Fredrik Backman - Britt-Marie Was Here [Britt-Marie var här]

She hoped that sooner or later her mother would get out of bed and say, “How nice you’ve made everything,” but it never happened. They never spoke about the accident, and, because they didn’t, they also couldn’t talk about anything else. Some people had pulled Britt-Marie out of the car; she doesn’t know who, but she knows that her mother, silently furious, never forgave them for saving the wrong daughter. Maybe Britt-Marie didn’t forgive them either. Because they saved the life of a person who from that day devoted herself to just walking around being afraid of dying and being left there to stink. One day she read her father’s morning newspaper and saw an advertisement for a brand of window-cleaner. And in this way a life went by.

Now she’s sixty-three and she’s standing at the back of beyond, looking out at Borg through the kitchen window of the recreation center, missing Faxin and her view of the world.

Obviously, she stands far enough from the window for no one outside to be able to see her looking out. What sort of impression would that make! As if she just stood there all day staring out, like some criminal. But her car is still parked in the graveled courtyard. She has accidentally left her keys inside and the IKEA package is still in the backseat. She doesn’t know exactly how she’s supposed to get it inside the recreation center, because it’s so very heavy. She can’t really say why it’s so heavy because she doesn’t know exactly what’s inside. The idea was to buy a stool, not unlike the two stools in the kitchen at the recreation center, but after she had made her way to the IKEA self-service warehouse and found the appropriate shelf she found that all the stools had been sold.

Britt-Marie had taken all morning to make the decision that she was going to buy and assemble a stool, so this anticlimax left her standing there, frozen to the spot, for such a length of time that she began to worry that someone in the warehouse would see her there looking mysterious. What would people think? Most likely, that she was planning to steal something. Once this thought was firmly established, Britt-Marie panicked and with superhuman powers managed to drag over the next available package to her cart, in almost every conceivable way conveying the impression that this was the package she had been after all along. She hardly remembers how she got it into the car. She supposes that she was overcome with that syndrome they often talk about on the TV, when mothers pick up huge boulders under which their children are lying trapped. Britt-Marie is invested with that sort of power when she starts entertaining suspicions of strangers looking at her and wondering whether she’s a criminal.

She moves farther away from the window, just to be on the safe side. At exactly twelve o’clock she prepares the table by the sofas for lunch. Not that there’s much of either a table or a lunch, just a tin of peanuts and a glass of water, but the fact is that civilized people have lunch at twelve, and if Britt-Marie is anything in this world she’s certainly civilized. She spreads a towel on the sofa before she sits down, then empties the tin of peanuts onto a plate. She has to force herself not to try to eat them with a knife and fork. Then she washes up and cleans the whole recreation center again so carefully that she almost uses up her whole supply of baking soda.

There’s a little laundry room with a washing machine and a tumble dryer. Britt-Marie cleans the machines with her last bit of baking soda, like a starving person putting out her last bait on her fishing line.

Not that she was thinking of doing any washing, but she can’t bear the thought of them all dirty. In a corner behind the tumble dryer she finds a whole sack of white shirts with numbers on them. Soccer jerseys, she understands. The entire recreation center is hung with pictures of various people wearing those shirts. Very likely they’re covered in grass stains, of course. Britt-Marie can’t for the life of her understand why anyone would choose to practice an outdoor sport while wearing white jerseys. It’s barbaric. She wonders whether the corner shop/pizzeria/car workshop/post office would even be likely to sell baking soda.

She fetches her coat. Just inside the front door, next to several photos of soccer balls and people who don’t know any better than to kick them, hangs a yellow jersey with the word “Bank” printed above the number “10.” Just beneath is a photo of an old man holding up the same jersey with a proud smile.

Britt-Marie puts on her coat. Outside the front door is a person who was clearly just about to knock on it. The person has a face and the face is full of snuff. This, in every possible way, is an awful way of establishing the very short-lived acquaintance between Britt-Marie and the face, because Britt-Marie loathes snuff. The whole thing is over in twenty seconds, when the snuff-face moves off while mumbling something that sounds distinctly like “nag-bag.”

At this point Britt-Marie picks up her telephone and dials the number of the only person her telephone has ever called. The girl at the unemployment office doesn’t answer. Britt-Marie calls again, because actually a telephone is not a thing you decide whether or not to answer.

“Yes?” says the girl at long last, with food in her mouth. “Sorry. I’m having my lunch.”

“Now?” Britt-Marie exclaims, as if the girl was joking. “My dear girl, we’re not at war. Surely it’s not necessary to be having your lunch at half past one?”

The girl chews her lunch quite hard. Bravely tries to change the topic of conversation:

“Did the pest control man come? I had to spend hours calling around but in the end I found someone who promised to make an emergency visit, and—”

“She was a pest control woman. Who took snuff,” Britt-Marie goes on, as if this explains everything.

“Right,” says the girl again. “So did she deal with the rat?”

“No, she most certainly did not,” Britt-Marie affirms. “She came in here wearing dirty shoes and I’d just mopped the floor. Taking snuff as well, she was. Said she was putting out poison, that’s how she put it, and you can’t just do that. Do you really think one can just do that? Put out poison just like that?”

“ No… ?” guesses the girl.

“No, you actually can’t. Someone could die! And that’s what I said. And then she stood there rolling her eyes with her dirty shoes and her snuff, and she said she’d put out a trap instead, and bait it with Snickers! Chocolate! On my newly mopped floor!” Britt-Marie says all this in the voice of someone screaming inside.

“Okay,” says the girl, and immediately wishes she hadn’t, because she realizes it is not okay at all.

“So I said it will have to be poison, then, and do you know what she told me? Listen to this! She said if the rat eats the poison you can’t know for certain where it will go to die. It could die in a cavity in the wall and lie there stinking! Have you ever heard of such a thing? Do you know that you called in a woman who takes snuff and thinks it’s absolutely in order to let dead animals die in the walls and stink the place out?”

“I was only trying to help,” says the girl.

“Ha. A fine lot of help that was. Some of us actually have other things to do than hanging about dealing with pest control women all day long,” says Britt-Marie well-meaningly.

“I couldn’t agree more,” says the girl.

There’s a queue in the corner shop. Or the pizzeria. Or the post office. Or the car workshop. Or whatever it is. Either way, there’s a queue. In the middle of the afternoon. As if people here don’t have anything better to do at this time.