I'm a professional. I can't allow feelings to take over. There's only one way to get unwanted feelings out of your system: kill them. I have a Makarov, a Glock, and a Beretta in my backpack. All we need is a safe place where we can kill a handful of unwanted feelings without hurting innocent bystanders. Stockholm has such a place. It's the shooting range of The Target. You have to be a member, but you're also admitted for training purposes if you work for the police, the military, or NATO (field agents of every international secret service have a NATO badge to get access to facilities where they can train their skills).
We don't go to The Target's shooting range at the Västberga Allé in the centre of Stockholm. I want to take the ferry to the island of Rindö, where they have an outdoor shooting range. Also, I want to combine the trip with a visit to Frieda's parents, who live on that same island. They might have information about Agneta.
When we arrive at the bus stop, Frieda runs away. For a few seconds, I don't know what to do. I follow her, worried, and see how she empties her stomach in somebody's garden. My intuition tells me she needs chemicals more than a hand on her shoulder. In a nearby pharmacy, I buy everything the woman behind the counter suggests.
When I'm back, Frieda is in panic, not about being attacked but about what other people might think: "This is why… I never leave the clinic… Benny. I get panic attacks. Headaches. I get sick. I don't sleep. I feel awful…"
I give her two pills against the acid in her stomach, a Valium to relax, and a bottle of water to wash it away.
"You must think… I'm awful.", Frieda says.
"Please, don't tell me what I think; ask me what I think. I think your body gives you the best defence mechanism for the next time somebody tries to force himself on you. Puking is perfect for scaring any rapist away. You should be happy and confident about your body's reactions. From now on, should anyone scare you: puke in their face."
I give her some wet paper towels to clean herself.
"Are you better? Do you prefer to walk to the ferry? Or do you need some more time?"
She needs time but tries to convince me she doesn't: "I'm fine. Ferry. Go. Yes. Walk, please."
I offer her my arm but don't insist when she keeps the distance, that mysterious distance between a man and a woman. I want to close that gap, but I can't seem to find the words to do it with…
"If you have any doubts about what I think, there's only one way to find out: ask me. I promised you can trust me. I'll never lie to you. You're a brave woman and I admire you for being so strong, for not giving up, although you suffer from things you can't control. Your panic attacks, your sickness and the other symptoms are just discomforts we both need to accept. I respect that you are like you are. There's nothing to worry about, except the sickness problem itself. Let's hope these pills help and let's trust Mother Nature to do the rest."
Frieda isn't in the mood to talk, and I have some thinking to do myself, so we keep quiet until we reach the ferry. We're lucky. It's leaving, but with a long sprint, we make it on board just in time. I fill my lungs with the salty air, watch the seagulls following us, and look around at the green islands between the grey water and the cloudy sky.
"You live in a beautiful country. If only it wasn't so cold, I think I could live here and be happy. This land's a place I love, where I would like to stay, some day, far away. I love being outdoors. There's so much nature around, lakes and woods and a unique archipelago of islands that no other country in Europe has…"
"You forget Swedish people. In general, they aren't very nice."
"You're the only Swedish person I know, and you are very nice.", I say.
"You don't know me. I'm awful."
I feel a wave of anger coming up, but Angry Angus doesn't play the strings of Frankenstein. This girl is hurt. I force myself into a calm and friendly mood. A confident smile. A soft voice: "Why do you say you're awful? Why do you do that to yourself? Nobody forces you to do it. It serves no purpose at all. Are you trying to convince me? It doesn't work; I don't believe you. Are you trying to convince yourself? Are you training yourself to accept a permanent state of misery for the rest of your life? Why don't you do the opposite? Think positive about yourself. Train yourself for your desired future. Work as hard as you can for a happy life. You're not alone. I'll help you with it. But you have to make the first step: I want you to be honest with yourself. Accept your current state. Accept how you are. Look in the mirror and tell yourself: «This is me. It's not perfect, but it's not bad either. It's just how it is, and I'm working on it to get better. That's all I can do». Accept the demons and the nightmares. The past is there. You can't take it away. All you can do is accept it as it is. I accept it and I look at you with admiration: I see a woman who doesn't give up, who's been through hell and came back, who thinks «from now on it can only get better». Be honest. Be realistic. You can't change the past, but you will change your future. I'll help you."
"You don't understand."
"Oh, I do understand. I'm ugly, I'm short and I'm not good with people. At school, I never had any friends. I had this silly dream of becoming a spy and I preferred to sit in my room, learning how to dismantle an atomic bomb, while the boys from my class played football and chased girls. It's a matter of respect. I respect you as you are because I see many good points in your character and they easily outnumber your few minor points. Please, respect yourself as I respect you."
