A Question Mark is Half a Heart Page 26
‘We can ask Grandma, when we see her.’
‘I don’t know if I want to. I can’t take any more. I just want to go home, I want everything to be back to normal. I want to take photographs again, to get back to work.’
Alice wriggles out of her arms.
‘Back to normal? You mean you want to go back to your lie?’
THEN
PARIS, 1986
Elin ran along the street with an envelope in one hand and her bag dangling from the other. She was out of breath and beads of sweat were breaking out on her brow. She couldn’t stop smiling, and when she got to the bookshop she threw herself right into Anne’s arms, making her stagger back a few paces, laughing. Elin pulled a piece of paper out of the envelope and waved it in front of her.
‘I’ve got a job,’ she wheezed, leaning against the counter with one hand.
Anne didn’t understand.
‘But you work all the time, don’t you? What’s so special about that?’
‘As an assistant,’ she grinned.
‘An assistant to whom?’
‘I’m going to be a photographer. I’m never going to stand in front of the camera again, only behind it,’ she grinned proudly.
Anne took both Elin’s hands in hers.
‘But don’t you love books? I thought I was going to convince you to study.’
‘Yes, but I love light more, magical light. Light is to photographers what ideas are to authors, you know that, right? And I plan to spend the rest of my life chasing light, the perfect light.’
Elin was talking so excitedly it sounded as though she was singing. Her French was more or less fluent now. Anne laughed at her.
‘You sound so full of passion! That’s good, passion is the most important thing. I believe in you, I always will. Just as long as you promise to keep coming here so I can make a fuss of you – you’ve become almost like a daughter to me.’
Elin’s face fell as Anne turned around and started automatically tidying the books on the table behind her. She arranged them in perfect stacks.
‘And you’re like a mother to me,’ Elin replied, barely audibly.
Anne didn’t respond. She’d started talking to herself again, as she often did when she was working. Her red hair had started to go grey, and she wore it in a bun at the base of her skull. She moved about between the shelves, moving books, straightening books.
Elin sank down into one of the armchairs with a thick, half-read book in her hand. The other chairs were already taken. The special thing about Anne’s bookshop was that it also functioned as a library. She didn’t seem to care much about sales and never seemed stressed about money. She taped up little hand-written notes about the books she liked the best. She helped students with their assignments. She held author talks in the evening. And she served hot chocolate with a drop of mint essence and marshmallows when you needed it most. But this afternoon she didn’t bring Elin a mug. Instead, she had a stack of heavy books in her arms.
‘If you’re going to become a photographer, we’re going to do it properly,’ she informed Elin, and put the entire stack on the table beside her.
‘Here’s a little history of photography. Go through all of them. And here’s a list of photographers you should know. Study the light … or whatever it is that’s important.’
She held out a handwritten note. Elin read through the names, delighted by Anne’s enthusiasm.
‘You can read your way to most things, but not all,’ she said, laughing.
Anne looked at her uncomprehendingly.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I plan to have my own style, to be unique.’
Anne nodded, pleased.
‘Good, that’s how it should be.’
At least this Sunday she had something to share. She rang every Sunday, but if he was slurring too much she’d hang up without saying anything. The first telephone booth she tried stank of urine, the sharp stench making her turn in the doorway and walk along to another, further down the street. She never rang from home, always from a phone booth. It had almost become a ritual.
It rang, but no one answered. She hung up, but stayed where she was. Another number flickered through her head, the one to her old home on the farm. She started to dial it, but stopped halfway through and tried Lasse’s number again.
‘Hello!’
The voice that answered sounded unfamiliar.
‘Who’s this?’ she asked.
‘This is Janne, who’s that?’
‘It’s Elin, Lasse’s daughter. Isn’t he home?’
Silence.
‘Hello, are you still there?’ Elin said. She heard him clearing his throat. ‘Where’s Papa?’
‘Haven’t you heard?’
Elin was baffled. What should she have heard?
‘Has he moved?’ she asked.
He cleared his throat again. She couldn’t tell whether he sounded drunk or not. If he sounded friendly or if he was an intruder.
‘He’s gone now,’ he mumbled eventually.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, he’s dead.’
Elin was speechless. Dead. Gone. No more calls, no more questions. They’d never see each other again. She swallowed the lump that was growing in her throat and slowly replaced the receiver on its hook, without saying anything.
The sun burst out from behind the clouds above the telephone booth, a few rays finding their way through. She looked up and waved. God’s lights. That was what Lasse used to call them.
‘Bye, Papa,’ she whispered.
NOW
VISBY, 2017
Elin spins slowly round and round, watching the sea and the city wall disappear and reappear, feeling the wind on her cheeks. Alice is sitting in front of her on the beach, playing with the stones. After a while, Elin sinks down beside her. She’s dizzy and her cheeks are rosy. Alice holds a pebble out towards her. It’s smooth and white.
‘Look, it’s a heart shape,’ she grins.
Elin takes it from her and puts it in the palm of her own hand, closing her fingers around it.
‘Did you know that it was a stone just like this that made me fall for your dad?’
Alice raises her eyebrows.
‘What do you mean? He’s never been here, has he?’
