She rubs the white mark on her ring finger. She remembers the last time the morning newspaper replaced the crossword supplement with a soccer section, because she read the newspaper four times in the hope of finding a small, hidden crossword somewhere. She never found one, but she did find an article about a woman, the same age as Britt-Marie, who had died. Britt-Marie can’t get it out of her head. The article described how the woman had lain dead for several weeks before she was found, after the neighbors made a complaint about a bad smell from her flat. Britt-Marie can’t stop thinking about that article, can’t stop thinking about how vexatious it would be if the neighbors started complaining about bad smells. It said in the article that the cause of death had been “natural.” A neighbor said that “the woman’s dinner was still on the table when the landlord walked into the flat.”
Britt-Marie had asked Kent what he thought the woman had eaten. She thought it must be awful to die in the middle of your dinner, as if the food was terrible. Kent mumbled that it hardly made any difference, and turned up the volume on the TV.
Britt-Marie fetched his shirt from the bedroom floor and put it in the washing machine, as usual. Then she washed it and reorganized his electric shaver in the bathroom. Kent often maintained that she has “hidden” his shaver, when he stood there in the mornings yelling “Briiitt-Mariiie” because he couldn’t find it, but she’s not hiding it at all. She was reorganizing. There’s a difference. Sometimes she reorganized because it was necessary, and sometimes she did it because she loved hearing him call out her name in the mornings.
After half an hour the door to the girl’s office opens. People emerge; the girl says good-bye and smiles enthusiastically, until she notices Britt-Marie.
“Oh, you’re still here. So, as I said, Britt-Marie, I’m really sorry but I don’t have time for . . .”
Britt-Marie stands up and brushes some invisible crumbs from her skirt.
“You like soccer, I see,” Britt-Marie offers, nodding at the stickers on the door. “That must be nice for you.”
The girl brightens. “Yes. You too?”
“Certainly not.”
“Right . . .” The girl peers at her watch and then at another clock on the wall. She’s quite clearly bent on trying to get Britt-Marie out of there, so Britt-Marie smiles patiently and decides to say something sociable.
“Your hairstyle is different today.”
“What?”
“Different from yesterday. It’s modern, I suppose.”
“What, the hairstyle?”
“Never having to make up your mind.”
Then she adds at once: “Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course. In fact it looks very practical.”
In actual fact it mainly looks short and spiky, like when someone has spilled orange juice on a shagpile rug. Kent always used to spill his drink when he was having vodka and orange juice during his soccer matches, until one day Britt-Marie had enough and moved the rug to the guest room. That was thirteen years ago, but she still often thinks about it. Britt-Marie’s rugs and Britt-Marie’s memories have a lot in common in that sense: they are both very difficult to wash.
The girl clears her throat. “Look, I’d love to talk further, but as I keep trying to tell you I just don’t have time at the moment.”
“When do you have time?” Britt-Marie asks, getting out her notebook and methodically going through a list. “Three o’clock?”
“I’m fully booked today—”
“I could also manage four or even five o’clock,” Britt-Marie offers, conferring with herself.
“We close at five today,” says the girl.
“Let’s say five o’clock then.”
“What? No, we close at five—”
“We certainly can’t have a meeting later than five,” Britt-Marie protests.
“What?” says the girl.
Britt-Marie smiles with enormous, enormous patience.
“I don’t want to cause a scene here. Not at all. But my dear girl, civilized people have their dinner at six, so any later than five is surely a bit on the late side for a meeting, wouldn’t you agree? Or are you saying we should have our meeting while we’re eating?”
“No . . . I mean . . . What?”
“Ha. Well, in that case you have to make sure you’re not late. So the potatoes don’t get cold.”
Then she writes “6:00. Dinner” on her list.
The girl calls out something behind Britt-Marie but Britt-Marie has already gone, because she actually doesn’t have time to stand here going on about this all day.
