In the flat under Lennart and Maud live the boy with a syndrome and his mum. The boy with a syndrome is a year and a few weeks younger than Elsa, and never speaks. His mother loses things all the time. Objects seem to rain from her pockets, like in a cartoon when the crook gets frisked by the police and the pile of stuff from his pockets ends up bigger than they are. Both the boy and his mother have very kind eyes, and not even Granny seems to dislike them. And the boy’s always dancing. He dances his way through his existence.
In the flat next to theirs, on the other side of the lift that never works, lives The Monster. Elsa doesn’t know what his real name is, but she calls him The Monster because everyone is afraid of him. Even Elsa’s mum, who isn’t scared of anything in the entire world, gives Elsa’s back a little shove when they’re about to walk past his flat. No one ever sees The Monster because he never goes out in the daytime, but Kent always says “People like that shouldn’t be let loose! But that’s what happens when the authorities go for the soft option. People in this bloody country get psychiatric care instead of prison!” Britt-Marie has written letters to the landlord, demanding that The Monster be evicted in view of her firm conviction that he “attracts other substance abusers into the building.” Elsa is not sure what that means, and she’s not even sure Britt-Marie knows. She asked Granny one day, but she just went a bit quiet and said, “Certain things should be left well alone.” And this is a granny who fought in the War-Without-End, the war against the shadows in the Land-of-Almost-Awake, and who has met the most terrifying creatures that have been dreamed up in an eternity of ten thousand fairy tales.
That’s how you measure time in the Land-of-Almost-Awake: in eternities. There are no watches in the Land-of-Almost-Awake, so time is measured according to how you feel. If it feels like an eternity, you say, “This is a lesser eternity.” And if it feels sort of like two dozen eternities, you say, “An utter eternity.” And the only thing that feels longer than an utter eternity is the eternity of a fairy tale, because a fairy tale is an eternity of utter eternities. And the very longest kind of eternity in existence is the eternity of ten thousand fairy tales. That’s the biggest number in the Land-of-Almost-Awake.
Anyway, to get back to the point: at the bottom of the house where all these people live, there’s a meeting room, where residents’ meetings are held once every month. This is a bit more than in most buildings, but the flats are rented, and Britt-Marie and Kent really want everyone living there, by “a democratic process,” to make a request to the landlord to sell them the building so they can become flat owners. And to do that, you must have residents’ meetings. Because no one else in the house actually wants to be a flat-owner. The democratic bit of the democratic process is the one Kent and Britt-Marie like the least, you might say.
And the meetings are obviously terrifically boring. First everyone argues about what they were arguing about in the last meeting, and then they all look at their agendas and argue about when to have the next meeting, and then the meeting is over. But Elsa still goes there today because she needs to know when the arguing starts, so no one notices when she sneaks off.
Elsa arrives early. Kent hasn’t got there yet, because Kent is always late. Alf hasn’t arrived either, because Alf is always exactly on time. But Maud and Lennart are sitting at the big table and Britt-Marie and Mum are in the pantry discussing the coffee. Samantha is sleeping on the floor. Maud pushes a big tin of dreams towards Elsa. Lennart sits next to her, waiting for the coffee. Meanwhile he sips from a thermos he has brought with him. It’s important to Lennart to have standby coffee available while he’s waiting for the new coffee.
Britt-Marie is by the kitchen counter in the pantry with her hands clasped together in frustration over her stomach, while she looks nervously at Mum. Mum is making coffee. This is making Britt-Marie nervous because she thinks it would be best if they waited for Kent. Britt-Marie always thinks it would be best to wait for Kent, but Mum is not so big on waiting. She is more about taking control. Britt-Marie smiles well-meaningly at Mum.
“Everything all right with the coffee, Ulrika?”
“Yes, thanks,” says Mum curtly.