Breathless (5 page)

“No, she does
not
,” says the teacher.

All that remains is for me to leave.

That Mama has already lost is obvious by her humiliated silence. I slide off the sweaty plastic seat—another reason to escape from the classroom with its bad vibe and stagnant air. Lukas is probably prowling around outside like a criminal. He's the one they are going to talk about now. He's the one who has made me into a fully fledged truant at such a tender age. That's the last thing I hear the teacher say before I race along the corridor and out to freedom.

—

Lukas is idling away the time on the fence between the playgrounds. The older children are not allowed to enter the area for primary children, so he's sitting there without letting his feet touch the forbidden ground. The tractor tire smells of burned rubber. I spin around and around on it until the heavy chains creak.

“Come on,” he says, but I've just finished spinning and can't stand up. When I bend my head backward the clouds above me are sucked together in a swirl.

I know that they can see us through the window. You're going to get into so much trouble, I'm thinking, and maybe I say it aloud, because Lukas suddenly looks as though I've struck him across the mouth, although it was meant as a warning and not as a threat.

“Who hit you?” I usually ask when I can see that it has happened again. One shouldn't ask, but I'm just a child and so I do. Lukas, on the other hand, is old enough to know that it's best not to answer. Anything you say can be used against you. At school no one seems to have the courage or the desire to touch him, so it's not difficult to figure out where the bruises come from.

—

“Lukas is twice your age, why aren't you with your classmates?” the teacher had asked while we sat waiting for Mama, who was late for the meeting.

“But they're
children
,” I exclaimed.

“Yes, but little one, so are you.” Perhaps. But I've never seen it that way. The first thing I felt when I came to school was shock—thrown in among my peers, in the midst of a pack of wild dogs, all snapping at each other's legs.

Lukas was old enough for seventh grade that year, but he had been moved back two years, a hard nut to crack. They couldn't put him in the special class for maladjusted children because he wasn't a troublemaker—it would have been easier if he had been a troublemaker. Fighting at recess, cheeky to the teachers, if he had had any obvious problems, difficulty sitting still, for example. But no, he has no trouble whatsoever with that. Sits absolutely still on the bench, doesn't move a muscle, regrettably he doesn't move his pen either and never puts up his hand. Can't learn a thing. At home, perhaps, but what he learns at home is of no use when he comes to school.

—

When Mama eventually comes out, her curry-colored toweling tank top is sweaty under the arms and her eyes are dull with migraine. She takes an unopened pack of cigarettes from her shoulder bag although she stopped smoking long ago. A single glance summons me to her. Lukas has slipped into the shadows and cannot be seen. Not a word from Mama as we pedal home, she in front, slipping slightly from side to side on the seat of her jeans, as the bicycle is adjusted for Papa's mother. Mama is tall, but Grandmother is taller. And I am small and at the moment I'm trying to make myself smaller. From now on I have to toe the line, do as I am told, no more no less, not cause more awkward meetings. Next time it will be the headmistress, the teacher has warned.

Crisis meeting in the kitchen. Everyone has to be there except for me. Unaccustomed to closed doors, I wail and kick at it until Papa's brother Rikard, who as a rule is always on my side, comes out and picks me up in both arms, carries me away, and flings me onto the television sofa.

“Stay!” he hisses, as if I've been transformed into a dog. If that's how he wants it, I think, and try to bite his hand, but Rikard pushes me over as if I were weightless.

“Don't move an inch,” he warns, “and I never want to hear that Lukas's name again.” I've never seen him like this before. Sitting still out of sheer surprise, I feel the blood pounding in my ears.

Mama is also changed. A different tone. The difference between blank shots and live ones.

“I love you, Lo, but not when you lie.”

“I don't lie!”

“Not when you lie, I said.” She punishes me in the worst possible way—by withdrawing her love. Doesn't comfort me when I begin to cry.

“You should beware of lies, they are dangerous. Little caterpillars that lie never get any wings.”

“I'm not a caterpillar!”

“No wings, Lo, just think about it.”

Lukas had arrived in the village the year before I was born. He could remember almost nothing about his life before this, and what I had done with my time before I met him—that part of my life had already faded from my memory too.

