Twenty-eight
He had dreamed about money. But mainly about Africa. And then not only about Miss Elly but so much more, the whole continent had streamed into his body like a pleasurable potpourri of beautiful images. Laughter and howls were heard in a landscape bathed in sun, where then twilight came creeping with coolness and surprisingly quickly everything was in shadow and darkness.
It was a good dream with many fine details, and a few that were funny. If he had been staying at the camp Christian and John would have listened to his account with great delight. They would have nodded energetically and persuaded Karsten to expand on the story. John would have giggled at his inimitable way when it came to Miss Elly and love. He loved to hear Karsten’s words about his “best sister,” as John had always called her.
Karsten got up to make breakfast and decide how he should organize the day, but the thoughts of Africa would not leave him in peace. Were John and Christian still at the camp or had other guides and trackers come, younger and faster? He did not want to believe that. No one could beat John where felines were concerned, and Christian knew everything about rhinoceroses.
He had coffee in a melancholy emotional state of joy and loss. Should he go back? Could he go back? The questions would come up now and then but so far he had rejected all thoughts of leaving Sweden. Now suddenly the idea of selling the little he owned, packing up and buying a one-way ticket, seemed fully feasible.
He did not want to live in Windhoek, but a little house in Shiwo he could probably find. Miss Elly’s relatives were there. They would welcome him with song and swallow him whole.
The money he set aside would perhaps be enough for the trip, a patch of ground and a house, but not much more. Miss Elly’s family would not hesitate a moment to support him, in reality they would demand to do so, but he did not want to live off of others, above all not those who were worse off than himself.
Karsten knew where this was heading. The image of the shoe box with money was burning on his retinas, in the dream the bundles had been his. He had been sitting on the veranda with the box at his feet conversing with his good friend Mr. Green, a thirty-centimeter-long lizard with a brown head and a shimmering green thorax that changed to turquoise toward the tail. His wife was an identical color, just as curious as her mate but careful and guarded in everything she undertook.
Mr. Green had let his tongue play—Karsten assumed that the lizard also sensed the smell of money—and approached slowly and sniffed at the shoe box. It had quite unexpectedly raised itself on its hind legs and leaned over the edge of the box and inspected the contents. And then something really unexpected happened. Mr. Green had seemed to sneer with his broad lizard mouth and triumphantly did a thumbs-up to his lizard wife as if to say: Here there are resources.
Karsten was awakened by his own laughter. Mr. Green had a talent for always putting him in a good mood. At times of melancholy and loneliness the lizard had been a friend to rely on.
Should he too do the thumbs-up? Should he take Mr. Green’s contented expression as a sign?
He finished breakfast in a quandary and with a growing sense of irritation. It was just past six o’clock in the morning so he did not need to feel stressed but hurried away anyway. He needed to leave the apartment, put his body to work, it was the only way to relieve the discomfort.
What remained at Lundquist’s was to cut down the birch tree on the front side and then clean up after himself. The birch was not particularly large but was in an awkward location. If he were to cut down the tree in one piece there would not be much room to spare, and there was a risk that it would fall over the fence toward the street, so he had decided to lop off the top first. For that maneuver he needed the ladder and was therefore forced to take the car and trailer.
He drove to the minimal storeroom in Boländerna where he stored his tools. He rented the storeroom from a sheet-metal shop. While he rooted among his things—there was no point in taking off too early—he heard the sheet-metal workers arrive. It was Hedlund and Oskarsson, as usual joking loudly with each other. Karsten became a little envious. The loneliness felt even stronger. He stopped a moment, stood quietly in the darkness of the shed and thought about Africa.
When the voices had died away he left the storeroom, unhitched the ladder from the hooks on the wall, and strapped it onto the trailer. He had already packed saw, oil, and fuel. It was time to finish the work in Kåbo.
* * *
The birch was soon dispatched, taken down and sawn into manageable pieces that he stacked in an old bicycle storage area that the homeowner used as a woodshed. Lundquist had explained that he would gladly chop the wood himself; he needed a little exercise, he said. Karsten could do nothing but agree in silence. Lundquist was alarmingly fat.
Everything had gone as planned and when he got in the car the sun was peeking out. He smiled quietly to himself and turned the ignition key.
After driving away he regretted that he had not thrown one more stone onto Ohler’s roof and slowed down, but realized immediately the silliness in returning to carry out such a solely self-indulgent action.
On the other hand, there was one thing he had neglected and that was saying good-bye to Johansson. He turned around the block and parked outside the associate professor’s house.
He found him by the compost sitting in a wheelbarrow.
“I got a little tired. I’m a little out of sorts actually.”
Karsten saw how embarrassed Gregor Johansson was. He must have felt caught just sitting and idling.
“No, don’t get up, it’s all right. Well, is this the last grass-cutting for the year?”
Johansson nodded. Karsten crouched down and leaned his back against the compost.
“So you’re done now?” said Johansson.
“Yes, the last is done. The birch is down. It feels good.”
“And what is waiting now?”
