Actually, it’s less than two years later: April 1911. Henrik Bergman has just been ordained. Anna is still in a sanatorium called Monte Verita by Lake Lugano and is considered practically cured. Svea Åkerblom has undergone a major operation for the removal of both breasts, her womb, spleen, and ovaries. She has grown whiskers and shaves every day. Carl has a new invention with which he is assaulting the Patent Office: with short but harmless electrical impulses, bed-wetting and ejaculation can be prevented in youths. Gustav Åkerblom’s wife, the jolly, plump Martha, has acquired a lover. Every Thursday she goes to Stockholm, where she is taking instruction in the painting of miniatures. Her husband has similarly increased in girth and does not begrudge his wife her distraction. Their daughters have started senior high school and intend to take university entrance exams, something fairly unusual in those days. Oscar Åkerblom the wholesaler has expanded his empire and opened branches in Vanersborg and Sundsvall. He is not just well-off these days, but regarded as wealthy Ernst has applied for a post as a meteorologist in Norway, a country far ahead of his own in this new science. Johan Åkerblom, the traffic superintendent, is rather fragile, the aftereffects of his stroke overcome but the pains in his leg and hip troublesome. Mrs. Karin, busy governing her extensive empire, has put on some weight, which does not worry her much. On the other hand, she has hemorrhoids and is also troubled with permanent constipation despite figs, prunes, and a special herbal tea of elderberry and dandelion.
After these interruptions, which would presumably make any experienced dramatist’s hair stand on end, we shall return to the story or the action or the saga or whatever.
The scene is the marital bedroom one spring evening at the end of April. It is past ten o’clock and quiet in Trädgårdsgatan. Noise and music can be heard coming from the Gästrike-Hälsinge student residence, which is closer to the cathedral, where preparations for Walpurgis Night are underway.
Mrs. Karin is putting her long hair into a thick braid for the night. As usual, she is standing in front of the mirror in the spacious bathroom beyond the bedroom. This contains a newly installed bath and running water, tiled walls, and a bulky radiator below the window with its colored panes. It cannot really be said that Karin is beautiful, but her lips are victorious, her complexion fair and unlined, her forehead broad, nose determined, her mouth even more determined. “Not lips for kissing but for issuing orders,” as Schiller says. The gray blue eyes can be cold and observant, but can also turn black with rage. Mrs. Karin has never uttered the words “I love” or “I hate.” That would be inconceivable, almost obscene. Nevertheless, this does not mean that Karin Åkerblom, who is just forty-five, is a stranger to passionate emotional outbursts.
Johan Åkerblom is sitting on the edge of his bed in his redbordered nightshirt, his pince-nez on his nose. He is reading an English magazine called The Railroad, which describes in voluptuous terms a new steam locomotive of astonishing performance. The bedside light illuminates his thin, newly washed hair, the rather hunched figure, and the long nose. The ceiling light is already out, the room dusky, white-painted beds, side by side. Light curtains, artistically draped, a huge wardrobe with double doors and mirrors, comfortable pale-green upholstered armchairs, a wide rug in soft colors, sturdy, ingeniously fitted-out bedside tables for carafes of water, medicine bottles, appropriate bedside books, and chamber-pot cupboards.
Inherited oil paintings hang on the walls: Karin when young in a white summer dress; a leafy tree against a brilliant summer sky; an Italian basilica in a square, three women in colorful costumes having stopped on the sun-drenched piazza.
Mrs. Karin closes the door into the bathroom. She has her glasses on her nose and pair of curved nail-scissors in her hand. She sits down on a low stool by the bed and starts cutting her husband’s toenails.
Johan: Ow, now you’ve cut my little toe off.
Karin: It’s so hard to see. Can’t you turn a little?
Johan: Then I can’t see to read.
Karin: I can’t think what you do to your toenails.
Johan: I bite them.
Karin: You ought to go to a chiropodist, a foot person.
Johan: Never! I’m no sodomite, am I?
Karin: Here’s a callus. You must let me scrape that away.