‘No, not here. But he bent down and picked up a heart-shaped stone on our first walk together. When he gave it to me I knew.’
‘Knew what?’
‘Ah, nothing.’
Alice takes the stone back and puts it in her pocket.
‘But why did you lie to him?’
‘It wasn’t that simple, I didn’t lie at first. He got the wrong impression early on, and I just never ended up telling him how things really were. I was so scared of losing him, so worried he’d be angry with me. The months passed, the years. We became a family, and everything else became unimportant.’
Elin stands up and puts her arms around Alice and they slowly start walking.
‘Sorry, Mom,’ says Alice, leaning her head against Elin’s shoulder. ‘This is hard for you, and here I am asking you all these difficult questions.’
Elin looks genuinely sad.
‘You have to understand how my life was when I met your dad. I had Anne, I had my career, my day-to-day life in Paris. This was all so distant. But I guess that’s how it goes, the truth always catches up with you.’ Elin gropes for the armrest of a park bench and crumples onto the seat, hunching her shoulders and folding her arms across her chest.
Alice sits down beside her, as close as she can get. They sit quietly, watching the ducks floating about on the edge of the little pond in the park. The sound of the sea is calming. There’s no traffic noise, everything is still.
‘Sam reminded me of all this in some way,’ Elin says at last.
‘What? Of Gotland? You used to say he was a real city boy.’
‘Yeah, but he’s still so down-to-earth in some way. So calm. He noticed all of nature’s little details.’
‘Give me the stone,’ she says.
Alice feels in her pocket and pulls it out. It looks maybe more like a triangle than a love heart, but the indentation is there, faintly, and the corners are gently rounded. Elin holds it in her hand and gets out her phone, takes a close-up and sends it straight to Sam.
‘I wonder if he remembers too,’ she says.
The car follows the curves of the narrow country road much too slowly. A queue of three impatient vehicles has already built up behind them. The November sun is low on the horizon, the light golden. There’s a lot of green despite the season, the pine trees still growing densely in the forests they pass. Elin suddenly remembers the trips of her childhood, between countryside and city, how she used to pretend to hold out a knife that felled the trees as they drove past them. They fell invisibly behind her and she never dared turn around for fear the illusion would evaporate.
The road straightens out and the cars behind them accelerate past, one after another. Elin shifts her foot to the brake and slows down even more. Her hands are gripping the steering wheel so hard her knuckles are white. She pulls into the side of the road with her tyres half a metre onto the white gravel alongside the asphalt. A compact silence spreads as the noise of the car’s engine ceases. No outside noise finds its way into the car. Just a faint ticking sound from the warm engine as it slowly cools down.
Elin turns the key again, backs into a narrow side street and turns around.
‘What are you doing? Fredrik is waiting for us,’ says Alice, suddenly alert.
Elin turns out onto the road and accelerates in the wrong direction. Alice tells her to stop, firmly, and she obeys, in the middle of the road. The car behind, forced to swerve, honks loudly as it drives past.
‘I can’t do this. Not today.’
‘You have to.’
‘It has to happen at my pace. That’s the only thing I can’t budge on.’
Elin turns her head to Alice, who reaches out and removes her mother’s sunglasses. Elin blinks away a tear, catches it with her index finger.
‘It won’t feel any easier tomorrow,’ says Alice. ‘You’re just putting it off. She won’t be angry, she’ll be happy. You can stay here a little while, but then you have to turn around. You have to.’
Elin leans back in her seat and closes her eyes. Her breathing gradually becomes deeper and calmer. Finally, she sits up again and puts both hands on the steering wheel.
‘You can do this, Mom,’ Alice whispers.
The car begins to move again, in the right direction. The closer they get, the more houses Elin recognises, and can even recall the names of the people who live there, or lived there. Thomas from school, Anna, her teacher Kerstin. Soon they’ll see the buildings of Grinde’s farm towering up beyond the fields. Or whatever’s there instead of the farm that burned down.
‘Just imagine if she thinks it’s my fault,’ she whispers, slowing down.
‘It wasn’t your fault. No one thinks that. Don’t you get it?’
‘That’s what Fredrik says, I know, but sparks can travel a long way. And I made a huge fire.’
‘He’s right, I think. You must be remembering wrong, you were only young.’
‘She was in love with him.’
‘Who was? With whom?’
‘Mama, with Micke, Fredrik’s papa. She worshipped him, even though life with him was hard.’
‘And you? What did you think of him?’
‘He was difficult. He even hit me. I can still remember his big flat palms. It wasn’t until recently that it occurred to me that not everyone knows how it feels to be hit.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘That not everyone knows how your skin reacts, that tight, stinging feeling. That that feeling stays with you, sometimes for several minutes. Not everyone knows how the blow sort of spreads through your bone marrow and that the pain can be felt in your whole body, not just where the blow landed.’
‘Oh, Mom, how awful.’
‘Those of us who know that, who know how it feels, we stand close together on the same dark ground. Completely unaware of each other.’
‘Does Fredrik know?’
Elin nods.
