The Red Address Book

by Sofia Lundberg

  Jenny turns the computer toward her young daughter, who is on the floor, chewing the corner of a magazine. She whimpers when Jenny lifts her. Refuses to stand on her own, slumps back down as soon as her feet touch the floor.

  “Come on, Tyra, walk, please. Show Auntie Doris.” Jenny tries again, speaking in Swedish this time: “Stand up now, show her what you can do.”

  “Just leave her be. When you’re one, magazines are much more exciting than an old lady on the other side of the world.”

  Jenny sighs. Moves into the kitchen, with the computer in her arms.

  “Have you redecorated?”

  “Yeah, didn’t I tell you? It looks good, right?” Jenny spins around with the computer, making the furniture blur into nothing but lines. Doris follows the room with her eyes.

  “Very nice. You have an eye for interiors, you always did.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that. Willie thinks it’s too green.”

  “And you think . . . ?”

  “I like it. I love light green. It’s the same color Mom had in her kitchen, do you remember? In that little apartment in New York.”

  “It wasn’t in New York, was it?”

  “Yeah, the brick building, do you remember? The one with the plum tree in the tiny little garden.”

  “In Brooklyn, you mean? Yes, I remember. With the big dining table that didn’t quite fit.”

  “Yeah, exactly! I’d completely forgotten about that. Mom refused to give it up when she divorced that lawyer, so they had to saw it in two to get it into the room. It was so close to the wall that I had to suck my stomach in to sit on one side of it.”

  “Oh yes, life was certainly never boring in that house.” Doris smiles at the memory.

  “I wish you could come for Christmas.”

  “Yes, me too. It’s been so long. But my back is too bad. And my heart. My traveling days are probably over.”

  “I’ll keep hoping anyway. I miss you.”

  Jenny turns the computer toward the counter and stands with her back to Doris.

  “Sorry, but I just need to make Tyra a quick snack.” She takes out bread and butter, lifts her whining daughter onto one hip.

  Doris waits patiently while Jenny butters the bread.

  When she returns to the screen, Doris asks, “You seem tired, Jenny. Is Willie helping you out enough?” Tyra presses the bread to her face, sitting on Jenny’s lap now. The butter smears across Tyra’s cheeks, and she pokes out her tongue to reach it. Jenny is holding her with one arm, and she uses the other to pick up a glass of water and take a big sip.

  “He does his best. He’s got a lot going on at work, you know? He doesn’t have time.”

  “What about the two of you, do you have time for each other?”

  Jenny shrugs.

  “Almost never. But it’s getting better. We just need to make it through this, the baby years. He’s good, he struggles a lot too. It’s not easy supporting an entire family.”

  “Ask him for help. So you can get some rest.”

  Jenny nods. Kisses Tyra on the head. Changes the subject.

  “I really don’t want you to be alone over Christmas. Isn’t there anyone you can celebrate with?” Jenny smiles at Doris.

  “Don’t worry about me, I’ve spent plenty of Christmases alone. You’ve got enough to think about as it is. Just make sure the children have a good Christmas and I’ll be happy. It’s a children’s holiday, after all. Let me see, I’ve said hello to David and Tyra, but where’s Jack?”

  “Jack!” Jenny shouts loudly, but there’s no answer. She swings around, and Tyra’s bread drops to the floor. The little girl starts to cry.

  “JACK!” Jenny’s face is red. She shakes her head and picks up the bread from the floor. Blows gently on it and hands it back to Tyra.

  “He’s hopeless. He’s upstairs, but he . . . I just don’t understand him. JACK!”

  “He’s growing up. Like when you were a teenager yourself, do you remember?”

  “Do I remember? No, not at all.” Jenny laughs and covers her eyes with her hands.

  “Oh yes, you were a wild child, you were. But look how well you turned out. Jack will be fine too.”

  “I hope you’re right. Sometimes being a parent is such a thankless task.”

  “It goes with the territory, Jenny. It’s meant to be that way.”

