Good Night, My Darling

by Inger Frimansson

  “Doesn’t anyone else live with you?”

  She shook her head.

  Even up here there were framed posters of Sandy Candy. He pointed and asked why.

  “Sven Dalvik was my father. The Sandy concern, you know.”

  He didn’t know, and that seemed to make her happy.

  He wandered to get a look at the books.

  “You like reading, don’t you?” she asked.

  “Yes, in my next life, I’m going to be a seller of fine used books.”

  “What do you do in this life?”

  “Oh, I’m the night clerk for a hotel.”

  “I thought rather that you were a doctor, the way you wrapped my foot like a real pro.”

  He looked at her seriously.

  “You were sitting in the snow as if you were dead. As if you’d been murdered.”

  “Murdered! What made you think that?”

  “It looked just like a murder in a movie.”

  “Ew…”

  “If I hadn’t come…”

  “I’d have woken up again after a minute. It’s happened to me before. My foot gives out on me, it hurts like hell, and I faint from the pain.”

  “How come?”

  “I broke it a long time ago. It’s never been really all right since then. I’ve been trying to strengthen it by running. Now I’ll have to give that up for a while.”

  “You certainly ought to!”

  He kept looking at the bookshelves.

  “Did you buy all these books yourself?”

  She laughed, a short and somewhat spiteful laugh.

  “Did you think I wouldn’t be capable enough?”

  “No, that’s not what I meant.”

  “No, sorry, yes, of course they’re mine. No one else in this house enjoyed reading, just me.”

  “Have you lived here a long time?”

  “I grew up here.”

  “You did…? By the way, I see you have Bernard Malamud. Have you read much of him?”

  “Well, I read him many years ago and I liked what he wrote. So I have three or four of his books.”

  “I like his style, too. But I’ve only read one of his. But it went right to my heart.”

  “You can borrow that one if you like.”

  He became oddly happy.

  “Thanks, I’d like that,” he said.

  Chapter FOURTEEN

  The light:

  Which suddenly slid into a black and sweeping darkness. The glittering of a shard, an eye. Mother and sisters screaming, Flora, Flora, or the cry of seagulls far away.

  Did she remember this? She was a very small child and was sleeping in a basket under the tree.

  No.

  She had just heard it told.

  Her eldest sister remembered:

  How you lay there and how Mamma ran from us screaming.

  Why was she screaming?

  Well, there was a big bird on your chest.

  It was pecking at your eye with its rough black beak.

  Certainly this was in here somewhere. The smell of a wide open bird beak, the smell of its craw: voles, worms, mire. A drop of saliva falling on her cheek, and even though she was too small to feel afraid-she was afraid. She screamed with her mother’s scream. And the bird’s scream and how it flew off, because the sisters were coming; they took stones from the ground and threw them, but nevertheless it continued to circle above the tree for a long time afterwards.

  “Flora, that is you, isn’t it? You remember me, don’t you?” She turned her head. Morning.

  The woman in the other bed had been lying there looking at her. For how long?

  “I understand… that you can’t talk. But you must remember me, Märta Bengtsson. Your father owned Klintgårdens Garden Supply; we used to go there and buy red beets.”

  The grey bloat under her chin, her turbid eyes, her veined arm which was pointing right at her.

  “To think that we’ve ended up here… and in the same room to boot. The gorgeous Flora Dalvik and me.”

  Oh yes, she remembered that squabbling, clinging kid, who never was properly clean. Her sister’s name was…

  “You and my sister used to go dancing. Oh, how I used to be so jealous. You were so pretty in your dresses… and you used to wear something pink. Yes, it was pink, though you called it apricot. Apricot! As if we were supposed to know more about apricots than that they were some kind of fruit.”

  Märta Bengtsson had managed to grip the railing above the bed and tried to raise herself up. Her flecked arms seized and she couldn’t manage it. She fell back into the pillows while giving off a loud fart.

  A chuckling laugh with no teeth.

  “To think we’d end up like this, you and I! Who would ever have believed it?”

  Flora closed her eyes. Siv was the name, Siv with the long toes. They learned to dance in her room, and one of Flora’s sisters had been there, too. Which one of them? Rosa, the one who was most fond of dancing?

  She got pregnant, Siv did, in the family way as they said. The taut skin over her belly, how she nevertheless didn’t die, but smiled. Smiled and laughed the whole way through until one night the kid popped out and was born.

  A family shame? Of course, it was always a scandal when something like that came to light. That someone had embraced a man without the blessing of the priest. She had embraced Sven Dalvik many a time with the priest’s blessing, but still nothing.

  “You heard Siv died, didn’t you? It was quite a few years ago now, 1992. She just lay down on her pillow and died. Just like that. Why weren’t we allowed to have a death like that? Just lie down on our pillows and die.”

  The white uniforms. Spray and stink of bedpans. Dampness between the legs, gone. She always froze when they took off her diapers, a wave of shivering went over her stomach and limbs. Just lying here giving off steam like a recently carved fish. Fixated on their young faces, would they be able to control themselves, would they be able to keep what they really thought under wraps. The sticky brown mess. Yes, her stomach was acting up, whether nightmares or in reality. She had heard the girl’s steps during the night. They had come closer, like marching soldiers, and she had stared at the door, but it didn’t open. It had been night.

