“Oh,” Marie said.
“Does she know who I am?”
“No,” Marie said. “Though she asks me every day why she doesn’t have a daddy.”
“And what do you say?”
“I said nothing, until two weeks ago, when I said that you worked in America.”
“Is that when you wrote to me?” George asked.
“Yes, George Frack—do you remember why?”
“Yes,” George said. “Funny how we do what was done to us.”
Silence again.
“After I told her, she began putting up pictures of President Bush all over her bedroom, and I realized that I had made a terrible mistake. I should have told you at the beginning.”
“I’m not mad,” George said quickly.
“Her name is Charlotte.”
“I want her to know me,” George said.
“She doesn’t know you,” Marie said. “And she already loves you.”
Then she started crying again.
“Are you married, Marie?”
“I’m engaged. And you are married with kids I suppose, George Frack?”
“No,” George said. “But I had a cat.”
“You’ll meet my fiancé. He’s nice, quite a bit older than me—twenty years, actually. He was the one who encouraged me to write to you.”
“Really? What’s his name?”
“Philip.”
“He sounds nice,” George said.
“Can you give me a few hours to think, George? I know it’s a lot to ask, but—”
“Sure. I’m staying at the Hotel Diplomat—call me when you’re ready.”
George hung up and lay back on his bed. He took a box of Raisinets from his briefcase and ate a handful. He then found a large envelope with the hotel name on it. In the envelope, George put his boarding pass, the chocolate he’d found balancing on his pillow, a feather that had been in his jacket pocket for years, a small thin bar of soap from the bathroom, and a drawing he’d done on the plane—of the man with the mustache.
Then George took a blue pen from the desk and wrote “Dominic Frack” on the paper. Then his sister’s address.
He sat on his bed and turned the television on. Then he turned it off again.
He picked up the phone and dialed his sister’s number, making sure he pressed the country code in first.
It rang and rang and rang.
George wondered if Helen was giving Dominic a bath. He imagined himself standing next to her with a towel. Dominic’s shiny face. Clouds against the window. Trees outside too, and the sea not far away.
A few minutes later, the phone rang of its own accord.
“George,” Marie said, “I don’t want to wait because I’m afraid you’ll change your mind and it will be my fault.”
“Good,” George said.
“Meet us at Skansen in two hours—it’s a park with animals, not far from your hotel.”
“Is it still raining?” George said.
“No, George, look outside.”
Outside, flakes the size of buttons drifted down and settled upon the earth. People on the sidewalks had slowed to look.
Then in the background, George heard his daughter scream something in Swedish.
“Did she just say it’s snowing?” George asked.
Within a couple of hours, the snow had stopped, leaving a thin layer of white across the city—just enough to catch footprints and bicycle tracks.
George took a shower. Then he shaved and brushed his teeth. He slowly dressed in his finest suit. Then he put on a brand-new pair of velvet loafers he’d brought with him. There were balls of tissue paper in the toes.
George left his hotel and walked east along the Strand-vägen toward the bridge. After crossing the busy road, he came to a fork. One path held the painted outline of an adult and child walking hand in hand; the other had the painted outline of a bicycle.
It was very cold outside, and each time George exhaled, he passed through a cloud of his own life.
Skansen was a park within a park. The Djurgården, in which the park was situated, was once the king’s private hunting grounds. Joggers passed in yellow spandex and thick hats. Along the water there were many boats. George guessed that they took tourists to the small, uninhabited islands around Stockholm. Most were closed for the winter, though one boat had lights on around its deck. As George approached, he saw several men working on the deck with their tools laid out next to them. As he passed, one of the men said something and waved. George smiled and waved back.
George entered the park through a blue iron arch with gold deer heads carved at the top. Birds swung from tree to tree. The path took him along the edge of another small lake. George checked the trees for the wreckage of kites. He wished he’d brought one. Ducks glided along the banks, while farther out, tall white birds cried out in the mist that lingered upon the surface of the lake.
When he reached the entrance to Skansen, George found that he was the only person there. A man with silver-rimmed glasses waved to him from the ticket office. George approached.
“One adult ticket?” the man asked.
“No, three tickets,” George said. “I’m expecting a woman and a girl in an hour—and I’d like to pay for them too.”
The man looked a little confused. “How will I know if they’re the right people?”
“I don’t know,” George said.
“Is it your family?” the man said helpfully.
George nodded.
“Then I’ll look out for a girl who looks like you.”
George nodded and grinned a little.
“There are also two other entrances,” the man added, “so if they don’t come through my gate, come back before we close and I’ll refund your money.”
“Okay, I will,” George said.
“Where are you meeting them?” the man asked.