  Jenny straightens her white shirt, notices a lick of butter, and tries to rub it off.

  “Ugh, my only clean shirt. What am I going to wear now?”

  “You can’t even see it. That shirt suits you. You always look so pretty!”

  “I never have time to get dressed up these days. I don’t know how the neighbors do it. They’ve got kids too, but they still look perfect. Lipstick, curled hair, heels. If I did all that, I’d look like a cheap hooker by the end of the day.”

  “Jenny! You’ve got the wrong idea. When I look at you, I see a natural beauty. You get it from your mother. And she got it from my sister.”

  “You’re the one who was a real beauty in her day.”

  “At one point in time, maybe. We should probably both be happy, don’t you think?”

  “Next time I fly over, you’ll have to show me the pictures again. I never get tired of seeing you and Grandma when you were young.”

  “If I live that long.”

  “No, stop it! You’re not going to die. You have to be here, my darling Doris, you have to . . .”

  “You’re big enough to realize that we’re all going to die one day, aren’t you, my love? It’s the one thing we can be completely sure of.”

  “Ugh. Please stop that. I have to go now, Jack has football practice. If you hang on, you can talk to him when he comes down. Speak again next week. Take care.”

  Jenny moves the computer to a stool in the hallway and shouts for Jack again. This time, he appears. He’s wearing his football uniform, his shoulders as wide as a doorway. He runs down the stairs two at a time, his eyes fixed on the floor.

  “Say hi to Auntie Doris.” Jenny’s voice is firm. Jack looks up and nods toward the small screen and Doris’s curious face. She waves.

  “Hi, Jack, how are you?”

  “Ja, I’m fine,” he says, replying in a mixture of Swedish and English. “Gotta go now. Hej då, Doris!”

  She raises her hand to her mouth to blow him a kiss, but Jenny has disconnected her.

  The bright San Francisco afternoon, full of chatter and children and laughter and shrieking, is replaced by darkness and loneliness.

  And silence.

  Doris shuts down the computer. She squints up at the clock above the sofa, the pendulum swinging back and forth, with its hollow ticking. In time with the pendulum, she rocks back and forth in her seat. She doesn’t manage to get up, remains where she is to gather her strength. She places both hands on the edge of the table and gets ready for another attempt. This time, her legs obey her, and she takes a couple of steps. Right then, she hears the front door opening.

  “Ah, Doris, are you getting some exercise? That’s nice to see. But it’s so dark in here!”

  The caregiver hurries into the apartment. Turns on all of the lights, picks things up, clatters around, talks. Doris shuffles into the kitchen and sits down on the chair closest to the window. Slowly organizes her things. Moves them around so that the saltshaker ends up behind the phone.

  The Red Address Book

  N. NILSSON, GÖSTA

  Gösta was a man of many contradictions. At night, and in the early hours of the morning, he was fragile, full of tears and doubts. But in the evenings preceding those moments, he was desperate for attention. He lived off it. Needed to be at the center of the discussion. Climbed onto the table and broke into song. Laughed more loudly than anyone else. Shouted when political opinions differed. He was happy to talk about unemployment and female suffrage. But most of all, he spoke about art. About the divine in the act of creation. What the fake artists would never understand. I once asked him how he could be
so sure he was a genuine artist himself. How did he know it wasn’t the other way around? He pinched me hard in the side and subjected me to a long tirade about cubism and futurism and expressionism. The blank look on my face was like fuel. It ignited his laughter.

  “You’ll understand one day, young lady. Form, line, color. It’s so fantastic that, with their help, you can capture the divine principle behind all life.”

  I think that he enjoyed my lack of understanding. That he was relieved when I didn’t take him as seriously as the others did. It was like sharing a secret. We could be walking side by side through the apartment; he would hang back, then jump forward, from time to time, to resume our pace. “Soon I’ll say that the young lady has the greenest eyes and the most wonderful smile that I’ve ever seen,” he would whisper, and my face would always flush, the same shade of red. He wanted to make me happy. In that alien environment, he became my comfort. A replacement for the mother and father I missed so dearly. He always sought my eye when he arrived, as if to check that I was OK. And he asked questions. It’s odd; certain people feel particularly drawn to each other. That was how it was with Gösta and me. After just a few meetings, he felt like a friend, and I always looked forward to his visits. It seemed he could hear what I was thinking.

