Inger Frimansson: Good Night, My Darling

The woman’s son was somewhere in the room. He walked around, had trouble sitting still. He was also old. When he first entered the room, he nodded at Flora, unsure of whether she could notice him or not. She could nod back, even though she couldn’t lift her head from the pillow.

He had mumbled something to the assistants about a single room, and they had explained and apologized. Lack of space and over capacity. Then they lowered their voices and Flora understood that they were talking about her.

The son appeared to be in pain; she heard him groan behind the screen. Every time he did this, his mother’s breathing quickened, became shakier, as if she longed to be back in the time where she still could comfort him.

This evening, they had put her to bed early. She would be disturbed, as the assistants would be running in and out all night to see to her roommate. They would be speaking in a softened tone, as if they would not be heard just as well. They would be turning on flashlights, and the smell of coffee would drift in to her from the personnel room.

It would hardly be a good night.

She thought about Sven and thought that it was unfair. His death had gone so quickly. She also would have liked to die in such a painless, sweet way, just leave everything behind and be on her way. Instead she stayed here as a living piece of luggage, and she was demeaned and violated just like a child.

She and Sven had felt sympathy toward each other from the very beginning. And he asked her to address him informally with her, which was very unusual at the time but helped their work atmosphere quite a bit.

She quickly discovered his incompetence in various spheres, but she did her best so that he would not discover what she knew. He was hardly a company head, and Flora became aware that he had taken over the family business without much enthusiasm. He did it because it was expected of him; he had been raised his whole life to do just that. His father, Georg Dalvik, had built the concern; he was the one who had created and launched the candy named Sandy, which was now famous world-wide: “Sandy Candy fine and dandy.”

Sven was not exactly the kind of man she had been dreaming of when she was young, but he was sweet. He believed in her; he turned to her when things became difficult. He also would ask her opinion whenever he wanted to buy a gift for his French wife. Because of this, she thought that she knew him and his family fairly well, even though she had never met either the wife or the daughter. He had a photo of them on his desk, a dark-haired woman, somewhat chubby, with a laughing child on her knee. The child reached behind herself to embrace her mother’s neck.

Sometimes, when he was abroad, she would go and look at that photo. It was taken outdoors, in Hässelby, where he had recently bought a house. You could make out one of the gables. Flora knew exactly which one.

Sven would tell her about his gardening difficulties. He had been raised in Karlavägen, in the middle of Stockholm, and he had no experience with green things. He would tell how his wife asked him to dig a patch for vegetables, and he just raised his palms in defeat. Once he complained about the raspberry bushes, which had been hit by a mysterious illness. Flora asked him to describe this.

“Well, some kind of brown spots on the leaves and the shoots, and it spreads and it gets spotty and gray. And there aren’t any raspberries; they just shrivel up. I am so disappointed. We were going to sit on the balcony, my wife and I, and have fresh raspberries with cream.”

She knew just what it was.

“I’m sorry,” she said, while a warmth spread in her middle. “It’s a fungus and unfortunately it is the absolute worst thing that can happen to raspberry bushes.”

Her boss stared at her.

“Yes, absolutely true,” she continued. “You will have to dig them all up and burn every one that has been stricken with it. Then you have to spray the rest with copper calcite fluid and copper sulfite.”

“Damn, what you know!”

It was not like him to swear, but he did then.

“You’ve forgotten my parents had a garden center. I’ve been raised with copper sulfite!”

He laughed and gave her a hug. That was unusual. They hardly ever touched each other.

They only touched each other two other times. The first time was one evening when they were working overtime. Flora made tea and sandwiches for them. When she placed the tray on his desk, he embraced her waist, but he took his arm away again quickly. She understood that he had thought he was at home for a minute. He was tired. He turned red.

The other time was at a crayfish party, which had been organized for all the employees out on one of the islands. They both became drunk, both she and Sven, neither of them used to drinking so much brandy. They sat at the top of a hill and held hands, nothing more.

When Sven’s wife died, he was very strong. He came back to the office after only one day. He had left his child with his parents.

He was changed, on the outside it looked like he had dropped a few pounds overnight. Otherwise, he seemed the same, but a bit quieter, a bit sorrowful.

Flora placed a pot of St Paul’s in his window. Blue was the color of hope and consolation. She did not know if he even noticed it. She asked if there was anything that she could do. He turned his head toward her without looking at her.

After the funeral, he started talking about his child. Her name was Justine. She was in a difficult stage. It certainly didn’t help that she had lost her mother.

“My parents can’t deal with her,” he said. “They’ve never had much patience with children. And my father has a heart condition.”

Flora listened patiently. The whole time she just sat and listened, without being pushy, without giving too much advice.

The first year, he employed housekeepers, who took care of both the house and the child. Sometimes he thought about selling the house, but his wife was in the cemetery in Hässelby, and he went there a few times a week.

“Do you think that she would want me to sell it?” he would ask her. “She loved that house so much. I bought that house for her sake.”

He had trouble hanging on to housekeepers. Perhaps it was too lonely, down at the beach? Too isolated?

That the girl could be behind the problem with housekeepers was a thought that never once entered into his poor, thick skull.

The trees began to appear out of the fog, becoming black, visible. It was morning. Justine had slept the whole night sitting in the armchair, she was thirsty and her shoulders were stiff.

The same feeling as over there. But not.

Over there:

She could still feel her relief which poured through her when she finally could make out the contours of things. The thick, tropical night had begun to move off, retreat; she lay with open eyes and took it all in. How everything reappeared, the tree trunks, the leaves, how they grew and took their forms as day came. And relief spread through her, made her limbs soft. She had been awake the whole night, and finally she fell into a light sleep, just as the others began to stretch and move around in their sleeping bags.

Justine went downstairs, holding onto the handrail like a tired old woman. Yep, just like Flora used to shuffle up and down between the floors before she had to move to the hospice. She would have never gone there voluntarily, but after her stroke, she no longer had any strength.

Down there, the kitchen was dark. She lit the stove and put on a pot of water. Her dress was all wrinkled; she must have been sweating while she was asleep. She hadn’t even noticed that night had come.

Was dying like that?

While leaning against the kitchen wall, she drank her tea in slow sips. Her ears strained for a sound. A sudden longing for words. Anything but silence. She called the bird. He was probably sitting on his branch and sleeping with his head turned backwards and his beak stuck under his gray feathers. He didn’t come and he didn’t answer. He was sitting in silence somewhere, remembering his wild origin.