The bird flew in from somewhere up inside the house. The sound of his rustling wings. He screeched and muttered, going on and on. He settled in her hair, holding tight with his coarse, shiny claws. She turned her head, felt him as a warm heaviness on the top of her head.
“Have you been waiting for me?” she said. “You know I always show up.”
She petted his back and took him down. With an angry little chatter, he disappeared into the kitchen.
She stretched on the thick, dining room rug, as she had learned from an exercise class on TV. She never cared for group activities. Shy, Nathan called her. In the beginning, that was what had attracted him the most.
She was still tall, but the time over there had sculpted her; she looked thinner, even though the scale still read 171 pounds. She stood for a long time in the shower, rubbing her stomach, limbs, the backs of her knees with a sponge.
Over there, not a single day went by where she did not long for clean European showers, long for a floor to stand on and tiles on the wall.
She and Martina had cleaned themselves in the yellow river water, but the smell of decay and mud seeped into their pores and could not be scrubbed away. In the beginning, she had a hard time getting in it, she thought about what may have been swimming about underneath the surface-snakes, piranhas, leeches. One morning they were forced to go through the rapids with all their clothes on since there was no other path. After that day, she was no longer afraid.
She dried off carefully and smeared on some body lotion. The Roma bottle was almost empty now, the one that looked like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. She cut it open with scissors and scraped out the rest with her finger. She looked at herself for a while in the mirror, flushed from the heat, no longer young. She painted lines around the eyes just as she had done since the sixties. Not a single person could make her stop.
Not even Flora.
Dressed in her green housedress, she went into the kitchen and poured herself a bowl of soured milk. The bird had settled on the window sill; he stared with one eye and muttered as if he were displeased. A blackbird strutted on the path outside, fat for winter and ruffled. Its call changed during the winter and became one shrill tone, as if someone were trying to pluck a too tightly wound guitar string. The other song, the one that was both melancholy and jubilant, usually stopped near the end of summer and did not return to life until late February, from the top of a very high tree.
For her entire life, Justine had lived in this house, by the water next to Hässelby Villastad. It was a narrow, tall little stone house, just right for two or three people. There had never been more than three, except for the short time with the baby.
Now Justine lived by herself. She could change the furniture just as she liked, but for now, she left everything just as it was. She slept in her childhood room with its faded wallpaper since she could not imagine moving into Flora’s and her pappa’s master bedroom. The bed was made, as if they would return at any time, and a few times a year, Justine would shake out the bedcover and change the sheets.
Their clothes were still hanging in the closet, Pappa’s suits and shirts on the left side of the bar and all of Flora’s little dresses on the other side. There was a thick layer of dust on the shoes. At times she thought about dusting them, but she never got around to bending down and picking them up.
She wiped down the dresser when she was in the mood to take care of things. She cleaned the mirror with window cleaner and she moved the hairbrush and the tiny perfume bottles around. Once she picked up Flora’s hair brush and held it to the window, staring at the gray strands of hair. She bit herself hard inside one cheek and quickly ripped away one of the strands. Then she went to the balcony and set it on fire. It burned with a pungent odor, rolled itself up, and disappeared.
It was already getting dark. She was in the upper hallway now, and she pulled a chair to the window, poured herself a glass of wine. The water of Lake Mälar shimmered out there, waves bobbing up and down, gleaming from the neighbor’s outdoor light, which was on a timer that began at dusk. There was seldom anyone at home, and she did not know the people who lived there now.
Just as well.
She was alone. She was free to do anything she decided to do. Everything she had to do to become whole, strong, a living person, just like everyone else.
She had that right.
Chapter TWO
He had spent Christmas with his parents. Quiet, uneventful days. Christmas Eve had been beautiful with all the trees covered in frost. His mother had hung a light in the old birch tree, just as she had done when they were small, and he remembered his and Margareta’s giggling eagerness, which began the minute they woke up on the morning of Christmas Eve.
His mother usually asked that he return for Christmas. And what else would he be doing? Even so, he played hard to get, let her ask and plead, as if he constantly needed to hear how much he meant to her.
He had no idea what his father thought. Kjell Bergman was a man who seldom revealed his emotions. Only once had Hans Peter seen him lose his cool, seen shades of pain glide over his large, bulging face. That was the night the police came when Margareta had driven off the road. That was eighteen years ago, and Hans Peter was still living at home.
His sister’s death meant that he had to postpone his plans to move out. He was the only child now, and his parents needed him.
He was twenty-five when it happened, and right in the middle of trying to plan his future. He had studied theology and psychology at the university. Something within him longed for something higher; he saw himself in austere black vestments and experienced something resembling peace.
He stayed with them for three years. Then he packed his things and moved out. His parents had begun to talk with each other again. In the initial period they had been silent, sat like statues in their TV recliners and said not one word, as if they wanted to punish each other, as if they, in some irrational way, considered it the other one’s fault that Margareta had driven off the road.
She had had her driver’s license just one week and she was using their car that evening, a 1972 Saab. No one ever managed to find out why she had driven off the road close to Bro and right into a cement block.
The car was totaled.
Her room stood unused for many years. His mother went in sometimes and shut the door behind her. When she came out, she would usually go to her bedroom, get undressed and creep under the covers.
Hans Peter suffered from that, so he slowly, cajolingly, tried to convince them to let him go and clear it out. Finally his mother gave in.
He had cleaned out everything from his sister’s room. He carried her private things up to the attic, and claimed her bed and the neat little desk as his own. His parents did not react. They didn’t make a peep, not even when emptiness gaped from the spotless room. Yes, he had been thorough: he had washed the walls with soda and water, used a wool mop on the ceiling, scrubbed both the windows and the floor.
His mother had always mentioned having a dining room. “Now you can have it,” he said. “I’ve prepared it for you.” And he threw the IKEA catalog on the coffee table, and finally convinced them to start looking through it. His father gnashed his teeth a bit, pressing his molars together silently. His mother had cried. But finally they accepted it. He had forced them to accept that Margareta was not going to come back, and it would not be a blot on her memory to change her room into something more practical than a museum.
However, they only ate in that room when he came home, in order to make him happy. Hans Peter thought that they never had guests. They hardly had them before, so why should they now, just because they had a dining room?