“Don’t give up, Flora. Clothes create grace and bearing. It could be a way to help return her to normal.”
Flora lowered her voice.
“Normal! That child has never been normal! It’s genetic, an inheritance from her mother. She has also been, let’s just say, a little unusual, to put it mildly. Now I’m attempting to give her basic knowledge about running a house. That won’t be wasted. And once Sven and I are old, she can care for herself and for us. Then she’ll be of some use, both to her and to us. A human being has to have some value; that’s among the most important things in life, to be useful.”
Viola could not understand why Flora didn’t hire help for the house or the garden. Married into wealth and still no additional household help.
“You could sit here like a member of the nobility and just be waited on. And you would still be valuable as the wife of the well-known Sven Dalvik, just that alone.”
Flora had her unusual reasons.
“I don’t want strangers in my home. This is my territory.”
The territory became Justine’s as well. Slowly, she greased herself into it, although Flora didn’t realize that. Wearing her father’s cast-off overalls, she scrubbed the walls and the floors in the house. Spring and fall, year after year.
In the water were a few drops of blood from a cut on her finger.
Chapter TWO
The day her father died, she was working her hardest up in the attic. She usually began at the top and slowly worked her way down. She was on her knees, scrubbing and scrubbing. The floor boards cut into her knees and the pain felt good to her. The raw wood, the smell of well-scrubbed pine.
Then from far below a draft of cold air. She heard Flora call. Her father had collapsed on the outer stairs. He had lost a shoe. Mechanically, she took off his other shoe. Her hands were still damp from the cleaning water.
Together they managed to pull him into the blue room. Flora ran up and down the stairs, changing clothes, smoking.
“You should change clothes, too, if you’re coming with us. You can’t wear those overalls.”
She sat with her father’s head in her lap. It felt hard and little.
Only one of them could ride in the ambulance. Justine took the Opel. She had gotten the Opel as a present for her thirty-fifth birthday. She followed closely behind the ambulance with its shrieking sirens.
As she already realized, there was nothing that could be done. A worn-out doctor took them aside to a room. She remembered a bandage over a cut on her father’s throat. She sat and wondered what he’d done. Did he cut himself? Or was it a hickey? She thought of anything and everything in that room, just not her father.
“So here’s what’s going on. At the most, he’ll manage to live through the night. I want you to be aware of this.”
“We’re aware,” she said.
Flora became angry. She scratched her hands like paws. “How much do you want… to do your utmost?”
“My dear Mrs. Dalvik, there are some things that can’t be bought. We have done our utmost.”
They sat, one on each side.
“Poor Justine,” said Flora. “I don’t think you realize how serious this is.”
Her cheeks were spotty with mascara. Justine had never seen her cry before. The sniffling bothered her; she wanted to be left alone with her father. She thought of death as a woman, maybe her mother, who had been sent to bring her husband home. She could imagine her coming through the window, big and tall, taking off his blanket, taking his hand, and leading him away from them. She would look at Flora with a spiteful little smile: “I’m taking him now, because he is mine.”
Nathan took her to the biggest shopping center in Kuala Lumpur. It looked just like a large department store in Sweden, and she was amazed at the assortment of goods. She must have forgotten her sunglasses at home, or lost them on the plane. Finally, she would be able to buy a new pair.
Nathan made clear that she could not hold his hand or show any affection because that would be offensive. People just did not show public affection in this country.
“We’ll resume all of this in the hotel room,” he said. He was in a good mood again.
He also thought she should look at some clothes.
“It’ll cheer you up. Women love to shop; just ask an expert like me!”
He had been married twice and had a live-in girlfriend once. There were photos of all his children in graduation outfits or wedding dresses on the living room shelf. He had six children. She asked about their mothers, punished herself with details.
“Ann-Marie is the mother of these two. They look like her, same blue eyes, but thank God not the same mental status, if I may say so. Nettan is the mother of the twin girls and Mikke, the boy. I was legally married to both Ann-Marie and Nettan, for five and seven years respectively. After that, I’ve been careful not to get married. When I met Barbro, we agreed to just live together. She also didn’t want to get married. She had just gotten divorced from some crazy guy who used to beat her up. I lived with her for four or five years. Little Jenny is ours.”
He was very proud of Jenny, who was a model. A thin girlish young woman with doe-eyes, a copy of her mother.
“And then, did you live by yourself?”
He waved his hand.
“In a matter of speaking.”
“Why did it never work out? Are you so difficult to live with?”
“All three had one thing in common: they were a bit hysterical.”
“What do you mean hysterical?”
“I don’t want to go into that now.”
“Am I also hysterical?”
“Not what I’ve seen so far. But if I notice it, I’ll be sure to let you know.”
“And which one was the best in bed?”
He pushed her into his bed, lay over her, put a hand over her mouth.
“The first one is you, the second one is you, the third one is you, Darling.”
She looked through the clothes, but everything was too small. Malaysian women barely reached her shoulders. They appeared stamped from the same mold, and their waists were as narrow as one of her legs.
Let’s go, she thought.
Nathan was speaking to a shop assistant; they were observing her. The assistant came up to her with a measuring tape around her neck.
“She’s wondering about your size.”
“Why? Nothing here I want.”
Nathan held a dress up to her. It looked made for a pygmy.
“I thought you might want something more elegant when we’re out and about among people. This is still civilization, you know.”
“Just look at that, Nathan, do you really think I can squeeze into that? Can you really believe that? It’s made for a child!”
“Well, maybe not this exact one, but a larger size.”
He turned toward the assistant; she had big, brown eyes.
“Bigger size?” he asked in English.
The assistant smiled crookedly, took the dress, and went away to search.
“Let’s go,” Justine whispered.
“Don’t be such a troublemaker.”
“But Nathan, you don’t get it.”
“The hell I don’t. I want to give you a nice dress, and you’re acting like a stubborn child.”
He began to walk to the counter. Justine followed him. The assistant came. She looked at Nathan expectantly.
“Well?” he asked.
“Sorry, sir, not bigger size.”
“As if I were an incompetent, stupid child!” Justine burst out once they returned to the street. “She ignored me completely!”
“Huh.”
“She turned to you; she talked to you.”
“She must have noticed how grumpy and unwilling you were.”