  “Have you eaten something unsuitable, Flora? I believe we’ll give you tea today, no more coffee.”

  “For the love of God, how that stinks!”

  “Don’t worry, Märta, we’ll open the window.”

  Now she was sitting in the reddish-yellow armchair, Märta Bengtsson was right across from her. Just like a pair of bosom buddies.

  “But one thing doesn’t make sense. Why are you in this kind of ward? Not that it’s any of my business, but… you know, there are private nursing homes. I mean something really nice, almost like having your very own nurse. You must be able to afford it. Not that you really threw it around when you were living, I mean, when Sven Dalvik was living, of course. But then you lived a totally different kind of life. At least I… I mean, that’s what we read in the papers. A real glittering gala life. You’ve lived a rich life, Flora. And so I’ll say it again, to think that we ended up here.”

  A rich life? Yes, as far as money went. Yes, rich indeed. And once she taught that kid some manners, things got much easier. She had offered love, ready to take the girl to her heart and love her. But that had been the wrong method. Siege warfare was the name of the game. Siege warfare and conquest.

  She used to take Justine into the basement sometimes and give her a round in the tub, sat her down and lit the fire. Never hot enough to burn her, though, never anything like that.

  A child has to learn boundaries.

  Sven’s kowtowing to the girl had gotten on her nerves. The look in her eyes when he took her into his arms, and surprised her with kisses and cuddles. The girl’s eyes never left her for a second. They shone triumphantly in her direction.

  There was something sick about that girl. Something akin to mental illness.

  She tried to ta
lk to Sven about it, after the two of them had made love. Then he was open and willing to listen to suggestions, even if he didn’t agree with her.

  “No!” he said. “The kid’s all right. But you’ve got to try and understand her, Flora. She is still grieving her mother.”

  “Sven, dearest, she can’t possibly even remember her mother.”

  “It’s the feeling of loss. It’s eating her from the inside, tearing a hole inside her. We shouldn’t let that happen. We have to give her all our love.”

  All of it? All of our love?

  And she opened her arms and legs. Come and have me again, Dearest, sow me, make me bear fruit.

  “She hears what we say, doesn’t she, nurse?”

  “One never knows. But it’s best to choose one’s words carefully.”

  “Do you know that she was once best friends with my sister Siv?”

  Oh no, we weren’t such close friends. Just on the surface, if you could imagine that with your shrunken little brain. She was coarse and clumsy, just like you. Your whole family was like that, and now I’m thinking of your father, how he toddled home on Saturday afternoon, that jerky, twitchy walk… and how you all left home just like mice. He beat Siv sometimes; she ran over to our place and cried. How could she even tell us such a shameful thing? She was almost boastful, the way she showed us her bruises. But once that baby was on the way, he showed his other side. It was almost as if he had been converted at a tent meeting, how he became such a sweet grandfather to that boy.

  But before then. Out into the cold with them, wife and children. Here I come, the master of the house. My mother would never ever have let herself be thrown out of her own house. If my father had even touched a drop of brandy in order to get drunk, I believe she would have buried him in the potato field.

  Your mom had gypsy blood. That’s why she couldn’t resist. The guilt of having gypsy blood. He gave her one once on her mouth so that her lips burst open with blood. We saw that one through the window, Siv and I. “Gypsy whore!” he yelled at her, she was barefoot and half dressed. That she lets him get away with it, I said to Siv. And that’s the day when our friendship ended.

  “Then came the day you married that fine director and widower Dalvik. Snapped him up, just like that! You never came to visit once you married. My daughter Marie was in the same class as his daughter. We saw the two of you at parental meetings. You held his arm so properly. You pretended you didn’t know me. But I wasn’t the one who’d changed so much; that was you; but I had no problems at all recognizing you. You can’t hide, no matter what the cloth you use for your clothes. Silk or velvet, hand-me-downs or rags.”

  They all resembled their father, his coarse build, his greasy, chapped skin. Flora was delicate.

  “You are as small as a girl,” said Sven Dalvik, and took her into his arms. Finally his daughter was sleeping; only then could he give himself fully to his woman. Gripped her narrow hips, were they large enough to hold a child? The small pink nipples, flat like a boy. She had short hair then; he called her his little guy.

  The girl was sleeping, but you could never be too sure. She could wake up and stand there in the doorway with those glowering, wide-awake eyes, that what-are-you-doing-withmy-father look.

  She no longer had orgasms.

  He didn’t seem worried about that. Did he actually even notice?

  “I can’t relax; everything’s locked up; everything in me has locked up.”

  “Don’t worry about it. It’s because you’re thinking about it too much that it’s not working.”

  “Let’s travel again. Our trip to London had to be cut short. Let’s have a second honeymoon, but choose Paris this time.”

  He did not want to leave the girl. Not so quickly again. But he still traveled quite a bit for business. “Let’s leave it for the future, Flora. Not right now.”

