Britt-Marie Was Here (13 page)

“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.

Sven stands by the door with the balcony boxes and her bag in his arms.

He’s about the same age as her, and this feels rather old when she looks at him.

“We miss your dad very much, Bank. All of Borg misses him,” he says wistfully into the hall.

Bank doesn’t answer. Britt-Marie doesn’t know what to do, so she
snatches the balcony boxes from Sven. He takes off his police cap, but remains on the threshold as men of that kind always do because as far as they are concerned it is not appropriate to go inside a lady’s home without an invitation.

Britt-Marie doesn’t invite him in, although it irks her to see him standing there on her threshold in uniform. She sees the ancient women on the other side of the road, still standing in the garden glaring at them.

What will the neighbors think?

“Was there anything else?” she says, although what she really means is, “Thanks.”

“No, no, nothing at all . . .”

“Thank you,” says Britt-Marie so that it sounds more like “Good-bye” than “Thanks.”

He nods awkwardly and turns round. When he has got halfway to the car, Britt-Marie takes a deep breath and clears her throat and only raises her voice a little:

“For the lift. I should like to . . . well, what I’m saying is: I should like to thank you for the lift.”

He turns around and his whole face lights up. She quickly shuts the door before he gets any ideas.

Bank goes up the stairs. Seems to use the stick more as a sort of walking cane than for orienting herself. Britt-Marie comes stumbling after with the balcony boxes and the bag in her arms.

“Toilet. Sink. You’ll have to eat somewhere else, because I don’t want the smell of frying in the house. Make yourself scarce in the daytime, because that’s when the estate agent brings buyers over,” she snorts and starts moving off towards the staircase.

Britt-Marie goes after her and says diplomatically:

“Ha. I should like to apologize for my behavior earlier. I was unaware of your being blind.”

Bank grunts something and tries to go downstairs, but Britt-Marie hasn’t finished.

“But I’d like to point out that you actually can’t expect people to know you’re blind when they have only seen you from behind,” she says helpfully.

“Goddamn it, woman, I’m not blind!” roars Bank.

“Ha?”

“I have impaired vision. Close up I can see just fine.”

“How close?”

“I can see where the dog is. The dog sees the rest,” says Bank, pointing at the dog, about three feet away on the stairs.

“Well, then you’re practically blind.”

“That’s what I said. Good night.”

“I’m certainly not the sort of person who gets hung up on semantics, I really am not, but I did certainly hear you say ‘blind’ . . .”

Bank looks like someone weighing up the possibility of causing damage to the wall with the front of her head.

“If I say I’m blind, people are too ashamed to ask any more questions, and they leave me in peace. If I say I have impaired vision they want to prattle on endlessly about the difference between that and being properly blind. Good night now!” she concludes, and moves on down the stairs.

“Might I ask why you have a stick and a dog and sunglasses if you’re not even blind?”

“My eyes are sensitive to light, and I had the dog before my eyes started acting up. It’s a normal bloody dog. Good night!”

The dog looks as if it has taken offense at this.

“And the stick?” Britt-Marie asks.

“It’s not a blind stick, it’s a walking cane. I have a bad knee. And it’s also quite convenient when people don’t get out of the way.”

“Ha,” says Britt-Marie. Bank shoves the dog out of the way with the cane.

“Payment in advance. No credit. And I don’t want to see you here in the daytime. Good night!”

“Could I ask when you expect to sell this house?”

“As soon as I find anyone balmy enough to want to live in Borg.”

Britt-Marie stands at the top of the stairs, which seem desolate and very steep as soon as Bank and the dog are out of sight. A moment later the front door slams and the house drowns in the silence that follows.

Britt-Marie looks around. It’s raining again. The police car has gone. A lone truck goes by. Then more silence. Britt-Marie feels cold on the inside.

She takes the bedclothes off the bed and covers the mattress in baking soda.

She gets her list out of her bag. There’s nothing on it. No items to tick. Darkness comes sweeping in through the window, enveloping Britt-Marie. She doesn’t turn on any lights. She finds a towel in her bag and weeps into it, while standing up. She doesn’t want to sit on the mattress until it has been properly cleaned.

