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

“Are you a member?” asked the young man when she reached the cashier.

“Of what?” Britt-Marie asked suspiciously.

“The salmon is only on sale for members,” he said.

Britt-Marie smiled patiently.

“This is not my usual supermarket, you see. In my usual supermarket my husband is a member.”

The young man held out a brochure.

“You can apply here, it only takes a sec. All you do is fill in your name and address here an—”

“Certainly not,” said Britt-Marie immediately. Because surely there’s some kind of limit? Do you really have to register and leave your name and address like some suspected terrorist just because you want to buy a bit of salmon?

“Well, in that case you have to pay full price for the salmon.”

“Ha.”

The young man looked unsure of himself.

“Look, if you don’t have enough money on you I ca—”

Britt-Marie gave him a wide-eyed stare. She wanted so badly to raise her voice, but her vocal cords wouldn’t cooperate.

“My dear little man, I have plenty of money. Absolutely plenty.” She tried to yell, and to slap down her wallet on the conveyor belt, but it was more like a whisper and a little pushing movement.

The young man shrugged and took her payment. Britt-Marie wanted to tell him that her husband was actually an entrepreneur, and that she was actually well able to pay the full price for some salmon. But the young man had already started serving the next customer. As if she didn’t make any difference.

At exactly 5:00 Britt-Marie knocks on the door of the girl’s office. When the girl opens the door, she’s wearing her coat.

“Where are you going?” asks Britt-Marie. The girl seems to pick up an incriminating note in her voice.

“I… well, we’re closing now… as I told you, I have t—”

“Are you coming back, then? What time should I expect you?”

“What?”

“I have to know when I’m supposed to put on the potatoes.”

The girl rubs her eyelids with her knuckles.

“Yes, yes, okay. I’m sorry, Britt-Marie. But as I tried to tell you, I don’t have the t—”

“These are for you,” says Britt-Marie, offering her the pencil. When the girl takes it, in some confusion, Britt-Marie also holds out a pair of pencil sharpeners, one of them blue and the other pink. She nods at these, and then she nods in a wholly unprejudicial way at the girl’s boyish hairstyle.

“You know, there’s no knowing what sort you people like nowadays. So I got both colors.”

The girl doesn’t seem quite sure who Britt-Marie is referring to by “you people.”

“Th… anks, I guess.”

“Now, I’d like to be shown to the kitchen, if it’s not too much bother to you, because otherwise I’ll be late with the potatoes.”

The girl very briefly looks as if she’s going to exclaim, “Kitchen?” but at the last moment she holds back and, like small children next to bathtubs, seems to understand that protesting will only prolong the process and make it more tortuous. She simply gives up, points to the staff kitchen, and takes the food bag from Britt-Marie, who follows her down the corridor. Britt-Marie decides to acknowledge her civility with some sort of compliment of her own.

“That’s a fine coat you have there,” she says at long last.

The girl’s hand slides in surprise over the fabric of her coat.

“Thanks!” She smiles sincerely, opening the door to the kitchen.

“It’s courageous of you to wear red at this time of year. Where are the cooking implements?”

With diminishing patience, the girl opens a drawer. One half is a jumble of cooking implements. The other holds a plastic compartment for cutlery.

A single compartment.

Forks, knives, spoons.

Together.

The girl’s irritation turns to genuine concern.

“Are… you… are you all right?” she asks Britt-Marie.

Britt-Marie has gone over to a chair to sit down, and looks on the verge of passing out.

“Barbarians,” she whispers, sucking in her cheeks.

The girl drops onto a chair opposite. Seems at a loss. Her gaze settles on Britt-Marie’s left hand. Britt-Marie’s fingertips are uncomfortably rubbing the white mark on her skin, like the scar of an amputated limb. When she notices the girl looking, she hides her hand under her handbag, looking as though she’s caught someone spying on her in the shower.

Gently, the girl raises her eyebrows.

“Can I just ask… sorry, but… I mean, what are you really doing here, Britt-Marie?”

“I want a job,” Britt-Marie replies, digging in her bag for a handkerchief so she can wipe the table down.

The girl moves about in a confused attempt to find a relaxed position.

“With all due respect, Britt-Marie, you haven’t had a job in forty years. Why is it so important now?”

“I have had a job for forty years. I’ve taken care of a home. That’s why it’s important now,” says Britt-Marie, and brushes some imaginary crumbs off the table.

When the girl doesn’t answer right away, she adds:

“I read in the newspaper about a woman who lay dead in her flat for several weeks, you see. They said the cause of death was ‘natural.’ Her dinner was still on the table. It’s actually not very natural at all. No one knew she was dead until her neighbors reacted to the smell.”

The girl fiddles with her hair.

“So… you… sort of want a job, so that…” she says, fumbling.

Britt-Marie exhales with great patience.

“She had no children and no husband and no job. No one knew she was there. If one has a job, people notice if one doesn’t show up.”

The girl, still at work long after her day should be over, sits looking for a long, long time at the woman who’s kept her here. Britt-Marie sits with a straight back, like she sits on the chair on the balcony when she’s waiting for Kent. She never wanted to go to bed when Kent wasn’t home, because she didn’t want to go to sleep unless someone knew she was there.

She sucks in her cheeks. Rubs the white mark.

“Ha. You believe it’s preposterous, of course. I’m certainly aware that conversation isn’t one of my strengths. My husband says I’m socially incompetent.”

The last words come out more quietly than the rest. The girl swallows and nods at the ring that is no longer on Britt-Marie’s finger.

“What happened to your husband?”

“He had a heart attack.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know he’d died.”

“He didn’t die,” whispers Britt-Marie.

“Oh, I th—”

Britt-Marie interrupts her by getting up and starting to sort the cutlery as if it has committed some kind of crime.

“I don’t use perfume, so I asked him to always put his shirt directly in the washing machine when he came home. He never did. Then he used to yell at me because the washing machine was so loud at night.”

She stops abruptly, and gives the oven a quick lecture about its buttons being the wrong way around. It looks ashamed of itself. Britt-Marie nods again and says:

“The other woman called me after he’d had his heart attack.”

The girl stands up to help, then sits down watchfully when Britt-Marie takes the filleting knife from the drawer.

“When Kent’s children were small and stayed with us every other week, I made a habit of reading to them. My favorite was The Master Tailor. It’s a fairy tale, you understand. The children wanted me to make up my own stories, but I can’t see the point of it when there are perfectly good ones already written by professionals. Kent said it was because I don’t have any imagination, but actually my imagination is excellent.”

The girl doesn’t answer. Britt-Marie sets the oven temperature. She puts the salmon in an oven dish. Then just stands there.