The Second Deadly Sin (13 page)

And so they drink coffee from traditional wooden mugs. Elina notices that he does not seem to mind that. He is evidently the type who eats simple Lappish food on wooden plates one day, then dines with royalty the next.

He admires the rag rugs, and compliments them on making the flat so snug and homely. He sits on the wooden bench that converts into a double bed at night, and Lizzie says they’ll do some painting tomorrow, and hang up some wallpaper. She informs him that the bookcase will be painted blue.

“What are you going to put into that?”

“Books, of course!”

She points at the trunk.

“The new teacher has brought a whole library with her.”

Lundbohm looks long and hard at the new teacher. Then he asks if he might be allowed to take a look at the books.

Elina’s hands are shaking, but what choice does she have?

And at the same time, she also welcomes the opportunity to show who she is.

When Lizzie sees all the books, she needs to sit down.

“That’s amazing,” she says. “Have you read them all?”

“Yes,” Elina says, with a trace of bravado in her voice. “And I’ve read some of them several times!”

Lundbohm produces a pince-nez from his pocket.

“Let’s have a look, then,” he says, and Lizzie takes books out of the chest one by one. They are lovingly packed between linen towels and sheets of tissue paper. Lizzie folds the tissue paper meticulously and piles it up. Lundbohm reads the titles out loud.

Elina just sits there and lets them get on with it. There are so many emotions surging through her. So many voices.

I’m so tired, she thinks when a lump in her throat signals that she is close to tears.

Voices. The women in the village back home who insist on telling her mother that the girl will be driven mad as a result of reading all those books. Who say that she’s an idle layabout when she sits there concentrating on her school homework. Snatch the pen out of her hand and tell her she should be helping her mother with the washing up. It is her mother who puts her hand on her daughter’s shoulder and prevents her from standing up. Who puts the pen back into her hand and says: “My girl is going to read books. As long as I have the strength to keep going, my daughter is going to study.” She recalls her schoolteacher sitting at the kitchen table back home, talking to her mother. “If Elina proceeds to higher education, I’ll pay whatever it costs. I don’t have any children of my own to pay for.”

Lundbohm picks and chooses from among her books, commenting on the ones he has read and asking about the ones he has not.

Elina tells him what he wants to know. She keeps it simple. After all, how could she explain to a man like him that books can save your life? He’s no doubt never been more than an arm’s length away from the theatre, literature, studies, travels.

But she smiles, and it feels better. She is soon speaking without inhibitions, and whenever she picks up one of her books she is only too happy to make its acquaintance again.

She is also sitting on the kitchen bench that converts into a bed, and soon she has a pile of books on her knee. Unfortunately there is a pile between her and herr Lundbohm as well.

There are books for children, of course – both she and Lundbohm prefer
Huckleberry Finn,
but there is also
Treasure Island
and
The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde,
although Elina explains that the latter is not really for children, and outlines the plot for Lizzie, who shudders in horror but rather likes the feeling. Then
Elina digs out Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein
, and announces that they will be reading aloud from that book every evening.

Lundbohm reads a few paragraphs aloud from Jack London’s
Call of the Wild
and
The Sea-Wolf
. Kipling’s
Kim
is wrapped up in a towel together with Nobel Prize-winner Rabindranath Tagore’s
Song Offerings
.

English and German novels, Selma Lagerlöf, Ellen Key and August Strindberg.

Lundbohm and Elina pass the books to one another, and sometimes, for just a few moments, they are both holding the same book. She leans forward and reads the same text as he is reading. He smells of soap.

He must have washed himself before coming to visit us, she thinks. Does anybody really do that when they are just going to call in on their housekeeper and tell her how many guests there will be for dinner?

Lizzie makes some more coffee, then waves her magic wand and produces some sugar lumps and the special cheese that people up here in the north dip into their coffee. They all drink the sweet coffee, then fish up the lumps of cheese that make crunching sounds as they chew them.

Down at the very bottom of the chest are some books wrapped up in brown paper tied with string.