Johan (reading the magazine): If you take it away, I’ll lose my balance. I find it difficult enough to walk as it is.
Karin: My patience is incredible. Incredible. Really.
Johan: Don’t be so namby-pamby, my darling. You love poking in ears, putting on bandages, squeezing pimples, lancing boils, pulling hairs out of anyone’s nostrils. And not least — cutting toenails. You find it voluptuous.
Karin: You could at least lift your foot up a bit.
Johan: I don’t like seeing you at my feet.
Karin: I sit at your feet so that you don’t get totally filthy.
Johan: As long as you have a pure mind, you don’t need to wash your feet.
Karin: And you have?
Johan: What do I have?
Karin: You don’t even listen to what you’re saying yourself.
Johan: Because you disturb me all the time. On these new great engine cylinders, they use what they call airway ventilators, which automatically open a link between the two ends of the cylinders, so no air compression shut inside the cylinder and consequent counterpressure can arise when the engine runs with the steam shut off. Listen to that now. Thank you, thank you, that’s enough toenail cutting for now.
The traffic superintendent puts the magazine aside, swings his legs up with some difficulty, and creeps down under the covers. Mrs. Karin presses the button of an electric bell and patters around her bed. She is wearing a full-length peignoir. Standing by her bed, she takes three pills in rapid succession, tossing her head back and taking a gulp of water after each pill.
Johan: When you take those pills, you look like a hen with a bad throat. And you blink.
There is a knock on the door, and Miss Siri comes in with a little silver tray holding a cup of steaming bouillon and a plate with two oatcakes spread with slivers of mild cheese. She puts the tray down on the traffic superintendent’s bedside table, wishes them good night, and departs as soundlessly as she had come.
Johan munches on an oatcake and blows on the hot soup. Mrs. Karin is sitting on her bed writing in her diary with a thin pencil.
Johan: Well?
Karin: I don’t know I’m writing down what happened yesterday, but the strange thing is I can’t remember anything. What happened yesterday? Can you tell me?
Johan: No. Yes, we had a letter from Martha. And I went to the dentist and had a wisdom tooth pulled. You bought an Arvid ödmann gramophone record.
Karin: Sometimes I feel so mournful, Johan. (She sighs.)
Johan: What’s worrying you?
Karin: I don’t know. Yes, as a matter of fact I do.
Johan: If you know, you should say what you know.
Karin: Don’t you think Ernst comes to see us less and less often?
Johan: I haven’t thought about it.
Karin: Yes. Less and less often.
Johan: You were the one who wanted him to move away from home and set up his own household.
Karin: Has it never occurred to you that I was so enthusiastic because I wanted him to contradict me: “No, no, Mammschen dear, I like it much better here at home with you and Papa.”
Johan (astonished): Don’t tell me you hoped that would happen?
Karin: The opposite happened. He was still enthusiastic.
Johan: And then our little girl is away. In a hospital. Far away. Thank goodness almost better, at last! But the house has been damned empty.
Karin: Yes, of course. But she likes it there at the sanatorium and has learned German properly. She doesn’t seem to have missed us.
Johan: And now you’re going over there to bring her back.
Karin: Would it upset you if Anna and I made a detour through Italy? I think it’d be fun to go to Florence jus
t once more in my life.
Johan: Then you’d be away quite a long time?
Karin: Four weeks at the most. You could come with us, Johan!
Johan: You know I couldn’t.
Karin: We could take it carefully. You’d enjoy a little trip, Johan. Imagine . . . Tuscany in the spring!
Johan: You must go. Not me.
Karin: Anna would be so pleased.
Johan: I’ll stay at home and count the days.
Karin: It’s good that Anna’s not coming home just yet. May can be so cold and wet. In June, we’ll go straight to the country.
Johan: Do you think she’ll want to wait that long?
Karin: What do you mean? Tell me what you mean.
Johan: I just meant that perhaps there’s someone she wants to come back to. Now that she’s well again.
Karin: I don’t really understand. Do you mean . . . ?
