Elsa nods and looks down at her lap and, once again, her anger wells up unreasonably inside her.
“My granny was also someone’s mother! Did you ever think about that?”
The Monster doesn’t answer.
“You don’t have to guard me!” Elsa snaps and starts scratching more swearwords into the wooden armrest.
“Not guard,” The Monster finally growls. His black eyes emerge from under the hood. “Not guard. Friend.”
He disappears back in under the hood. Elsa burrows her gaze into the floor and scrapes her heels against the wall-to-wall carpet, stirring up more dust.
“Thanks,” she whispers grumpily. But she says it in the secret language now. The Monster doesn’t say anything, but when he rubs his hands together it’s no longer as hard and frenetic.
“You don’t like talking so much, do you?”
“No . . . but you do. All the time.”
And that’s the first time Elsa believes he’s smiling. Or almost, anyway.
“Touché.” Elsa grins.
Elsa doesn’t know how long they wait, but they keep waiting long after Elsa has really decided to give up. They wait until the lift door opens with a little pling and the woman in the black skirt walks into the corridor. She approaches the office with big strides but freezes midair as she sees the enormous, bearded man and the small girl who looks as if she’d fit into the palm of one of his hands. The girl stares at her. The woman in the black skirt is holding a small plastic box of salad. It’s trembling. She looks as if she’s considering turning and running away, or maybe, like a child, believes that if she closes her eyes, she’ll no longer be visible. Instead, she stands frozen to the spot a few yards away from them, her hands grasping the edge of the box as if it were the edge of a cliff.
Elsa rises from her chair. Wolfheart backs away from them both. If Elsa had been looking at him, she would have noticed, as he moved away, an expression on his face that she had never seen in him before. A sort of fear that no one in the Land-of-Almost-Awake would have believed Wolfheart capable of. But Elsa doesn’t look at him as she rises from the chair; she is only looking at the woman in the black skirt.
“I think I have a letter for you,” Elsa eventually manages to say.
The woman stands still with her knuckles whitening around the plastic box. Elsa insistently reaches towards her with the envelope.
“It’s from my granny. I think she’s saying sorry about something.”
The woman takes it. Elsa puts her hands in her pockets, because she doesn’t quite know what to do with them. It’s unclear what the woman in the black skirt is doing here, but Elsa is certain that Granny had some reason for making her bring the letter. Because there’s no coincidence in Miamas, or in fairy tales. Everything that’s there is meant to be there.
“It’s not your name on the envelope, I know that, but it has to be for you.”
The woman smells of mint today, not wine. Carefully she opens the letter. Her lips tighten; the letter trembles in her hands.
“I . . . used to have this name, a long time ago. I changed back to my maiden name when I moved into your house, but this was my name when . . . when I met your grandmother.”
“After the wave,” ventures Elsa.
The woman’s lips pinch inwards until they disappear.
“I . . . I planned to change the name on the office door as well. But . . . well, I don’t know. It never . . . never happened.”
The letter starts trembling even more violently.
“What does it say?” asks Elsa, regretting that she didn’t have a quick peek before handing it over. The woman in the black skirt makes all the right movements to start crying, but seems to be out of tears.
“Your grandmother writes ‘sorry,’ ” she says slowly.
“For what?” Elsa asks at once.
“Because she sent you here.”
Elsa is just about to correct her and point at Wolfheart and say, “Sent us here!” But when she looks up he’s already gone. She didn’t hear the elevator or the ground-floor door closing. He’s just disappeared. “Like a fart through an open window,” as Granny used to say when things weren’t where they were supposed to be.
The woman with the black skirt moves towards the door, emblazoned with the words “Reg. Psychotherapist,” followed by the name she once had. She puts the key in the lock and gestures quickly for Elsa to come in, although it’s quite obviously not what she wants at all.
When she notices that Elsa’s eyes are still searching for her large-hewn friend, the woman with the black skirt whispers morosely: “I had another office when your granny last came to see me with him. That’s why he didn’t know you were coming to me. He would never have come if he had known you were coming here. He is . . . is frightened of me.”
17
CINNAMON BUN
In one fairy tale from the Land-of-Almost-Awake, a girl from Miamas broke the curse and released the sea-angel. But Granny never explained how it happened.
Elsa sits by the desk of the woman with the black skirt in a chair that Elsa assumes must be for visitors. Judging by the cloud of dust that enveloped Elsa when she sat down, as if she’d accidentally stumbled into a smoke machine at a magic show, she decides the woman can’t have very many visitors. Ill at ease, the woman sits on the other side of the desk, reading and rereading the letter from Granny, though Elsa is quite sure by now that she’s only pretending to read it so she doesn’t have to start talking to Elsa. The woman looked as if she regretted it as soon as she invited Elsa in. A bit like when people in TV series invite vampires in and then, as soon as they’ve crossed the threshold, think Oh shit! to themselves just before they get bitten. At least this is what Elsa imagines one would be thinking in that type of situation. And that’s also how the woman looks. The walls of the office are covered in bookshelves. Elsa has never seen so many books outside a library. She wonders if the woman in the black skirt has ever heard of an iPad.
