“Are you scared?” asks Mum.
“Yes,” admits Elsa.
Mum doesn’t tell Elsa not to be afraid, and she doesn’t try to trick her into believing that she shouldn’t be. Elsa loves her for that.
They are in the garage and have pushed the backrest down in Renault. The wurse floats out over everything between them, and Mum unconcernedly scratches its pelt. She wasn’t even angry when Elsa confessed that she’d been keeping it hidden in the storage unit. And she wasn’t scared when Elsa introduced her. She just started stroking it behind its ear as if it were a kitten.
Elsa reaches out and feels Mum’s belly and Halfie contentedly kicking in there. Halfie is not afraid either. Because she/he is completely Mum and George, whereas Elsa is half her dad and Elsa’s dad is afraid of everything. So Elsa gets afraid of about half of everything.
Shadows more than anything.
“Do you know who he is? The man who was chasing me?” she asks.
The wurse buffets its head against hers. Mum gently caresses her cheek.
“Yes. We know who he is.”
“Who’s we?”
Mum takes a deep breath.
“Lennart and Maud. And Alf. And me.” It sounds as if she’s going to reel off more names, but she stops herself.
“Lennart and Maud?” Elsa bursts out.
Mum nods. “I’m afraid they know him best of all.”
“So why did you never tell me about him, then?” Elsa demands.
“I didn’t want to scare you.”
“That hardly worked, did it?”
Mum sighs. Scratches the wurse’s pelt. The wurse, in turn, licks Elsa’s face. It still smells of sponge cake mix. Unfortunately, it’s quite difficult to be angry when someone smelling of sponge cake mix is licking your face.
“It’s a shadow,” whispers Elsa.
“I know,” whispers Mum.
“Do you?”
“Your grandmother tried to tell me the stories, darling. About the Land-of-Almost-Awake and the shadows.”
“And Miamas?” asks Elsa.
Mum shakes her head.
“No. I know you had things there that she never showed me. And it was long ago. I was about as old as you are now. The Land-of-Almost-Awake was very small then. The kingdoms didn’t have names yet.”
Elsa interrupts impatiently:
“I know! They got their names when Granny met Wolfheart, she named them after things in his mother’s language. And she took his own language and made it into the secret language so he’d teach her and she could talk to him. But why didn’t she bring you with her, in that case? Why didn’t Granny show you the Land-of-Almost-Awake?”
Gently, Mum bites her lip.
“She wanted to bring me, darling. Many times. But I didn’t want to go.”
“Why not?”
“I was getting older. I was an angry teenager, and I didn’t want my mother telling me fairy tales on the phone anymore, I wanted to have her here. I wanted her in reality.”
Elsa hardly ever hears her say “my mother.” She almost always says, “your grandmother.”
“I wasn’t an easy child, darling. I argued a lot. I said no to everything. Your grandmother always called me ‘the girl who said no.’ ”
Elsa’s eyes open wide. Mum sighs and smiles at the same time, as if one emotional expression is trying to swallow the other.
“Well, I was probably many things in your grandmother’s stories. Both the girl and the queen, I think. In the end I didn’t know where the fantasy ended and reality began. Sometimes I don’t even think your grandmother knew herself.”
Elsa lies in silence staring up at the ceiling, with the wurse breathing softly in her ear. She thinks about Wolfheart and the sea-angel, living next door for so many years without anyone knowing the first thing about them. If holes were drilled in the walls and floors of the house, all the neighbors could reach out and touch one another, that was how close their lives were, and yet in the end they knew almost nothing about the others. And so the years just went by.
“Have you found the keys?” asks Elsa, pointing at Renault’s dashboard.
Mum shakes her head.
“I think your grandmother hid them. Presumably just to tease Britt-Marie. That must be why it’s parked in Britt-Marie’s space. . . .”
“Does Britt-Marie even have her own car?” asks Elsa, because from where she’s lying she can clearly see BMW, Kent’s ridiculously oversize car.
