Karin Alvtegen - Shame

Monika was kicking and biting inside. Throwing herself again and again at the fragile shell that held her captive. Doctor Lundvall was having a hard time breathing, and things were starting to get urgent, very urgent.

‘If it’s all right with you I’ll be leaving now.’

It was there in her voice. At any rate she could hear it herself. But maybe the people on the sofa were too immersed in their own gratitude to hear it. Börje got up and came over to her.

‘I don’t know what else to say but thank you. It’s a bit hard to find the words right now.’

‘You don’t have to say a thing.’

She took his outstretched hand and pressed it fleetingly, then turned to Åse, who was looking at her with a bottomless sorrow in her eyes.

‘Goodbye Monika, thanks for coming.’

When she heard her name the façade cracked, but she managed to make it out to the car before the scream came.

The car knew the way better than she did. Incapable of making any decision at all, she suddenly found herself parked outside the cemetery. Her legs walked the familiar paths and the flame that had been lit in another time flickered in its holder. She sank to her knees. Rested her forehead against the cold stone and wept. For how long she didn’t know. Darkness had fallen and the cemetery was empty; she and a headstone and a candle flame were all that were left. All the tears that had been stifled with such obedience and restraint over the years came welling up in a frenzy. But they gave her no comfort, they only drove her deeper into despair. There was nothing she could do. A woman had lost her beloved and a child had lost her father, and she just sat there, alive and of no use to any human being. Once again she was the one who had survived and had managed to kill someone who should have been allowed to live. If there was a God, his ways were truly inscrutable. Why take Mattias and let her go? Two people depended on him. His new job would have been their salvation. And Monika herself was expected to continue on as if nothing had happened. Just drive home to Thomas with all her opportunities in safe custody and begin to build her future. Return to her expensive possessions and her well-paid job and pretend she was caring for human lives, when the truth was quite the reverse.

She straightened up and read the words she had looked at thousands and thousands of times.

My beloved son .

So natural, always so present. And always so out of reach.

She placed her palms over his name on the cold stone, and in the depths of her heart she had only one desire.

That she once and for all might trade places.

Maj-Britt was sitting in her easy chair and the TV was on. Programme after programme rolled by; as soon as any thought managed to penetrate the images flickering past, she would click to another channel. The only thing she hadn’t managed to do was escape the pain in her back. After she read Vanja’s words it was more pronounced than ever.

Before she retreated to what the TV had to offer, she had managed to confirm the conspiracy. She hadn’t said a word about her sore back, yet Ellinor had seen through her with her prying eyes. And she was the only one who could have told Vanja.

Everything would have returned to normal if it hadn’t been for Ellinor. If Vanja sent any more letters, Maj-Britt could escape by refusing to read them, and what she had already been forced to read she could stifle with TV and food if she just made an effort. But then there was Ellinor. Pleasant little Ellinor, who in reality was in league with Vanja; it was no accident that they had both forced their way in at the same time and almost succeeded in overturning her world. Behind her back they had forged their evil plans; what they were after was incomprehensible. But hadn’t life always been this way? Against her. And she had never understood why.

And then there was the shame. The fact that Vanja knew that she had lied about her life and knew that she was sitting there in the flat, dependent on home help for her continued existence. And the fact that through her lies Maj-Britt acknowledged what a failure she actually was.

She heard no word of greeting when the door opened and then shut. Saba raised her head and wagged her tail a little, but stayed lying there next to the balcony door. She wanted to go out, but Maj-Britt hadn’t been able to get up.

She heard footsteps approaching, and when they stopped she knew that Ellinor was in the room, only a couple of metres behind her.

‘Hi.’

Maj-Britt didn’t reply, just turned up the volume with the remote. Ellinor appeared at the edge of her field of vision, on her way to Saba and the balcony door.

‘Do you want to go out?’

Saba got up, wagged her tail, and squeezed her heavy body through the open door. Outside the wind was blowing, and when a gust tore the door wide open, Ellinor shut it again. Maj-Britt saw her standing there with her back to the room, gazing out through the glass door.

Something was different. Ellinor’s usual chatter was gone, and there was an oppressive air about her that Maj-Britt found unpleasant. A confusing change that she had to handle in some way. Ellinor stood by the door for a long time, and when she suddenly started speaking it happened so unexpectedly that Maj-Britt gave a start.

‘Do you know anyone in this building?’

‘No.’

She answered even though she considered refraining. Ellinor’s new behaviour scared her, especially since she now knew that the person behind the friendly façade was concealing her real intentions.

‘There’s a family living across the courtyard; the father died yesterday. In a traffic accident.’

Maj-Britt didn’t want to know, but she could picture that father, the one who used to go out and push his daughter on the swing, and that mother who seemed to be in some kind of pain. As usual she was being informed of things that she didn’t want to deal with, things she hadn’t asked to be told. She changed the channel.

Ellinor opened the door to let Saba back in, and then Maj-Britt heard her go out to the kitchen. On the TV three people’s faces were being transformed using plastic surgery and make-up, and Maj-Britt succeeded in keeping up her defences for a long time. But then Ellinor was back. Maj-Britt acted as if she didn’t notice, but out of the corner of her eye she saw Ellinor come into the room with something in her hands and sit down on the sofa. She sat down with the self-confidence of someone who knows she can get back up from it at any time.

‘I thought I’d mend this.’

Maj-Britt turned her head. Ellinor was sitting with her dress in her lap, one of the two she always wore. This one had started to come apart a bit at the seams. Maj-Britt wanted to object but knew it needed to be mended. The alternative was to take the trouble to have a new one made, and she shuddered at the memory of the last time she did that. Or sew it herself? Impossible. For some reason the thought had never crossed her mind, not even in the days when she could have managed it physically. She didn’t even own a needle and thread. But to watch Ellinor’s fingers moving over something that usually clung tight against her skin was repulsive.

Maj-Britt pressed her lips together and went back to watching TV. But then she reacted to a movement from the sofa. Ellinor had stretched her arm up over her head. Maj-Britt never had a chance to think. She never had a chance to figure out rationally what made her turn all her attention to Ellinor; at the same time she was filled with a terror so strong that she suddenly couldn’t move. She stared at Ellinor. Between her hands was an arm’s length of sewing thread, and Maj-Britt couldn’t defend herself. As if bewitched she followed the thread down to the spool in Ellinor’s left hand. And then it was too late. The memory forced its way in from the whiteness. Like a shade pulled down, with the spring stretched to the breaking point, and suddenly it rolls up with a snap. Maj-Britt sat as if paralysed and looked at what was taking shape before her. What had so long been repressed but which without warning had come back through all those years. And there was nothing she could do to protect herself.