Sven’s kowtowing to the girl had gotten on her nerves. The look in her eyes when he took her into his arms, and surprised her with kisses and cuddles. The girl’s eyes never left her for a second. They shone triumphantly in her direction.
There was something sick about that girl. Something akin to mental illness.
She tried to talk to Sven about it, after the two of them had made love. Then he was open and willing to listen to suggestions, even if he didn’t agree with her.
“No!” he said. “The kid’s all right. But you’ve got to try and understand her, Flora. She is still grieving her mother.”
“Sven, dearest, she can’t possibly even remember her mother.”
“It’s the feeling of loss. It’s eating her from the inside, tearing a hole inside her. We shouldn’t let that happen. We have to give her all our love.”
And she opened her arms and legs. Come and have me again, Dearest, sow me, make me bear fruit.
“She hears what we say, doesn’t she, nurse?”
“One never knows. But it’s best to choose one’s words carefully.”
“Do you know that she was once best friends with my sister Siv?”
Oh no, we weren’t such close friends. Just on the surface, if you could imagine that with your shrunken little brain. She was coarse and clumsy, just like you. Your whole family was like that, and now I’m thinking of your father, how he toddled home on Saturday afternoon, that jerky, twitchy walk… and how you all left home just like mice. He beat Siv sometimes; she ran over to our place and cried. How could she even tell us such a shameful thing? She was almost boastful, the way she showed us her bruises. But once that baby was on the way, he showed his other side. It was almost as if he had been converted at a tent meeting, how he became such a sweet grandfather to that boy.
But before then. Out into the cold with them, wife and children. Here I come, the master of the house. My mother would never ever have let herself be thrown out of her own house. If my father had even touched a drop of brandy in order to get drunk, I believe she would have buried him in the potato field.
Your mom had gypsy blood. That’s why she couldn’t resist. The guilt of having gypsy blood. He gave her one once on her mouth so that her lips burst open with blood. We saw that one through the window, Siv and I. “Gypsy whore!” he yelled at her, she was barefoot and half dressed. That she lets him get away with it, I said to Siv. And that’s the day when our friendship ended.
“Then came the day you married that fine director and widower Dalvik. Snapped him up, just like that! You never came to visit once you married. My daughter Marie was in the same class as his daughter. We saw the two of you at parental meetings. You held his arm so properly. You pretended you didn’t know me. But I wasn’t the one who’d changed so much; that was you; but I had no problems at all recognizing you. You can’t hide, no matter what the cloth you use for your clothes. Silk or velvet, hand-me-downs or rags.”
They all resembled their father, his coarse build, his greasy, chapped skin. Flora was delicate.
“You are as small as a girl,” said Sven Dalvik, and took her into his arms. Finally his daughter was sleeping; only then could he give himself fully to his woman. Gripped her narrow hips, were they large enough to hold a child? The small pink nipples, flat like a boy. She had short hair then; he called her his little guy.
The girl was sleeping, but you could never be too sure. She could wake up and stand there in the doorway with those glowering, wide-awake eyes, that what-are-you-doing-withmy-father look.
She no longer had orgasms.
He didn’t seem worried about that. Did he actually even notice?
“I can’t relax; everything’s locked up; everything in me has locked up.”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s because you’re thinking about it too much that it’s not working.”
“Let’s travel again. Our trip to London had to be cut short. Let’s have a second honeymoon, but choose Paris this time.”
He did not want to leave the girl. Not so quickly again. But he still traveled quite a bit for business. “Let’s leave it for the future, Flora. Not right now.”
But time went on and Justine began school.
“Who would take care of her?” he said. “If we both traveled, you and I? Who would get her dressed and send her off to school with her schoolbags?”
“You worked it out before.”
“But it’s different now. I don’t want to disappoint her again.”
And he went off by himself. Returned with expensive presents. A ring with diamonds to make it up to her and this trumpet thing for the girl.
“If you let her play that thing inside, I’m moving!”
Play, if you could call it that!
The girl would go to the beach and inhale so that her whole body bent double. The ducks would come, lured by the sound; they should have had better taste. But it seemed to make her happy.
“I’m playing for the birds, Pappa!”
“My fine, sweet girl. Soon you’ll be able to start an orchestra.”
The ducks climbed on the dock and got things messy with their excrement. Who did he think was going to scrub the dock clean! Did you think I moved here to be scrubbing filthy bird shit from an old dock!
No.
Impossible to argue with that man. He bit his lip and was silent. Until she had to come hat in hand, begging for forgiveness.
The kid. Everything was her fault. Overprotected and spoiled.
She had sunk into her chair. She was very tired. Marta Bengtsson had been staring at her, taking away her rest.
“Nurse! Please come here a moment! I think Mrs. Dalvik has fainted.”
“No, no, she’s fine. We just have to prop her up again, like this.”
“Maybe she’s tired and needs to rest?”
“No, it’s good for you to be up as long as you can. It makes the day go faster.”
A friendly thought, at least, from Marta Bengtsson. Flora looked at her and managed a nod. Marta nodded back.
“Whoever would have thought we would end up like this.”
Every once in a while a fierce rage came upon her. Not at Marta, not at the caretakers. No, at Sven. Seventy years old and completely healthy up to that moment, one afternoon he clutched at his heart and fell down at the top of the stairs. She had been standing in the window and had seen him, and she had immediately called for an ambulance. She had to use all her strength to push him slowly away, so that a crack was open wide enough for her to get out the door. He lay there on the stairs and something frothy was running from one of the corners of his mouth.
He was dead the following morning.
She was sitting next to him, holding his hand. Justine was at his other side. He had them both, and still, he left them both.
Who will be sitting at my side, when the time comes? I don’t want to die.
I want to live.
Chapter FIFTEEN
Some days they all ganged up on her. Everyone in the whole class. They took each other’s hands, mittened hands with wet thumbs, and made a circle. This is what the teacher saw: How the children were playing Christmas games with the memory of plundering the Christmas tree fresh in their minds. How the wind pulled at their scarves; their light voices. She then felt a warm flush in her chest and remembered her own innocent child self.
“
