A Fortune Foretold Page 2

  A cargo ship comes sailing in, laden with apricots from Andalucía.

  With buns from Borås. And cherries from China. The inventor, red in the face, rocks on his chair. He is so drunk that he can’t even catch the handkerchief rolled into a ball.

  Long after everyone else has left the letter B and moved on, the inventor is still stubbornly struggling.

  Breasts, broads, from…B-b-breasts and broads f-f-from…

  He can’t tear himself away from the breasts and the broads, and after a while Ricki and Lisa manage to ease him out of the apartment and into the elevator. Later on she wants to know what was wrong with him. They don’t want to tell her, and only then does she realize it’s something embarrassing.

  Eventually Dad explains that he might have had a little bit too much to drink.

  Mom is more direct, and says that the so-called inventor is a drunk. She can work out for herself what he wanted. When she puts two and two together, she feels sorry for Lisa, whose husband sits there bellowing about women so that everyone can hear.

  Lisa is a dentist; her office is on Kornhamnstorg. Shortly after this incident the girl develops a raging toothache. Dad calls Lisa, who kindly agrees to see her even though it’s a Sunday. While Lisa is drilling the tooth, the inventor turns up. She realizes this only when Lisa removes the drill from her mouth. He is demanding money, and has no intention of leaving until he gets it.

  There is a scene. In her peripheral vision she sees Lisa fetch her purse and open it. Don’t ever come here again.

  When the inventor has gone, Lisa remains resolutely silent.

  Which means that she can’t say anything about it either. It’s not the first time she has noticed that adults keep quiet about things that are unpleasant. By doing so they also force children to lie and dissemble. The most taboo subject of all is anything relating to sex. The mouth and the vagina have something in common. They are both unprotected orifices leading right inside the body.

  When she is home alone she studies the reproductive organs in The Housewife’s Home Doctor, five wine-red volumes on the bottom shelf of the bookcase in Dad’s bedroom.

  The woman has a hole. So does she. Judging by the hints in the books, it seems as if the male organ is inserted in this hole. Does this mean that Dad stuck his wiener inside Mom? Never in a million years. It’s unthinkable. The gray expanse of uncertainty grows wider.

  She quickly replaces the book when she hears a key in the front door. How does she know that she is doing something shameful? She just does. It is part of the far-reaching sphere of silence.

  He’s good, Vilhelm Moberg, Mom says to Dad. She is talking about the book they have both just read. There have been articles about it in the newspapers: it is regarded as indecent. The novel has been discussed in Parliament, according to Dad. When they have finished with the book she reads it too, under the covers with her flashlight.

  The Emigrants, by Vilhelm Moberg, is the best book she has ever read. The characters are so brilliantly depicted that they are unforgettable: Kristina, Karl-Oskar. Ulrika from Västergöhl, who was called a whore, and that disgusting man whose penis stuck straight up in the air when he was dead. It’s astonishing.

  They have talked about seed and eggs. Not a word about the rest of it. Not a word about sticking the wiener in the hole.

  Dad discovers that she has read the book. She is sitting on the kitchen sofa, drawing. Dad is leaning on the refrigerator. He runs his hand through his hair, as he always does when he doesn’t know what to say.

  So, you’ve read it. What did you think of it?

  It was good. (In an indifferent tone of voice.)

  Nothing you thought was unpleasant, or didn’t understand?

  Nope (shrug). Like what?

  A cunning response. Dad drops the subject, but she can tell from his expression how terrible it would be even to suggest that he could do something so disgusting with Mom. She has no desire to embarrass her father like that. Thanks to The Emigrants, however, she is forced to acknowledge that this is what happens.

  Everything points in that direction.

  Before she read the novel she had no idea how a baby comes out—through the navel or the hole in your bottom? Now she knows that the baby comes out at the front, out of the woman’s hole that doesn’t really have a name. Mom calls it the front bottom. And although it seems unbelievable—how can a baby get through that little hole—the knowledge is invaluable.

