He sat in his chair behind the reception desk and the snow blew like smoke outside on the street. It was dark, and all the shops had closed. If he had a dog today, he would name her Bella and she would be at home in his bed waiting for him, warming up the bed. He usually had frozen toes after sitting at the hotel all night long. Could you leave a dog that long? Well, why not. Dog owners usually didn’t have to get up in the middle of the night to take out their four-footed friends?
Would it be the right thing to do? What if Bella missed him? And what if she started howling, night after night? How would that go? He could lose his apartment and then where would he be?
The reception area was not very large, but it was pleasantly decorated with a set of wicker sofas and cushions that had a large flower design. On the glass table, there were some magazines: Allt om mat, Reader’s Digest, some Christian magazine, and the newspapers Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet. To the right, on its own table, was an aquarium with two kinds of fish, some black fish and some see-through fish. Hans Peter imagined that the black ones were called Black Mollies. The cleaning lady had told him once, but she spoke Swedish poorly and he didn’t really understand what she had said.
The cleaning lady was responsible for the aquarium. She made sure that they received their food and once a week she cleaned their home with a big plastic scoop. She was a Greek immigrant and her name was Ariadne.
Of course, Hans Peter thought when he first met her. A Greek woman named Ariadne! He tried to talk to her about the Labyrinth at Knossos, but she had just covered her mouth with her hands and laughed. She had noticeable gums.
At times when she didn’t have a babysitter, she brought her daughter with her. Her daughter was blind. She would stay on the cot behind the curtain. Hans Peter knew at once when she had been there. The pillow smelled and the pillowcase was wet and a bit sticky. The girl usually lay there sucking on raspberry candy ropes.
Next to the cot was a door that led to the small kitchen. For the guests who wanted it, Hans Peter could make sandwiches with shrimp or cheddar cheese and olives, which he would cut in half and fasten with toothpicks. Part of his job was to make the rounds at two in the morning and pick up all the shoes that had been left out for cleaning. This service from days gone by was something that Ulf chose to preserve. He was careful with his services and Hans Peter didn’t care one way or the other. This way he got a break from the night’s monotony. He went around with a big basket on his arm and collected the shoes, writing the room number on their soles with chalk. The first night he was on the job, he thought that he would be able to remember which shoes went where, but it was much more difficult than he imagined. He had to take a chance on guessing right. Two pairs of men’s shoes landed up at the wrong door, but the guests didn’t get upset. They thought it was a funny episode that they could tell when they returned home.
Tonight the rooms were all booked. Hans Peter had made himself comfortable on his chair and had put aside the newspaper. He was about to read the seventh song in Don Juan when the outer door opened and a swirl of snow came in. A man stood in front of the registration desk. He had wet hair which clung to his forehead.
“May I help you with something?” asked Hans Peter. The man closed the door and stamped his feet. Hans Peter asked again if he could be of service somehow. “I want to see one of your guests,” said the man, and Hans
Peter could tell that he was drunk.
“Yes, which guest would you like to see?”
“Agneta Lind.”
Hans Peter flipped through the register. He didn’t recognize the name, but he recognized the situation, married men looking for their unfaithful wives.
“I’m sorry, but we don’t have any guest by that name here.” “Don’t mess with me. I know she’s here.”
Hans Peter shook his head. Now he had to be tactful. The man was large and strong, and he wore a buttoned, somewhat worn coat, and around his neck he wore a gold chain with an amulet.
“She must have registered under a different name.” “That would be hard to know.”
“Don’t you have to require someone to show their ID?” “Actually, no.”
The man had tried to look as intimidating as possible, but now he took a few steps back and sank into the sofa. He hid his face in the elbow of his coat. It sounded like he was crying.
“Damn it all to hell. If you knew how degrading this is…” These were always difficult situations. What was a person to say? Whatever he said could be the wrong thing. He waited. “If I describe her… would you recognize her?”
“Please understand… we can’t do that. We have to protect our guests.”
The man wasn’t listening.
“She’s… thirty-eight, but you’d never know. Everyone thinks she looks younger. She has short hair, dyed red, but it’s not red everywhere… and now that bastard…”
“Why do you want to find her?”
“She’s my wife, dammit! She’s here with her lover, and I don’t give a damn that she is here. I’ve tracked her down. Tre Rosor was written in her planner. She’s never been too clever. Tre Rosor, that’s the name of this place, right? Isn’t that the name of this fucking hotel?”
“Yes, but this is not that kind of a hotel.”
“What do you mean, that kind?”
“We don’t have a… bad reputation.”
“That’s not the point here.”
“All right… but… there’s no person by that name here.”
“Her lover… I know who he is. I’ve seen him. He has glasses and funny outfits, some kind of fucking lawyer who is upstairs screwing her, I’ll kill them both.”
He really ought to throw the man out or call the police. That would be the right thing to do.
Instead he said, “Would you like a cup of coffee?”
