“You were going to bed?” he said. “Yes, we’d been watching TV all evening,” she said. “And he didn’t move when I got up to go downstairs.” “Was it dark outside? Do you remember?” Yngve asked. “Yes, I think so,” she said. I was close to retching. “But when you called Gunnar,” Yngve said, “that was in the morning, wasn’t it? Can you remember?” “It might have been in the morning,” she said. “Now that you say so. Yes, it was. I went upstairs and there he was, in the chair. In there.” She got to her feet and left the kitchen. We followed. She stopped halfway into the living room and pointed to the chair in front of the television. “That’s where he was sitting,” she said. “That’s where he died.” She covered her face with her hands for an instant. Then she walked quickly back to the kitchen. Nothing could bridge this. It was impossible to deal with. I could fill the bucket with water and start washing, and I could clean the whole damned house, but it would not help an iota, of course it wouldn’t, nor would the idea that we should reclaim the house and hold the funeral here, there was nothing I could do that would help, there was nowhere I could escape to, nothing that could protect me from this.