The traffic superintendent looks at his wife with a thoughtful expression on his face: It is a moral and strategic dilemma for him. He doesn’t like keeping secrets from Karin. He ought to keep quiet. But he doesn’t. Quick decisions and extensive consequences.
Karin: What is it, Johan? I can see you want to tell me something that’s worrying you.
He doesn’t answer, but opens the bedside table drawer and takes out a letter. It’s a letter from Anna. To Ernst. Not sealed. Quite thick.
Johan: When the afternoon mail came, you weren’t at home. So I took it. Here’s a letter from Anna to Ernst. It was posted in Ascona four days ago.
Karin: Ernst’s coming back from Christiania next week. There’s no point in foewarding it.
Johan: Anna seems to have forgotten to seal the envelope. Or she did it so carelessly, it’s come open by itself.
Karin: Why do you say it like that? That’s nothing remarkable. It often happens . . .
Johan: There’s another letter inside the letter.
Karin: . . . another letter? To Henrik Bergman.
Johan: It says on the envelope “to be forwarded because I don’t know his address.”
Karin: But that letter’s sealed.
Johan: That letter was sealed, but I’ve opened it.
Karin: What do you think Anna’ll say . . . ?
Johan: It was simple. A little steam from the kettle.
Karin: Have you read the letter?
Johan: No, I haven’t read it.
Karin: Why haven’t you read it?
Johan: I don’t know. Ashamed to, perhaps.
Karin: If we read that letter, it’d be for Anna’s good.
Johan: Or from jealousy. Or because we’re furious that the girl is going behind our backs. Or because we don’t accept young Bergman.
Karin: Naturally, Johan. It’s easy to complicate one’s deepest motives. You can read about that kind of fun in novels.
Johan: Read it! I find it difficult to make out Anna’s handwriting.
Karin takes the letter to Henrik Bergman, opens it, puts on the glasses she has just taken off, unfolds the many pages, and reads in silence. She shakes her head.
Karin: Oh, just listen to this!
But Johan is not allowed to listen to anything. Mrs. Karin turns the pages, frowning and scratching her cheek.
Johan: I was given nothing to listen to.
Karin (reads): “. . . all long ago. When I think back, I realize how childish, immature, and spoiled I was. The long time I’ve spent here at the sanatorium and the proximity of contemporaries who are much sicker than I am have made me think again. And then I’ve said to myself . . .”
Johan (quietly): . . . you mustn’t read any more.
Karin: . . . if you don’t want to hear it, then I’ll read it to myself.
Johan: It’s not right.
Karin (reads): “. . . and then I’ve said to myself, I feel a responsibility for you, Henrik, a responsibility I thought I hadn’t the energy to bear and so I tried to unburden myself of you. I was ill, too. I couldn’t think clearly It was nice just to sink into a fever and be looked after. I felt humiliated and deceived. I thought you’d lied. I was convinced I’d never be able to trust you again. Now, afterward, this all seems unreal and distant. And also, my guilt is at least as great as yours, if it can be called guilt when you’re blinded and confused.”
Mrs. Karin stops and puts down the crisply folded sheets of paper with the golden emblem of the sanatorium on the left-hand edge. She finds it hard to control an emotion leaping up her throat and forcing her to swallow.
Johan: . . . strange to think . . .
Karin (reads on): “. . . I know nothing. But if it is true that after almost two years you still look on me as you did when we were sitting on the jetty at Duvtjärn washing the blood out of that bedspread . . .”
Johan:. . . one must blame oneself . . .
Karin:” . . . it’s so easy to say you love someone. I love you, dear Papa. I love you, brother dear. But you are really using a word you don’t know the meaning of. So I dare not write that I love you, Henrik. I don’t dare do that. But if you will take my hand and help me out of my great grief, then perhaps we can teach each other what that word entails . . .” (Pause.)
Johan: Now we know more than we wanted to know.
Karin: Yes, it’s going to be difficult now.
Johan: We can’t suppress the letter.
Karin: He shouldn’t have it.
Johan: I beg of you, Karin.
Karin: For Anna’s sake.