And then, once again, her thoughts drift off to Granny and the Land-of-Almost-Awake. For if this woman is the sea-angel, basically she’s the third creature from that world, along with Wolfheart and the wurse, that lives in Elsa’s building. Elsa doesn’t know if this means that Granny took all her stories from the real world and placed them in Miamas, or if the stories from Miamas became so real that the creatures came across to the real world. But the Land-of-Almost-Awake and her house are obviously merging.
Elsa remembers how Granny said that “the best stories are never completely realistic and never entirely made-up.” That was what Granny meant when she called certain things “reality-challenged.” To Granny, there was nothing that was entirely one thing or another. Stories were completely for real and at the same time not.
Elsa just wishes Granny had said more about the curse of the sea-angel, and how to break it. Because she supposes this is why she sent Elsa here, and if Elsa doesn’t figure out what to do she’ll probably never find the next letter. And then she’ll never find the apology for Mum.
She looks up at the woman on the other side of the desk and clears her throat demonstratively. The woman’s eyelids flicker, but she keeps staring down at the letter.
“Did you ever hear about the woman who read herself to death?” asks Elsa.
The woman’s gaze glides up from the paper, brushes against her, and then flees back into the letter.
“I don’t know what . . . it means,” says the woman almost fearfully.
Elsa sighs.
“I’ve never seen so many books, it’s almost insane. Haven’t you heard of an iPad?”
The woman’s gaze suddenly moves up again. Lingers for a longer time on Elsa.
“I like books.”
“You think I don’t like books? You can keep your books on the iPad. You don’t need a million books in your office.”
The woman’s pupils dither back and forth over the desk. She gets out a mint tab from a little box and puts it on her tongue, with awkward movements a
s if her hand and tongue belonged to two different people.
“I like physical books.”
“You can have all sorts of books on an iPad.”
The woman’s fingers tremble slightly. She peers at Elsa, a little as one peers at a person one meets outside a bathroom, where one has spent just a tad too long.
“That’s not what I mean by ‘a book.’ I mean a ‘book’ in the sense of the dust jacket, the cover, the pages. . . .”
“A book is the text. And you can read the text on an iPad!”
The woman’s eyes close and open like large fans.
“I like holding the book when I’m reading.”
“You can hold an iPad.”
“I mean I like being able to turn the pages,” the woman tries to explain.
“You can turn the pages on an iPad.”
The woman nods, with the slowest nod Elsa has seen in all her life. Elsa throws her arms out.
“But, you know, do what you like! Have a million books! I was only, like, asking. It’s still a book if you’re reading it on an iPad. Soup is soup whatever bowl it’s in.”
The woman’s mouth moves spasmodically at the corners, spreading cracks in the surrounding skin.
“I’ve never heard that proverb.”
“It’s from Miamas,” says Elsa.
The woman looks down at her lap. Doesn’t answer.
She really doesn’t look like an angel, thinks Elsa. But on the other hand she doesn’t look like a drunk either. So maybe it evens itself out. Maybe this is how halfway creatures look.
“Why did Granny bring Wolfheart here?” asks Elsa.
“Sorry—who?”
“You said Granny brought him here. And that’s why he’s afraid of you.”
“I didn’t know you called him Wolfheart.”
“That’s his name. Why is he afraid of you if you don’t even know who he is?”
The woman puts her hands in her lap and studies them as if she just caught sight of them for the first time and wonders what in the name of God they’re doing there.
“Your grandmother brought him here to talk about the war. She thought I’d be able to help him, but he got scared of me. He got scared of all my questions and scared of . . . of his memories, I think,” she says at last. “He has seen many, many wars. He has lived almost his whole life at war, in one way or another. It does . . . does unbearable things to a human.”
“Why does he carry on like that with his hands?”
“Sorry?”
“He washes his hands all the time. Like he’s trying to wash off a smell of poo, sort of thing.”
“Sometimes the brain does strange things to one after a tragedy. I think maybe he’s trying to wash away . . .”
She becomes silent. Looks down.
“What?” Elsa demands to know.
“ . . . the blood,” the woman concludes, emptily.
“Has he killed someone?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is he sick in the head?”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re a terropist, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Can’t they be fixed, people who are sick in the head? Maybe it’s sort of rude to call them sick. Is it? Is he all broken up in the head?”
“All people who have seen war are broken.”
Elsa shrugs. “He shouldn’t have become a soldier, then. It’s because of soldiers that we have wars.”
“I don’t think he was that sort of soldier. He was a peace soldier.”
“There’s only one sort of soldier,” Elsa snorts.
And she knows she’s a hypocrite for saying it. Because she hates soldiers and she hates war, but she knows that if Wolfheart had not fought the shadows in the War-Without-End, the entire Land-of-Almost-Awake would have been swallowed up by gray death. And she thinks a lot about that. Times you’re allowed to fight, and times when you’re not. Elsa thinks about how Granny used to say, “You have standards and I have double standards, and so I win.” But having double standards doesn’t make Elsa feel like a winner.
