Night comes to the streets outside the window. The kitchen smells of coffee and chocolate cake. And Elsa listens to the story of Sam.
The son of the world’s kindest couple, who became more evil than anyone could understand. Who became the father of the boy with a syndrome, who, in turn, had less evil in him than anyone could have believed, as if his father took it all on his shoulders and passed none of it on. She heard the story of how Sam was once a little boy himself, and how Maud and Lennart, who had waited for a child for so long, had loved him, as parents love their children. As all parents, even the very, very worst possible, must at some point have loved their children. That is how Maud puts it. “Because otherwise one can’t be a human being, I just can’t imagine one could be a human otherwise,” she whispers. And she insists that it has to be her fault, because she can’t imagine that any child is born evil. It has to be the mother’s fault if a boy who was once so small and helpless grows up into something so terrible, she’s quite sure of that. In spite of Elsa saying that Granny always said some people are actually just shits and that it’s no one else’s fault other than the shit’s.
“But Sam was always so angry, I don’t know where all that anger came from. There must have been a darkness in me that I passed over to him, and I don’t know where it came from,” Maud whispers, quite crushed.
And then she talks about a boy who grew up and always fought, always tormented other children at school, always chased those who were different. And about how when he was an adult he became a soldier and went to far-off lands because he thirsted for war, and how he met a friend there. His first real friend. About how everyone who saw it said that it had changed him, brought out something good in him. His friend was also a soldier, but another sort of soldier, without that thirst. They became inseparable. Sam said his friend was the bravest warrior he had ever seen.
They went home together and his friend introduced Sam to a girl he knew, and she saw something in Sam and for a brief moment Lennart and Maud also got to see a glimpse of someone else. A Sam beyond the darkness.
“We thought she’d save him, we all hoped so much that she’d save him, because it would have been like a fairy tale, and when one has lived in the dark for so long it’s so very difficult not to believe in fairy tales,” Maud admits, while Lennart clasps her hand.
“But then those little circumstances of life came up,” Lennart sighs, “like in so many fairy tales. And maybe it wasn’t Sam’s fault. Or maybe it was entirely Sam’s fault. Maybe it’s for people much wiser than I to decide whether every person is completely responsible for their actions or not. But Sam went back to the wars. And he came home even darker.”
“He used to be an idealist,” Maud interjects gloomily. “Despite all that hatred and anger, he was an idealist. That’s why he wanted to be a soldier.”
And then Elsa asks if she can borrow Maud and Lennart’s computer.
“If you have a computer, I mean!” she adds apologetically, because she thinks about the palaver she had with Wolfheart when she asked him the same thing.
“Of course we have a computer,” says Lennart, puzzled. “Who doesn’t these days?”
Quite right, thinks Elsa, and decides to bring it up with Wolfheart next time he turns up. If there is another time.
Lennart leads her past the bedroom. In the little study at the far end of the flat, he explains that their computer is very old, of course, so she has to have a bit of patience. And on a table in there is the most unwieldy computer Elsa has ever seen, and at the back of the actual computer is a gigantic box, and on the floor is another box.
“What’s that?” says Elsa, pointing at the box on the floor.
“That’s the actual computer,” says Lennart.
“And what about that?” asks Elsa and points at the other box.