  Occasionally, he would bring company when he came over. It was almost always some young, tan, muscular man, far removed, in both style and demeanor, from the cultural elite who generally frequented Madame’s parties. These young men usually sat quietly in a chair, waiting while Gösta emptied glass after glass of deep red wine. They always listened intently to the conversation, but never joined in.

  I saw more than that, once. It was late at night, and I had stepped into Madame’s room to fluff up her pillows before she went to bed. Gösta’s arm was around a young man’s hip. He let go, as though he had burned himself. They were standing close together, face to face, in front of two of Gösta’s paintings, which were propped against the bed. Neither said anything, but Gösta looked me straight in the eye and held a finger to his mouth. I plumped the pillows with one hand and left the room. Gösta’s friend disappeared into the hallway and out the front door. He never came back.

  They say that madness and creativity go hand in hand. That the most creative among us are those who stand closest to gloominess, sadness, and obsessional neuroses. At the time, no one thought like that. Back then, feeling unhappy was considered ugly. It wasn’t something people talked about. Everyone had to be happy all of the time. Madame with her impeccable makeup, her smooth hair and glittering jewels. No one heard her anguished weeping at night, once the apartment had fallen silent and she was left alone with her thoughts. She probably threw her parties to keep those thoughts at bay.

  Gösta attended for the same reason. Loneliness drove him from his apartment, where his many unsold canvases were stacked against the walls, a constant reminder of his poverty. He was often marked by the sober melancholy I had noticed when we first met. When in that state, he would remain seated until I forced him out. He always wanted to return to his Paris. To the good life he had loved so dearly. To the friends, the art, the inspiration. But he never had the money. Madame provided him with the dose of Frenchness he needed to survive. One short moment at a time.

  “I can’t paint anymore,” he sighed one evening.

  “Why do you say that?” I never knew how to respond to his gloominess.

  “It amounts to nothing. I don’t see pictures anymore. I don’t see life in clear colors. Not like before.”

  “I don’t understand any of that.” I forced a smile. Rubbed his shoulder with one hand.

  What did I know? A girl of thirteen. Nothing. I knew nothing about the world. Nothing about art. To me, a beautiful painting was one that depicted reality as I understood it. Not by means of distorted, colorful squares forming equally distorted figures. I thought it was probably a stroke of luck that Gösta could no longer produce those terrible paintings that Madame stacked in her wardrobe in order to put food on his table. But later, I would find myself pausing, feather duster in hand, in front of his work. The confusion of colors and brushstrokes occasionally managed to catch my imagination, letting it run wild. I saw something new. With time, I learned to love that feeling.

  The Red Address Book

  S. SERAFIN, DOMINIQUE

  She was restless. I’d heard that from the other girls. The parties kept her removed from everyday life; the moves kept her removed from boredom. Her upheavals were always sudden, unpredictable, yet there was always a reason for them. She had found a new apartment that was bigger, better, in an area with a higher status.

  Almost one year to the day after our first meeting, she came into the kitchen. Stood with her hip and shoulder against the brickwork beside the wood stove. With one hand, she played with the brim of her hat, the strap beneath her chin, her necklace, her rings. Nervously, as though she was the maid and we were the masters. As though she was a child about to ask an adult for permission to take a cookie. Madame, who otherwise stood so straight, with her head held high. We curtsied and probably all thought the exact same thing: we were about to lose our jobs. Poverty scared us. With Madame, we had an abundance of food, and despite the tough working days, our lives were good. We stood in silence, our hands clasped in front of our aprons, stealing furtive glances at her.

  She hesitated. Her eyes wandered among us, as though she faced a decision she didn’t want to make.

