A Blessed Child (21 page)

Chapter 67

“And for once I was right,” said Palle Quist to his friend Isak as they had a cup of coffee together the next morning. “For once!”

After a long night’s sleep, they had all (everybody involved in any way in the production of
An Island in the Sea
) informed him, one after another, that, despite the horrible tragedy, they wanted to go ahead with that day’s dress rehearsal, and the premiere the day after.

“I mean…for once!” he repeated.

Isak said nothing. He did not appear to be listening.

“I think it’s for the best,” ventured Palle.

Isak nodded.

“Finishing what we’ve started, I mean.”

Isak nodded again.

“And it will be a tribute,” said Palle Quist.

He had given up trying to engage his friend’s attention and was talking more or less to himself.

“A tribute to Ragnar and to life. I think Ragnar would have appreciated that, in spite of everything. God bless him.”

Chapter 68

In his review of that year’s Hammarsö Pageant,
An Island in the Sea
—written and directed by the Social Democrat and energetic enthusiast Palle Quist—the impudent upstart from Örebro, the one with the silly name, expressed the view that it was time to take a break. Next summer, he wrote, enjoy the summer, enjoy the sunshine, enjoy the sea, and enjoy the special, beautiful natural world of Hammarsö! The best thing about this whole dismal amateur performance, he continued, had been the cinnamon buns and saffron pancakes served at intermission.

The audience was on the whole more indulgent than the reviewer from the local paper; it allowed itself to be carried along by the storyteller, by the sea nymphs and wood sprites, by Ann-Marie Krok’s halting meter and Erika’s singing.

Somebody said afterward that the youngest member of the cast looked like an angry little troll. The audience was unaware that Molly did not want be in the play. Molly wanted to go swimming. But Rosa and Isak said she had to be in the play. She could go swimming afterward, or the next day, but she had practiced all summer and couldn’t just back out at the last minute. She had a responsibility to everyone, Rosa said.

Molly stood squinting on the edge of the stage for a long time, and most people thought she had forgotten her lines—she was only a little girl, a small, skinny figure in a purple dress—but finally she opened her mouth and hurled the words toward them, one after another, loud and furious:

And now that night is falling

The full moon is bright as day

We are halfway between light and darkness

And halfway through our play.

And it could have been a success, thought Palle Quist the night after the premiere. They gave only one full performance. There was no encore performance the day after, as there had traditionally been. It could have worked. But there was something missing. Something that went wrong. He had been obliged to cut Ragnar’s monologue, and he mused for a moment on the strange, angry boy who had never wanted to play the part as written. He wondered how Ragnar would have performed in front of an audience: Would he have done anything differently? Then Palle put the thought to the back of his mind. Because it wasn’t that. It wasn’t Ragnar. It wasn’t even Isak. The closing monologue in rhyming verse had been not only about the longing of the dead for life and God’s confrontation with Satan but also about the whole political situation…the fleeing boat people in Southeast Asia, the terrorist attacks in Spain…the crucial election campaign in September…yes, everything! Everything! The sort of life people wanted to live—that was what it was about! It was the best, richest, most pregnant monologue he had written in his life, it was charged with meaning, brilliant and unconstrained.

But Isak had ruined everything.

Isak had ruined everything.

And then there was something else, something he couldn’t put his finger on, something missing. The reviewer was right. He was through being a playwright. He didn’t give a damn! Next summer he would just relax and enjoy himself.

Chapter 69

“Come hither and hear what I have to say, for they call me wise!”

The stage was dark and silent. The animals were sleeping. The wood sprites began to hum and the bird tamer, clad in green, played the flute. It was a simple, pretty tune. Then Isak made his entry from stage left, dressed in a black cloak and fake white beard, with a large leather-bound book under his arm. When they saw him, the wood sprites stopped humming, the bird tamer laid down his flute, and Isak positioned himself center stage and cleared his throat. He looked out over the audience. He cleared his throat again. He saw their faces and froze. He felt giddy, and as if he were going to be sick. He knew that Now! Now! Now! Now! it has to happen and I can’t do it, can’t do it. He heard someone in the audience fidgeting, someone coughing, someone saying: Hurrah for Isak Lövenstad! He bowed and smiled at the man who had shouted hurrah and thought, If I don’t say what I’ve got to say now, it will be too late. Everything swam before his eyes. It was cold. He had no choice. Or anything to lose. Not anymore.

Isak bowed again and then he spoke; he spoke loudly to be sure everyone would hear him.

“I apologize.”

Isak felt a great, heavy fatigue running through his body, as if he were underwater and could no longer resist; it would be nice to get home to Rosa.

“As I say, I apologize.”

He took a breath. It was over. He said: “But I seem to have forgotten my lines…I do not know what I am supposed to say.”

He gave a third bow.

“So I shall go now.”

Chapter 70

All the suitcases were packed and lined up in the hall—Isak’s big green one, with room for his papers and folders and books, Rosa’s and Laura’s practical black ones, Erika’s little blue one, and Molly’s big red one. Molly had the biggest suitcase of all. Molly’s case stood there in the hall, lording it over all the others, and when Isak went to lift it and carry it out to the car, he gave a loud groan. Not wanting to hurt his back, he decided to drag it after him through the front door to the open trunk. Molly, wearing the blue dress that just about covered her bottom, hop-skipped back and forth between his legs until in the end he had to ask her to go and sit in the car and be quiet. All the bed linen had been washed, ironed, folded edge to edge, and neatly piled in the linen cupboard. Rosa had been up since three o’clock on the last morning to get the house ready for their departure, and at eleven the drying cupboard was switched off for good that summer. Now it was empty and dark and cold in there. There was nothing hanging on the drying rails. Not Molly’s blue dress, or Isak’s socks and shirts and trousers, or Erika’s polka-dot bikini. The sheet of paper with the picture of the horned devil and the warning
THIS DRYING CUPBOARD IS NOT TO BE USED BY CHILDREN AFTER SWIMMING! ANYONE WHO BREAKS THIS RULE WILL BE PUNISHED WITHOUT MERCY
! was still on the door, fixed with a bit of sticky tape. Rosa had considered taking it down; it was in her nature to tidy, clean, clear out, and sort, and she liked to leave clean, smooth, empty surfaces behind her—yet, without really being able to say why, she left the sign there. The floors had been vacuumed and then scrubbed with green soap; the windows had been cleaned and covered with thin fabric to protect everything from the light and to stop anybody who happened to be passing that autumn from looking into the living room (at the armchairs, the grandfather clock, the writing desk) and perhaps getting the urge to break in. Her duster had touched everything in the house that could be touched; Rosa had stood on the top rung of the ladder; she had gone down on her knees and lain flat on her stomach; she had compressed herself into a little ball—not a single hook or sill or corner or patch of floor, under a wardrobe or bed, had been missed. The toilets had been scrubbed and scoured with blue cleanser, and when she had finished that (about two hours before it was time to go), nobody was allowed to go to the toilet again except once, just before they got in the car and drove off, and when you pulled the chain that last time, the water in the toilet was still blue. A final afternoon meal comprising cold meatballs, boiled potato, salad, and homemade lemonade was served, and consumed quickly around the kitchen table, and by then there wasn’t much to say to one another. The people around the table, a man and a woman and three children, had, as the house would have attested if houses could bear witness, already left. The house had washed them out of itself and remained standing there, clean and shut and uninhabited, ready for quieter and darker days and nights.

Chapter 71

Isak was at the wheel, with Rosa in the seat beside him. In the back sat Erika, Laura, and Molly. As the car passed the gate and the field of long grass, Erika turned around and saw the white limestone house disappearing from view in the back window. She said nothing. Neither did anyone else. Molly sang a song; that was all.
A memory, a memory, the stars are sweet, a memory, a memory, and the sky is blue.
Now the journey was the important thing. First the twenty-minute ferry crossing to the mainland. Then the tedious car ride to the airport. Then the flight itself. And finally the arrival at Fornebu in Oslo, where Erika and Molly would be met by their mothers, Elisabet and Ruth.

It was Erika’s job to look after Molly the whole way, because Isak, Rosa, and Laura would be taking a different route, by car back to Stockholm.

