They started appearing more often since a young girl from Polhemsgarden in Solna had raised the alarm on the mistreatment of the elderly. TV showed close-ups of bedsores and blackened toes, and the girl, who was an employee of Polhemsgarden, received some kind of an award for bravery, and civil courage was spoken of quite a bit.
This event, for Flora’s part, meant that the white-coated assistants got her out of bed every single day, even on the weekends-in fact, especially on the weekends, since visitors could show up unexpectedly then-seated her upright and tied her to the wheelchair. They combed her thin hair and made two braids from it. She had never braided her hair. That wasn’t her style.
What had been her style?
More and more, she was beginning to forget it.
She was thirty-three years old when she moved into Sven Dalvik’s home. His daughter was just about five. Flora worked at his firm. Or, more exactly, she was employed as his secretary in order to assist Director Dalvik with everything he could possibly need.
Head secretary. Did that position even exist these days? She had been proud of her job. She had gone to vocational school in business administration and then gone to BarLocks. Such ambitions were rare among her acquaintances. Most of her contemporaries had gotten married and had children as soon as they finished high school.
And what did she do? Why didn’t she find some nice young man and get married at a reasonable time? She had no answer. The years went by, and Mr. Right had not shown up. Of course, she had gotten some offers, quite a few, in fact, especially during the time that she went dancing and danced everywhere in town or at Hasselby Baths. Young men came there from all over Stockholm, and she knew all the tricks. She could have pulled anyone to some dark corner if she had decided on it. Just like her friends did.
No, that was too easy. And she was worried about what those city boys would say behind her back. They’d think she was just any old country girl.
She was not. She was different.
She lay on her back and stared at the ceiling. The woman in the bed next to her was in the midst of dying. The assistants had placed a screen between the beds, but the sound of approaching death could not be screened. They probably thought Flora didn’t realize what was going on.
She listened to the labored breathing, each breath coming at longer intervals. The dying woman was old and had been in bad shape ever since she had arrived fourteen days earlier. It was time for her to leave the earthly plane; she was well over ninety.
The woman’s son was somewhere in the room. He walked around, had trouble sitting still. He was also old. When he first entered the room, he nodded at Flora, unsure of whether she could notice him or not. She could nod back, even though she couldn’t lift her head from the pillow.
He had mumbled something to the assistants about a single room, and they had explained and apologized. Lack of space and over capacity. Then they lowered their voices and Flora understood that they were talking about her.
The son appeared to be in pain; she heard him groan behind the screen. Every time he did this, his mother’s breathing quickened, became shakier, as if she longed to be back in the time where she still could comfort him.
This evening, they had put her to bed early. She would be disturbed, as the assistants would be running in and out all night to see to her roommate. They would be speaking in a softened tone, as if they would not be heard just as well. They would be turning on flashlights, and the smell of coffee would drift in to her from the personnel room.
It would hardly be a good night.
She thought about Sven and thought that it was unfair. His death had gone so quickly. She also would have liked to die in such a painless, sweet way, just leave everything behind and be on her way. Instead she stayed here as a living piece of luggage, and she was demeaned and violated just like a child.
She and Sven had felt sympathy toward each other from the very beginning. And he asked her to address him informally with her, which was very unusual at the time but helped their work atmosphere quite a bit.
She quickly discovered his incompetence in various spheres, but she did her best so that he would not discover what she knew. He was hardly a company head, and Flora became aware that he had taken over the family business without much enthusiasm. He did it because it was expected of him; he had been raised his whole life to do just that. His father, Georg Dalvik, had built the concern; he was the one who had created and launched the candy named Sandy, which was now famous world-wide: “Sandy Candy fine and dandy.”
Sven was not exactly the kind of man she had been dreaming of when she was young, but he was sweet. He believed in her; he turned to her when things became difficult. He also would ask her opinion whenever he wanted to buy a gift for his French wife. Because of this, she thought that she knew him and his family fairly well, even though she had never met either the wife or the daughter. He had a photo of them on his desk, a dark-haired woman, somewhat chubby, with a laughing child on her knee. The child reached behind herself to embrace her mother’s neck.
Sometimes, when he was abroad, she would go and look at that photo. It was taken outdoors, in Hasselby, where he had recently bought a house. You could make out one of the gables. Flora knew exactly which one.
Sven would tell her about his gardening difficulties. He had been raised in Karlavagen, in the middle of Stockholm, and he had no experience with green things. He would tell how his wife asked him to dig a patch for vegetables, and he just raised his palms in defeat. Once he complained about the raspberry bushes, which had been hit by a mysterious illness. Flora asked him to describe this.
“Well, some kind of brown spots on the leaves and the shoots, and it spreads and it gets spotty and gray. And there aren’t any raspberries; they just shrivel up. I am so disappointed. We were going to sit on the balcony, my wife and I, and have fresh raspberries with cream.”
She knew just what it was.
“I’m sorry,” she said, while a warmth spread in her middle. “It’s a fungus and unfortunately it is the absolute worst thing that can happen to raspberry bushes.”
Her boss stared at her.
“Yes, absolutely true,” she continued. “You will have to dig them all up and burn every one that has been stricken with it. Then you have to spray the rest with copper calcite fluid and copper sulfite.”
“Damn, what you know!”
It was not like him to swear, but he did then.
“You’ve forgotten my parents had a garden center. I’ve been raised with copper sulfite!”
He laughed and gave her a hug. That was unusual. They hardly ever touched each other.
They only touched each other two other times. The first time was one evening when they were working overtime. Flora made tea and sandwiches for them. When she placed the tray on his desk, he embraced her waist, but he took his arm away again quickly. She understood that he had thought he was at home for a minute. He was tired. He turned red.
The other time was at a crayfish party, which had been organized for all the employees out on one of the islands. They both became drunk, both she and Sven, neither of them used to drinking so much brandy. They sat at the top of a hill and held hands, nothing more.
When Sven’s wife died, he was very strong. He came back to the office after only one day. He had left his child with his parents.
He was changed, on the outside it looked like he had dropped a few pounds overnight. Otherwise, he seemed the same, but a bit quieter, a bit sorrowful.
Flora placed a pot of St Paul’s in his window. Blue was the color of hope and consolation. She did not know if he even noticed it. She asked if there was anything that she could do. He turned his head toward her without looking at her.
After the funeral, he started talking about his child. Her name was Justine. She was in a difficult stage. It certainly didn’t help that she had lost her mother.
“My parents can’t deal with her,” he said. “They’ve never had much patience with children. And my father has a heart condition.”
Flora listened patiently. The whole time she just sat and listened, without being pushy, without giving too much