  “Paris!” she eventually exclaimed, flinging her arms wide. A small vase on the mantelpiece fell victim to her sudden euphoria. The small fragments of china scattered between our feet. I immediately bent down.

  Silence descended over the room. I felt her eyes on me and looked up.

  “Doris. Pack your bag, we’re leaving tomorrow morning. The rest of you can go home, I don’t need you anymore.”

  She waited for a reaction. Saw the tears welling up in the others’ eyes. Caught the anxiety in mine. No one said a word, so she turned, paused for a moment, and then quickly left the room. From the corridor, she shouted:

  “We’re taking the train at seven. You’re free until then!”

  And so, the next morning, I found myself in a shaky third-class carriage en route to the southern tip of Sweden. All around me, strangers twisted and turned on the hard wooden benches; those worn seats gave my backside splinters. The carriage smelled musty, like sweat and thick, damp wool, and it was full of people clearing their throat and blowing their nose. At every station, someone would leave and someone new would board. Every now and then, a person transporting a cage of hens or ducks between parishes would appear. The birds’ droppings smelled pungent, and their piercing squawks filled the carriage.

  Few times in my life have I felt as lonely as I did on that train. I was on my way toward my father’s dream, which he had shown me in books, back when my childhood was still secure. But during that ride, the dream felt more like a nightmare. Just a few hours earlier, I had run along Södermalm’s streets as fast as my legs would carry me, desperate to get to my mother’s apartment in time to hug her and say goodbye. She smiled, the way mothers do, swallowed her sadness, and held me tight. I felt her heart pounding hard and fast. Her hands and forehead were damp with sweat. She must have been crying earlier, because her nose was blocked and I didn’t recognize her voice.

  “I wish you enough,” she whispered in my ear. “Enough sun to light up your days, enough rain that you appreciate the sun. Enough joy to strengthen your soul, enough pain that you can appreciate life’s small moments of happiness. And enough friends that you can manage a farewell now and then.”

  She fought her way through these words, which she so wanted to say, but then she could no longer hold back the tears. Eventually she let go of me and went back inside. I heard her mumbling, but I didn’t know whether the words were directed at me or at her.

  “Be strong, be strong, be strong,” she repeated.

  “I wish you enough too, Mamma!” I shouted after her.
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  Agnes lingered in the yard. She clung to me when I tried to leave. I asked her to let go, but she refused. Eventually, I had to pry her chubby little fingers off my arms and run as fast as I could, so she couldn’t catch up with me. I remember the dirt beneath her fingernails and her gray wool hat, dotted with small red embroidered flowers. She cried loudly as I left, but soon fell silent. Probably because my mother had gone outside to fetch her. Even now, I regret not turning around. Regret not taking the opportunity to wave goodbye to them.

  My mother’s words became a guiding light in my life, and just thinking of them has always given me strength. Enough strength to make it through the hardships to come.

  The Red Address Book

  S. SERAFIN, DOMINIQUE

  I remember the moon, a thin sliver against a pale-blue backdrop, and the rooftops beneath it, the laundry hanging on the balconies. The smell of coal smoke from the hundreds of chimneys. The train’s rhythmic pounding had become a part of my body over the long journey. Day had just started to dawn as we finally approached Gare du Nord after many long hours and several changes. I got up and leaned out of the third-class window. Breathed in the scent of spring and waved to the street children running barefoot along the tracks, their hands outstretched. Someone tossed them a coin, which halted them abruptly. They flocked around the small piece of treasure and started to fight over who would get to keep it.

  I kept a tight hold on my money. I held it in a small, flat leather purse, knotted to the waistband of my skirt with a white ribbon. At regular intervals I reached down to check that it was still there. Ran my hand over the soft corners I could feel beneath the fabric. My mother had slipped the purse into my hand just before I left, and it contained all the money she had been saving, money she used only in special circumstances. Perhaps she loved me after all? I was so angry with her, often thought that I never wanted to see her again. But at the same time, I missed her so unfathomably much. Not a day went by without my thinking about her and Agnes.