Evaporated a few seconds later—gone.
It is sometime during the summer of 1989 that Susette Packlén starts seeking out Maj-Gun at the newsstand again, more than just as a random customer. In some way expressly to see Maj-Gun, talk about this and that, pass the time. And she often stays there, hanging out. Perched on another stool, “the customer’s stool” as Maj-Gun calls it, a little off to the side of the counter behind which Maj-Gun herself is sitting. Or rather, standing in the doorway, as a smoking buddy.
Even though she really does not want to, or maybe that is the wrong way to say it because it is only when she is actually in the newsstand, listening to Maj-Gun talking the hind leg off a donkey (and it is always Maj-Gun who is jabbering away, Susette who is listening), that she simultaneously in some way regrets having come, almost does not understand why she is there, longs to get away from there.
But then again tearing yourself away without hurting Maj-Gun is not that simple.
Tearing yourself away at all. Which is a rather strange feeling.
And she would not have time of course. A bit later, in the fall, she gets a cat too, a white, long-haired abandoned summer cat from one of the houses she cleans, the beautiful Glass House on the Second Cape. Only partially purebred, has difficulty taking care of its coat properly, needs to be brushed regularly every day. And still quite the kitten: starved for attention.
And thus, of course, there is the cleaning during the day with Solveig. Susette likes her job, that is not it—just you get tired of being on your feet all day long, it sucks the energy out of you sometimes. And this particular summer and fall of 1989, Solveig has taken on, for her part and the company’s, the final cleaning for the newly built residential area Rosengården 2 in the woods rather close to the Outer Marsh where Solveig lives, though to the south, closer to the sea. But still, far too much work for just two people, especially if there are already signed contracts for other places. Joint projects where Solveig and Susette regularly clean together, and individual ones, where each cleans on her own. During the summer, Susette has, for example, been busy with the summer guests on the Second Cape as well; they need to have cleaning done by the company that has been her special area of responsibility for a long time. Such as the Glass House, being rented by a French diplomatic family: mother, father, and three children, two boys and a girl in their early teens, who have a habit of making music together on the veranda—the Winter Garden—in the evenings. A complete small chamber orchestra where all of the members are dressed in the same long red- or blue-and-white-stripped polyester blouses, the evening dress that they change into every evening around six o’clock, a domestic design from the best brand—but still… as if they were sitting there on the veranda in their pajamas, playing calming classical pieces, the sea behind them, wild, in revolt because it is very windy that summer.
White foam from the waves that crash against the windows and remains there as a stickiness, a hell to scrub away, something that is part of Susette’s work: hang on the windowsill, try and get at the crap from the inside, rig up an A-ladder in the water along the beach, wedge it into place between the rocks, and climb up and scrub, scrub… it is really stuck as said, so you really have to focus, she does not have time to think about much of anything else, such as hating the sea for example.
Or going to the cousin’s papa in the cousin’s house, which is located right behind the Second Cape behind a copse of trees, farther in toward Solveig’s former home, which Susette was immediately assigned as an individual project when Solveig hired Susette a thousand years ago and Susette had given an account of her work experience in which cleaning was not included but quite a bit of care work with the elderly and the sick, both at the private nursing home in the District and after that in other places.
“Can you take care of the old man?” Solveig had asked and added, “I’m going to say it like it is. I just can’t be bothered. But that stays between the two of us and for Christ’s sake, don’t ask any questions.”
And of course, Susette certainly said yes: she is used to old people, likes old people. And so maybe there was not anything particularly lovable about the old guy but there was not anything horrible or repulsive about him either. Tired, cranky, bulging from having drunk too much aquavit in the middle of a mess of shit and gloomy clothes and unwashed pots and pans and a sweet corroding stink of old sweat and alcohol and tobacco that hangs in the air in there. And of course, obviously, it must feel rather terrible to see that decay in person when it is your own home so she understands why Solveig does not want to go there herself.
But for Susette, who does not have any roots like that—mainly a job among others, and she has a habit of going there once or twice a week. Airing things out and doing the dishes and cleaning and what have you and when the weather is nice she quite simply forces the grouchy old man out into the garden so he will not be in the way while she was cleaning. He goes along with it most reluctantly of course, but in reality Susette has the impression that he protests mainly for the sake of protesting. Because he certainly must like having things cleaned up a bit and maybe he did not have anything against bickering with her; with a glint in his eyes too, “sweet tease,” the loneliness becomes quite lonely, having a bit of company.
Once, in the very beginning, when she had gotten the cousin’s papa out into the garden, she discovered a pistol lying on a pile of newspapers on the refrigerator. She took it, slipped it into her backpack, Fjällräven, among her things for the sauna, because she is going to the sauna later that evening, is planning on going there right after work, but something else comes up, and then the backpack is left hanging on a hook in her bathroom.
On the other hand, with Solveig, that old man the cousin’s papa is rarely brought up at all.
“How’s the old man?” Solveig asks now and then, mostly in passing. “Fine,” Susette replies, adding, “Still going strong. He seems to have nine lives.”
But then he dies after all despite everything, several years later, but still. Exactly in that year, 1989, when Susette starts hanging out with Maj-Gun at the newsstand again. A Thursday in the month of August he is lying on the kitchen floor in the cottage unconscious when Susette arrives there by bus and she calls for an ambulance, calls Solveig, and the old man is taken directly to the District Hospital where he dies that same night from a subsequent heart attack without ever having regained consciousness.
An old age regardless; he was eighty-two.
But then, that time, when she sees Maj-Gun again and starts hanging out with her, in the middle of her life—completely occupied with her everyday existence, work and hobbies.
In her life. In My Life, which she also starts thinking about in a particular way when she starts hanging out with Maj-Gun in the newsstand. Like a newspaper headline or something to write down in “The Book of Quick-Witted Sayings” (Maj-Gun’s notebook that she sometimes quotes from).
My life. With contours in other words, so nameable, chiseled.
“What happened with your admission interviews, Maj-Gun?”
“I don’t know.” Maj-Gun shrugs on one of those late evenings when they are standing in the doorway to the newsstand, Maj-Gun is smoking. Tosses the cigarette away, a spot of ember lands on the dark sidewalk on the asphalt in the twilight.
“Lost steam. I guess.”
“And then there weren’t any good opportunities to study at the new rental place either. Concentrating was difficult, to put it mildly. Motormouths, motormouths in that family. Djeessus, Susette. If you only knew—”