Good Night, My Darling

by Inger Frimansson

  “But I must travel to Switzerland.”

  He lowered his voice.

  “You know, that’s close to where your mother came from.” “Then I want to go, too!”

  “My sweet child, that’s not possible. You understand. It’s a business trip. And you have to go to school. I have my work; you have school; we both have our daily duties.”

  She beat against his hands, against his stupid legs.

  He placed her back in her bed, and left the room.

  He was gone in the morning.

  She thought about the animal. The animal could be her daily duty.

  But Flora came to get her at school, which she hadn’t expected.

  Flora was dressed in her little black dress and pearls. A purse dangled from her wrist, held by a bronze chain.

  “We’re going to Vällingby,” she said. “We are going to a café.

  They began to walk down the hill.

  “You could try to be happy. For once!”

  Flora held her hand and minced along the way ladies do when they want to appear beautiful.

  Flora was beautiful.

  “Tell me what you did in school today,” she said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Of course you know.”

  “We read some, I think, and did addition.”

  Her hand was hard around Justine’s fingers.

  “Read some and did addition, you think!”

  Justine had to pee. She wanted to pull her hand from Flora’s, but Flora would not like that. Flora was her mother now, and she had to be Flora’s child.

  Once they arrived in Vällingby, Flora went shopping. Justine had to hold her purse while she tried on clothes.

  A bare arm came out.

  “Miss, this one is too big, could you bring me size thirtyfour instead?”

  The imperial ways of the shopkeepers, how they swept in and out, carrying the clothes. Flora came out wearing new dresses, twirled around and showed herself.

  “Well, Justine, what do you think? Shall I take this one? Do you think Pappa would like to see me in this?”

  First then did the shopkeepers notice her. Their expressions softened. Your mother certainly is lovely, isn’t she!

  Once they reached the café, she was finally able to go to the bathroom.

  When she came out, Flora had already ordered a cola and a pink and puffy Napoleon pastry.

  Flora didn’t eat anything, just sipped her coffee from a very small cup.

  The tables had checkered tablecloths. The place smelled strongly of smoke. Next to their table there was a child the same age as Justine who was with an older lady who was just spitting some saliva into a napkin in order to wipe the child’s face.

  “Oh Grandma!” said the child, but she didn’t squirm. She bit into her bun and stuck her tongue out at Justine. It was covered with doughy clumps.

  Flora’s red nails.

  “Eat, now, Justine! Eat!”

  At a different table, there was a man with a newspaper. He looked toward them. He smiled at Justine and winked. His hair was shiny black like a chocolate cake.

  When Flora shook a cigarette out of the package, he was there right away with a light.

  She bent her neck gracefully.

  “Eat, Justine!” she repeated. “You have to eat the whole thing. I’m warning you. I’m not going to buy pastries just so you can leave them half uneaten.”

  “Children are funny, aren’t they?” said the man.

  Flora blew out smoke. Her lips left a red mark on the cigarette.

  “They can also be a pain,” she said.

  Justine took small bites. She had already eaten the pink, raspberry inside. All that was left looked like fat, creamy porridge.

  She thought about the animal. She was not going to make it there today.

  The man had pulled his chair closer to their table. The other girl and her grandmother had left.

  “Can you sing?” the man asked, smiling at Justine. His lips were dry and thin. His tie was fastened by a dark green stone which shifted color when he moved.

  She stared at her spoon. It was sticky all the way up the handle.

  “All girls can sing,” the man continued.

  Flora giggled. She sounded like a child, her white teeth as tiny as a baby’s.

  “If you sing, I’ll give you a crown,” said the man, and he placed his hand on the table. His hand had short black hair and wide flat nails. He drummed a bit with his fingertips. “Child!”

  Flora’s iron pinch on her chin, the skin forced together. “Show the man that you can sing!”

  She pulled herself free.

  “What is her name?”

  “Justine.”

  “Strange name.”

  “It’s French.”

  “So maybe she does not understand what we are saying to her?”

  “She just has the ability to turn off. But she understands all right. And if she doesn’t finish her food, she knows what will happen when we get home.”

  “What will happen then, Madame?”

  “She’ll get a thorough spanking.”

  “From you?”

  “From me indeed!”

  “So Madame is a strict person?”

  “Yes, strict is the word.”

  “Are you from there yourself?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Are you French?”

  Flora giggled again. She said a name that sounded like Bertil.

  By now the man had pushed his chair between Flora and Justine. He sat so close that Justine could smell his aftershave. It was so strong, stronger than perfume, that her nose began to itch and run.

  “Shooo-stine,” said the man.

  She did not dare to look at him, but looked at her plate, the surrounding flower design and the gooey mess in the middle.

  “Haven’t you finished yet!”

  Flora’s porcelain eyes, eyelashes long and painted in numerous layers. Every morning she stood in the bathroom and brushed on layer after layer with a short, strong brush. “I… can’t!”

  It came out as a scream, though she didn’t mean to. She had meant to whisper, but the word came screeching out in spite of herself. Her tears burned against her hand; her mouth changed the scream into a howl.