“Somewhere, I guess.” George said.
“Very good,” the man said. “Well, I should tell you that Skansen was founded by Artur Hazelius in 1891.”
“1891?” George said.
“I think you’re going to be surprised.”
“I think I’m already surprised,” George said.
“That’s what we like to hear,” the man said. He was a cheerful sort of person.
George walked through the deserted model town that was supposed to be a miniature Sweden. There were empty workshops, empty schools, empty shops that in summer would be full of employees in period costume and Swedish children licking ice creams.
In the middle of winter, Skansen was like George’s life: a world that quietly waited for people to fill it.
After a few minutes, George’s loafers were covered in snowy mud. Birds circled high above the park. As he passed a plowed square of soil with a sign that read “Herbgarden,” George found himself on a ridge overlooking the city of Stockholm. The sound of cars and trains echoed through the cold air as a continuous hum, broken only by the occasional call of a bird from faraway trees.
When George approached the aviary, he noticed an empty stroller. A few yards away, a small woman was holding a girl up to the bars so she could see. George looked at his watch. He wasn’t supposed to meet them for another hour. As he approached, the little girl turned around as if she sensed him.
George stood still.
He looked at the girl and she looked back at him. She was the first to smile. It was the face from the photograph.
Then her mother turned and looked at George. She slipped a handkerchief from her sleeve and wiped her eyes.
“Hello,” George said. But though his mouth moved, the word came out so quietly that only he heard it.
“Hello, George Frack,” Marie said.
She looked much older than George remembered. Her body sagged in the middle, and her hair was flat and thin. But her eyes were still beautiful.
“Vem är han?” Charlotte said to her mother.
“Han är George,” her mother said. “Talar engelska, Lotta.�
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“Hello,” Charlotte said, turning to George. “My name is Lotta.”
“My name is George.”
“Would you like to come with us, George?” Lotta said.
George fought to control the trembling in his throat.
“I’d like that,” he said.
And so, as Marie watched from a little way off, Lotta took George’s cold, shaky hand into her little hot hand and led him through the aviary.
“The houses here are from all over Sweden,” Lotta said. “There are many wild animals too and an owl—two owls.”
“Really,” George said.
“What’s your favorite animal, Mr. George?”
“Cats.”
“Me also!” Lotta exclaimed.
Before they reached the owl enclosure, George felt dizzy. Then his legs crumpled beneath him, and he lay motionless in the mud looking up at clouds.
Lotta stood and watched, unsure of what to do. Marie rushed over. The sound of footsteps on wet earth, then George sobbing so loud that some of the animals turned to see from their cages.
After that, Lotta kept her distance from George, though every so often she would hand him a piece of candy covered in pocket-dust.
Later on, as a family of bored elk chewed straw, Lotta took George’s hand again.
“Are you okay, Mr. George?” she said.
“No,” George said. “I’m actually pretty freaked out.”
Then Marie knelt down and held Lotta by her shoulders. The elk continued chewing behind them.
“Lotta, George är dina pappa.”
Lotta looked up at George.
Then her face broke apart.
“George är dina pappa, Lotta,” Marie shouted, shaking Lotta as if she were a lifeless doll.
George looked down at his fingers.
Lotta screamed and ran away.
Her mother shouted for her to come back.
Then George, without consciously deciding to, began to chase her. He could feel the mud splashing up his legs. He felt dizzy again, but his legs moved faster than he’d ever imagined. In the distance, a small figure rounded a corner. George followed it. He caught sight of her again, her brown hair tossed with each desperate stride. When he caught up to her, he reached out for her shoulders and they both fell into the snowy mud.
George grabbed her and held her close. He rocked her back and forth and their bodies dug a small space in the earth to cradle their weight.
An employee feeding the animals watched and then turned away with a sigh.
When Lotta reached her arms around George’s neck, he could feel the heat of her mouth against his cheek. It was the weight of the entire world pressed against him in two small lips.
Even when Marie appeared, breathless—they wouldn’t let go of one another.
Lotta’s hair smelled like apples.
And her hands were so very small.
They left the park in darkness. The moon hung above the city like a bare knuckle. Water clapped against heavy boats and then, encircling Stockholm, re-created a city of no consequences.
Lotta was singing loudly in her stroller. She held the flag George had bought her at the museum shop. It had a cat on it.
Lotta kept turning to look at George; but her small face was hidden by shadows. George imagined her blinking eyes, her small hands under the blanket, hot breaths, the feeling of being pushed along the muddy path home.