“Because these books are not all appropriate for being looked at by one’s employer,” Elina explains with a stiff upper lip.

“Let’s see how much this employer can tolerate,” Lundbohm says with a laugh, opening the packages one after the other.

First up is the
The Penholder
by Elin Wägner.

“Wägner and Key …” Lundbohm says.

“Yes,” Elina says. “And Stella Kleve.”

They both know what the other is thinking. The teacher sympathises with authors who believe that love is more important than a marriage certificate.

And she buys books, he thinks. That’s why she wears worn-out shoes and a scruffy overcoat.

He is possessed by a desire to buy some clothes for her. A pretty blouse. With lace trimmings.

In the next parcel is Fröding’s
Splashes and Spray.
No wonder that collection of poetry was wrapped up in brown paper. Fröding was even taken to court for one of his poems.

Elina loves Fröding. How can anybody think that what he writes is obscene? All those poems about loneliness and the longing for love and tenderness. How often did Fröding console her when she sat there in the schoolroom, all alone? He was always even worse off than her, always more of an outsider.

“He didn’t die, actually,” she says.

Lundbohm closes his eyes as he sits there and recites from memory:

There follow several seconds of silence. Elina is lost for words. A man quoting Gustav Fröding. He did so with the perfect level of restraint in his voice, not too much emotion. He made a short pause between “dreaming away” and “as well I might”, so that one almost had the impression he was creating the poem himself, searching for the right words, searching for everything she was searching for herself. Anything that can douse the fever that sometimes takes possession of her – the feeling of restlessness, loneliness.

Lundbohm sits there in silence, his eyes half-closed as if he is dreaming.

I ought to kiss him, she thinks, and is astonished by the reaction of her heart.

She immediately tells herself that she is being stupid. She has only just met the man. He is so much older than she is. And he is fat.

But when she looks at those weary, half-closed eyes and those lips that only a few seconds ago curled slightly to express a stab of pain as he recited somebody else’s words that embodied his own longings, she sees a young man in him, even a young boy. She wants to get to know him. To become familiar with all his ages. She wants to know everything about him. She wants to kiss him. To own him.

“Good Lord,” Lizzie says. “‘Dreaming away of alcohol and lovely lasses’. That’s just what my Johan-Albin used to do. Before he met me. He’s given up booze now. But I can tell you that I’ve got some books as well.”

She takes out her contribution to the bookcase from one of her suitcases.

Lundbohm comes back to life in delight when he reads titles like
Behind Closed Curtains
and
The Sweetness of Sin
.

He puts on his pince-nez, thumbs through the pages at random, then begins to read:

Now it’s Lizzie’s turn to close her eyes and listen as if she is sitting in church.

“Lovely!” she says when he has finished reading.

Lundbohm smiles in amusement.

“Aha,” says Elina. “So you smile at sentimental novels, do you? I have quite a few of those as well.”

She unpacks several brown paper parcels containing cheap paperbacks. There are crime novels featuring Sherlock Holmes and Nick Carter, and the Swedish writer Samuel Duse’s books about his detective Leo Carring; also adventure tales, romantic fiction set in the wilds of northern Sweden, mystery yarns, and love stories by the Swedish bestseller Jenny Brun.

The air is now filled with formal dress balls, inheritances, murder by poisoning, crofters’ daughters who become wealthy socialites, ghosts, opium dens, gold-mining communities, pirates, grave desecrators, thwarted love, forbidden love, shattered dreams, spies, jealousy, pangs of conscience, baby farmers, swindlers, revenge, sheikhs in the desert, seducers, mysterious strangers, innocent victims, hypnotists, car chases, polar bears, man-eating tigers, charming doctors, unscrupulous criminals, desert islands in the Pacific Ocean, North Pole expeditions, dangers, despair and happy endings.

They read aloud from the blurbs, and admire all the stylish covers.

“What a lot of immoral pornography!” Lundbohm says, smiling at Elina.

She puts her head on one side and indicates that she is a hopeless case.

