They despaired because the boy stopped eating. What do you do with a child who doesn’t eat? She sat with a spoon, opened his little mouth. What went in ran out again and behind his ears. She gave him to the girl. Warm him up if you can. But the girl was lethargic, no longer present.
The baby lived only four days. Then there was nothing more to do.
She wrapped him in a linen towel. Sven came with a box which had been used for shoes.
The child was too small and was born too early.
He never said what he had done with the box.
Chapter NINETEEN
His parents were standing at the window when he arrived. He glimpsed them behind the curtains, how they pulled back so that he would not see them. He was irritated; he couldn’t help it.
He had bought tulips in the subway as well as a box of candy, Romerska bågar. What do you give a man who is that old? His father had never appreciated books.
His mother took off his coat.
“Go in to your pappa; the food will be ready in a minute.” It smelled wonderful throughout the whole house. She had made roulades; she knew that was his favorite dish. And large boiled potatoes. And peas and jelly.
His father dished up a portion.
“How are things going with you?” he asked. “Is there a lot going on at the hotel?”
“It’s been a bit busy.”
“But you are still just working the night shift?”
“Yes, but the night shift can be fairly difficult.”
“I don’t get it. Aren’t the guests asleep then?”
“But Kjell, you’d understand if you thought about it for a second,” his mother said and giggled.
“No, goddammit, I don’t.”
His mother looked at him and made a face.
“If there are a lot of guests… maybe even foreigners,” Hans Peter said, “then there’s a lot to do with their passports and such. And then you have to help them with information, and maybe call a taxi for them; sometimes they get lost.” “All right, so there’s more involved.”
“Take some more roulades,” said his mother.
“Thanks, Mamma, this was great. You really know what I like.”
She smiled tightly.
After dinner he helped her with the dishes. His father sat in front of the TV, something about skiing.
“He has become so touchy and brusque,” his mother mumbled while she rinsed off a plate.
“Uh-huh.”
“Nothing is ever good enough. I try and try.”
“Is he healthy and all that?”
“Healthy? I think so. I haven’t noticed anything wrong.”
“What about you, Mamma? How are you doing?”
“What do you mean?”
“Are you doing all right?”
“Of course I am, healthy as can be. Well, sometimes I get a little dizzy, but that happens with age.”
She went to the cupboard and took down a can of coffee.
“I’ve made him a tårta, one with chocolate, the kind he likes.”
“You’re always spoiling him.”
She suddenly threw her hands in front of her face and burst into tears.
“But, Mamma, what’s wrong?”
He tried to put an arm around her, but she pulled herself away.
“Mamma… are you thinking of Margareta?”
“Yes,” she hiccupped.
That’s the way it usually went. The memories became stronger around birthdays and holidays. She was always trying to talk about anything but that, but it was always there, ready to break out.
He didn’t know what to say.
His mother stood there for a moment, turned toward the cupboard.
“Would you like me to make the coffee?” he asked. She shook herself a little and turned on the faucet.
He felt impatient. He drank the coffee and took two helpings of cake. Every time he visited his parents, he stuffed himself with way too much food.
“Shall we have something with our coffee?” his father muttered.
“Kjell, we’ve had something with the coffee already. I made a tårta!”
“I mean something else than tårta, something stronger.”
He smiled at Hans Peter, somewhat slyly.
“Or what do you say, H. P.? But maybe you’re working tonight?”
“Yes, I am,” he said hastily, “but I can have a little glass, anyway.”
His father kept his liquor in an old cabinet with paintings of pumpkins on its doors and sides, which he had won at an auction. He found a bottle of whisky. He was wearing his old sweater with leather pads on the elbows. How long had he had it? His whole life?
“I won’t have any,” his mother said.
“Would you like something else? Some sherry?”
“Thank you, that’d be fine.”
“Where are the glasses?”
“Where they’ve always been.”
Hans Peter got up.
“I’ll get them. I know where they are.”
He wanted to leave. He was experiencing an unusual feeling, almost expectation, longing. The air here at home was suffocating him; he was having a great deal of trouble sitting still in the living room sofa.
After half a glass of whisky, his father became talkative. He started giving a lecture on golden parachutes, his own pet peeve.
“The newspapers are always talking about high directors who are fired because they can’t do their jobs properly, but the strange thing is, they get fired with a hefty reward, millions of crowns for the rest of their lives. Isn’t that crazy? I’ve done my job well for all those years and ruined my back to boot, just doing my job, and I don’t get a damned million for that. What is a worker’s back worth? Not one damn bit. But those high directors, they get to lounge around in their fine chairs and drive around in their fine, fancy automobiles.”
“Kjell, we’ve heard that already; we know that.”
“And even though I’ve paid my dues to the union, but even the union can’t…”
Hans Peter knew that the only thing to do was to nod along, so he did. He remained sitting for another hour, and then he got up and looked at the clock.