“Why are you so dark? When all the others are so fair?” he asked. “Where do you really come from?” He thinks it's unfair that he is the one called darkie, when I'm the dark one of the two of us. In summer his hair is bleached until it is nearly blond, so it's just his eyes and his name and the fact that everybody knows. My origins are just as distant as his, but only on a map. It's not completely true that all the others are fair—in every class there are children belonging to the Greek workers, with names as long as the night freight train. But those children have each other. They're obvious, belong together, keep together.

Our home is not here, but a conviction we help one another to sustain. Because neither of us knows what it looks like where we really belong, we can imagine those places however we want. For Lukas, born on the outskirts of Budapest, a few hazy details emerge out of context. A blue glove, warm bread, a fox in a trap, blood in the snow, one or two words from a nursery rhyme or a swear word, he is not sure. Unsorted, unusable moments, a sensation in the stomach, mouth, nose, not really a smell or a taste, just a vague feeling.

At his house they never speak about what they've left behind. The two have no language in common. His papa has mastered only rudimentary Swedish and Lukas even less Hungarian, just the very simplest of phrases. Amid such silence between them at the dinner table, they hardly know each other, father and son, two wastelands.

—

Lukas doesn't go near my house, knows that he's not welcome. Instead every day is filled with lies for his sake.

Beware, Mama says. Boy's eyes, boy's hands, boy's smell. Love and the other lies. Especially love, whose poison is like a snake's, goes straight to the heart with no time to cause pain, and suddenly you're lost. I always wondered who she had cherished with that sort of love.

M
y mama with seashells in her ears, no makeup, her long body constantly moving, sweat glistening at her armpits, narrow waist, broad bottom, flared Lee jeans, strappy platform clogs. I loved her as a capricious wind that comes and goes to suit itself. It was Rikard who taught me to cycle, Marina who taught me to swear, Lukas who taught me to swim and roll cigarettes, Katja who taught me kissing and long-distance spitting, Grandmother Idun who taught me to paint my lips and click my fingers to “My Funny Valentine.” Mama taught me nothing. Not even to look out for all the things she was afraid of.

She didn't turn me away, but was merely out of reach the whole time, even when we were together. A perfectly normal mother except that she smoked Silk Cut that you could only buy on the ferries over to Denmark. Papa was also quite normal apart from the fact that he could walk on water, however thin the ice was.

Together they made up a sacred circle of four: Idun and Björn, Anna and Aron. Grew up together, always lived together, before the children, with the children, with the tar-boiling, haymaking, forest, mine, railway. When my parents and their brothers and sisters were teenagers and Papa's father had the idea for the long move south, the two families did even this together. Everything they owned was packed up in the same way they lived: mixed together and shared, secure and cramped.

They bought the place unseen—the house by the undulating Skåne field, the largest they could find that was fairly reasonable. The houses were twice the price of those in the north, which Grandfather Björn took as a sign of what a promised land the south really was. Not cheap, but promised.

And so it came about that all their savings were suddenly tied up in a place they had never even seen. In addition they had been obliged to take out a loan so big that Grandfather Aron couldn't sleep at night. He had never been in debt to anyone before, had been brought up that way and thought of it almost as a sin. To buy a house unseen, that was madness . . . madness, according to Grandmother Idun. She was usually the one who made the decisions, but not this time, otherwise this wouldn't have happened. The idea that they should move was Björn's, the man she loved for his ideas, but he didn't usually carry them out. This time was different, he said, the children's future.

—

Before they packed up their joint vanload of furniture and set off on the twelve-hundred-mile journey south, someone had to go on ahead and reconnoiter. The house had to be renovated, but they didn't know how much needed to be done. None of the sons could take time off to accompany Björn, so instead it was my mama, Katarina, who volunteered. Björn was doubtful, but Grandmother Idun persuaded him. Katarina was as strong as their own boys, and besides she was the most practical of the youngsters. It was just a case of setting her to work; she was used to lending a hand.

Idun had spoken. And so it was.

The train across the country took a day and a night. Neither Grandfather nor Mama had traveled so far before. He had been involved in laying tracks, but had never actually made a train journey anywhere. And neither of them had the faintest notion that where they were going to move was so tremendously far away. He had wanted to travel alone. Why had Idun insisted? They sat in silence all the way down to the Västerbotten border, then Mama fell asleep, fortunately. With her head against his shoulder, which embarrassed him slightly, but at least he was relieved that the silence between them had a natural cause.