Africa, thought Karsten. He had a desire to recount his dream, but the box of five-hundred-kronor bills would be hard to explain. And Mr. Green perhaps would stand out as slightly too fantastic a lizard for anyone who had never met him.
“I’m going to cut down a couple of maple trees in Årsta, then I’ll have to see. Once again thanks for the witch alder.”
“It was nothing. Maybe you can come by in the spring. Or sooner,” Johansson hastened to add.
“I’d like to do that. I still have to look after Lundquist’s garden next year.”
At the same moment it occurred to him that he was lying to the associate professor. He would never set foot at Lundquist’s again. It didn’t feel right. He wanted to say goodbye to the associate professor in a better way.
“Maybe I can come by the day after tomorrow? I have a couple of gardening books that might interest you. Duplicates.”
He wanted to give the associate professor something. He wanted to explain himself, tell him something about Africa. Not just disappear from this belated friend.
“Gladly,” the associate professor answered. “Come for midmorning coffee.”
They separated at the gate. What Karsten could not suspect was that they would never meet again.
Twenty-nine
“Birgitta, I want you to speak with the professor.”
Agnes had gotten up and hung her apron on the backside of the kitchen door. Birgitta and Liisa were still sitting at the table.
“Give your notice?”
Birgitta looked completely speechless.
“Yes, isn’t that what you say?”
Liisa nodded and smiled.
“That’s exactly what you say,” she said, and despite her agitation Agnes could see the contented look on the Finnish woman’s face.
“But why?”
Birgitta’s question was simple but hard to answer. Agnes did not really know herself. She thought she had formulated the reasons to herself. But now she just felt deathly tired of the professor’s carping and irritation. If he had won a prize he should be satisfied. Yet he had become eve
n grumpier. She was also tired of the house, and she didn’t know exactly why.
She missed the sea, she could also mention as a reason, but that sounded too pompous and strange, and not particularly believable besides. She had actually lived in town for more than fifty years and never expressed any longing for something so vague as a view of “the sea.”
If she were to say something about the rock at Tall-Anna’s, where you could see so far, the professor would laugh out loud. Birgitta perhaps would not laugh but become worried and take it as a result of confusion. For her everything outside the pruned garden had constituted a threatening disorder since childhood.
“I want to be a pensioner,” said Agnes.
Liisa Lehtonen laughed heartily.
“Damn it, you’re right about that!” she hooted. “Be a happy pensioner!”
Birgitta looked at Liisa in amazement.
“This isn’t funny,” she said. “Do you understand what worries there will be?”
“For dear Bertram, you mean?”
“For all of us,” said Birgitta.
“I am actually over seventy,” said Agnes.
They had eaten supper and Agnes had as usual cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher. The professor had retired. Liisa suggested they play cards, something that Agnes never did, except for Old Maid when the Ohler children were small.
No, she did not want to play cards. She did not want to do anything whatsoever other than go up to her room and call Greta. Her sister was the only one who would understand.
“Can I quit after this week?”
“Normally you give one month’s notice,” said Liisa, who had stopped laughing.
“You’ll perk up, right now you’re just worn-out,” said Birgitta, and Agnes understood that Birgitta was only repeating what the professor had said.
“Yes, that can easily happen here,” said Agnes, who felt that she had violated the established rules of the game.
There was so much involved in that simple sentence that neither Birgitta nor Liisa could say anything. It was as if the women in the kitchen were struck by an insight. Perhaps not the same one, but all three were silent for a few moments to take in and be able to properly handle what had happened. A new situation had commenced in the Ohler house.
It was Liisa who broke the silence, perhaps it was all the years of mental training that came in handy.
“We’ll call for a company to come in and clean the whole house, make it sparkling clean and then come back every week. Agnes will be the supervisor.”
“Good!” Birgitta exclaimed, who became enthusiastic as soon as she understood the import of the suggestion.
Agnes listened with growing impatience. She simply wanted to get away from it all. Didn’t they understand that?
Just then the bell rang. Birgitta fell silent. Liisa looked up with a surprised, slightly frightened look on her face, as if she did not understand what was jangling.
“The study,” Agnes said mechanically, and reached out her hand for the white apron she used outside the kitchen, but immediately let her hand fall, took a deep breath, and then let out the air with a sigh.
“I’ll take it,” said Birgitta, in a futile attempt to rescue the situation, for in that moment everyone realized that there was not a company in the whole world that could replace Agnes Andersson.
Birgitta left the kitchen. Liisa got up and went over to the kitchen entrance. Agnes studied the slender body and the short hair, tried to imagine her and Birgitta together. It didn’t work. It was as incomprehensible as so much else in the Ohler family.
“Now the last leaves are falling,” said Liisa abruptly, who had never commented on the garden before. She turned her head and looked at Agnes.
“Yes,” said Agnes, “it’s fall.”
My last apple cake, she thought.
“Maybe what’s happening is just as well,” said Liisa, but did not specify what she meant, whether that concerned the inexorable arrival of autumn or the fact that Agnes wanted to leave the household.
