“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.”
“Mice make no distinctions,” said Agnes, freeing herself from her grasp. “They make their way indoors this time of year. I usually set out a few traps every fall.”
Birgitta observed her wide-eyed.
“I’ve been doing that all these years,” Agnes added.
“Have you talked with Daddy?”
“About what?”
“The mice.”
“I didn’t know you were so afraid of—”
“I’m not afraid! Don’t you understand? People are coming here now, journalists and others, from all over the world, and you’re walking around with a rat trap. And tonight Daddy’s colleagues are coming here. I’m sure they’ll be sitting in here after dinner.”
Agnes looked at Birgitta with an expression that did not express any of what she felt inside, but possibly Birgitta sensed Agnes’s fatigue, a fatigue that perhaps unconsciously let the contempt be glimpsed from behind the mask she had polished for half a century.
“I know what you’re thinking!”
Agnes turned away.
“You think I’m stuck-up and impertinent.”
“Not at all,” said Agnes with her back toward Birgitta.
“Look at me!”
“I have a few things to do,” said Agnes, but then turned around slowly, as if the movement were associated with an awful pain.
“You believe—”
“Believing you can do in church,” said Agnes, but fell silent out of pure astonishment at her own reply.
Birgitta was staring at her.
“I must say”—this was one of Bertram’s stock phrases that his daughter had inherited—“this prize has certainly stirred things up properly.”
“It’s been stirred up a long time,” Agnes mumbled.
“What do you mean?”
Agnes walked over to one of the windows that looked out from the back of the house.
“Palmér planted the apple tree outside here the same week I came to the house. It was a cold October, I remember the steam from his mouth.”
Agnes’s voice was raspy, as if it hadn’t been used in a long time, and she cleared her throat before she continued.
“I was standing right here, it’s like it was yesterday. He was out there and I was inside here where it was warm. I remember that I wanted to call him into the kitchen for coffee, but that sort of thing was not done. I didn’t know my place and the cook was not gracious either. Your grandfather and grandmother were still alive then, your father had a position at Academic Hospital and I … I didn’t know…”
“What didn’t you know?”
Birgitta had joined her at the window and also observed the tree, heavy with fruit. All that was heard was the sound of the rain striking against the window.
“How life would turn out.”
“Who knows that when you’re young?”
Agnes did not reply. Her eyes rested intently on the shiny fruit that rocked in the wind and was rinsed by the rain.
“I think I’ll make an apple cake,” she said at last.
“Do you regret taking a position here?”
Agnes cast a quick glance at Birgitta.
“Regret or not, I was sent here as a replacement for my sister.”
Agnes made an almost imperceptible movement with her head and left the window, taking quick steps toward the door. With her hand on the doorknob she turned around to say something, but remained standing without a word.
“Are you not feeling well?”
“I should see about the food for dinner,” Agnes replied, leaving the room and carefully closing the door behind her.
* * *
Perhaps it was the rain that made Birgitta von Ohler linger a long while by the window, the way you stay standing by a fire or in front of a fireplace, staring into the flames. Now it was the steady lashing against the windowpane and the stubborn, almost aggressive sound of the drops against the windowsill that captivated her.
She had come to the house to help Agnes with the preparations for dinner. It was obviously at Bertram’s initiative, because when she showed up Agnes acted completely uncomprehending and unusually brusque, refusing all assistance in the kitchen.
Agnes’s reaction was perhaps understandable but nonetheless Birgitta became lost in a gloomy state that corresponded well with the weather. The usually pleasant feeling of being indoors and able to observe the storm from a warm, sheltered position would not appear. On the contrary, she had an impulse to leave the house, expose herself to the foul weather, and let the rain and wind take hold of her.
Her father was in his study; according to Agnes he was spending several hours there every day, and did not want to be disturbed. God knows what he was occupied with. She had asked but didn’t get an actual answer, other than that he was tidying up old papers and notes.
At times she feared that he would not manage the onslaught of callers and journalists and then the ceremony itself in Stockholm on the tenth of December. She could see him wobbling up to receive the prize from the hands of the king, but stumble and fall headlong. Or, in the usual conversation on TV with the other prize winners, lose the thread and start rambling on about inconsequential things, something he was doing more and more often.
Birgitta had carefully hinted something about her apprehensions to Agnes, but she seemed completely oblivious, or perhaps she was pretending not to understand. She had just looked disinclined, with her slightly protruding eyes surrounded by a blackness that suggested a poor night’s sleep.
The fatigue that afflicted Bertram von Ohler seemed increasingly to spill over onto the housekeeper. But she’s no longer a youth, thought Birgitta. Last Christmas, when the whole family had gathered for once, she had discussed the issue with her brothers. Perhaps she should see about hiring a younger person? Agnes could obviously continue living there. Throwing her out after half a century would be heartless, on that they all agreed.
No decision was made, perhaps partly because it felt unreasonable to hire someone outside the circle of Anderssons from Gräsö, who had served the family for almost seventy years. But there were no more sisters and no younger generation.
