Karin Alvtegen - Shame

‘I get off at five.’

‘Shall we say six, then?’

After a last look at Maj-Britt’s window she drove back in towards the city. She was already late. Her mother had been waiting a quarter of an hour for her, and Monika knew that she would be sitting with her coat on in the hall, growing more and more impatient with each minute that passed. But first she had to drop by the bank. And the head of the clinic had rung four times and left messages that she hadn’t answered. Some of her colleagues had also left messages repeatedly, but she still hadn’t called them back.

Somewhere deep inside her something was trying to speak, something that was trying to make her realise that the situation she had created was growing more and more untenable with each hour that passed. But since there was no turning back and there was not a single way she could alter the state of things, it was much easier not to listen. Much easier.

The most important thing at the moment was that the threat she had just experienced had been eliminated, and for the time being she could feel fairly safe. She simply had to take ten minutes at a time. That was all she could ask.

All she had the right to ask.

Maj-Britt was standing at her window and watching what was happening down in the parking area. She followed their conversation with interest, although of course she couldn’t hear a single word they were saying. But each gesture and facial expression confirmed what she had suspected. That doctor had lied to her, but she still didn’t understand why.

Ellinor had sat down on the sofa. Saba was standing by her feet and wagging her tail, and Ellinor patted her on the back. Neither of them had said a word since they had been left alone together. Maj-Britt was still dealing with the humiliation of having exposed her incapacity so completely to Ellinor. Not being able to go through even a simple doctor’s examination. Ellinor had at least had the good taste not to comment on her obvious displeasure, nor had she tried to make things worse with sympathy or some idiotic claim that she understood how Maj-Britt felt. And that was lucky. Because if she had done that, Maj-Britt would have had to tell her to go to hell, and that was an expression she did not like to use.

Maj-Britt saw the car drive off, and the mother and child went to their door.

Ellinor still showed no sign of leaving. She had completed her duties but was still here; it was always puzzling when she did that. But right now Maj-Britt had something else on her mind and didn’t much care. It was Ellinor who broke the silence first, which was no surprise to either of them.

‘Why didn’t you say anything about the blood in your urine?’

The mother and her child had gone inside and the main door swung closed behind them. Maj-Britt left the window and went over to the easy chair.

‘Why should I? It wouldn’t have made it go away.’

There was silence for a while. Water was running through a pipe somewhere in the building, and from outside in the stairwell voices were heard and the sound of footsteps which grew louder and then faded away, only to cease abruptly when the door closed. She looked at Ellinor, who was lost in thought and picking distractedly at the cuticle of her right thumb. Maj-Britt was full of questions, and she knew that Ellinor had the answers. Thoughtfully she sank down in the easy chair.

‘How did you know this person, did you say?’

Ellinor abandoned her cuticle.

‘Her name is Monika, actually. If that’s who you mean.’

Maj-Britt gave her a weary look.

‘Excuse me. How do you know Monika ?’

She pronounced the name with the obvious distaste she felt, and she didn’t even have to look at Ellinor to sense how much her remark annoyed her.

‘I actually think it was quite decent of her to come over.’

‘Of course. A fantastically noble human being.’

Ellinor gave a heavy sigh.

‘As I said, sometimes you might think a bit about who deserves your contempt and who doesn’t.’

Maj-Britt snorted. And with that it was quiet again. But Maj-Britt knew that if she just waited long enough, Ellinor wouldn’t be able to resist telling her. That was the closest thing to a weakness she had been able to find in this obstinate girl. The fact that she couldn’t keep her mouth shut. At least not for long.

A few minutes passed.

‘I’m not the one who knows her, my mother does.’

Maj-Britt smiled to herself.

‘They met at a course a few weeks ago. They went there together in my mother’s car.’

Ellinor got up and went over to the window. Maj-Britt listened with interest.

‘Do you remember I told you someone died a few weeks ago who lived across the way here?’

Maj-Britt nodded, though Ellinor couldn’t see her.

‘His name was Mattias. He died on the way home from that course in a car crash. My mother was driving. She hit an elk.’

Maj-Britt stared into space. She could see the father and child outside in the playground in her mind’s eye.

‘And your mother?’

‘Well, it’s unbelievable, but she walked away without a scratch. She was in shock, of course, and she has such a guilty conscience because he died and she survived. She was driving, after all. And he had a child and everything.’

Maj-Britt thought some more, watching Ellinor’s back as if it might give her some additional clues.

‘So that doctor, pardon me, Monika I mean, was she in the car too?’

Ellinor turned round. Stood there a moment and then went back to the sofa. She sat cross-legged and put the embroidered cushion on her lap. Then she suddenly looked at Maj-Britt and smiled. Maj-Britt was instantly on her guard. The little gap she had opened closed up like a clam.

‘What is it?’

Ellinor shrugged.

‘I suddenly realised that this is the first time we’ve talked to each other. I mean really talked. The first time you’ve started a conversation.’

Maj-Britt looked away. She wasn’t quite sure that this was a good sign, that she had actually started a conversation voluntarily. She hadn’t even noticed it herself. She had done it without thinking, almost as if it had happened naturally. And of course Ellinor had noticed that, the change. For the moment Maj-Britt couldn’t decide what it might lead to, whether it was good or bad. Whether it might be turned against her. But she knew that she wanted answers to her questions, so that she would have some sort of compensation if this whole conversation proved to be a mistake.

‘I asked whether she was in the car too.’

‘No, but she was supposed to be. She and Mattias traded places on the way home, and she rode with someone else instead. The last day of the course was delayed or something, and she was in a hurry to get home, and Mattias offered to stay.’

Maj-Britt took in the information and sorted it as best she could. Attempted to link it with the fact that the doctor had tried so firmly to deny that she knew the fatherless child. And the endless patience with which she had pushed the swing.

She and Mattias traded places on the way home .

‘Did they know this Mattias before the course?’

Ellinor shook her head.

‘They were all strangers before the course started. That was the whole point.’

And with that Ellinor brought Maj-Britt’s thoughts to a conclusion. She had added the one comment that was necessary to link the chain together into an understandable explanation.

‘I wonder how she feels, I mean Monika. If they hadn’t traded places then she would have been dead now. I wonder how it feels to walk around knowing that.’

To think what a polite attempt at conversation could yield. Her little question had hit the bull’s-eye and broken open a peephole right into the insides of that know-it-all doctor. But that was always where the sore points were. Desperately hidden away in the dark, but so easy to get to if you managed to aim the question in the right direction. The only thing that could not be explained was the lie itself. Why had she denied that she knew that child and the mother who had lost her husband because she was still alive?