“When I was competing I used to think about sex,” Liisa went on. “It’s the opposite of what all the experts recommend; it’s calm you should try to achieve, a kind of peace that actually doesn’t exist. That’s what you aim for. I did the opposite, worked myself up. In my first Olympics, in 1984 in Los Angeles, I met a competitor from South Korea, we fell in love at first sight and met in secret. Then we met in the finals. I glanced at her and I wet my panties. Since then I always think about her at critical moments. I won in Los Angeles. She won on the home field four years later. That seems right, doesn’t it?”
Why is she telling me all this? Agnes thought with surprise. Does she want to shock me, or what? She was forced to turn around to conceal her disapproval.
“Now I’m thinking about the Korean,” said Liisa.
Agnes whirled around.
“Do you know what?” she exclaimed. “Now that’s enough of your vulgarities. And this is no firing range or Olympic Games. And wipe that grin off your face!”
“It’s there to cheer you up.”
The Finnish woman’s scornful tone and her own fury made Agnes leave the kitchen. Never again, she thought, will I cook for that bitch. She took the stairs like when she was young and was forced to catch her breath when she came up to the second floor.
Birgitta came out of the study at the far end of the corridor. She was crying. Agnes went in the opposite direction, slipped into the little drawing room, and closed the door behind her with a feeling of having escaped from a swarm of angry bees.
She collapsed in an armchair that had remained from years ago. The last daylight had disappeared and the room was in darkness. She closed her eyes. In her mind the house on the island emerged. She could picture Greta, how she had her coffee, and quietly felt the twilight in the kitchen and then went into the old drawing room, turned on the table lamp and the sconces on the wall, switched on the TV and settled in.
Agnes did not understand the curious attachment she felt for Greta. They had never been particularly close, but now the cottage and her sister stood out in a light shimmer that perhaps was not completely grounded in reality. The cottage was crooked and drafty, cold in the winter, the kitchen was old-fashioned, and her sister was often peevish and incommunicative.
But none of that mattered. She wanted to go home. She also wanted to settle down on the couch in front of the TV.
She did not know what Greta would think about having company, but there was no turning back. With that conviction she got up, turned on the ceiling light, went over to the telephone, and dialed the number to the island. Her sister answered after a couple of rings, which meant she had not yet sat down in front of the TV.
Agnes told her quite briefly and without superfluous comment that she would be quitting at Ohler’s and coming out to the island within a couple of days. She said nothing about the future, if her intention was to stay for good or if the visit was to be seen as an interim stop before she got something of her own.
To her great surprise Greta had no comment but instead simply asked if Agnes needed help. Perhaps Viktor’s cousin’s grandson Ronald could come with his big car so that Agnes could take everything with her? After a moment of hesitation Agnes accepted the offer and they decided that Ronald, if he was able, would come on Saturday morning. Greta insisted that she herself would show up during the day tomorrow to help pack. Agnes understood that Greta also wanted to see the house one last time.
Agnes’s hand was shaking when she hung up the phone. Something awful was in the process of happening, she felt it in her whole body. During the call with her sister she had taken great pains not to let her inner tension be known, but now she let out the worry and anxiety. She was forced to lay down, only to get up a short time later and restlessly wander around the room. At any moment the bell might ring, or perhaps more likely, Birgitta would knock and in her gentlest voice ask if everything was all right.
But they left her in peace. The whole house see
med to be holding its breath. Her decision to give notice had shaken things up properly.
It struck her as she stood looking out over the dark garden that Greta’s suggestion to come into town was also a way to support her little sister. Greta surely sensed that it was not a completely painless maneuver to leave the professor. The tension in her stomach remained but the trembling decreased somewhat. She was holding steady.
The lights were on at Bunde’s, likewise at the associate professor’s, but at Lundquist’s it was dark. She wondered for a while about the gardener but not for long, for why should she care about the professor’s apple trees and bushes? And his remark about time was not so astounding, it was surely more common than she had thought.
Instead, in her thoughts she planned her packing. She had not accumulated much and that was just as well. Ronald would carry it out to the car in a jiffy. The thought made her smile. How quickly they would disappear. Before the others really understood what had happened, she would be sitting perched in the passenger seat alongside Ronald in his gigantic car. Greta would do all the talking from the backseat. Ronald would as always sit silently. They had last met at Viktor’s funeral and she happened to think about everyone who had gathered at Gräsö Church. The majority she recognized, the others Greta had identified. Stronger than ever she felt that she wanted to go home to the island.
For the first time in many years, perhaps decades, she lingered in her drawing room for an entire evening and went to bed without having asked whether the professor wanted something before bedtime.
Thirty
Friday was going to be rainy. It was pouring down already early in the morning. Karsten Haller cancelled all plans for tree pruning. The maples in Årsta would still be there after the weekend. And if they weren’t it didn’t matter to him.
Instead he took the bus down to the city to visit a travel agency on Drottninggatan. There he had been well treated before, and he felt that a friendly reception was even more important this time. Perhaps he would never need the services of a travel agency again. He was on the point of leaving the country and now every human contact and every transaction had significance. These were the memories he would carry with him and he did not want to have bitter thoughts now at the end.
Open Grave: A Mystery (Ann Lindell Mysteries) Page 21
