I tried to call Maggie just now, but for some reason I have no reception. It would be good to hear her voice.
—Viveka
Hi Dad.
When I was little, I could sit for hours looking out the window. It could be because of a certain kind of music, or because it was dusk, or a certain slant of the light. There was a sensation in my chest, a churning. I couldn’t put words to it then. But it was a knowledge that there was something out there. That there was a hole in the world. And a longing to go there. I still have that longing, but it doesn’t overwhelm me like it used to. Until now. There’s something about the light here that makes the longing bloom.
—
I’m thinking about the last time I saw you alive. It was four years after I had left home. You called sometimes when you were drunk, saying everything would get better. In the end I changed my phone number.
Then it was your fiftieth birthday, and I thought I’d give it a chance. I knocked on your door at about seven in the evening. There was no reply, but the door wasn’t locked. In there was the wino den. Something under the garbage rustled in a corner.
You were on the couch, watching TV. You looked up when I came in, old milk cartons crunching under my boots.
“I was at the schoolhouse, you know?” you said. “I did clean up in here. And I went to the schoolhouse. I waited for her to come back. But she didn’t.”
You started to weep. It was a wet and forlorn sobbing. I turned around and left. It would be six years until I saw you next.
—
Inside the schoolhouse, I pretend that no time has passed. Closing my eyes, I can hear the others. The rhythmic thud of kneading dough. Something being chopped on a cutting board. Someone strumming a guitar and humming the melody. Footsteps on the stairs. The smell of baking bread and tea and onions frying in butter. A hand caressing my cheek in passing. I pretend that it’s dinnertime. We sing together, and then we fill our plates. I can sit in anyone’s lap. I lean against a shoulder. When I’ve fallen asleep, they carry me to the brown corduroy couch in the corner of the dining hall and put a blanket over me. The corduroy is rough against my face. The buzz of voices rising and falling.
Dad
The sun didn’t rise today. I can only see it as a glow on the horizon. I was in the kitchen when the noise came. I could hear it all the way inside. I went out onto the veranda. It was the sound of little bells. I hadn’t heard it since the day Mom left.
I tried to call Maggie. No reception. So I’m sitting here on the steps. The sound of bells still hangs in the air. And the twilight just lingering there, that won’t go toward night or day.
Dad, I think Mom is coming soon.
Miss Nyberg and I
IT BEGAN WITH A FAINT, SCRAPING NOISE on the balcony.
That’s how I think things began for you, anyway. For me, it started one late night in your room. It’s many years ago now, back when we were young. I was reminded of it because you mentioned that you’d planted sequoia. You did that when I rented a room in your apartment, and we snuck a plant into the flower bed outside the house, and somehow it managed to take root in the stern Swedish soil. After twenty years, the tree had managed to dig its roots all the way down into the laundry room of an adjacent house.
It’s a Sunday in late February. We’re on the big red plush sofa that I love, but is so damned hard to get out of. You’ve made a tart apple crumble, almost no sugar, but extra crumble. We cover it in lakes of custard and talk about our aches and pains: my new hip joint, your sciatica, my novel, your exhibition. And about the sequoia on the balcony, about to slowly wake from winter sleep. And I realize I’ve never told you the story about Brown.
—
It was summer. You worked nights as an illustrator at a tabloid. We shared a landline phone. I woke up at dawn because I thought I heard it ringing. The phone was quiet when I opened the door to your room. But there was someone in the gloom, sitting on the wooden chest you used for a coffee table. It was a small, gnarled shape with a faint glimmer of eyes. In my half-sleeping state, it didn’t seem that odd.
When I woke up again, I wasn’t sure if I had actually been in your room that night. But the image of the creature on the coffee table stuck in my head. It turned into a short story that was never finished—I had trouble with the ending. It also felt a bit weird that a friend of mine was the main character. I could have changed her name, but it wouldn’t have been the same thing. I mean, the story was about you.
This also has to do with your penchant for strange plants. You weren’t very interested in growing boring, ordinary flowers. Possibly sweet pea, because they were so pretty. Other than that, though, you preferred to order the most bizarre stuff you could find in the seed catalog, some of it on general principle:
“Angel trumpets! They ought to be illegal. I’ll have to grow those.”
You liked mandrake and deadly nightshade for the same reason. (This was the year your project was to fill the balcony with poisonous plants.) And then there were the surprise bags you ordered and opened with glee: mixed, unlabeled seeds that could sprout into anything.
—
So when all this happened, I reckon it was late March, when the snowdrops start to wilt and crocus stick their buds out of the ground, when gravel and salt still litter the streets. It was dusk, and the first blackbird warbled in the pine next to the building. You opened the balcony door to let some air in, and you wouldn’t have looked down at the sleeping flowerpots if it weren’t for that scraping noise. There was a very small creature between two of the pots, trying to escape attention by standing very still. It was shivering from the cold.
It was knotted and dusted with soil, knees and elbows worn shiny. It was perhaps four inches tall. It made no resistance as you bent down and picked it up, lifted it into the kitchen and put it down on the table. You looked at each other for a while. Then you said:
“Did I grow you?”