She decided to bring up the question again, now when Abraham and Carl would be coming to Uppsala. Agnes would surely protest indignantly but perhaps think it would be nice anyway to only work a couple of hours a day and let someone take over the main responsibilities. She had recently expressed a kind of cynical indifference about the condition of things, an attitude that would have been unthinkable before. Birgitta had looked for signs of whether this new attitude had left its marks in the house, but could not discover any. Everything was sparkling clean as before, the food preparation seemed to work irreproachably, and her father had not expressed even a word of dissatisfaction.
If Agnes had changed, then this also applied to her father to a large degree. The initial euphoria, the almost boyish delight about the prize, had been replaced by irritability. He was holding something inside, she was convinced of that, something that worried him. She had tried in vain to narrow down what it might be but had also been rejected by him, grumpily to start with but later, when she brought up the issue again, angrily and with an emphasis that made her mute with astonishment.
Her father was not in the habit of raising his voice, even if he sometimes sputtered a little. Often he was content to evade her questions. Then when he unexpectedly used that old harsh voice she relived for a moment her childhood and youth and remembered the occasions when her parents clashed.
Afterward he had seemed regretful, said something to the effect that he was stressed, but nothing else, no hint about what worried him. She knew him well and realized that he was withholding something.
Now he was rooting through his old papers, whatever use that could be, and barely answered when spoken to. He had even canceled playing bridge, an a
lmost inconceivable measure. But he could not avoid dinner. In a weak moment, he had told Agnes that he regretted it immediately, he had invited Professor Ahl and a few other colleagues for a “simple meal.”
Perhaps it was simply the excitement and a general worry about standing in the limelight that created this irritation and desire for isolation? She wanted to believe that, but the nagging sensation that there was something else refused to go away.
She had forgotten to ask if Gregor was invited. He had seemed strange when they met on the street. The associate professor was perhaps not a cheerful fellow, but she had always gotten along well with him. Now he had stared at her as if she were a ghost, and then rushed off like a frightened animal.
She breathed on the window and in the mist that was formed she wrote her name. A scraping sound from the top floor brought her back to reality and she decided to call home and say that she would be staying a few more hours. Regardless of what Agnes maintained, two persons surely would be needed to wait on a number of professors.
Liisa would not be happy, she had always had difficulties with Bertram and between them there was a kind of childish competition for Birgitta’s favor. It could take on quite silly expressions, primarily from her father’s side.
* * *
“I meant to ask you, is Gregor, Associate Professor Johansson, invited to the dinner?”
“No,” Agnes answered, standing by the kitchen door. In one hand she had a basket and in the other an umbrella.
“I see you’ve made coffee. I’ll have a cup.”
Agnes nodded toward the coffeemaker and opened the door. A gust of rain-soaked autumn wind came into the kitchen. Agnes opened the umbrella and went out into the garden. A stab of melancholy and fear made Birgitta immediately rush over to the window.
It’s like forty years ago, it struck Birgitta, I’m a child who is standing in the kitchen and sees Agnes go out to pick fruit or berries in the garden. I have become a middle-aged women while she is unchanging.
She observed how Agnes carefully selected the apples. Sometimes she used the umbrella to knock down fruit. Birgitta made an attempt to leave her spectator’s position, perhaps to help out, but it was too late: Agnes already had the basket full, and was immediately back in the kitchen.
She had a pleased look, an expression that Birgitta knew well. In her way of resolutely shaking off the umbrella, closing the door after her, and placing the basket of fruit on the little table under the window—surprisingly exact and nimble movements coming from an elderly woman—she demonstrated an efficiency and sovereignty that Birgitta had always admired. No one performed their tasks as energy-efficiently.
“The rain doesn’t want to give up,” Agnes noted.
Gone was the harshness in her voice.
“Shall I peel the apples?”
Agnes stopped for a moment, then filled a plastic tub with water which she placed on the table, took out a peeler, and pulled out the kitchen chair.
“Not too small pieces,” she said.
“What kind is this?”
“Cox Pomona.”
They worked in silence. Birgitta sat at the table and peeled and cut up the fruit while Agnes cut up onions and root vegetables at the counter.
“You know, Agnes, when I was little I thought you would disappear every time you left the house, even if you were just going to pick a few currants or go down to the store and buy a liter of milk.”
Agnes gave her a quick look, but did not say anything.
“That was a horrible time, wasn’t it? That I put up with all those quarrels”—Birgitta took another apple out of the basket—“but I had to, I was only a child.”
“Your mother drank,” said Agnes.
Birgitta’s peeling knife stopped in mid-motion.
“Your mother was unhappy.”
Birgitta stared at the housekeeper’s hunched back. Only the sound of the knife against the cutting board was heard.
“What do you mean?”
Agnes turned around with the knife in her hand. The smell of onion struck Birgitta.
“Exactly what I’m saying—your mother was unhappy and drank.”
“My mother was sick.”
“She got sick, yes.”
