The same old Vanja, no doubt about that. But Maj-Britt didn’t understand what she meant. She tried to recall what she had said in that letter, but Vanja hadn’t said anything, had she? Maj-Britt definitely would have remembered.
‘What do you mean, you already told me?’
Vanja’s smile grew bigger. Again her old Vanja flashed by. The Vanja who shared so many of her memories.
‘I wrote that I’d dreamt about you, didn’t I?’
Maj-Britt stared at her.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m just telling you what happened. That I dreamt it. Naturally I wasn’t dead certain, but I didn’t feel like taking a chance.’
Maj-Britt heard herself snort but she hadn’t really meant to. The explanation came so unexpectedly and was so improbable that she couldn’t take it seriously.
‘You expect me to believe that?’
Vanja shrugged her shoulders and suddenly was her old self. Something in the expression on her face. The more Maj-Britt looked at her the more she recognised her. Time had merely passed and worn out the casing a bit.
‘Believe whatever you like, but that’s how it was. If you have some better explanation that you’d rather believe, then be my guest.’
Maj-Britt was suddenly angry. She had come all this way, conquering her fears several times over to come here, and now had to listen to this. Then she suddenly remembered that she had also come to ask forgiveness, but she no longer felt like it. Not when Vanja was sitting there making fun of her.
There was a long silence. Vanja clearly didn’t intend either to take back what she had said or to offer any further explanation, and Maj-Britt didn’t feel like asking more questions. That might be taken as an acceptance of what she had just heard, and she didn’t really intend to play along. She really didn’t. She had been so sure that the explanation would be satisfactory in some way, though what exactly she was hoping for she didn’t actually know. The whole thing had been so confusing, so totally incomprehensible. But this was worse than the confusion; she didn’t want any part of this. Especially because not even in her wildest imagination could she have come up with any better explanation.
‘I know how it feels, I was so scared myself at first. But then when I got used to it I realised that it’s actually quite amazing. That something like that can exist that we didn’t know anything about.’
Maj-Britt didn’t really feel that way. On the contrary, it frightened her. If Vanja was right, there could be a whole bunch of things she knew nothing about. But Vanja didn’t seem to be bothered by it. She sat there quite calmly.
And then she continued the conversation, as if what they had just said was nothing out of the ordinary.
‘I’ve been offered a pardon by the government. In a year I’ll be released.’
Maj-Britt was grateful that the conversation had turned to something concrete.
‘Congratulations.’
Now it was Vanja’s turn to snort. It didn’t sound nasty, just a sign of how she felt.
‘It wasn’t me that sent in the application; it was someone on the staff.’
‘But that’s great, don’t you think?’
Vanja sat in silence for a moment.
‘Do you remember what you did sixteen years ago?’
Maj-Britt thought about it. 1989. She had probably been sitting in her easy chair. Or maybe on the sofa, because she was still able to do that back then.
‘Since then I’ve been locked up in here. But actually I only exchanged one prison for another, and I can assure you that at first this was sheer paradise in comparison. Except for all the thoughts that flowed in when it was no longer just a matter of getting through the day without making him angry. Or whatever it was that he felt.’
Vanja looked down at her hands resting on the table.
‘A prison sentence is actually the same thing as a fine, it’s just that you pay with time instead. And the big difference is that you can always get more money.’
Maj-Britt chose to remain silent.
‘It’s impossible to survive in here if you don’t learn to look at time differently than you did before. You have to try and convince yourself that it really doesn’t exist. If you’re locked up here you have to transport yourself to another place to survive.’
She tapped her index finger against her silvery head.
‘In here. At eight o’clock every evening they lock the door and after that you’re alone with your thoughts. And I promise you, some of them you would do anything to avoid. The first year it made me terrified, I thought I’d go crazy. But later, when I couldn’t fight against it any longer and just surrendered…’
She left the sentence unfinished and Maj-Britt waited impatiently for the rest. Vanja sat silently, staring out into space, and seemed to have finished talking. But Maj-Britt wanted to hear more.
‘What happened then?’
Vanja looked at her as if she had forgotten she was there but was glad to see her.
‘Then you realise that you can hear quite a bit if you only dare to listen.’
Maj-Britt swallowed. She wanted to talk about something else now.
‘What are you going to do when you get out?’
Vanja shrugged. Then she turned her head and sat looking at the picture she had examined earlier. The forest-covered landscape.
‘You know, there’s only one thing I think I’ve longed for out there. Know what it is?’
Maj-Britt shook her head.
‘To ride a bike, on a gravel path, through the woods. Preferably in a strong headwind.’
She looked at Maj-Britt again. Smiled, almost with embarrassment. As if her longing would seem ridiculous.
‘It might be hard for those of you on the outside to understand how someone can long so much for something like that. Because you can do it every day if you want.’
Maj-Britt looked down at the tabletop. She felt herself blushing and didn’t want Vanja to see it. Her own truth was a reproach in this context. Sixteen years Vanja had paid. Maj-Britt herself had thrown away thirty-two of her own free will. She hadn’t been near a gravel path. Or a forest. And if the wind was blowing a little she would close the balcony door. She had voluntarily entered her prison and thrown away the key, and, as if that wasn’t enough, she had let her body become the final shackle.
