A Fortune Foretold

by Agneta Pleijel

  You know, of course, he says. Everyone knows. Everyone also knows what Vibeke is like, she’s had lots of lovers, your husband isn’t the first. And everyone is on your side, her friend goes on; he suggests that someone should have a word with Dad in order to bring him to his senses.

  The expression on Mom’s face horrifies her friend. She obviously didn’t know—what has he done?

  Shocked at the knowledge that people are gossiping behind her back, Mom yells at Dad, tells him to go to hell. And he leaves. Even then he refuses to admit that it was Vibeke.

  As she listens, the floor shakes. Evidently it is possible to live within a long marriage without the slightest vestige of honesty. Dad managed it.

  Mom is not an enigma. But he is.

  Her head is spinning. Vibeke, that’s not exactly news. But how could Dad bear to spend all those years in silence, keeping quiet? She doesn’t understand. She doesn’t even want to understand. She refuses to believe that Dad is a common liar.

  Perhaps it’s his honorable feelings—toward Vibeke—that made him keep quiet. His honorable feelings? And what about those same feelings toward Mom? If Mom hadn’t yelled at him, told him to go to hell, he probably wouldn’t have gone.

  And everything would have continued as before. But he left.

  Perhaps that was what he wanted, deep down inside, so he took the opportunity. Will he come back? No one knows. No one knows anything. Mom broods over something he flung at her before he disappeared: You’re a mollusk, I’m sick of being your nursemaid. Mom is the first to admit that she hasn’t always been the way she should have been.

  But mollusk, nursemaid—is that really how he has regarded their marriage? She has worked through several years when they have lived on the surface of their marriage.

  And she can’t abide superficiality! As she listens she has to agree; her mother is anything but superficial.

  Is this what I deserve? Mom yells.

  Does any woman deserve to be treated like I’ve been treated, by a man who is trapped within himself like an unripe fruit in its skin? He’s such a goddamn coward! Mom screams, slamming her fist into the wall.

  Then she lies down and refuses to get up. She curls up like a fetus, her back shaking. The girl doesn’t know what to do. Outside it’s broad daylight. The blinds are pulled right down. Mom’s expression is vacant. Her skin is burning, as if she has a fever.

  She mumbles, but it’s impossible to make out what she is saying.

  And those eyes…blind, empty, unfathomably deep.

  No solace can be offered. And when Mom does get out of bed, she starts pacing around the apartment once again, and now she is implacable. Dad is a coward, he is not a man, not even in bed. He has trampled the most sacred things of all beneath his feet, the truthfulness of the soul, the purity and authenticity of the mind.

  He has also trampled all over his daughters. His weakness is boundless. He is a pathetic little human being. He deserves the contempt of the whole world.

  So this is love stripped bare. Sexuality. Eroticism. This is the god Eros, of whom Ricki spoke so beautifully. And Eros turns out to be evil. Destructive.

  What she is witnessing is an amputation. A limb being torn off, the body part that is Dad’s lengthy presence in Mom’s life. She can only guess at how agonizingly painful it must be. She knows too little about the labyrinths of love, about the difficult interplay between honesty and lies in a marriage. About the instability of feelings and the fact that they can change.

  What she sees is the appalling pain of the person who has been abandoned, in its first, uncensored version. There is no hint of expiation.

  The pain is raw, like a lump of meat.

  Over the years Dad has been a safeguard. She often thinks that without him they would be living in a madhouse. She loves him. A lot of the things Mom spits out are petty, humiliating, and untrue.

  He’s not an evil man, in spite of everything.

  He’s not a villain with no conscience. A little helpless in the face of the onslaught from Mom, perhaps. Maybe he didn’t want to leave her, but didn’t feel he could abandon Vibeke either. Of course he’s done the wrong thing, there’s no disputing that. But why did he do it? She is finding it difficult to think clearly.

  She can’t simply accept Mom’s absolute condemnation. She ends up in the middle of something she finds really hard; she tries to be fair. There is no such thing as fairness in love, but she doesn’t know that yet.

