No, Olle doesn’t have a job (he mentions it himself).
It’s not a problem; he keeps himself busy with all kinds of things. He has spent the last few years living in the Canaries selling underwear—wonderful climate. Everything will be fine, there’s nothing to worry about now he has his Ricki. His voice is full of trust.
When the engaged couple have left, she bends over Grandma with her white hair, Grandma, whose expression usually seems lost in the mist.
Did you like him? Grandma asks.
Very much, she replies firmly.
Grandma shakes her head. She much preferred Elis, she says, her gaze sliding out of the window. The ladies’ underwear salesman, that’s what Grandpa calls Olle. That’s when she realizes that Olle hasn’t been a hit. It’s almost as if it was preordained that her grandparents would dislike Ricki’s fiancé.
On the way home she asks if the family aren’t pleased that Ricki has finally found a man to love. Dad is sleepy. Ricki will probably end up supporting Olle.
Or your grandfather will, he says.
Mom’s suggestion sounds innocent at first: why not send their eldest daughter to a language course in Lübeck next spring? It’s not far away—just across the Baltic Sea. Dad is busy filling in forms before his departure to the United States. He gathers them up and says that he thinks it’s unnecessary.
He never went on any language courses.
Nor did his sisters. It hasn’t done any of them any harm.
The idea of a language course seems to him excessive, and would involve a considerable financial investment. Mom stands at the table with the prospectus in her hand, insisting that it won’t be expensive. The student stays with a family, the West Germans are happy to welcome Swedish teenagers, it will cost little more than her food and travel. Mom thinks it’s definitely worth the money.
She is nailed to the spot between them.
It’s about money again.
Dad is thrifty, like Grandma and Grandpa. Mom is frivolous and wasteful. She tries to speak up, tell them she isn’t bothered about the language course, but they’re not listening. Mom begs, Dad shuts her down. Mom adopts that sarcastic tone of voice. Dad prepares to leave, but stays anyway.
It turns into an exchange of views worse than anything she has experienced in the past. It’s not about Lübeck. Or the money. They are arguing about something else. Maybe it’s because Dad is going to the States? It’s definitely something. She can’t work out what it is, but they are gripping each other tightly like octopuses deep in the ocean. As she listens to them, she suddenly realizes: she costs money. She hasn’t really thought about that before.
Eventually Dad has had enough: let her go, for God’s sake.
He flies to the United States. Mom and Vibeke go with him to Kastrup. In spite of the fact that Vibeke is pregnant, she drives them in Bertil’s great big Chevy. They take the car ferry from Limhamn to Denmark, and wave him off together. He is going to do research and give lectures, and he will be away for a long time.
I cost money, I am a burden. A horrifying thought. Repulsive. During the winter in the first year at high school it weighs down on her like a nightmare; yes, really, like a nightmare: the fact that she costs money. She swears to herself that she will never again accept money at home. She will eat and live there, but she will take care of the rest herself. A firm decision.
She keeps her vow throughout her time in school. There is nothing magnanimous about her resolve; she wants to get away from them, not to be a victim of their obscure, opaque antagonism.
She cycles to the Cathedral School beneath trees blazing in shades of red and fiery yellow, farther on over slippery leaves, her ears filled with the sound of cars swishing along the wet road.
In her head: constant fantasies. A woman in black on the edge of an abyss, the wind tearing at her full-length dress. She steps forward as if she were in an opera (though she has never been to an opera). She calls out, but it is impossible to make out the words.
The woman is magnificent and tragic. She bears a certain resemblance to Mom, but she is more like Cassandra, a famous prophetess from the olden days. She has read about her.
Her tragedy was that her predictions were always correct, but she was never believed.
Evil gusts of wind blow off the plain. Her gloves don’t help at all. She bought the cheapest pair available at the EPA department store. Her fingers are so stiff with cold that they could easily be snapped in two.
She cycles with her head down against the wind.
