Why is she telling me all this? Agnes thought with surprise. Does she want to shock me, or what? She was forced to turn around to conceal her disapproval.
“Now I’m thinking about the Korean,” said Liisa.
Agnes whirled around.
“Do you know what?” she exclaimed. “Now that’s enough of your vulgarities. And this is no firing range or Olympic Games. And wipe that grin off your face!”
“It’s there to cheer you up.”
The Finnish woman’s scornful tone and her own fury made Agnes leave the kitchen. Never again, she thought, will I cook for that bitch. She took the stairs like when she was young and was forced to catch her breath when she came up to the second floor.
Birgitta came out of the study at the far end of the corridor. She was crying. Agnes went in the opposite direction, slipped into the little drawing room, and closed the door behind her with a feeling of having escaped from a swarm of angry bees.
She collapsed in an armchair that had remained from years ago. The last daylight had disappeared and the room was in darkness. She closed her eyes. In her mind the house on the island emerged. She could picture Greta, how she had her coffee, and quietly felt the twilight in the kitchen and then went into the old drawing room, turned on the table lamp and the sconces on the wall, switched on the TV and settled in.
Agnes did not understand the curious attachment she felt for Greta. They had never been particularly close, but now the cottage and her sister stood out in a light shimmer that perhaps was not completely grounded in reality. The cottage was crooked and drafty, cold in the winter, the kitchen was old-fashioned, and her sister was often peevish and incommunicative.
But none of that mattered. She wanted to go home. She also wanted to settle down on the couch in front of the TV.
She did not know what Greta would think about having company, but there was no turning back. With that conviction she got up, turned on the ceiling light, went over to the telephone, and dialed the number to the island. Her sister answered after a couple of rings, which meant she had not yet sat down in front of the TV.
Agnes told her quite briefly and without superfluous comment that she would be quitting at Ohler’s and coming out to the island within a couple of days. She said nothing about the future, if her intention was to stay for good or if the visit was to be seen as an interim stop before she got something of her own.
To her great surprise Greta had no comment but instead simply asked if Agnes needed help. Perhaps Viktor’s cousin’s grandson Ronald could come with his big car so that Agnes could take everything with her? After a moment of hesitation Agnes accepted the offer and they decided that Ronald, if he was able, would come on Saturday morning. Greta insisted that she herself would show up during the day tomorrow to help pack. Agnes understood that Greta also wanted to see the house one last time.
Agnes’s hand was shaking when she hung up the phone. Something awful was in the process of happening, she felt it in her whole body. During the call with her sister she had taken great pains not to let her inner tension be known, but now she let out the worry and anxiety. She was forced to lay down, only to get up a short time later and restlessly wander around the room. At any moment the bell might ring, or perhaps more likely, Birgitta would knock and in her gentlest voice ask if everything was all right.
But they left her in peace. The whole house seemed to be holding its breath. Her decision to give notice had shaken things up properly.
It struck her as she stood looking out over the dark garden that Greta’s suggestion to come into town was also a way to support her little sister. Greta surely sensed that it was not a completely painless maneuver to leave the professor. The tension in her stomach remained but the trembling decreased somewhat. She was holding steady.
The lights were on at Bunde’s, likewise at the associate professor’s, but at Lundquist’s it was dark. She wondered for a while about the gardener but not for long, for why should she care about the professor’s apple trees and bushes? And his remark about time was not so astounding, it was surely more common than she had thought.
Instead, in her thoughts she planned her packing. She had not accumulated much and that was just as well. Ronald would carry it out to the car in a jiffy. The thought made her smile. How quickly they would disappear. Before the others really understood what had happened, she would be sitting perched in the passenger seat alongside Ronald in his gigantic car. Greta would do all the talking from the backseat. Ronald would as always sit silently. They had last met at Viktor’s funeral and she happened to think about everyone who had gathered at Gräsö Church. The majority she recognized, the others Greta had identified. Stronger than ever she felt that she wanted to go home to the island.
For the first time in many years, perhaps decades, she lingered in her drawing room for an entire evening and went to bed without having asked whether the professor wanted something before bedtime.
Thirty
Friday was going to be rainy. It was pouring down already early in the morning. Karsten Haller cancelled all plans for tree pruning. The maples in Årsta would still be there after the weekend. And if they weren’t it didn’t matter to him.
Instead he took the bus down to the city to visit a travel agency on Drottninggatan. There he had been well treated before, and he felt that a friendly reception was even more important this time. Perhaps he would never need the services of a travel agency again. He was on the point of leaving the country and now every human contact and every transaction had significance. These were the memories he would carry with him and he did not want to have bitter thoughts now at the end.
He stepped into the agency’s office with a smile and half an hour later he stepped out with a smile.
He walked along the street with the quiet exhilaration of a person who has just made a life-altering decision-a mixture of reverence, euphoria, and an absolute conviction of having chosen the right path. But despite the light-heartedness, every step, every thought, was of the greatest importance. Even the rain drumming against his umbrella seemed to have a message. For Karsten Haller rain was something good, it made the semidesert bloom and fish that had been lying still, apparently dead, in the mud of the rivers waken to life. But even the absence of rain could be good. Then the animals flocked by the few waterholes. The clouds of dust on the horizon heralded migrating hordes of grass-eaters.
Now he was not stirring up much dust on Fyristorg. It was still raining intensely. He had decided to exchange the bundle of five-hundred-kronor bills from Ohler’s safe. It went more smoothly than he thought.
“Have a nice trip,” the young woman behind the security glass chirped, as she pushed over the yellow packet of money.
He had said something about visiting his relatives in the United States, with a vague sense that he had to justify his transaction. LUDMILLA, as it said on the woman’s name tag, did not think there was anything strange about his wanting to exchange twenty-five thousand kronor to American dollars.
Crime is encouraged, he thought, smiling back, left the premises and headed for the next exchange office, which was in a shopping arcade.
There it went just as smoothly. He quickly stuffed the money in the inside pocket of his jacket and set a course for the exit. When he caught sight of his own mirror image outside a store he did a double take; he looked like he had shoplifted something. He slowed down and looked around. Did someone perhaps think that he was behaving strangely? But no one seemed to take any notice. A teenager bumped into him, but did not apologize, on the contrary he glared at Karsten as if to say “Get out of the way, old man.”