“You . . . shouldn’t have come here.”
“I came here because you were Granny’s friend.”
“I don’t need charity! I can manage on my own,” says the woman grimly.
“Sure, you’re really managing bloody well. Really. But I’m not here out of charity,” Elsa manages to reply.
“Well, get out then, you little brat! Get the hell out!” hisses the woman, still without turning around.
Elsa starts breathing hard, frightened by the sudden aggression, and insulted by the woman not even looking at her. She hops off the chair with clenched fists.
“Right, then! So my mum was wrong when she said you were just tired! And Granny was right! You’re just a bloody—”
And then it goes as with all anger attacks. They don’t just consist of one anger, but of many. A long series of angers, flung into a volcano in one’s breast until it erupts. Elsa is angry at the woman in the black skirt because she doesn’t say anything to make anything more understandable in this idiotic fairy tale. And she’s angry at Wolfheart for abandoning her because he’s afraid of this idiotic psychoterropist. And most of all she’s angry at Granny. And this idiotic fairy tale. And all those angers together are too much for her. She knows long before the word leaves her lips how wrong it is to yell it out:
“DRUNK! YOU’RE NOTHING BUT A DRUNK!!!”
She regrets it terribly in the same instant. But it’s too late. The woman in the black skirt turns around. Her face is contorted into a thousand broken pieces of a mirror.
“Out!”
“I didn’t m—” Elsa begins to say, reeling backwards across the office floor, holding out her hands, wanting to apologize.“Sorr—”
“OOOUUUT!” screams the woman, hysterically clawing at the air as if looking for something to throw at her.
And Elsa runs.
She hurtles along the corridor and down the stairs and through a door to the vestibule, sobbing so violently that she loses her footing, tumbles blindly, and falls headlong. She feels her backpack whack against the back of her head and waits for the pain when her cheekbone meets the floor. But instead she feels soft, black fur. And then everything bursts for her. She hugs the enormous animal so hard that she can feel it gasping for air.
“Elsa.” Alf’s voice can be heard from the front door. Absolutely cut-and-dried. Not like a question. “Come on, for Christ’s sake,” he grunts. “Let’s go home. You can’t lie there bloody sobbing your heart out.”
Elsa wants to yell out the whole story to Alf. Everything about the sea-angel and how Granny sends her out on idiotic adventures and she doesn’t even know what she’s expected to do, and how Wolfheart abandoned her when she needed him most and everything about Mum and the “sorry” Elsa had hoped to find here, and everything about Halfie who will come and change everything. How Elsa is drowning in loneliness. She wants to shout it all out to Alf. But she knows he wouldn’t understand anyway. Because no one does when you’re almost eight.
“What are you doing here?” she sobs.
“You gave me the damned address,” he mutters. “Someone had to bloody pick you up. I’ve been driving a taxicab for thirty years, so I know you just don’t leave little girls anywhere, any-old-how.” He’s quiet for a few breaths before adding, into the floor: “And your grandmother would have bloody beaten the life out of me if I hadn’t picked you up.”
Elsa nods and wipes her face on the wurse’s pelt.
“Is that thing coming as well?” Alf asks grouchily. The wurse looks back at him even more grumpily. Elsa nods and tries not to start crying again.
“It’ll have to go in the trunk, then,” says Alf firmly.
But obviously that is not how things end up. Elsa keeps her face buried in its fur all the way home. It’s one of the very, very best things about wurses: they’re waterproof.
There’s opera coming from the car stereo. At least Elsa thinks it must be opera. She hasn’t really heard very much opera, but she’s heard it mentioned and she supposes this is what it sounds like. When they’re about halfway home, Alf peers with concern at her in the rearview mirror.
“Is there anything you want?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Coffee?”
Elsa raises her head and glares at him.
“I’m seven!”
“What the hell’s that got to do with it?”
“Do you know any seven-year-olds who drink coffee?”
“I don’t know very many seven-year-olds.”
“I can tell.”
“Well, bloody forget it, then,” he grunts.
Elsa lowers her face into the wurse’s pelt. Alf swears a bit in the front, and then after a while he passes her a paper bag. It has the same writing on it as the bakery where Granny always went.