Always late, only just in time for morning prayers. Across the railway line where the farmers transport their beet crops, past the school for the deaf, past Spyken, then the traffic gets heavier. She turns into Södergatan and ends up in a swarm of bicycles and cars. The woman in black withdraws.
She usually makes it before they lock the iron gates. If you’re late you get a black mark. Her lungs are burning as she parks her bicycle and races up the stairs to morning prayers.
One winter morning a girl she doesn’t know cycles up beside her. She has a pale, slightly doughy face, thick glasses, and a knitted hat.
Her name is Nanna, she says.
Her voice sounds a little muffled as she claims that they attend the same school; she is in the same year, but in a parallel class. They live in the same apartment block on Vintergatan.
She has never seen this girl before. She notices her fantastic woolly gloves, the border of knitted reindeer around her hat. Do they really live in the same building? Nanna moves ahead of her, and she can see Nanna’s blond hair sticking out from under her hat, tumbling down over her collar.
Nanna soon changes her mind and slows down. They don’t really have anything to say to each other, so she gives her a brief nod and overtakes her. At which point Nanna speeds up and passes ahead.
Then slows down as if she had suddenly thought of something. She overtakes her again. Nanna speeds up again and passes her. This goes on all the way to school. From above they must look like two knots in an elastic band that is constantly being stretched and released. They go faster and faster. This is no longer a bicycle ride, it is a sprint.
Through the narrow confines of Mårtensgatan. Past the square and down Södergatan at breakneck speed.
Two idiots attached to an elastic band. However, it does mean she gets to school in plenty of time. She forgets Nanna and hurries up to the hall, where the principal is sitting jingling his keys as usual. The Religious Education teacher stands on the podium, clears his throat. She tries to breathe some feeling into her frozen fingers. From the stage the asthmatic organ wheezes into life.
Later on she sees the girl called Nanna in the schoolyard. She is alone. Standing up straight, her eyes fixed on a book. All the others, herself included, are surrounded by bodies, chatter, intimacy. Nanna is so alone that it hurts. Such immense loneliness is hard to see. She turns her head away.
Mom is very busy in Dad’s absence. She gets a job with the Scandinavian Youth Orchestra, and she also becomes an accompanist to the cathedral choir. She starts translating a children’s book from her mother tongue.
And then of course she has to fix broken bicycle locks, know where the bicycle pump is, take Ninne and Ia to school, do all the things Dad used to take care of, plus she has to shop and cook and mend their clothes. She buys an electric sewing machine which is called Elna and can do zigzag stitching; this makes it easier to turn up hems and sort out buttonholes. She complains that she doesn’t have time to do what she wants to do.
Ninne is constantly practicing on her screechy violin. Ia brings home her giggling girlfriends. In order to relax, Mom cycles up to see Vibeke and Bertil, where she admires the new baby, their fourth, an afterthought. A lovely little boy, Mom says, and supplies Dad with his measurements so that he can send over American baby clothes, which he does.
Mom types a letter to Dad almost every day on thin airmail paper. Next to the typewriter are car brochures—Volvo, Saab, Ford. Mom wants a new car when Dad comes
home. She is desperate to get out and about! She is going to learn to drive.
Denmark, Germany, maybe even farther.
The Hanomag has had its day. Bertil wants to sell their old Chevy, but Mom writes to Dad that they ought to buy a new car; it’s more economical, according to the experts at Saab-Ana. She stays up late, working on her translation from Dutch. In the morning the ashtray by the typewriter is overflowing.
You three must write to Dad too, she keeps on saying. They do, they write to Dad. Her letters are dull. She misses Dad, but she lacks the words to convey what is happening to her.
Confirmation classes. She had hoped to receive guidance about what lies beyond anything that can be proved. It starts badly. The participants are almost exclusively girls, most of whom are younger than her, childish and superficial. The jovial priest who is giving the classes doesn’t seem to be taking the subject of faith very seriously.
The catechism. No explanations. Hymn singing.
Can any of you play the piano?
A number of hands are raised, hers with a certain amount of hesitation.