Lizzie yawns loudly and ostentatiously. Lundbohm stands up at once, as if she has made a trumpet call.

“I’ll come and inspect the rest of the books in the near future,” he says, pretending to be censorious as he points to the rest of the brown-paper parcels at the bottom of Elina’s chest.

They look out of the window and see that it has started snowing in earnest.

“Not again!” Lizzie says with a sigh.

Lundbohm takes his leave. Lizzie and Elina convert the kitchen bench into a bed. As soon as they have put on their nightdresses, they collapse into it.

“I’m so pleased to discover that you are very good at cleaning and laughing,” mumbles Lizzie into Elina’s ear. “You’re just what the doctor ordered.”

Then they both fall asleep.

Lundbohm walks home through the snow. There is no sign of life in the streets. He is in remarkably high spirits. He has not had so much fun for a very long time. Albeit with his housekeeper and the new teacher.

He says her name out loud. He’s feeling that childish. The sound doesn’t travel far. The dancing snowflakes swallow up his voice.

“Elina,” he says. “Elina.”

Rebecka Martinsson knocked on Krister Eriksson’s door. He lived in a brown-painted four-roomed detached house in Hjortvägen. It was good of him to look after Marcus. She wondered how things had gone. A chorus of barking dogs could be heard from inside the house.

She went in, squatted down and greeted them all. Tintin stood there with great dignity, all four paws on the floor, and allowed herself to be tickled under her neck while curling her lip in the direction of young Roy, making it clear that he would have to wait his turn. The Brat was unworthy of her attention, and she ignored him as he crawled and slithered around Martinsson, whimpering and trying to lick her face. His mistress, his lovely mistress – where had she been all this time? Vera said a brief hello, but then returned to the kitchen. Krister was frying thin slices of reindeer meat, which were spitting and crackling in the pan.

Marcus came crawling up on all fours.

He was wearing a jumper that was a little on the large side.

Newly bought, Martinsson thought.

The boy’s fair hair was hanging down over his eyes. His arms and legs seemed thin and spindly.

It’s not easy to deal with children, Martinsson thought. You could ask a grown-up how he was. If you could do anything to help. Express your sympathy. But what can you do with a young boy who comes crawling up to you on all fours?

“Hello, Marcus,” she said in the end.

He barked eagerly at her in response.

“Well, well,” said Martinsson to Eriksson with a laugh. “Have you found yourself a new dog?”

“I certainly have,” Eriksson said, also laughing. “It’s a wild dog Vera found wandering about in the forest. Isn’t that right?”

“Wuff!” Marcus said, nodding his head.

“He hasn’t got a name yet,” Eriksson said. “What do you think?”

Martinsson stroked Marcus’s head and caressed his back.

Terrific, she thought. At least I understand dogs.

The boy crawled off into the living room, and returned with a tennis ball. It was too big for him to hold it in his teeth, so he held it in one hand in front of his mouth.

“There’s a good dog! Fetch!”

She threw the tennis ball away. The Brat and Marcus scampered after it.

When Eriksson put the question, she said she would love to stay for dinner. Reindeer meat with preserved raw lingonberries, mashed potatoes and a brown sauce. Marcus ate his dinner out of a bowl on the floor. Vera sat patiently beside him, hoping she would be given the remains.

After dinner Marcus went out into the garden, which was enclosed by a wire Gunnebo fence. While waiting for the coffee water to boil, Eriksson started the washing up.

“He seems thrilled to bits, sleeping in the kennel outside,” he said. “I reckoned that if he wants to be a dog, and is happy pretending to be one, then why not?”

“Why not indeed? A police officer from Umeå will be coming tomorrow: she’s apparently very good at interviewing children. Maybe she can get Marcus to remember things?”

“Who’s going to look after him? Has that been decided yet?”

“His grandma’s cousin will take him. Maja Larsson. She’s living
in Kurravaara at the moment – her mother’s in hospital. I’ll give her your number.”

Eriksson nodded.

“He’s welcome to stay here. One extra dog doesn’t make much difference … I heard about that von Post business …”