Astrid and Veronika (9 page)

‘Come with me,’ he said, holding both my hands. ‘I’ve forgotten how to live without you. I can’t remember how I used to get by. Please come with me, Veronika.’

I looked at his face, scanned every minute detail and stored the images. The fair skin stretching over his forehead, the reddish-blond hair rising from an intricate pattern of vertices. The small scar on his upper lip. The chipped front tooth. Had they happened at the same time, the lip and the tooth? I knew so little. And what I knew, I was already treating as history. Observing, recording, storing. I tried to imagine how he would age. What he would look like as an old man.

He turned away and lay on his back, his arms clasped under his head. I watched his profile, memorising every line.

‘I lie awake after we have made love and watch you,’ he said. ‘I worry that you will quietly pull back the covers and slip away if I close my eyes. Slip away like a deer into the night.’

He stretched out a hand and pulled me towards him. We lay still. My eyes were closed and I filled my head with his smell. I could hear cars passing in the street below and their headlights painted drifting patterns on the ceiling. The gas fire hissed.

He left on a Saturday morning. We had agreed that I shouldn’t come with him to the airport. We sat at the table drinking coffee. It was still dark outside.

‘I have something for you, Veronika,’ he said, and pushed a small parcel across the table. ‘I want you to open it after I have left, and I want you to use it often.’

I held the parcel between my palms, struggling not to cry. ‘I have nothing for you, James,’ I said.

‘Just give me a smile,’ he said.

And it was the hardest gift to give.

In the silence a blackbird started singing hesitantly. Astrid stood, leaning heavily on the table, her movements awkward, as if her joints were aching. She pushed the chair back, taking the time to make it a gentle, soundless process. She walked around the table, bent forward and took Veronika’s face in her hands. Her palms on the young woman’s cheeks, she looked at her intently for a moment.

‘Love,’ she whispered. ‘Always remember your love.’

She dropped her hands and crossed the floor. Her feet made no sound. Veronika turned her head and her eyes followed the figure slowly making her way into the hallway. She looked at the feet with the too-large socks, the shirt wrinkled across the back. The thin hair on the back of Astrid’s head. She loosened her clasped hands and let them drop to her lap, inhaling deeply, as if she had been holding her breath for a long time. She heard the front door open and close, and when she looked out the window she saw the old woman treading slowly through the grass, gradually merging with the lingering mist. And she put her hands to her face and cried.

 

Summer arrived abruptly, the week before midsummer. Veronika fitted mosquito nets over the windows so she could keep them open and create a breeze through the house. The birch trees went from sheer pale purple through shy green to full summer exuberance in a few days, and the delicate bluebells covered the meadows with a quivering brush of purple. The bird cherry trees blossomed and filled the air with perfume over a few intense days, then the petals fell like snow. When Veronika walked along the river she was passed by children on bikes on their way to the lake for a swim, towelling robes fluttering in the wind behind them and large rubber tyres across their shoulders. School had finished for the year; summer lay ahead, open-ended. She hadn’t seen Astrid since the evening of the dinner. And when she passed her house the kitchen window was opened only a crack. She could see no life inside.

In the village the preparations for midsummer festivities were under way, carrying with them an atmosphere of warm anticipation. The open area along the river beyond the church had been mowed and stands erected on one side. When Veronika walked past the shop, people were lingering outside in the sun, chatting and smiling, their faces turned towards the sun.

Two days before Midsummer’s Eve, Veronika walked across and knocked on Astrid’s front door. It was late afternoon and although the sun was still high in the sky a lazy drowsiness filled the air; birds and insects seemed to be resting. She knocked once and waited. Then again. She heard no sound. She tried the handle and the door opened. She stood on the threshold, waiting. ‘Astrid?’ she called, the sound tearing the still darkness inside. There was no response. Leaving the door open, she stepped inside. As her eyes adjusted she could see the hallway ahead, all doors closed. She stood still, her ears alert, but heard nothing. She walked up to the closed kitchen door and listened again before pressing down the handle.