  But time went on and Justine began school.

  “Who would take care of her?” he said. “If we both traveled, you and I? Who would get her dressed and send her off to school with her schoolbags?”

  “You worked it out before.”

  “But it’s different now. I don’t want to disappoint her again.”

  And he went off by himself. Returned with expensive presents. A ring with diamonds to make it up to her and this trumpet thing for the girl.

  “If you let her play that thing inside, I’m moving!”

  Play, if you could call it that!

  The girl would go to the beach and inhale so that her whole body bent double. The ducks would come, lured by the sound; they should have had better taste. But it seemed to make her happy.

  “I’m playing for the birds, Pappa!”

  “My fine, sweet girl. Soon you’ll be able to start an orchestra.”

  The ducks climbed on the dock and got things messy with their excrement. Who did he think was going to scrub the dock clean! Did you think I moved here to be scrubbing filthy bird shit from an old dock!

  No.

  Impossible to argue with that man. He bit his lip and was silent. Until she had to come hat in hand, begging for forgiveness.

  The kid. Everything was her fault. Overprotected and spoiled.

  She had sunk into her chair. She was very tired. Märta Bengtsson had been staring at her, taking away her rest.

  “Nurse! Please come here a moment! I think Mrs. Dalvik has fainted.”

  “No, no, she’s fine. We just have to prop her up again, like this.”

  “Maybe she’s tired and needs to rest?”

  “No, it’s good for you to be up as long as you can. It makes the day go faster.”

  A friendly thought, at least, from Märta Bengtsson. Flora looked at her and managed a nod. Märta nodded back.

  “Whoever would have thought we would end up like this.”

  Every once in a while a fierce rage came upon her. Not at Märta, not at the caretakers. No, at Sven. Seventy years old and completely healthy up to that moment, one afternoon he clutched at his heart and fell down at the top of the stairs. She had been standing in the window and had seen him, and she had immediately called for an ambulance. She had to use all her strength to push him slowly away, so that a crack was open wide enough for her to get out the door. He lay there on the stairs and something frothy was running from one of the corners of his mouth.

  He was dead the following morning.

  She was sitting next to him, holding his hand. Justine was at his other side. He had them both, and still, he left them both.

  Who will be sitting at my side, when the time comes? I don’t want to die.

  I want to live.

  Chapter FIFTEEN

  Some days they all ganged up on her. Everyone in the whole class. They took each other’s hands, mittened hands with wet thumbs, and made a circle. This is what the teacher saw: How the children were playing Christmas games with the memory of plundering the Christmas tree fresh in their minds. How the wind pulled at their scarves; their light voices. She then felt a warm flush in her chest and remembered her own innocent child self.

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

  For the fact of the matter with Justine was that she always had to go pee, but she forgot to go to the washroom, or dawdled on the way there. More likely the latter, actually. The girls had hindered her there and made her embarrassed.

  Flora got angry of course. Held the piss-wet underwear under her nose.

  Always being wet down there, she got chafing sores and red marks.

  Now she was lying in the snow. No one had pushed her. She lay down willingly and the ring dance continued and their worn snow boots. Lay there like a sacrificial lamb.

  Something hard at her side. The snow could be formed; it was a bit warmer now. They were building around her; they were building a well and she was at its bottom.

  The bumpy white walls. Far up there the light, gray and whistling. The bell rang. Time to go in.

  “We’re going now,” Berit called.
She was the archangel, the one who decided everything. “Hurry up, so that teacher doesn’t yell at you.”

  She could have gotten up. She could have braced herself against the walls and they would have crumbled; that wouldn’t have been difficult at all.

  She didn’t.

  The teacher and Flora and herself. The tick of the clock on the wall.

  “Look at us when we’re speaking to you!”

  “Well, she has lost her mother…”

  “But that was many years ago and she has a new mother now. She can’t profit from that old story for the rest of her life. We have to bring her away from that, help her. Otherwise, she is going to have a great deal of problems later on.”

  Flora wearing her white blouse.

  “We only want the best for you, Justine; you know that.”

  The teacher with white chalk on her hands.

  “She is not without talent. But she has to try harder. She can’t sit there so quietly during the lessons. I know that she has inner resources. And she has a responsibility for her own life, just as all human beings do; even schoolchildren do.”

  “We will have to talk to your father about this, Justine, unless you change your ways. And you don’t want to do that, do you?”

  No, there she hit the nail on the head. Pappa had to be spared. He would never have to know. He had enough problems of his own with that witch woman in his house and in his bed.

  Let’s think about someone, Justine, someone only you and I know. Yes. Mamma.

  Flora whipped her, but never when Pappa was home. She locked her in the basement with her school books, but she no longer had the strength to force her into the wash tub.

  “I’ll listen to you recite later, even though it won’t make a difference. You’re a real lost cause.”

  What does she mean, a “lost cause”?

  Sometimes she fled from the schoolyard. But it would be more difficult later on, when they caught up to her. Berit grabbed her, pointing at her body.

  “Look at Justine’s French nose!”