He made a shrimp sandwich for the man and put on a large pot of coffee. Suspiciously, the man bit into the sandwich, and a few shrimp fell off onto his knee. He chewed loudly and looked around with quick glances. I hope Ulf doesn’t show up now, thought Hans Peter. Ulf wouldn’t be so thrilled with this. It didn’t look right to have someone come and make themselves at home in the middle of the hotel’s foyer.
Once the man drank a cup of coffee, he started to calm down. Hans Peter hoped he would go away soon.
“That was great!” said the man and swallowed the last bite of the sandwich. “An unexpectedly warm welcome, I’d call it.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m Björn. Björn Lind.”
Hans Peter did not want to know the man’s name. He didn’t want the man to get to know him better either. But against his will, he began to chat, just like him to land in situations that he really ought to know how to ward off.
“Have you two been married long?”
“A couple of years at least.”
“But it’s not been going so well for a while, right?”
“I certainly don’t think so.”
“What about her?”
“Hell if I know. Never heard her complain.”
“Have you talked about a divorce?”
“Not at all. But I know that she has others on the side. I can feel it. She says she’s going to the movies with a friend but in reality…”
“Maybe she really went to the movies.”
“Fuck that idea.”
“What’s your line of work?”
“I own my own business. I have a message delivery service and a couple of cars. She was one of the drivers. That’s how we got together.”
A fish came to the surface and snapped some air. The fish did that at times, when they needed extra oxygen. Hans Peter wondered if they knew that they were captive. At any rate, they could see out through the water and the glass. Whenever Ariadne approached, they all swam up to the surface at once; they knew she was bringing food; they recognized her.
“If your wife is seeing other guys, maybe she has a reason,” he said carefully.
“What do you mean, a reason?�
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“Well, maybe she’s not so happy with how you two are doing. For me that’s what happened.”
“Well, life’s not always a bouquet of roses!”
“Of course not.”
“But maybe it is here at the Tre Rosor, ha, ha?”
Hans Peter laughed.
“What about you?” the man said. “You married?”
“Have been.”
“There you see how easy it is.”
“Yep,” sighed Hans Peter.
“Did she take off? Or did you?”
“Well, neither of us took off exactly. We just… drifted apart.”
“But Agneta and I… we…”
“Can you two still talk with each other?”
“Talk this, talk that.”
The man grew quiet. He took up one of the newspapers and flipped through it, mostly to have something to do with his hands. Someone was walking along the hallway upstairs. Just think if there really were an Agneta Lind among the other guests? Think if she came down dragging her lover behind her. Hans Peter tried to remember who had checked in during the evening, what they looked like, had there been a woman with short red hair? He didn’t remember one.
“Hey,” said Björn Lind, as he with great effort got to his feet. He now appeared completely sober. “I’m going now. Thank you. I mean it. Not sure for what. Maybe the food, if nothing else.”
Hans Peter couldn’t read any longer. He couldn’t comprehend the words. He washed up the cup and the small plate, rinsed the coffee pot. A feeling of depression was settling into him without his really knowing why. He wished that the night would go by quickly. He wanted to go home and lie down. His legs were aching, as if he were coming down with a fever.
Chapter NINE
After a long break, the girl began to visit her again. The girl had changed. There was something unfamiliar about her, something in her bearing. As if all the knots in her spine had been smoothed out and she had returned to being that Justine she had been when she was little. And she held that persona up like a shield whenever she stepped into the room.
Yes, even that, her way of walking was different, no longer that careful pattering that relatives of sick people got into the habit of doing, but she would open the door and walk right in. With a terrible screech, she would pull a chair to the bedside and sit there without moving, straight and cool. Sit there and stare directly at her with that same crafty look that she had had enough of long ago.
A creepy feeling came over Flora as she lay there in the bed. The blanket felt heavy on her ribcage. Yes, it was like she was again able to feel her own body with all its fragility, down to the smallest cell, as it had been before the stroke. She tried to close her eyes and pretend to be sleeping, but time and again she had to open her eyes slightly to see if the girl was still there, if the girl had changed her position. It became a compulsion.
She found herself listening for the girl’s footsteps, even in the middle of the night. If she could only get those damned white uniforms to understand that she didn’t want visitors any longer. Not by anyone. Not even closest relatives.
At first Flora had been unconscious and didn’t know whether she had visitors or not. When she slowly began to come to, the girl was standing next to her bed. And that feeble voice, that pleading: “Can you see me, Flora? Can you hear me?”
Flora’s tongue felt like dry tree bark.
There was light in the room; a nurse came in. “Does she understand what I’m saying?”
That look the nurse gave before the two of them left together. Flora tried to lift her hand to move the blanket. She wanted to get out of bed, find a mirror, see what had happened to her. They had given her drugs; she had forgotten how she had come there.
But she could not get her hand to lift.
Could not even move it.
During that first period, they had subjected her to a great number of tests. Every day, they had rolled her away to labtest rooms and X-ray rooms. They had stuck needles into her arms; they had tested her foot with instruments and asked, do you feel this, Mrs. Dalvik? Do you feel this at all?
