Paul and I exchanged letters for years. I never stopped caring about him. Paul, the recluse, living in his temple of memories. When he eventually passed away, I traveled to England to bury him alongside the urn containing the ashes of Rox, his beloved dog, who had died a few years earlier. Only three people turned up for Paul’s funeral. The priest, his closest neighbor, and me.
The Red Address Book
N. NILSSON, GÖSTA
Our reunion was exactly as Gösta had imagined in his letters. The sailors cast their ropes ashore; the dockworkers grabbed them and wound them around the bollards on the pier. The iron gangway was rolled into position on the uneven pavement. A light rain was falling, and Gösta was standing there on the dock, beneath a big black umbrella. I walked toward him. I was no longer a pretty young woman, not at all the person he held dear in his memory. I didn’t have a single intact piece of clothing, nor a good pair of shoes. My hair was lank, and the years had taken their toll on my skin, leaving it rough. Still, he held out his arms to me, and I fell into them without a moment’s hesitation.
“Oh, Doris! You’re here, finally!” he whispered, refusing to let go.
“Yes, it’s certainly been a while, darling Gösta,” I replied, sniffling.
He laughed. Took a step back, held my shoulders in his hands.
“Let me see you.”
I dried my tears and with a sense of uncertainty met his eye. That was enough to breathe life back into our friendship. Suddenly, I was that little thirteen-year-old again, and he was the unhappy artist.
“You have wrinkles.” He laughed, his finger stroking the skin around my eye.
“And you’re an old man.” I laughed back, placing my hand on his round stomach. He smiled.
“I need a better housekeeper.”
“And I need a job.”
“So what do you say?”
I was still clutching my duffel bag, which contained a few mementos from England.
“Shall we do it? When can you begin?”
I looked up and smiled.
“How does right now sound?”
“Right now is good.”
He held out his arms to me, and we hugged, this time to seal an affectionate business deal. Then we walked together, up the hills of Södermalm, to Bastugatan. When I saw Madame’s building farther down the street, my stomach lurched. I approached it cautiously, pausing outside to read the names on the door.
“A young family lives there now. Four kids they’ve got, crashing about and yelling, bothering Göran in the apartment below. It’s driving him mad, he says.”
I nodded but didn’t reply, reached for the handle I had turned so often. To think that my hand had been here, to think that the very first time . . .
“Come on, let’s go home now and get some food in you.” Gösta placed his hand on my shoulder. I nodded.
The hallway smelled of turpentine and dust. Paintings were stacked against the walls in long lines. Paint was splattered on the pine floor, and the living room furniture was covered in white sheets. Flies swirled among the piles of dirty plates in the kitchen.
“You do need a housekeeper.”
“I told you.”
“Well, now you have one.”
“You know what that involves. I’m not always in the best of moods.”
“I know.”
“And I need complete discretion with regards to . . .”
“I’ll stay out of your private life.”
“Good.”
“Do we have any money?”
“Not much.”
“Where can I sleep?”
He showed me to the maid’s quarters. A small room with a bed, a desk, and a walk-in closet. There were women’s magazines, traces of a female presence. I turned and gave him a questioning look.
“They always quit when they find out . . .”
He never used the word homosexual. It wasn’t something we talked about. Whenever his nocturnal guests came over, I would push cotton balls into my ears to avoid hearing them. During the day he was just Gösta, my friend. I went about my business, he went about his, and we would eat together in the evening. If he was in a good mood, we would talk for a while. Sometimes about art. Sometimes about politics. Our relationship was never that of employer and maid. To him, I was just Doris, the friend he had been missing for many years who had finally returned.
One night I showed him the short stories I had written in Paul’s cottage, about the woman and child. He read them carefully, occasionally going over the same page twice.
He sounded surprised when he eventually spoke. “Did you write all this?”
“Yes. Is it bad?”
“Doris, you’re talented. You have the gift of words—I’ve always said that. You need to make the most of it.”
Gösta bought me an exercise book, and I began writing in it every day. Short stories suited me best, as I never had the energy to properly structure anything longer. My stories became a way for us to put more food on the table. I sold them to women’s magazines; they would buy anything so long as it was about love. That was what sold. Passion. Romance. Happy endings. We sat there on Gösta’s dark-purple velvet sofa, laughing at the banalities I came up with. We, who had been marked by life, laughed at those who believed in happy endings.
26
“Could you give me a little water?” Doris reaches toward the table for her glass. Jenny holds it as Doris places her hand on her wrist to raise the glass to her lips.
“Do you want anything other than water? Coca-Cola? Soda? Juice?”
“Wine?” Doris’s eyes crinkle mischievously.
“Wine? You want wine?”
Doris nods. Jenny smiles.
“Well, of course you can have wine. White or red?”
“Rosé. Cold.”
“OK, leave it to me. It’ll take a while, but you can rest in the meantime.”
“And strawberries.”
“And strawberries. Anything else? Chocolate?”