  She tries a couple of times, just tentatively, to protest against the torrent of merciless condemnation. She is very careful. Possibly a little meddlesome. She is very frightened. She swallows hard and takes her time choosing her words. She does it to create a sense of balance so that she will be able to stand up straight.

  So that the floor will not give way during this heartrending war.

  But when she says, Let’s be a bit more sensible about this, I mean he’s not all bad, something happens that she can’t cope with at all. Mom’s fury is directed at her instead. She is informed that she is just like him. Just as weak and cowardly. A traitor, just like him. You’re just like him, Mom yells.

  You don’t stand up for anything either. You go along with whoever is the strongest. You’re scared, and you lack character—just like him! At that moment she feels she is losing her footing and falling. More than that, she feels as if she is being cast down into hell. An exaggeration, of course. But this sense of falling, plummeting, being cast down is so horrific that she stops trying to say anything positive about her father.

  That’s what it’s like to be rejected by Mom. And since it’s true—she is very scared—she doesn’t do it again. A membrane of cold indifference is drawn around her so that nothing can reach her from the outside—not her friends’ parties, the birds, the lush greenery and scents of spring.

  She bumps into Nanna and her poodle outside the store. Nanna is bubbling over with happiness after graduating. She talks about how lovely the spring is, wanting the girl to concur. It doesn’t happen. However, Nanna suggests she come around later. That sounds like a good idea; the briefest time away from home is a liberation.

  She rings the bell and Nanna opens the door, delighted to see her. Welcome, come on in! She lives with her mother in a two-room apartment that is filled from floor to ceiling with books. At long last they start talking to each other. Nanna’s future seems to be crystal clear, with no shadows.

  She already knows that she is going to do a doctorate in the history of religion. Her thesis will look at religious perceptions in the works of Homer, so she will have to read Greek. But first she is going to study theoretical philosophy to give her a base to build on, as she puts it. She also writes poems, and is intending to publish them and continue writing alongside her academic career.

  Which isn’t at all surprising.

  Nor is the fact that Nanna was reading Nietzsche in the first year at high school. She has no intention of bringing up that embarrassing encounter over her confirmation class. Nanna has probably forgotten all about it.

  She becomes friends with Nanna. Who stands barefoot in her kitchen in a light summer dress making tea (Earl Grey, Lapsang Souchong, Darjeeling, Gunpowder, who knew there were all those different kinds of tea). They drink it on the balcony in white cups that have developed a patina with frequent use.

  The sun is shining. Nanna rests her bare feet on the railing and talks about Lars Forssell, Gunnar Ekelöf, D. H. Lawrence, and eroticism.

  The spring is spread indolently before them. And she is sitting next to Nanna, who turns out to have a detailed knowledge of eroticism, not least through female relatives who have embarked on wild, ardent love affairs.

  She protests, says that eroticism is fatal.

  That’s part of the whole thing, Nanna replies calmly. That’s the point. Without risks, eroticism would be nothing. So that’s what they talk about. Not about her parents. They immerse themselves in eroticism as a bringer of life. As the origin of religion. As a protection against
fossilizing and a tool for renewal.

  It keeps her other thoughts at bay. She often calls in to see Nanna, and they tackle the extensive issue of love. Not the way girls usually do, by sharing their experiences. Thanks to the amount of reading Nanna has done, they approach eroticism through literature. She likes Nanna more and more each day.

  Surrender, ecstasy, rapture.

  To almost die, yet preserve oneself by not melting into the other person and being crushed. Nanna laughs—that’s what eroticism is all about—and a funny little furrow appears between her eyes. She could have been an unbearable know-it-all, but she turns out to have a lighthearted and almost intrepid side: life seems to lie before her like a ripe fruit, just waiting for her to sink her teeth into it and take a bite.

  Nanna reads D. H. Lawrence, and so does she.

