Laura’s hand, holding a card, stops in midair. She replies that she is convinced there are people who can see more deeply than others.
What about the sixth sense? Aunt Laura definitely believes in the sixth sense.
The lights on the mainland are visible on the other side of the lake; a faint mist rises from the water, and as it drifts the shimmering lights sometimes disappear completely. Moths dance toward the windowpane, attracted by the kerosene lamp. Might as well ask.
Does Aunt Laura believe in God?
Yes. Yes, I do.
Even though it is impossible to prove his existence?
Aunt Laura replies that she has no need to prove his existence. Think about it! It is equally impossible to prove that God does not exist. An unassailable answer. She is filled with respect. Aunt Laura teaches math and physics. What she says is logical and scientific. Belief is internal.
You have to dare to believe, and Aunt Laura has that courage. It is like Kierkegaard’s leap of faith over the seventy thousand fathoms of water (although she has never actually heard of Søren Kierkegaard). A cramp in her belly begins to ease.
Thanks to Laura’s talkative nature, she finds out things she would never have known about otherwise. Grandpa was a poor boy who was born in a soldier’s cottage in Vimmerby. He graduated from high school and got a job at the Royal Telegraph offices in Stockholm, where Grandma worked as a telephonist.
Grandpa proposed to her over and over again for ten years, and eventually she said yes: she wanted to get married and have children. But then she spent her whole life mourning the fact that she had had to give up work, and no longer had her own money. Aunt Laura’s voice grows warm when she talks about Grandma. She adds that it’s important for a woman to have her own money.
Uncle Elis is also from Småland, and was Grandpa’s student at Teknis. He too is a professor—of mechanical engineering at Chalmers Institute. This means that she and Aunt Laura can count at least four professors among their closest relatives. They seem to flourish like mushrooms among the tilled fields and stone walls of Småland.
Laura and Uncle Elis are very fond of one another, but from something that is said she suspects they haven’t had much of a sex life due to his frailty, which depresses him. He can spend hours sitting by a play area in Gothenburg, watching the little boys and mourning his lost childhood, according to Laura.
Why does he watch little boys? Is he a pervert? Maybe it’s because he and Aunt Laura couldn’t have children. One morning when Aunt Laura has gone off in the skiff to buy pastries, she finds Uncle Elis in the dining room. He is wearing a striped robe; he places one hand on the nape of her neck and rests his forehead on hers.
Her breasts, pert in her bra, are pressed against his chest.
They stand like that for a long time. A fly buzzes.
From time to time he lifts his head and gazes into her eyes. His are gray. He sighs. She suspects that something sexual is going on. Is he drawn to children, but can’t tell anyone? An alarming thought. She shakes it off. She is the one who is constantly thinking about sex.
All the time. It’s manic. Sick. Standing like this with Uncle Elis is not at all unpleasant; in fact it’s quite hypnotic. Her head detaches itself from her body and floats around the room like a balloon. Through the window she sees Aunt Laura with a white cake box in the stern of the skiff.
Uncle Elis lets go of her and walks away. This is repeated on one or two occasions. She wonders what it means as she lies in bed with Aunt Laura’s paintings on the wall above her. Flowers. And angels. There are also pictures of her, Ninne, and Ia, painted by Laura from photographs. Not angels with wings, but each sitting on a flower of her own. Hers is a daisy.
She looks absolutely ridiculous. Apart from the fact that it’s well painted. She feels sorry for Aunt Laura, who can’t have children. That must be why Uncle Elis is so melancholy.
They return to Gothenburg. Aunt Laura takes her to the Liseberg amusement park. She wins a big box of chocolates on the Wheel of Fortune and has her photograph taken. Aunt Laura orders a copy. They take a trip on Paddan, the canal boat, and have their photograph taken again.
And as she and Aunt Laura are walking up the Avenue in the fresh, salty air they see—this is amazing!—Birger Malmsten. He is slim and incredibly handsome, wearing dark glasses. He is an actor at the City Theater, and is married to the model and film star Haide Göransson—the woman who looks like Ricki.