Doris nods and attempts to smile, but her mouth can’t manage it. Only her upper lip slides above her teeth, transforming the smile into a grimace. Her breathing is labored, every breath rattling in her chest. She seems much wearier than she was yesterday. Jenny leans forward and rests her cheek against Doris’s.
“I’ll be back soon,” she whispers, thinking: Don’t die while I’m gone. Please, don’t die.
She half-runs through the slush and the Nordic darkness, toward the brown exterior of Mörby centrum mall. Tyra giggles and points to the wheels and the water being sprayed up as they rush through the puddles. Jenny can feel it soaking through her leather boots. A dark, wavy tidemark has appeared on them; the soles are too thin to handle winter in Sweden. They’ll never be right again; she forgot to treat the leather.
In the supermarket, she finds out that you still can’t buy alcohol there—it’s available only at Systembolaget, the state-run liquor store. She swears and hurries over there. She has deep feelings for Sweden, the place where her grandmother and great-grandmother grew up, and tends to put the country on a pedestal. But she has clearly not spent enough time there to smoothly negotiate the basics of everyday life. She sighs and sits down at the information counter in Systembolaget. After five minutes, a man in a checked green shirt comes over.
“Hi! Can I help you with anything?”
“Hi, yes, I need two bottles of rosé, something nice,” she says. He nods and leads her over to a shelf of rosés. Reels off suggestion after suggestion, asks what kind of food she’ll serve it with.
“Just chocolate and strawberries,” she says wearily.
“Aha, in that case, maybe you’d prefer something sparkling? Or maybe —”
She interrupts him. “No, just an ordinary rosé wine. Choose whichever you would pick yourself.” She feels like screaming: just give me a fucking rosé! But she manages to control herself and nods politely when he holds out two bottles. Once he leaves, she glances down at a different bottle, one with a nicer l
abel, and discreetly swaps them.
“Do you sell wineglasses?” she asks the woman at the checkout as she hands over her American passport.
The woman shakes her head. “Try the supermarket, I’m sure they have plastic ones.”
Jenny sighs and heads back there.
The stroller gets caught in the slush three times on the way back to the hospital, and by the time Jenny pushes it onto the ward, she is so warm that her cheeks are flushed. Tyra is sleeping. She peels off her coat and hangs it over the stroller handle, making the bottles in the bag clink against each other. Doris is awake, and at that sound, her mouth curls into a more convincing smile. Her face no longer looks quite so gray.
“Oof, walking is hot work.” Jenny grabs a newspaper and fans herself with it. “You’re looking brighter!”
“M o r p h i n e,” Doris says slowly, then laughs. “They give it to me whenever the pain gets to be too much.”
Jenny frowns. “You’re in pain? Where?”
“Here and there. Everywhere. In my hip, my leg, my stomach. In a new way. Almost like it’s radiating from within. Like my entire skeleton is full of thousands of sharp pins.”
“Oh, Dossi, that sounds awful! I wish there was something I could do!”
“There is.” Doris smirks knowingly.
“You want some? Is it really OK, considering you’ve been given morphine?”
Doris nods and Jenny grabs the purple bag from the space beneath the seat of the stroller. She places both bottles on the table and crumples the empty bag.
“It makes no difference, I’m going to die anyway.”
“Nope. I don’t want to hear a word about that.” Jenny bites her lip.
“My darling, I’m never going to leave this bed. You know that, don’t you? You do understand?”
Jenny nods dully and sits down right next to Doris, who slides even closer. She grimaces slightly when she moves her leg.
“Does it still hurt, even with the morphine?”
“Only when I move. But let’s talk about something else now. I’m so sick of suffering. Tell me about Willie. And David and Jack. And the house.”
“Happy to. But first, it’s time for a toast.” She pours the pink liquid into two plastic cups, the closest thing to a glass she could find at the supermarket. Then she presses the button to raise the head end of the bed. Doris slips down slightly, and Jenny lifts her head by putting her hand behind her neck, and gently tips the cup to her mouth. Doris noisily slurps down a few drops.
“Like a summer’s evening in Provence,” she whispers, closing her eyes.
“Provence? Have you been there?”
“Many times. I often used to go when I lived in Paris. There were parties there, at the vineyards.”
Jenny hands her a huge red strawberry. “Was it pretty?”
Doris sighs. “Wonderful.”
“I read about your adventures in Paris last night. Did you really write all that for me?”
“Yes, I didn’t want to die with everything in my head. The knowledge that all my memories would be lost with me was too painful.”
“How was Provence back then? And the parties? Who else was there?”
“Oh, it was exciting. Many of the greats. Authors, artists, designers. Everyone wore clothes more beautiful than you could imagine. There were different fabrics back then. They had luster, quality. We were in the middle of the countryside, but everyone was dressed like they were going to the Nobel Prize ceremony. High heels, strings of pearls, and huge diamonds. Rustling silk dresses.”
Jenny sighs. “And you were a live mannequin! What do you know! That’s why you were never impressed by the simple fact that I was working, when I was younger. But why did you never talk about your own work, Dossi? I can’t remember that you ever mentioned it.”
