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

“It takes an excellent imagination to pretend one doesn’t understand anything year in, year out, even though one washes all his shirts and one doesn’t use perfume,” she whispers.

The girl stands up again. Puts her hand fumblingly on Britt-Marie’s shoulder.

“I… sorry, I…” she starts to say.

She stops although she hasn’t been interrupted. Britt-Marie clasps her hands together over her stomach and looks into the oven.

“I want a job because I actually don’t think it’s very edifying to disturb the neighbors with bad smells. I want someone to know I’m here.”

There’s nothing to say to that.

When the salmon is ready they sit at the table and eat it without looking at each other.

“She’s very beautiful. Young. I don’t blame him, I actually don’t,” says Britt-Marie at long last.

“She’s probably a slag,” the girl offers.

“What does that mean?” asks Britt-Marie, uncomfortable.

“It’s… I mean… it’s something bad.”

Britt-Marie looks down at her plate again.

“Ha. That was nice of you.”

She feels as though she should say something nice back, so, with a certain amount of strain, she manages to say, “You… I mean… your hair looks nice today.”

The girl smiles.

“Thanks!”

Britt-Marie nods.

“I’m not seeing as much of your forehead today, not like yesterday.”

The girl scratches her forehead, just under her fringe. Britt-Marie looks down at her plate and tries to resist the instinct to serve up a portion for Kent. The girl says something. Britt-Marie looks up and mumbles: “Pardon me?”

“It was very nice, this,” says the girl.

Without Britt-Marie even asking.

And then Britt-Marie got herself a job. Which happened to be in a place called Borg. Two days after inviting the girl from the unemployment office to have some salmon, that’s where Britt-Marie heads off to in her car. So we should now say a few words about Borg.

Borg is a community built along a road. That’s really the kindest possible thing one can say about it. It’s not a place that could be described as one in a million, rather as one of millions of others. It has a closed-down soccer field and a closed-down school and a closed-down chemist’s and a closed-down liquor store and a closed-down health care center and a closed-down supermarket and a closed-down shopping center and a road that bears away in two directions.

There is a recreation center that admittedly has not been closed down, but only because they haven’t had time to do it yet. It takes time to close down an entire community, obviously, and the recreation center has had to wait its turn. Apart from that, the only two noticeable things in Borg are soccer and the pizzeria, because these tend to be the last things to abandon humanity.

Britt-Marie’s first contact with the pizzeria and the recreation center are on that day in January when she stops her white car between them. Her first contact with soccer is when a soccer ball hits her, very hard, on the head.

This takes place just after her car has blown up.

You might sum it up by saying that Borg and Britt-Marie’s first impressions of each other are not wholly positive.

If one wants to be pedantic about it, the actual explosion happens while Britt-Marie is turning into the parking area. On the passenger side. Britt-Marie is very clear about that, and if she had to describe the sound she’d say it was a bit like a “ka-boom.” Understandably, she’s in a panic, and she abandons both brake and clutch pedals, whereupon the car splutters pathetically. After a few unduly dramatic deviations across the frozen January puddles, it comes to an abrupt stop outside a building with a partially broken sign, the neon lights of which spell the name “PizzRai.” Terrified, Britt-Marie jumps out of the car, expecting it (quite reasonably, under the circumstances) to be engulfed in flames at any moment. This does not happen. Instead, Britt-Marie is left standing on her own in the parking area, surrounded by the sort of silence that only exists in small, remote communities.

It’s a touch on the annoying side. She adjusts her skirt and grips her handbag firmly.

A soccer ball rolls in a leisurely manner across the gravel, away from Britt-Marie’s car and towards what Britt-Marie assumes must be the recreation center. After a moment there’s a disconcerting thumping noise. Determined not to be distracted from the tasks at hand, she gets out a list from her handbag. At the top it says, “Drive to Borg.” She ticks that point. The next item on the list is, “Pick up key from post office.”

She gets out the cell phone that Kent gave her five years ago, and uses it for the first time. “Hello?” says the girl at the unemployment office.

“Is that how people answer the phone nowadays?” says Britt-Marie. Helpfully, not critically.

“What?” says the girl, for a few moments still blissfully unaware that Britt-Marie has not necessarily walked out of the girl’s life just because she’s walked out of the unemployment office.

“I’m here now, in this place, Borg. But something is making an awful racket and my car has blown up. How far is it to the post office?”

“Britt-Marie, is that you?”

“I can hardly hear you!”

“Did you say blown up ? Are you okay?”

“Of course I am! But what about the car?”

“I don’t know the first thing about cars,” tries the girl.

Britt-Marie releases an extremely patient exhalation of air.

“You said I should call you if I had any questions,” she reminds her. Britt-Marie feels it would be unreasonable for her to be expected to know everything about cars. She has only driven on very few occasions since she and Kent were married — she never goes anywhere in a car unless Kent is there, and Kent is an absolutely excellent driver.

“I meant questions about the job. ”

“Ha. That’s the only important thing, of course. The career. If I’m killed in an explosion, that’s not important of course,” states Britt-Marie. “Maybe it’s even good if I die. Then you’ll have a job to spare.”

“Please Britt-Mar—”

“I can hardly hear you!!” bellows Britt-Marie, in a very helpful way, and hangs up. Then she stands there, on her own, sucking in her cheeks.

Something is still thumping on the other side of the recreation center, which is still standing only because at the last councillors’ meeting in December, there were so many other things already scheduled for closure. The local authority representatives were concerned it might cause a postponement of their annual Christmas dinner. In view of the importance of the Christmas dinner, the closure was pushed back to the end of January, after the holiday period of the local authority councillors. Obviously the communications officer of the local authority should have been responsible for communicating this to the personnel department, but unfortunately the communications officer went on holiday and forgot to communicate it. As a result, when the personnel department found that the local authority had a building without anyone to take care of it, a vacancy for a caretaker of the recreation center was advertised with the unemployment office in early January. That was the long and the short of it.

Anyway, the job is not only exceptionally badly paid, but also temporary and subject to the decision regarding the closure of the recreation center to be reached at the councillors’ meeting in three weeks’ time. And to top it all, the recreation center is in Borg. The number of applicants for the position were, for these reasons, fairly limited.