  Flora hit her. Right in the middle of the café, Flora gave her a hearty slap. The howl cut right off.

  “Justine is a bit of a hysterical child,” she said. Her red lips had also left their mark on the coffee cup.

  “Her French nerves?” the man said with a fake French accent.

  Flora’s new little laugh, sultry and cooing.

  They took a cab home. The backseat was filled with shopping bags. The driver joked about the bags: did you buy up all of Vällingby, ladies? Flora joked back. The perfume of the man followed them into the taxi.

  Once they arrived home, Flora unpacked all the clothes and hung them on hangers in the bedroom. There were two dresses, a blouse and a skirt. Her movements were twitchy. She pulled down one dress and threw it on the bed.

  “Why did I buy this one! In this light, I can see this color doesn’t fit my skin one bit! I’m sorry I bought it! This is all your fault, Justine! You’ve put me in this mess. You are spoiled rotten!”

  She grabbed Justine’s ankles and spun her around, faster and faster, until her body was off the ground, the blood left her brain, and she felt like vomiting. Her leg hit the side of the bed, and Flora lost her balance and fell over. Justine ended up next to the wall with her knees tight against the molding.

  Flora took her into the basement. She poured water into the wash tub. Justine sat on the edge of the counter in just her panties and a camisole.

  “Do you know how we get the laundry clean? Have you watched me do the laundry? You’ve seen how I boil the water so that the clothes get completely clean. But first I set the clothes to soak.”

  And she lifted Justine with her cold fingertips, and set her into the tub. The water came up to her stomach. She hugged
her legs, holding them against her belly button.

  Flora had gone. She had stomped her way up the stairs and Justine heard her turn the key two turns. When Justine carefully adjusted her position, the water splashed against the wash tub’s rough sides.

  The water was cold now, but what if Flora came back and fired up underneath it? How much heat could she stand? Would she be like a frog lying on the serving tray with white eyes? Would her flesh get so tender it would fall off her bones when they lifted her up?

  Flora wouldn’t dare.

  Once when Pappa was gone, Flora locked her in the basement until late at night. She came down in her robe, waved matches around, but then put them aside. She drained the water and picked Justine up onto her knees. Justine’s feet were spongy and wrinkled and her toenails felt like they were going to fall off.

  Flora had brought a towel and Justine’s pajamas. She had dried Justine off right there in the basement and put on her pajamas. Then she carried Justine up the stairs and laid her in her own bed and pulled the covers up over them both. Flora’s arm had lain across her chest and she had felt Flora’s angular pelvis against her back all night long.

  Now she sat completely still. She thought she heard voices. She thought that Pappa had come home and now he was going to be really angry. But then the voices drifted away.

  She could climb out of the wash tub, but she couldn’t get down off the counter. She would have to grow a bit more for that. She saw a spider crawling along the wall. She was afraid of spiders and stared at it until it turned around and went back to its hole. One of her shins hurt where it had hit the bed when Flora was whirling her about. Flora said that people who tended toward hysteria would be made better by twirling them about properly. Once she had taken hold of Justine’s ankles and spun her until she did not know up from down.

  “This is what doctors did in the olden days for people who were sick in the head. Blood is forced to the brain so that they get more oxygen. If you throw up, that’s even better, because you get rid of the craziness that way. I’d spin you even more if I had the energy. But you’re getting much too heavy.”

  Pappa came back from his trip. He gave her an instrument, shiny as gold and decorated with tassles.

  “When you’re big, you can lead an entire orchestra.”

  She had to be outside with her instrument, far away in the garden. She blew into it and a sound came out. Her father came down to listen to her. He called to Flora, and the two of them stood under the apple tree and listened to her blow into the golden horn.

  “That’s not easy, I swear. Clearly she has a gift. Do you hear her? I should make sure she takes lessons.”

  “Girls aren’t supposed to play the trumpet!”

  “It’s not a trumpet, Flora, it’s a horn. An old mail horn from Lucerne.”

  Neither he nor Flora could get a squeak from that horn. Justine took a deep breath. Her lips lost feeling.

  Pappa was able to fasten a hook into the wall above her bed. He wasn’t very handy and he usually became angry when he had to screw things in or hammer a nail. But now the horn was hanging on the wall, held by its red silk ribbon.

  He forgot about the lessons. Now and again, Justine reminded him of his promise, but he only said, Drat! I’ve forgotten that again. She would stand by the edge of the water and blow her horn. She imagined herself in a parade, wearing a jacket and pleated skirt. All the streets in town were closed. Justine went first, the other musicians following her like rats.

  Chapter EIGHT

  After working the night shift at the hotel, Hans Peter usually slept until ten-thirty the next morning. If things were light, he sometimes could take a catnap during the night on the cot behind the curtain at the reception desk. He often thought he was a wealthy man. He had an abundance of time.

