“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, Marta Bengtsson. Your father owned Klintgardens 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.”
Marta 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, Marta, we’ll open the window.”
Now she was sitting in the reddish-yellow armchair, Marta 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.