It’s past midnight by the time she notices the door. It’s next to one of the windows, facing out onto nothing. Britt-Marie has difficulties at first believing what she is seeing. She has to go and fetch a bottle of Faxin, then clean all the window glass in the door, before she can even bring herself to touch the door handle. It’s stuck. She pulls at it for all she’s worth, wedges herself against the doorframe and uses her body weight, which admittedly isn’t much. For a fleeting moment she sees the world through the glass and thinks about Kent and
all the things he always said she couldn’t do and, in that moment, something makes her gather all her strength in a furious show of defiance that finally overpowers the door. She flies backwards through the room when the door opens wide. Rain falls in over the floor.

Britt-Marie sits leaning against the bed, breathing heavily and staring out.

It’s a balcony.

A
balcony can change everything.

It’s six in the morning and Britt-Marie is enthusiastic. It’s a new experience for her. Somebody’s state of mind would rather have to be described as the hungover, irascible kind. Britt-Marie has woken her by knocking on the door of the pizzeria at six o’clock to ask her, excitedly, for a drill.

Somebody grudgingly opens up and informs Britt-Marie that the pizzeria and all its other financial activities are closed at this time of day. Britt-Marie then questions why Somebody is there at all, because, as far as Britt-Marie can see, it can’t possibly be hygienic to live in a pizzeria. Somebody explains as well as she can in her condition—eyes half-closed, with various scraps of food on her jersey that never quite made it to her mouth or for one reason or another came back out again—that she was “too much drunk” after the soccer match last night to make it home. Britt-Marie nods appreciatively at this, and says she thought this was a wise decision, because one really shouldn’t drink and drive. She doesn’t look at the wheelchair at all when she says it.

Somebody mutters and tries to close the door. But, as we already said, Britt-Marie is enthusiastic and will not be deterred. For Britt-Marie now has somewhere to put her balcony boxes.

Everything changes when you have somewhere to put your balcony boxes. Britt-Marie feels ready to take on the world. Or, at least, Borg.

Somebody doesn’t seem to respond so very well to enthusiasm at six in the morning, so Britt-Marie asks if Somebody happens to own an electric drill. And in fact Somebody does own one. She fetches it. Britt-Marie takes it with both hands and accidentally turns it on and, as a result of this, happens to drill Somebody’s hand just a little. Somebody then takes back the drill and demands to know what Britt-Marie was intending to do with the drill. Britt-Marie announces that she plans to put up a picture.

So now Somebody is in the recreation center, hungover and a little irascible, with a drill in her hand. Britt-Marie stands in the middle of the room, looking enthusiastically at the picture. She found it in the recreation center storage room early this morning, because Bank, as we know, had ordered her to make herself scarce in the house in the daytime, and in any case Britt-Marie was having trouble sleeping, what with all the emotions surfacing after the discovery of the balcony. The picture had been leaning up against the wall behind an unmentionable pile of rubbish, covered in a layer of dust so thick that it looked like volcanic ash. Britt-Marie took it inside the recreation center and cleaned it with a damp rag and baking soda. It looks very stylish now.

“I’ve never put up a picture before, you have to understand,” explains Britt-Marie, very considerately, when she notices that Somebody is looking exhausted.

Somebody finishes her drilling and then hangs up the picture. It’s not actually a painting, just a very, very old information chart with a black-and-white map of Borg. “Welcome to Borg” it says at the top. For someone who loathes traveling, Britt-Marie has always had a great love of maps. There’s something reassuring about them, she’s
always found, ever since Ingrid used to speak to her at night about Paris when they were children. You can look at a map and point at Paris. Things are understandable when you can point at them. She nods soberly at Somebody.

“We don’t have any pictures at home, me and Kent, you have to understand. Kent doesn’t like art.”

Somebody raises her eyebrows at the information chart when Britt-Marie mentions “art.”

“Could we possibly hang it a little higher?”

“Higher?”

“It’s very low,” Britt-Marie observes, obviously not in a critical way.

Somebody looks at Britt-Marie. Looks at her wheelchair. Britt-Marie looks at the wheelchair too. “But obviously it’s fine where it is, also. Obviously.”

Somebody mutters something best not heard by anyone and rolls off towards the door, back to the pizzeria across the parking area. Britt-Marie follows her because she needs Snickers and baking soda.

Inside there’s an overwhelming smell of cigarette smoke and beer. The tables are covered in dirty glasses and crockery. Somebody roots around behind the counter, grunting something to the effect of, “Headache tablets . . . where does Vega keep that shit?” She disappears into the kitchen.

Britt-Marie is tentatively reaching for two dirty plates when Somebody, as if she can sense what she is up to, yells: