The Lemon Table (5 page)

He convinced himself that if he were to tell the story of Mats Israelson correctly, it would make her say once more, “I would like to visit Falun.” And then he would reply, “I shall take you there.” And everything would be decided. So he worked at the story until he had it in a form that would please her: simple, hard, true. He would tell it her ten minutes after they cast off, at what he already thought of as their place, by the rail outside the first-class cabin.

He ran through the story one final time as he reached the jetty. It was the first Tuesday in the month of June. You had to be precise about dates. 1719 to begin with. And to end with: the first Tuesday of June in this Year of Our Lord 1898. The sky was bright, the lake was pure, the gulls were discreet, the forest on the hillside behind the town was full of trees that were as straight and honest as a man. She did not come.

GOSSIP NOTED
that Mrs. Lindwall had not kept her rendezvous with Anders Bodén. Gossip suggested there had been a quarrel. Gossip counter-suggested that they had decided on concealment. Gossip wondered if a sawmill manager lucky enough to be married to a woman who owned a piano imported from Germany would really allow his eye to stray to the unexceptional wife of the pharmacist. Gossip replied that Anders Bodén had always been an oaf with sawdust in his hair, and that he was merely seeking out a woman of his own class, as oafs are wont to do. Gossip added that marital relations had not been resumed in the Bodén household since the birth of their second child. Gossip briefly wondered if gossip had invented the whole story, but gossip decided that the worst interpretation of events was usually the safest and, in the end, the truest.

Gossip ceased, or at least diminished, when it was discovered that the reason Mrs. Lindwall had not gone to visit her sister was because she was pregnant with the Lindwalls’ first child. Gossip thought this a fortuitous rescue of Barbro Lindwall’s endangered reputation.

And that was that, thought Anders Bodén. A door opens, and then closes before you have time to walk through it. A man has as much control over his destiny as a log stencilled with red letters which is thrust back into the torrent by men armed with spiked poles. Perhaps he was no more than they said he was: an oaf lucky enough to marry a woman who had once played duets with Sjögren. But if so, and his life, from now on, would never change, then, he realized, neither would he. He would remain frozen, preserved, at this moment—no, at the moment which nearly happened, which could have happened, last week. There was nothing in the world, nothing wife, nor church, nor society could do, to prevent him from deciding that his heart would never move again.

BARBRO LINDWALL
was not convinced of her feelings for Anders Bodén until she recognized that she would now spend the rest of her life with her husband. First there was little Ulf and then, a year later, Karin. Axel doted on the children and so did she. Perhaps that would be enough. Her sister moved to the far north, where cloudberries grew, and sent her pots of yellow jam each season. In the summer, she and Axel went boating on the lake. He put on predictable weight. The children grew. One spring, a labourer from the sawmill swam in front of the steamboat and was run down, the water stained as if he had been taken by a shark. A passenger on the foredeck testified that the man had swum steadily until the last moment. Gossip claimed that the victim’s wife had been seen going into the forest with one of his workmates. Gossip added that he was drunk and had taken a bet that he could swim right across the steamer’s bows. The coroner decided that he must have been deafened by water in the ears and recorded a verdict of misadventure.

We are just horses in our stalls, Barbro would say to herself. The stalls are unnumbered, but even so we know our places. There is no other life.

But if only he could have read my heart before I did. I do not talk to men like that, listen to them like that, look them in the face like that. Why couldn’t he tell?

The first time she had seen him again, each of them part of a couple strolling by the lake after church, she was relieved that she was pregnant because ten minutes later she had a bout of sickness whose cause would otherwise have been obvious. All she could think of, as she vomited into the grass, was that the fingers which held her head belonged to the wrong man.

She never saw Anders Bodén alone; she made sure of that. Once, spotting him board the steamboat ahead of her, she turned back at the jetty. In church she sometimes glimpsed the back of his head, and imagined hearing his voice separately. When she went out, she protected herself with the presence of Axel; at home, she kept the children close. Once, Axel suggested they invite the Bodéns to coffee; she replied that Mrs. Bodén would certainly expect Madeira and sponge cake, and even if that was provided would look down her nose at a mere pharmacist and his wife who were both incomers. The suggestion was not repeated.

