Everything would have been different if that accident with Margareta hadn’t happened. He would not have lost his own bearings.
On Christmas Day it began to rain, and it kept raining all week. His mother did her best to pamper him. She prepared breakfast trays, and when he lay in bed waking up, he heard her careful knock on the door.
“My big boy,” she murmured, as she placed the breakfast tray on the bedside table.
Then he’d want to hug her and cry, but that gave him a bad taste in his mouth, so he lay still under the blanket, not moving.
He stayed until the day before New Year’s Eve. Then he couldn’t take it any longer: their breathing, their chewing, the sound of the TV at the highest possible volume. They were both over seventy. One of them would be dead soon and he didn’t know which one of them would have the hardest time being alone.
They had known each other since they were in their twenties.
He longed for his own cool apartment, where he could uncork a bottle of wine, solve the crossword puzzle, and listen to his own choice of music, Kraus and Frank Sinatra.
He told his mother that he was invited to a New Year’s Eve party.
He barely made it in the door when the phone rang. One of his women friends.
“How’s it going?” she said girlishly.
“Fine. I just got home.”
“Were you with Kjell and Birgit?”
She had only met them once and already acted as if they were close.
“Yeah.”
“I thought so. I’ve been trying to reach you.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Hans Peter? Can I come over tomorrow evening? Can we celebrate New Year’s Eve together?”
He thought about telling her that he had to work at the hotel, but couldn’t bring himself to do it.
She came over, and she had taken an effort with her clothes and make-up. He hadn’t remembered that she was so cute. He understood that she had made an effort, just for him, and it made him feel guilty.
They had met at a mutual friend’s place, and had gone out for a while since then. Sporadically. Nothing steady. But she had been one of the women he had taken to meet his folks in Stuvsta.
“You don’t think that I am being too eager, do you?” she asked directly. “A woman is not supposed to take the initiative. Or so they say.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Well, I’m here now.”
She had two grocery bags full of food, wine, and champagne.
There was something about her that made him excited, more than he felt with anyone else. Something in her way of putting her head to one side and looking a little bit guilty.
He was frightened of his own strength.
Afterwards, she got right out of bed.
He knew that she didn’t like it, that he had come too soon. He wanted to explain, but couldn’t find the words.
They set the table together, and she didn’t say much, but after she drank half a glass of wine, she began to cry.
“Sweetie, what is it?” he asked.
She didn’t answer and began to cry harder.
He threw his fork on the table.
“I’m a real asshole!” he exclaimed.
She turned to the side and didn’t look at him.
“Little sweetie,” he said. “Why did you want to come here, anyway?”
“I like you. I was longing for you the whole damn Christmas holidays.”
He got up and walked around the table, took her into his arms, lifted her out of her chair.
“Should we just finish the food, then?”
She took out a tissue and nodded.
After dinner, she fell asleep in the sofa, leaning on his arm. She breathed heavily and noisily. He was uncomfortable, but didn’t want to move, afraid that she would wake up and demand more from him.
A feeling of desolation crept over him.
Chapter THREE
Nathan had been wearing the green fatigues which were too tight for the jungle. He didn’t know that when he bought them; he just thought that they were practical and cheap. “Economical,” he said. Justine remembered his exact word.
No one saw him go to be by himself for a few moments. No one but Justine.
He probably screamed, more from surprise than anything else, although it probably stung a little. He tumbled outward immediately. The rapids and the waterfall drowned every sound, and they were so powerful that whatever became caught in them would be dashed to pieces.
Sometimes she thought she heard that scream. She was home now, at home in her house, but even so… And when she heard that scream, she also saw the body, how it turned once while falling. She saw his arms and his hands that she had loved.
Her house was narrow and tall in an almost Dutch kind of way. Originally it had been built with just two stories, but to get more room, her Pappa had had someone remodel the attic. But they were hardly ever there. In the summer it was too hot, and in the winter too cold.
Her father had never been an entirely practical person. He had hired carpenters, young men with suspenders. They had rushed up and down the stairs and formed their lips in silent suggestions whenever she came out in her nightgown. She had been confined to her bed. She lay in bed and listened to their steps and their hammering, and slowly she began to realize that she wasn’t a little girl any longer.
The oil heater was down in the basement. The driver of the oil tanker used to mutter about how difficult it was to reach it properly when it was time to refill it with oil, as the house was down so close to the beach that it was impossible to get the hoses stretched that far. Pappa used to bribe him with a bottle of whiskey, and this was something that Justine continued to do, once she was alone. Naturally, it was no longer the same driver. This one was bony and ill-tempered, and he spoke a dialect that made it almost impossible for her to understand his words. She felt herself shrink when she heard the sound of the oil truck. For a time, she thought about discontinuing oil delivery, but she didn’t know any other way to warm the house. There was a fireplace on the second floor, but it wasn’t big enough to heat the entire house. The raw chill of the lake seeped straight into the walls and floors.
In any case, she only had to deal with the trucker once a year. She always placed the whiskey bottle near the basement window, tied with a paper bow.
“Thanks for bringing the oil,” she would write on a slip of paper that she placed under the bottle. The piece of paper would still be there afterwards, the ink smeared.
The basement also held a large old-fashioned washing tub, which Flora had insisted on using. Twice a month Flora did laundry down there, and on those days both Justine and her father would feel ill at ease. She made herself look really ugly on those days, Flora, as if she enjoyed changing herself into a repulsive washerwoman. She knotted a handkerchief around her hair and wore her smelly patterned skirt which had missing buttons. It was a kind of reverse Cinderella transformation, and her fingers left stinging damp marks on Justine’s cheeks.
The hall was minimal, but they still had to store their outerwear there. Everywhere in the house there was a shortage of wardrobes. Once she became an adult, she had sometimes wondered why her pappa, with his wealth, had decided to continue living in that small house, even if it was adjacent to Lake Malar. Something to do with her mother, something nostalgic.