She stares after him for a long time after he has passed by. So does Aunt Laura. She has gotten to know her aunt much better, but she will never see Uncle Elis again. He dies shortly after her visit.
Nothing has changed at home. Aunt Vibeke and Uncle Bertil are visiting; everyone is in the kitchen. Dad is curled up on the sofa with one arm around Vibeke. He is smoking; the hand holding the cigarette is resting on the edge of the sofa.
The other is dangling next to one of Vibeke’s large breasts. Her hand is on Dad’s thigh, and her head is resting on his shoulder. A bolt of pain shoots through the girl. Dad is pretty drunk, of course, cheerful and red in the face, but how can he do this in front of Mom? Vibeke draws him like a magnet.
But how dare they flaunt their attraction to each other when Mom is sitting at the same table? The whole of her teenage experience tells her: they are in love.
Mom doesn’t seem to have noticed anything; she is deep in conversation with Bertil. After a while Dad removes his arm from around Vibeke’s shoulders, but her hand remains on his thigh. They are adults. They know what is permissible and what is not. This is just their normal flirtatious behavior.
However, the image of them will not go away. However hard she tries to scrape at it, obliterate it, she can’t get rid of it. Did Mom really not see what they were doing? Or did she see, and decide to ignore it? She decides to classify the image of Dad and Vibeke as a snapshot. Paste it in a photograph album.
And keep the album firmly closed. That is what she does.
It is time to fill in her application form for high school, and as always she is unsure of herself. She asks her parents for advice. She wasn’t expecting this to lead to a quarrel, but their voices grow sharper as they exchange opinions.
She definitely needs to opt for the science route. (says Dad)
Arts—a knowledge of languages is a good thing. (Mom)
She can pick up languages later. (matter-of-fact tone of voice)
Do you think math will make her happy? (sarcastic)
Happy? You’re being irrational. The sciences will give her a wider range of career choices after school.
She sits between them in the kitchen, not saying a word. And they keep on going. She tries to work out what it is they disagree about. Personally she would like to leave the room, and the argument. No chance.
Arts, because she’s a girl. (Mom)
Gender is irrelevant, science is a way of thinking, you need to start young, otherwise it’s too late. (Dad sounds knowledgeable)
You’re not listening! (Mom raises her voice)
I am listening, but in this instance I know better. (he’s annoyed)
Because I didn’t graduate? (a waspish comment from Mom)
It’s late, I have to go. (Dad is angry)
As soon as it comes to something important, you take off. (she’s furious)
We’ll discuss this later.
You need to stay right here until we’ve finished talking!
Mom rushes after him into the hallway, but the front door has closed and Dad is gone. The argument wasn’t about her, it was about something else entirely. All she knows is that she is the catalyst. Afterward she slithers around like a slippery scrap of soap in a soap dish. She chooses the science route, disappointing her mother.
She changes her mind at the last minute and applies for the arts. She is accepted, and Mom is delighted. Why does she drag them in? Over and over again she decides not to let them into her life, certainly not both of them simultaneously.
And then she does it anywa
y, without thinking. And it always ends up the same way: she is the problem. There is something wrong with her, because she can’t please both of them, which is a great source of anguish to her. She senses that the antagonism between her parents lies beneath the surface of the words, deep down in something that is slimy, slippery, and disgusting.
It is something worse than the difference between the languages of mathematics and music. Words cannot be trusted.
If Mom knew what she was up to, she would have good reason to be worried. But Mom doesn’t have a clue. They put on makeup, she and her girlfriends; they go to places where there are no parents, and dance in darkened rooms. They make out in armchairs and on sofas. When the light goes on they blink in confusion.
On one occasion a garter belt is lying in the middle of the floor like a dead spider with its legs entangled. Everyone laughs. Until one of the girls, she can’t remember which one, grabs the unfortunate spider and stuffs it in her pocket.
