Good Night, My Darling

by Inger Frimansson

  “Who the heck knows.”

  “But… where is he now?”

  “Going to a meeting. Gone the rest of the day. Gone tomorrow, too.”

  “Oh, Annie… what are we going to do?”

  “Do? Nothing we can do until Monday. Just wait. All day tomorrow and wait all weekend, too.”

  “Why did he bring it up now? Why couldn’t he wait until Monday then?”

  Annie shrugged. Her hair was a mess. She ought to do something with it.

  “What did he look like? How did he make the announcement?” “Like always. A big port-salut cheese for a face.” Berit took a paperclip from the desk and began to twist and turn it, bend it backwards.

  “I met Elizabeth at lunch, you know, that blonde who works over at Bonniers.”

  “That little gossip.”

  “Oh, she’s not that bad. But she was cryptically hinting that Curt was going to sell to Bonniers.”

  “We’ve heard that one before, and nothing’s ever come of it.” “Well, what if now is the time? Why do you think he’s calling for an employee meeting?”

  “You think. So we can be Bonniers employees.” “You would be. You’re still fairly young. But me, I’m turning forty-six this year. I’m not so sure that The Big Boys will take on an old lady like me.”

  Annie was silent for a moment.

  “But… if he’s selling the company, he’s selling us, too, like, we’re part of the deal,” she exclaimed. “I mean… we go, too. Otherwise, he has to buy us out somehow. Some kind of employment termination amount.”

  “Ha! Do you have a golden parachute I don’t know about?”

  “No.”

  The paper clip broke and snagged her thumb. “What is everyone else saying?”

  “Same stuff. They’re scared shitless. Lotta even got a stomach ache and had to go home.”

  Berit went to the kitchen and started a pot of coffee. It was messy and cluttered as usual: dirty coffee mugs, an empty Lean-Cuisine package. She picked that up and tossed it into the garbage, and exclaimed, “Goddamn pit, this place!”

  “Come and have coffee,” she angrily called out into the hall, as if it were an order. Everyone came, silent and worried.

  The publishing business had twelve employees, including Carl Lüding himself. Non-fiction was their best seller. Or had been. They had one real best-selling author, Sonja Karlberg, who wrote old-fashioned romance novels that, strangely enough, were hits with contemporary readers. She appeared to be a mild and fragile old lady, but Annie, who was her editor, began to feel ill the moment that Sonja Karlson called and said she was on the way in. Sonja Karlson could be furious over the slightest correction and once threw a galley down so hard that both the galley and Annie’s keyboard broke apart.

  Silently, everyone took a seat, sipping from their coffee mugs. Outside, dusk was coming, and raindrops had begun to hit the window panes. Berit glanced at the pots with the green plants in the window and noticed that no one had watered them. They were withering. Her stomach knotted. She loved all of this, all these faces around the table now heavy with worry, the mess, the bundles of manuscripts, the stress, the books off to printers, everything that was a part of her work.

  She had studied languages at the university. She had no idea what she wanted to do, and chance brought her to the world of publishing. A teeny-tiny ad from a teeny-tiny press that wanted an editor. The house was Strena, and it had since gone out of business, but for a few years, Berit corrected manuscripts for thrillers, and that proved lucrative during the time she married and had children.

  At an office party, she began to talk with Carl Lüding. As it turned out, he was expanding his business and he hired her on the spot without demanding a formal degree. But that was the way it tended to turn out for most of them in the publishing world, the hand of chance.

  Berit’s husband Tor was an accountant. The first few years, they lived in his cramped, one-room apartment on Thulegatan. It was a challenging time. When the boys were two and three, the family could finally move to a house of their own in Ängby.

  Now the boys had moved.

  Out of the nest.

  She sometimes was sad about not having them home any longer. Now they were grown men and they were lost to her forever.

  She left the office early that day, at four in the afternoon. On the way home, she bought two ox fillets and a bottle of red wine. Tor had not come home yet. She changed clothes and set the table in the dining room, using candles and the linen napkins.

  “He’s going to think we have something to celebrate,” she thought bitterly.

  When she heard him drive in the garage, she put butter in the frying pan and uncorked the wine.

  He opened the outer door and hung up his coat, and she heard the thud of his shoes as he untied them and kicked them toward the wall. He came to the kitchen, looking weary.

  “I thought we could cheer ourselves up a bit,” she said.

  “Well, all right, but why?”

  “Why not?”

  “Something special? An anniversary or something?”

  “Not that I know of. But shouldn’t we have the right to have a cheerful dinner on an average Thursday evening?”

  “All right, then.”

  They ate their dinner in silence. Berit drank quite a bit of wine, which went to her head and made her tipsy.

  “What’s going on with you?” he asked.

  “What do you mean with me?”

  “Something’s going on, I can tell.”

  “Tor, tell me the truth. Are you still attracted to me?”

  “Berit!”

  “Come on! Do I make you hard and horny?”

  He pushed away his plate.

  “Why are you blathering about that now?”

  “I’m not blathering. I’m asking you a straight question and I want a straight answer. Is that so damned strange?” “You’re my wife.”

