Then a distant sound that kept increasing. The clattering noise of a helicopter. The fog was too thick for her to see it, but it got closer and closer.
She never could listen to the sound of helicopters without thinking of the time she saw “Miss Saigon” in London with some friends. They had gotten good seats, but were practically scared to death of the sudden high roar of the helicopter in the introductory scene. And she remembered the ending, the curtain, the strong light right in their faces. Many people were crying. It was sentimental, all right, but also so unbelievably tragic.
Afterwards they had gone to a pub where Berit started some small talk with a handsome, unemployed young man who insisted on calling her “Mum.” She enjoyed the pub’s party atmosphere. She was amazed at her own command of English, but the next morning, she just wanted to go back home.
Now, a few meters up in the air, she felt two lights and the sound was very close. She felt a fluttering panic-what if it didn’t see her, if it intended to land right there? She ran a few steps into the snow bank.
The helicopter glided past her so closely that raindrops shaken from the trees fell on her face. It belonged to the navy. It sniffed back and forth at the edge of the beach and she saw the pilot as a huddling silhouette. Did someone disappear under the ice? Someone who right now was fighting for life in chilly Lake Mälar?
Maybe Justine was not even home. She thought of that as she climbed up the stairs and rang the bell. No one opened up. She waited for a minute and rang the bell again. Then she heard weak thumping inside the house, and stepped back a few steps.
It was Justine. She was home; her clothes were wrinkled as if she’d slept in them. On one foot she had a large woolen sock.
“Berit?” she asked.
“Yes… it’s me. May I come in for a minute? Or are you busy?”
Justine stepped aside.
“No, come on in.”
“I brought some flowers and also… this bottle of wine. I drank all your glögg the other day and I want to make up for it… I thought… coming uninvited and all.”
“Don’t worry about it. Go ahead and hang up your coat.”
When Justine went into the kitchen, Berit noticed that she was limping. She stopped, her arms hanging at her sides.
“What have you done to yourself?”
“Naah… it’s nothing. I slipped when I was out running. It was a crazy thing to do, I know, go running in the middle of winter. But it’ll go away soon; it’s already feeling much better.”
“You didn’t break it, did you?”
“No. That foot’s a little weak, that’s all. It’s always been weak. I keep spraining it all the time.”
“You do?”
“Next time when you come by, it’ll be all better, and we can take a walk and look at old familiar places. The old school…”
“Maybe… what are you up to, by the way? Did I interrupt you with something important?”
“Not at all.”
“Would you mind if I stayed for a bit?”
“No, not one bit. We can open up this bottle of wine and have a taste. What time is it anyway?”
Justine giggled.
“Always having that old Luther looking over our shoulders!”
“Of course, I thought you’d drink the wine yourself. I didn’t intend to sit here and swig it down, too.”
“Open the bottle, please. The corkscrew is in the top drawer in the kitchen. Then let’s sit upstairs in the library, where we were sitting last time. It’s so pleasant there.”
They went up the stairs. Berit noticed the posters from Justine’s father’s candy factory. They were still hanging in the place they always had. The memories came back.
“Do you remember all those Sandy Candy boxes we used to get from you?” she asked hesitantly.
“Maybe you did get some.”
“You always had a whole bunch of those boxes.”
“Pappa brought them home. I got really sick of them after a while. Sometimes you want something else than that old Sandy taste in your mouth.”
“But the kids were jealous of you! Your father owned a candy factory!”
“No big deal.”
When they reached the library, the bird was sitting in the window. He turned his head toward them and squawked. Berit jumped so that she almost dropped the bottle of wine.
“Oh, did he scare you?”
“When he screamed like that…”
“He’s just making his presence known.”
“Why would he do that?”
“So we don’t forget that he exists.”
“No risk of that! Does he ever attack you?”
“Attack me? Whatever for?”
“I don’t know. I’d never trust a wild thing like him.” Justine took the bottle from her and poured. They lifted their glasses, said skål. They sipped the wine.
“Mmm,” said Berit. “Not bad at all, if I may say so. I really don’t drink wine often enough. But it’s so good, so good for the soul.”
The helicopter was there again; it seemed to be right out side the house. The bird flapped his wings, nodded his head. “Someone has fallen through the ice,” said Justine. “How do you know that?”
“Heard it on the local radio.”
“How awful.”
Justine nodded.
“Happens every year. I live so close that I always notice, too.”
“Isn’t the ice a little too weak to walk on?”
“It holds at some places, and then suddenly it gets weak.
People really ought to know better. But some people are just idiots.”
Justine laughed and raised her glass.
“Skål!” she said. “Skål to those idiots!”
After a moment, she asked about Berit’s job.
“Have you been fired yet, or what’s up?”
“The business is moving to Luleå. My boss says we can all come, too. But no one wants to move to Luleå.”
“Do you have a choice?”
“I don’t know… I don’t know anything any more… I can’t sleep at night.”
And tears welled up in her eyes, made her weak and exposed.
“I seem to come here and burst out… bawling.” “You are carrying so much confusion inside yourself. Just like the rest of us…”
Justine stretched out one arm and made a clucking sound.
The bird tramped around for a moment in the window and then flew to her with clumsy wing beats.
“Even this bird,” she said. “He needs a female. He doesn’t really understand that, but something is bubbling up inside him, making him weak. It’s getting lighter; spring is coming. Then longing grows like a sorrow, just as it does in every living being.”
“Justine… when we were little…”
Justine said quickly, “Tell me about your boys.” “My… boys?”
“Yeah, how they’re living their lives, these young people with their whole lives ahead of them? Do they ever feel that sadness?”
Berit took some tissues from her bag, blew her nose; her head was throbbing.
“Sadness? No I really don’t think so.”
“Are they working?”
“They’re… still both studying. But they don’t know what they want to be yet. At any rate, they’re not going into the publishing business. I scared them away from that.” “Do they have girlfriends?”
She nodded.
“They belong to another world. Young, thin, beautiful.
Whenever I see them, I really understand more than ever that I am passé.”
Justine placed the bird between them. He turned his beak toward Berit, and made a hissing sound.
“Yuck. Justine… can’t you…”
“You’re afraid of him. He notices that right away. Try and be natural, relax.”
Berit drank some wine and then carefully reached out her hand. The bird opened his beak and it was red and large in there.
“He sees through me,” she whispered. “He doesn’t like me.”
“Don’t worry, just ignore him. Well, whatever, I can move him.”