“Spatial awareness…” the man repeated thoughtfully, “do you have good enough spatial awareness?”
“I don’t know…” said Sofia, now somewhat perplexed, coming back down to earth.
She noticed that Grandma had also come to the kitchen door and was listening and eyeing her sharply, and Sofia again felt the throbbing and clenching in her chest overwhelming her because she sensed that Grandma knew she was lying… But at the same time she also felt defiant – after all why shouldn’t she want to be an orthodontist? In the end it was up to her to decide, wasn’t it?
“Wasn’t he just furious!” said Rael the next day at school.
“Was that your dad?” asked Sofia.
“Well, who else could it be… Him and his property! He’s always in a tizz about his property. As if I’ll need it. I’m going straight to America to be a model. At first he said only that he won’t be paying for anything any more, but then I said that I wouldn’t be able to pay you any more – that we were splitting the cash fifty-fifty, and that your mum’s out of work and you’re even eating leaves and moss… Just as well that you’re like a beanpole – he wouldn’t have believed me otherwise…”
“We’re not eating leaves and moss,” said Sofia, “just pieces of dry bread…”
“Well, not much difference, the main thing is that it worked! I told him that it wasn’t easy for me either, that I can’t manage with a grand, and that he sometimes sponsors people so why can’t I… Then he asked what your mum’s job was… I told him she worked in electronics – that’s right isn’t it? But what did she do?”
“I don’t know, something to do with soldering the boards, soldering circuits on to boards that made the electronic equipment work…”
“I can tell Dad… Anyhow, he didn’t say anything else – that means that we can carry on where we left off. He wants you to make the tea and me to do the reading though, but there’s no sense to that at all.”
At the next reading session, Grandma interrupted Sofia to say, “You read well. No mistakes, and clearly. You don’t stumble over words and you don’t gabble… My son wants Rael to read to me but I said to him, I said, so Grandma has to put up with a learner reader, does she? Why does he have to punish Grandma with someone who has to sound out every word? The thing is, he’s worried about what an old person like me might do, he’s worried I might develop some affection for a stranger and leave my wealth to her… Ha! What wealth do I have – this flat here’s all I’ve got… But my son is making sure that this tiny bit of wealth doesn’t fall into the stranger’s hands… He doesn’t realise that not everyone needs wealth – people like you don’t need wealth…”
The paper had sunk on to Sofia’s lap. She didn’t fully understand – was Grandma talking to herself or expecting her to reply? Or should she read on? But Grandma was looking knowingly at her, as if asking a question.
“I don’t know,” said Sofia, “I definitely need money!”
“Look here,” said Grandma triumphantly, “you can tell the difference between money and wealth, but you don’t even realise you can. Everyone in this world needs money – this world of ours, it’s under the rule of the devil, it’s dog eat dog! And everyone here uses money as a yardstick; money is the measure of your worth… But the worth of people like you isn’t measured in money, money flows through the fingers of people like you, it doesn’t stick to you, it doesn’t pile up under your feet, it doesn’t afflict you… but wealth, wealth does afflict people and once it’s started, it never fully lets up. It afflicts them when even a tiny drop threatens to drip through their fingers…”
Grandma spoke disjointedly, with pauses, and sometimes seemed to wait for a response from Sofia. But Sofia did not really understand what she was saying. Was it that Grandma thought it a good thing if money flowed through your fingers or did it mean there was too much wasted? And didn’t financial hardship afflict her just as much as it did Rael?
“Doesn’t money flow through Rael’s fingers too?” she asked cagily because Rael was genuinely forever complaining that she was out of cash and desperately needed this or that, that she was unfit to leave the house if she wasn’t wearing Davidoff. Cool Water was the only fragrance that suited her properly but she was a hundred kroons short, and it was the only thing she needed, she had everything else… Yet if she managed to cadge the missing hundred kroons by the following day and got her hands on the Davidoff, she would get bogged down in bags and scarves and braids and say something like, “Look, this is just the scarf to match that beige blouse of mine, you remember, the one with the flowers embroidered on it, it’s almost see-through…” all her happiness at the Davidoff having evaporated…
“Rael’s different,” said Grandma. “She’s like a starving person – she wants more and more things, that’s all; she’s forever wanting to see the things she can get for money. Money burns a hole in her pocket… Life might well prove hard for her…”
Grandma sounded quite worried as she spoke. Sofia hadn’t seen her like that before – Grandma seemed to be one of those people who was free of the concerns that ordinary people had, as if she were above them, but now all of a sudden she looked like a small, elderly, concerned granny, just like the ones in the shops who crumpled their purses in their fingers and weighed up whether to buy a morsel of sausage or soup bones… Sofia knew some little grannies like this and understood their feelings – that was thanks to the fact that lately she had been lurking in shops, swallowing saliva and fearing that people noticed when she did so… And for some reason it was precisely those women, the little grannies, whom she had noticed – their facial expressions suggested they were working out the best option, but she realised that in fact they were weighing up whether they had the wherewithal to buy anything…
“But she’s not a bad sort,” said Grandma, as if reconsidering, “no, she’s not a bad sort…”
And then she beamed, as if switching on a light, “She is a lovely child…”
Sofia was suddenly suffused with sadness – or even bitterness, the type of bitter sadness she’d never previously experienced: Grandma would never wistfully beam and call her a “lovely child…” To Grandma, she was a peer – the type who was suitable as a companion because she read nicely and listened quietly, suitable because of her qualities, a bit like the radio, telly or the computer… but Rael was simply a lovely child, unconditionally… She felt the wave of love that flooded out of Grandma, bypassing her, insensible to her as it bubbled into the depths of the kitchen somewhere, where Rael was most likely lying down on the couch, headphones on…
“But what if everything were taken away from Rael?” asked Grandma, suddenly sly. “Perhaps she’d find poverty useful? Perhaps I should leave everything here to you? D’you think perhaps you’d know how to make good use of money? Put it to good use?”
“No, why?” said Sofia, suddenly alarmed as she finally understood what she was talking about and why Rael’s father had been worrying. “No, you mustn’t do that.”
“Why mustn’t I?” Grandma demanded.
Sofia didn’t know. She simply felt it would be dreadful for Rael to have everything taken away – the rooms with the high fanlights and the silky curtains, the old carved dresser and easy chairs, the fine, delicate porcelain cups, the mother-of-pearl pastry plate, the sugar bowl and silver spoons that would clatter as Rael would bring them to the table, usually without breaking anything… and her grandma’s unconditional love radiating its brilliance over the whole scene…