  “That’s exactly why I’m asking!”

  She got up and went around the table, behind him, and placed her hands on his head. He had just begun to go bald right on the top of the skull, she caressed him right there, then let her hands glide down to his shirt, his middle.

  “Berit,” he said. “I want to finish eating.”

  On Saturday she took the subway out to Hässelby. It felt strange to be riding the subway on the weekend instead of the usual work day, its totally different kinds of passengers, many children and their parents, a different kind of light, other colors, other sounds. She noticed how dirty and rundown everything looked. The floor of the car was blotchy with particles and dried fluids; many of the seats had so much graffiti they looked black.

  Snow had come during the night, and it had stayed. She got off at the final station and her memories washed over her, memories from her teenage years. While she walked to the bus stop, she noticed that the area surrounding the subway had been renovated and renewed. The Konsum grocery store was gone. Instead there was a budget store with flashy red sale signs.

  She had planned walking to the cemetery, but since the bus was already there, she rode the few stops. The sun glistened on the snow cover, which made her eyes water. She should have brought her sunglasses!

  The cemetery looked idyllic, practically countryside, with its snow-covered gravestones and the blue titmouses chattering in the branches. On the right side of the chapel, there was a heap of snow-covered wreaths. Friday was a typical funeral day. Both her parents were buried on a Friday, first her mother and then, two years later, her father.

  Except for the occasional car going by on Sandviksvägen, it was peaceful and quiet here. The graveyard is the resting place of the dead, as the sign on the entrance stated; here you weren’t supposed to disturb the peace by being loud. The dead had had enough of that in life and now they had the right to rest in peace.

  She was alone. She looked around. In one of the apartments back there on Fyrspannsgatan, a young daughter of a doctor had been held prisoner by a psychopath. That was over a yea
r ago and she suddenly remembered the details of the story. The girl had stood at one of the windows and hoped that someone would see her and take action. But who would take action by seeing a girl in a window? Even if she were screaming and calling for help?

  How was it going for that girl now? According to the papers, she escaped with her life, but what about her psyche? She must be psychologically damaged for ever after?

  Berit wondered about which window it had been. The evening tabloids had certainly shown pictures of the house with a circle around the window in question. Curious onlookers had definitely come by just to see the place and try to understand what it must had been like to be caught in the hands of a psycho.

  A thought entered her mind to produce a book about the girl. Convince her to write a diary about the awful time she had been imprisoned. She was surprised that Melin & Gartner hadn’t done that already, as they usually were the first to publish books of that sort. Criminals and victims, suspects and police: those were the kinds of books that sell.

  Here she was, thinking about work again! Even though she told herself she wouldn’t do that!

  She felt her way along the shoveled and sanded little path. Over there to the left, the family grave, which would probably only ever hold two people. Family grave, an idea from previous eras, when people lived among their folks.

  The grave was covered with snow. She brushed the snow off with her mittens and said the names of those two people who had been her parents out loud. Her conscience nagged her; she really ought to come here more often.

  She had bought two grave candles, one for each.

  “One for Mamma, one for Pappa,” she whispered, while she tried to light the two votives. It was harder than she thought, as every puff of wind blew out the matches, even though the wind wasn’t that strong.

  “I think of you anyway,” she whispered, “even if it doesn’t look like it. Even if I don’t come here so often. I think of you both from time to time, and you must know that. If you see me now, if you are moving above me invisibly, keep a watchful eye on me. Right now I really wish you could do that.”

  Both of them had died of cancer. Her father had been a big smoker. His labored breathing returned to her, his scratching at the throat opening when he didn’t get enough air.

  “Whatever you do, my girl,” he would say whenever she came to visit him in the hospital, “don’t ever start smoking!”

  He didn’t know that she had already been smoking for a while, and the sight of his emaciated body on the sheets could not bring her to stop.

  Her mother had skin cancer, the same kind that took Tage Danielsson’s life in the early eighties.

  They were already old when they had her, just as old as she was now. They could have died of simple old age. Her mother had told her that she thought she was barren, but when she began to throw up her breakfast every morning for a whole week, she realized that she wasn’t.

  Berit left the grave with the votive flames barely visible in the January sun. She followed Hässelby Strandväg and walked past the house she had lived in when she was growing up. It hadn’t changed. She wondered who lived there now, but she saw no sign of life and the walk was white from snow that hadn’t been shoveled.

  She had gone this way from her house to the school every day when she was little. There were more houses, but nevertheless, time seemed to have stood still here. She didn’t have any contact with her classmates now, and she barely remembered their names.

  Lake Mälar was smooth, a bit of mist rose slightly above the surface. She longed for ice, longed to put on her skates and skate right out to the horizon, away from everything that surrounded her, everyday life, people, away from her own self. She suddenly noticed that her hands were freezing and she had left her mittens at the grave.

  She found herself standing in front of a narrow stone house. An inner picture of the house remained in her head from her childhood.

  Justinn försvinn, Justinn försvinn.

  Get lost, Justine. Get lost and stay lost!