  In time she will be able to use it to show off in front of her friends. Unfortunately she still doesn’t have any.

  She reads all the time. Anything she can get hold of, and it started when she was very young. During her first year at school—that was in Lund, she started twelve months earlier than she should have done, because she had taught herself to read—she gets sick.

  Scarlet fever with glandular complications, apparently. She is confined to an isolation unit at the hospital. No one is allowed in to see her, apart from the nursing staff who come and stick sharp needles in her bottom.

  Penicillin is a new miracle drug; she has an injection every three hours around the clock, which probably saves her life. However, her buttocks are covered in scabs. She keeps on picking at them and crying.

  Leaking like a sieve. Like a sponge that is being squeezed hard.

  She waves to Mom and Dad through a pane of glass. They are both wearing thick coats and heavy boots; it is snowing outside. On one occasion Dad presses a handwritten note against the window. She reads it. There is a little boy in the isolation unit; he is sick too, and she can meet him if she likes. What a terrible idea! A strange boy!

  No, no! She shakes her head so fervently that the meeting never takes place. She is very shy. Strange children frighten her more than anything. She sobs in her hospital bed, stubbornly and constantly. Until a tall, stern nurse in a black dress and a white hat—her name is Sister Ingrid—looms over her.

  You do want to get better, don’t you? In that case you need to stop crying.

  Because she is an obedient child, she stops at once. The nights are horrendous. She is afraid of the dark, and her tears keep her company. The only thing Mom and Dad can do is to send her books. One library book a day, and as long as that book lasts, she is able to stop thinking about them and missing them. She remains in the isolation unit for many weeks. Months, perhaps. She turns seven. Reading consumes her.

  When she is allowed home at long last, her legs are so shaky that she can barely walk. She finds it difficult to grasp that the family has been there all the time, just the same as always, without realizing how dreadfully she has suffered.

  Her stay in the hospital has made it very clear that they are perfectly fine without her. Don’t they want her? A child that for some reason has deemed itself a failure becomes ingratiating. Like me. She is told that they are going to move.

  Dad has been awarded a grant, and is going to carry out research at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. It is mentioned frequently, which is why she remembers the name. All everyone talks about is America. No one asks how things have been for her.

  They cross the Atlantic aboard the SS Gripsholm. Second grade in an American school and new classmates; this time she doesn’t even have a language in which she can talk to them. She reads. Without her noticing how it happens, soon she is also reading American books. The Bobbsey Twins, about a family with several sets of twins. Pollyanna, who teaches the reader to be happy all the time. And Alice in Wonderland—unforgettable. Just like Through the Looking Glass, which is also about Alice and equally unforgettable. A step through a mirror, and anything can happen. She reads with such absorption that she forgets where she is.

  In the spring they drive from Princeton to Los Angeles in a used car, a Nash, because Dad has gotten a job there. The journey takes ten days, and she spends all her time in the car reading.

  At the drive-in, where they stop for hamburgers and Coca-Cola. At the motel. At the gas stations while the Nash is being filled up. She reads her
way through the towns, across the prairies, along the sunlit Route 66. She reads through the Rocky Mountains and across the border into California. She puts down her book or her Roy Rogers comic—he is her hero among the cowboys—only when they visit an Indian reservation or stop to admire the Grand Canyon.

  When they reach the Great Salt Lake Desert they travel at night, because of the heat. She lies on the backseat, Ninne on the floor between the front and back seats, and Ia with her head on Mom’s lap and her legs on Dad’s. The headlights illuminate the skeletons of animals and people. If they break down, death will be waiting for them.

  According to Mom. Dad has wound down the window; he is smoking and resting his arm on the sill. The air is warm, wrapping itself around them. It is a memory that holds a sense of total security. A black sky arches above them. Unknown dangers lurk outside the car, but she is as safe and sound as a pea in a pod. Nothing bad can happen to her.

  Not in this vast desert night. Never.

  This is how she wants it to be.

  Just the five of them. No one else.

