and milk and more coffee and heaven knows what. That was the time when she was trying to fit in. Later on she got divorced and gave up baking and cooking altogether. Mimmi can almost imagine how Lisa eats her dinner in the cottage. Standing up, her bottom leaning against the worktop, shoveling down something out of a tin, maybe cold meat soup.
But that time. Lars-Gunnar on the sofa with his arm around Eva’s shoulders, an unusually tender expression for a man in this village, and particularly for him. He was so proud. She was, maybe not pretty, but much younger than him, like Mimmi now, somewhere between twenty and thirty. Mimmi can’t imagine where this social worker, a tourist on holiday, met Lars-Gunnar. But Eva gave up her job in… Norrkoping, if Mimmi remembers rightly, got a job with the council and moved into the family home, where he still lived. After a year, Nalle was born. Although at the time he was called Bjorn. A suitable name for a big bear of a baby, but now everybody called him Nalle-“teddy bear.”
It can’t have been easy, thought Mimmi. Coming from a big town to live in a little village. Hauling the pram back and forth during her maternity leave, only the old dears to chat to. It’s a wonder she didn’t go crazy. Although that’s exactly what she did, of course.
The microwave pinged and Mimmi cut two slices of ice cream and spooned strawberry jam over the pancakes. She poured a big glass of milk and spread butter on three thick slices of coarse bread. Took three hard-boiled eggs out of a pan on the gas stove, put the whole lot on a tray with an apple, and took it out to Nalle.
“And no more pancakes until you’ve eaten the rest,” she said firmly.
When Nalle was three, he got inflammation of the brain. Eva rang the emergency helpline. She was told to wait awhile. And so things turned out the way they did.
And when he was five, Eva left. She left Nalle and Lars-Gunnar, and went back to Norrkoping.
Or ran away, thought Mimmi.
There was a lot of talk in the village about how she’d abandoned her child. Some people just can’t cope with taking responsibility, they said. And they asked how she could do it. How could she? Abandon her child.
Mimmi doesn’t know. But she does know how it feels to be suffocated in the village. And she can imagine how Eva fell to pieces in the pink concrete house.
Lars-Gunnar stayed in the village with Nalle. Didn’t like to talk about Eva.
“What could I do?” was all he said. “I mean, I can’t force her.”
When Nalle was seven, she came back. Or, to be more accurate, Lars- Gunnar fetched her from Norrkoping. The next door neighbor told everyone how he’d carried her into the house in his arms. The cancer had almost eaten her away. Three months later, she was gone.
“What could I do?” said Lars-Gunnar again. “She was the mother of my son, after all.”
Eva was buried in Poikkijarvi churchyard. Her mother and a sister came up for the funeral. They didn’t stay long. Stuck around for the coffee and sandwiches afterward just as long as necessary. Carried Eva’s shame for her. The other guests at the funeral didn’t look them in the eye, stared at their backs.
“And Lars-Gunnar stood there consoling them,” people said to each other. Couldn’t they have looked after the woman when she was dying? Instead it was Lars-Gunnar who’d taken care of all that. And you could see it to look at him. He must have lost fifteen kilos. Looked gray and worn out.
Mimmi wondered what would have happened if Mildred had been there then. Maybe Eva would have fitted in with the women in Magdalena. Maybe she’d have got a divorce from Lars-Gunnar but stayed in the village, managed to look after Nalle. Maybe she could even have managed to stay married to him.
The first time Mimmi met Mildred, the priest was sitting on Nalle’s moped. He was going to be fifteen in three months. Nobody in the village said a word about the fact that an underage mentally handicapped boy was driving around on a moped. Good God, he was Lars-Gunnar’s boy. Heaven knows they hadn’t had an easy time. And as long as Nalle stuck to the road through the village…
“Ouch, my arse!” laughs Mildred inside Mimmi’s head as she jumps off the moped.
