Mrs. Simonsson brought everything out, the guests ate and drank and became increasingly noisy. Laura was sitting between one of the Italians and a student from her father’s department. The student was as pale and timid as Laura, and ate cautiously. It looked as if he was having difficulties with Mrs. Simonsson’s food.
“Your father will become famous,” was the only thing he said to Laura during the entire dinner.
Laura didn’t know what that meant. She understood the word but not how this fame would affect her and her family. Famous, she thought, and imagined her father’s voice issuing from the radio in the living room and how he would appear on television.
She also did not understand where all the strange people had come from. There were never guests at the table and all of a sudden the room was bursting with unknown voices and laughter. Laura knew it had to do with the approaching fame.
She looked at her father. He spoke with food in his mouth, gesturing with the knife in his hand. He looked as if he wanted to stab his dinner guests. A spot of gravy on his shirt stood out like a flower. Laura saw how her mother watched him closely. But there was also an unusual expression around her mouth that could be interpreted as a faint smile.
Mrs. Simonsson carried out new tureens, dishes, and bottles. Everything disappeared at an incredible rate as if the guests were uncertain how long the hospitality would be extended. One of the biggest eaters sat directly across from Laura and she knew immediately who he was. Her father had talked about “The Horse,” a colleague in the department, who at present was shoveling in mounds of leek gratin, veal steak, and gravy with great relish.
After several mouthfuls “The Horse” interrupted himself, wiped his mouth on the napkin, struck his glass, and called for silence. His exhalations came intermittently across the table. As the speech progressed his pale cheeks were transformed. “Livores mortis” her father later called those glowing patches. “The Horse” continuously turned his knotted hands with veins like living worms under the blotchy skin, as if he wanted to strangle the linen napkin in his hand.
He began by describing the heights that Ulrik Hindersten had set his sights on and thereby started a path where only very few had been able to leave a mark. This got a rousing response, especially from Laura’s partner. He clapped and shouted something about the apt metaphor. Laura, who had been raised in the presence of Petrarch, figured that “The Horse” must have alluded to something in the writer’s work.
The speech was long. He talked about the meaning of obstinancy and her mother’s smile was extinguished. He talked about humility and several guests chortled. Even Ulrik smiled. “The Horse” spoke of Ulrik’s taking on Truth in single combat and now everyone laughed.
The student began to fidget when “The Horse” started in on the situation at the department. One of the Italians burped discreetly into his napkin. Someone tittered nervously. Mrs. Simonsson made an extra clattering noise with the dessert plates. Ulrik Hindersten’s colleague went on at full steam, apparently unaware of the reactions around him.
“There are powers,” he said, “that do not have the will nor the intellectual capacity to completely appreciate our host’s brilliant ability to shed light on Petrarch’s poetry. The contradictory elements of the medieval fourteenth-century mind… the complexity of man’s remorseful struggle for fusion with… for an understanding of… that Ulrik has already approached in a trailblazing manner in his dissertation… cannot be emphasized enough… with an envious pettiness the critics have put aside all scholarly… our hostess… charming daughter… a home that breathes… gathered… a pleasure… the fullest extent…”
He went on in this way. The horselike aspect in his appearance was reinforced as he became carried away by his own eloquence and neighing laughter. The guests squirmed nervously in their chairs; Mrs. Simonsson became more impatient as she was serving ice cream for dessert.
The colleague concluded his remarks with a toast. Laura felt a purely physical relief as the guests reached for their glasses. Her intuition signaled catastrophe.
Her father, on the other hand, sensed nothing. His good mood made him open a dusty bottle of Taylor’s when the guests left. It was a gesture of goodwill to her mother, who loved port. They sat in the bay window. Ulrik Hindersten was optimistic. He talked about buying a house in Italy. Laura sat down on the floor by her parents and listened. Her mother sat and listened dumbstruck to how detailed the plans had become. Outside Arguà, not far from Petrarch’s grave, her father had seen an old three-story house, admittedly in disrepair but fully functional. With the house came an olive grove and a garden that sloped to the west. He described almost passionately the knotted olive trees and the little terrace with a pergola where grapevines created a pleasantly filtered light and coolness.
“We can live there large parts of the year,” he explained. “You can cultivate the garden and I can do research. Sometimes I will of course have to travel back to Sweden but I think the department will only be happy if I am not there so often,” he said, smiling with rare self-irony.
Her mother didn’t say anything, just stared out into the garden.
“You’ll have to leave the apple trees, but you’ll get oranges and olives instead,” Ulrik said and placed his hand on hers.
Laura didn’t know if it was the unexpected show of affection or the thought of the garden in Italy that made her mother suddenly burst into tears. Only later did she understand that her mother was more clearheaded than her father. She had known there would never be an olive grove.
“It won’t present any difficulties for Laura either,” her father continued. “Her Italian is as good as mine. She’ll adapt. Don’t worry.”
Laura shivered. How many times had she replayed this scene in the bay window to herself? She remembered every line, every expression, and her mother’s beautiful but sorrowful, almost transparent profile.
It was as if she did not have a body, as if her father were speaking to a creature whose veil-thin skin contained something immaterial.
Laura reached out and grabbed her mother’s ankle. The answer was an almost imperceptible head movement.
Several months later-when the garden was blanketed under the first snow-her mother returned to the topic of the dinner and especially “The Horse’s” speech.
“They’re not like other people,” she said. “When they say one thing they mean another. Remember how ‘The Horse’ talked, how he praised your father. Everything was a lie. Everyone sensed it, everyone except your father. If the decision to appoint your father to the professorship had been made, then ‘The Horse’ would not have said a single word, perhaps would not even have come for dinner. But he came, ate like a horse, and deliberately talked nonsense. He enjoyed it. He knew your father would never receive his title.”
“But why did he say those things?” Laura asked.
“So the fall would be even greater. The higher he could get Ulrik the greater the disaster. It’s like that china figurine,” her mother said and pointed to the figure of a girl in the window. “If it topples out of the window it will break in two, but if you drop it from a great height it will smash into a thousand pieces.”