  She reads so as to hide where no one can get at her. That is necessary in Årsta. Mom is frequently in a bad mood; she has to shop, take care of the laundry, darn socks, vacuum the apartment, and put food on the table. She hates cooking, so it’s usually Falun sausage and blood pudding. Nothing wrong with that; it’s delicious.

  Of course Mom sometimes plays her grand piano.

  Mom throws her head back, her tongue moves inside her cheek keeping time with the music, her large hands taking charge of the keyboard, the magnificent sound filling the small apartment. A shutter comes down inside the girl’s ear. It is because she perceives her mother’s restlessness, her discontent.

  But sometimes Mom wants to sing with them. She plays children’s songs just as she did in Lund, when she was a piano teacher. She lifts Ia onto her knee and plays a Christmas carol.

  You’re musical, Mom says to Ninne.

  Ia is too little for Mom to be able to assess her talent. But to the girl Mom says crossly: Keep your vocal chords together, don’t let out the air the way you’re doing now.

  How do you keep your vocal chords together?

  Where are they?

  She loses the desire to sing. No, she doesn’t want to. She sulks. Mom says she is obstinate. She looks up the word: stubborn, inflexible, self-willed. Is she all of those things? She understands that Mom thinks she has no musical ability; Mom ought to know, after all. She can’t bear being criticized by Mom.

  It makes her feel crushed. Unloved. As if the surface of her skin has been scratched to pieces. She loves her mom. She loves her very much, but she is afraid of her. Mom can easily fly into a temper. When that happens, Ia crawls under the piano and Ninne sidles off into the nursery. She herself tries to answer back.

  You’re not being fair, Mom. You’re dumb!

  But you have to be careful when Mom is in that mood. She just gets even more annoyed if you contradict her, and the girl turns into a frightened rabbit, wriggling to get away. Her heart pounds and she finds it difficult to breathe.

  And the next minute, when Mom sighs and says that her life is passing so fast, she is compressed by guilt as if it were a clothespin. That’s the worst thing of all, when Mom is unhappy with herself. When that happens the girl dangles there held fast by guilt, as if she were pinned to a clothesline. A guilty conscience.

  She doesn’t know where the conscience is either.

  But it is gray and sludgy and it hurts.

  We cannot see ourselves from the outside. But she stands at the window on the seventh floor and sees her mother emerge from the minimarket, its name, SNABBKÖP, written in red neon letters.

  Mom is carrying heavy bags. She limps, because she had polio when she was young. Mom was seventeen years old; she prayed to God to spare her hands, and her prayers were answered. She could still play the piano, but one leg withered away until it was as thin as a twig, and that made her lame.

  Poor Mom, limping through the park with her bags while Ia skips on ahead in the snow! She ought to run downstairs and help Mom, but there is a stone in her chest that stops her from doing so. A heavy stone.

  It is made of granite, with a shimmering seam of quartz. The white quartz means helping Mom, but the granite weighs more. Mom and Ia make their way through the park as the streetlamps are lit. They need to cross the street, and Mom can’t hold Ia’s hand and carry the bags at the same time. She ought to go down in the elevator.

  She doesn’t do it. She just thinks about herself.

  That’s what Mom says, and she’s probably right. She doesn’t move until she hears the sound of the elevator; then she reluctantly goes into the hallway to open the front door for them.

  Mom. Being with her is dizzying. Shininess and glitter and running water. With Mom there is satisfaction and relief. That’s the way it was.

  Mom takes her to see a lady who runs a children’s theater company.

  She has to read out a poem. It is a long, complicated poem by Erik Axel Karlfeldt, called The Unrecognized Fiddler. Mom has practiced with her at home. She is the scruffy fiddler; she reads with such insight that tears spring to her eyes.

  If Elsa Olenius finds the ten-year-old a little comical—and she probably should have—she doesn’t say so. The girl is allowed to join Our Theater.

  Thanks to Mom. And all at once, everything can change. Mom becomes a dark forest, a volcano. When that happens, the ground shifts beneath the girl’s feet.