‘Fredrik knows, of course, he had it much worse. He said he hasn’t missed him, and in a way I understand. Micke was much more difficult than my real papa. Papa used to hit us sometimes, but I got a lot more hugs than slaps.’
‘Men who use violence should be deported to Mars, the whole lot of them,’ says Alice.
‘Women too,’ Elin replies.
The fields that swish past are frozen and bare, the same fields Elin once ran through. In the distance she can see the avenue cut across them. The gravel drive that leads to Grinde’s farm is still lined with bare trees, but they’re lower and sparser than the old lime trees she remembers. She catches a glimpse of a house at the end of the avenue, white but unfamiliar. Her heart thuds in her chest as she drives past the turn-off.
‘You should see the way it looks here in the summer. When the flowers are blooming all over the verges,’ she says, pointing to the muddy brown roadsides.
‘Your flowers? They’re the ones you’re always drawing, right? I’ve always wondered, there are so few types I recognise. I thought they were imaginary flowers.’
‘I guess they may as well be.’ Elin smiles.
Further along the road, they catch sight of the store. The two-storey stone building looks just like it did when she last saw it, beige stucco and red window frames. Now, just as then, the windows are covered with discount posters advertising cheap food. Fredrik’s pick-up is parked at an angle outside the building, it says Grinde’s Construction on the side in thick black lettering. When he hears them coming he gets out and walks over as Elin winds down the window.
‘Took you long enough, I thought you’d got lost, that maybe you didn’t know your way around here any more.’
‘Imagine that, the store’s still here,’ Elin says, astonished.
‘Everything’s still here, everything’s just like normal.’
‘Nothing’s like normal,’ she retorts as she steps out of the car. She’s wearing high narrow heels, and they sink into the soft gravel. The black leather of her shoes is grey with dust. She pushes her sunglasses up on her nose and absent-mindedly touches up her lips with a red lipstick from her bag. A cold wind blows in from the sea and Alice is hunched against it, shivering.
‘Shall we go in and buy something for her? A box of chocolates?’ she asks.
‘Edvin likes salt lakrits,’ Fredrik says. He tries to speak English, but trips himself up and says the Swedish word for liquorice.
‘What’s that?’
‘I can show you if you’d like?’
Fredrik gestures towards the shop and Alice follows him doubtfully. Elin stays outside and breathes a while, listening to the motion of the branches in the wind, their familiar pattering sound. The roar of the waves. The scent of earth.
It’s still the same door, the glass door. And there’s a tug back as she pulls the steel handle, just as she remembers. She pulls on it hard and walks inside. The floor is new, as is the shelving. The walls are painted a different colour. But the smell is the same. Fresh bread, meat, and freshly-brewed coffee. Fredrik stands at the counter, talking to the cashier. He knows her, they smile and laugh. Alice comes up to Elin with a red box of chocolates. She takes it from her, turns it over in her hands, studying each side.
‘We always had a box of these at Christmas time,’ she marvels. ‘Mama likes them, I remember that.’
She walks on through the shop, runs her hand over the packaging on the shelves. Powdered mashed potato, Béarnaise sauce, split pea soup, mustard, quick-cook macaroni. Familiar yet different. She walks over to the sweet counter, takes bag after bag of the flavours of her childhood.
‘You don’t even eat sugar, do you?’ Alice laughs.
‘Today I eat everything.’ Elin’s arms ar
e full of sweets and she’s smiling so much her cheeks push her sunglasses up.
‘It is pretty sunny today.’ Fredrik nods meaningfully at her, winks.
She shoves them up onto her head.
‘Do you never wear sunglasses here?’
‘Not in November. We’re glad if we even catch sight of the sun now and then.’
He takes her by the hand and pulls her further into the shop, where the doors into the stockroom and the office are ajar.
‘Come on, I want to show you something,’ he says.
She follows him up the stairs to the upper floor, which smells of dust and damp. There are boxes and cartons stacked on the floor and the walls are covered with old posters, fixed with multi-coloured drawing pins. The old, heavy oak desk is still in the office, the one Gerd used to sit behind when she counted the money. Fredrik opens a cabinet, the inside covered with taped-up pictures.
‘Look at this. No one’s forgotten about you here.’
She moves closer. There are a few newspaper clippings from French magazines on the cupboard door. A young Elin, smiling innocently out at the reader.
‘How …?’
‘Gerd knew exactly what was going on. When she heard you’d moved to Paris and become a model, she started buying French magazines. You generally weren’t in them, but she spent so much money on those magazines, she ordered them direct from France. But now and then you’d turn up. Uncannily beautiful, I used to stand here and look at you for hours. I missed you so much.’
‘Has Mama seen them too?’
Fredrik closes the cabinet again and locks it carefully.
‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘Presumably. Gerd always used to show me when she found a new picture. She was so proud of you. The neighbourhood celeb.’
‘That was such a long time ago. I’m much happier behind the camera.’
Fredrik stiffens and takes one of her hands in both of his, his tone suddenly serious.
‘Hey, there’s something I have to tell you. Before we go over to her place,’ he says.
Elin feels how her heart races from the sudden contact. She takes a step closer, their faces close, she can feel his breath, like a stream of warmth caressing her cheek.