It nodded in reply.
—
It was seemingly a sexless creature, but thin and crooked as it was, it looked like an old man. You simply named him Brown, and you made a bed for him in a blue flowerpot in the kitchen window.
Brown either couldn’t speak or chose not to. He was a quiet presence who seemed content to sit among the plants in the kitchen window. He would climb down to sit on the kitchen table when you ate. He disappeared under the dirt in the blue flowerpot whenever you had visitors.
I wrote some stuff about how Brown seemed to have a personal relationship with each of the plants in your flat and on the balcony. He made his rounds every day, patting stems and leaves, sometimes just sitting still among the roots. In spring, little buds sprung out on his shoulders and elbows that bloomed in time for midsummer. During winter, he hibernated in the flowerpot.
—
I wrote about when you moved from Hökarängen to another suburb west of Stockholm, and how Brown almost died because the transition was so difficult. And there the text ended. I didn’t know what to write, how to make the story come together. Where would it end? Would Brown stay with you the rest of your life? Would he ever be discovered by someone else? If someone moved in with you, how would he be able to stay hidden? To answer all these questions I would have to invent your future life. Your career. Your travels. A partner, maybe more. This is easy enough with a fictitious person, but you were very real, and my friend. Who was I to decide what you would do for a living, what kind of people you would come to love? I ended up being so afraid of doing something wrong, as if I were about to force you into a literary arranged marriage, that I stopped writing in the middle of the move from Hökarängen and Brown’s imminent death.
—
We know now how things ended up, of course. Alice’s gentle siesta snores reach out into the living room. Your paintings cover the walls. Brown’s presence, I say, must have gone unnoticed, or he’s become a family secret. Of course, I didn’t think you’d ever share your life with someone who couldn’t handle the existenc
e of someone like Brown.
You’re still listening, uncharacteristically quiet. When I say these last things, you smile at me—that very Finnish smile that makes you look so much like your mother, slanted eyes almost disappearing into the folds of your face. You chortle at me.
“I know, I know,” I say. “But what the hell was I supposed to do? You of all people know I can’t stop making things up.”
You burst into laughter. You stand up and walk over to the window, where you lift an upside-down flowerpot. A tiny, gnarled creature lies curled up on a folded woolen sock. It seems to be asleep. I can see its tiny rib cage moving.
“Brown,” you say. “What a name.”
Rebecka
THE OUTLINE of Rebecka’s body is light against the scorched wall, arms outstretched as if to embrace someone. The floor is littered with white ashes. Everything else in the room looks like it did before. A kitchen table with a blue tablecloth, a kitchenette stacked with dirty dishes. A wrought iron bed, which I am strapped to.
I ended up here because I was Rebecka’s only friend. As such, I used to clean up after her half-hearted suicide attempts: blood from shallow wrist cuts; regurgitated benzos and vodka; torn-out overhead light sockets and doorjambs that wouldn’t hold her weight. She would call me in the wee hours of the morning: Get over here, help me, I tried again, I screwed up…and I would go over there to nurse her and hug her, again and again. What was I supposed to do? I wanted to tell her to do something radical—jump from the West Bridge, throw herself in front of a train—just to get it over with. But I didn’t have the heart. I don’t know why I remained her friend. It’s not like I got anything out of it. It was the worst kind of friendship, held together by pity.
—
I remember the phone conversation we had the day before her first suicide attempt. It was a slushy Saturday in March. I was in my pajamas on the sofa, watching two sparrows fight over a lump of tallow that hung from the balcony rail. We were talking about something inconsequential, clothes and sizes I think, when she suddenly changed the subject.
“The Lord,” Rebecka said over the phone.
“Hallowed be His name,” I said reflexively.
“Sure. The Lord,” she said. “He punishes people, right?”
“Is that a trick question?” I said.
She was quiet for a moment. Then: “I did something.”
“What?”
“I went to the Katarina Church and spit in the baptismal font.”
“You did what?” I must have shouted; the birds took off.
“Spit in the baptismal font. I thought that might get His attention.”
“Rebecka, that’s insane. People have been fried on the spot for doing stuff like that.”
“Yeah, that was sort of the point, wasn’t it?”
“So what happened?”
“Well, He showed up.”
I waited for her to say she was just pulling my leg, but she said nothing, just breathed down the line. “He showed up? How?”
“Uh,” she said, “it was really bright. I had to cover my eyes.”
I looked outside. Melting icicles on the windows and rain gutters that glittered in sunlight unbearably bright after the foggy Stockholm winter. “Uh-huh,” I said.
“But He said He was okay about the font,” she continued. “He said that some people have to be allowed more mistakes than others. That they’re damaged and don’t understand.”
“Did you get a chance to ask Him about the other stuff?”
“No. He left after that. I’ll have to come up with something else.”
“Rebecka,” I said, “you can’t make Him change His mind.”
“I just don’t want to feel like shit. Is that too much to ask?”
“We can’t expect Him to take care of everything,” I said. “After all, we had to take care of ourselves before He came back.”
