They went their separate ways. The associate professor was happy about the comment about the hydrangea, which really was enormous and covered a large part of the east wall, but at the same time he was very displeased. He had been able to determine that he’d indeed seen a stranger on Lundquist’s lot, but had not gotten any answer to what he was doing there. Frustrating to say the least. He definitely did not look like a burglar or photographer, as Bunde had suggested. And why would anyone sneak around? Ohler was no camera-shy movie star or member of the royal court who had to be photographed surreptitiously. On the contrary, he certainly welcomed all the attention.
The stranger had sounded so certain when he talked about the hydrangea and the spindle tree on Lundquist’s lot. Could he be a gardener? The associate professor decided that was the case. What other person wandered around that way talking so naturally about plants?
He had been polite too, and well-dressed in practical, durable clothing. The latter also argued for gardener.
The associate professor rounded two street corners before he was back on his street. He glanced in toward Ohler’s, where the lights were on, as in the past when the house was full of people. He tried to imagine what was going on in there, and above all what would happen in the future. Festivities, children and grandchildren gathered, colleagues on visits, media people driving up in cars for live broadcasts, dinners—in brief: life and motion.
He himself would go into his turret. The professor would point up toward the illuminated tower and say something about “my assistant, Associate Professor Johansson.” He would stand out as a mossy hobby gardener, who for lack of anything else devoted his solitary life to “begonias or whatever.” A skinny shadow figure in a silhouette play who now and then was lit up by the cold blue glow from the lights the associate professor had arranged for his rare plants, while the professor could shine of his own force, surrounded by living, warm people.
He had remained standing on the sidewalk, staring straight ahead without seeing, afflicted by heart palpitations. He waited until his pulse regained its normal rhythm and took a deep breath. His throat was burning from all the coffee that gave him sour belches during the walk.
“What do you say, Uncle Gregor!”
He turned around. Birgitta von Ohler was standing in front of him with a broad smile and outstretched arms. She persisted in calling him Uncle Gregor, which she had done since childhood. He didn’t like it, but now it was too late to correct.
“Birgitta,” he said tamely.
“Are you standing here? Come in for a cup of coffee!”
“Thanks, but I think I’m fine.”
“Don’t be silly, Daddy will be very happy.”
“I’m going to throw together a little food in my cottage,” said the associate professor. “It will be a lot—”
“Of course it’s quite amazing! After so many years. You did hear that he mentioned you?”
“How’s that?”
“On TV.”
The associate professor shook his head.
“‘My best colleague,’ he called you on the news.”
The associate professor stared incredulously at the radiant Birgitta and then let his gaze disappear into a darkness of rising anger. The street and the sidewalk disappeared, likewise the houses and Birgitta von Ohler.
“How are you feeling?”
She took a step closer, took hold of his arm. The associate professor opened his eyes.
“Excellent,” he said, but the paleness and weak voice were obvious signs to the contrary.
“Gregor! You’re not feeling well.”
The associate professor freed himself from her grasp, turned around and staggered toward his house. I can’t run, he thought, I cannot die on the street.
He shoved open the gate and took a couple of deep breaths. Home. From Bunde’s house organ music was heard, a Bach cantata, always this pompous Bach! Otherwise it was silent.
His heart had never protested. Perhaps this is God’s punishment for my unjust thoughts and my foolish anger, thought Gregor Johansson.
He was astonished at himself. Suddenly I am turning to God! Both brain and heart have become dysfunctional due to this damned Nobel Prize!
He went over to the beech tree and pressed one palm against its trunk. The coolness of the bark was transmitted through his arm and cooled down his agitation a little.
Should I speak freely? Should I too, like Schimmel in Germany, write an article and tell how it really happened, about Ferguson, about the teamwork, about how one man steals all the glory for himself, as if it were the solitary genius who creates? I could testify. Schimmel can raise up Ferguson, I can push Ohler down from his pedestal.
The thought gave him a certain consolation, but he realized that few, if any, would be influenced. He would stand out as a bitter and jealous loser, as if he was only speaking on his own behalf. The professor was right on one point: There was no justice.
All that remained was to keep his mouth shut. As soon as he had drawn that conclusion the associate professor went into his house.
Seven
Agnes Andersson stared at her feet. How far had they taken her? Or on the contrary, where had she taken her feet? Assuming now that it was the head and not the feet that decided the direction.
To a footbath. In a house where basically she had spent her entire adult life.
Agnes was the third Andersson sister from Gräsö who worked for the Ohlers. Carl von Ohler rented a house on the island a few summers in the 1930s and then came into contact with the fisherman and smallholder Aron Andersson, who supplied fish and helped out with odd jobs.
Then, when Carl needed a new maid for their home in Uppsala, the oldest of the Andersson daughters, Anna, was talked into starting. When she left the household after a couple of years her place was taken over by the middle sister, Greta, who stayed a few years longer, and who in turn was replaced by their little sister, Agnes.
Bertram and his family had use of the wing rooms, as they were called. When his father died in 1959 he became sole master of a fourteen-room house.