—

The house was far from what he had imagined. If this was what they called “in need of renovation,” then they had entirely different standards down here. A cellar of standing height rather than a crawl space. Extremely well insulated with proper synthetic material, not just air gaps and sawdust. Björn went from room to room and breathed in the feeling of newness. Modern materials and kinds of wood that smelled different. A dining room—that was a phrase to savor—redolent of punch. Big enough for them all to be able to eat together for the first time, as long as they bought a larger table. Wall-to-wall carpets in the bedrooms so numerous that they would not have to sleep more than two to a room. The ground floor the size of a small cathedral. Practical ceilings, high enough even for Björn, Idun, and their tall sons. Massive double-glazed windows that let in so much light, not what they were used to: temporary secondary windows that always fogged up in winter.

Björn opened the window onto the garden and flicked out the flies lying sluggish and well fed on the sill. He had never seen fatter flies. And there it was, the arboretum, the reason he had fallen for this particular house. The impressive collection of exotic trees—at least they were exotic to him, born beyond the tree line. They spread out coquettishly in front of him. A Garden of Eden. Paradise.

Katarina following at his heels, just as dumbfounded, went to stand next to him at the open window. He wanted . . . to say something, but he was speechless. It wasn't like him to be so weak and sentimental. Perhaps because he had taken off his shoes and was barefoot like a child. When he'd had the chance for the first time in his life to experience the feel of a fitted carpet between his toes, he'd unlaced his boots and let his big white feet sink into the unresisting softness. He really did want to say something, something that was worthy of the situation, but he couldn't. And it didn't help that she stood there so close to him, her sandals kicked off too, her hand raised. She held her slender brown hand before her like a delicate and exotic leaf, as if she were trying to touch the magnificent arboretum from a distance. He hoped she understood what a kingdom he'd lain at her feet.

This was what all their children deserved. They hadn't grown up in luxury and affluence—far from it—but the future was theirs, he promised her. As far as he knew, all the children had originated in the warm flour-smelling bakehouse, at the side of the house that the families had rented together for many years. So was it chance or delusions of grandeur that made them choose regal names for their firstborn? But who has a greater right to cherish dreams than those who possess nothing, and hadn't he and Idun always dreamed of being able to give their eldest son, Erik, all this? And Anna and Aron had undoubtedly held the same hope for their Katarina.

—

There she was now, Katarina, like a vestige of the old in the midst of the new. It must have been to do with the change in the light. Something that rendered her a little like a queen, looking out over the new landscape as if in two minds whether it was worth conquering or not. An ice queen, coldly distant, or maybe just exhausted after twenty-four hours on the train. Her scent of birch and melting snow. Surrounded by the unfamiliar, she smelled of home.

“Queen Katarina.” He laughed. She hadn't been following his thoughts and gave a start at his laugh. Watchful, looked at him as if she thought . . . that he was flattering her? Or the opposite, that he had caught her red-handed committing the mortal sin of pride—standing there, hand raised to the mirage beyond the window as if imagining that all this was hers and hers alone. Did he want to bring her back down to earth with his sarcastic “queen”? She lowered her hand, but as he glanced at her, her distinct profile was no less majestic.

“You know who you're named after, don't you?” he said. No, she didn't know. Didn't know who he was talking about, even though she had spent several years longer at school than him, serving no purpose at all.

“Russia's greatest ever ruler, Catherine the Great. A conqueror.” She mumbled something inaudible in reply, still suspecting that he was making fun of her, that he'd picked up on her weak point, her vulnerability, and he wanted to put her in her place so she didn't get ideas. Conqueror? Why did he call her that?

—

It wasn't time to go to bed, but she had unrolled the mats and the old military sleeping bags on the floor, to serve as their beds until the furniture arrived on the van. And she'd been out and bought something for them to eat and candles and a pack of beer at the grocer's shop, which was almost closer to the house than the outside privy was back home. While they ate, Björn continued to talk about Catherine the Great, and she resisted the urge to ask him to listen to her instead. She had things to say too. She just hadn't found the right words yet.

This tsarina, who had clearly made a big impression upon him, had conquered vast territories on Russia's account. She'd had three children by three different men, presumably none of whom was her husband—she'd simply had him assassinated after he'd been crowned regent and then took the throne herself and reigned for another thirty years over her huge empire, Björn related, opening another beer.

