Astrid and Veronika (10 page)

‘There is nothing here that belongs to you,’ I said. ‘Nothing.’

And so my long wait began.

‘Now that the time has finally arrived, I am frightened.’ Astrid bent forward, arms crossed over her chest, her eyes on the grass at her feet. ‘I am so afraid.’ Veronika watched the bumblebee, still pursuing its solitary inspection of the strawberry flowers.

‘Would you like me to drive you there?’ she said. Astrid turned her face and looked at Veronika, but she said nothing. ‘I’ll come with you. Let me ring the home.’ Veronika sat with her legs stretched out in front of her, leaning back, her elbows on the grass.

‘I am not afraid of facing him,’ Astrid said. ‘I am afraid of facing myself.’ They sat in silence. Astrid leaned back in her chair with her face towards the sky, eyes closed. When she spoke again her words were slow, as if she were searching deep inside for them.

‘Such a long wait. I allowed life to slip away while I nurtured my hatred inside this house. Now I realise I made it my prison. I told myself I was safe here. I told myself I had to wait for the house to become my own. I chained myself to the house. Now I can see that all these years I have waited to be released, when all the time, the only bonds were those I made myself.’ She looked at Veronika and her eyes were filled with such grief that Veronika had to look away. ‘And now the time has come. I must face the truth.’

Veronika did not respond, just reached up and placed her hand on Astrid’s arm. The old woman had her eyes on the horizon, and when she spoke again she squinted, as if trying to focus on a point in the far distance.

‘I know now that it didn’t begin with my husband. It was inside me already when I married him.’ She sat silent, her head resting against the chair back. ‘It began here. It began in this house.’

I cannot remember that my father ever touched me. Not lovingly, not in anger. He was away for long periods and my only company was a succession of young girls who kept the house. When he was home he rarely came out of his study. He seldom spoke to me, and when he did it was usually in short sentences. Practical instructions, never personal. He never once mentioned my mother, and instinctively I knew not to. I don’t think I ever saw him properly — as a man, as a person. Children never see their parents as people, I suppose. Only later, when I looked at photographs of my father, could I see what he looked like. Very fair, with a perfectly symmetrical oval face, soft mouth, straight nose. The striking feature was his eyes — very light blue, like ice, and almost transparent, as if lit from behind. On a woman it would have been a beautiful face, but on a man the features were disturbing. Too beautiful. I used to be told I looked like my father, but I have never seen the likeness. I have never thought of myself as beautiful, not even when perhaps I was.

He wasn’t very tall and he was rather lightly built. His hands were very white, with long fingers. An academic’s hands, not a farmer’s. He was sent to Uppsala to university, but I don’t think he ever completed a degree. In those days it was unheard of here for anybody to go to university. It set him apart, absolutely. But when my grandfather became ill, my father was called back to manage the farm.

He had met my mother at university, I think. I have tried to imagine what brought them together: this weak, slight man and my tall, striking, laughing mother. It is impossible for me to understand. But just as we are unable to see objectively how our parents look, I think we are incapable of imagining their life together. I only know that all that was good in my mother died here. I have no way of imagining my father’s reaction. I remember only my own loneliness, my own grief. In my memory I am alone by the window as she leaves. Where was my father?

All his life, he wore his wedding band on his ring finger. On the other hand a gold signet ring on the little finger. In the evenings he used to sit in his armchair in the study, a glass of brandy in his hand, and the signet ring would make tinkling sounds as his finger tapped the glass.

I think it might have been easier if it had happened regularly. As it was, after that first time I lived in permanent dread, my ears alert to the slightest sound or movement in the house. Only when I knew he was away could I breathe properly.

It was just after school had finished for the year. Early summer, the year I was thirteen. I was upstairs in my room. I had picked lily of the valley and I was arranging it in two small vases: one for my desk, one for the bedside table. It was as if I felt the sound before I heard it. As if a preceding cold breeze alerted me. Then, the sound. He called me. The single word shot through the quiet house like a flash of ball lightning. My father rarely spoke to me, and never used my name. But here it was: ‘Astrid!’ His voice was not loud, yet it was a deafening sound, tearing up the stairs and into my room. The flowers dropped from my fingers and scattered over the desk. In an instant, the world where little girls like me picked lily of the valley vanished. I was in new territory, where there were only the two of us.

My father was in his study when I came down the stairs. He had pulled the curtains. He sat in his chair, glass in hand. I stood on the doorstep, rigid, my arms tight against my sides, my hands hard fists. With a nod of his head he beckoned me into the room. I stood in front of him and he stared at me. His pale eyes shone; in the dim light they glowed as if alight. They stayed fixed and expressionless on my body as he opened his mouth and told me to undress.

My stiff fingers struggled with buttons and clasps, while his eyes remained set on me, unblinking. When I stood before him naked his eyes moved slowly over my body. There was no sound: all was silent in this new world. After an eternity he gestured for me to turn around. I stood with my back to him, my eyes on a partly burnt log in the fireplace in front of me. The only sound was the rhythmic rustling of wool against wool, his arm against his trousers. Time passed. My entire youth passed.

Only when I heard his steps across the floor and the sound of the door closing did I turn around. When I bent down to gather my clothes it felt as if my body would never again be able to move properly. My feet were numb, my legs stiff and I trod the stairs with difficulty. I walked slowly across the upstairs landing, carrying the bundle of clothes in my arms like a dead body. I locked myself in the bathroom and filled the hand-basin with cold water. I rubbed my entire body with a washcloth until the skin burnt. Then finally I cried. I sat on the floor, with the washcloth over my face, and cried until I had no more tears.

Later, when I lay in my bed, the room still smelled of lily of the valley. I lay absolutely still, on my back, arms crossed over my chest. For a moment I saw myself from a great distance, as if observed from above. I saw every small detail: how my hair was still neatly plaited, the pattern of the bedspread, the white desk where the flowers lay scattered. And I wanted to make it right again. I wanted to bring the girl in the bed back to the world before. But I couldn’t. All I could do was to leave her where she was.

Veronika was poised with her hand in the air ready to knock when Astrid opened the door. She must have been standing waiting. The old woman had made no effort to make herself presentable: her trousers were the usual baggy corduroys, the shirt the checked flannel, sleeves rolled up.

When their eyes finally met over the roof of the car, Astrid’s were naked and wide open, gazing into Veronika’s with an expression of terror. Like a child’s, hiding nothing. It was just after nine when they left, and as they drove down the unsealed road a cloud of dust rose behind them. Astrid sat with her hands pressed between her knees, hunched, and staring straight ahead.

They drove in silence. There was more traffic than usual, because of the forthcoming long midsummer holiday. Veronika turned on the radio and tuned into the local station, which played light summer music. She kept the driver’s window slightly rolled down and the sound of the air competed with the music. Neither of them spoke for the entire drive and Veronica wondered if Astrid might be asleep.

They turned off the main road and arrived at the rest-home just before ten, in time for the arranged meeting with the head nurse. The building was a drab 1970s construction: three low structures, painted dark green and joined together by glassed passageways. No water spurted from the funnels of the small concrete fountain that sat in the centre of a circular flowerbed where wispy rose bushes struggled in the parched soil.

They walked up the metal steps to the front door and went inside. The reception area was empty and the still air smelled of detergent and dying bodies, bland food and forced cheerfulness. The small counter to the right had a vase of drooping cornflowers, but the seat behind it was empty. When Veronika pressed the bell a woman emerged through the door behind. The rubber soles of her shoes squeaked as she crossed the shiny linoleum floor. She was middle-aged, with a plain face and a solid body that seemed to have been poured into her uniform, which stretched over her breasts and stomach. Her smile was professionally comforting as she extended her hand to greet them.

‘I am Sister Britta,’ she said.

Veronika looked at Astrid, who stood passively, her hands hanging straight down. For a brief moment the nurse’s hand remained unacknowledged in the space separating the three women, before Veronika grasped it.

‘And you must be the daughter,’ Sister Britta continued.