At the time, there was one maid besides Agnes on the serving staff, and a half-time caretaker, all of whom had to take care of Bertram, his wife Dagmar, and the two sons, and as of 1960 a nanny who took care of the afterthought, Birgitta.
Now only Agnes and Bertram were left.
She was sitting in what the family always called the “small parlor.” Fifty years ago it would have been inconceivable that as a servant she would be allowed to occupy a room that was reserved for the “ladies,” then equipped with a couple of small couches and a handful of armchairs. It was intended that the female guests could gather there after dinner, drink a glass of liqueur, and exchange a little gossip. All while the men sat in the library drinking cognac and talking about their business.
Now it must have been thirty years since any ladies drank and gossiped in the house. The parlor had been redone into a kind of living room for her. Next to it was her bedroom. To start with, she had thought it was quite unnecessary, but Birgitta, who had taken the initiative, insisted on it and Agnes moved from her old room to a new one in the wing. And thus got her own parlor in the bargain.
The time she spent with her sore feet submerged in the tub of lukewarm water and Epsom salts was a break for her head too. Every evening she sat like that, ten minutes, a quarter of an hour.
* * *
She heard the professor rummaging about. Quite suddenly it had become important, after years of Sleeping Beauty slumber. He had instructed her in how he wanted it to be and she could tell that if he was often confused he was exact and clear where the arrangements for the study were concerned. The stuffed bird would be removed—“Toss it” was the professor’s curt order—and that made her happy. She had wanted to get rid of it long ago, the ugly and malevolent-looking thing.
He had talked long and well about the picture with the family tree and lost himself in stories and kinsfolk. Tales she had heard ad nauseam. Bu
t she let him talk on without listening, while she dusted off the bookcase and stowed away old magazines and loose papers.
Suddenly the monologue had ceased. Their eyes met for a moment and in his features she could glimpse what she thought resembled distress, before he laughed.
“The way I go on, as if these … diagrams, these branches”—he threw out his hand toward the picture—“might interest you. You have your own family out on the island.”
She did not really know what she should say but nodded instead.
“You never married, did you, Agnes,” he observed unexpectedly.
“No, I never did. And there were no branches on the Andersson tree. I, and my sisters too for that matter, have been fully occupied with Ohlers.”
The professor stiffened, without saying a word, and shortly thereafter left the room.
* * *
Perhaps there had not been a line of suitors outside her door, though at one time there had been men. But Agnes never married. That was not something she dwelled on or considered particularly notable or tragic, it was simply the way it turned out, she had always reasoned with herself. A fragile defensive wall, she realized that, but her background, as daughter of the fisherman and lay preacher Aron Andersson, founder of the congregation God’s Army, had given her a fatalistic attitude. A fragile wall, for certainly she had longed many times to be out of the Ohler house, and the only way that had existed at one time would have been marriage.
Her father had impressed on her, sometimes with the rod, that her task was to serve God and all other masters, including himself. In his faith there were no mountains. His Old Testament attitude, which aroused a mixture of wonder, respect, and ridicule on Gräsön, left no room for thoughts of freedom.
The congregation God’s Army, which in its heyday had two dozen members at most, of which five were from the Andersson family, was long since departed. Her sister Greta and herself, together with a couple of other retirees, were the only survivors who could testify to the reserve and muteness that marked the interior life of the sect. There was not much joy and consolation, only fear and hard work.
Smallholder Aron Andersson’s faith in God was as merciless as the stony ten-acre parcel he had to work, the family’s life as poor of pleasures as the patch of forest, mostly consisting of alder marsh and rocks, that belonged to the place, and their worldly fate as uncertain as the harvests of the often surly sea, sometimes plentiful catches of herring but more often half-empty nets.
For Aron life and the sea were a struggle, a precipice, resistance that, if not overcome, in any event must be endured. That was God’s idea. Everything was meager and harsh but above all unpredictable. Only the Word stood firm and the thought of the Son’s descent was the only refreshment to be had.
The father’s doings left no room for any form of spontaneity or surprises. The only thing that deviated was that all the sisters were allowed to leave the island and the congregation to serve the Ohler family.
This was an anomaly that for Agnes was unfathomable at first. Perhaps it was her mother’s influence that made it all possible. There was a streak of rebellious delight in her. Aron Andersson also harbored an obsequious respect for Carl von Ohler and his lily-white wife, so when the question came up of whether Anna might go with them into town Aron chose to grant his permission. For a couple of summers Anna had been helpful in the Ohler household on the island, so it was perceived by everyone as a natural extension.
Perhaps the father, in all his stern religious zeal, felt a pinch of doubt after all. Perhaps he wanted to crack open a door for his three daughters, away from the island and the meager life. Even he could see how times were changing. Not even the strictest remained unaffected.
When Anna was going to start in Uppsala Aron sailed her over the sound to Öregrund and the waiting bus. When Greta followed later she could take the motorboat and Agnes in turn could take the ferry that had started working Öregrundsgrepen.
