She lies on the grassy bank of the river Trave and kisses a German boy in lederhosen whom she doesn’t care about at all, untroubled by her conscience. She learns a great deal during her stay, and not just German. It’s her first trip abroad alone, and it turns out to be crucial; she learns such a lot.
About the war, about Europe.
And she is beginning to harden her heart against love. Die Verhärterung.
She doesn’t know that she is on the way to becoming a person who is difficult to love. On the outside she is happy, always happy. On the inside she is covered in a sheet of ice, and it will cost her an enormous amount to break through.
When she returns home she works for a family in Mellbystrand, looking after the children and helping with the housework, and it doesn’t pass. She receives a grant from the King’s Fund and travels to Norway, although she has no idea why she has been selected for this honor; she is far from the best in her class.
She is still in love; the feeling does not pass.
It hurts so much that she sits on the floor in a house on Kullen; she wraps her arms around her body and rocks back and forth to ease her pain. This is worse than the sense of loss when the boy with the Mustang dumped her in the first place. This is a deficiency disease over which she has no control. It feels as if nails are being driven into her body.
Kullen: they are there because after his return Dad was allowed to borrow a house that belongs to the university. The family is spending a week there in late summer. To get down to the sea you have to clamber down the cliff using rickety wooden steps, far too unstable for Mom to make it to the water.
The girl climbs down frequently to seek a cooler spot.
And when she reaches the bottom of all those narrow steps there they are, Dad and Vibeke, leaning against the fence with the child between them. Their silhouettes are black against the sparkling water. Yes, Vibeke turns up in the car with her little boy and is warmly welcomed by Mom and Dad.
She walks past them and into the sea. As she swims the water eases her pain for a while. The gulls sail across the sky, and in the distance she can just see Denmark. Her only consolation comes from reading and drawing. She always has her sketchbook with her in her bag. In Germany. In Mellbystrand. In Norway. In the park in Lund, and in the house on Kullen.
People, their faces and bodies. Capturing their contours on paper gives her a feeling of being present. It gives her the sense that she exists, if only as an observer. When she draws she is there and nowhere else.
In the second year at high school they move on from miserable Cicero and meet Catullus. The Latin teacher reads the poems aloud in Swedish before they tackle the original texts. Once again she is reminded of the torments of love. Catullus wanders drunkenly through the alleyways of Rome bellowing the name of his beloved. She doesn’t know if she is filling the verses with this unreasonable torture, or if it is there already.
Oh God, surely it must pass eventually?
Yes, with difficulty. Her obsession fades away with a desolate, lingering chord.
Catullus’s pain is like that of a woman. But he was a man. He can do whatever he wants, be drunk and crazy one minute, tender and desperate for love the next, at least in his poems. Love, love, love. Hate, love, hate.
Love again. A man doesn’t need to be ashamed of his love. She can’t afford to behave that way. She is done with love. The only solution: to make herself impenetrable. You can’t just let yourself disappear into a sinkhole. You have to draw a line in the sand, build a barrier against this sickness that makes you lose all control.
Mom comes into her room. Was it in the autumn of her third year at high school? Something is wrong. Seriously wrong. She looks up from her English grammar and Mom bursts out: Vibeke can’t be trusted—just so you know!
She walks out of the room with no explanation. Outside a sullen twilight is falling. The penetrating scraping of Ninne’s violin can be heard in scratchy, disjointed sequences, punctuated by the sound of Ia’s ball thudding against the wall. She can’t follow Mom and ask her what she’s talking about. Dad is sitting in the dining room, working. Why does Mom feel the need to pass on this information? What is she supposed to do with it?
It’s not her problem; she feels a surge of resentment, which leads her to print on the inside cover of her English grammar book: AUNT VIBEKE CAN BE TRUSTED. She reads what she has written from time to time, and there it stays. She can’t really explain her reaction, but a family is a communicating vessel. She remembers learning how such a vessel is constructed in Physics in junior high—that and the galvanized frog.