Mimmi is sitting outside Micke’s. She’s taken one of the chairs outside and found a place sheltered from the spring breeze; she’s smoking a cigarette and turning her face up toward the sun in the hope of getting a bit of color. Nalle looks pleased. He waves to Mimmi and Mildred, turns and rides off, the gravel spraying up around him. Two years earlier he’d been one of Mildred’s confirmation candidates.
Mimmi and Mildred introduce themselves to each other. Mimmi is a bit surprised, she’s not sure what she was expecting, but she’s heard so much about this priest. That she’s wonderful. That she’s so wise. That’s she’s off her head.
And now she’s standing here looking completely normal. Boring, in fact, if she’s completely honest. Mimmi had expected some kind of electrical field around her, but all she sees is a middle-aged woman in unfashionable jeans and practical Ecco shoes.
“He’s such a blessing!” says Mildred, nodding in the direction of the moped chugging along the village road.
Mimmi mumbles and sighs and says something about how things haven’t been easy for Lars-Gunnar.
It’s like a conditioned reflex. When the village sings its song about Lars-Gunnar and his feeble young wife and his handicapped boy, the chorus is always the same: “feel sorry for… what some people have to go through… things haven’t been easy.”
A deep crease appears between Mildred’s eyebrows. She looks searchingly at Mimmi.
“Nalle is a gift,” she says.
Mimmi doesn’t reply. She doesn’t buy any of that all-children-are- a-gift-and-there-is-a-purpose-in-everything- that-happens.
“I don’t understand how people can keep talking about Nalle as if he were such a burden. Has it occurred to you what a good mood it puts you in, just being with him?”
It’s true. Mimmi thinks about the previous morning. Nalle is too heavy. He’s always hungry, and his father has his hands full making sure he doesn’t eat all the time. An impossible task. The ladies in the village can’t resist Nalle’s pleas for food, and sometimes neither can Mimmi and Micke. Like yesterday. Suddenly Nalle was standing in the kitchen of the bar with one of the hens under his arm. Little Anni, a Cochin, not much of a layer, but nice and affectionate, doesn’t mind being patted. But she doesn’t want to be carted away from the flock. She’s kicking with her little hen’s legs and cackling uneasily under Nalle’s huge arm.
“Anni!” says Nalle to Micke and Mimmi. “Sandwich.”
He twists his head to the left and bends his neck so that he’s looking at them sideways under his fringe. Looks crafty. It’s impossible to decide whether he knows he’s not fooling them for one second.
“Take the hen outside,” says Mimmi, attempting to look stern.
Micke bursts out laughing.
“Does Anni want a sandwich? Well, she’d better have one then.”
With a sandwich in one hand and the hen under the other arm, Nalle marches out into the yard. He puts Anni down and the sandwich disappears into his mouth at top speed.
“Hey!” Micke shouts from the veranda. “I thought that was for Anni?”
Nalle turns toward him with an expression of theatrical regret.
“Gone,” he says haplessly.
Mildred is still talking:
“I mean, I know it’s been difficult for Lars-Gunnar. But if Nalle hadn’t had these problems, would he really have brought any greater happiness to his father? I wonder.”
Mimmi looks at her. She’s right.
She thinks about Lars-Gunnar and his brothers. She can’t remember their father. Nalle’s grandfather. But she’s heard stories. Isak was a hard man. Kept the children in line with the strap. Sometimes worse. He had five sons and two daughters.
“Shit,” said Lars-Gunnar once. “I was so scared of my own father that I wet myself sometimes. Long after I’d started school.”
Mimmi remembers that comment very clearly. She was small then. Couldn’t believe that great big Lars-Gunnar had ever been scared. Or little. Wet himself!
How they must have tried not to be like their father, those brothers. But yet he’s there inside them. That contempt for weakness. A hardness passed down from father to son. Mimmi thinks about Nalle’s cousins, some of them live in the village, they’re in the hunting fraternity, they drink in the bar.
