Strangers: A Novel(46)

“OK then.” Erik gets the skewers from the drawer and begins to cut the turkey fillet into even pieces.

I wash the tomatoes under hot water. Nothing tastes worse than ice-cold tomato salad.

Erik hums as he works, a melody which I don’t recognize at first. With a bit of imagination, though, it kind of sounds like “Strangers in the Night.” Singing along under my breath, I pull the knife out of the wooden block. I don’t need to exert much pressure, it glides through the tomatoes as though they were butter. Perfect, fine, wafer-thin slices. Red and juicy.

It’s easy and fun. In just a short time I’ve already cut five tomatoes into slices and pushed them into the salad bowl, without the white fleshy part with the seeds breaking away.

The bottles of olive oil and white balsamic vinegar are standing there at the ready, but … the onions are missing. I hope I still have some in the fridge, at least one; one would be enough. All I need to do is get it, but I can’t pull my eyes away from the tomatoes in the bowl. From that red color.

I feel so light, inside. I feel like humming and singing and almost like dancing. All the pressure from the past few days is gone; it’s faded away. No more worries. No more thoughts.

And then, suddenly, there’s a silvery arc, so beautiful, like a curved bolt of lightning shooting up into the sky, one I’ve created with a single, smooth movement.

There’s a pause, for the duration of half a breath. And then … falling, plummeting, jabbing. Like I was a falcon swooping down, with a clear target, one I don’t want to miss at any cost.

The spot on his back, not far from the spine, beneath the shoulder blade. At last.

Time slows, almost standing still. I see the knife going downward, looking at it both with joy, the like of which I’ve rarely felt before, and with a fear which almost makes me lose my mind.

Part of me wants to stop the movement, but the rest of me is stronger. It wants to see the knife plunging into Erik’s back, not just once, but again and again.

At that moment Erik turns his head; his eyes widen, he moves his body to the side and the knife catches his right upper arm, raised in self-defense.

Red. Glistening, flowing red.

For a few seconds I stare in fascination at the stain which starts to spread on the sleeve of Erik’s shirt; only then do I begin to understand what just happened.

What I did.

No, please no, please …

It is me who screams, not him. I let the knife fall on the worktop, this knife which has been haunting my thoughts for days, the knife which I just used to stab Erik. Just like that.

“My God … I’m so—I’m so sorry!” I take a step toward him, but he flinches away. With an expression that I’ve never seen in his eyes before. Full of disbelief, horror, and disappointment which pains me all the way to my soul.

Then, in just a few seconds, all of that is gone. It turns into the opposite. I try to go over to him again.

“Stay where you are.” His voice, so full of emotion just moments ago, is now like ice. And it’s no wonder, I understand it, understand him, but …

The first thing I can get my hands on, that seems to make sense, is a roll of paper towels. I move forward to press it onto his upper arm to make a dressing, but this time he yells at me. “I said, stay where you are! Come any closer to me, and I won’t be held responsible for my actions!”

The blood has already seeped through his sleeve and is now dripping to the floor. Erik presses a hand over the wound, and it seems as though the pain is now kicking in.

“I’m so sorry,” I repeat, and hate myself for the fact that I also start to cry. For the fact that I seem incapable of uttering anything but this laughable, completely worthless apology. As if my words could make up for what I just did. As if anything could ever make up for it.

And I don’t understand. I don’t understand myself. There was no reason to do that, everything was going well between us …

“You’re completely insane.” Erik shakes his head in emphasis to every word he says. “Insane and dangerous. No, don’t come any closer.” The iciness in his tone has been joined by something else. Disgust?

I could understand that, of course. If I say what’s on the tip of my tongue right now, which is that I have no idea why I did this, because I was actually in the process of falling in love with him, it would only make things worse.

Insane and dangerous.

He’s right. It’s now glaringly obvious, if it wasn’t before, that I have to get myself admitted to a clinic. As quickly as possible.

But first Erik needs help. “I’ll get the first-aid kit. We have to make sure that we stop the bleeding and—”

“We don’t need to do anything at all, not anymore.” He fixes his gaze on me. “You were going to stab me right through the back with that knife, weren’t you? If I hadn’t turned around, I’d be dead now. You would have … stabbed me in cold blood.”

Everything he says is true, despairingly true. And, at the very least, he has the right to know it. I nod.

“Why, Jo?” Now, for the first time, I see something resembling grief in his eyes. Grief for how things once were, maybe, even if I can’t remember. Grief for what we could still have had.

“I don’t know.” My sobs swallow my words. “I really don’t know,” I repeat. “It just happened. I barely knew what was happening myself, and I know how that sounds. Even to me. But that’s how it was. Like I was outside of my own body, watching myself doing it. I never wanted to harm you and yet I almost killed you. You’re right. I am crazy.”