  She wants to be like Ricki, cool and unmoved.

  Ricki comes to visit; she wants to give them her Tarzan books, three well-worn volumes that she found in the loft. She is giving them away because she is moving. Dad is at work as usual, even though it’s a Sunday. Mom serves coffee in the living room, where the piano takes up most of the space. She seems annoyed with Ricki, her tone is impatient, why?

  Mom once snapped that Dad’s sisters are insipid.

  Insipid.

  No temperament, that’s what Mom means. Mom, on the other hand, has plenty of temperament. She and Ricki are very different. In Årsta she has become aware of differences. At school there are children who smell of poverty. It is a rancid, acrid smell; poor hygiene, Dad says.

  She knows that she is in a better position than others. She doesn’t want anyone to find out that they have a grand piano. She doesn’t want to deviate from the norm, and the piano is a clear deviation. The difference between Mom and Ricki hurts a great deal.

  Ricki is sitting in the armchair, wearing high-heeled sandals.

  Mom can’t wear high heels because of her bad leg; she would turn her ankle. Ricki asks if Mom plays a lot. And when do you imagine I would have time to do that? My musical life is over, Mom replies. Her irritation is palpable, but Ricki doesn’t seem to notice. She has made the effort to come all the way out to Årsta with the Tarzan books; there is no other reason for her visit. The girl is terrified that Mom will take out her discontent on Ricki. That Mom will complain about her life, her children, about Dad.

  She likes Ricki; does that make her insipid too?

  It is a conflict of loyalties. She has to get out of the situation. She asks if she can try on Ricki’s shoes. Ricki obligingly kicks them off. They are too big, she totters along holding her arms out to the sides to help her balance on the high heels, and everyone laughs at her.

  Neta is a theatrical little monkey, Mom says, stubbing out her cigarette. No problem. She is happy to play the monkey. They can laugh at her as much as they like. She has averted a dreadful threat. During Ricki’s visit she has laid herself like a bridge across the river of differences. She has succeeded. There must be no differences.

  And everyone must love one another.

  If they don’t, she will be split right down the middle.

  Dad works at the technical college, and when he gets home late in the evenings, he tries to be helpful—washing up, vacuuming, cheering everyone up and telling bedtime stories.

  It doesn’t
make any difference. Mom is still miserable.

  Does he think Mom is wasteful? It seems that way. Mom is totting up till receipts. She is bent over the kitchen table, adding and adding, forgetting the cigarette in the ashtray. Then she shows Dad how much she has saved. Can’t we move to a slightly bigger apartment? she begs. Dad doesn’t answer right away.

  We can’t afford it, he says eventually.

  I’m sure we can, Mom persists. I’d love to live in Östermalm.

  Hmm, Dad says, and changes the subject.

  He tells us a joke about a foolish student; Mom doesn’t even smile. She is hurting inside. Dad washes the dishes. The girl dries. When the sisters have settled down in the nursery for the night, Dad lies down on Ia’s bed and tells a story.

  Never out of a book. He makes it all up. The story is about ants. Human beings invented the decimal system, because they have ten fingers. Ants have six legs. Their chief mathematician invents the seximal system and constructs a kind of catapult. They must defend their queen, who does nothing but lie around laying eggs; her name is fru Sextant. Dad laughs at his own wit.

  The ants set to work with their catapult, bombarding the neighboring anthill with lingonberries and ants’ eggs. She feels anxious as she listens. She doesn’t understand why. Perhaps because Mom has closed the door behind her.

  She goes back to the kitchen sofa and her book.

  Sometimes Dad takes them with him to college so that Mom can play the piano in peace. Ninne and Ia scribble on the blackboard, while she reads the third Tarzan book and Dad loses himself in his papers, as usual.

  Not long ago a moose managed to get into the college.

  It was in the newspaper. It was seen running along the road somewhere near Johanneshov. During the night it came into town and got into the technical college. When it couldn’t find its way out, it threw itself through a pane of glass. It was covered in wounds from the shards of glass when it was tracked down and shot.