“No, it’s possible I didn’t. But I’ve written about it for you now, so you’ll know everything. Usch, it was such a vanishingly short period in a very long life. You know how it is. Talking about it once you’re older just leads to surprised faces. Who would believe that an old biddy was once a model? And besides, I ended up back where I began. A simple housekeeper. No more, no less.”
“Tell me more, I want to hear everything. What did you wear at those parties?”
“It was always something out of the ordinary, those magnificent creations. That was why I was there. To show off the dresses. Dazzle society.”
“Gosh, how exciting! Doris, I wish I had known all this. I’ve always admired you for your beauty, so I’m really not surprised, and I don’t think anyone else would be either. When I was young, I always wished I would grow up to look like you, do you remember that?”
Doris smiles, pats her gently on the cheek. Then takes a deep breath.
“Yes, life was easier before the war. And it’s always easier to be young and beautiful. You get a lot of things for free.”
“I recognize that.” Jenny laughs loudly and pulls at the skin on her neck. “How did this happen? When did I become middle-aged and wrinkly?”
“Pssh, nonsense. I won’t hear you talk about yourself like that. You’re still young and beautiful. And you have half your life ahead of you, at least.”
Jenny looks at Doris. “Do you have any pictures from back then?”
“Just a few; I didn’t manage to take many with me from Paris. Those I do have are in a couple of tin boxes in the wardrobe.”
“They are?”
“Yes, they should be, under my clothes somewhere. Battered, rusty old tin boxes that I luckily managed to get back from New York. They’ve been halfway around the world, and it shows. One of them was a chocolate box that Allan gave me, so I never wanted to throw it away. It’s thanks to him that I enjoy saving memories in tin boxes.”
“I’ll look for them tonight. How exciting! If I find any pictures, I’ll bring them in tomorrow so you can tell me all about every single person in them. Would you like another strawberry?”
Tyra whimpers and waves her arms in the air. Her whining soon turns into a full-blown tantrum. Jenny picks her up and holds her little body tight against her own, kisses her on the cheek, and bounces her up and down to comfort her.
“She’s probably hungry; I’ll take her down to the cafeteria. We’ll be back soon. You get some rest, so you can tell me more about Paris later.”
Doris nods, but her eyelids have started to droop before Jenny even manages to turn away. She studies her for a moment. Doris is wrapped in one of the hospital’s pale-yellow blankets, and she is as thin as a bird. Her hair is flat and sparse, the skin of her scalp glowing bare and white between the strands. The beauty that followed her through life has gone. Jenny resists the impulse to hug her again and quickly heads down to the cafeteria. Don’t die, please don’t die while I’m gone, she thinks again.
The Red Address Book
N. NILSSON, GÖSTA
He was a perfectionist through and through, and possessed an intensity verging on the manic. I had never seen anything like it, and never did again. When he painted, he might spend weeks on a single canvas. And he was unreachable during that time. Didn’t eat much, didn’t talk. Directed all of his energy into fields of color and building his compositions. It was a love affair, a passion that took over his body and his consciousness. He couldn’t do anything about it, he said; it was just a matter of following his senses and letting the picture take shape.
“It’s not me doing the painting. I’m always surprised when I see the finished piece. The pictures just come to me, as though someone else had taken over,” he explained whenever I asked him about it.
I often watched him from a distance. It fascinated me how, even as the critics shot him down, he managed to retain his creative energy. Some claimed to understand him, and kept him from starving by buying his paintings. People with lots of money and a burning interest in art.
That apartment on Bastugatan had an interior that bore signs of our dreams of Paris. The walls of the studio were covered with pictures of our belo
ved city. Some Gösta had painted himself, some were cut from papers; some were postcards that I had sent to him. We talked often about the city we both longed for, and he still wanted to return there. We fantasized about going back together one day.
When the war came to an end in 1945, we both went down to Kungsgatan to celebrate with everyone else. It was unlike Gösta to be out among the crowds, but he didn’t want to miss the moment. He walked with the French flag in his hand, I with the Swedish. The euphoria was tangible—people celebrated the end of the conflict by laughing, singing, shouting, and throwing confetti.
“Doris, do you know what this means? We can go now, we can finally go.” Gösta laughed louder than I had ever heard him laugh before as he waved the Tricolor. Usually so bitter and suspicious about the future, he at last seemed hopeful.
“Inspiration, my dear, I need to find inspiration again. It’s there, not here.” His eyes grew wild at the thought of seeing his artist friends in Montmartre once more.
But we never had enough money. Nor the courage to do what comes more naturally to youth—simply pull up sticks and leave. Paris remained a dream. Like all lost loves, that city grew ever more precious in our minds. In a way, I’m glad Gösta never managed to return. The disappointment of meeting the reality of Paris, after idealizing it for so long, might have been too much for him to bear. A painful discovery—his inspiration wasn’t so strongly connected with one particular place after all. It was within him, and it was his job to find it and put it to use, however slow and difficult that process was. And to do this over and over again.
The Red Address Book Page 19