“But there were psychologists then,” she said.
“Yes.”
“And there aren’t anymore.”
“No, I guess not.”
“Because He cures everyone and…how was it…‘lifts the darkness in every soul.’ Except me. So what am I going to do?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s a task you have. A test.”
“I already went through my damned test. I can’t deal with all this crap.” She hung up.
The string of attempts with pills, razor blades, and ropes started after that. She would call me after every attempt. I took her to the hospital the first few times. After making sure she didn’t have any life-threatening injuries (and she never did), they sent her home with a priest in tow. Eventually, Rebecka wouldn’t call me until a day or so after she’d done something. Then I’d visit to clean up the mess while she hid in her bed.
The Lord tells us we must have patience with our fellow men, especially those who are being tested. Rebecka was being tested. Around the time when I had just met her, she had been raped and tortured by her husband, rest his soul. She had never recovered.
—
“People who hurt others are the ones with the best imagination,” Rebecka said.
We were walking along the quay from Old Town to Slussen, watching the commuter boats trudge across Lake Mälaren. It was November. There were no tourists waiting for the boats this time of year, just some pensioners and a kindergarten group in bright snowsuits. I didn’t mind the cold, but Rebecka was bundled up. We each had a cup of coffee, Rebecka occasionally pulling down her scarf from her face to take a sip. I couldn’t help but look at her scarred lips as she did so.
“I don’t follow,” I said.
“Would you get the idea to cut a pregnant woman open with a bread knife and take the baby out?” She was talking through her scarf again, voice muffled.
I shuddered. “Of course not.”
“Or poke someone’s eyes out with a paper clip?”
“Come off it.”
“Three days, Sara.”
Of course. This was what she was on about. Karl.
“He used everything he could get his hands on.”
“I know, Becks. You’ve told me everything.”
She went on as if I hadn’t said anything. “You couldn’t imagine the things he came up with, not in your worst nightmares. Get it? And you know something else?”
“What?” I said, although I knew what she was going to say.
“How could He let it go on for three days before He decided to do something about it?”
“He did deal with him,” I said, as I usually did.
“Yeah, after three days. Why did He wait so long?”
“I don’t know.”
We were quiet for a while, sipping coffee.
“And I’m still here,” Rebecka said. “It’s like I’m being punished too.”
“I don’t think you are,” I said. “You’re not being punished. He doesn’t do that. Like I said before, maybe it’s a test.”
We went through the motions like that, until I said I had to go home and dropped her off at Slussen, where she would take the subway.
—
She didn’t take the subway. She tried to throw herself in front of it. It was in all the morning papers: Rebecka jumped from the end of the platform, so that the train would hit her at full speed. The driver later told reporters that he’d had a sudden impulse to brake before he was supposed to. The train had stopped a meter from where Rebecka was lying on the tracks.
“Maybe now you’ll believe me when I tell you,” she said across the kitchen table the following day. “Listen, I’m ashamed for all the times you’ve had to come and clean me up.”
“It’s all right,” I said.
“No, it’s not. I know you think I’m a coward who’s afraid to really go ahead and kill myself. I know you wish I could make up my mind and either die or start living again.”
I couldn’t meet her eyes then.
“It’s always been for real,” she said. “It really has. I can’t sleep through a single night wit
hout waking up because Karl is there. He’s standing at the foot of the bed, and I know he’s about to do all those things to me. I want it to stop. I want to sleep.” She looked at me. “Every time I went for my arms with the razor they stopped bleeding. Every time I took pills and alcohol I started throwing up. I never once stuck my fingers down my throat. I promise. I just started throwing up. And if I didn’t, absolutely nothing would happen even though I should be passing out.”
“So what are you saying?” I said.
“It’s getting worse. I don’t even get injured anymore. I swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills yesterday, you know?”
“And…?”
“They came out the other end this morning. Whole. The Lord is fucking with me.”
“Don’t swear,” I said.
“I’m telling you. The Lord is fucking with me. I hate Him. He won’t take the nightmares away. Or the scars, all the scars. But He won’t let me kill myself, either. It’s like He wants me to suffer.”
“Rebecka, we’ve been through this one before.”
“Would you stop taking His side all the time?” she shouted. “I’m your best friend!”
“Rebecka,” I said.
“I know what you’re going to say. He’s not my nanny.”
“That wasn’t what I was going to say.”
“If He thinks I’m supposed to deal with this myself, He could have just not come back in the first place. That way I would have known what to do. But now, this is the way things are. And I really don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
“Me neither,” I said.
—
The next time Rebecka called it was early morning.
“You have to come over,” she said. “We have to talk.”
I took the bike over to her apartment, expecting to see another scene of a failed suicide attempt. Her face was pale under the scarring when she opened the door.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi,” I said. “I’ve taken the day off.”
She let me in. There wasn’t anything on her or in the apartment to indicate she had done anything to herself, just the usual mess. I sat down by the kitchen table while she poured tea. The blue tablecloth was crusted with cup rings. I traced them with a finger.
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