“No. But she had a car many years ago. A white one. And it’s still her parking spot. I think it’s about the principle. It’s usually about the principle with Britt-Marie,” says Mum with a smirk.
Elsa doesn’t quite know what that means. She doesn’t know if it makes any difference either.
“How did Renault get here, then? If no one has the key for it?” she thinks aloud, although she knows Mum won’t be able to answer because she doesn’t know either. So she asks Mum to tell her about the shadow. Mum brushes her hand over her cheek again and levers herself up laboriously from the seat, with one hand over Halfie.
“I think Maud and Lennart will have to tell you about him, darling.”
Elsa wants to protest, but Mum has already climbed out of Renault, so Elsa doesn’t have much choice but to follow her. That is Mum’s superpower, after all. Mum brings Wolfheart’s coat. She says she’s going to wash it so he can have it when he comes home. Elsa likes thinking about that. How he’s coming home.
They put blankets over the wurse in the backseat and Mum calmly cautions it to stay still if it hears anyone coming. And it agrees. Elsa promises it several times that she’ll find a better hiding place, although it can’t seem to see the point of this. On the other hand, it looks very pleased about her going off to find more cookies.
Alf is standing guard at the bottom of the cellar stairs.
“I made coffee,” he mutters.
Mum gratefully accepts a cup. Alf hands Elsa the other cup.
“I told you I don’t drink coffee,” says Elsa tiredly.
“It’s not bloody coffee, it’s one of those O’boy drinking-chocolate bastards,” Alf answers indignantly.
Elsa peers into the cup, surprised.
“Where’d you get this from?” she asks. Mum never lets her have O’boy at home because there’s too much sugar in it.
“From home,” mutters Alf.
“You have O’boy at home?” Elsa asks skeptically.
“I can bloody go to the shop, can’t I?” says Alf sourly.
Elsa grins at him. She’s thinking of calling Alf the Knight of Invective because she’s read about invective on Wikipedia and she feels all in all there are too few knights of it. Then she takes a deep gulp and comes close to spitting it out all over Alf’s leather jacket.
“How many spoonfuls of O’boy did you put in this?”
“I don’t know. Fourteen or fifteen, maybe?” Alf mutters defensively.
“You’re supposed to put in, like, three!”
Alf looks indignant. Or at least Elsa thinks so. She put “indignant” in Dad’s word jar one time, and she imagines that’s what it looks like.
“It should bloody taste of something, shouldn’t it?”
Elsa eats the rest with a spoon.
“So you also know who was chasing me in the churchyard, don’t you?” she asks Alf, with half of the cup’s contents in the corners of her mouth and on the tip of her nose.
“It’s not you he’s after.”
“Err, hello? He was chasing me.”
Alf just slowly shakes his head.
“Yes. But you’re not the one he’s hunting.”
23
DISHCLOTH
Elsa has a thousand questions about what Alf just said, but doesn’t ask any of them because Mum is so tired once they’ve gone up into the flat that she and Halfie have to go straight to bed. Mum gets like that these days, tired as if someone pulled the plug. It’s Halfie’s fault, apparently. George says that to compensate for Hal
fie keeping them awake for the next eighteen years, Halfie is making Mum fall asleep all the time for the first nine months. Elsa sits on the edge of the bed stroking her hair; Mum kisses her hands, whispering, “It will get better, darling. It will be fine.” Like Granny used to say. And Elsa wants so, so much to believe that. Mum smiles sleepily.
“Is Britt-Marie still here?” she says, with a nod towards the door.
Britt-Marie’s nagging voice emanates from the kitchen, so the question immediately becomes rhetorical. She’s demanding “a decision” from George on Renault, which is still parked in Britt-Marie’s slot in the garage. (“We can’t live without rules, George! Even Ulrika has to understand that!”) George answers cheerfully that he can understand that well enough, because George can understand everyone’s point of view. It’s one of the annoying things about him, and, sure enough, seems to be getting Britt-Marie into a huff. And then George offers her some eggs, which she ignores, insisting instead that all tenants “submit to a full investigation” regarding the stroller, which is still locked up at the bottom of the stairs.