  He used his time to exercise and read. Once, on the back page of an American magazine, he found a list of the most important classics of literature throughout world history and he got the idea to read them all, from the Iliad to Das Kapital. It was impossible to buy all those books, even at used bookstores, so he often was forced to go to the great City Library on Sveavägen in order to find them. “Forced” was the right word. The atmosphere in the library was somber, though he couldn’t figure out why. Those people taking care of the books, daily confronted with book-hungry patrons, shouldn’t they be just a little bit more cheerful? Couldn’t the books light up their lives? Each time he showed his library card and named the book he wanted to check out, he felt assaulted, as if his mere presence created difficulties for the woman behind the checkout counter. They were worse than the cashiers at the department store in Bucharest, where he had visited once in the eighties before the fall of Ceausescu.

  Even when he was a boy, he felt that taking out books was awkward. He picked out a great heap of books, but the librarian informed him that he could only take out three at a time. And so she held up each book: this one or this one? He got so confused that he did not go back for many years, and he had asked his mother to take the three books that he finally had chosen.

  Right now he was reading Don Juan by Lord Byron in C.V.A. Strandberg’s translation. It was a thick and remarkably funny book in verse, and he had found it in a used book store. It had been published by Fitzes Bokförlag in the year 1919 and there was an ex libris plate on the inside flypaper which revealed that the person who once had owned it was named Axel Hedman.

  Things like this tickled Hans Peter’s curiosity. Immediately he began to research who this Hedman was, and eventually he found out that Axel Hedman had been a former instructor in Latin who was condemned for the murder of his housekeeper a few years after this book had been published.

  She was certainly not just his housekeeper, thought Hans Peter. The woman had been fairly young, as he discovered in an old newspaper from the time which had published a photo of the dead woman. She had thick, pronounced lips and appeared sensual. Instructor Hedman had defended himself by saying that the woman had used him and was after his savings. Apparently, the court didn’t put much stock in that.

  Perhaps instructor Hedman had been sitting in his cell on Långholmen and reading this very book? Right now Hans Peter was sitting at the reception desk with the book open behind a newspaper, which he used to cover it the moment anyone came and needed his help.

  This didn’t happen all that often. Actually, each guest could be given a key to the outer door so that they could take care of themselves and that would have been fine. But Ulf, who owned the hotel, didn’t want that. He wanted class at his establishment. And there was no class in a place without a night receptionist.

  The hotel was called Tre Rosor and was centrally located in the middle of Drottninggatan. It had ten double rooms and the same number of single rooms. The standard was simple, a washbowl in the room with the toilet and shower down the hall. Many of the guests were regulars, and a fifty-year-old man seemed to have moved into one of the rooms for good.

  “He’s all right,” said Ulf. “He pays and takes care of himself. He likes living in the middle of the city without worrying about the responsibility of his own place.”

  Sometimes, middle-aged couples came who were definitely not married to each other. Hans Peter was good at noticing the signs. They paid in advance, and at midnight, they often departed, with a different bearing-eyes more shiny, they spoke with softer voices.

  “We’re just going to take a little walk,” the man might say as he placed the key on the desk.

  But they didn’t return. At any rate, not that particular night.

  Ulf owned many different hotels. Every once in a while, he asked Hans Peter out to lunch or dinner; he probably thought he had a bit of responsibility toward him, since they had been brothers-in-law.

  “You bookworms,” he said, indicating his sister the librarian.

  Ulf didn’t much care for reading.

  “Made-up stories, what’s the point? People that some guy just thought up. Shouldn’t you care more about real people i
n real life?”

  “The one doesn’t necessarily exclude the other.”

  “I don’t know about that. Wouldn’t it be better for you to get out more and find yourself a new little lady that you could throw in your lot with?”

  Sometimes he came to Hans Peter’s place and was always surprised at the number of books. He stroked the spines and wondered how many volumes Hans Peter had.

  “Have you really read all these?”

  “You ask that every single time.”

  “How many hundreds and hundreds are there?”

  “Hundreds? You mean thousands!”

  They were very different types, but they got along well. Ulf was also divorced and some time after Hans Peter’s divorce, they took a trip together to London where they pubhopped and talked about life.

  He had found a good job. Ulf was a great boss. Even if there was no real status in being a night clerk, the most important thing must be what he himself felt about it.

  At the end of January, it turned cold. A great deal of snow came and Hans Peter started taking long walks when he woke up right before lunchtime. Sometimes he thought about getting a dog. Maybe a boxer or some other kind of pleasant dog. The problem was that he couldn’t take the dog to work. People had allergies; the hotel would lose customers.

  He thought about the dog he had once taken care of when he was a boy. His family had rented a summer cottage on the island of Gotland. Next to them was an older couple with a little roly-poly dachshund which looked like a sausage, and for the first few days, Hans Peter was afraid of it. The woman showed him how to hold out his hand with a piece of sugar cake and tell the dog to sit. Then the dog bent her hind legs behind her and sat; he could see her long tummy and her small white teats. She would not touch the sugar cake until Hans Peter let her. “Here you go,” you were supposed to say. Then she put her head to one side and gulped down the cake.

  He forgot what the dog was called, but he remembered that the woman would let him take the dog out on a leash. She would sink up to her tummy in the sand and whined and wanted him to carry her. Margareta was there, too; she was little, maybe two or three. She would grab the dog with her small, hard hands and the dog would yelp, but the dog never hurt Margareta. She understood that Margareta was herself just a puppy.