“Well, I’ve got to get rolling if I’m going to make it to work,” he said. “Thanks so much for dinner. And many happy returns!”
He held out his hand to his father. His father took it and squeezed a bit. He made a grimace, as if he were about to say something. Then he cleared his throat and put his hands into the large pockets of his sweater.
“Take care of yourself, H. P.,” he said. “Thanks for coming.”
His mother came up to him and gave him a light hug. She was one foot shorter than he was. He looked at her. Her hair was thinning; he could discern her white scalp. He hugged her a bit tighter.
Hans Peter took the commuter train to T-Centralen, the central station, and walked from there to the hotel. It had stopped raining; he was longing for air.
In the entryway of the hotel, Ariadne was busy with the aquarium. She was running late today. She said that her girl was sick and she had to wait for her husband to return. She stood bent over the aquarium; she was wearing blue close-fitting jeans.
He took out the register and thumbed through it absentmindedly.
“What does your daughter have?” he asked.
“I think it’s that influenza.”
One of her arms was down in the aquarium; she moved the hose around the bottom and sucked up the small wormlike excrement.
“I’ve told Ulf to buy bigger fish,” she said resentfully. “He says they wouldn’t be happy. They would be happy; I know they would, I told Ulf that I was certain they would. But he said, no, the big ones wouldn’t be happy.”
All of a sudden he felt tired of her. He just wanted to be left alone. He wondered if she were finished with all the rooms. She probably was; she usually did the aquarium right before she went home.
“Are all the rooms finished?” he asked.
She turned and look
ed at him; her eyes were brown and questioning.
“The rooms?”
“Yes.”
He thought that she should not be wearing such tight jeans. A fleeting thought flew through him, he wondered if her husband was good to her? Was he kind to her?
“Oh, don’t worry about it. I was just thinking out loud,” he said.
She went back to the aquarium. She’d spread out newspapers all around so that she wouldn’t get the area wet. Hans Peter had the book in his briefcase, the book he’d borrowed from Justine. As soon as Ariadne left, he’d take a look at it. He longed to hold it. A strange feeling had come over him, a feeling of ceremony. He had placed the book in his briefcase with careful hands, as if it were something delicate and fragile. He had finished it after only a few days, and he thought about how he was going to take the book back to her. He wanted to lengthen the time that he had the book so that he could fantasize about how it would be when he brought it back.
The book had moved him in a special way. It was about a man in middle age, Dubin, who wrote biographies and one day began to look at his own life. There was a similarity he felt between Dubin and himself that made him uncomfortable. As if he had never really lived, as if his life was running out on him and he could do nothing to stop it. He longed to discuss the book with Justine. He didn’t know her, but he had held her nude foot, held it in his lap and warmed it.
Ariadne placed the glass cover back in its spot and started to roll up the green rubber hose. She looked sad.
“I’ll pick up the newspapers for you,” said Hans Peter.
She made a hopeless gesture.
He squatted on the floor and started rolling up the newspapers. They were soggy, and a blackened and slimy water plant was lying on one of them. She was out in the kitchen, rinsing thoroughly at the faucet. He started feeling guilty. He squeezed behind her and threw the papers in the garbage.
“Is she very ill, your little daughter?” he asked gruffly.
“A fever.”
“Say hi to her from me. Tell her to get better.”
Ariadne nodded. He took her lightly on the shoulders.
“Have a good Saturday night, then,” he said. “See you on Monday.”
He dialed Justine’s number. He almost thought that it wouldn’t be in the telephone book, that she would prefer to keep it unlisted, but there it was. He recited it a few times to himself without noticing he did so, and then he had it memorized.
He signed in a few guests, gave them their keys. At around ten in the evening, he lifted the hand set and keyed in Justine’s number. Five rings went through. Oh my God, maybe she was asleep at this hour? He was just about to hang up, when someone took the call, but the line was silent.
“Hello?” he said expectantly.
No one answered.
He said it again.
“Hello, may I speak with Justine Dalvik?”
A snap in his ear and the line went dead.
When he woke up late the next morning, he stayed in his bed for a very long time. In his sleep, he had seen her in front of him. She was balancing on a row of sharp stones; she was barefoot, slipping and sliding. The bird circled over her head; how it continually dove at her head. He saw himself in the dream, too. How he ran and waved his hands, trying to make the bird disappear. Instead, Justine was frightened by the noise and she fell onto the sharp stones and slit her throat. He stood and watched her, how her head was stuck in a little narrow heap of stones. He was gripped by deep despair and some of that was still with him when he woke up.
He got up. Outside, the temperature was milder, the shine of rain on the window. He stayed in the shower for a quarter of an hour. Then he called her number again.
This time she answered. When he heard her voice, he began to sweat under his armpits. Immediately he forgot the words he was going to say.
“Hello?” he said somewhat stupidly.
She seemed as if she had a cold.
