And speaking of the cousin’s house, what it had been like when Solveig had gotten there and found her brother the next morning, “those cigarette butts, in all of the ashtrays.” No lipstick on the filters, but cigarettes of such a brand that certainly no one else in the whole District smoked except one, whom Solveig personally happened to see with her own eyes somewhat later, one day in January, when she and Maj-Gun had run into each other on the square and Maj-Gun had been weighed down with things from her old place of employment. All of those things Maj-Gun lost hold of in the midst of everything and the splendor spilled over the square, including those unusual cigarettes. As obvious as she could be, Solveig remembers, she personally helped pick up Maj-Gun’s belongings.
You still seem convinced that it is a question of some sort of Immaculate Conception Virgin birth, the storks in Portugal?
Maj-Gun had the desire to point out in a loud, old newsstand voice in the middle of the picturesque café silence among the pastries and the homemade textiles. Djeessus, Solveig. I’m just saying. Djeessuss.
But not gotten anything out at all, instead she just sat there with her mouth open and in the midst of it all understood that it would not matter for Solveig if she were to mention the Fjällräven backpack that she had also seen when she looked in through the window and seen what she had seen, the terrible. Susette had personally called—from where? Certainly from the house. And then she had gone on her way and taken the backpack too.
But suddenly, at the café, Solveig stopped herself and almost started laughing.
“But take it easy, Maj-Gun. For Christ’s sake. Let it go. What do you think of me anyway? I’ve never thought it was you. I know. Tobias told me—about Susette’s apartment. How he found you there and that you were pretty miserable and feverish and made sure you got to the rectory and were able to rest.”
“Tobias?”
And Solveig later said, that yes, she and Tobias had been good friends, and now that he was gone, how she missed him sometimes, so much that she could be completely upside down in the middle of the day. “Sometimes you realize how much you care about someone and how much you value him first when it’s too late. That you should have shown your gratefulness. Not much would have become of me if it hadn’t been for Tobias. He was always there, always, for everything—”
This and more, Solveig has talked for a while so that without being mentioned directly Tobias also knew that the house had been set fire to and maybe he had possibly had, via some brother at the Lions Club, connections at the insurance company too.
“But I guess that’s the way it is, Maj-Gun,” Solveig said at last, in general, as it were. “Been there done that.
“But one more thing, Maj-Gun, which I still want to say. That regardless of Tobias or anything else, I would never seriously have been able to think poorly of you. Because this is how it is with me, Maj-Gun. That either I like someone or I don’t… and I liked you from the very beginning. That’s how I am—”
And Solveig suddenly started telling a story from her childhood, a Christmas bazaar in the fellowship hall, some fruit basket her brother Bengt had won in the lottery and he had immediately given it, the entire basket, to their new “cousin” Doris Flinkenberg who had recently come to live at the cousin’s house. Just because Doris wanted it and she was so little after all, and besides, she had had such a terrible time with her real parents there somewhere in the Outer Marsh and now that she had finally gotten a real foster home she deserved all the joy and love and all the presents she could get in this world.
But then the Pastor’s daughter Maj-Gun had been there wearing a terrible mask over her face and stolen the largest green apple from the basket. Scratsch, just stuck her hand right through the cellophane, not paid attention to Doris, just taken it for herself.
“That was funny,” Solveig determines in the presence of Maj-Gun who of course has no memory of it. Who remembers things like that? “Though I didn’t dare laugh then. It was such a shame about Doris. You couldn’t say anything bad about her. And yes—well. Despite everything that happened later, you know she killed herself, of course; I just didn’t like her.
“I guess that’s my secret, Maj-Gun. Because Doris just came and took everything away from you.”
“You remember all the cuckoo stuff later.” Maj-Gun could not help but smile.
“But that’s how it is for me, Maj-Gun, as I said. With Susette too. She is who she is. Did you know that I saved her life once when we were little? She was close to drowning, in the swimming school. I was wearing a blue bathing suit, was Tobias’s teacher’s assistant, I was Sister Blue.
“And she, Susette, had helped the cousin’s papa for several years and God knows that there was a revolver lying around in that house and she didn’t do anything with it—”
Solveig grows quiet for a few seconds, but then she says again, in conclusion, as it were: “Been there done that, Maj-Gun. That’s how it is, has been for me, with Susette too. Like with you. You either like someone or you don’t—”
So: no more about that. They had gone their separate ways at the square in the town center, Solveig, Maj-Gun Maalamaa. Solveig asked again, as if in passing, “And how long are you thinking about staying?” Hesitation, and for a few seconds that wildness in Solveig’s eyes.
The girl is there of course, the child, an old agreement. “Not very long. I’m going to see my brother, then I’m leaving.” The child, one had to carefully deal with everything important, for her sake, Johanna’s.
Been there done that. Maybe it is like that. In the middle of the square in the town center, which had been transformed into some sort of parking lot; both of them had their cars parked there, so not because of that. No newsstand at the square either, incidentally. Though Maj-Gun there next to her Volvo did not ask Solveig who got into her Toyota with the name of the real estate agency on the side about the newsstand. Not even in passing, as if it had been raining: “And where is the newsstand these days?”
It has not been raining, but snowing a little, hesitant flakes, sparse, descending. A horde of youths who have come wandering across the square, filling it with their own business for a few minutes. Laughter and jokes and shouts: no ordinary country bumpkins, no sir. There has been something precious about them, exclusive, talent… the theater, the dance, the music. And in the middle of the group someone in particular catches your eye: a girl with big, teased hair that falls around her, over her back, shoulders, small small butterfly clips in her hair, many, many, shimmering. The most merry, the obvious center point: suddenly she stays behind the rest and runs out among the cars to the very center of the square and stands there laughing and looking around, everyone looks at her as if she is on a stage, and catches snowflakes, slowly falling around her in the chilly November day, with her tongue.
A bewitching girl, who looked at everyone, looked at no one, laughing, snowflakes on her tongue.
“Come on now, Ulla, we’re going to be late!” one of the youths who is waiting for her in the group on the other side of the square calls out.