Novell (May 2007)
The only sensible children
We sit in the car. The belt is like a noose over her breasts. The car is hot, I get no air. I open the window. Outside, the sun is shining like a big, heavy ball in the sky. It
is the gas that makes it so hot. The ozone layer has been broken. Polar bears drowning and small Africans who die in the heat. The warm sweat flowing from the neck down in the linen. I can not understand that choosing to die a time like this. But that was exactly what he did.
Sebastian drive the bumpy roads, He said nothing during car travel. Yesterday when the call came, he had thought that I would be sorry. He had been on the living room floor, tall as a flagpole and hugged my shoulders. He had not believed in me when I said I actually did not bother me. Yes, quite true, I spoke not. Sure, there was an interest. An interest in it actually, finally done. An interest of a legacy that plaster on the wound. He was dead. Cold and frozen like a Popsicle. Her voice had cried and congested and I replied calmly and gently on her questions. Well, I was an only child. No, we had no contact. My voice seemed to soothe my aunt, who lived for several days in the dark about his life and death. He had passed away at the hospital, she said.
car jumps and jump on the bad roads. From the radio will sound a bad pop song that I can not name. I feel the headache come slowly and resting his head against the headrest. Sebastian sighs and cranks down his window. Korsdraget is welcome. There are too many trees here in Småland. Every forest has its own soul, his own life. Not to get trample the beautiful grass that has grown there since the old hags were small and never get to pick even one flower. They are beautiful, where they are but they're pretty beautiful in my hand too. The gravel crunches under the tires and a jump into the pit of the stomach when I see the yellow house towering at the end of the road. We turn up. At the road are small trees, too small for it to be called the avenue, but they are beautiful nonetheless. For many damn trees.
The car stops. Sebastian opened the door and look at the lonely, empty house. I can not go out. I can not even look that way. He left in the dirty windows, the shiny glass. He is left in the dirt, the stone steps, in the broken railing. "Emma?" Sebastian speaks quietly to me. "Will you?" I open the door, my feet feel like lead. Through the door, I ask myself up. The angular gravel under my feet, the stubborn wind in my hair. There is nothing beautiful house. It is as if the age and the wind started to turn it into dust before our very eyes.
There was certainly a time when he played the role. I threw myself into his arms when he came to visit. That day, I was happy and I partook of my friends jealous. We were all daughters of mothers who worked until they could not manage more and fathers who were not seen in more than a few days a year. If we were lucky. Glatt could tell in school about the Great who had been visiting. How kind he was and how much He liked one. How much you like him and how many times you would see him over the summer holidays. When he went climbing, I settled myself at my mother as if I was afraid she would disappear.
kitchen is cleared of furniture except for a chair. There are wet spots on the floor after my aunt who had been here and clean. But the dirt has not gone away, it seems ingrained in the planks. The kitchen is small and out to the living room has no door. There is a leather sofa without cushions. I wonder if it ever had any cushions. The whole house smells of stale cigarette smoke. I've always associated the smell with him. Not I knew it was a house that smell was stuck in. Sebastian wrinkles her nose. I know I've been here once before. I remember we sat in the kitchen and the Mazarine. My mom, my dad and me. "What did he look, your dad?" Asked Sebastian while he looks up at the ceiling, like calling it. I shrugged. "He was fat. He drank a lot. He had a mustache. "The memory of his mustache to scratch my face when I hug his neck. The small stain on his mouth as it grew hair on. "He had green eyes." I feel sick, my head is spinning. I sit down on the lone chair and leans her head in my hands. The small pieces that I lost and forgotten in front of my eyes. They remember how he looked.
On my sixteenth birthday was no phone call. The usual five hundred patches, neither did. The latter stung more than the former. He had said he wanted to see me, that I could stay with him over the summer. I shouted to the mother that she had to protect me for hell, blame anything. I did not want to live there. He was a stranger. A drunk, a dirty old man. He drank Lapin Kulta and drove off the road in his Cadillac. I read about it in the newspaper as if it was someone else and wanted to joke that he had died. A call in the middle of the night. I replied. His swelling, slurred voice that told me to fuck off. Institute of the handset when he put on without me saying a word. The maintenance was not in the month of July, Mother had to borrow money from his brother. I went to my sister's clothes, we could have each other because she was tall and narrow and I was shorter and rounder. At the same time he bought a new Cadillac, a new house, new wife. I was not angry, not sad. More hopeless, I began to look for his name among the death notices in the newspaper. He was owed me.
bedroom upstairs is in the shade. I stand in the doorway, on the threshold. In here are all there, untouched. Still, they are pink, tattered sheets on the bed and still his clothes on the chair together with Office. There is a sadness that descends. Something still and quiet as still living in his clothes, the sheets, the rag rugs. I wonder if it was that he died in the hospital or if she lied, and he actually died in this room. Lying in bed. Or on the floor when he tried to put on her clothes. I open one clothes closet. There are a couple of shirts. It smells of sweat and old in there. Under the bed is a pair of sandals with Velcro closure. I wonder if he was so tired that he had not managed to tie the strings on the other. On the wall hangs a photo of him as a child. He stands with the Finnish flag in his hand on a lawn. His hair is blond, almost white. He smiles weakly.
One last time I would see him. It was two years ago. He lived in Hillerstorp a while before moving to the yellow house. I went to visit Mom when she stopped for the day, I had went to buy chocolate balls. There, on the other hand, the way he stood. The brown leather jacket and a cigarette in his mouth. He was very still. The mustache was still thick and also the hair of his head. This time I threw me around his neck. I felt a lump in his stomach and pulled back the foot that was on way across the street. He stood there and waited for something. He looked up, straight at me. For a second I thought he would recognize me. But then he dropped the cigarette and his eyes saw the foot stepped on it. I kept going. Maybe I had received someone else's face during the night. Perhaps there was nothing left that he could recognize.
From the window I can see how Sebastian goes over gravel. Suddenly he stops and looks out over the lawn. There are no trees that can disturb on. Tomorrow my father buried in the cemetery. His heavy body lies in a coffin, dressed, combed. Perhaps shaved. Tomorrow we will wear black clothes and put a flower on trälocket. There is a bureau near the window. The buds have been broken in all cases except one. I pull it out. There is an empty can of Lapin Kulta, paper with Finnish words that I do not understand and a photo. I'll take it up. A little girl with blond, almost white hair smiles at me in the photo. I recognize her. I know who it is.
Tomorrow we go to church for the first time in a long time. We will sing with the hymns we can not, listen to the words that we know are true. We will go from here and not be one bit wiser.
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