“Who is it?”
“Oh, sorry, it’s me, Hans Peter. Maybe you don’t remember me.”
“Of course I remember you.”
“How’s your foot?”
“Better. Not completely, though.”
“Great. I mean, that it’s better.”
She laughed, but began to cough.
“Oh, have you also gotten the flu? The cleaner at the hotel, her daughter…”
“Oh no, not at all. I’m just a little tired this morning.” “I thought… that book.”
“Yes? Have you finished it?”
“Yes.”
“What did you think?”
“I kind of wanted… to talk to you about it. With you most of all… so to speak… and eye to eye.”
She laughed a low laugh. He saw her now, the round cheeks, the freckles on her nose. He wanted to ask what she was wearing, what she was doing the minute he phoned, what she wished for herself.
“Come on over, then,” she said. “Let’s talk.”
She was wearing black tights and a sweater that went to her knees. Or maybe it was a thick, knit dress; he really didn’t know for sure. Her fingertips were ice cold.
“It’s so cold here in the house,” she said. “I’ve been keeping the fire going in the fireplace, but it doesn’t seem to help.”
“I don’t think it’s cold.”
“No?”
“No, pretty warm in fact. But I’ve been walking quickly, and so I’m, well, all heated up from inside.”
“What may I offer you?”
They went into the kitchen. He noticed two glasses of red wine on the counter. He felt some of his energy slipping away. “Right now I feel like having a large cup of strong coffee.
I’ll set the coffeepot on; would you like that?”
“Yes, thanks.”
Justine had put a sock on the injured foot. He noticed she still had difficulty walking. Now she stood and measured the coffee into the filter. She rested her back against the counter and breathed heavily.
“Fact is, I have to have some coffee to turn into a human being,” she said. “I had a late night. I’m a little hung over.” His palms tickled a bit. He turned away from the sight of the glasses.
“What? You’ve never been hung over, Hans Peter?” “Of course, of course I have. But it’s been awhile now.” “I don’t like it, the whole day is lost.”
“Well, if you had fun the night before…”
“I don’t even like it then.”
“Did you have a party, or something?”
“No, not really. A friend came here. A woman who’d been a classmate of mine in school.”
He was filled with shimmering happiness. His midsection tightened; his face relaxed.
“Oh for crying out loud, sit down,” he said. “I can look at your foot.”
She let her arms hang down.
“Don’t you want me to?”
“Sure…”
“You have to be careful with a sprain.”
“Can we go upstairs? If you take the tray with the coffee cups.” “What about the bird? Where is he?”
“Oh, he’s sitting somewhere and stressing himself.”
It was dusty and messy in the library. He saw signs of ice cream on the table. In the window there was a little pot of crocus. The bird was nowhere in sight.
“It’s a bit of a mess here, as you can see,” she said. “It doesn’t bother me. You should see my place.” He placed the tray on the table and pulled up the chairs so that they would be facing each other.
She had painted her toenails red. He saw that when he took off the sock and unwrapped the bandage. Her foot jerked; he could see that she was ticklish.
He saw the marks from the bandage on her skin. They looked like small valleys and he followed them with his fingertips, cupped his hand around her heel.
“It almost looks more swollen now than last time,” he said. “I didn’t rest it enough. It’s hard to stay still.” “Maybe you don’t need to bind it so tightly.”
“M
aybe not.”
“Justine, may I ask you something, apropos of nothing.
Have you ever felt that life was slipping way from you?” “Yes… sometimes.”
“Once I’m gone… no damned soul is going to remember me or know who I was.”
“The same with me, I fear.”
“You don’t have any children?”
She shook her head.
“People will remember you as the granddaughter of the man who founded the Sandy concern.”
She smiled slightly, her upper lip was elegantly formed, her lower lip chapped.
“So what?” she said.
“Well, even if you’ve had children, it doesn’t mean that someone will remember you. But you would be a kind of a creator, a part of you would in some way continue living… and into the next generation, too, but a bit more thinned out, of course.”
“You can live a good life without being a creator.”
“Of course, that’s true.”
“Why didn’t you have children?”
“It just didn’t happen that way.”
“It didn’t?”
“I was married for a long while, but no. Nothing happened. She got remarried later on and had a ton of children. Maybe there’s something wrong with me; maybe I don’t have what it takes.”
His hand had begun to move along her foot. He made no move to pull her foot closer. His middle finger worked itself gently under the edge of her tights. He felt her calf, smooth against his finger.
“And you?” he said. “Why didn’t you have any children?”
“I had a child once. It died after only a few days.”
“Oh.”
“It was a long time ago.”
He took his hands away, but she left her foot there, with her toes pointing toward him.
“Your hands felt nice,” she said. “I liked it.”
Hans Peter smiled at her.
“By the way, I have to tell you something. I dreamed about you last night.”
Good Night, My Darling Page 16
