Ellinor had stopped just inside the doorway.
‘Are you okay?’
Maj-Britt nodded. She had made it here and tried to take strength from the triumph. But the ordeal had cost her; her legs wouldn’t hold up any longer, and she went over to a table with four chairs that looked sturdy enough to bear her weight. She pulled out one of them and sat down.
‘Then I’ll wait outside.’
Maj-Britt nodded again.
Ellinor took a step over the threshold but stopped there and turned round.
‘You know, Maj-Britt, I’m so terribly glad you’re doing this.’
And then she was alone. A small room with venetian blinds pulled down, a simple sofa group, the table she was sitting at and some pictures on the walls. The sounds continued to flow in from the corridor. A telephone rang, a door closed. And soon Vanja would come. Vanja, whom she hadn’t seen in thirty-four years. Who she thought had abandoned her and to whom she herself had now lied. She heard footsteps coming down the corridor and her fingers tightened their grip on the table edge. And then she was standing in the doorway. Maj-Britt saw how she involuntarily gasped. She remembered the wedding photograph, Vanja as bridesmaid, and realised how mistaken she had been. In the doorway stood an ageing woman. Her dark hair transformed to silver and a fine network of wrinkles on the face she had once known so well. The concept of time suddenly personified. In a single blow made so palpable that all those things taken for granted that were constantly happening now demanded their tribute, those things that had constantly etched their rings, year by year, whether they were used or not.
But it was Vanja’s eyes that almost took her breath away. She remembered the Vanja she had known, always with a gleam in the corner of her eye and a little mocking smile on her lips. The woman she saw before her bore an infinite sorrow in her gaze, as if her eyes had been forced to see more than they could stand. And yet she smiled, and in an instant the Vanja she had once known shone through in that unfamiliar face.
She gave no sign that revealed what she was thinking when she saw Maj-Britt.
Not a sign.
The guard stood in the doorway and Vanja looked around the room.
‘Hey Bosse, can’t we pull up the blinds a little? I can hardly see my way around in here.’
The guard smiled and put his hand on the door handle.
‘I’m sorry, Vanja, they have to stay like that.’
He closed the door behind him, but Maj-Britt never heard him lock it. It didn’t seem that he did. Vanja went over to the window and tried to adjust the blinds but it didn’t work. They stayed put. She gave up and looked around again. Went over to a picture and leaned forward, looking a little more closely. A view of a forest-covered landscape.
Then she turned round and swept her gaze over the room.
‘Imagine, I’ve wondered for all these years what these visiting rooms look like.’
Maj-Britt sat in silence. For all these years. Vanja had sat and wondered for sixteen years.
Vanja came over to the table and pulled out the chair across from her, looking almost shy as she sat down. Maj-Britt was in a daze. In such a daze that her nervousness was gone. It was only Vanja who was sitting there. Hidden somewhere in that strange body was the Vanja she had once known. There was nothing to be afraid of.
They sat looking at each other for a long time. Completely silent, as if they were searching each other’s faces for familiar details. Seconds and then minutes ticked by in inactivity and Maj-Britt’s trepidation receded entirely. For the first time in ages she felt utterly calm. The refuge that she had experienced in her youth that always surrounded Vanja was intact; it was possible to relax here, to stop defending herself. And she thought about Ellinor again: how she had struggled, finally reaching her.
It was Vanja who broke the silence.
‘Imagine if anyone had told us back then that we’d be sitting here today. In a visiting room at Vireberg.’
Maj-Britt lowered her eyes. Everything that had poured out of her now made room for something else. The realisation that so much time had been wasted. And that now it was all too late.
‘Have you been to a doctor yet?’
As if Vanja could hear what she was thinking.
Maj-Britt nodded.
‘When are you going to have the operation?’
Maj-Britt hesitated. She didn’t intend to lie anymore. But she couldn’t tell her the truth either.
‘How did you know?’
Vanja smiled a little.
‘I was smart, wasn’t I? Making you come here even though I had already told you about it. Because I did in my very first letter. What a person won’t do to get to see what the visiting rooms look like.’
The same old Vanja, no doubt about that. But Maj-Britt didn’t understand what she meant. She tried to recall what she had said in that letter, but Vanja hadn’t said anything, had she? Maj-Britt definitely would have remembered.
‘What do you mean, you already told me?’
Vanja’s smile grew bigger. Again her old Vanja flashed by. The Vanja who shared so many of her memories.
‘I wrote that I’d dreamt about you, didn’t I?’
Maj-Britt stared at her.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m just telling you what happened. That I dreamt it. Naturally I wasn’t dead certain, but I didn’t feel like taking a chance.’
Maj-Britt heard herself snort but she hadn’t really meant to. The explanation came so unexpectedly and was so improbable that she couldn’t take it seriously.
‘You expect me to believe that?’
Vanja shrugged her shoulders and suddenly was her old self. Something in the expression on her face. The more Maj-Britt looked at her the more she recognised her. Time had merely passed and worn out the casing a bit.
‘Believe whatever you like, but that’s how it was. If you have some better explanation that you’d rather believe, then be my guest.’
Maj-Britt was suddenly angry. She had come all this way, conquering her fears several times over to come here, and now had to listen to this. Then she suddenly remembered that she had also come to ask forgiveness, but she no longer felt like it. Not when Vanja was sitting there making fun of her.
There was a long silence. Vanja clearly didn’t intend either to take back what she had said or to offer any further explanation, and Maj-Britt didn’t feel like asking more questions. That might be taken as an acceptance of what she had just heard, and she didn’t really intend to play along. She really didn’t. She had been so sure that the explanation would be satisfactory in some way, though what exactly she was hoping for she didn’t actually know. The whole thing had been so confusing, so totally incomprehensible. But this was worse than the confusion; she didn’t want any part of this. Especially because not even in her wildest imagination could she have come up with any better explanation.
‘I know how it feels, I was so scared myself at first. But then when I got used to it I realised that it’s actually quite amazing. That something like that can exist that we didn’t know anything about.’
Maj-Britt didn’t really feel that way. On the contrary, it frightened her. If Vanja was right, there could be a whole bunch of things she knew nothing about. But Vanja didn’t seem to be bothered by it. She sat there quite calmly.
And then she continued the conversation, as if what they had just said was nothing out of the ordinary.
‘I’ve been offered a pardon by the government. In a year I’ll be released.’
Maj-Britt was grateful that the conversation had turned to something concrete.
‘Congratulations.’
Now it was Vanja’s turn to snort. It didn’t sound nasty, just a sign of how she felt.
‘It wasn’t me that sent in the application; it was someone on the staff.’
‘But that’s great, don’t you think?’