"How can I? I'm not good enough."
"From now on, I want you to say: «I'll give it my best». Not just «I'll try» but really commit yourself. We'll accept failure, but we cannot accept a weak attitude. Your future happiness is at stake here. That's why we're on this ferry, dear Frieda, because over there, on that island, there's a place where we'll kill your «I'm not good enough»."
* * *
"This bottle of Bordeaux is your «I'm not good enough». This bottle of German beer is your «I won't». The bottle of American cola is your «I can't». This Italian Chianti is your fear. The black Irish Guinness is filled with all your demons. And this little bottle of Swedish schnapps is your past and all the terrible memories it contains."
I walk back to the other side of the shooting range and give her one of the three pistols. Frieda got familiar with it during the last twenty minutes: "This is my dear friend, Tony Beretta, with his steel 4,9-inch dick and his nine lead balls. It makes him HOT when you kill your fears."
"You're crazy."
"Yes, I am, and I'm going to make you crazy too. Being crazy feels great. I recommend it to everyone. Nobody tries to hurt you. They look at you and think: «Oh, he's just crazy». Now, take that pistol, hold it like I showed you, and say the magic words with each bullet you fire. We're going to kill your demons and burn your nightmares. There's no better way than shooting them to death, right here, right now."
Frieda takes a deep breath, raises the Beretta, aims at the first bottle and starts with the ritual.
"You've hurt me enough."
BANG!
"This stops here."
BANG!
"I'm not afraid of you."
BANG!
"I am an amazing woman."
BANG!
"You will NOT hurt me anymore!"
BANG!
"I will make you pay."
BANG!
"I fight back!"
BANG!
"This ends HERE!"
BANG!
"Benny says: NO MORE!"
BANG!
The broken bottle, bleeding Bordeaux, is the innocent victim of our voodoo ritual that kills the demons in Frieda's head. I give her a full clip. She reloads, hands me the empty clip so I can fill it again for the next round, and repeats her ritual with the bottle of German beer.
Words are wind. Words can't hurt you. But words can become magic spells that change your mind and help you get stronger.
There are two ways to keep yourself standing in the blasting blizzard of life. You can hide inside steel armour, indestructible, but it will also isolate you from the warmth some people are willing to share, and it will cost you lots of energy to keep standing when the storm tries to blow you away. The second choice is… dress in chicken wire. The blizzard of ice-cold words will not harm you. Without effort, you can go wherever you like. But you have to open up and face the world without fear, like children enjoy everything as if it's a miracle. It doesn't even need courage. It needs trust. Believe in yourself. Respect yourself. You can learn that by saying the magic words: you can't hurt me, I'm an amazing woman, and I won't give up, I will fight back.
Words are wind. If I was to call a white man «nigger», he would laugh about me, for being so stupid. He would let the wind of words pass right through him like he's made of chicken wire; he wouldn't feel hurt. Now, if I would say that same n-word to a black man, he would feel insulted, perhaps even become angry or aggressive. Why? It's neither me nor the word that makes him feel bad. He does that to himself, probably because he learnt from others to react that way: somebody tries to hurt you, so you should react by hurting yourself. That black man could also have chosen to laugh like the white man about my stupidity. Insults say nothing about the insulted and everything about the insulter.
What would be the wisest thing to do? Open up. Don't let others hurt you. Let the wind run through you. You shouldn't pay attention to the stupid, the violent, the rude, the ignorant and the uneducated people on our planet. Turn off your TV. You can't educate stupid people, so don't waste your energy on them. Their words don't say anything about you, only about themselves. Don't follow the bad example of others who don't contribute to your happiness, but give instead a positive example to others by showing that nobody can hurt you. I call those racists «decent white Christians», an insult that drives them crazy, makes them angry and aggressive, but I don't care.
A wise woman would say something like: "I heard a thousand cruel words about me, and it made no difference, yet I hear one praise, and all cold darkness shatters."
Even the little schnapps bottle has died now. Frieda and my friend Tony have won the battle of Rindö, a heroic battle that will be remembered for the rest of her life. Her traumas are buried forever. The doors to her past are closed, and the key has been fed to the sharks. Frieda sits down on the ground and lets her tears flow generously, one last mourning of all those dark powers that kept her awake for so many nights.