The old woman sat at the table, her hands around a mug on the table. The curtains were drawn and the sun filtered through the faded print material, filling the room with a tired, ochre light. Veronika felt as if she had entered a dream, a surreal, staged scene.

Astrid gave no sign of having noticed the visitor — her eyes were fixed on the window. Veronika walked up to the table and sat down. She stroked the cracked oilcloth with her palm, and waited. Eventually she said, ‘I am sorry to intrude like this, but I was worried. I haven’t seen you for almost two weeks. Just the open window in the morning.’ The old woman said nothing. ‘And Friday is Midsummer’s Eve. I was hoping you would come with me to the village and watch the raising of the maypole.’ She looked at her neighbour, her words hanging in the air. Astrid remained silent, her eyes fixed on the window. A fly buzzed helplessly on the windowsill.

‘He is dying,’ she said, her eyes turning from the window and looking straight into Veronika’s. ‘My husband is dying.’

Veronika’s stared back, uncomprehending.

‘They rang from the rest-home.’

Astrid’s fingers ran over the rim of the empty mug in front of her and her eyes returned to the window. ‘He’s been dying for such a long time. I have waited for so very long. But now they say it’s imminent.’

Veronika stood up, put the kettle on and put two fresh mugs on a tray. ‘Let’s go outside,’ she said, gently touching Astrid’s elbow. Astrid slowly obliged, clearly preoccupied with her thoughts.

Before taking the tray outside, Veronika carried Astrid’s folding chair to the back of the house and placed it near the wall in the light shade from the apple trees. She returned for the tray and Astrid followed her.

The wild strawberries were in full bloom, the white flowers like snowflakes on the grass. Veronika guided Astrid to the chair and sat down on the grass beside it. A large bumblebee wobbled over the flowers, as if dazed by the abundance. Veronika rested her back against the warm wood of the wall behind her. Astrid sat still, her eyes closed and the coffee mug in her hands.

‘Such a long wait,’ she said. ‘A lifetime.’

I have longed for this death since the day I was married. Sixty years. Now that it is here, I understand that it has no significance. That it was never about him. What I have thought started the day I was married actually began much earlier. The marriage was just the defining moment. It was the day I gave up my life.

It was June. I had willed the weather to remain grey and cold but the day turned out summery, with a fiercely blue, empty sky. The bells ringing. A grand ceremony. The priest came from Uppsala, the flowers from Stockholm. Lily of the valley, large and waxy with a sickly perfume. I wore the traditional costume, not the white dress my father had requested. The one thing I decided.

The evening before, I sat in my room with the box that held my mother’s wedding dress. I opened the lid, lifted the dress gently and held it against my body. I put it to my face, closed my eyes and inhaled. But there was no smell: the dry silk rustled against my skin but it had nothing to say. I set the veil on my hair and sat naked on the chair in front of my mirror with the lace falling over my shoulders. I looked at my face, the pale oval with the blue eyes staring back at me. I traced my eyebrows with my index finger. Then the ridge of my nose. My lips. I held up my hands and looked at them, stroked the creamy skin on the undersides of my arms. I loosened my braids, combed my long hair with my fingers and let it fall down over my breasts and shoulders. My eyes took in every detail of my body. The exact colour of the skin. The pink nipples. The blonde pubic hair. I cupped my breasts, stroked my flat stomach, my thighs. I wanted to memorise it all before I let it die.

In the morning I dressed in my costume. The thick woollen skirt, the vest, the linen blouse, the apron, the shawl. The shoes with brass clasps and the red woollen stockings. I walked down the stairs in the heavy outfit and into the summery day, feeling colder than I had ever been before. Afterwards, people said that I wore the funeral version — the dark apron, no jewellery. It is not true. But I wore the costume instead of my mother’s white dress, and it wasn’t enough to warm me.

My husband married a farm. He married the land and the house. The fields with rye and potato and flax. The orchard and the meadows. The forests and the timber. And he married the family name. My father thought he had negotiated a future for himself and for the farm.