“Maybe so,” says the woman in a low voice that skims over Elsa’s thoughts.
“You don’t have very many patients here, do you?” says Elsa with a pointed nod across the room.
The woman doesn’t answer. Her hands fidget with Granny’s letter. Elsa sighs impatiently.
“What else does Granny write? Does she say sorry for not being able to save your family?”
The woman’s eyes waver.
“Yes. Among . . . among other things.”
Elsa nods.
“And for sending me here?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because she knew you’d ask a lot of questions. As a psychologist, I suppose I’m used to being the one who asks the questions.”
“What does ‘Reg. Psychoterropist’ mean?”
“Registered psychotherapist.”
“Oh, I thought it had something to do with bombs.”
The woman doesn’t quite know how to respond to that one. Elsa throws out her arm defensively, and snorts, “Well, maybe it sounds stupid now, but it seemed more logical at the time! Everything seems obvious in hindsight!”
The woman does something with the corner of her mouth that Elsa thinks might be a smile of some kind. But it’s more like a stiff twitching, as if the muscles around her mouth are new to this game. Elsa looks around the office again. There are no photos here, as there were in the woman’s flat. Only books.
“You got any good ones, then?” she asks, scanning the shelves.
“I don’t know what you think is good,” the woman answers carefully.
“Do you have any Harry Potters?”
“No.”
“Not even one?” Elsa asks, incredulous.
“No.”
“You have all these books and not a single Harry Potter? And they let you fix people whose heads are broken?”
The woman doesn’t answer. Elsa leans back and tips the chair in that exact way her mum really hates. The woman takes another mint from the tin on the desk. She makes a movement towards Elsa to offer her one, but Elsa shakes her head.
“Do you smoke?” asks Elsa.
The woman looks surprised. Elsa shrugs.
“Granny also used to have a lot of sweets when she couldn’t smoke, and she usually wasn’t allowed to indoors.”
“I’ve stopped,” says the woman.
“Stopped or taking a break? It’s not the same thing,” Elsa informs her.
The woman nods, setting a new record for slowness.
“That would be more of a philosophical question. So it’s difficult to answer.”
Elsa shrugs again.
“Where did you meet Granny? Was it after the wave? Or is that also difficult to answer?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I like long stories.”
The woman’s hands take cover in her lap.
“I was on holiday. Or . . . we . . . me and my family. We were on holiday. And it happened . . . an accident happened.”
“The tsunami,” says Elsa gently.
The woman’s gaze flies around the room and then she says, in passing, as if it only just occurred to her:
“Your grandmother found . . . found me . . .”
The woman sucks so hard on the mint in her mouth that her cheeks look like Granny’s that time she was going to “borrow” petrol from Elsa’s dad’s Audi by sucking it out of a plastic tube.
“After my husband and my . . . my boys . . .” the woman begins to say. The last words stumble and fall into the chasm between the others as they pass. As if the woman had suddenly forgotten that she was in the middle of a sentence.
“Drowned?” Elsa fills in, and then feels ashamed of herself when she realizes that it’s probably very unpleasant to speak that word to someone whose family did.
But the woman just nods, without looking angry. And then Elsa switches to the secret language and
asks briskly:
“Do you also know our secret language?”
“Excuse me?”
“Ah, nothing,” Elsa mumbles in the usual language and looks down at her shoes.
It was a test. And Elsa is surprised that the sea-angel doesn’t know the secret language, because everyone in the Land-of-Almost-Awake knows the secret language. But maybe that’s a part of the curse, she thinks.
The woman looks at her watch.
“Shouldn’t you be at school?”
Elsa shrugs.
“It’s Christmas holidays.”
The woman nods. Probably more or less at a normal speed now.
“Have you been to Miamas?” asks Elsa.
“Is this some kind of joke?”
“If I’d been joking I would have said, a blind guy walks into a bar. And a table. And a couple of chairs.”
The woman doesn’t answer. Elsa throws out her arms.
“You get it? That a bliiind guy walks into a bar and a tab—”
The woman looks into her eyes. Smiles faintly.
“I got it. Thanks.”
Elsa shrugs sourly.
“If you get it, laugh.”
The woman takes such a deep breath that if you threw a coin into it you’d never hear it hit the bottom.
“Did you think of that one yourself?” she asks after that.
“Which one?” Elsa counters.
“About the blind guy.”
“No. Granny told me.”
“My boys used to . . . they used to tell jokes like that. Asking something strange and then you had to answer and then they said something and laughed.” As she says the world “laughed” she stands up, her legs as fragile as the wings of paper planes.
And then everything changes quickly. Her whole manner. Her way of talking. Even her way of breathing.
“I think you should leave now,” she says, standing by the window with her back towards Elsa. Her voice is weak, but almost hostile.
“Why?”
“I want you to leave,” the woman repeats in a hard voice.
“But why? I’ve walked halfway across the city to give you Granny’s letter and you’ve hardly had time to tell me anything and now you want me to leave? Do you get how cold it is out there?”
The Fredrik Backman Collection_A Man Called Ove, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry, and Britt-Marie Was Here Page 44