Veronika gave Astrid a quick look, but the old woman remained immobile, her eyes vacant.

‘No, no,’ Veronika said. ‘Just a friend.’ She realised that the nurse had made a very plausible assumption. She was surprised to realise that she didn’t mind.

They were led into a small office with a desk and two plastic chairs facing it. The nurse took her seat behind the desk and indicated to Veronika and Astrid to sit down. Sun streamed in between the slats in the blind covering the window behind the nurse, leaving her face dark and outlined by frizzy hair, as if tangled in cobwebs.

‘Mr Mattson is dying,’ she said. ‘As I explained to Mrs Mattson on the phone, there is nothing more we can do for him. It’s been a very long process, but now it is a matter of days, perhaps hours.’ She clasped her hands on the desk in front of her. ‘Now, Mrs Mattson hasn’t been a frequent visitor . . .’ Her voice trailed off. ‘But as we are now talking about a very short time, a
very
short time, I thought she would appreciate the opportunity to say goodbye properly.’

Silence followed, and they could hear the sound of a toilet flushing and of metal clanking against metal.

The nurse nodded to herself, approvingly. Her clasped hands on the shiny surface lay still. Birds chirped, and a smell of freshly cut grass wafted in through the window. Outside, life went on; inside the small room, the presence of death was sucking up the air.

‘Let me see him.’

The words were spoken quietly, yet they seemed to still all other sounds. Even the birdsong seemed to pause momentarily. Astrid stood, supporting herself heavily on the back of the chair. ‘I want to see him now.’

He was in a double room but the other bed was unoccupied. The room faced north, and despite the warm weather it seemed cold, the air still and stale. Nothing in the room looked private. The body in the bed was as lifeless as the plastic-covered chair in the corner by the window and the grey-striped curtains that hung listlessly either side of the window. They stood at the foot of the bed and looked down on the immobile shape that occupied it. Veronika could see no signs of life. The face was a white paper mask, stripped of personality. The eyes were closed. The body seemed so light it hardly dented the mattress or the pillow, and there were no creases in the white cotton blanket that was stretched firmly over the bed and tucked under the mattress. It was a human being reduced to a neutral physical form: limbs and organs, but no identity. It was impossible to envisage the man who had once inhabited the body.

‘I have come to watch you die, Anders,’ Astrid said to the still body. ‘And I will be here until it is finished.’ Were they words of comfort? Or a threat? Veronika looked at the old woman, but she found no clue in her pale face. Astrid’s eyes rested impassively on the patient. She stood by the foot of the bed, not touching it, her hands clasped at her back.

Veronika left the room and walked back to the reception. The nurse was back behind the counter. She looked up and presented Veronika with one of her measured, professional smiles. ‘It is always difficult, but we manage it well here,’ she said. Veronika sat down on one of the chairs in the waiting area. Manage what? she thought. Did either of them have any idea of what was going on inside the room? What was going on between these two people? A dying man and his wife — or a woman with a life to end?

In the end Veronika walked outside and sat on the grass under some birches. It was well over an hour before Astrid came out onto the front steps. She stood there, squinting in the bright light, her hand on the railing, and Veronika walked up to her. She lifted her arms as if to embrace the older woman, but let them fall, allowing one hand only to rest lightly on Astrid’s arm as they walked down the stairs. They continued up to one of the benches fronting the dry fountain and the flowerbed and sat down.

‘It may take weeks. Or be over today. Nobody knows,’ Astrid said. ‘The doctor will be here at three.’

They drove to the nearest village for something to eat. There was a choice between a small café and a hotdog outlet. The café was empty and smelled of coffee that had been sitting on the hot-plate for hours. They sat down at one of the small tables with blue and white checked plastic tablecloths. There was no sign of human life. Veronika served them each a mug of scalding bitter coffee from the pot on the counter. As she sat down, a young girl emerged from the interior and they ordered a ham sandwich each. The food arrived quickly and was generous and fresh. Yet Astrid’s stayed untouched on the plate while she kept sipping the coffee.