Birgitta stared at the older woman, tried to see something conciliatory in her facial features, some opening to a different conclusion, a different story. But in the housekeeper’s face there was only the determined look that Birgitta recognized so well. No compromise was possible. It was a stern implacability that Birgitta guessed had been impressed on Agnes during prayer and self-denial since she was a child.
She held an apple up to her nose to drive away the smell of onion.
“But there’s nothing to talk about now,” Agnes decided, and resumed her work.
Birgitta took a bite of the apple.
“I’m going to make two apple cakes,” Agnes stated with her back turned toward her. “If you want to eat the apples you can go out and pick for yourself.”
She went over to the refrigerator, took out a package of bones with some meat on them, perhaps pieces of oxtail, and Birgitta understood that Agnes was preparing a stock and that most likely there would be roast fillet with mushroom gravy and fried potatoes with herbs for dinner, a classic in the house.
Birgitta got up and pulled on the old, cutoff boots that Agnes always had standing by the door and went out. She realized that Agnes was watching her and when she turned her face toward the sky there was a fine drizzle that settled on her face like a cool, refreshing film. She knew that it would irritate Agnes.
“You’ll catch cold,” was also her immediate comment when Birgitta returned to the kitchen.
“I wish I could be at the dinner,” she said.
“I doubt if it will be much fun,” said Agnes.
“I was mostly thinking about the food.”
Agnes’s neck twitched.
“Can’t we eat in the kitchen, the two of us? Like before, when—”
“I’ll be serving,” said Agnes.
“You’ll have time for that too.”
Agnes did not answer but shook her head.
“I can help you,” said Birgitta, but realized at once that it was the wrong thing to say.
“Think how that would look.”
A sudden fury came over her and she caught herself cursing Agnes’s lack of imagination. “Think how that would look,” she silently imitated the ill-tempered comment, but the fury changed just as quickly into a kind of melancholy that affected her more and more often when she visited the house. It seemed as if the uncertainty of her childhood returned even stronger with increasing age, as if the smells in the house, the sight of the heavy furniture and the threadbare carpets brought her back to the unpredictable aspects of her early years, the feeling of constantly moving in a minefield, where a quarrel could detonate at any moment. Freedom had always been outside the house, in the garden or in the old playhouse that some distant relative had cobbled together in the early 1960s, places that neither Bertram nor Dagmar visited.
Liisa always joked with her, called the Ohler family “the headshrinkers” without ever explaining what she meant, but Birgitta herself had started to think of the family as a clan that wandered around with shrunken skulls, a ridiculous but also anxious image that sometimes came to her.
“Why did you think I would disappear every time I left the house?”
“What?”
The breadth of Agnes’s question, and perhaps the fact that she asked it at all, produced a landslide of emotions inside Birgitta.
“I guess I was afraid of being alone,” she answered with her eyes directed out the window. Between the branches of the trees and the black-soiled leaves some patches of blue sky were visible.
“No risk,” said Agnes. “I stayed here. Always.”
“Do you regret it?”
“Maybe I was scared too,” said Agnes at last.
She fetched a pan—it was her firm conviction that stock should always be
cooked in an iron pan—dumped in the bones, the oxtail meat and vegetables, salt, whole pepper, bay leaves, poured in a little water and half a bottle of red wine, Portuguese Birgitta noticed, set the pan on the stove, and turned on the heat.
“There now,” she murmured.
Birgitta had peeled and cut up the last apple and let the segments disappear down into the tub of water. She wished there had been more fruit to peel.
“As luck would have it I brought black chanterelles with me,” said Agnes.
“From the island?”
Agnes nodded.
“I should have made the stock yesterday, but I didn’t find out until this morning that there would be a dinner this evening.”
“I’m sure it will be really good as always,” said Birgitta.
Agnes was standing by the stove and would do so until she could skim the stock a couple of times, and then leave it to simmer for several hours.
“Afraid of the life out there,” she said unprovoked, making a movement with the ladle toward the window. “Here I had an income and a place to live anyway.”
“But you’ve been happy, haven’t you?”
Agnes snorted.
“You all thought I couldn’t manage anything else,” she said. “Anything other than scrubbing, dusting, and cooking, cleaning up. And maybe that’s right.”
“Now you’re being unfair.”
Birgitta got up and went over to the housekeeper. “Look at me!” she said.
Agnes slowly turned her head. Her eyes looked uncommonly fish-like, perhaps it was the heat in the kitchen, perhaps the talk about happiness and all the thoughts that brought with it that made her eyes stick out even more.
“We have always appreciated you, you know that! The whole family, even if Daddy is the way he is. Even Mama wanted to have you stay.”
The ladle stopped in the pan.
“What do you mean ‘have me stay’?”
“It was nothing,” said Birgitta, her face turning bright red.
“Yes it was,” said Agnes, as she resumed the skimming.
Birgitta thought she could perceive something triumphant in her voice.
“I know that the professor wanted to fire me, but that Dagmar intervened.”
Open Grave: A Mystery (Ann Lindell Mysteries) Page 6