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

“I would like to propose a working arrangement. For your part, it would mean that a dinner would be arranged for you every evening at six o’clock.”

She makes an explanatory gesture at the chocolate.

“The arrangement, if we find it mutually beneficial, would mean that, if you die, I won’t let you lie and smell bad in the wall. And you will do the same for me. In case people don’t know we are here.”

The rat takes a tentative step towards the chocolate. Stretches its neck and sniffs it. Britt-Marie brushes invisible crumbs from her knee.

“It’s the sodium bicarbonate that disappears when one dies, you have to understand. That’s why people smell. I read that after Ingrid had died.”

The rat’s whiskers vibrate with skepticism. Britt-Marie clears her throat apologetically.

“Ingrid was my sister, you have to understand. She died. I was worried she’d smell bad. That’s how I found out about sodium bicarbonate. The body produces sodium bicarbonate to neutralize the acidic substances in the stomach. When one dies, the body stops producing the sodium bicarbonate, so the acidic substances eat their way through the skin and end up on the floor. That’s when it smells, you have to understand.”

She thinks about adding that she has always found it reasonable to assume that the human soul is found in the sodium bicarbonate. When it leaves the body, there’s nothing left. Only complaining neighbors. But she doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t want to cause bother.

The rat eats its dinner but doesn’t comment on whether or not it enjoyed it.

Britt-Marie doesn’t ask.

Everything begins in earnest this evening. The weather is mild, the snow turns to rain as it falls from sky to earth. The children play soccer in the dark, but neither the dark nor the rain seems to concern them in the least. The parking area is only blessed with light here and there, where it’s cast by the neon sign of the pizzeria, or from the kitchen window where Britt-Marie stands hidden behind the curtain watching them, but, to be quite honest, most of them are so bad at soccer that more light would only have a marginal effect on their ability to hit the ball.

The rat has gone home. Britt-Marie has locked the door and washed up and cleaned the whole recreation center one more time. She is standing by the window looking out at the world. From time to time, the ball bounces through the puddles onto the road, and then the children play Rock, Paper, Scissors to decide who has to go and fetch it.

Kent used to tell David and Pernilla when they were small that Britt-Marie couldn’t play with them because she “didn’t know how,” but that isn’t true. Britt-Marie knows perfectly well how to play Rock, Paper, Scissors. She just doesn’t think it sounds very hygienic to keep stones in paper bags. As for the scissors, it’s not even worth thinking about. Who knows where they’ve been?

Of course Kent is always saying Britt-Marie is “so darned negative.” It’s a part of her social incompetence. “Darn it! Just be happy instead!” Kent fetches the cigars and takes care of the guests and Britt-Marie does the washing-up and takes care of the home, and that’s how they have divided up their lives. Kent is a bit happy, darn it, and Britt-Marie is darned negative. Maybe that’s how it goes. It’s easier to stay optimistic if you never have to clear up the mess afterwards.

The two siblings, Vega and Omar, play on opposing sides. She is calm and calculating, gently moving the ball with the insides of her feet, as you might twiddle your toes against someone you love while sleeping. Her brother, on the other hand, is angry and frustrated, hunting the ball down as if it owes him money. Britt-Marie doesn’t know the first thing about soccer, but anyone can see that Vega is the best player in the parking area. Or at least the least bad one.

Omar is constantly in his sister’s shadow. They are all in her shadow. She reminds Britt-Marie of Ingrid.

Ingrid was never negative. As always with people like this, it’s difficult to know whether everyone loved Ingrid because she was so positive, or if she was so positive because everyone loved her. She was one year older than Britt-Marie and five inches taller — it doesn’t take much to put someone in your shadow. It never mattered to Britt-Marie that she was the one who receded into the background. She never wanted much.

Sometimes she actually yearned to want something, so much that she could hardly bear it. It seemed so vital, wanting things. But usually the feeling passed.

Ingrid, of course, was always falling to bits with wanting things — her singing career, for instance, and the celebrity status she was predestined to achieve, and the boys out there in the world who were so much more than the usual ones on offer in their apartment block. The usual boys who, Britt-Marie realized, were infinitely too unusual to even look at Britt-Marie and yet far too usual in every way to deserve her sister.

They were brothers, the boys on their floor. Alf and Kent. They fought about everything. Britt-Marie couldn’t understand it. She followed her sister everywhere. It never bothered Ingrid. Quite the opposite. “It’s you and me, Britt,” she used to whisper at nights when she told her the stories of how they were going to live in Paris in a palace filled with servants. That was why she called her little sister “Britt”—because it sounded American.

Admittedly it seemed a bit odd to have an American name in Paris, but Britt-Marie had certainly never been the sort of person who opposed things needlessly.

Vega is grim, but when her team scores in the dark yard, in the rain, in a goal made of two soft-drink cans, her laugh sounds just like Ingrid’s. Ingrid also loved to play. As with all people like that, it’s difficult to know if she was the best because she loved the games, or if she loved them because she was the best.

A little boy with ginger hair gets hit hard in the face with the ball. He falls headlong into a muddy puddle. Britt-Marie shudders. It’s the same soccer ball they shot at Britt-Marie’s head, and when she sees the mud on it she wants to give herself a tetanus shot. Yet she has difficulties taking her eyes off the game, because Ingrid would have liked it.

Of course, if Kent had been here he would have said the children were playing like big girls’ blouses. Kent is able to describe almost anything bad by adding, before or after, that it’s a bit of a “big girl’s blouse.” Britt-Marie is actually not especially fond of irony, but she notes a certain amount of that very thing in the fact that the only player out there not playing like a girl’s blouse is the girl.

Britt-Marie finally comes to her senses and leaves the window before anyone out there starts getting any ideas. It’s past eight, so the recreation center is steeped in darkness. Britt-Marie waters her balcony boxes in the dark. Sprinkles baking soda over the soil. She misses her balcony more than anything. You’re never quite alone when you can stand on a balcony — you have all the cars and houses and the people in the streets. You’re among them, but also not. That’s the best thing about balconies. The second best is standing out there early in the morning before Kent has woken up, closing your eyes and feeling the wind in your hair. Britt-Marie used to do that, and it felt like Paris. Of course she has never been to Paris, because Kent doesn’t do any business there, but she has solved an awful lot of crossword clues about Paris. It’s the world’s most crossword-referenced city, full of rich and famous celebrities with their very own cleaners. Ingrid used to go on about how they’d have their own servants, which was the only bit of the dream Britt-Marie wasn’t sure about — she didn’t want them to think that Britt-Marie’s sister was so bad at cleaning that she had to employ someone to do it. Britt-Marie had heard their mother talking about those sorts of mothers with contempt, and Britt-Marie didn’t want anyone talking about Ingrid like that.