“There’s a cinnamon bun in there,” he says, adding, “But don’t bloody cry all over it or it won’t taste good.”
Elsa cries on it. It’s good anyway.
When they get to the house she runs from the garage up to the flat without even thanking Alf or saying good-bye to the wurse, and without thinking about how Alf has seen the wurse now and might even call the police. Without saying a word to him, she walks right past the dinner that George has put on the kitchen table. When Mum comes home she pretends to be asleep.
And when the drunk starts yelling on the stairs that night, and the singing starts again, Elsa, for the first time, does what all the others in the house do.
She pretends she doesn’t hear.
18
SMOKE
Every fairy tale has a dragon. Thanks to Granny, that is. . . .
Elsa is having terrible nightmares tonight. She’s always dreaded closing her eyes and no longer being able to get to the Land-of-Almost-Awake. The worst thing would be a dreamless sleep. But this is the night she learns of something even worse. Because she can’t get to the Land-of-Almost-Awake, and yet she dreams about it. She can see it clearly from above, as if she’s lying on her stomach on top of a huge glass dome, peering down at it. Without being able to smell any smells or hear any laughter or feel the rush of wind over her face when the cloud animals take off. It’s the most terrifying dream of all the eternities.
Miamas is burning.
She sees all the princes and princesses and the wurses and the dream hunters and the sea-angel and the innocent people of the Land-of-Almost-Awake running for their lives. Behind them the shadows are closing in, banishing imagination and leaving nothing but death as they pass. Elsa tries to find Wolfheart in the inferno, but he’s gone. Cloud animals, mercilessly butchered, lie in the ashes. All of Granny’s tales are burning.
One figure wanders among the shadows. A slim man enveloped in a cloud of cigarette smoke. That’s the only scent Elsa can smell up there on top of the dome, the smell of Granny’s tobacco. Suddenly the figure looks up and two clear blue eyes penetrate the haze. A shroud of mist seeps between his thin lips. Then he points directly at Elsa, his forefinger deformed into a gray claw, and he shouts something, and in the next moment hundreds of shadows launch themselves from the ground and engulf her.
Elsa wakes up when she throws herself out of the bed and lands facedown against the floor. She cowers there, her chest heaving, her hands covering her throat. It feels as if millions of eternities have passed before she can trust that she’s back in the real world. She’s not had a single nightmare since Granny and the cloud animals first brought her to the Land-of-Almost-Awake. She had forgotten how nightmares feel. She stands up, sweaty and exhausted, checks to see that she’s not been bitten by one of the shadows, and tries to get her thoughts into order.
She hears someone talking in the hall and has to muster all her powers of concentration to scatter the mists of sleep and be able to hear what’s happening.
“I see! But surely you understand, Ulrika, that it’s a bit odd for them to be calling you. Why don’t they call Kent? Kent is actually the chairman of this residents’ association and I am in charge
of information, and it’s common practice for the accountant to call the chairman with these types of errands. Not just any old person!”
Elsa understands that “any old person” is an insult. Mum’s sigh as she answers is so deep that it feels as if Elsa’s sheets are ruffled by the draft:
“I don’t know why they called me, Britt-Marie. But the accountant said he would come here today to explain everything.”
Elsa opens the bedroom door and stands in her pajamas in the doorway. Not only Britt-Marie is standing there in the hall; Lennart and Maud and Alf are also there. Samantha is sleeping on the landing. Mum is wearing only her dressing gown, hurriedly tied across her belly. Maud catches sight of Elsa and smiles mildly, with a cookie tin in her arms. Lennart gulps from a coffee thermos.
For once Alf doesn’t look entirely in a bad mood, which means he only looks irritated in an everyday way. He nods curtly at Elsa, as if she has forced him into a secret. Only then does Elsa remember that she left him and the wurse in the garage yesterday when she ran up to the flat. Panic wells up inside of her, but Alf glares at her and makes a quick “stay calm” gesture, so that’s what she tries to do. She looks at Britt-Marie and tries to figure out if she’s worked up today because she has found the wurse, or if it’s a quite normal fuss about the usual Britt-Marie stuff. It seems to be the latter, thank God, but directed at Mum.