After a while, they’d given up.
They had tied her to a stretcher and two young ambulance workers had rolled her out. It was the first time in ages that she had breathed outdoor air and it sunk in that as far as she was concerned, her life was over. When the ambulance turned out of the driveway, she saw a glimpse of the emergency hospital and remembered the sound of sirens.
At the nursing home there was no such hurry.
Sometimes during the night, she felt a certain closeness, as if Sven was back with her. He was strong and young, just as he had been in the beginning. She wanted to cover her head with the sheets; he shouldn’t see her like this, so old and humiliated. Go, she wanted to scream at him, go back to your French wife.
That woman had died at the height of her greatest beauty. She was the one he had chosen; she was the one who had given him a child. Flora had never been more than a surrogate, however much he had tried to deny this.
If he had only agreed to sell the house, that would have been the ultimate proof that he meant the things he said. That he wanted to start a new life. But he refused. She could get him to do many things, but not this. The house was holy to him. His French wife had chosen it, and she had placed her weed of a child in it as a continual reminder.
Her own womb was barren.
Now it was morning again. There was sound in the hallways, light, curtains being drawn back. She looked toward the window, black and shiny, but the uniforms had still turned on all the lights.
A chipper voice from a white uniform: “Good morning, Flora. Did you sleep well?”
What right did they have to use my first name?
The blanket taken away, hands on her hips and rear. At least she could still pee.
She avoided looking at her skinny limbs and the black hair which had faded to gray.
The white uniform sang; she was just a child with golden locks.
“Now we have real winter Flora. Isn’t it wonderful! A great deal of snow fell last night. And it was cold, below zero. I had to get a ride here from my boyfriend and we almost didn’t make it up the hill. Although he has summer tires still on and they’re really worn out.”
Yes that was it. Snow. The dull scraping of snowplows; that was the sound this morning.
“I’m going to come back soon and wash you up, and then a bit of food would be good, wouldn’t it?”
That chirpy, naive optimism. As if food would taste good in her situation.
Snow… Snow was on the ground when he first took her to the house. She slipped on the slope, and almost fell. He took hold of her arm, but not hard, not as if he wanted to own her.
There was a woman in the house. A housekeeper. She had made dinner and set the table in the room that Flora would later make into her blue room. There was a draft between the front door and the door to the basement. Something was wrong with the heater, even though it was new. He was so touchingly impractical.
Flora’s feet were freezing. She hadn’t taken any indoor shoes with her. Sven found a pair of woolen socks and they were much too big, so she continued to freeze until she drank a glass of wine. Then she became hot and in the mood to laugh.
The housekeeper had come in with the girl. She resembled her father, the same light skin and chin.
“This is my daughter Justine,” said Sven and lifted the girl into his arms. She hugged his neck strongly and refused to shake Flora’s hand. She had to take it back and she felt humiliated.
They finished eating and they were sitting at a smaller table for coffee. The child clung to Sven and would not look up. Finally he carried her from the room.
“You must excuse her,” he said when he returned. “You know what happened. She is at a difficult stage.”
A few weeks later, Flora invited him to her place. She had recently moved into a two-room apartment on Odenplan, next to Gustav Vasa Church but facing the courtyard garden.
She had gone home right after lunch, and she still remembered what she had served him for dinner. Baked ox fillets with sautéed chanterelles and fresh strawberries for dessert. Her parents had helped her to find the strawberries, which were out of season, as well as the chanterelles. He was thoroughly impressed.
That evening they slept together. He had been alone for so long that he came right away. They remained in bed and she cupped her hands around his thin buttocks and felt an increasing tenderness.
“Sven,” she whispered.
Yes, she whispered his first name, and he was no longer her boss but a man who had been inside her, and she took his fingers and placed them between her thighs. Then he hardened, grew, and she laid on him and led him into her in a way she had never done before with anyone.
He liked her. Yes, almost loved her. Every evening he returned. She lay in his arms and she told him about Hässelby and about herself.
“I love your name,” he said. “Flowery.”
“It’s not for nothing that I’m the daughter of a master gardener.”
He laughed and tickled her with the tip of his tongue. She turned, mouth next to his knee.
She continued her story from this position.
“My parents owned a garden supply store for over thirty years. They took it over from my paternal grandfather. They intended to keep it in the family, but… well, it didn’t happen like that. We were four sisters with flower names, but it didn’t help; none of us had the desire to grow plants. I’m the youngest. Rosa is the oldest, and then this is Viola and this one is Reseda.”
“Reseda?”
“Yep. That’s her name.”
“And if you were boys?”
“Then we wouldn’t be sleeping together.”
She turned again and followed his hairline with her index finger. His glasses were on the table; his eyebrows were light, almost invisible.
“I mean, what kind of names would they have?”
“I got it the first time. Maybe Root and Branch. Like the Root and Branch of Jesse… My parents really wanted boys. None of us girls wanted the garden store. We had had enough.”
Good Night, My Darling Page 7