3
It’s 4:55. Britt-Marie is waiting by herself in the street outside the unemployment office, because it would be impolite to go in too early for the meeting. The wind ruffles her hair gently. She misses her balcony so much, it pains her to even think about it—she has to squeeze her eyes shut so tightly that her temples start hurting. She often busies herself on the balcony at night while she’s waiting for Kent. He always says she shouldn’t wait up for him. She always does. She usually notices his car from the balcony, and by the time he steps inside, his food is already on the table. Once he’s fallen asleep in their bed she picks up his shirt from the bedroom floor and puts it in the washing machine. If the collar is dirty she goes over it beforehand with vinegar and baking soda. Early in the morning she wakes and fixes her hair and tidies up the kitchen, sprinkles baking soda in the balcony flower boxes, and polishes all the windows with Faxin.
Faxin is Britt-Marie’s brand of window-cleaner. It’s even better than baking soda. She doesn’t feel like a fully fledged human being unless she has a more-or-less full bottle at the ready. No Faxin? Anything could happen in such a situation. So she wrote “Buy Faxin” on her shopping list this afternoon (she considered adding exclamation marks at the end, to really highlight the seriousness of it, but managed to contain herself). Then she went to the supermarket that isn’t her usual, where nothing is arranged as usual. She asked a young person working there for Faxin. He didn’t even know what it was. When Britt-Marie explained that it’s her brand of window-cleaner, he just shrugged and suggested a different brand. At which point Britt-Marie got so angry that she got out her list and added an exclamation mark.
The shopping cart was acting up and she even ran over her own foot with it. She closed her eyes and sucked in her cheeks and missed Kent. She found some salmon on sale and got some potatoes and vegetables. From a little shelf marked “Stationery” she took a pencil and two pencil sharpeners and put them in her cart.
“Are you a member?” asked the young man when she reached the cashier.
“Of what?” Britt-Marie asked suspiciously.
“The salmon is only on sale for members,” he said.
Britt-Marie smiled patiently.
“This is not my usual supermarket, you see. In my usual supermarket my husband is a member.”
The young man held out a brochure.
“You can apply here, it only takes a sec. All you do is fill in your name and address here an—”
“Certainly not,” said Britt-Marie immediately. Because surely there’s some kind of limit? Do you really have to register and leave your name and address like some suspected terrorist just because you want to buy a bit of salmon?
“Well, in that case you have to pay full price for the salmon.”
“Ha.”
The young man looked unsure of himself.
“Look, if you don’t have enough money on you I ca—”
Britt-Marie gave him a wide-eyed stare. She wanted so badly to raise her voice, but her vocal cords wouldn’t cooperate.
“My dear little man, I have plenty of money. Absolutely plenty.” She tried to yell, and to slap down her wallet on the conveyor belt, but it was more like a whisper and a little pushing movement.
The young man shrugged and took her payment. Britt-Marie wanted to tell him that her husband was actually an entrepreneur, and that she was actually well able to pay the full price for
some salmon. But the young man had already started serving the next customer. As if she didn’t make any difference.
At exactly 5:00 Britt-Marie knocks on the door of the girl’s office. When the girl opens the door, she’s wearing her coat.
“Where are you going?” asks Britt-Marie. The girl seems to pick up an incriminating note in her voice.
“I . . . well, we’re closing now . . . as I told you, I have t—”
“Are you coming back, then? What time should I expect you?”
“What?”
“I have to know when I’m supposed to put on the potatoes.”
The girl rubs her eyelids with her knuckles.
“Yes, yes, okay. I’m sorry, Britt-Marie. But as I tried to tell you, I don’t have the t—”
“These are for you,” says Britt-Marie, offering her the pencil. When the girl takes it, in some confusion, Britt-Marie also holds out a pair of pencil sharpeners, one of them blue and the other pink. She nods at these, and then she nods in a wholly unprejudicial way at the girl’s boyish hairstyle.
“You know, there’s no knowing what sort you people like nowadays. So I got both colors.”
The girl doesn’t seem quite sure who Britt-Marie is referring to by “you people.”
“Th . . . anks, I guess.”