“Don’t worry, darling, we’ll find a better hiding place for your friend tomorrow,” Mum mumbles half-asleep, and then adds with a smile: “Maybe we can hide it in the stroller?”
Elsa laughs. But only a little. And she thinks that the mystery of the locked stroller is like the opening of an insanely awful Agatha Christie novel. Elsa knows that because almost all of Agatha Christie’s novels can be read on the iPad, and Agatha Christie has never had such a stereotypical villain as Britt-Marie. More likely she’d be a victim, because Elsa can imagine a murder mystery in which someone has bludgeoned Britt-Marie to death with a candlestick in the library, and then everyone who knew her would be a suspect because everyone would have a motive: “The hag was a nightmare!” And then Elsa feels a bit ashamed for thinking along these lines. But only a little.
“Britt-Marie doesn’t mean any harm, she just needs to feel important,” Mum tries to explain.
“She’s still just a nagging old busybody,” Elsa mutters.
Mum smiles.
And then she gets comfortable on the pillows and Elsa helps her push one of them under her back, and Mum strokes her cheek and whispers:
“I want to hear the stories now, if that’s all right. I want to hear the fairy tales from Miamas.”
And then Elsa whispers calmly that Mum has to close her eyes but only halfway, and then Mum does as she says, and Elsa has a thousand questions but does not ask any of them. Instead she talks about the cloud animals and the enphants and the regretters and lions and trolls and knights and the Noween and Wolfheart and the snow-angels and the sea-angel and the dream hunters, and she starts talking about the Princess of Miploris and the two princelings who fought for her love, and the witch who stole the princess’s treasure, but by then Mum and Halfie are asleep.
And Elsa still has a thousand questions but does not ask any of them. She just covers Mum and Halfie with the blanket and kisses Mum on the cheek and forces herself to be brave. Because she has to do what Granny made her promise to do: protect the castle, protect her family, protect her friends.
Mum’s hand fumbles for her as she’s standing up, and just as Elsa is about to go, Mum whispers in a half-asleep state:
“All the photos on the ceiling in your grandmother’s bedroom, darling. All the children in the photos. They were the ones who came to the funeral today. They’re grown-up now. They were allowed to grow up because your granny saved their lives. . . .”
And then Mum is asleep again. Elsa is not entirely sure that she even woke up.
“No shit, Sherlock,” whispers Elsa as she switches off the lamp. Because it wasn’t so hard working out who the strangers were. It was forgiving them that was hard.
Mum sleeps with a smile on her lips. Elsa carefully shuts the door.
The flat smells of dishcloth, and George is collecting used coffee cups. The strangers were all here today drinking coffee after the funeral. They smiled sympathetically at Elsa and Elsa hates them for it. Hates that they knew Granny before she did. She goes into Granny’s flat and lies on Granny’s bed. The streetlight outside plays against the photos on the ceiling, and, as she watches, Elsa still doesn’t know if she can forgive Granny for leaving Mum on her own so she could save other children. She doesn’t know if Mum can forgive it either. Even if she seems to be trying.
She goes out the door, into the stairwell, thinking to herself that she’ll go back to the wurse in the garage. But instead, she sinks listlessly onto the floor. Sits there forever. Tries to think but only finds emptiness and silence where usually there are thoughts.
She can hear the footsteps coming from a couple of floors down—soft, padding gently, as if they’re lost. Not at all the self-assured, energetic pacing the woman in the black skirt used to have when she was still smelling of mint and talking into a white cable. She wears jeans now. And no white cable. She stops about ten steps below Elsa.
“Hi,” says the woman.
She looks small. Sounds tired, but it’s a different kind of tiredness than usual. A better tiredness, this time. And she smells of neither mint nor wine. Just shampoo.
“Hello,” says Elsa.
“I went to the churchyard today,” says the woman slowly.
“You were at the funeral?”
The woman shakes her head apologetically. “I wasn’t there. Sorry. I . . . I couldn’t. But I . . .” She swallows the words. Looks down at her hands. “I went to my . . . my boys’ graves. I haven’t been there in a very long time.”
