Alice squeezed out some silver polish onto a white cotton cloth and picked up a fork.
Louise tried again.
‘We don’t actually know yet, maybe it’s not so serious.’
Alice’s hand rubbed faster, and the cloth turned black.
‘I still think you ought to wait a bit and see what the doctors say, don’t you?’
With violent force Alice suddenly cast the fork aside and turned round. Completely unprepared, Louise shrank from the ferocity of her gaze.
‘For God’s sake, woman! Can’t you at least let me enjoy my own obliteration?’
For a few seconds Alice was exposed, and Louise lost her breath at what she saw. A despair so deep it distorted her features. Then the moment passed, and Alice returned with furious movements to her silverware. Louise backed out to the living room and sank down on the sofa.
It was Alice who was standing there in the kitchen, and yet it was herself she had seen.
In a sudden moment of clarity she understood that in forty years it would be her turn to see the meaninglessness of life finally confirmed. Just like Alice, over the years she would spread her bitterness over anyone who came near her, over Ellen and her future family. Passing on to her daughter the futile task of attempting to make up for a wasted life. Illuminated from a different angle, all perspectives had changed, her obligations to her daughter other than she had envisaged. For whose sake had she sacrificed herself? Who was expected to show gratitude? Ellen, who would be sent out into life with a distorted view of what love is? Jan-Erik, whose behaviour she condoned by not telling him to stop? What sort of role model was she for her daughter? Louise realised that her fear of making a move was merely selfish cowardice, for what joy would Ellen gain from a mother who was already dead? A mother who, when it was much too late, would expect gratitude for everything she had given up to keep the family together.
All she desired was to be allowed to surrender. To set free a life that had been imprisoned for so long. She could feel it inside, how it was begging for oxygen, pulling and tearing to be allowed to show its potential.
The instant she made her decision, everything became calm.
The little glass horse was standing on the window-sill. She reached out and picked it up, placing it gently in her hand. Then she returned to the kitchen. Alice was still standing where she had left her, picking through her parents’ silverware. Louise hesitated, wanting to thank her, but as usual couldn’t quite find the words. She put her hand tentatively on her shoulder.
‘I’m going now, Alice. Good luck with everything you have to do. I’m taking this little horse and giving it to Ellen. I know she’d love to have it.’
28
Torgny was sitting at his kitchen table holding Gerda’s obituary. No poem. No grieving relatives. Just as anonymous as his own would be one day, if someone even took the trouble to put one in the paper.
His black suit was hanging in the hall. Nowadays he only wore it to funerals. Newly brushed but as outdated as himself. A disguise he allowed himself now and then.
He would often look in the newspaper to see who had died, and if a name sounded familiar he would go to the funeral. A chance to get out and kill some time, steal a little sympathy. His tie had once been tied by Halina’s fingers. He had never undone it. He simply widened the loop a bit and pulled it over his head, wearing his noose as a symbolic marker.
He struck a match and lit a cigarette, opening the window a crack as he’d promised the landlady when the neighbours complained about the smell of smoke from his flat. For fifty-four years this had been his home, ever since he moved to Stockholm. With youthful enthusiasm he had moved into the city proper, ready for the world to open up to him. A world that had been divided into black and white, where no nuances of grey had yet made themselves felt. The black was everything he had left behind; his childhood and the inherited job as a metalworker. Even as a child he had felt different. Early on he’d learned to hide his pain whenever a schoolmate, one of his brothers, or his father gave vent to their fury because he refused to apologise for his individuality. Short, thin and not very strong, he was easy prey for anyone who felt so inclined. Until he discovered the power of language. With his new-found weapon he fended off every antagonist, and over the years he honed his argumentative technique to perfection. Not that he escaped being bullied; on the contrary, people who are inarticulate are quick to raise their fists, but the beatings were always easier to bear when he knew that he’d already won.
The white part was what awaited him in the future. Stockholm, its cultural offerings, and the writer’s life that had begun. He would certainly show everybody back home just who they had been laughing at.
He would soon turn seventy-eight. Twilight had come early, his life had long been moving towards evening. The days were growing more desolate; everyone he’d known was gone or had been lost somewhere along the way. Few people were left who could share his memories.
He looked at the obituary he’d torn out of the paper.
Kristoffer’s confession had forced Torgny to concede that an aeon of time had passed, to accept all the wasted days and the fact that his waiting had long ago become meaningless. The little boy was transformed into a grown man, but in Torgny’s world he was still a sorely missed four-year-old. What Kristoffer had told him was a final confirmation that Halina was no longer alive.
Torgny hadn’t had time to ask for Kristoffer’s phone number or his last name. The boy he’d once viewed as his own had surfaced only to disappear once more. Above all else he wanted to be able to see him again.
How strange that he’d turned up just now, when the advent of Gerda’s funeral had also speeded up his memories. It was asking too much of him to attend. He couldn’t handle it now that the images of what he had done had surfaced, bursting through the thin membrane in which he’d wrapped his shame.
He no longer even understood why he’d wanted to go to the funeral in the first place. Maybe it was so he could take one last look at the man who had destroyed his life. One last look, to reinforce the hatred that had been his only lifelong companion.
He threw the cigarette butt out of the window and closed it. He no longer wanted to remember anything now, and he buried the obituary under a pile of newspapers. It didn’t help. Gerda and all that was connected to her memory lingered on. They had barely known each other; they’d merely exchanged an occasional word when he was at the house. On the way in or out he might stop for a moment as she worked in the kitchen or knelt by a flower-bed.
The last time he’d seen her was immediately afterwards. On the verge of vomiting he’d rushed out of the house and, leaning on his knees, tried to throw up all his own wickedness.
He shook another cigarette out of the packet but left the window closed. He got up to fetch a beer but slumped back on the chair when he remembered that he’d drunk them all.
If only he’d understood then that he was genuinely happy. Back then, when Halina and Kristoffer had been in his life and he still had the ability to write. When he didn’t have to crouch behind the words after once and for all losing the right to make himself heard. Not until all was lost had he realised what he’d had. His suffering increased by the contrast.
The invisible breaking point.
Not until much later had it become as clear as a beacon.
The moment when Halina had asked him to take her to Västerås.
He should have been suspicious, since she never wanted to come along. Childcare was so expensive, she always said. Wasn’t it when he mentioned that Axel Ragnerfeldt was going to be there that she suddenly changed her mind?
As so many times before, the answer had forgotten its question, when everything in the light of what followed had become apparent.