Mom found her a piano teacher, she has practiced boring Czerny-Kretschmer scales without success. She wants answers to important questions, but there is no reference to such matters. And what if one has doubts? One day she dares to ask. The priest stares at her blankly, uncomprehending.
You must pray. God hears your prayers.
Does he? The priest is counting on the fact that they all believe, that their faith is self-evident and unquestioning. How can he make that assumption? He is good-humored, stitched into his priestly role as if it were a coat. His body reveals that he likes good food.
Apparently he is a member of Parliament for the right. Can he, so immersed in worldly concerns, lead her toward the faith for which she thirsts? She doubts it. She also begins to doubt whether the priest truly believes, rather than merely doing so out of habit.
God doesn’t get in touch. She had hoped that he would make his presence known in one way or another, but there is no sign of him. On the day when it is her turn to play the piano, she is paralyzed. She lies on her bed, incapable of getting up to practice. The minutes pass, marking time like evil hammer blows. At the last second she leaps onto her bicycle.
She sits at the keyboard staring at the notes, unable to read them.
The very first chord is a disaster.
The priest tells her to go back to her seat. The smell of wet wool is all-pervasive. He plays the hymn himself, leading the singing with a voice filled with iron ore. No doubt he thinks she hadn’t done enough preparation. She agrees with him. But there is a resistance within her, tough, unyielding, stubborn, stronger than her.
She isn’t asking for much, she just wants the priest to take her question seriously. And, of course, for God to get in touch.
Send a small sign of mutual understanding, a little wink at least. If he exists, as she feverishly hopes he does, then it’s really not fair if he speaks only to those who already believe. How are those who doubt supposed to gain access to the community?
Through a revelation. Just like when Saul was cast to the ground and became Paul. Or when Doubting Thomas was told to insert his hand in Jesus’s side to feel the wound for himself. She certainly isn’t demanding such irrefutable proof, just an internal tremble that would shake her logic, her sensible approach.
A very small revelation, however modest. But the winter passes, and nothing happens.
The fortune-teller’s prediction, however, continues to be fulfilled. Ricki gives birth to a son after a difficult labor. A fortune-teller is more reliable than God. She has her doubts about him. She also has doubts about her doubts. Why won’t God send her a sign?
She decides it is because she is unworthy.
The fault lies with her again; it is difficult to bear. If God exists, then in his eyes she is unworthy. It is an attempt to save her faith from the doubt. And she gets caught up in the idea of her own unworthiness as if she had stumbled into a patch of vicious thistles.
Mom is beside herself when she comes home from visiting Bertil and Vibeke. It has nothing to do with the new baby or the Chevy; it’s something Vibeke said.
It’s a shame he’s feeling so bad, that’s what Vibeke said.
So Vibeke and Bertil know better than she does how Dad is feeling? Mom felt like an idiot. The fact that Dad writes to their friends is fine, but how can he open his heart to them and not to her?!
He hasn’t said a word to her about how he’s feeling deep down. His letters to Mom are sober and trivial. He writes about the lectures he gives, the people he meets, the occasional greeting from a mutual acquaintance. Nothing about deep down. Not a squeak about his innermost feelings. And now she has to hear it from outsiders! Mom stares out of the window as her cigarette sits on the ashtray, smoking itself. What can she say to her mother?
When Dad is away, Mom’s moods flow straight into her. It’s almost unbearable. It might not be Mom’s fault, but it’s still really hard to cope with.
She wants to get out. Get away. She thunders down the stairs heading toward Moonlight Serenade, American Patrol, and the painfully raw sound of the saxophone in Flamingo.
It’s Saturday night and Nanna opens her door on the ground floor as she is passing by. Nanna’s loneliness is painful. The girl hasn’t exactly made an effort to disperse it.
Where are you going? Nanna wants to know.
She answers vaguely, Out, to see some friends. Could she take Nanna with her? This creature with its woolly gloves doesn’t fit in, but Nanna is still standing there, and so as not to appear unfriendly, she has to come up with something to say.
