She opened the window, as if to blow out all the thoughts that were circulating in the car. The wind had picked up, due west, she noticed. She thought about Edvard and his musings about weather and wind, how he drew her into his speculations. At the start of his time on the island he was a little uncertain, accustomed as he was to inland weather phenomena, a farm worker’s observations of the outlook for precipitation or clearing. But as he became more sure, Viola, and above all the old neighbor Viktor, also taught him a great deal about the idiosyncrasies of archipelago weather.
The side road down to Viola’s had been widened. That was surely thanks to Edvard. He had always complained about the road. Viola seldom left her farm and experienced no great need for a good road. Edvard on the other hand commuted to his job as a construction worker and was of a different opinion. Ann wondered whether he was still in that industry. She knew nothing about his present life.
There were two cars in the farmyard. One was a pickup, probably Edvard’s, thought Ann. Behind it was hidden a Corolla that was at least twenty-five years old. I should have called, it struck her when she caught sight of the car. Perhaps he was living with someone? That was not an impossibility, more likely probable. He was surely still an attractive man, of which there was a shortage on the island.
She got out on shaking legs, prepared to throw herself back in the car at any moment and take off. Steeled herself to look relaxed. She realized that Edvard had already heard the car, unless his hearing had gotten even worse.
There were lights on in the kitchen, in the parlor, and one flight up. Viola’s bedroom-Ann assumed that the old woman was bedridden-faced out toward the sea.
When she was a few meters from the glassed-in porch, and noticed that all the door and window frames were freshly painted, the door opened. Edvard. He had not turned on the light, perhaps he had stood and watched her for a few moments, uncertain whether he was mistaken. But to her his shape was so familiar that she would recognize it among thousands.
“You,” was all he said.
“Me,” said Anna.
You and me, she thought.
“I heard that Viola was ill.”
He nodded, perhaps he was waiting for a continuation. Was the shock so great that he was incapable of saying anything? Perhaps his disgust at her unexpected visit made him mute?
“Do you have… company?”
The question was unbelievably silly, she realized that immediately, but she could not get herself to put it another way.
“Yes, a buddy of Viola’s is here,” said Edvard, nodding toward the Toyota. “She’ll be leaving soon.”
She sensed that he understood her embarrassment. Buddy, she thought, and could not help smiling a little. Viola’s buddy.
“How is she doing?”
He was still standing with his hand on the doorknob. Perhaps he didn’t want to let her in.
“She’s very weak,” he said.
Ann heard from his voice that he was tired.
“You’ve fixed the road,” she said.
He nodded.
“And painted the porch.”
“Yes, a lot has happened since the last time,” he said, and she could not determine whether he was teasing or amused at her remarks.
“Nice,” said Ann, “very nice,” and nodded eagerly as if she wanted to underscore that she thought everything seemed to be in tip-top shape with the side road, the house, Edvard, and life.
“Come in,” he said curtly, leaving the door and disappearing into the house.
She followed him as if he were an executioner and these were her last steps up onto the scaffold.
The smell was the same. In the kitchen to the left as usual it was sparkling clean. Ann suspected that Edvard had help, he never cleaned up completely himself, there was always something left on the counter, a cup on the table or crumbs on a cutting board. Perhaps there was another woman in the house?
To the right were the stairs up to Edvard’s room, worn by his feet, not repainted since last time.
Edvard walked straight ahead. He was limping a little. The hair on the back of his head was perhaps a little thinner, otherwise he looked like he always was.
He stopped and waited for her before he pushed open the door to Viola’s room.
“You have a visitor,” he said, taking a step to the left and making room for Ann.
The room was lit only by a table lamp in the corner. Viola was laying like a dowager, submerged in a sea of blankets in the gigantic bed. Ann remembered that she was always cold and in the winter often had double blankets. It smelled of cleanser and coffee.
Her cheeks were skinnier than ever. The thin, white hair was even thinner and whiter. Immediately when Ann came into the room she opened her eyes and fixed her with her gaze like the way she did the first time they met.
“Ann, my own policewoman,” the old woman croaked, making an effort to pull her arms out of the covers.
Ann went up to the bed and placed her hand on Viola’s cold cheek. They looked at each other.
“I knew it,” the old woman said.
Ann fought back the tears. This was such a valuable moment that instinctively she did not want to throw away a single second by sobbing and weeping. She wanted to have a clear gaze, be just as strong as Viola had always been.
“I got your greeting,” said Viola.
A discreet cough was heard from the unlit part of the room. Ann turned her head and there sat an elderly woman on a chair. Ann realized immediately that this must be the sister of the Nobel Prize winner’s housekeeper. Despite the darkness it was not hard to make out the resemblance, not least the slightly protruding eyes that now observed her with a mournful expression.
Ann got up to quickly introduce herself so that the woman could then leave her and Viola in peace. She did not want to have a funeral singer sitting in the room.
Perhaps Ann still harbored a wish that it would be only Viola, Edvard, and her in the house. Like before.
The woman got on her feet surprisingly quickly and greeted Ann with a nod.
“I’ll be in the kitchen,” she said. “Perhaps you’d like a cup later?”
She did not wait for an answer but instead left quickly and quietly. All that lingered behind her was a faint odor of sweat. Edvard followed her out of the room and closed the door very carefully behind him.
Ann sat down on the chair that was placed on the other side of the bed.
“You didn’t bring the boy with you?”
Ann shook her head and realized her mistake when she saw the cross frown on the old woman’s furrowed face. Sometimes she had considered Viola a kind of paternal grandmother, a replacement for the one Erik would never have, but out of pure selfishness she had not brought him with her. She had been afraid of Edvard’s reaction, ashamed to display the physical evidence of their capsized love story. Because it really had been a story, full of desire and tenderness. But Erik would have been his child and no one else’s.
She ought to have put herself above this, overlooked Edvard’s possible animosity and her own embarrassment, and introduced her son to his “grandmother.” She would have liked that, Ann realized now. Perhaps she considered Ann the daughter she never had.
Ann, who had been the unfaithful one, the one who betrayed her Edvard, was now forgiven. She understood that and a sense of longing shot through her, making her feel that all the bad things could be made undone. An impossible wish, a dead end. She was taken back for a moment or two to another life, to a different sort of love than what she experienced with Anders Brant.
“Next time,” said Ann. “Do you want to see a photo of Erik?”
The old woman shook her head, and this did not surprise Ann. She had never seen a single photograph in the house.
“It takes a rickety old woman to get you to drag yourself here,” said Viola, regaining in her voice a little of the ironic astringency that was her trademark.