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

He talks all the way, just as Kent used to do when they were in the car. But it was different, because Kent always told her things, whereas the policeman asks her questions. It irritates Britt-Marie. You do get irritated by someone taking an interest in you, when you’re not used to it.

“What did you think of the match, then?” he asks.

“I was in the toilet,” says Britt-Marie.

She gets incredibly irritated when she hears herself saying this. Because anyone making hasty conclusions might believe she has serious intestinal problems. The policeman doesn’t answer straight away, so she comes to the conclusion that he is indeed sitting there making hasty conclusions, and she doesn’t at all appreciate that he is doing so. So she adds sharply:

“I actually don’t have serious intestinal problems, but it was important for me to be in the toilet, otherwise apparently something would have gone wrong in the match.”

He laughs. She doesn’t know if it’s at her expense. He stops when he notices that she doesn’t much appreciate it.

“How did you end up here in Borg?”

“I was offered employment here.”

She has her feet semi-buried among empty pizza boxes and paper bags from the hamburger place. In the backseat is a painter’s easel and a jumble of brushes and canvases.

“Do you like paintings?” the policeman asks her, in an upbeat mood, when he sees her looking at them.

“No.”

He fidgets with embarrassment at the steering wheel.

“I mean, I don’t mean my own paintings, of course. I’m just a bit of a happy amateur. I’m doing a course in watercolor painting in town. No, I mean paintings in general. Real paintings. Beautiful paintings.”

There’s something inside Britt-Marie that wants to say, “Your paintings are also beautiful,” but another more down-to-earth part of her answers in its place:

“We don’t have any paintings at home. Kent doesn’t like art.”

The policeman gives her a silent nod. They drive into town, which is actually also more like a large village than a proper town. Similar to Borg, just a bit more of it. Heading in the same direction, but not as quickly. Britt-Marie stops at a cash machine next to a tanning salon, which Britt-Marie doesn’t find so very hygienic because she’s read that solariums cause cancer, and you can hardly say cancer is hygienic.

It takes a bit of time to get her money out, because she’s so careful about hiding her code that she ends up pressing the wrong buttons. She is also hardly helped along by the fact that she still has a bamboo screen on top of her head.

But the policeman doesn’t tell her to hurry up. She realizes to her own surprise that she likes this. Kent always told her to hurry up, however quickly she was doing something. She gets back into the police car, and starts feeling she ought to say something sociable. So she takes a deep breath and points at the empty takeaway boxes and bags on the floor, and says:

“I don’t suppose they were offering a cooking course in town, oh no.”

The policeman lights up.

“Yes, as a matter of fact, I did a sushi-making course. Have you ever made sushi?”

“Certainly not. Kent doesn’t like foreign food.”

“True, true, well, there isn’t much cooking when you make sushi. Mainly just… cutting. And I haven’t done it so many times, actually, to be honest with you. I mean since I did the course. It’s not much fun cooking for yourself, if you understand what I mean?”

He smiles with embarrassment. She doesn’t smile at all.

“No,” she says.

They drive back into Borg. Finally the policeman seems to build up enough courage to bring up another subject:

“Well, anyway, it’s nice of you to take on the youngsters like you have. Borg is not an easy place to grow up in these days. The young people need someone, as you know, to see them.”

“I have not taken anyone on. They are certainly not my responsibility!” protests Britt-Marie.

“I don’t mean it like that, of course, I just mean they like you. The young people. I haven’t seen them liking anyone since their last coach died.”

“What do you mean, their ‘last coach’?”

“I, well, yes, I suppose I just mean they are very glad you moved here,” says the policeman, opting for “they” when really he would have preferred to say “we,” and then he asks:

“What did you do before you came here?”

Britt-Marie doesn’t answer. Instead she glares out of the window at the houses they are passing. Outside almost every one of them, a “For Sale” sign has been hammered into the lawn, so she states drily:

“There don’t seem to be many people living in Borg who want to stay in Borg.”

The corners of the policeman’s mouth do what the corners of mouths do when trying to overcome wistfulness.

“The financial crisis hit hard here, after the trucking company laid off all the drivers. Those who have signs up are the ones who still have hopes of selling. The others have given up. Young people escape to the cities, and only the oldies like us stay on, because we’re the only ones who still have jobs.”

“The financial crisis is over. My husband told me that, and he’s an entrepreneur,” Britt-Marie informs him, keeping both her hair and the white mark on her ring finger well hidden under the bamboo screen. He looks away, awkwardly, while she firmly stares out of her window at a community in which even those who live there would rather not.

“And you’re also keen on soccer, I understand,” she says at last.

“I was once told that ‘You love soccer because it’s instinctive. If a ball comes rolling down the street you give it a punt. You love it for the same reason that you fall in love. Because you don’t know how to avoid it.’ ” The policeman smiles, slightly embarrassed.

“Who made this suggestion?”

“The children’s old coach said it once. Lovely, isn’t it?”

“Ludicrous,” says Britt-Marie, although part of her wants to say “poetic.”

He grips the steering wheel even harder.

“Probably so, probably so, I just mean that… I mean everyone loves soccer, don’t they? So to speak?”

She doesn’t say a word.

They pass the corner shop, carry on for a few moments, then stop outside a small, gray, squat house built on two floors. In a garden on the other side of the road stand two women who are so old that they look as if they lived in this community before it became a community. Leaning on their walkers, they cast suspicious glances at the police car. Sven waves at them as he and Britt-Marie get out of the car; they do not wave back. It has stopped raining, but Britt-Marie is still holding the bamboo screen over her hair. Sven rings the doorbell of the house. The blind woman, no less cube-shaped than the house itself — although Britt-Marie would never dream of referring to her as fat — opens the door.

“Hi, Bank,” says Sven cheerfully.

“Hello, Sven. So you’ve brought her along?” says Bank indifferently, waving her stick towards Britt-Marie. “The rent for the room is two hundred and fifty kronor a week, no credit. You can only rent it until I get the house sold,” Bank goes on, grunting, and stomps back into the house without inviting them in.

Britt-Marie enters behind her, slightly on her tiptoes because the floor is so dirty that she doesn’t even want to walk on it in her shoes. The white dog lies in the hall, surrounded by carelessly packed moving boxes in an utter disarray. Britt-Marie assumes this is all because of carelessness, not the fact that this “Bank” person is blind. Although Britt-Marie doesn’t have preconceived opinions, she’s quite convinced that even blind people can be careless.

All over the house are photos of a girl in a yellow soccer jersey, and in a few of them she is standing next to the old man who is also in the photos at the recreation center. In these pictures he is younger. He must have been about Britt-Marie’s age when they found him on the kitchen floor in that house, Britt-Marie realizes. She doesn’t know if that makes her old. She hasn’t had so many people to compare herself to in recent years.