“Now, I’d like to be shown to the kitchen, if it’s not too much bother to you, because otherwise I’ll be late with the potatoes.”
The girl very briefly looks as if she’s going to exclaim, “Kitchen?” but at the last moment she holds back and, like small children next to bathtubs, seems to understand that protesting will only prolong the process and make it more tortuous. She simply gives up, points to the staff kitchen, and takes the food bag from Britt-Marie, who follows her down the corridor. Britt-Marie decides to acknowledge her civility with some sort of compliment of her own.
“That’s a fine coat you have there,” she says at long last.
The girl’s hand slides in surprise over the fabric of her coat.
“Thanks!” She smiles sincerely, opening the door to the kitchen.
“It’s courageous of you to wear red at this time of year. Where are the cooking implements?”
With diminishing patience, the girl opens a drawer. One half is a jumble of cooking implements. The other holds a plastic compartment for cutlery.
A single compartment.
Forks, knives, spoons.
Together.
The girl’s irritation turns to genuine concern.
“Are . . . you . . . are you all right?” she asks Britt-Marie.
Britt-Marie has gone over to a chair to sit down, and looks on the verge of passing out.
“Barbarians,” she whispers, sucking in her cheeks.
The girl drops onto a chair opposite. Seems at a loss. Her gaze settles on Britt-Marie’s left hand. Britt-Marie’s fingertips are uncomfortably rubbing the white mark on her skin, like the scar of an amputated limb. When she notices the girl looking, she hides her hand under her handbag, looking as though she’s caught someone spying on her in the shower.
Gently, the girl raises her eyebrows.
“Can I just ask . . . sorry, but . . . I mean, what are you really doing here, Britt-Marie?”
“I want a job,” Britt-Marie replies, digging in her bag for a handkerchief so she can wipe the table down.
The girl moves about in a confused attempt to find a relaxed position.
“With all due respect, Britt-Marie, you haven’t had a job in forty years. Why is it so important now?”
“I have had a job for forty years. I’ve taken care of a home. That’s why it’s important now,” says Britt-Marie, and brushes some imaginary crumbs off the table.
When the girl doesn’t answer right away, she adds:
“I read in the newspaper about a woman who lay dead in her flat for several weeks, you see. They said the cause of death was ‘natural.’ Her dinner was still on the table. It’s actually not very natural at all. No one knew she was dead until her neighbors reacted to the smell.”
The girl fiddles with her hair.
“So . . . you . . . sort of want a job, so that . . .” she says, fumbling.
Britt-Marie exhales with great patience.
“She had no children and no husband and no job. No one knew she was there. If one has a job, people notice if one doesn’t show up.”
The girl, still at work long after her day should be over, sits looking for a long, long time at the woman who’s kept her here. Britt-Marie sits with a straight back, like she sits on the chair on the balcony when she’s waiting for Kent. She never wanted to go to bed when Kent wasn’t home, because she didn’t want to go to sleep unless someone knew she was there.
She sucks in her cheeks. Rubs the white mark.
“Ha. You believe it’s preposterous, of course. I’m certainly aware that conversation isn’t one of my strengths. My husband says I’m socially incompetent.”
The last words come out more quietly than the rest. The girl swallows and nods at the ring that is no longer on Britt-Marie’s finger.
“What happened to your husband?”
“He had a heart attack.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know he’d died.”
“He didn’t die,” whispers Britt-Marie.
“Oh, I th—”
Britt-Marie interrupts her by getting up and starting to sort the cutlery as if it has committed some kind of crime.
“I don’t use perfume, so I asked him to always put his shirt directly in the washing machine when he came home. He never did. Then he used to yell at me because the washing machine was so loud at night.”
She stops abruptly, and gives the oven a quick lecture about its buttons being the wrong way around. It looks ashamed of itself. Britt-Marie nods again and says:
“The other woman called me after he’d had his heart attack.”
The girl stands up to help, then sits down watchfully when Britt-Marie takes the filleting knife from the drawer.