“So the landlords have suddenly had the notion that they might be willing to sell the flats to us? After all the years that Kent has been writing them letters! Now they have suddenly decided! Just like that, easy-peasy? And then they contact you instead of Kent? That’s curious, don’t you find that curious, Ulrika?”
Mum tightens her dressing gown sash. “Maybe they couldn’t get hold of Kent. And maybe since I’ve lived here so long they thought—”
“We’ve actually lived here the longest, Ulrika. Kent and I have lived here longer than anyone else!”
“Alf has lived in the house the longest,” Mum corrects her.
“Granny has lived here the longest,” Elsa mumbles, but no one seems to hear her. Especially not Britt-Marie.
“Isn’t Kent away on a business trip?” asks Mum.
Britt-Marie pauses at this and nods imperceptibly.
“Maybe that’s why they didn’t get hold of him. That’s why I called you as soon as I hung up after speaking to the acc—”
“But surely it’s common practice to contact the chairperson of the leaseholders’ association!” says Britt-Marie with consternation.
“It isn’t a leaseholders’ association yet,” Mum sighs.
“But it will be!”
“And that is what the landlords’ accountant wants to come and talk about today—he says they’re finally willing to convert our rental contracts into leaseholds. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. As soon as I’d hung up the phone after talking to him, I contacted you. And then you woke up the whole house and now here we are. What more do you want me to do, Britt-Marie?”
“What sort of nonsense is that, coming here on a Saturday? Surely one doesn’t have meetings like this on a Saturday, surely one doesn’t, Ulrika? Do you think one does? Probably you do, Ulrika!”
Mum massages her temples. Britt-Marie inhales and exhales fairly demonstratively and turns to Lennart and Maud and Alf for support. Maud tries to smile encouragingly. Lennart offers Britt-Marie a shot of coffee while they are waiting. Alf looks as if he’s now approaching his usual level of ill-humor.
“Well we can’t have the meeting without Kent,” Britt-Marie splutters.
“No, of course, only if Kent can make it back,” Mum agrees exhaustedly. “Why don’t you try calling him again?”
“His plane hasn’t landed yet! He’s actually on a business trip, Ulrika!”
Alf grunts something behind them. Britt-Marie spins around. Alf pushes his hands into his jacket pockets and grunts something again.
“Sorry?” say Mum and Britt-Marie at the same time, but in diametrically opposed tones of voice.
“I’m just bloody saying that I sent Kent a text twenty minutes ago when you started making a bloody racket about this, and he got back to tell me he’s on his bloody way,” says Alf, and then adds, “The idiot wouldn’t miss this for all the tea in China.”
Britt-Marie seems not to hear the last bit. She brushes invisible dust from her skirt and folds her hands and gives Alf a superior glance, because she knows quite clearly that it’s impossible for Kent to be on his way here, because, in fact, his plane hasn’t landed yet and, in fact, he’s on a business trip. But then there comes the sound of the door slamming on the ground floor and Kent’s footsteps. You can tell they’re Kent’s because someone is screaming German into a telephone, the way Nazis speak in American films.
“Ja, Klaus! JA! We will dizcuzz thiz in Frankfurt!”
Britt-Marie immediately sets off down the stairs to meet him and tell him about the impudence that’s been impudent enough to take place here in his absence.
George comes out of the kitchen behind Mum, wearing jogging shorts, a very green sweater, and an even greener apron. He gives them an amused look, while holding a smoking frying pan.
“Anyone want some breakfast? I’ve made eggs.” He looks as if he’s going to add that there are also some newly bought protein bars on offer, but seems to change his mind when he realizes they may run out.
“I’ve brought some cookies,” says Maud expansively, giving Elsa the whole tin and patting her tenderly on the cheek. “You have that, I can get some more,” she whispers and walks into their flat.
“Is there coffee?” asks Lennart nervously, having another shot of standby coffee as he follows her.
