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powder-white lace skirts, too much for the male dancers who almost collapsed each time they had to lift her, but not too much for Isak, who always wanted more. Though he was himself a lean man, known for his brilliant brain and his perfect pitch.
     
    With a small team at the University of Lund, Isak helped develop the use of ultrasound. In his old age he was called a pioneer in his field. The female patients were grateful. Tumors were discovered, the unborn checked and assessed. Some might say invaded. Isak’s many romantic indiscretions were forgotten as time went by, and those women had grown old, their bodies no longer arousing anything in anyone. Neither desire nor curiosity. Perhaps pity. The female body is predictable that way.
    But oh! Isak the lean and Elisabet the voluptuous! As a young man, he would spread her out naked on the bed like a big hand-embroidered quilt. He would not allow a single piece of skin, a single limb, a single orifice to remain unattended. But it wasn’t enough. He wanted more. And she let him rub oil on her stomach and move the transducer over her skin so her flesh melted away and they could both see the inside of her body on a screen; he couldn’t get enough of it, couldn’t get enough of the irresistibly lovely Elisabet: her stomach, bladder, womb, ovaries, birth canal, cysts, tissues, ligaments. And one day, a fetus inside her! A nine-week-old fetus. A nine-week-old Erika. Or not Erika. Not nine weeks. Something else. Not a human being. Not time. Something that would one day be a human being, be time, be a nine-week-old Erika screaming and screaming for her mother’s breast. But now: something dark and mobile, like a jellyfish. A blob or blotch that often merely dissolves and runs out of a woman’s body as blood and liquid and grit. But that just as often takes root and eats and grows and bursts out of its skin like a cancer or a tree. Sounds attracted to or repelled by each other: sounds that create an image. A blotch that wasn’t there until it appeared on the screen, in the womb, deep within and way up inside Elisabet’s divinely beautiful body.
    There was a child growing inside your divinely beautiful body, Elisabet. It would not disappear, though you ran up and down all the steps you could find, ran through the streets of Stockholm instead of taking the bus, ran to the shop to buy food for yourself and your husband, the man they declared a genius, ran to rehearsals at the Opera House, where you held your breath and pulled in your stomach though nothing showed yet; ran home, up and down more steps, always more steps, ran to your morning class, ran until you fell over in one practically perfect movement and threw up on yourself and two other girls who came tripping over on tiptoe to help you; threw up on pure white costumes, on diaphanous tights, leg warmers and toe shoes firmly tied, crossed twice around the ankle; threw up so the stench of your vomit overpowered the smell of chalk; everywhere that smell of chalk; you could no longer bear the smell of chalk on the floor, on your shoes. But your child didn’t disappear. You went on running, but your child clung on to you and you couldn’t stop throwing up. Rehearsals were canceled, classes skipped. You were replaced by another dancer. Get rid of it, Isak! Get rid of it! I don’t want it, you must see that! I don’t want children! Not this child! Not now! But Isak did not want to get rid of it. That’s a life you’re carrying,
a life,
Elisabet, he said, and shut the door behind him. Your body lost its shape. It swelled up. What’s that smell, Isak? Fried food? Sweat? Perfume? Soap? Semen? Coffee? Snow? You’ll soon be able to see your baby, he said. And if it’s a girl she’ll be called Karin, because it’s the loveliest name I know. Your stomach expanded. Your ankles swelled. You got out the sewing machine and the rolls of pink silk ribbon. You measured and cut four ribbons of equal length and fixed them to your shoes.