A number of glass tubes are connected to one another.
Liquid is poured into one of them. It spreads throughout the tubes, until the level is the same in all of them. She doesn’t want to be affected by Mom’s moods. She wants to regard this incident as an outburst brought on by Mom’s hysteria.
One night a little while later, after a wild party, she ends up with a guy in the poverty-stricken Nöden district in the middle of Lund. The boy is ugly and clumsy. They go to the same school. It is freezing cold back at his place. No adults. A shabby apartment with the same smell she remembers from Årsta: poverty, lack of hygiene.
They make out. She feels nothing but distaste. She notes his thirst for love.
She lets him keep on, caresses him in return.
The whole thing is tasteless, but she can lend herself out. She almost thinks it’s her duty. His hand finds its way inside her panties. He wants more. After a few minutes she removes his hand and leaves. He doesn’t protest, he merely looks sad. It is as if she encounters a part of herself in him. Why shouldn’t she lend herself out when she sees his loneliness from her distant ring of transparency?
If she were being honest: she went with him because he wasn’t dangerous. Because she knew she didn’t want him, which gives her the upper hand. The same thing will happen again with others. She doesn’t want to be drawn into love. It is too dangerous.
And yet she longs for it, so much that it almost drives her crazy.
A few years later when they are both due to graduate from high school, the boy can’t cope. He has to sneak out the back way, like those who fail their exams. It is the memory of this sneaking out that came to me when, after many years, I happened to see his death notice in the newspaper. An announcement. No grieving family or friends mentioned beneath his name. So alone, without love.
She has to cycle up a steep hill to get to the facility for the chronically sick. It’s hard work on ice-cold winter mornings, but she enjoys the job, it enables her to earn money, and it is an important part of her time at high school. Most of the patients are elderly and suffer from rheumatism; many have multiple sclerosis.
Fröken Gren, for example.
She is a tall woman, her body as stiff as a board, and she is always equally pleasant when she is being washed. Something falls out of her vagina like a fleshy flower. Fröken Gren calls the girl her ray of sunshine; it feels good.
Bad-tempered fröken Nord is a different kettle of fish. Her body is a compact, tangled ball of limbs. She has to be washed, upper and lower body, and different-sized cushions and pillows have to be pushed into hollows and crevices.
And all the time fröken Nord barks like a stray dog. The complex procedure ends with a pointer being inserted under one arm so that she can use it to turn the pages of the magazine on the cushion in front of her.
The only young patient in the facility is Lotta.
Younger than her—only fourteen. Half of Lotta’s head is wrapped in bandages; she has a brain tumor, and knows that she is going to die. She has only one eye. The other has been surgically removed. Occasionally one of the local boys offers Lotta a ride on the platform of the moped he uses to make deliveries.
And Lotta, curled up on the platform looking like a little mushroom, turns her one eye up to the treetops and roars as loudly as she can. The boy takes the corners at breakneck speed. The senior nurse, Sister Nelly, stands beside her o
n the veranda. Her only comment is that it’s great for Lotta to experience some happiness during her short life. Not a word about recklessness.
An elderly woman from one of the villages outside Lund has a cannula in her throat, and is unable to produce any comprehensible sounds. She is small, with curly gray hair, and no doubt she was once beautiful. Her eyes are naked and despairing.
She writes little notes, begging to be allowed to die. One Sunday the time comes, and the family gathers around her bed. They are dressed in black, singing hymns and sobbing. Against all expectation, the woman survives. Sister Nelly calls the girl to her office. And yes, she admits that she gave the patient all of her countless pills at once; she didn’t realize they were supposed to be spread throughout the day.
Sister Nelly sighs and says let’s forget about this, let’s not mention it to anyone. She obeys Sister Nelly, she forgets about it and is grateful. And a little more hardened; best to delete the fact that she practically killed the old woman.
Once upon a time death was incomprehensible. A dead hare in a field, small and shriveled. A swarm of flies rose from the body as she and Dad approached. The knowledge that life departs like a puff of steam is hard to grasp.