Johan: And if she finds out that we . . .
Karin: Letters get lost. It happens every day.
Johan: It mustn’t happen.
Karin: That’s silly, Johan.
Johan: Do as you please. But I don’t want to know.
Karin: Just as I thought.
Johan: Do you really imagine we can stop . . . ?
Karin: Maybe not. (Pause.) But now I’m going to tell you something important. Sometimes I am quite sure when something is right or wrong. I am so sure, it’s as if it were written down. And I am sure that it is wrong with Anna and Henrik Bergman. So I’ll burn the letter to Ernst and the letter to Henrik. And I’ll go to Italy with Anna and stay away the whole summer if that proves necessary. Are you listening to what I’m saying, Johan?
Johan: In this case, you’re going too far.
Karin: I don’t think so.
Johan: Evil breeds worse evil.
Karin: That remains to be seen.
Johan: I don’t understand how you dare!
Then silence falls in the bedroom: despondency, anxiety, revulsion, anger, jealousy, grief: Anna’s leaving me. She has already left me. Anna is going away and taking the light with her.
Mrs. Karin leafs through the many closely written pages, reading here and there, her forehead scarlet: I know that Anna is uncertain deep down. She only opposes us when she’s angry or upset. I must be careful. She really wants to please her mother. Her looks can be pleading . . . tell me what to do. I know so little.
Karin (suddenly): Yes, well, it says here that Henrik Bergman has been ordained. (Reads) “I grieve that I couldn’t be at your ordination, and I think about how your mother must have . . .” Oh, yes. Then he promptly disappears from town, what a . . .
She falls silent. It’s painful that Johan doesn’t understand. Even distances himself. It’s been like that so often in their life together. She has had to carry out all the unpleasant decisions on her own.
Karin: Johan.
Johan: Yes.
Karin: Are you miserable?
Johan: I’m at a loss and miserable.
Karin: Can’t we try to be nice to each other although we disagree on this matter?
Johan: But this is vital, Karin.
Karin: Just because of that. I don’t want you to retreat. I don’t mind taking the responsibility, but you mustn’t retreat.
Johan: But it’s vital.
Karin: I heard you say so.
Johan: For you and me.
Karin: For us?
Johan: If yo
u carry out what you plan to do, then you’ll harm Anna. If you harm Anna, you harm me. If you harm me, you harm yourself.
Karin: How can you be so sure that I’ll harm Anna? It’s horrible of you to say that.
Johan: You’ll stop her from living her own life. You can only make her anxious and uncertain, but you can’t change anything. You can damage but not change.
Karin: And you’re sure of that?
Johan: Yes.
Karin: You know?
Johan: Sometimes, though not often, I think about the future. Both you and I know that I’ll soon be leaving you. We know that, though we never talk about anything so embarrassing and unfortunate. You’ll be left alone and will go on ruling your kingdom. I think you’ll find yourself rather isolated. Don’t make yourself lonelier than you need to.
Karin is sitting upright in her bed, not leaning back against the pillows. With a hasty movement, she takes off her glasses and puts them, not on the bedside table, but in front of her, right across the scattered sheets of paper. Her face is in the shadow, her hands on the covers. For a brief moment she is open, vulnerable. Johan tries to take her hand, but she withdraws it, though not roughly.
Karin: I don’t think I can be lonelier than I already am.
Johan: I don’t understand.
Karin: Ernst is moving to Christiania. For good.
Johan: Does that seem so bad?
Karin: Yes, it does.
Johan: Ernst is really the only person . . .
Karin: I don’t know, I can’t classify. But Ernst . . .
She gets no further, and slaps the covers with her hand, once, twice.
Johan: Is it so bad?
Karin: I’m not going to complain.
Johan: Our children are leaving us. That’s a fact.
Karin: I’m not complaining.
Johan: But I presume it’s a terrible desolation.
Karin: You use such dramatic words.
Johan: I presume it’s like this — this moment had to come. We’re not prepared for it. And now we’re nonplussed and close to tears.
The Best Intentions Page 13