  A chorus of high voices, and she was a member of that chorus and her own voice was one of them.

  Justine went in, Justine went out, when she went in, she pissed again.

  The sound became louder to the point she got dizzy.

  A woman was standing by the door. She had short, curly hair, and was wearing pants with a flower motif. Something about her was familiar. Berit waved.

  “Justine?” she said doubtfully. “Justine, is that you?”

  The woman came down to her. Her eyes were green and her look was straightforward.

  “Berit Blomgren! How strange! I was just thinking of you.”

  The words echoed inside her.

  “You were?”

  The woman laughed.

  “As a matter of fact, I really was.”

  “My last name is Assarson nowadays…”

  “Oh of course, you’ve gotten married.”

  “Yes.”

  “I was just going to get my old kick-sled. These days you can’t use a kick-sled that often, but at least today it looks like winter.”

  “We had kick-sleds, too, when we were little. I got a red one, which my pappa painted for me.”

  “Mine was just varnished. It’s out in the shed. But why don’t you come in for a minute? You look like you’re freezing.”

  “Hmm, maybe I am. I just came from the cemetery. I must have left my mittens there.”

  “Would you like some glögg? I have some left over from Christmas.”

  “Glögg? Sure, that would be great. Glögg warms you from the inside out.”

  The sun flowed over the floor. Berit sipped her glögg and felt warmth return.

  “How many years has it been?” said Berit softly,. “since we last saw each other?”

  “1969, when we finished grade school.”

  “Must have been.”

  She thought a minute.

  “Jesus, that was over thirty years ago!”

  “Yep.”

  “You’ve lived here… still here in your parents’ house?”

  “Yes, indeed.”

  “You’ve been here the whole time?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Are they deceased? I remember seeing something about your father in the paper. There was quite a write-up, I believe.”

  “Oh yes, my pappa is dead. Flora is in a nursing home.”

  “Flora, yes, that was your mother’s name. I always thought that it was such a pretty name. She was really beautiful, your mother, and she always smelled so good.”

  “She wasn’t my real mother.”

  “I know.”

  She took another sip of the glögg. It was strong and wellspiced.

  “My parents are buried over in the graveyard there. They were very old, you probably remember. I didn’t stay here in Hässelby very long. I had to get away from here. I met my husband soon after that. He’s called Tor, by the way; he’s an accountant. Sounds dull, doesn’t it?”

  Justine smiled. “Have some more glögg. We might as well finish it up, Christmas is over.”

  “Skål.”

  “Skål yourself. To our meeting up again.”

  “But really… why were you thinking of me today exactly? That sounds so odd. The exact day when I am here in Hässelby, you think of me and then we meet up again, like fate.”

  “It really wasn’t fate. You walked here yourself.” “Yes, but… I was just wandering around thinking about the past.”

  “Auld lange syne.”

  “Maybe so.”

  “Do you have any children, Berit?”

  “Two. Boys, twenty-one and twenty-two. They’ve moved out now. We’re just by ourselves now, Tor and me. Now we can really be there just for each other. What about you?” Justine shook her head.

  Then she stuck her fingers in her mouth and whistled a sharp short whistle. There was swishing behind them, the room shrunk, it squawked and something sharp scraped her skull, caught in her hair.

  �
��My God! What the hell!”

  She screamed and leapt to her feet, spilling her mug of glögg all over her pants.

  Chapter SEVEN

  An animal was lying in the forest. An animal that looked like a dog.

  First she saw just his head; around him were leaves and moss. She just saw his head, but she wasn’t afraid, and she went home without being seen.

  She found the washtub in the basement, where Flora was keeping clothespins. She dumped them into a corner, filled the washtub with water, and returned.

  The animal drank. Some water ran out onto the moss, but the throat moved and it swallowed. She saw that the animal had been without water for quite some time.

  Was it a dog? She touched the tangled fur. It wrinkled its nose and showed its yellow teeth.

  The animal didn’t have a collar. The body was in the moss and the twigs of the lingonberry bushes were bent and red.

  “You can’t come home with me,” Justine said. “A witch lives in my house and she will put the evil eye on you. But I will come back and bring you food and water, I promise.”

  He was rough all around the neck. She gave him a name.

  She said his name as loud as she dared, but he did not move his body, and his tail could not be seen in the moss.

  She took meat with her the next day. Without Flora noticing, she took a piece of her cutlet and wrapped it in a handkerchief.

  The animal was still there, like before.

  She could no longer see his eyes.

  When she placed the bit of meat next to his nose, his tongue came out a bit.

  But he did not eat.

  She never saw him again.

  Pappa came up to her room one evening.

  “Do you want to say your prayers with me?

  “Ourfatherwhoartinheaven,” she began.

  He leaned over her, kissed her behind her ear. “And who are we thinking about now, just you and me, just us two.”

  “Mamma,” she whispered.

  His face fell and he looked sad.

  “I also have to tell you that tomorrow when you wake up, I won’t be here.”

  “No!” Justine flew out of bed.

  He pleaded with her, but that just made her angry. “You have to stay here!”