—

They'd come to a promised land, everything would be better here, he assured her, as they sat in their makeshift sleeping quarters with the military sleeping bags. It was just like during the war, only without the war. What did he mean, “everything,” she wondered? She didn't think there was anything wrong with their life at home. What were they lacking?

“Light, warmth, and hopes for the future, Katarina, for a start . . .” A winter in SkÃ¥ne is as short and mild as a holiday—without the temperate winter there would be no arboretum.

“What's an arboretum?” she asked.

“It's a tree universe,” he said. “A universe of trees.” That evening they went in for the first time, among the tall trunks that made even Björn look small, despite his stature.

They fell asleep and awoke in a different state of happiness, but with the same feeling of elation. He rose quickly to see if the arboretum was still outside the window. It hadn't been a dream. The trees were where they should be, all the different species he'd never seen before and whose names he didn't know.

The house needed no work, so they could take some time off, relax, bask in the sun until the others came down from the north. The only thing they had to do was to buy a scythe to cut the grass and a good book on trees so that they could guide the others around the grounds, point out sugar maples, black poplars, empress trees, everything that was now theirs. Björn had thought they'd bought a house at great expense, but now it turned out they'd acquired a paradise for next to nothing.

Jubilant, he lifted the newly awakened Katarina as if she were a slender birch pole and waltzed her around the room with long jerky steps.

She weighed nothing. A tiny waist like Idun's before the five children. He could have danced with her until darkness settled over the fertile fields of early summer, if she hadn't been so dizzy that she crumpled into a laughing heap on the floor. A princess on a pea in a punch-scented dream about a proper house. Her clearwater gaze. He felt young himself, was laughing too. It had been a long time, but he couldn't help it when he looked at Katarina sitting with glowing cheeks, shy all of a sudden, even though she was the boldest of the four girls, more like Idun than her own mother. Her blue skirt had ridden up in the careless movements of the dance, and she tugged at it. Such recklessness. There must be something in this new world that was making them like this. Intoxication that went straight to the senses, bypassing reason. The air was already pulsing with cow dung and buttercups, while at home winter was barely over. If anyone could see them now, they would think that the buttercups, the cow dung, the change of air, idling about like this, sleeping like vagabonds until late in the morning, the shift from late winter to early summer, all of this had gone to their heads. Decompression sickness. The danger of stepping too quickly into the light. Giddiness. Blinding.

He was unaccustomed to it. Perhaps that was all. He'd never been alone with any of the girls, and now they were almost adults, especially Katarina, at seventeen the eldest. A young Idun, tall, strong, lucently fair, her skin like birch. Powerful arms. Strong neck. Cold eyes. Like morning water, he thought. The sensation of waking up too quickly when you plunged into her gaze. He had always sobered up when he looked into Idun's eyes. But Katarina's eyes didn't have the same effect on him, they made him confused, not clearheaded.

Idun was the same as ever, only not quite so translucent, and her strength had passed into a kind of heaviness. He didn't lie when he said that he loved her more with every child. But differently. Because Idun
had
changed, as if each child were a whole new experience. He didn't share this feeling. For him it was just more of the same.

There were days when he wished that he remembered. He'd asked her, “Do you remember?” and Idun had smiled wryly and said, how could she ever forget? And then he'd been too ashamed to ask her to share her memory with him. However hard he tried, he couldn't recall their first meeting—the crucial moment. Perhaps there was no crucial moment, but he imagined something, yes, against the light in a cloudberry meadow.

He remembered her forever. She'd always been there, as natural as breathing. You didn't think about it all the time, but you couldn't survive without it. Sometimes he wished he could recollect how it had been when he first fell in love with her. There were days when he really needed that memory.

—

Why are you telling me all this? Katarina thought, but she allowed him to continue: buttercups, cow dung, change in the air, light. Something made him see her differently, she knew. Indeed, seeing her at all was different. Speaking to her. He'd never done that before. She had the feeling that he walked around the many rooms of the new house looking for her as soon as she was out of sight. And when he disappeared into the arboretum for a long time, it was she who searched for him, she who went through the trees calling his name, as if she really missed him.

—

In order not to feel completely useless waiting for the two families, they refined the dream before the others arrived, made a few small repairs that were in fact unnecessary, took care of the vanload of furniture that had been sent on ahead. Together they sat on the veranda in the evening and enjoyed the calm before the storm, the absence of mosquitoes and the presence of each other, the unfamiliar smells from the arboretum of balsam poplar and eucalyptus.