She knows the codes. One for the lips, two for the throat, three for the breasts, four for the pussy. Five…but nobody goes that far. Thanks to the codes the girls can quickly swap notes during recess on Monday mornings. She learns the trick of knotting a scarf around her neck to hide the love bites.
When Mom asks what she did on Saturday night, she lies. She doesn’t want to be dishonest, but she dare not tell the truth because she is afraid of being hurt, as she was over the business with the bra. Or because she is afraid of something else. Even her own words can’t be trusted. She prays to God for forgiveness. She lies in her bed and prays like crazy. It’s not the making out, well it’s that too, but it’s mainly because she isn’t being straight with Mom.
It pains her. Other girls have no problem telling lies; what’s the matter with her? Why does she find it so difficult? There is something about Mom’s life that she is responsible for. What is it? It’s the fact that Mom isn’t happy with her life. Mom is forced to do a whole lot of things she doesn’t want to do. The girl is partly to blame through her very existence.
How can she think that way?
But she does. God forgive me for who I am. She wants God to hear her, love her, and forgive her. In bed at night she tries to look up at him. In the darkness she sees nothing but emptiness, a tower of emptiness joined to another and another. She gazes up through all those towers as if she were looking through binoculars.
Emptiness. Particles. Constellations. Distant galaxies. An endless, cold desolation. No room for God there. She turns the darkness-binoculars around. There she is in her bed; she is nothing. Ridiculously imagining that someone who hears prayers in the void actually exists. She abandons her mother by lying.
Personally she has been abandoned by God. Or rather: she doesn’t actually know if he exists. She joins her hands on Sunday morning and listens to the church service on the radio; at first she feels pious, but after a while merely hypocritical. It’s so boring she could scream. How do they cope, those who believe?
The fact that the universe consists of particles, however, does not prove that God doesn’t exist. Therefore, she needs to learn about him from those who believe in him. Does she know anyone who falls into that category? Her classmates were confirmed long ago. She signs up for the autumn confirmation classes in the diocese of Lund.
In order to look into the matter. Mom is totally taken aback.
You’re going to be confirmed? Right, okay…Why?
She is perched on Mom’s bed in the room at the top of the spiral staircase, and she can’t come up with a decent answer. It’s complicated. She replies that it’s a test. She wants to test herself. And God. Mom becomes pensive; she doesn’t say anything nasty, she just says that it doesn’t sound like a bad idea.
You’re bound to learn something, after all.
Mom adds that she herself would actually like to know too.
This means that the confirmation classes become a kind of project: she has to find out how it all works on behalf of both of them. To find a language where the words are not ambiguous, but clear and direct, so that you are convinced and gain certainty. During the conversation, intimacy grows. Mom, who does everything for them in spite of the fact that she would rather be playing the piano.
Mom, who yearns for so much and also complains about so much. Except for her lameness. And for a moment it is not the girl perched on her mother’s bed, but Mom sitting by her bed in the nursery in Lund, reading to her. Mom, who crosses out the word witch and writes old woman in pencil instead, because the girl is so inexplicably terrified of witches (I notice when I have learned to read). And who says Momma’s angel, and tucks her in, and everything is fine.
A miracle happens—Ricki gets engaged! Silence falls around the kitchen table when Dad makes the announcement. That’s wonderful, Mom says over the sausages. Who to?
Someone she met on Madeira, apparently.
But isn’t it several years since she was there?
It seems they’ve kept in touch, Dad replies.
And the kitchen practically bursts into flames.
The fortune-teller’s predictions are coming true! Her fantasies about Ricki’s love affairs were on the money! It turns out that the unknown fortune-teller Ricki consulted could see more clearly than anyone else. This changes everything at a stroke.
If the predictions are coming true, then this is proof that God exists. The world is controlled by an invisible force that operates beneath everything else. She is filled with a sense of reassurance.
Dad is off to Stockholm to meet some colleagues. She wants to go with him, particularly when she hears that the stranger—Ricki’s fiancé—is going to be introduced to Grandma and Grandpa. And Dad agrees. He treats her to dinner in the restaurant car on the train.