  She borrows Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Sons and Lovers, and Women in Love, and reads them after Nanna. Lawrence regards a man and a woman as two supreme heavenly bodies. Two planets, separate and independent, faithfully following each other’s orbits. Not crashing into each other. Not joining together. Simply following in each other’s tracks, thanks to the laws of gravity.

  Two heavenly bodies. Supreme. And equally strong. It is a relief to find images of love that are different from those to which she is exposed on a daily basis through a peephole into a marriage.

  It transpires that Nanna was born in Stockholm too, and during her time at high school she has had her very own boat built at Möja. That’s where the whole of her first student loan will be going.

  A clinker-built motorboat. With a cabin and an Albin engine. That’s where Nanna is going to spend the summer, with her poodle and her books and her typewriter. One hand on the tiller. Heading out toward the horizon. Alone and free.

  As an overture to life, it is unbeatable.

  Mom’s contempt does not diminish, nor does her fury. It is an ancient female fury; she had no idea how extensive it was. It is archaic. It is like the fury of Medea, who killed her children to hurt her husband. Mom doesn’t kill them. She simply draws the three sisters into her fury.

  Which is terrible.

  From Dad she moves on to all men.

  Never trust a man. A mantra that becomes set in stone: They should all be castrated, every last one of them, it’s the only thing that will do any good. She can understand the rage. What is more difficult to handle is Mom’s low self-esteem.

  The fact that Dad has left her proves that she is worthless. She dare not show herself on the street, where everyone would be able to see her limping as they gossip about the abandoned wife. The sisters are hauled into this feeling of worthlessness as if it were a fishing net. They never escape completely.

  Not for the rest of their lives.

  Ninne develops breathing difficulties. When she goes to bed she can’t breathe, and thinks she is going to die. The girl doesn’t dare tell Mom, but she calls Dad, who has rented a room in town. He takes Ninne to a doctor, who confirms the symptoms and says that she ought to move away from home. But Ninne is only fifteen and has several years left in school; where would she go?

  I went to see Ricki, now when was that? Probably in early summer, after Granny and Granddad invited me to spend a few days at the market garden.

  During my visit to Ricki I was so out of it that I hardly remember anything.

  I wanted to know if Ricki was aware that Dad had left. I couldn’t get the words out. I decided she did know, just like Laura and Grandpa. No one on my father’s side of the family mentioned Mom anymore. Including Ricki. At Granny and Granddad’s at that stage it was unthinkable even to mention Dad’s existence.

  They had loved him like a son.

  Now he had been struck off the register. Persona non grata. I vaguely remember Olle coming into the living room with the boy trailing behind him; he had tucked a tea towel around his waist, and he called Ricki precious Mommy and wanted me to stay for dinner. The memory is diffuse.

  But I couldn’t possibly stay. I had to get back to Mom. The constant worry over her was eating away at me.

  Ricki was so like my father. They both had a calmness and simplicity, but to care about them had almost become a betrayal of my mother.

  I longed for light and simplicity, but the line between light and darkness ran right through me. No young person is experienced, and no child survives parental conflict without guilt. It’s like A Midsummer Night’s Dream, where the forces of nature are pitted against each other: Oberon, King of the Fairies, against Titania, Queen of the Fairies. Everything around them ends up out of joint.

  She arrives home from a shift at the care home and can’t bring herself to go upstairs. She lies down on the concrete floor of the bicycle storage room in the cellar. The barred windows let in a gray, woolly light. She has received a letter from Granny.

  My darling eldest grandchild, I am so worried about your mother. You must take on the responsibility that your father has walked away from. I hear that Ia is being difficult—you must deal with her. I am relying on you. You have to take care of your mother.

  She lies there in a kind of trance, the cold crawling into her spine.

  Eventually she gets to her feet and goes upstairs, enclosed in her armor of cold indifference, and yet she is sick with worry about what she will face when she opens the door.

  A couple of times, no more, when Mom keeps saying that she is going to kill herself, she calls Mom’s old friend from the days when she studied music in Paris—Aunt Marta, who now lives in Lund.

