Mari Jungstedt - Dark Angel

‘We’ll take along our own lunch so we can sit in that wonderful park over near Solliden. From there you have a view of the whole city, let me tell you. Oh, it’s going to be marvellous!’

She dashed into the bathroom to put mascara on her beautiful long lashes, making them even longer. I sat on the lid of the toilet and watched with admiration as she got ready.

‘You have such beautiful eyes, Mamma.’

‘You think so?’ she replied, giggling with pleasure. ‘Thank you, my sweet little boy!’

Grandma was too frail to go with us. Instead, we were going to meet Aunt Ruth and my cousin Stefan at the zoo. He was a few years older than me. Aunt Ruth was on her own, just like Mamma. Her husband had left her because he’d fallen in love with his secretary. The family used to live in Saltsjöbaden and were ‘well to do’, as my mother put it. Now Aunt Ruth and Stefan had moved to a small flat in Östermalm.

We took the train, since Grandma lived some distance outside the city. I grew more and more excited with every station we passed. I could hardly sit still. My siblings chattered away with Mamma, commenting on the view from the window and discussing the people who walked past on the platform whenever the train stopped at a station. Look at the strange hat that old woman is wearing! Where are we now? Did you see that man – was he drunk? Are we almost there? What a cute puppy!

I couldn’t concentrate. I just wanted to sit in silence until we reached our destination.

After what seemed like an eternity, we finally arrived at Stockholm’s central station. From there we took a bus out to Skeppsbron in Gamla Stan. That was where we could catch the ferry to Skansen. Mamma didn’t like taking the underground. She said it smelled bad, and it was filled with so many unsavoury characters.

Aunt Ruth and Stefan were waiting at the ferry dock when we arrived. Mamma and Ruth hugged each other, while my siblings and I shook her hand. We didn’t see her very often, only a few times a year. Stefan seemed happy to see us, which was a relief to me. It was something I’d been worrying about.

We boarded the ferry and I stayed out on deck with the other kids. The sun shone; the water sparkled. It was May. Soon it would be summer and I would be out of school. Stefan and I stood next to each other, leaning over the railing and looking at the churches and other buildings in the narrow streets of Gamla Stan, which was receding more and more into the distance behind us.

Mamma and Aunt Ruth were sitting inside to stay out of the wind. Both of them had pinned up their hair under a scarf. Ruth’s scarf was navy blue, while Mamma’s was pink. That was her favourite colour. She was looking stylish in a tight-fitting black dress and a short pink jacket with big buttons. I was proud of my mother because she looked so pretty. In comparison, Ruth looked like an old woman, even though they were almost the same age. Mamma was slender and seemed much younger. She sat inside the ferryboat, laughing and looking lovely. I was glad to see her so happy.

And soon I was going to meet in real life all the animals that I’d seen only in pictures or on TV. I could hardly believe it.

All of a sudden the zoo was right in front of us. Stefan pointed. ‘Do you see the amusement park? And the rollercoaster? Over there. I’ve ridden on it a whole bunch of times. Don’t you think it looks scary?’

I shook my head. I’d never been there before, but at that moment it didn’t matter. I was going to Skansen.

The boat docked and everybody disembarked. There were a lot of people and I lost sight of the others in the crowd in front of the entrance to Gröna Lund. Suddenly I felt somebody give me a hard pinch on the arm.

‘Where on earth were you?’ snapped Mamma in annoyance. That ugly voice of hers was back, even though she had just been laughing so merrily. ‘You need to stay close. Don’t you understand that?’

The lump in my stomach came back, settling into its familiar place. I tried to block out its presence from my mind, tried to forget it was there. We had almost reached the zoo. I tossed a remark to Stefan in a halfhearted attempt at a joke, making a great effort to act normal. We were here to have fun. I’d been looking forward to this day for such a long time. The animals were waiting inside.

At the entrance we had to stand in a queue. Mamma started looking tense because there were at least thirty people ahead of us. The nervous feeling in my stomach got worse. ‘I’m sure it won’t take very long, Mamma. Here, let me carry the bag.’

The sun was shining, it was warm outside, and no one else seemed at all concerned about the wait. They were talking and laughing and joking. I wished that Mamma could be as relaxed as they were.

The queue slowly moved forward. Ruth powdered her nose. Mamma lit a cigarette. ‘God, why is this taking so long? What can they possibly be doing up there?’

When we finally passed through the turnstile, everyone had to use the loo. But I was too excited to pee.

Skansen was located high atop a hill and we began making our way up the slope. Suddenly we found ourselves right next to an ice-cream stand, and Ruth stopped.

‘OK, I’m treating everybody to ice cream! Then we’ll sit down and get re-energized before we climb any further. Skansen is a big place, kids. It takes a long time to walk all the way around. Right over there are the elephants, but you have to finish your ice cream before we can go and see them. Or else they might swipe the cone right out of your hand! All right. Choose any kind of ice cream you want!’

The strained look on Mamma’s face disappeared when she sat down at a café table with a cup of coffee and a vanilla cone.

‘This is exactly what we all needed,’ she told Ruth, giving her sister a grateful smile.

The mood immediately lifted, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

When we each had to choose the ice cream we’d like to have, I was too timid at first to ask for a soft ice cream in a waffle cone, which is what I wanted most. But Ruth refused to give up until I admitted that was what I wanted. The man in the ice-cream stand gave me a wink and let the soft ice cream come swirling out of the machine until I had the tallest ice-cream cone I’d ever seen. Delighted, I carefully took the cone from him. It was a blend of vanilla and chocolate, and it tasted wonderful. I’d only had a soft-ice cone a few times before, and this was the best one of all. I sat down at the table next to Mamma.

I felt butterflies churning in my stomach as I looked towards the entrance to the elephant house. Soon we’d be going inside. All the kids had ordered the same kind of cone, but when I looked around at everyone else seated at the table, I was happy to see that mine was a little taller than everyone else’s.

As if my cousin Stefan could read my thoughts, he suddenly cried: ‘Who has the biggest cone?’

He leaned forward, holding out his cone to compare it with mine. I rose halfway out of my chair to do the same. But in my eagerness, I happened to bump into Mamma’s coffee cup. It toppled off the table and landed in her lap. I can still hear her angry shout as the hot coffee spilled over her skirt and bare legs. I jumped up so quickly that all the ice cream fell out of my cone.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing, you little idiot!’ she bellowed. The next second she burst into tears.

Ruth leaped up and nervously began wiping Mamma’s skirt with paper napkins from the holder on the table as she tried to console her sister. ‘Hush now, it’s not so bad. We’ll just wipe you off here and then go into the loo to wash off the rest with water. Your skirt will dry in no time in the sun. You’ll see.’

The other children and I sat in horrified silence as Mamma sobbed. She kept switching between feeling sorry for herself and yelling at me.