Karlson could be furious over the slightest correction and once threw a galley down so hard that both the galley and Annie’s keyboard broke apart.
Silently, everyone took a seat, sipping from their coffee mugs. Outside, dusk was coming, and raindrops had begun to hit the window panes. Berit glanced at the pots with the green plants in the window and noticed that no one had watered them. They were withering. Her stomach knotted. She loved all of this, all these faces around the table now heavy with worry, the mess, the bundles of manuscripts, the stress, the books off to printers, everything that was a part of her work.
She had studied languages at the university. She had no idea what she wanted to do, and chance brought her to the world of publishing. A teeny-tiny ad from a teeny-tiny press that wanted an editor. The house was Strena, and it had since gone out of business, but for a few years, Berit corrected manuscripts for thrillers, and that proved lucrative during the time she married and had children.
At an office party, she began to talk with Carl Luding. As it turned out, he was expanding his business and he hired her on the spot without demanding a formal degree. But that was the way it tended to turn out for most of them in the publishing world, the hand of chance.
Berit’s husband Tor was an accountant. The first few years, they lived in his cramped, one-room apartment on Thulegatan. It was a challenging time. When the boys were two and three, the family could finally move to a house of their own in Angby.
Now the boys had moved.
Out of the nest.
She sometimes was sad about not having them home any longer. Now they were grown men and they were lost to her forever.
She left the office early that day, at four in the afternoon. On the way home, she bought two ox fillets and a bottle of red wine. Tor had not come home yet. She changed clothes and set the table in the dining room, using candles and the linen napkins.
“He’s going to think we have something to celebrate,” she thought bitterly.
When she heard him drive in the garage, she put butter in the frying pan and uncorked the wine.
He opened the outer door and hung up his coat, and she heard the thud of his shoes as he untied them and kicked them toward the wall. He came to the kitchen, looking weary.
“I thought we could cheer ourselves up a bit,” she said.
“Well, all right, but why?”
“Why not?”
“Something special? An anniversary or something?”
“Not that I know of. But shouldn’t we have the right to have a cheerful dinner on an average Thursday evening?”
“All right, then.”
They ate their dinner in silence. Berit drank quite a bit of wine, which went to her head and made her tipsy.
“What’s going on with you?” he asked.
“What do you mean with me?”
“Something’s going on, I can tell.”
“Tor, tell me the truth. Are you still attracted to me?”
“Berit!”
“Come on! Do I make you hard and horny?”
He pushed away his plate.
“Why are you blathering about that now?”
“I’m not blathering. I’m asking you a straight question and I want a straight answer. Is that so damned strange?” “You’re my wife.”
“That’s exactly why I’m asking!”
She got up and went around the table, behind him, and placed her hands on his head. He had just begun to go bald right on the top of the skull, she caressed him right there, then let her hands glide down to his shirt, his middle.
“Berit,” he said. “I want to finish eating.”
On Saturday she took the subway out to Hasselby. It felt strange to be riding the subway on the weekend instead of the usual work day, its totally different kinds of passengers, many children and their parents, a different kind of light, other colors, other sounds. She noticed how dirty and rundown everything looked. The floor of the car was blotchy with particles and dried fluids; many of the seats had so much graffiti they looked black.
Snow had come during the night, and it had stayed. She got off at the final station and her memories washed over her, memories from her teenage years. While she walked to the bus stop, she noticed that the area surrounding the subway had been renovated and renewed. The Konsum grocery store was gone. Instead there was a budget store with flashy red sale signs.
She had planned walking to the cemetery, but since the bus was already there, she rode the few stops. The sun glistened on the snow cover, which made her eyes water. She should have brought her sunglasses!
The cemetery looked idyllic, practically countryside, with its snow-covered gravestones and the blue titmouses chattering in the branches. On the right side of the chapel, there was a heap of snow-covered wreaths. Friday was a typical funeral day. Both her parents were buried on a Friday, first her mother and then, two years later, her father.
Except for the occasional car going by on Sandviksvagen, it was peaceful and quiet here. The graveyard is the resting place of the dead, as the sign on the entrance stated; here you weren’t supposed to disturb the peace by being loud. The dead had had enough of that in life and now they had the right to rest in peace.
She was alone. She looked around. In one of the apartments back there on Fyrspannsgatan, a young daughter of a doctor had been held prisoner by a psychopath. That was over a year ago and she suddenly remembered the details of the story. The girl had stood at one of the windows and hoped that someone would see her and take action. But who would take action by seeing a girl in a window? Even if she were screaming and calling for help?
How was it going for that girl now? According to the papers, she escaped with her life, but what about her psyche? She must be psychologically damaged for ever after?
Berit wondered about which window it had been. The evening tabloids had certainly shown pictures of the house with a circle around the window in question. Curious onlookers had definitely come by just to see the place and try to understand what it must had been like to be caught in the hands of a psycho.
A thought entered her mind to produce a book about the girl. Convince her to write a diary about the awful time she had been imprisoned. She was surprised that Melin & Gartner hadn’t done that already, as they usually were the first to publish books of that sort. Criminals and victims, suspects and police: those were the kinds of books that sell.
Here she was, thinking about work again! Even though she told herself she wouldn’t do that!
She felt her way along the shoveled and sanded little path. Over there to the left, the family grave, which would probably only ever hold two people. Family grave, an idea from previous eras, when people lived among their folks.
The grave was covered with snow. She brushed the snow off with her mittens and said the names of those two people who had been her parents out loud. Her conscience nagged her; she really ought to come here more often.
She had bought two grave candles, one for each.
“One for Mamma, one for Pappa,” she whispered, while she tried to light the two votives. It was harder than she thought, as every puff of wind blew out the matches, even though the wind wasn’t that strong.
“I think of you anyway,” she whispered, “even if it doesn’t look like it. Even if I don’t come here so often. I think of you both from time to time, and you must know that. If you see me now, if you are moving above me invisibly, keep a watchful eye on me. Right now I really wish you could do that.”
Both of them had died of cancer. Her father had been a big smoker. His labored breathing returned to her, his scratching at the throat opening when he didn’t get enough air.
“Whatever you do, my girl,” he would say whenever she came to visit him in the hospital, “don’t ever start