She did not know how to think about what had happened. There was no one to ask; she thought of similar examples, but they were all disreputable and seemed to have no bearing on her own case. She was unprepared for constant, silent, secret pain. One year, when her sister’s cloudberry jam arrived, she looked at a pot, at the glass, the metal lid, the circle of muslin, the handwritten label, the date—the date!—and the occasion for all this, the yellow jam, and she thought: that is what I have done to my heart. And each year, when pots arrived from the north, she thought the same thing.

AT FIRST
, Anders continued to tell her what he knew, under his breath. Sometimes he was a tourist guide, sometimes a sawmill manager. He could, for instance, have told her about
Defects in Timber
. “Cup shake” is a natural splitting in the interior of the tree between two of the annular rings. “Star shake” occurs when there are fissures radiating in several directions. “Heart shake” is often found in old trees and extends from the pith or heart of the tree towards its circumference.

IN SUBSEQUENT YEARS
, when Gertrud scolded, when the akvavit took hold, when polite eyes told him he had indeed become a bore, when the lake froze at its edges and the skating race to Rättvik could be held, when his daughter emerged from church as a married woman and he saw in her eyes more hope than he knew existed, when the long nights began and his heart seemed to close down in hibernation, when his horse stopped suddenly and began to tremble at what it sensed but could not see, when the old steamboat was drydocked one winter and repainted in fresh colours, when friends from Trondheim asked him to show them the copper-mine at Falun and he agreed and then an hour before departure found himself in the bathroom forcing his fingers into his throat to make the vomit come, when the steamer took him past the deaf-and-dumb asylum, when things in the town changed, when things in the town remained the same year after year, when the gulls left their stations by the jetty to scream inside his skull, when his left forefinger had to be amputated at the second joint after he had idly pulled at a stack of timber in one of the seasoning sheds—on these occasions, and many more, he thought of Mats Israelson. And as the years passed, Mats Israelson turned in his mind from a set of clear facts which could be presented as a lover’s gift into something vaguer but more powerful. Into a legend, perhaps—a thing she would not have been interested in.

She had said, “I would like to visit Falun” and all he had needed to reply was, “I shall take you there.” Perhaps if she had indeed said, flirtatiously, like one of those imagined women, “I long for Stockholm” or “At nights I dream of Venice” he would just have thrown his life at her, bought rail tickets the next morning, caused a scandal, and months later come home drunk and pleading. But that was not how he was, because that was not how she was. “I would like to visit Falun” had been a much more dangerous remark than “At nights I dream of Venice.”

AS THE YEARS PASSED
, and her children grew, Barbro Lindwall was sometimes assailed by a terrible apprehension: that her daughter would marry the Bodén boy. That, she thought, would be the worst punishment in the world. But in the event Karin attached herself to Bo Wicander, and could not be teased out of it. Soon, all the Bodén and the Lindwall children were married. Axel became a fat man who wheezed in his pharmacy and secretly feared he might poison someone by mistake. Gertrud Bodén went grey, and a seizure left her one-handed at the piano. Barbro herself first plucked assiduously, then dyed. That she had kept her shape with little assistance from corsetry seemed to her a mockery.

“You have a letter,” Axel said one afternoon. His manner was neutral. He passed it over. The handwriting was unfamiliar, the postmark was Falun.

“Dear Mrs. Lindwall, I am in hospital here. There is a matter I would very much like to discuss with you. Would it be possible for you to visit me one Wednesday? Yours truly, Anders Bodén.”

She handed over the letter and watched him read it.

“Well?” he said.

“I should like to visit Falun.”

“Of course.” He meant: of course you would, gossip always called you his mistress; I was never sure, but of course I should have guessed, that is what your sudden cooling and all those years of absent-mindedness were about; of course, of course. But she heard only: of course you must.

“Thank you,” she said. “I shall take the train. It may be necessary to stay overnight.”

“Of course.”

