But papa Pastor had, in other words, become a bit shy in regard to femininity, which implied certain things, not to mention at the dinner table, as it were. Maybe he was also thinking about the fact that his beloved daughter was in the process of growing up, going out into life, away from him. “Deaconship.” He got hold of himself again… which had been such a… um… challenge and source of happiness for his dear sister Liz and his dear wife: dear dear Shadow Inga-Britta who always smiled so pleasantly—it was true!—at all of the amusing phrases at the dinner table, considerately poured more brown gravy over new pieces of steak on everyone’s plates. With rowanberry jelly, mmmm, made from berries she picked herself.
The Manager, when he hears that, listens amused but quickly gets a rascallike glint in his eyes, familiar from other places, it strikes Maj-Gun. Of course the newsstand, and in some way, despite everything that has happened, how wonderful, what a happy recognition. And then says in a sober tone of voice that maybe we should have a small bit of snuff. “I knew your father when he lived here in the District.” He chuckles. “We were brothers in the Lions Club,” and ho ho ho, “at that man’s house, who is one of the nicest people I’ve met, there was a lot of open-mindedness. Oh, Maj-Gun, you’re a good storyteller, so lively, self-willed, enticing. But, unfortunately, your father, he probably isn’t fundamentally inclined at all.”
He was right of course, but in some way, what Maj-Gun could get irritated about at the newsstand, especially with Susette Packlén, was when someone did not believe her, when she was questioned about her stories that she liked to tell when there was an audience, does not bother her now.
Rather it was a bit nice not to be steered onto the right road but still, within this framework, I am not without space, can it be like that, with the Manager, that, here?
And the feeling, like a seed, the beginning of one, do you even dare say it—a rose, so powerful inside you. Back to reality again, it is not the newsstand, not the other apartment, the rooms in the attics, the rectory—but here?
“Maj-Gun,” the Manager starts, but then he does not really know what to say.
“Well, it was just a story anyway,” says Maj-Gun. “Manager, I like telling stories. And in some way, Manager, there is still a grain of truth to what you say. Or it should be like that. You carry something to its point in order to make it clear. Though sometimes in the newsstand I got the feeling that you can tell, say, whatever, as long as it sounds good, has flow so to speak. But it isn’t like that, Manager. You can’t say just anything.
“I mean, becoming a pastor. It was just a thought… among many others. At the time.
“And, Manager,” she adds after a little while, “we were a family, at the rectory, that liked telling stories… not my brother Tom of course, he would rather hold speeches and lectures. Reason. He can reason, he can. About almost anything. But I don’t want to reason about just anything. I want to say something I believe in.
“But we had quite a lot of fun together sometimes, there at the rectory.” And then, in the midst of all the emotion and warmth inside, she comes to the almost most important thing of alclass="underline" “And how is Father doing?”
The Manager smiles, says just fine and that he has been worried about her, of course.
“You know what, Manager,” Maj-Gun says, the last thing she says that strange, perplexing evening. “I think I’ve always wanted to become a lawyer too.”
The Manager smiles, tousles her hair, and then they go to bed—and that night, is it not as though he played Carmen, a rose you threw at me, a little bit louder than usual?
FLAMING CARMEN
ON HOLY INNOCENTS’ DAY, the twenty-eighth of December 1989, when Maj-Gun turns thirty, the Manager gives her The Law Book as a present. Bound in red, unbearably heavy and in small print, wrapped in glaring red silk paper with a similar indecently colored bow around it, which Maj-Gun tears apart in an attack of birthday girl happiness that knows no boundaries, as if all of the happy birthdays she has had that have lived their quiet lives inside her flame up in one moment, and she throws her arms around the Manager’s neck.
Remains clinging. A few seconds. An eternity. The Manager carefully but gently loosens Maj-Gun’s hands from his neck.
“Now I finally get to read articles,” Maj-Gun adds but softer, because both of them are a bit embarrassed. “At the newsstand I mean. Maybe the newsstand really is my calling.”
The Manager does not answer, does not look up, he is suddenly completely and entirely occupied with transferring the birthday cake from the cardboard box from the bakery in the town center to a cake plate that is really just an ordinary plate. But he has put a paper doily with edging under it so it will look extra festive: an Enormouscake, with green piping and a sugar bud, a small pink rose on top. And then there is coffee in the kitchen that must not be allowed to boil over and all the cups and saucers need to be set out and the silver spoons that he has six of in a special case, stored in a special cabinet in the living room.
Maj-Gun grows quiet, in other words, sits down on the chair and neither of them says anything for a good while.
I love you sweet child never change! But the Manager, who almost said that a long time ago in the newsstand and almost put his hand out over the counter in an almost irresistible eagerness to pinch Maj-Gun Maalamaa on the cheek. So overwhelmed by who she was, who she is, all her pretty quotes too, from “The Book of Quick-Witted Sayings” and otherwise, all her oddities. “I love you don’t ever change!” Or, now, two days ago, that evening when Maj-Gun found out about everything, for example that she had not murdered her friend as she thought and would not be spending the rest of her life in prison, and they had spoken about the future, what would become of her, later: how the Manager, when he had gone to his room on the other side of the wall that night, played Carmen like always, at a low volume, but still a little louder than usual. Or? And, as if in the midst of everything it had been a message to her, Maj-Gun. The rose that you threw at me—a seed that had been planted, the Manager, was it imagined? A seed that had grown during the night and the days that followed. Even if new music played on the record player, in the middle of the day too, Old Men’s Choir Singing in the Fellowship Hall, a choir in which the Manager as well as her own father, papa Pastor, had been members, sung the highest part—her father, “with true pastor’s vibrato in his voice,” as her father had said at the rectory once. Maj-Gun suddenly remembers how her father had said it, rascal-like, as it were, because regardless of how much her father liked singing, he had never really had much of a singing voice but he had, in other words, never made a secret of it either. More than generously admitted to himself, among others, the following: that the Manager had been as right as anything when he soberly claimed in the middle of Maj-Gun’s somewhat free-flying story where the Pastor had the lead role in another way that no, no father certainly had not been strict, not the least bit “Old Testament–minded” at all. Yes, of course, so right, for real. At papa Pastor’s there was, there is, a lot of open-mindedness. And Maj-Gun may have wanted to say that to the Manager too when they were listening to the men’s choir, but drag father into this now, in this mood during these days, full days, where everything that has been said, and not been said, all the silence and all the music have become one peculiar hidden message about the will to and the longing for touch. It is a rose blooming, but Manager, don’t you hear WHAT they’re singing? All possible invisible threads between them, and the Manager has, without a doubt, felt it too because in the middle of everything he cleared his throat and started, in an extra-objective tone of voice, to lament the lack of men in the District who enjoy singing, resulting in that the Men’s Choir, shortly after Maj-Gun’s father quit as vicar in the parish and received a new post in another municipality, had to be put down altogether. “He was a real enthusiast,” the Manager tried to explain further and the social life in the municipality in general owed so much to her father too… but then he suddenly grew quiet in the middle of that thought and that sentence, stopped. But the music, undeniably, roaring about roses, played on on the record player.