Sending the daughters to the professor and the house in Kåbo was a guarantee besides that they ended up among “educated and cultivated folk.” The expression was her father’s. That the Ohler family were not believers, other than on paper, was less important. The family was a suitable acclimatization to a respectable life on the mainland. The father’s greatest apprehension was that they would end up “at the factory” or “in a store” and thereby be lured into sinful ways.
* * *
Agnes observed her toes in the footbath. God’s ten commandments in accordance with the childhood rhyme, where the words had been drummed in: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” So long ago, but she could still feel the pressure of her father’s fingers around her toes as he made her mechanically repeat commandment after commandment.
Sixty-five years ago. She felt dizzy for a few moments at the insight that she would soon die, be united with her parents. She would never get to experience someone pressing their fingers against any part of her body, not even the crooked toes.
Perhaps I wasn’t made for that, she thought. I was destined to serve. I have never loved anyone, not even Birgitta, who took shelter in her arms when it was stormy in the house, when Dagmar and Bertram crossed swords. And no one has loved me. Well, she corrected herself at once, Father and Mother.
She remembered when her father had died quickly in his seventies. He dropped dead in the cramped cowshed. Actually, he had nothing to do there, the little herd had been gone for several years, like most of the cows on the island, but he used to go out there and “idle,” as her mother said.
The news came the same day that it was announced that the “old king” had died, so the to-do around Aron Andersson’s death was curtailed somewhat.
She went out to the island. Ohler offered to have her driven out, but she took the bus, got off in Öregrund, crossed the little square, read the newspaper placards about the nation’s grief, and came up to the ferry landing soaked with sweat, even though a stiff breeze was blowing from the northeast. It was Fredell who ran the ferry and he expressed his sympathy; rumors spread quickly on an island. They were the same age and schoolmates, and she wanted him to hug her, a completely unimaginable action for both of them. But he stood next to her during the trip across, silently with his hands on the railing. They looked out over the water, northward toward the island, where they were both born. She was cold, the sweat coagulated on her body, but she remained standing, and he remained standing, even though he always walked around talking. She said, “Thanks, Gösta, that was nice of you.” He went to make sure that the cars got off the ferry. She would never forget Gösta Fredell.
She walked from the ferry home. It was only a few kilometers, if you counted like when she was a child. I’ll catch pneumonia, she thought, but trudged on. There was a comfort in the landscape, late yarrow and columbines swayed at the edge of the ditch and the apples shone in the gardens. At old Lidbäck’s a mare was standing that whinnied as she walked past. She stopped and said a few friendly words.
Her childhood home, a poorly built wooden shack, looked even smaller, as if the house had adapted itself now that it needed to house only two persons instead of three. It was a gray, melancholy house and had been like that since Anna’s return from service with the “old professor.” Later on she left for Stockholm, where she got a position with a businessman with houses in both Saltsjöbaden and in France.
She was replaced by Greta, who in turn was replaced by Agnes, a relay team of sisters to keep the Ohler home in good shape.
Agnes could still remember the short walk from the road up toward the house. It was as if it was the last time, even though she realized that was not the case. But it was a painful way to go, a farewell. Thirty-five years ago, she thought, staring at her feet in the bath.
* * *
“He went first,” said her mother as Agnes stepped into the kitchen.
She was sitting at the table, and immediately poured a cup of coffee from a thermal carafe, as if she had been sitting there a long time waiti
ng for her daughter’s arrival. They had their coffee in silence. If her father had become somewhat more easygoing with the years her mother had changed in the opposite direction.
Greta was at the funeral parlor to take care of the practicalities. Agnes helped pack clothes in boxes and bags, which would most likely end up in the attic. Agnes did not ask what her mother intended.
“The office,” the box room under the stairs, which Aron had furnished as his own little den, was mostly cleaned out. Agnes suspected that her sister had been there. But in a drawer she found her childhood. In the warped drawer in a worm-eaten cupboard he had stored the loose tobacco, the only vice he allowed himself. He did not smoke, instead he cut up the long braids and drew the tobacco into his nose. He did it to “clear his nasal passages.”
That aroma was her father, but also a kind of worldly perfume, an almost sensory reminder that there was an existence beyond the home and the congregation.
She had pulled the drawer out completely and brought it to her nose, breathed in deeply, and experienced her father’s mute devotion. So certainly she had been loved, in his reserved way, but loved all the same.
Agnes knew that Greta had tried to get hold of Anna and before she returned to Uppsala she asked whether their big sister had been heard from. Her mother did not answer and Agnes took that as a no.
A few days later Agnes got pneumonia, was bedridden, and could not be at the funeral.
* * *
The water had long since cooled in the tub. Her feet were wrinkled and softened. Agnes filed them long and well, a task that brought her a kind of pleasure.
Eight
“There are rats!”
“It’s mice,” Agnes Andersson corrected.
“Doesn’t matter.” Birgitta von Ohler looked around the library as if she would discover more. “They are rodents,” she continued, “and they can eat up a household from inside.”
Maybe it was the fatigue that made Agnes’s eyes tear up.
“Don’t be sad,” Birgitta exclaimed, taking hold of her arm. “It’s not your fault. I’m just so surprised that it’s happening in this house.”
Open Grave: A Mystery Page 5