But otherwise, Solveig, Rita: it is obvious that it was Solveig and not Rita who came to the rescue in the swimming school, no doubt about it, seriously.
Back then she had not needed more than a few seconds in Rita’s company to realize it. Businesswoman of the Year’s two-window ice cream stand on the square where Susette and Rita had worked together for a few days before Susette was transferred to the strawberry fields in the middle region of the country by her employer.
Rita Rat with higher prospects: would never have lifted a finger to help anyone without thinking about what was in it for her. Could clearly be seen on her face. Rita’s sullen silence, a mute rage in the air, tangible like an approaching thunderstorm. A trembling point of power, collected energy. Certainly fascinating but it had not interested Susette any further, she was preoccupied with her own problems. Some pangs of conscience for having quit her job at the private nursing home for the elderly and infirm where she had a full-time position. “They will be so sad, the old sick men and women, they are so attached to you,” the manager’s farewell words echoing in her ears and a certain disappointment, which she had had her hands full trying to hide. The ice cream stand, was this it? The J.L. kerchief and Rita Rat grumbling beside her: is this what she had longed for in the quiet hospital corridors where she had stood in front of the window and looked out over the square on warm spring days, scoops of ice cream on cones, sweet tastes, wild strawberries, pears, and chocolate?
Had not really made heads or tails of those thoughts either, so what she had done at the ice cream stand with Rita Rat was what she had already been good at, at the time: making it look like she was sleeping. But she was not sleeping, was as alert as could be, conscious of everything going on around her. A peculiarity she in other words still has, and Solveig in the company car can sometimes get annoyed about it. Some mornings in the car for example when they are heading into the city by the sea and need to get an early start and Solveig picks her up at the first bus stop by the main country road outside the town center, where Susette has walked all the way from her apartment in the complex on the hills on the north side; how she then sits there and dozes next to Solveig who is driving and playing the radio or one of her old cassette tapes. As they approach the city, how Solveig turns the volume up to an insufferable level in order to wake the bear who is sleeping, as she says. But completely unnecessary, which is proved by Susette who, several hours later in the middle of the working day, suddenly just starts rambling loudly about the high water level from the weather forecast or singing some song, and the girl she moves in the dance with red, golden ribbons, which Solveig was playing in the car that morning.
But in the car Susette is startled by an unpleasant surprise, the sound buzzing through the front of the car, she straightens her back, says grouchily, “Thanks for saving my life Sister Blue. I am so damned grateful.”
“And with these words I give you Susette Packlén,” Solveig says in turn and then you are supposed to remember what no one remembers, what “these words” were, that is to say what Jeanette Lindström had said when she and Susette got into an argument while catering and Jeanette pushed her employee up to Solveig in the middle of her wedding.
But joking aside. Sister Blue, Sister Red—or Rita Rat, no more about her. I was Sister Blue. Except one thing. Susette can certainly understand exactly what it is like to be the shapeless one of two who are so alike on the outside.
The other, the one off to the side, whom no one has any real memory of. Because it is true after all, also for Susette. You do not remember Solveig, you remember Rita.
And then to just be left behind alone when the other has left for good.
Left at the childhood home, the cousin’s property, just that old man, the cousin’s papa, whom Susette always cleaned for and visited and looked in on sometimes as part of her work responsibilities and who had died in the late summer before that fall.
“What are you going to do with the house?” Susette asks Solveig after some time has passed. Solveig shrugs her shoulders, answers that it is not hers. The old man left everything to her brother. The whole shitload, Solveig clarifies, spitting out the words, poorly restrained wrath bubbling under the surface, Susette has never seen her so angry so angry. “That property still has a certain value after all.”
“You have a brother?” Susette asks in surprise while at the same time realizing how stupid the question is. Of course she knows, has always known. Just had not really thought about it.
“Of course I have a brother,” Solveig hisses impatiently. “Bencku. Don’t you remember anything?”
“Djeessuss!” rushes out of Susette’s mouth, because in that moment something else has occurred to her of course. The Boy in the woods. Bengt. My love it is pure and true. Maj-Gun at the newsstand. Susette just cannot, even though it is unsuitable, hold back a little laugh.
“What are you laughing about?”
“Nothing, sorry. But shit, Solveig. Seeing as how you’ve been stuck with everything.”
“I’ll be fine,” Solveig says, cutting her off, collected again. “Business is good. There are loans from the bank.”
“That brother,” Solveig asks carefully. “Where is he now?”
Solveig laughs shortly. “Djeessuss. Who knows? And I don’t mean anything mystical by it. To hell with him. That’s it. And don’t ask me where it started for him. Nowhere, everywhere. Being adrift, more shit. He is drawn to it, so to speak.”
And that has almost been the most Solveig has ever said about herself in that way, in the company car, or while working.
Because Solveig and Susette, they do not exactly talk about personal matters, whether they are cleaning or riding in the company car together. So, seriously, they do not talk about anything really. Ordinary things and that jargon they have, isolated observations from various cleaning projects. Susette about the Frenchman on the Second Cape, for example. Not about the sea or the music on the veranda and all that, but about the floor-length polyester blouses that the entire diplomatic family, mother father and three children, change into every evening when it is not about representation but having spare time, whether or not they are making music. The French family’s idea about how a real summer archipelago life should be lived, running around in pajamas on the cliffs.
On the other hand, with Solveig, in generaclass="underline" it is good. Stories; old stories, been there done that, it blows away. Traveling with Solveig in the company car—that year, the last year Solveig and Susette clean together and in general, Solveig gets a new car, a Volkswagen Transporter, marbled gray, four-wheel drive. And Solveig who plays the radio, the news, the weather forecast or her old cassette tapes. Folk songs, Micke’s Folk band, And the girl came from her lover’s meeting, the volume higher, less exorbitant.
With Solveig during the day, but actually, how do you know a person? How do you get to know them? By talking, endless arguing about this and that, stories, stories about life and death and success and adversity and all the experiences you have had? Nah. That is not the only way, Susette knows. Because with Solveig, despite the fact that they never share information about themselves—when Solveig says something for real, something important about herself, it comes in passing—but still, Susette knows exactly who Solveig is. And that both of them, she and Solveig, in some way are alike. Not like twins, but parallels so to speak.
And besides, does everything have to be attributed to something that has happened, something in the past?