“When Kent’s children were small and stayed with us every other week, I made a habit of reading to them. My favorite was The Master Tailor. It’s a fairy tale, you understand. The children wanted me to make up my own stories, but I can’t see the point of it when there are perfectly good ones already written by professionals. Kent said it was because I don’t have any imagination, but actually my imagination is excellent.”
The girl doesn’t answer. Britt-Marie sets the oven temperature. She puts the salmon in an oven dish. Then just stands there.
“It takes an excellent imagination to pretend one doesn’t understand anything year in, year out, even though one washes all his shirts and one doesn’t use perfume,” she whispers.
The girl stands up again. Puts her hand fumblingly on Britt-Marie’s shoulder.
“I . . . sorry, I . . .” she starts to say.
She stops although she hasn’t been interrupted. Britt-Marie clasps her hands together over her stomach and looks into the oven.
“I want a job because I actually don’t think it’s very edifying to disturb the neighbors with bad smells. I want someone to know I’m here.”
There’s nothing to say to that.
When the salmon is ready they sit at the table and eat it without looking at each other.
“She’s very beautiful. Young. I don’t blame him, I actually don’t,” says Britt-Marie at long last.
“She’s probably a slag,” the girl offers.
“What does that mean?” asks Britt-Marie, uncomfortable.
“It’s . . . I mean . . . it’s something bad.”
Britt-Marie looks down at her plate again.
“Ha. That was nice of you.”
She feels as though she should say something nice back, so, with a certain amount of strain, she manages to say, “You . . . I mean . . . your hair looks nice today.”
The girl smiles.
“Thanks!”
Britt-Marie nods.
“I’m not
seeing as much of your forehead today, not like yesterday.”
The girl scratches her forehead, just under her fringe. Britt-Marie looks down at her plate and tries to resist the instinct to serve up a portion for Kent. The girl says something. Britt-Marie looks up and mumbles: “Pardon me?”
“It was very nice, this,” says the girl.
Without Britt-Marie even asking.
4
And then Britt-Marie got herself a job. Which happened to be in a place called Borg. Two days after inviting the girl from the unemployment office to have some salmon, that’s where Britt-Marie heads off to in her car. So we should now say a few words about Borg.
Borg is a community built along a road. That’s really the kindest possible thing one can say about it. It’s not a place that could be described as one in a million, rather as one of millions of others. It has a closed-down soccer field and a closed-down school and a closed-down chemist’s and a closed-down liquor store and a closed-down health care center and a closed-down supermarket and a closed-down shopping center and a road that bears away in two directions.
There is a recreation center that admittedly has not been closed down, but only because they haven’t had time to do it yet. It takes time to close down an entire community, obviously, and the recreation center has had to wait its turn. Apart from that, the only two noticeable things in Borg are soccer and the pizzeria, because these tend to be the last things to abandon humanity.
Britt-Marie’s first contact with the pizzeria and the recreation center are on that day in January when she stops her white car between them. Her first contact with soccer is when a soccer ball hits her, very hard, on the head.
This takes place just after her car has blown up.
You might sum it up by saying that Borg and Britt-Marie’s first impressions of each other are not wholly positive.
If one wants to be pedantic about it, the actual explosion happens while Britt-Marie is turning into the parking area. On the passenger side. Britt-Marie is very clear about that, and if she had to describe the sound she’d say it was a bit like a “ka-boom.” Understandably, she’s in a panic, and she abandons both brake and clutch pedals, whereupon the car splutters pathetically. After a few unduly dramatic deviations across the frozen January puddles, it comes to an abrupt stop outside a building with a partially broken sign, the neon lights of which spell the name “PizzRai.” Terrified, Britt-Marie jumps out of the car, expecting it (quite reasonably, under the circumstances) to be engulfed in flames at any moment. This does not happen. Instead, Britt-Marie is left standing on her own in the parking area, surrounded by the sort of silence that only exists in small, remote communities.
The Fredrik Backman Collection_A Man Called Ove, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry, and Britt-Marie Was Here Page 63