How about you—what are you doing tonight?
Nanna replies that she is going to do some reading.
What are you reading?
She asks mainly to round off the conversation, and has already taken a step toward the door when Nanna speaks.
Nietzsche, she says.
And closes her door. Nietzsche! A philosopher, little more than a name as far as she is concerned. So Nanna is reading Nietzsche, even though she’s only two years older, according to the school register. That shuts her up. Serves her right. Instead of acquiring knowledge on important matters, she is heading out. Cheek to cheek. That familiar bulge nudging against her stomach.
She is thoughtless. Flighty. Ignorant. She cycles into town, drowning in the heaving seas of her unworthiness.
Britten’s mom is out, and the room where they are dancing is so small that they are all crammed together. I Cover the Waterfront. A Night in Tunisia. Mouths and bodies. A herd of buffalo. Everyone’s arms are warm. Stan Getz. Dizzy Gillespie.
She dances with Svante, she hugs Britten, Svenne kisses her, and Robban places a hand on her bra, sending electric currents from her nipple straight down into her clitoris. And Britten’s mom arrives home a little the worse for wear with a guy who is a poet, apparently. They drink wine in the kitchen, where Britten’s mom sleeps.
They carry on dancing, until Britten’s mom appears in the doorway.
I know you’re having fun, boys and girls, but it’s time to call it a night.
The closer she gets to home, the more guilty she feels. It’s the making out, it’s Nietzsche, it’s the knowledge that she’s unworthy, and it’s Mom.
In the end she has to get off her bicycle.
She stands there puffing and panting on Dalbyvägen.
Her conscience refuses to be assuaged. The clouds pass by on their way to Africa. The bushes along the cycle track point at her with accusing branches. Over by the railway line the only lamppost looms like an emaciated ascetic. Unworthy, unworthy, everything around her is calling.
In the early spring she comes home from her confirmation class, nothing going on inside her head, and pushes her bicycle into the rack. She lifts her bag off the parcel shelf and drops it with a crash. She looks up at the sky.
Above the apartment block next door, separated from theirs by a frost-covered lawn,
a thin white moon is hovering, veils of cloud wrapping it in a cozy blanket.
The clouds thicken and disperse, and behind them the sky is as blue as a sapphire. The moon looks like a bird’s egg. The bird’s nest drifts down toward the earth. All is peaceful. There has been nothing but noise since they came to Lund. Constant attempts to be attentive, to take note, to fit in. And beneath it all the ever-present anxiety: how is Mom feeling?
Now, for example. She ought to go up and see her.
But she stays where she is. God doesn’t contact her, but still she stands there, happily liberated from her thoughts for a while. It is an unexpected interlude of peace.
Then she picks up her bag, pushes open the door, and switches on the light. At that very moment Nanna opens her door, her fair hair curling around her shoulders, glasses shining. She is wearing a bulky sweater and wide, airy pants. Her dog, a black poodle, is winding itself around her legs.
And Nanna asks, Where have you been?
She answers truthfully. At her confirmation class.
Everything changes in an instant. Nanna’s posture, the look on her face, her voice. It is no longer muffled, but shrill and accusatory.
You mean you’re going to be confirmed?
That’s the plan, yes.
A torrent of words comes pouring out of Nanna. She hasn’t been baptized, therefore the church will not allow her to be confirmed. She doesn’t want to be, anyway. Priests are hypocrites. Just like missionaries. They frighten the poor natives, whom they call heathens, telling them that they will burn in hell unless they are baptized, they force them to undergo baptism. That’s how they prepare the way for soldiers with cannons and rifles, and for white colonialists. That’s what Christianity does.
You do realize you share the guilt if you’re confirmed?
I hadn’t realized that, no.
The bulb in the stairwell goes out. Nanna switches it back on. The light is cold and harsh, and Nanna’s fury seems to be increasing. Don’t you realize that the church claims that I will burn in the fires of hell, simply because I haven’t been baptized?
A Fortune Foretold Page 9
