Up until then the day had been deceitfully good, which if you think about it is of course normal right before catastrophes. Sunny weather, insidious of course too, because in reality, summer has already thrown you away.
When it comes to the plan, it has been going back and forth in my head. Sometimes as if it hasn’t been there at all. But, confidence. Björn has been initiated, it will happen soon. It? That Björn will go to the cousin’s papa and talk some sense into him? Give all that money to the cousin’s papa and say: Well, Doris? Now we have, the cousin’s mama and Björn (and me, but that comes out later when everything is okay and we have, what, a party mood and the table has been laid in the parlor?), carried out our end of the agreement.
The cousin’s mama. Maybe Björn has spoken to her? And they have their own little secondary strategy, because they’re older and can think about the practical details better.
Björn and the cousin’s mama: I haven’t asked Björn about it directly, but the cousin’s mama and Björn talked to each other in the barn for a long time the previous evening.
On the morning of that day, after breakfast I tried winking in Björn’s direction, but he hadn’t had the chance to notice it. Rita was there of course. Always together otherwise, me and Rita. “Got something in your eye?” and sang happily, but thank goodness so softly that neither Björn nor anyone else heard: “Aha, I understand. Daj daj daa.” It didn’t exactly make things better because then I had even less of a chance to look in Björn’s direction in order to send signals about our agreement.
The fact that the cousin’s papa might occasionally count his hidden boot money has also flickered through my mind. From the beginning. Yet another factor that is taken away when considering if you should have a plan like this at all.
But I’m so little, of course. You can’t expect me to be able to think about everything. On the one hand that. On the other hand, a logical false conclusion that you can make exactly if you haven’t grown up yet, and I haven’t grown up yet; this, exactly this day, is actually the last day I am ever a child even though I don’t know that yet. A small thought here, or along these lines: “There’s always more money.” Which the cousin’s papa has a habit of saying pretty often, contentedly, as it were. On the one hand he meant, insinuated, his own money. All the money he has and that Rita is going to steal from him when she runs away as a teenager, which he has hidden somewhere. On the other hand there has also, in his tone, been something that can, by a sharp person, be understood as happy expectation. All the money that isn’t yours yet but that can be attained, get and have. That attitude, that money in general, makes you happy. And then of course you really become pleasantly surprised if you get even more money, in general so to speak. Especially if the amount you’re offered is in exchange for peanuts—my God, the house is big, there are several houses on the property, Doris, there’s probably room for everyone here—maybe doesn’t just match but rises above the amount you had asked for in the beginning. In addition to the fact that the “sum” I stole out of the boot, which I didn’t count, has taken on mystical proportions in my head and what the cousin’s papa wants to have for Doris is something I haven’t even paid attention to in the beginning, just a lot, granted—but in addition to that I have, in other words, seriously recently, while nothing is happening except that I am waiting a bit nervously, seriously started imagining that the cousin’s papa will be happy too. The cousin’s papa’s joy and the cousin’s mama’s joy and Doris’s joy and everyone’s joy—for eternity afterward, in the cousin’s house.
“Go and hang yourself, fathead.”
“Daj daj daa,” Rita has been singing in the yard, in other words, meaningfully, in the morning, after breakfast, Björn has gotten on the moped and gone to work.
“Come now, Solveig. Morning session. Training.”
And actually that has been the best thing of all.
He who likes Björn so much too, especially Björn out of all the children. Had given some money for the moped, and for the transistor radio, in the beginning. The boy’s practical skill. In contrast to the shitkids, really. Björn will certainly in some way find a way to put the plan into action. Solveig’s plan. I am in other words convinced of it by just looking at him, which I still don’t get a chance to do very often because of Rita.
“Daj daj daa,” Rita sings as it were, meaningfully.
“Come on now, let’s go and train a bit more.”
And in reality that has been the most fun. Not standing there pondering. Taking my blue swimsuit, my blue towel, Rita her red swimsuit, her red towel, and running on the path through the woods to Bule Marsh, jumping in. In peace and quiet, of course. Miss Andrews, the baroness, usually comes only to the very early morning session.
In the afternoon there has been big cleaning and scrubbing of floors and on days like this the cousin’s mama is always in a wonderful mood, she likes cleaning. She’s been singing unusually a lot this day. The cousin’s papa has been throwing darts from his chair in the yard. Plonk plonk. The darts on the board. He has better luck when he isn’t three sheets to the wind. Still, not in the center, not today. Not even the eight or the nine. Just like Rita who has been there, Rita is terrible at darts; the fact that she lacks precision is truly obvious when it comes to throwing darts. And Doris Flinkenberg has shown up as well. Wanted to join in. Been allowed to. Thrown darts around her in general. But she’s so little that it doesn’t matter how she throws.
And so little too that she can’t help Solveig and the cousin’s mama with the cleaning. Doris isn’t particularly good at cleaning either, though she’s careful not to say it out loud. Later, when she’s living in the cousin’s house and becomes older, it is still the cousin’s mama and I who continue having most of the responsibility for cleaning in the home.
The cousin’s papa has even been in an excellent mood out there in the yard, felt like some sober joking in the middle of the dart throwing. With Rita: about what bad dart throwers they are. “Have you tried poker, Rita?” Maybe it would go a bit better for Rita there, the cousin’s papa joked meaningfully, because in poker it isn’t really about the skill as much as the luck and the art of reading your opponent, which is decisive. You have to have a certain amount of patience. A real game of poker can take a long time. But you can learn patience, determination. The cousin’s papa knows to say, does Rita know that?
The cousin’s papa laughs and Rita has to get her act together to laugh too. I can see it. Rita can’t stand it when anyone tells her that she’s bad at something. But not even she talks back to the cousin’s papa when she doesn’t really need to. Saves her energy. Rita can do that, she will get better at it in time. A certain feeling for the right timing. Like when she has left and taken all the money out of the cousin’s papa’s new hiding place, which I don’t know about because it’s farther up in the future and after that day, the last day of childhood, I won’t be interested in things like secret stashes of money or anything that has anything to do with the cousin’s papa anymore, not—when it happens, and the cousin’s papa notices it, afterward. Then he’ll be completely perplexed, genuinely surprised.
And in some way also give in to her. Afterward. When Rita is no longer there, because she never sets foot in the cousin’s house or on the cousin’s property again after leaving the District when she goes to the Backmanssons’ after Doris’s death and she’s seventeen years old.