The birch was soon dispatched, taken down and sawn into manageable pieces that he stacked in an old bicycle storage area that the homeowner used as a woodshed. Lundquist had explained that he would gladly chop the wood himself; he needed a little exercise, he said. Karsten could do nothing but agree in silence. Lundquist was alarmingly fat.
Everything had gone as planned and when he got in the car the sun was peeking out. He smiled quietly to himself and turned the ignition key.
After driving away he regretted that he had not thrown one more stone onto Ohler’s roof and slowed down, but realized immediately the silliness in returning to carry out such a solely self-indulgent action.
On the other hand, there was one thing he had neglected and that was saying good-bye to Johansson. He turned around the block and parked outside the associate professor’s house.
He found him by the compost sitting in a wheelbarrow.
“I got a little tired. I’m a little out of sorts actually.”
Karsten saw how embarrassed Gregor Johansson was. He must have felt caught just sitting and idling.
“No, don’t get up, it’s all right. Well, is this the last grass-cutting for the year?”
Johansson nodded. Karsten crouched down and leaned his back against the compost.
“So you’re done now?” said Johansson.
“Yes, the last is done. The birch is down. It feels good.”
“And what is waiting now?”
Africa, thought Karsten. He had a desire to recount his dream, but the box of five-hundred-kronor bills would be hard to explain. And Mr. Green perhaps would stand out as slightly too fantastic a lizard for anyone who had never met him.
“I’m going to cut down a couple of maple trees in Årsta, then I’ll have to see. Once again thanks for the witch alder.”
“It was nothing. Maybe you can come by in the spring. Or sooner,” Johansson hastened to add.
“I’d like to do that. I still have to look after Lundquist’s garden next year.”
At the same moment it occurred to him that he was lying to the associate professor. He would never set foot at Lundquist’s again. It didn’t feel right. He wanted to say goodbye to the associate professor in a better way.
“Maybe I can come by the day after tomorrow? I have a couple of gardening books that might interest you. Duplicates.”
He wanted to give the associate professor something. He wanted to explain himself, tell him something about Africa. Not just disappear from this belated friend.
“Gladly,” the associate professor answered. “Come for midmorning coffee.”
They separated at the gate. What Karsten could not suspect was that they would never meet again.
Twenty-nine
“Birgitta, I want you to speak with the professor.”
Agnes had gotten up and hung her apron on the backside of the kitchen door. Birgitta and Liisa were still sitting at the table.
“Give your notice?”
Birgitta looked completely speechless.
“Yes, isn’t that what you say?”
Liisa nodded and smiled.
“That’s exactly what you say,” she said, and despite her agitation Agnes could see the contented look on the Finnish woman’s face.
“But why?”
Birgitta’s question was simple but hard to answer. Agnes did not really know herself. She thought she had formulated the reasons to herself. But now she just felt deathly tired of the professor’s carping and irritation. If he had won a prize he should be satisfied. Yet he had become even grumpier. She was also tired of the house, and she didn’t know exactly why.
She missed the sea, she could also mention as a reason, but that sounded too pompous and strange, and not particularly believable besides. She had actually lived in town for more than fifty years and never expressed any longing for something so vague as a view of “the sea.”
If she were to say something about the rock at Tall-Anna’s, where you could see so far, the professor would laugh out loud. Birgitta perhaps would not laugh but become worried and take it as a result of confusion. For her everything outside the pruned garden had constituted a threatening disorder since childhood.
“I want to be a pensioner,” said Agnes.
Liisa Lehtonen laughed heartily.
“Damn it, you’re right about that!” she hooted. “Be a happy pensioner!”
Birgitta looked at Liisa in amazement.
“This isn’t funny,” she said. “Do you understand what worries there will be?”
“For dear Bertram, you mean?”
“For all of us,” said Birgitta.
“I am actually over seventy,” said Agnes.
They had eaten supper and Agnes had as usual cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher. The professor had retired. Liisa suggested they play cards, something that Agnes never did, except for Old Maid when the Ohler children were small.
No, she did not want to play cards. She did not want to do anything whatsoever other than go up to her room and call Greta. Her sister was the only one who would understand.
“Can I quit after this week?”
“Normally you give one month’s notice,” said Liisa, who had stopped laughing.
“You’ll perk up, right now you’re just worn-out,” said Birgitta, and Agnes understood that Birgitta was only repeating what the professor had said.
“Yes, that can easily happen here,” said Agnes, who felt that she had violated the established rules of the game.
There was so much involved in that simple sentence that neither Birgitta nor Liisa could say anything. It was as if the women in the kitchen were struck by an insight. Perhaps not the same one, but all three were silent for a few moments to take in and be able to properly handle what had happened. A new situation had commenced in the Ohler house.
It was Liisa who broke the silence, perhaps it was all the years of mental training that came in handy.
“We’ll call for a company to come in and clean the whole house, make it sparkling clean and then come back every week. Agnes will be the supervisor.”
“Good!” Birgitta exclaimed, who became enthusiastic as soon as she understood the import of the suggestion.
Agnes listened with growing impatience. She simply wanted to get away from it all. Didn’t they understand that?
Just then the bell rang. Birgitta fell silent. Liisa looked up with a surprised, slightly frightened look on her face, as if she did not understand what was jangling.
“The study,” Agnes said mechanically, and reached out her hand for the white apron she used outside the kitchen, but immediately let her hand fall, took a deep breath, and then let out the air with a sigh.
“I’ll take it,” said Birgitta, in a futile attempt to rescue the situation, for in that moment everyone realized that there was not a company in the whole world that could replace Agnes Andersson.
Birgitta left the kitchen. Liisa got up and went over to the kitchen entrance. Agnes studied the slender body and the short hair, tried to imagine her and Birgitta together. It didn’t work. It was as incomprehensible as so much else in the Ohler family.
“Now the last leaves are falling,” said Liisa abruptly, who had never commented on the garden before. She turned her head and looked at Agnes.
“Yes,” said Agnes, “it’s fall.”
My last apple cake, she thought.
“Maybe what’s happening is just as well,” said Liisa, but did not specify what she meant, whether that concerned the inexorable arrival of autumn or the fact that Agnes wanted to leave the household.
“When I was competing I used to think about sex,” Liisa went on. “It’s the opposite of what all the experts recommend; it’s calm you should try to achieve, a kind of peace that actually doesn’t exist. That’s what you aim for. I did the opposite, worked myself up. In my first Olympics, in 1984 in Los Angeles, I met a competitor from South Korea, we fell in love at first sight and met in secret. Then we met in the finals. I glanced at her and I wet my panties. Since then I always think about her at critical moments. I won in Los Angeles. She won on the home field four years later. That seems right, doesn’t it?”