But at the care facility, people die. One after another. The bodies are taken away on gurneys at night to avoid upsetting anyone else. If it’s a general ward, they wheel out the bed. Fru Asplund, however, has a single room, and the body can be washed during the day.
She stands by the bed with fru Jönsson, who is a care assistant. Fru Jönsson is used to this, but for her it is the first time. She has washed the living fru Asplund, who was a big woman, many times. Chatted, helped out at mealtimes. Now she and Jönsson are standing here, each with an aluminum bowl, a bar of soap, and a washcloth.
They pull back the sheets and see that the deceased has soiled herself. That often happens at the moment of death, Jönsson says in a matter-of-fact tone as she drops the nightgown and sheet on the floor. They wash the body from their respective sides.
They turn it over and wash every nook and cranny. The body is dead, but still warm. The whole thing feels very strange. At last the deceased is clean and tidy. Her hair has been combed, she is wearing a clean white nightgown and her hands are folded on her chest. Jönsson calls the porter, who brings a gurney. Together they transfer the deceased.
It is her job to clean the room while the deceased is still there: bedside table, closet, floor. She talks nonstop, directing her comments to the deceased: It’s fine, you’ve passed over, have a good trip, it was lovely to meet you. Death is frightening and she is trying to get used to it. To become hardened to it.
In the evening the porter returns and removes the body. There is a mortuary down in the basement. No doubt it is made to look like a chapel.
She never visits that room.
Grandma dies too. They wander around the Northern Graveyard, Grandpa, Aunt Laura, Dad, and the girl, unable to find the grave site. It is pouring with rain. Ricki and Olle aren’t there; they are at home with their little boy. Grandma has been cremated, she has been licked by flames, bitten by fire. What remains is ash and fragments of bone. Is she mourning her grandmother?
It is impossible to mourn a shadow. The rain finds its way down inside her collar. Her hair is sodden. Grandpa is wearing a black hat. Aunt Laura has pulled a plastic rain hood over her hair, and Dad is in his pale American suit. Here! Aunt Laura shouts, but she is mistaken.
Apparently it’s a family grave. She’s never seen it.
Here! Laura tries again, but once again she is wrong. Grandpa looks unexpectedly small in his black coat. Rain is dripping off the brim of his hat.
A green spider—actually it’s a man on a bicycle in a green rubber cape—stops at a crossroads. He shouts something, with one foot on the ground for support. Beneath the green cape he is clutching Grandma under his arm. Her urn.
The spider is an employee at the graveyard and knows where to look. He gets off his bicycle and they follow him. Dad hangs back to light a cigarette. Grandpa and Aunt Laura are unaware of it, but something alarming is going on in Lund. She can’t talk to anyone about it. Definitely not Dad.
They follow the man through wet grass, past monuments and graves surrounded by iron chains, past gravestones adorned with doves and marble angels. At last they reach the family grave. It is almost invisible, a small flat stone with three family names and a hole that has been dug beneath a tree by the path. The fact that one of the family names is hers sends an uncomfortable pang through her body. She remembers the dead hare, half-eaten.
The rain drips from the branches of the trees as Dad and Laura place Grandma’s remains in the hole. Grandpa’s cheeks are wet with tears, or is it rain? No one says anything. The employee takes his leave and gets back on his bicycle.
The gravestone is no bigger than a briefcase.
Beneath it lies a whole collection of people. Seven or eight individuals. Laura knows who they all are. Grandma’s parents. Grandma’s maternal grandmother’s sister. Grandma’s two unmarried sisters. Grandpa and Grandma’s first child, little Karin, who died before Laura was born. Just one man, Grandma’s unknown father, has dragged a flock of women along with him.
And presumably the grave contains not only bones and ash, but unimaginable unknown sorrows and tears. Here lies her father’s family, undemanding, unassuming, and thrifty. No airs and graces. No exaggerated pomp. No big words.