V
A FEW DAYS LATER, ICE-SKATING at the Kungsträdgården. Lotta is doing pirouettes on the ice. It is late. They ate dinner at Max—Lotta’s favorite hamburger restaurant. After eating a third of her burger, Lotta had a Blizzer. She said it was very sweet, and she made George try a few mouthfuls with a flimsy spoon. Marie’s boyfriend, Philip, joined them when he finished work. He sells home appliances. Philip’s wife left him in 1985 for another man with whom she now lives in Gothenburg. Philip’s daughter is grown up and goes to university. Lotta likes to tease Philip by running away with his hat.
The man who served them at Max Hamburger was cross-eyed, so no one in the line knew whom he was talking to. Lotta thought this was funny, even when the man glared at her (if he was glaring at her). The restaurant had orange doors. Tired fathers drank coffee; shopping bags balanced on the end bars of strollers. On the wall were photographs charting the pictorial history of Max Hamburger.
The outdoor ice-skating rink was not far from the restaurant. Clouds rubbed faintly against an early evening sky. In the distance burned the bright neon letters of the Svenska Handelsbanken.
The streetlights were a cluster of white balls, with a single dome of light held aloft. Many of the buildings were painted yellow.
George had never ice-skated before. Lotta pulled him around the statue that stood in the middle of the small rink watching over everything but seeing nothing.
“We’re on the top of the world,” Lotta shouted. “This is the North Pole!”
Marie and Philip watched from the side, their arms locked.
Then George broke away and began to skate clumsily but without falling over.
“Look at Pappa,” Lotta shouted. And George knew that he had to keep going, despite the feeling that at any moment he might slip or the ground under his feet might suddenly be taken away—he had to stay up, he had to keep moving, and in time he would learn how to do it.
VI
WHEN THE COLD AT the ice rink became too much, George and Lotta changed back into their shoes, and they all found a café in which to warm up.
The city was cold and quiet but with lights everywhere.
There will be many things to sort out. George, Philip, and Marie will spend many nights drinking schnapps talking about arrangements. The four of them are convinced things can work out.
Lotta has stopped wetting her bed. She wonders what New York looks like. She wonders if she will ever look down from a skyscraper at all the people. She has put a photo of Goddard next to her bedside lamp. Her favorite David Bowie song is “Life on Mars?”
On the subway back to Lotta’s house in Södermalm, Lotta tells George about the old boat that was found in Stockholm harbor.
She tells him how in 1628, the most beautiful ship ever made sank before it could get out to sea. And then over three hundred years later, somebody decided to find it and bring it back to life.
Lotta wants to know if they have museums in New York. George tells her there are many. She asks if there is a cat museum. George tells her that he wishes there were one.
Then he thinks about the idea of a museum: the physical record of things; the history of miracles; the miracle of nature and the miracle of hope and perseverance, arranged in such a way as to never be forgotten, or lost, or simply mistaken for everyday things with no particular significance.
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An Excerpt from The Illusion of Separateness
Epilogue
We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness.
—THICH NHAT HANH
MARTIN
LOS ANGELES,
2010
I.
THE MERE THOUGHT of him brought comfort. They believed he could do anything, and that he protected them.
He listened to
their troubles without speaking.
He performed his duties when they were asleep, when he could think about his life the way a child stands in front of the sea. Always rising at first light, he filled his bucket, then swished along the corridors with pine soap and hot water. There were calluses where he gripped the handle. The bucket was blue and difficult to carry when full. The water got dirty quickly, but it didn’t annoy him. When it was done, he leaned his mop against the wall and went into the garden.
He sometimes drove to the pier at Santa Monica. It was something he did alone.
A long time ago, he proposed to a woman there.
There was mist because it was early and their lives were being forged around them. They could hear waves chopping but saw nothing.
In those days, Martin was a baker at the Café Parisienne. He had a mustache and woke up very early. She was an actress who came in for coffee one morning and never quite managed to leave.
She would have liked the Starlight Retirement Home. Many of the residents were in films. They come to breakfast in robes with their initials on the pocket. They call him Monsieur Martin on account of his French accent. After dinner they sit around a piano and remember their lives. They knew the same people but have different stories. The frequency with which a resident receives guests is a measure of status.
Martin is often mistaken for a resident himself.
It would be easier if people knew exactly how old he was, but the conditions of his birth are a mystery.
He grew up in Paris. His parents ran a bakery and they lived upstairs in three rooms.
When Martin was old enough to begin school, his parents seated him at the kitchen table with a glass of milk, and told him the story of when someone gave them a baby.
“It was summer,” his mother said. “The war was on. I can’t even remember what the man looked like, but there was suddenly a child in my arms. It happened so quickly.”
Love Begins in Winter Page 14