12
Jukka was impatient.
‘Talk to the old boy now,’ he growled. ‘We don’t have time to just stand around gaping at him.’
He walked over to the window and opened it: it had been closed for so long that it was extremely difficult to move.
‘It stinks in here,’ he said. ‘A nasty stench of old man. The earth has already started to eat you up, without your noticing. Your body is already full of worms and maggots, chewing away at your flesh.’
Jukka glared expectantly at Hanna. She went up to the bed where the old man was lying. He had bits of old food in his beard, his nightshirt was sweaty and dirty. She explained who she was, what she was called, and who her father and mother were. The old man didn’t seem to understand, or maybe he hadn’t heard. She repeated what she had said, but louder.
In reply he raised a trembling hand. Hanna thought he was trying to greet her — but the hand was pointing to the window.
‘I’m cold,’ said the old man. ‘Close the window.’
Jukka was standing by the window as if on guard. He took a step forward, as if he were about to attack.
‘The room stinks,’ he said. ‘It needs airing. But do you realize who this is, standing here in front of you? Hanna Wallén. Are you a relative of hers, or not? If you can tell us yes or no, we can leave you in peace.’
But the old man didn’t understand. He started begging for food — he was hungry, and nobody gave him anything to eat any more.
Hanna tried again. Explained once again who she was, and talked at length about Elin. But it was no use. The old man in the filthy bed was living in a different world, in which the only thing that mattered was his hunger.
‘Come on,’ said Jukka. ‘Let’s go. This is a waste of time. We’ll talk to the old woman downstairs. She might know.’
If she’d been able to, Hanna would have run out of the house and not stopped until she was back home again with Elin and her brothers and sisters. Nobody wanted to take care of her, the whole journey had been in vain. She didn’t belong in this town. She’d been welcomed by a confused, bewildered old man, nobody else.
When Forsman heard about the failed expedition, he tore a strip off the cowering Jukka. Was he incapable of ferreting out where the family had gone to? Would that have been so difficult?
Forsman calmed down eventually, and said to Hanna in his usual friendly voice that he would personally take over responsibility for finding out where the family had gone to. She shouldn’t worry. People didn’t just disappear into thin air. He would no doubt be able to find the relatives she had come to meet.
‘In the meantime you can stay here,’ he said. ‘You can make yourself useful about the house. Help the other girls!’
Two days later he had some information to pass on to her. He called her into his office, where he was sitting at a desk, chewing away at a cigar stub.
‘That old man you met is just a sort of lodger,’ he said. ‘He’s not even a relative. He’s allowed to lie there in that bed until he dies. Then somebody else will take over the room. A whole family of dockers are lined up to move in. They’re no doubt hoping he’ll die as soon as possible because at the moment that family is living in a cattle shed. But nobody seems to know where the others have gone to.’
He looked hard at her. She was beginning to feel scared, but braced herself.
‘I think you should stay here for the time being,’ said Forsman. ‘We could do with another maid.’
She closed her eyes, and breathed out. She couldn’t make up her mind if that was due to relief or to joy. She tried to conjure up the sounds from the house by the river: but everything was silent, her thoughts were interrupted only by the noise of a cart clattering past in the street.
Forsman seemed to gather what she was thinking. He smiled. Hanna curtseyed, and left the room.
She said silently to herself: well, at least I’ve got something to do here now.
13
She worked together with Berta from then on. She followed her around, helped her out in her duties, and also allowed her to show her around the town in what little spare time they had. Most of the time was spent washing the clothes of everybody in the very large household, and also the sheets and tablecloths. There was a pump in the inner courtyard, and they fetched water from there to the laundry, which was next to the stables. Hanna couldn’t understand how Berta coped with the strenuous work, which kept her occupied for more than twelve hours a day. Berta had started working for Forsman when she was thirteen years old. She told Hanna that her father had died as a result of an accident at the sawmill in Essvik, her mother had died of consumption the following year, and the children had all gone their different ways. Berta kept coming back to her assertion that she had been lucky to get a job in Forsman’s household. Although it was hard work and not exactly uplifting, she had a roof over her head, a bed to sleep in and a meal three times a day. What had she to complain about? What right had she to do so?
‘If I were to leave, there would be at least ten girls queuing up outside in the street, hoping to take over my job,’ said Berta early one morning as they were standing by the pump, filling their buckets. ‘Why shouldn’t I cling on to what I have?’
‘Will you still be here ten years from now?’ asked Hanna.
Berta shook her head and burst out laughing. Although she was still young she had lost several of her upper teeth.
‘I can’t think that far ahead,’ she said. ‘Ten years? I don’t even know if I’ll still be alive then.’
But Hanna persisted. There must be something that Berta dreamt about, surely?
‘Children,’ said Berta hesitantly. ‘I’d love to have some. But for that to happen I’d have to find a husband. And I haven’t. I want somebody who doesn’t drink or fight. Where can anybody find a man like that?’
Whenever Hanna asked Berta a question, she answered it inside her own head with regard to herself. What did she want? Would she still be alive ten years from now? Or would she be dead as well? Who was the man she hoped to meet? Did she really hope to meet one? And what about children? Could she really think about having children when she was still a child herself in so many ways?
Towards the end of February an unexpected thaw set in. In the evenings, if they had enough strength left, they would go for a walk through the town. Berta showed her round, did so with pride, with a sort of sense of both owning something and having responsibility. She knew something that Hanna didn’t. The town was hers.
Occasionally Berta would ask a few questions about the place where Hanna lived before she had come to Sundsvall with Forsman: but Hanna soon noticed that Berta was not really all that interested in what little she had to tell. Or perhaps it was just that Berta had never seen anything but the town she lived in, and couldn’t imagine what it would be like by a river below a high mountain.
Her relationship with Berta was something completely new for Hanna. During the time she lived in Forsman’s house she and Berta became close friends who dared to take each other into their confidence. Almost every evening they lay in the bed they shared, whispering. It seemed to Hanna that she had never before had a friend like Berta. The relationship she had had with her siblings and her mother had been quite different.
They dared to talk about the difficult things in life. Love, children, men. Hanna soon realized that Berta had just as little experience as she did when it came to what life had in store for them.
Sometimes in the evenings when they were out walking, always arm in arm, with their shawls wrapped tightly around their hair and chin, boys of about their own age who were loitering around would shout to them: but they never replied, just increased their pace — even if later, when they had gone to bed, they might giggle and talk about what had happened.