  She calls and Marta says, Hang on, I’m coming.

  She stands at the kitchen window, her heart pounding. When she sees plump Marta turn the corner from Tellusgatan on her bicycle, the weight is lifted from her shoulders.

  Aunt Marta is the only one who can calm Mom down. She persuades Mom to get dressed, places a pot of coffee on the kitchen table. She is the only adult who knows how hard it is to live inside Mom’s despair. We sisters never discussed it between ourselves.

  We just lived inside it.

  Nanna calls and invites her downstairs. Her kind, gentle mom is out, and they knock back a bottle of wine, maybe two, and Nanna talks about why she and her mom came to Lund.

  That is related to eroticism as well.

  Before Nanna was born, her mom was married with three small children. When she met Nanna’s father, who was also married, she was floored by a love that took her breath away. It was irresistible.

  It was as if fate was giving her a command.

  She split up from her first husband, took the three children, and married the love of her life. It was a scandal. And it turned out to be anything but an idyll.

  Nanna’s father was an alcoholic who abused her mother. Nanna and her half-siblings lived in fear. On one occasion he threatened them all with a gun. He was admitted to the psychiatric hospital at Beckomberga, but he was charm itself; he talked his way out and came back. He was just as jealous as before, and kept on hitting Nanna’s mother.

  This continued until Nanna was fourteen years old. Her mother woke at dawn one day; she had five precious minutes to gather up her most important belongings. They fled to Lund, hoping that Nanna’s father wouldn’t find out where they were.

  But he tracked them down, and one day he rang the apartment.

  Nanna was home alone, and took the call. When she heard who it was, her body became rigid. It’s me, it’s Dad, say something. Nanna knew she mustn’t reveal where they were. She was so scared and lost for words that the colors in the rag rug started swapping over. Red became blue and blue became green.

  The colors jumped around before her eyes, and she couldn’t say a word. Nanna, I know it’s you, answer me. She didn’t know what to do with herself. Say something, Nanna. She hung up the phone. After that call her father disappeared without a trace. There was an appeal on the radio for information regarding his whereabouts.

  Weeks and months passed, until a friend went out into the archipelago in his sailboat. It was late fall, and stor
my. First the friend found the motorboat, smashed by the waves against a remote islet. Then he found the body. Nanna’s father had shot himself with a Parabellum left over from his military service. The same gun he had once pointed at his family.

  It is a story every bit as powerful as a Greek tragedy.

  She stares at Nanna, lost for words. Nanna isn’t crying, but she is taking fierce drags on her cigarette. The others might have been relieved, Nanna says, but not me. I missed him, but I couldn’t let anyone see that.

  It is a drama that penetrates her soul. The guilt, the loneliness, the feeling of missing someone. From that moment, Nanna becomes a really important person. All those years in school must be reassessed. The girl who caught up with her on her bicycle on Dalbyvägen. Who stood alone in the schoolyard with her book.

  Who seemed arrogant and haughty, but who was lost and in despair. People don’t know much about one another. She didn’t know a thing about Nanna until now. Her own situation is nothing compared to what Nanna has gone through.

  After that she becomes a part of Nanna’s life. This enables her to escape her own life, and provides some relief. Nanna’s life becomes a parallel existence to which she is allowed access, and it has the great advantage of belonging to someone else. But Nanna disappears to the archipelago and her boat with the Albin engine, while the girl gets a summer job at the Grand Hotel.

  There too she lives as if she is in some kind of novel. It doesn’t really concern her, but she can be in it and observe it greedily.

  She is a cleaner, but also provides room service.

  She receives a silver dollar from an elderly American who rings for tea, then opens the door stark naked. One man keeps ringing to ask her to brush his kaftan, or whatever the black cloak he wears is called. She kneels down and brushes the front, then the back, while he stands there with his eyes closed. When she has finished, he tells her to start again. She brushes away patiently, but when he wants her to do it for the third time, she tosses her head, hands him the brush, and leaves.