Who is Ricki’s fiancé?
Dad knows nothing, apart from the fact that he’s Swedish.
What was he doing on Madeira? Dad has no idea.
Her head is full of questions. Dad has no information about Ricki and her mystery man. She would like to find out a lot of other things. If he is in love with Vibeke. If he’s upset because she chose the arts route. If he thinks that God and mathematics don’t go together. She swallows her childish questions.
It’s a joy just to sit here on her own with Dad. It rarely happens. What mathematical problems are you working on?
She has never asked that before. Dad gazes out of the window and says that he is calculating in an infinite number of dimensions. In n dimensions, where the letter n represents an infinite number. She is totally taken aback.
There’s an infinite number of dimensions?
Dad replies that there could be dimensions that the human senses cannot perceive, but that in spite of this, math can calculate within these dimensions. They don’t really know how it works, but hypothetically, yes. There could be many, many dimensions.
Outside the window hills and houses lurch toward her, and the fir trees pick up their skirts and curtsey. Even though he doesn’t know it, Dad has released God from a cramped cage. God rules over a universe made up of an infinite number of dimensions. Sheer excitement makes her a little flirtatious, and Dad seems to like it.
Back in their railway coach he takes out his math papers, while she buries herself in Captains Courageous, by Rudyard Kipling. Dad picked it out of the bookcase when she said she had nothing to read on the train. She reads for the rest of the journey: about the spoiled young rascal Harvey, the son of an American millionaire, who falls overboard from a luxury liner. He is saved by a little fishing boat called We’re Here, and has to learn how to behave under the harsh rule of Captain Disko.
It is a world populated solely by men and boys. No women; it’s liberating. She wants to avoid thinking about sex. The unbearable Harvey becomes a new person thanks to corporal punishment, discipline, and hard work. If predictions come true, then God exists.
Ricki gives her a big hug. Ricki throws her arms around her, looking absolutely radiant. The fiancé? The girl can’t take her eyes off him. His
name is Olle, he is tall and skinny and looks a little hungry, and as the fortune-teller predicted, he is dark-haired. He has a cleft chin and bushy eyebrows that meet in the middle.
A rakish appearance. A bit like a pirate.
He shakes hands heartily with everyone.
Even Grandma in her wheelchair, which is difficult, but Olle pats her on the shoulder. Once the introductions are over, the conversation falters. Ricki never says much, and what can they discuss with Olle? Not his job (before the engaged couple arrived, Grandpa had informed the others that he doesn’t have one). Not his family (apparently he doesn’t have one of those either).
It’s always hard work with her paternal grandparents. The words are shoveled back and forth with enormous effort. Grandpa sucks on his cigar. Grandma says nothing. Dad also seems troubled. Aunt Laura, now a widow, is in the kitchen making coffee.
It strikes her that she has never met her paternal grandparents outside the family circle. Now, in the presence of a newcomer, she realizes how closed that circle is; inward-looking, almost impenetrable. There are only two ways to make one’s way through the mental terrain. One is to keep quiet, like Ricki.
The other is to fill the air with words, as Laura does. Subdue the silence with chatter, with bubbling, babbling, overwhelming chatter, never leaving a gap. Because Olle is there she is able to pick up the linguistic sociology of her grandparents. In spite of their status they are so socially insecure that it borders on snootiness.
At long last Laura arrives with the coffee tray, bringing with her a long, slightly breathless garland of words. As usual there are reams of apologies, she doesn’t have much to offer in the way off coffee and cake, she hopes the Danish pastries from the shop will taste okay, she was going to make cookies but she didn’t have time. And with an especially pleading tone of voice directed at Olle: the coffee is probably unforgivably weak.
Olle takes a sip and replies cheerily that it could have done with a few more beans. Aunt Laura is so taken aback that she actually falls silent for a little while.
A Fortune Foretold Page 8