I married death.

The church was so full there were people standing at the back. My father was hosting a large dinner afterwards, and guests had travelled from as far as Stockholm. Many had come just to look. I walked up the aisle with my father and my hand on his sleeve was numb. Even now, after all this time, I can see the face of the priest, his brown eyes locking with mine. He was an old man, overweight, and I could see that he was panting. There were drops of perspiration on his brow. But his eyes were kind. I set my eyes on his and willed them to stay there. I remember nothing else.

Afterwards I watched the backs of my father and my husband as they were signing the ledger. They looked like business partners, signing a successfully completed transaction.

I was eighteen years old.

I walked out onto the steps of the church, my arm resting on my husband’s. Guests threw rice over our heads and I could see their smiling faces, their moving lips, but I heard no sounds.

We all returned home for the reception. My father had arranged for the barn to be cleared. The wide doors on either side were open, and the frames had been trimmed with branches of birch. Long tables were set up inside, covered with white tablecloths and decorated with wild flowers. A group of local fiddlers had been hired to play and as our carriage drove up the music began. Guests congregated, drinks were passed around, the fiddlers played, but to me it all swirled in a silent vortex. Deathly silent.

As we were asked to move inside and sit down to eat, my father took my hand, raised it and turned me slightly away from him. His eyes swept over my body before he bent forward and let his lips brush my ear. He said nothing, but the smell of brandy lingered around my head. He abruptly dropped my hand and we walked inside.

I sat at the bridal table all evening but I heard none of the speeches, tasted none of the food. Time had ceased to exist. When after dinner my husband stood, stretched out his hand and indicated the dance floor, I found it so extraordinary that I laughed. He took my dead body in his arms and awkwardly moved us around the floor, while a wall of sweating faces looked on. As soon as the guests joined the dancing, he released his hold on my waist, turned and left the floor. I stood for a moment while the throng of guests revolved around me. When I left the barn it was as if the swirling mass parted to grant me passage.

Outside, the white day had given in to a white night. There were no stars in the pale sky. I could hear laughter from behind the lilacs — a man’s guttural bursts mingling with a woman’s pealing giggle. I walked around the house and sat down on the grass by the strawberry patch. I lifted the apron to my face, but I had no tears.

Later, I lay in the bed upstairs in the master bedroom. My father had moved to the smaller bedroom on the other side of the landing and he had had the girl make up the big bed for us. Nothing had been changed from the time when my mother had lain in the bed. It was as if I could feel the outlines of her body, where my body fitted. I lay on my back, my hands folded on the white linen sheets over my chest. I twisted the plain gold wedding band on my finger and looked out the window. The bird cherry trees were covered in blossom and petals fell like snow in the light breeze. I could hear guests laughing in the garden.

The sun was over the horizon when I heard his steps on the stairs. He opened the door clumsily and I could hear him undressing, his shoes falling to the floor. I lay still, my eyes closed. The room filled with his exhalations, his smell, and I struggled to breathe. He fell into bed, his body hot next to mine. I sank deeper into the recess of the mattress.

He was such an insignificant man. The first time I met him he stood beside my father, a pale copy. Smaller, younger, yet somehow similar. He was short, and already balding at twenty-five. His eyes looked out on the world through thick glasses, without expression.

As he lay beside me in the strange no man’s land of the June night, his eyes were closed. He rolled over and lay on top of me, pushing my icy body ever deeper into the mattress. His hands were on my skin, his breath in my ear, but my eyes were on the ceiling, following a crack from one corner across the entire white expanse. My body rested in my mother’s.

When the sun reached the tree outside the window, I got up. I had to climb over his sleeping body. He was on his back. His face was empty, his eyes closed and his mouth half open, with a trickle of saliva running down his chin. I stood by the window looking out, but I saw nothing. Then behind me I heard him speak, his voice a hoarse whisper.

‘It’s all mine now, you know. Everything you can see through that window. All mine.’ He cleared his throat loudly, coughing up phlegm. I turned to look at him.