‘No government can grant me a pardon.’
Maj-Britt was hauled out of her thoughts by the sorrow she heard in Vanja’s voice.
‘What do you mean?’
But Vanja didn’t answer. Just sat there looking at the picture. Maj-Britt suddenly felt that she wanted to offer solace, reassurance, for once be the person who was there for Vanja instead of the other way round. She searched urgently for the right words.
‘But what happened wasn’t your fault.’
Vanja gave a deep sigh and ran her fingers through her hair.
‘If you knew how tempting it’s been for all these years to hide behind the argument that none of what happened was my fault. To blame everything on Örjan and what he did.’
Maj-Britt grew more excited.
‘But it was his fault!’
‘What he did was horrid, unforgivable. But he wasn’t the one who…’
Vanja broke off and closed her eyes.
‘Imagine, after all these years I still can’t say it. Not without my whole body hurting.’
‘But he was the one who drove you to it, he was the one who made you do it. He made you believe that there was no other way out. You wrote to me yourself and explained it all in the letter.’
‘But we’re talking about years. All those years when I stayed and let it happen. It began long before we had children. I even wrote an article about it once, saying that you should leave after the first time you’re struck.’
She sat in silence for a moment.
‘I don’t know whether anyone can understand how ashamed I was that I let it happen.’
Vanja passed her hand across her face. Maj-Britt wa
nted to say something but couldn’t find the words.
‘Do you know what my biggest mistake was?’
Maj-Britt slowly shook her head.
‘That instead of finally leaving I chose to see myself as a victim. That was when I let him win, it was like going over to his side and telling him he was right to behave the way he did, because all a victim does is give in, she can’t do anything about her situation. I simply couldn’t break the pattern that I had been used to from the beginning in my own family.’
Maj-Britt thought about Vanja’s home. She had experienced it as a refuge from God’s stern countenance, a place where there was always a blessed commotion. Everyone knew that Vanja’s father got drunk sometimes, but most often he was happy and never scared her. It was mostly his stupid jokes that could be so tedious. You never saw much of Vanja’s mother. She was usually behind the closed bedroom door, and they used to tiptoe past it so they wouldn’t bother her.
‘Pappa never hit me but he hit Mamma, and that was almost the same thing.’
Vanja looked at the picture again, and there was another pause before she went on.
‘We never knew who would be coming home when the front door opened. Whether it was Pappa or that other man who looked just like him but who was a stranger to us. All he had to do was open his mouth and say a single word and we could tell.’
Maj-Britt hadn’t known. Vanja had never hinted with a single word what went on at her house.
‘You mustn’t forget that Örjan grew up the same way I did, with a father who lashed out and a mother who took it. So now I always ask myself where everything actually has its origin. It’s a bit easier then, a bit easier to understand why people do things that can never be forgiven.’
It was quiet in the room. The sun had reached the windows and was filtering in through the narrow gaps between the slats in the blinds. Maj-Britt looked at the striped pattern on the opposite wall. Then she took a deep breath so she would dare to ask the question that she felt she had to ask.
‘Are you afraid to die?’
‘No.’
Vanja hadn’t even hesitated.
‘Are you?’
Maj-Britt lowered her eyes and looked at her hands in her lap. Then she slowly nodded.
‘This is how I usually look at it. Why should it be any scarier to die than to be unborn? Because actually it’s the same thing, only our bodies don’t exist here on earth. Dying is nothing but returning to what we were before.’
Maj-Britt could feel the tears coming. She wanted so much to find consolation in Vanja’s words, but she couldn’t. She somehow had to reciprocate, that was her only chance. And all at once she remembered what she had come here to do. So that she wouldn’t let any hesitation overpower her, she started telling the story. She didn’t gloss over anything and she didn’t leave anything out. She put the entire sad truth into words. How it had been. What she had done.
Vanja sat quietly listening. She let Maj-Britt spill out her whole confession without interrupting. There was only one thing Maj-Britt didn’t confess, and that was the plan she intended to carry out. The debt she had to pay off.
In order to dare.
Vanja sat lost in thought when Maj-Britt finished. The sun had retreated and the stripes from the blinds on the wall had faded away. Maj-Britt could feel her heart pounding. With each minute that passed, Vanja’s silence became more ominous. Maj-Britt was so afraid of what she would say, how she would react. Whether Vanja would condemn her too and not accept her excuses. It wasn’t merely the lies. Now that Maj-Britt understood Vanja’s loss, the life she herself had chosen seemed a sheer insult. To her consternation she realised that she carried even more guilt.
‘You know, Majsan, I don’t think you ever understood how important you were for me over all those years, how much it meant to me that I had you.’
Maj-Britt was stopped cold in the midst of taking a breath. The abrupt change threw her off balance.