Kent strides up the stairs and appears in the doorway. He is wearing jeans and an expensive jacket. Elsa knows that because Kent usually tells her how much his clothes cost, as if he’s awarding points in the final of the Eurovision Song Contest. Britt-Marie hurries along behind him, mumbling repeatedly, “The rudeness, the sheer rudeness of not calling you, of just calling any old person. Isn’t that just so rude? Things can’t be allowed to go on like this, Kent.”
Kent doesn’t really acknowledge his wife’s raving, but points dramatically at Elsa’s mum.
“I want to know exactly what the accountant said when he called.”
But before Mum has time to say anything, Britt-Marie brushes off some invisible dust from Kent’s arm, and whispers to him in a radically changed tone of voice.
“Maybe you should go down first and change your shirt, Kent?”
“Please, Britt-Marie, we’re doing business here,” Kent says dismissively, more or less like Elsa when Mum wants her to wear something green.
She looks crestfallen.
“I can throw it in the machine, come along, Kent. There are freshly ironed shirts in your wardrobe. You really can’t be wearing a wrinkly shirt when the accountant comes, Kent, what will the accountant think of us then? Will he think we can’t iron our shirts?” She laughs nervously.
Mum opens her mouth to try to say something again, but Kent catches sight of George.
“Ah! You’ve got eggs?” Kent bursts out enthusiastically.
George nods with satisfaction. Kent immediately darts past Mum into the flat. Britt-Marie hurries after him with a frown. When she passes Mum, Britt-Marie looks bothered as she lets slip, “Oh well, when one is busy with a career like you are, Ulrika, there’s no time to clean, of course not.” Even though every inch of the flat is in perfect order.
Mum ties the sash of her dressing gown round her a little tighter, and says, with a deeply controlled sigh, “Just come on in, all of you. Make yourselves at home.”
Elsa dives into her room and changes out of her pajamas into jeans as quick as she can, so she can run down and check on the wurse in the cellar while everyone is busy up here. Kent interrogates Mum in the kitchen about the accountant, and Britt-Marie echoes him with an “mmm” after every other word.
The only one who stays in the f
ront hall is Alf. Elsa sticks her thumbs in her jeans pockets and pokes her toes against the edge of the threshold, trying to avoid looking him in the eye.
“Thanks for not saying anything about the . . .” she starts to say, but she stops herself before she has to say “wurse.”
Alf shakes his head grumpily.
“You shouldn’t have rushed off like that. If you’ve taken that animal on, you have to bloody shoulder your responsibility for it, even if you’re a kid.”
“I’m not a bloody kid!” snaps Elsa.
“So quit behaving like one, then.”
“Touché,” Elsa whispers at the threshold.
“The animal is in the storage unit. I’ve put up some sheets of plywood so people can’t see inside. Told it to keep its mouth shut. I think it got the point. But you have to find a better hiding place. People will find it sooner or later,” says Alf.
Elsa understands that when he says “people” he means Britt-Marie. And she knows he’s right. She has a terribly bad conscience about abandoning the wurse yesterday. Alf could have called the police and they would have shot it. Elsa abandoned it like Granny abandoned Mum, and this scares her more than any nightmares.
“What are they talking about?” she asks Alf, with a nod towards the kitchen, to shake off the thought.
Alf snorts.
“The bloody leaseholds.”
“What does it mean?”
“Jesus, I can’t stand here explaining everything,” he groans. “The difference between a rental contract and a leasehold in a bloo—”
“I know what a bloody leasehold is, I’m not bloody thick,” says Elsa.
“Why are you asking, then?” says Alf defensively.
“I’m asking what it means; why are they all talking about it!” Elsa clarifies, in the way one clarifies things without being very clear at all.
“Kent has been going on about these sodding leaseholds ever since he moved back in, he won’t be satisfied until he can wipe his ass with the money he’s shat out first,” explains Alf, in the manner of one who doesn’t know very many seven-year-olds. At first Elsa is going to ask what Alf meant when he said that Kent “moved back in,” but she decides to take one thing at a time.
The Fredrik Backman Collection: A Man Called Ove, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry, and Britt-Marie Was Here Page 45