He sighed and lit another cigarette.
‘I think what she was most afraid of was being abandoned again. She had been through so much shit it’s no wonder something broke inside of her. My own crappy childhood was a luxury cruise in comparison. It’s fucking shit when you think about it.’
‘Tell me.’
And so Torgny told him. That Kristoffer’s mother was Jewish and had been born in Poland in 1938. That she was sent to a concentration camp and lost her entire family. That her mother was shot, her father was probably taken to another camp, and that she never found out what happened to him. That her sister died in the camp and left her alone. Only after Torgny had been talking for a while did it dawn on Kristoffer that this was his own family he was talking about. This wasn’t someone else’s. He came from Poland instead of Sweden, and his whole family had been wiped out. The more information he heard the more confused he became, and finally he had to ask for a pen and paper so he could take notes.
‘Imagine yourself as a six-year-old seeing your mother’s brains blown out. She told me he’d laughed afterwards, the man who shot her mother. He’d bet another soldier that he could shoot someone in the eye. It was just random that he happened to choose her.’
His grandmother. They were talking about his grandmother. And his mother who had been forced to watch. Kristoffer suddenly thought of Joseph Schultz. From Jan-Erik Ragnerfeldt’s lecture. Maybe there was something in him that was especially affected by that story, an inherited cry for justice.
‘Someone said that Halina went back to Poland, and maybe that’s what she did. She didn’t have any family left, but that’s where she was from, after all. She still spoke the language fluently, and there was nobody here to keep her. Sadly.’
Torgny took a swig of beer.
‘The thing was, she never felt the same about me as I did about her. Otherwise, she would never have left me.’
He fell silent and looked at the floor.
‘She seemed to retreat when I showed her how I felt, as if she didn’t think she had a right to be happy in any way. I remember that sometimes it felt as though she liked me best when I didn’t care as much; that’s when she became more loving. But then when I loved her back she would retreat again.’
Kristoffer listened intently. Torgny spoke with ruminative pauses, and something told Kristoffer that these memories had waited a long time to be aired.
Kristoffer looked at the book in his hands. The picture of the woman turned away.
‘You mustn’t believe that your mother was some sort of idiot just because she had a problem. On the contrary, she was probably the smartest person I ever met. When she was well she was like a… I don’t know, I can’t describe it.’
Torgny smiled and looked around as if searching for a suitable description.
‘Damn, what great times we had when everything was good. There was no one else quite like her. I know, because I’ve looked.’
He stopped talking and fell into a reverie.
Torgny had been quiet for a long time. Kristoffer felt a profound weariness but he knew that the conversation was not over yet. There was more he needed to know. Yet he no longer knew what he was going to do with the information. ‘You said that it was my pappa who painted that picture.’
He nodded towards the painting and Torgny snorted.
‘That brute. Luckily for him he managed to drink himself to death before I had a chance to kill him.’
‘So he’s dead?’
‘Yes, a long time ago, and you should be glad of that. Karl-Evert Pettersson was his name. An artist, but he evidently drank so heavily that nobody wanted anything to do with him. He was the sort who flies into a rage when he’s drunk and wants to fight and cause trouble. He was drunk when he did it.’
‘Did what?’
‘When he raped her.’
Kristoffer shifted in his chair in an attempt to shake off what he was hearing. Now he didn’t want to hear any more. No more.
‘She was modelling for that painting, trying to make a little extra money. She wanted to be a writer but she never managed to get anything published.’
Torgny broke off suddenly as if he’d said something he didn’t want to talk about.
Kristoffer felt that something was starting to fall apart. His fantasies during his childhood, the dream world where hope was kept alive. The images of how happy his parents would be when they finally found him. How they would be heartbroken and had fought to get him back.
‘That was when we met, after she got knocked up. She was desperate because she didn’t want to… Well, I might as well tell you the truth. She had been raped, but the abortion laws were different then. The new abortion law that gave women the right to choose and all that wouldn’t be passed until a few years later, and you should be damned glad of that.’
A feeling of nausea washed over Kristoffer.
‘But then, after you were born, she was happy. She was a good mother, she really was. It was only sometimes, when she wasn’t feeling well, that she could be a bit harsh.’
Kristoffer tried to get up, holding on to the back of the chair.
‘She must have been ill when she left you at Skansen. She would never have done anything like that if she were feeling well.’
With the book in his hand he managed to make it to the hall.
‘Kristoffer.’
Torgny was still sitting on the bed, but Kristoffer couldn’t speak. He reached for the door handle.
‘Why don’t you get in touch again sometime, Kristoffer? We could see each other again, the two of us.’
He went out to the landing and managed to pull the door shut behind him. His ears were filled with a piercing scream. His hand shook as he grasped the banister, and his legs felt stiff as if seized by cramps. He barely managed to make it down the stairs.
Everything was in ruins.
His hidden inner world that had always glittered like a distant oasis, enticing him with its promise of bliss. Empty and ravaged, it had dissolved and slipped away. All the endless waiting. All the lost seconds. The hope that had driven him onwards. How could he accept that all the waiting had been in vain?
They had never looked for him; he had never been missed.
From the depths of his being it came surging up – the grief he had never permitted to exist. Like a howl for restitution it came flowing and knocked his feet from under him. With his back against the wall he slid down to the floor.
He hadn’t wanted to know any of this!
All he wanted was to get it back.
The hope.
The hope of one day finding an explanation that would bless him with the ability to forgive.
24
When the doorbell rang they were still sitting in the library. For a while now the smell of dinner had filled the house, and Gerda would soon be here to tell them it was ready. They looked at each other when they heard her footsteps moving down the hall towards the front door. Axel got up, and knew immediately who had rung the bell.
‘I’m looking for Axel Ragnerfeldt.’
‘I’m sorry, he’s not at home.’
‘He certainly is, I saw him through the window.’
For a few seconds there was silence.
‘Unfortunately he’s busy.’
‘Tell him I want to talk to him. It’s for his own good.’
Alice got up and hissed at Axel.
‘Go and help Gerda, for God’s sake!’
Axel rushed out. To his consternation he realised that he was afraid. More afraid than he could ever recall being since he was a child.