‘I was so sad when you stopped writing without telling me where you had gone. At first I thought maybe I had done something to make you angry, but for the life of me I couldn’t imagine what it might have been. I wrote a letter to your parents and asked them where you were living, but I never got an answer. And then time passed and… well, everything turned out the way it did.’
What Vanja said was so amazing that Maj-Britt could find no words. How could she have been important to Vanja? It had been just the opposite. Vanja had been the strong one, the one who was needed. Maj-Britt had been the needy one. That’s how it had always been.
Vanja smiled at her.
‘But I never stopped thinking about you. That’s no doubt why the dream felt so strong.’
Again they sat quietly for a moment, looking at each other. So much time and yet so little had changed, not really.
‘Can’t you and I do something together when I get out?’
Maj-Britt gave a start at her words but Vanja continued.
‘You’re the only person I know out there.’
The question was so unexpected and the thought so disorientating that she had a hard time taking it in. Vanja’s words implied so much more, punching big holes in Maj-Britt’s solidly anchored image of the way everything was and would continue to be. To think that Vanja wanted to have anything to do with her at all, almost needed her, and of her own accord wondered whether they might do something together when that day came and it was possible.
But it wasn’t possible. And never would be. When the day came that Vanja would have the opportunity to do something, Maj-Britt would no longer exist. She had made up her mind, after all.
‘I have a year left in here and I think I have something important to do during that year.’
Do something together. A little disturbing possibility had opened up, but she would have to quash it here and now. Everything was still so utterly meaningless. She tried to sort out her thoughts as she listened to what Vanja was saying, but they kept wandering here and there, heading down small unknown turn-offs that hadn’t existed before. They dashed without permission down the new paths, cautiously testing to see if they would take hold.
She and Vanja?
Try to capture again a little of what they had lost?
Not be alone anymore?
‘I don’t know what it is yet but I hope I recognise it when it pops up.’
She tried to concentrate on what Vanja was saying.
‘Excuse me, I didn’t hear you right. What is it you’re going to do?’
‘That’s what I don’t know yet. Just that it’s something important. It might be that someone needs my help.’
Maj-Britt realised that she must have missed something Vanja had said.
‘How can you know that?’
Vanja smiled but didn’t reply. Maj-Britt recognised that expression. She had had it many times when they were growing up, and it always made Maj-Britt extremely curious.
‘It’s probably not a good idea to tell you about it. You wouldn’t believe me.’
Maj-Britt didn’t ask anymore, because she realised the direction the conversation was headed. She didn’t want to hear about any more dreams that came true. Everything was confusing enough as it was.
There was a knock at the door. The man who had brought Vanja stuck in his head.
‘Five minutes.’
Vanja nodded without turning round, and the door was closed again. Then she reached out her hand and placed it on Maj-Britt’s.
‘Keep your stern God if you like, although He scares you out of your wits. Someday I’ll tell you a secret, about what happened that time when I wanted to die and almost died in the flames. But if you can’t even believe in a lousy little dream coming true then it’s a bit too early yet.’
Vanja smiled but Maj-Britt couldn’t manage to smile back, and maybe Vanja sensed her anguish. She stroked Maj-Britt’s hand.
‘You don’t have to be afraid, because there’s nothing there to be afraid of.’
And then she smiled t
he smile that Maj-Britt knew so well. Only now did she realise how much she had missed it. Her Vanja who could always make her feel better, who with her fearlessness had helped her through childhood and always made her see things from another point of view. If only she could have the chance to do things over, to do everything differently. Why had she allowed Vanja to disappear from her life? How could she have abandoned her?
You don’t have to be afraid, because there’s nothing there to be afraid of.
More than anything she wanted to be able to share Vanja’s certainty. Leave all the terrors behind and once and for all dare to choose life.
‘Oh, how I wish I could believe like you do.’
And Vanja’s smile grew even wider.
‘Couldn’t you just be satisfied with a little “maybe”?’
Saba stood waiting at the door when she got home. Maj-Britt went straight to the phone and dialled Monika Lundvall’s number.
Ring after ring echoed over the line before she was forced to accept that no one was going to answer.
EPILOGUE
Snow had fallen during the night. The world lay concealed under a thin white blanket. At least that part of the world she could still see. She had scraped off a spot on a bench and sat looking at her white breath.
One night.
One night she had managed to get through, and now only one hundred and seventy-nine nights were left and just as many days. Then she would be free. Free to do what she wanted. In one hundred and seventy-nine days and just as many nights she would have served out society’s punishment for the crime she had committed and she would regain her freedom.
Freedom. The word had previously been such a natural part of her life that she had never even thought about its real significance. Perhaps it was the same with freedom as it was with everything else that was taken for granted. Only with its loss could you gain the ability to really understand its true value.
She had been so envied. A well-paid head surgeon with a fancy company car and luxury flat. A life full of coveted status symbols. The generally accepted proof that she was a successful person, someone important. But each step she had taken to raise herself above mediocrity had distanced her from freedom, because the more she had to protect, the more afraid she had become of losing what she had managed to achieve.
Shame Page 26