ANDERS BODÉN
lay in bed deciding what to say. At last, after all these years—twenty-three, to be precise—they had finally seen one another’s handwriting. This exchange, this first new glimpse of each other, was as intimate as any kiss. Her writing was small, neat, school-formed; it showed no signs of age. He thought, briefly, of all the letters he might have received from her.

At first he imagined that he might simply tell her the story of Mats Israelson again, in the version he had perfected. Then she would know, and understand. Or would she? Just because the story had been with him every day for more than two decades, this did not mean she would necessarily have any memory of it. So she might judge it a trick, or a game, and things might go wrong.

But it was important not to tell her that he was dying. This would put an unjust burden on her. Worse, sympathy might make her change her reply. He too wanted the truth, not a legend. He told the nursing staff that a dear cousin was coming to visit him, but because of a fragility of the heart must on no account be told of his condition. He asked them to trim his beard and comb his hair. When they had gone, he rubbed a little tooth-powder into his gums, and slid his damaged hand beneath the bedclothes.

AT THE TIME
of the letter, it had seemed straightforward to her; or, if not straightforward, at least unarguable. For the first time in twenty-three years he had asked something of her; therefore her husband, to whom she had always remained faithful, must grant the request. He had done so, but from that point things began to lose their clarity. What should she wear for the journey? There seemed no clothes for such an occasion, which was neither a holiday nor a funeral. At the station, the booking-clerk had repeated “Falun,” and the stationmaster had eyed her valise. She felt entirely vulnerable—if someone should merely prod her, she would start explaining her life, her purposes, her virtue. “I am going to meet a man who is dying,” she would have said. “No doubt he has a last message for me.” This must be the case, mustn’t it—that he was dying? Otherwise, it did not make sense. Otherwise, he would have sought contact when the last of their children had left home, when she and Axel had become merely a couple again.

She registered at the Stadshotellet, near the marketplace. Again, she felt the clerk examining her valise, her married status, her motives.

“I am visiting a friend in hospital,” she said, although no question had been asked of her.

In her room, she stared at the hooped iron bedstead, the mattress, the brand-new wardrobe. She had never stayed in a hotel by herself before. This was where women came, she realized—certain women. She felt that gossip could see her now—alone in a room with a bed. It seemed astonishing that Axel had let her come. It seemed astonishing that Anders Bodén had summoned her without any explanation.

Her vulnerability began to disguise itself as irritation. What was she doing here? What was he making her do? She thought of books she had read, the sort Axel disapproved of. In books, scenes in hotel bedrooms were alluded to. In books, couples ran away together—but not when one of them was in hospital. In books, there were heartwarming deathbed nuptials—but not when both parties were still married. So what was to happen? “There is a matter I would very much like to discuss with you.”
Discuss?
She was a woman in late middle age bringing a pot of cloudberry jam to a man she had known a little, twenty-three years ago. Well, it was up to him to make sense of it all. He was the man, and she had done more than her part just by coming here. She had not remained a respectable married woman all these years merely by chance.

“YOU HAVE
lost weight.”

“They say it suits me,” he replied with a smile. “They”: he obviously meant “my wife.”

“Where is your wife?”

“She visits on other days.” Which would be apparent to the hospital staff. Oh, his wife visits him on these days, and “she” visits him when his wife’s back is turned.

“I thought you were very ill.”

“No, no,” he replied cheerfully. She seemed very much on edge—yes, it had to be said, a little like a squirrel, with anxious, jumping eyes. Well, he must calm her, soothe her. “I’m fine. I’ll be fine.”

“I thought …” She paused. No, things must be clear between them. “I thought you were dying.”

“I’ll last as long as any fir tree on the Hökberg.”

He sat there grinning. His beard had been freshly trimmed, his hair stylishly combed; he wasn’t dying after all, and his wife was in another town. She waited.

“That is the roof of the Kristina-Kyrka.”

She turned away, walked to the window, and looked across at the church. When Ulf was little, she always had to turn her back before he would tell her a secret. Perhaps this was what Anders Bodén needed. So she looked at the copper roof blazing in the sun and waited. After all, he was the man.