They found they had Ragnar’s mother’s blue Volkswagen Beetle in front of them on the ferry. She was sitting alone in the car. Erika couldn’t see her face, but noticed she had long, thin gray hair (Erika couldn’t remember it having been that long, or that gray) and a big gray sweater.

Rosa said quietly: “Don’t you want to go over? Say something to her?”

“Who?”

Isak’s answer was brusque and dismissive, but Rosa went on: “Ann-Kristin, Isak! She’s sitting there, in the blue car.”

Isak looked straight ahead.

“Why should I? What would I say?”

Rosa said: “I don’t know. That would be up to you.”

Isak shook his head.

“No,” he said. “I don’t want to. I’ve nothing to say.”

Chapter 72

It was now, at this time of year, that Hammarsö’s summer guests cleaned their houses, dismantled their garden furniture, stowed away their barbecues and barbecue equipment, hammock cushions, blankets, and oilcloths, cleaned out their fridges, jettisoned half-empty milk cartons, messy packs of butter, half-eaten casseroles and veal roasts, hot dogs, depleted packs of cold cuts, and cartons of eggs nearing their sell-by date. It was a shame to throw food away, but what could they do? The food couldn’t be left to rot, and it was too much bother to take it back to the city. And it was now that cars were crammed full of dirty clothes (because not many people had laundry rooms as Rosa did, with washing machines and drying cupboards), carryalls, plastic bags, large towels that had once been a luxurious white but were now grubby and gray and lay squashed up against the back window alongside bits of tent, cardboard boxes, tricycles, typewriters, golden retrievers, and cats that in some cases would be let or thrown or lured out of the car in some unfamiliar place far from the island, far from the city, and left to fend for themselves.

In Oslo, Molly lay in her mother’s arms and slept heavily. Every morning after they had got up, her mother said: “Give me a twirl, Molly! Let me see. I do declare you’ve grown some more in the night again!” And Molly laughed loudly, jumped down from her chair and spun round.

Yes, it was now that the island was emptied of people, the ferries no longer shuttled so regularly to and fro, the shop kept shorter hours, and the beaches lay deserted.

Hammarsö’s permanent residents could finally stretch their arms skyward and feel the clear, sparkling sunlight warming their bodies, their skin, their hands, their fingertips; warming them all before the autumn came in earnest sometime in November, with its catacombs full of wind and rain and darkness.

Chapter 73

And fresh storms came. The wind rampaged over the stony beaches, over the rock in the sea where young girls had played and sunned themselves, over the closed shop and the deserted roads. It forced its way into the houses, into the beds with the rolled-up mattresses, and into the corners that were no longer clean, dusted and redolent of green soap. If anyone had accidentally found themselves going down to the white limestone house sometime during the autumn (though nobody did), they might have asked themselves why Rosa had troubled to get down on all fours and clean and toil and sweat—hadn’t it all been in vain? There were black heaps of dead and half-dead flies on the windowsills. Admittedly many of the flies would come to life and start buzzing again when Simona looked in sometime in January to check on the state of the house. The flies would be swatted and swept out into the snowdrifts, but she wouldn’t find all of them, and, anyway, new heaps would form on the windowsills after she had gone. There were mouse droppings in the kitchen, in the bread basket, under the refrigerator, beside the telephone, and a real, live mouse was living in the cupboard under the sink. The mouse was living well, because Rosa had forgotten to empty and clean a shelf of snacks. Cheese puffs, among other things. Eventually, as the snow drifted down, it became almost as cold inside as outside, and when the wind decided to show its strength by knocking over Big Dick’s son (who was now well over seventy) on the road, causing damage to his hip so he had to start walking with a stick like other old men, it whistled and howled in people’s houses, and Isak’s was no exception. Fluff scudded over the floors from one corner to another: balls of fluff rolled and flew and gamboled and reshaped themselves into more balls of fluff and still more again; and then the darkness rolled in over the island, over sea and sky and heath and field; into Isak’s house, through cracks and holes and fissures and the slit between the curtains that never quite met when they were shut. Nothing remained untouched by the winter darkness. Not the armchairs, or the grandfather clock, or the blue china vase.