“Did it help?” asks Elsa.
The woman’s lips disappear.
“I don’t know.”
Elsa nods. The lights in the stairwell go out. She waits for her eyes to grow accustomed to the darkness. Finally the woman seems to gather all her strength into a smile, and the skin around her mouth doesn’t crack quite as much anymore.
“How was the funeral?” she asks.
Elsa shrugs.
“Like a normal funeral. Far too many people.”
“Sometimes it’s hard to share one’s sorrow with people one doesn’t know. But I think . . . there were many people who were very fond of your grandmother.”
Elsa lets her hair fall over her face. The woman scratches her neck.
“It’s . . . I understand it’s hard. To know that your granny left home to help strangers somewhere else. . . . Me, for instance.”
Elsa looks slightly suspicious. It’s as if the woman read her thoughts.
“It’s known as ‘the trolley problem.’ In ethics. I mean, for students. At university. It’s . . . it’s the discussion of whether it’s morally right to sacrifice one person in order to save many others. You can probably read about it on Wikipedia.”
Elsa doesn’t respond. The woman seems to become ill at ease.
“You look angry.”
Elsa shrugs and tries to decide what she’s most angry about. There’s a fairly long list.
“I’m not angry at you. I’m just angry at stupid Britt-Marie,” she decides to say in the end.
The woman looks slightly confused and glances down at what she’s holding in her hands. Her fingers drum against it.
“Don’t fight with monsters, for you can become one. If you look into the abyss for long enough, the abyss looks into you.”
“What are you talking about?” Elsa bursts out, secretly pleased that the woman speaks to her as if Elsa is not a child.
“Sorry, that’s . . . that was Nietzsche. He was a German philosopher. It’s . . . ah, I’m probably misquoting him. But I think it could mean that if you hate the one who hates, you could risk becoming like the one you hate.”
Elsa’s shoulders shoot up to her ears.
“Granny always said: ‘Don’t kick the shit, it’ll go all over the place!’ ”
And that’s the first time Elsa hears the woman in the black skirt, who now wears jeans, really burst out laughing.
“Yes, yes, that’s p
robably a better way of putting it.”
She’s beautiful when she laughs. It suits her. And then she takes two steps towards Elsa and reaches out as far as she can to give her the envelope that she’s holding, without having to move too close.
“This was on my boys’ . . . on their . . . it was on their headstone. I don’t . . . don’t know who put it there. But your granny—maybe she figured out that I’d come. . . .”
Elsa takes the envelope. The woman in jeans has disappeared down the stairs before she has time to look up from the envelope. On it, it says, “To Elsa! Give this to Lennart and Maud!”
And that is how Elsa finds Granny’s third letter.
Lennart is holding a coffee cup in his hand when he opens the door. Maud and Samantha are behind him, both looking very sweet. They smell of cookies.
“I have a letter for you,” Elsa declares.
Lennart takes it and is just about to say something, but Elsa goes on:
“It’s from my granny! She’s probably sending her regards and saying sorry, because that’s what she’s doing in all the letters.”
Lennart nods meekly. Maud nods even more meekly.
“We’re so terribly sad about this whole thing with your grandmother, dear Elsa. But it was such a wonderfully beautiful funeral, we thought. We’re so glad that we were invited. Come in and have a dream—and Alf brought over some of that chocolate drink as well.” Maud beams.
Samantha barks. Even her bark sounds friendly. Elsa takes a dream from the proffered tin, filled to the top. She smiles cooperatively at Maud.
“I have a friend who likes dreams very much. And he’s been on his own all day. Do you think it would be all right to bring him up?”
Maud and Lennart nod as if it goes without saying.
24
DREAMS
Maud doesn’t look quite as convinced once the wurse is sitting on her kitchen rug a few moments later. Especially as it’s literally sitting on the entire kitchen rug.
“I told you it likes dreams, didn’t I?” says Elsa cheerfully.
The Fredrik Backman Box Set Page 50