She thought, maybe if we made love.
But when she touched him, he broke free.
She had met him at the dentist’s. It was during a period of time when she was there fairly often; she had problems with a bridge. Every time she entered the waiting room, he was sitting there, and finally, they both broke into laughter.
“It seems our dentist is also a matchmaker,” he said.
He was a few years older than she was. He had gray, tufty hair that would normally look ridiculous on a man of his age, but strangely did not on him. She heard someone call his name, Nathan Gendser.
Finally, they managed to come out into the waiting room at the same time. She was numb in her jaw from the Novocain. He was paying at the cashier.
“I’m finally done,” he said. “Feels great.”
She felt a twinge of disappointment.
“Lucky you!”
“Do you have much left?”
“Once or twice more. It wasn’t just the bridge; there were some cavities, too.”
“I have my car outside. Can I drive you somewhere?” Her own car was around the corner. She thought a moment, then said, “Thanks.”
It was summer. His plump, tanned hands; no ring. “Dalvik…,” he said. “I was wondering about that. Are you related to the Sandy Candy business?”
She nodded.
“Oh, I get it. That’s why you have to go to the dentist’s so often nowadays. Too much candy when you were a child!” “I didn’t eat too much of that candy. I didn’t like it much.
But I ate a lot of other kinds of candy.”
“I’m not surprised.”
He sat quietly for a minute. Then he asked her where she was going.
“Where are you going yourself?”
“Well, I can let you off at the subway station next to Odenplan? I live in the vicinity.”
“That’d be perfect.”
“Are you on vacation now?”
“No, I don’t work.”
“What! You don’t work! Are you unemployed?” “Not exactly.”
She felt his look; she stared stubbornly straight ahead.
People often were bothered when they found out that she didn’t work. She had never really started a career. She had been sick most of her teenage life. Then she thought it was too late for anything. But you just couldn’t say this to strangers. In order to avoid questions, she sometimes said that she’d worked for the family concern but was now thinking of trying something else. And then she would change the subject.
“I usually call myself an odd-job man,” he said. “But the last few years, I’ve been working as a tour guide.” He let her out in front of the medical building on
Odenplan. When he drove off, she went into the subway and rode back to the dentist’s to get her car. Once she got home, she looked up his name in the telephone book. He lived on Norrtullsgatan. She got out the city map and found the exact place where he lived.
The next day, she did something unusual. She went there. This was unlike her. She talked to herself: what are you doing here, what are you expecting?
It was as if she were tipsy.
His car was parked next to the building. She glanced up at the façade, wondered which window was his. So that he wouldn’t discover her, she went into a nearby bookstore and thumbed through some books, finally buying a paperback just for appearances. Then she walked along the sidewalk, up and down, in front of his building. As if she knew he was coming any minute, an intuition.
Her sixth sense was correct. He came out of the apartment building a half hour later. He was alone. She sped up, as if she were just walking along that minute, she said, “Hey, it’s you… I didn’t expect to see someone I knew!”
His face: a look of surprised happiness!
“I was just going out to grab a bite to eat. Do you want to come, too?”
They took a boat out to the royal palace island of Drottningholm. He invited her to lunch at the exclusive restaurant. She felt she was waking up from a period of paralysis.
She had been silent for so many years. With him, the language began to return, one word at a time.
He stroked life into her body; he awakened her. “You are so beautiful, I love women who are not anorexic.
Like you, you’re so alive.”
She became violently jealous of all the women he had made love to.
“How do you know that I’m so alive?”
“I feel it, even though you’re in your shell. I’m going to peel it from you, pluck your shell off, and show you to the world.”
She thought it was just something that a man would say, but she gave herself to him, totally.
She had never made love as a grown woman. After her child, her life came to an end.
Fragments of discussions between her father and Flora. Flora like an attack terrier: “It’s not just protecting her, you have to let her get well. We can’t do this here at home. You can’t, I can’t. She has to go to a clinic.”
She listened to her father’s footsteps, how doors slammed, how it thundered and shook through the entire house.
Finally he allowed a psychiatrist come to the house to examine her. He spoke of what happened and called it a miscarriage.
“You have to go on,” said the psychiatrist. “You have your whole life in front of you.”
He did not realize that for her, the reverse was true.
Yes, all the experts came to see her. He bought the best ones there were. Talk, talk, talk. He let her come with him on his trips, put her in the firm. Numbers and calculations, but nothing stayed in her mind. He brought home an electric typewriter, and Flora covered the keys so that she couldn’t see them. She learned a and ä.
When Flora traveled to Maderia with her, her father set her up in his bedroom.
“Sleep in my room, so you can see when I fall asleep and when I wake up. If I have done you wrong in life, know that I didn’t mean it, I’ve only wanted the best for you, Justine; you are all I have left of what was once my whole world. You are all I have left.”
“What about Flora?” she whispered.
“Flora? Oh yes, of course, Flora, too.”
She lay in Flora’s bed, on Flora’s pillow. She saw her father with new eyes. She saw that he had long ago passed his youth. His hair was no longer brown, but thinner and drab; his eyebrows shot out like bushes. He was sitting on the chair by Flora’s vanity. He was looking in the mirror.
“What do you wish for in life, Justine?” he asked, and he had resignation in his bearing.
She had no answer.
He leaned forward over the table.
“That man who… came so close to you? You don’t have to tell me who he was. But… was he important to you?”
She ran away from him wearing her nightgown. Stood behind the door and refused to talk.
Her father had to coax and cajole. He handed her the horn, as if that would help, as if she still were a little girl that could be comforted with a musical instrument.
The horn’s mouthpiece against her lips, the song of the horn.
She turned around, reflected in his eyes; his eyes were filled with pain. She wanted to cling to him and disappear into nothing. She was his only daughter, with great sorrow.
After some time, she began to stabilize. Flora had great patience. Whenever her sister came to visit, that was all they talked about, Flora’s great, endless patience.
“You’re certainly giving her just as good care as she would have gotten in a mental hospital,” said Viola, smelling like perfume and flowers. “It must give her a sense of security to have you around her. And it gives him some peace of mind, too.”
“It wouldn’t make any difference whether she were here or in a hospital; she hardly makes a fuss these days. And Sven feels better, having her here at home. His little girl.”
She said the last words with a bit of sarcasm.
Viola crossed her nylon-covered legs, and called Justine over.
“If I took you into the city, Justine, bought you a dress.”
“Believe me,” said Flora. “We’ve bought her so many clothes! I can’t stop you, but it’s a wasted effort. She never wears new things. At the very most, she will put it on for one day, and then she’ll never wear it again. She says that it feels uncomfortable and affected. But it doesn’t really matter. I mean, she hardly ever leaves the house.”