I leave her and her emotions alone for a while, cleaning the guns and doing my own version of the training with a bottle of passion-fruit champagne cocktail, killing a feeling of my own that's been haunting my conscience for already too long: "It's just a silly phase…" BANG! "… I'm going through" BANG! "And just because…" BANG! "… I help you with this" BANG! "Don't get me wrong, don't think that I'm insane." BANG! "I like to see you" BANG! "But then again" BANG! "That doesn't mean you mean that much to me." BANG! "I'm not in love." BANG!
I'm a professional. Frieda is an ally, a necessary tool to fulfil my mission. I can't let some minor feelings interfere when I'm at work. She's cute, it's true, but she's a mental patient and she's out of reach too, being far too high above someone like me. I'll never be good enough. I need to repeat it until that stupid feeling has disappeared. It works. I feel much better already. Frieda is about halfway through her final goodbye with her nightmares. There's enough time to repeat my ritual; I have one more bottle of passion-fruit champagne cocktail left.
After we shared a bottle of mineral water and an apple, there's one last thing in my backpack. I take it out and give it to Frieda. It's a present, packed in shiny paper, something I bought on our way here: "This is dessert."
She opens the package. It's a book. It's Wes Craven's «A Nightmare on Elm Street». I give her a lighter too: "All your nightmares are here, in this book. You can read them every night, or you can take the lighter and burn them forever. It's your choice."
Frieda gives me a suspicious look: "Are you serious? My nightmares are in my head, not in a book…"
"It's fiction. Fiction is real because you believe in it. When I was a little boy, my granddad read me «The Spy Who Came in from the Cold», and «Goldfinger», and «The Bourne Identity». That fiction made me believe so much in a better world that it became true. But the fiction in your head makes your world worse than it really is. So? We take the nightmares, put them back to where they came from, and we burn them. It's a ritual. It works. All you have to do is believe in it. It's your choice."
Frieda looks at me, looks at the bestseller in her hands (lots of people love nightmares), looks at me again, and wonders: "Are you crazy?"
I guess I am and I confirm it with a grin: "You've tried all the normal ways, with the pills, the therapy, and the clinic. It didn't work. So why don't we try something crazy? It can never be worse."
My laughter infects Frieda: "Do they teach you this at Spy School?"
I laugh back: "I learnt it from Ray Bradbury, from his classic novel «Fahrenheit 451»: burning books destroys the knowledge of the readers. Burn your nightmares and find out. At least, it will keep us warm. My hands are cold and my butt is frozen. Did you hear that story about the little boy who watched the skaters in mid-winter Amsterdam with his tongue against the metal bridge? His tongue froze against the cold iron and he couldn't even call for help. Finally, they released him with hot water. A journalist wrote about the adventure in the evening paper. The next day, over fifty people had their tongues frozen against metal bridges. That's what reading does to us."
"So now we're going to burn my nightmares and when it works, Wes Craven will get the Nobel Prize for medicine?", Frieda laughs.
I'm double now: "With all those people, suffering and fighting demons, there will not be enough copies. Come on, baby. Light my fire…"
Frieda puts a flame under the half-opened book and illuminates the shooting range with sinister shadows. With a spooky voice, I cry out: "Demons of the Underworld, follow your evil ways back to your hell and stay there until the end of times. Nightmares and dark demons. Your end is now. From now on, happy dreams will replace you. And if you dare to return, I send Frieda to scare you; if you know how she looks when she wakes up in the morning, you won't even think of coming back."
Frieda throws the burning pages on the grass before us, lifts her dark chestnut hair like a lion's manes, and shouts: "I'm the ghost of Christmas Future. I'm scarier than everything you can imagine."
What's really scary is that Stockholm hasn't seen any rain lately. The high grass in front of us is dry as straw and, thanks to budget cuts, long enough to answer our prayers for hell. There's no water to put out the fire, ni una gota de esperanza. The icy wind takes things out of our hands. In seconds, the flames are high enough to reach the reeds on the border of the island. The demons aren't satisfied yet; they lighten up the entire place and invite the two fir trees to the party, turning them into bright torches like the ghost of Christmas future uses to burn the sad remainders of good ol' Ebenezer Scrooge and all the other nightmares fiction brought us. This ritual works a little too well.
Frieda is terrified: "Benny! We should put it out. Find a bucket. Call the fire department. Do something."
I can't. I'm laughing too much: "This is hell, Frieda. We can't put it out. All we can do is run away as fast as we can and leave our demons behind. Or do you want to explain this to the police, with the risk that our story will be front page news tomorrow and the rest of the world starts copying our good example?"
We run.