They stand in silence in the pouring rain in front of the least prepossessing gravestone in the whole churchyard; it is shockingly modest. All those unknown souls from Småland who came to Stockholm and were poor. But who battled through adversity.
Aunt Laura and Grandpa take the subway to Västertorp.
She and Dad are going to visit Ricki and Olle. What is she supposed to say to Dad? He’s lost his mom. And even though she didn’t really get to know Grandma herself, she realizes that Dad loved her very much, and is very upset.
And he doesn’t say anything, apart from So, that was that then, as he cups his hand around a match, which could mean just about anything. So. It’s over. There are no words.
And then he says they should have time to go to the liquor store, which they do, and Dad buys a bottle of Grönstedts cognac. She would have liked to say something special about Grandma, but she can’t come up with anything that doesn’t sound artificial. That’s one of the distinguishing features of Dad’s side of the family: they take pride in never saying anything pretentious. Never exaggerating. No hysteria. Dad’s family is very different from Mom’s.
They walk along Regeringsgatan and it is pouring, a peevish, persistent rain. Dad tucks his hand under her arm and jokes. Ricki resigned from HSB as soon as she found out she was pregnant: sanguine, overconfident, and thoughtless. It didn’t work out; she and Olle soon found themselves short of money. Now she is employed at the Defense Factory Works.
The apartment on Drottninghusgränd is as warm as a greenhouse. Olle is delighted with the cognac, and gets out the glasses. There is some talk about Olle’s job; he sells radios for Philips, and isn’t happy. She hasn’t seen Ricki for a long time. She has grown rounder; the former elegant dress sense is no more.
But being close to Ricki still feels like stroking silk, soft and exclusive. She accompanies her into the little nursery. The boy, who is two years old, is awake; he is sitting quietly on his cot.
He has a strange, slightly egg-shaped head. He doesn’t make a sound. He doesn’t take his eyes off Ricki, and his expression is unfathomable. Ricki picks him up and breastfeeds him; they make her think of the Italian sculpture called the Pietà: a mother and son. Jesus after he was taken down from the cross.
During the hours in Ricki’s presence, she becomes calm.
Life is normal in Ricki’s apartment, she thinks. Five strangers are sharing the sleeping car with her. She lies awake, listening as the wheels of the train jolt over the points. From then on she visits Ricki whenever she gets the chance.
She neve
r asks Ricki about personal matters, not even when they are alone together. Olle is at work and Ricki is standing at the sink in overalls, peeling potatoes. She has tied an unflattering scrap of fabric around her soft hair.
She isn’t at work because she has been feeling a little dizzy.
Nothing to worry about, Ricki says, even though knives and forks keep jumping out of her hands and falling on the floor.
Everything will sort itself out if you take what comes, she says. That’s exactly what Dad sings in the shower; it’s a song by Ernst Rolf. Ricki says she likes puttering around at home. When she’s at work they have a child minder who looks after the boy during the day.
The two of them, Ricki and Olle, have experienced what it is like to be totally accepted by another person. She will never experience that. She finishes with one boy after another. When it is over, she grieves. Every single time she grieves as if her heart would break, even when she did the dumping.
The boy has learned to walk. With light, rapid steps he makes his way from the living room, through the kitchen, into his nursery, and back again. Over and over again. He is pale and has a slight stoop. Three years old, never says a word. There is no need; his parents love him, and words are superfluous.
Nothing abnormal, Ricki says when she asks anyway.
Boys often start talking late. Ricki has read up about it, nothing to worry about. After they have eaten, the boy fetches his Donald Duck comic, and Ricki takes him on her knee and reads to him. Huey, Dewey, and Louie are messing around as usual. The Beagle Boys are plotting something bad. Mean old Uncle Scrooge falls asleep on top of his piles of gold.
The boy follows the story with rapt attention, gazing at the pictures with that inscrutable expression. Everything is fine, apart from their finances, Ricki says, smiling at her across the kitchen table. Unfortunately they don’t have enough money. And Olle comes home from work.
A Fortune Foretold Page 11
