Inger Frimansson - Good Night, My Darling

Tor had had a boat when they met, and of course it was nice to glide out among the islands and seek night harbor in a protected cove. But all the rest of it. He lost his temper easily and expected her to keep track of all the ropes and their ends, and in a crisis he always forgot that she just couldn’t do it. So there were always arguments and hard feelings.

They sold the boat and bought a summer place instead. For a summer place, it was fairly large, a house built at the end of the nineteenth century situated on Vät Island. It had been winterized, so they were able to celebrate Christmas there, which they often did. This past Christmas, both of their sons brought their girlfriends with them.

Berit went into the food halls at Hötorget. It was just past one o’clock in the afternoon, and the worst lunch crush was over. She ordered an avocado salad with shrimp and a large café au lait and sat down at one of the tables near the flower department. Such wonderful tulips you can get nowadays, what wonderful colors! If only the weather would change to be just a bit colder so that snow would come and lighten things up a bit.

The avocado was somewhat hard. She thought about going back to the counter and complaining, but she didn’t. How many times had she sat here in the food hall and eaten lunch? At least once a week during all the years she had been employed at the publisher’s. She tried figuring it out in her head: 46 weeks a year times fourteen years would be, would be, would be…

As a matter of fact, she had been traveling when she turned forty-five last year. Tor had surprised her with a roundthe-world ticket.

“Couldn’t you have waited until I turned fifty!” she exclaimed, practically alarmed over his sudden generosity.

He had hugged her quickly and clumsily.

“Who knows whether we’ll still be around then.”

So they went and were gone for almost two entire months. So that was eight weeks and therefore eight times when she didn’t eat in the food halls. She dug around in her purse for her mini-calculator, but didn’t find it. She had to take out a ballpoint pen and work it out just as Miss Messer had taught them during their schooldays so long ago.

Six hundred times or more she had had lunch here in this little restaurant near the bottom of the escalator. Over six hundred times!

Well, Berit, this is your life!

More and more often she felt sad over her condition. She felt that her life had passed its peak, and quite a while ago at that, and now everything was too late.

Everything, what everything?

She sometimes talked about this with Annie, who had the office next to hers. They had both begun at the publishing house at the same time, both had been home with the kids for a while before then, both had sons.

Everything… you’ve been waiting for, everything that was supposed to happen.

Annie agreed. Even though she was four years younger, she was thinking the same thing.

I wonder when it ended , she thought. I wonder when that change came, the change from a young, hopeful human being to a robotic machine.

She was far from being old. Sometimes men still looked at her with that special look in their eyes, but usually only after they had been introduced. Otherwise, she was hardly ever visible. Of course she took care of her body, took care of her face, never left her house without her make-up on, not even in the countryside. Every fifth week she went to her hairdresser, a handsome black man, who knew exactly how best to cut her hair.

Too bad he’s gay, she thought. I’ve never done it with a black man. She turned red from shame at the mere thought.

She let her eyes wander around the food stalls, as she almost always saw someone she knew while she was here, and sure enough, here comes Elizabeth, gliding across the room. Elizabeth had an unusual way of sashaying so that everything that was in her way was swept aside.

She saw Berit, and turned her mouth to a smile.

“Darling Berit, here you are all alone; can I join you for a minute? What are you having… café latte? I’ll take one as well.”

“I have to go soon, but go ahead and sit down. I don’t have to rush.”

Elizabeth also worked in the publishing business, at Bonniers, in the big white building on Sveavägen.

“How are you, darling, you seem a bit pale?”

“I do?”

“Oh, that’s probably just the light here, nothing to worry about.”

“As a matter of fact, I am a little tired.”

“You are? We’ve had a few weeks off, but maybe you had to work through Christmas?”

“No, no. I’m not that kind of tired.”

“Oh, I know exactly what you mean. It’s this eternal gray weather. If only we had a bit more chill, so that the ice would come; I am so longing for the ice this year. We have not yet been skating one single time. And in the middle of January! Do you think it could be this El Niño thing affecting us all the way here in Scandinavia?”

“I haven’t the vaguest idea.”

“Well, it’s dull, dull, dull, that I know. Tell me, anything new?”

“Not really. How about you?”

“Lots of work, as always.”

“Same here. Same old same old… I’m thinking that it could be last year, or the year before, or the year before that, even. Everything the same. I think I’m getting burned out.”

“Oh my dear, dear friend. Isn’t it fun any more?”

“Fun is as fun does.”

Elizabeth leaned closer over the round, white iron table.

“I’ve heard them say… Curt Lüding is thinking of selling?”

Curt Lüding was Berit’s boss. He had started the business in the middle of the seventies, and he belonged to the young opposition, the kids who fought at the barricades. In those days, he published underground literature and socially critical novels. He was done with that now. Times had changed.

“The same old rumor,” even as she said it, she felt her stomach lurch.

“You haven’t heard anything specific?”

“No. You?”

“Nah. Nothing worth noticing.”

“Bonniers wants to take over?”

“Well, yes.”

Berit poked at a piece of corn with her fork, put it in her mouth.

“It’s not at all pleasant with these rumors going around,” she said. “Maybe that’s why people are feeling down. That uncertainty. I’m really going to ignore work all weekend long. I’m not going to think about it for one minute! I’m going to try and get out instead, maybe take a long walk this Saturday. Maybe I’ll go out to Hässelby and see to my parents’ graves there, and then take a long walk through nature out there and feel some nostalgia. I haven’t been there for who knows how long.”

On the way back to work, she sneaked into a shop for luxury lingerie on Drottninggatan. She tried on some bras and decided on a red shiny one with underwire and a pair of matching panties. The sharp lighting made her thighs and stomach look like dough.

My body, she thought. Just like an autopsy report. Six hundred and ninety crowns.

What you do for a minute of happiness!

She longed for some chocolate and walked hurriedly past the Belgian chocolate shop. She had bought some hand-made chocolate snails there for the boys’ girlfriends last Christmas. Those girls were thin as sticks; they could use a little more weight on their bones.

She felt strange around them. They resembled each other: awkward, blonde, flat-chested. They hung on the boys the whole time, pawing them and whimpering like spoiled children whenever they thought no one heard them. She never would have acted like that with Tor’s parents! His mother would have driven her from the door.

Helle and Marika. Helle was Danish, how she ended up in Stockholm was anybody’s guess. Berit had tried to chat with them, find out a bit about their backgrounds. They were sullen and silent. Or maybe just shy. She kept up her humor for the sake of her boys.