Elsa stands in the hall in The Monster’s flat and watches them through the spyhole. Technically, her feet aren’t touching the floor, though, because the wurse has sat down on the hall mat so that she’s wedged between the rear end of the enormous animal and the inside of the door. The wurse looks extremely irritated. Not threatening, just irritated. As if there’s a wasp in its bottle of lemonade.
It occurs to Elsa that she’s more panicked by the police on the other side of the door than the by two creatures in the hall with her. Maybe it doesn’t seem so very rational, but she’s decided to trust more in Granny’s friends than Britt-Marie’s. She rotates carefully by the door until she’s facing the wurse, then whispers in the secret language: “You mustn’t bark now, please be good. Or they’ll kill you!”
The wurse doesn’t look entirely convinced that it would come off worse if she opened the door and let it out among the police, and turns away dismissively. It stays silent, though seemingly more for Elsa’s sake than its own.
Outside on the landing, the police have almost forced the door open. Elsa hears them yelling command words at each other, about being “ready.”
She looks around the hall and into the living room. It’s a very small flat but the tidiest one of any description she has ever set foot in. There is hardly any furniture, and the few items that there are have been arranged face-to-face, looking as if they’ll commit furniture hara-kiri if a single speck of dust lands on them. (Elsa knows that because she had a samurai phase about a year ago.) The Monster disappears into the bathroom. The tap runs in there for a long time before he comes out again. He dries his hands elaborately on a small white towel, which he then folds neatly and goes to put in a laundry basket. He has to stoop to fit through the doorway. Elsa feels as Odysseus must have felt when he was with that giant, Polyphemus, because Elsa recently read about Odysseus. Apart from the fact that Polyphemus probably didn’t wash his hands as carefully as The Monster. And apart from Elsa thinking she’s not as high-and-mighty and self-righteous as Odysseus seems to be in the book. Obviously. But apart from that, sort of like Odysseus.
The Monster looks at her. He doesn’t look angry. More confused, actually. Almost startled. Maybe that’s what gives Elsa the courage to blurt right out: “Why did my granny send you a letter?”
She says it in normal language. Because, for reasons not yet entirely clear to her, she doesn’t want to talk to him in the secret language. The Monster’s eyebrows sink under his black hair so that it’s difficult to make out any facial expressions at all behind it, and the beard and the scar. He’s barefoot, but wears those blue plastic shoe covers you get at a hospital. His boots are neatly placed just inside the door, very precisely in line with the edge of the doormat. He hands Elsa another two blue plastic bags, but jerks back his hand once she touches them, as if worried that Elsa might also touch him. Elsa bends down and puts the plastic bags over her muddy shoes. She notices that she has slightly stepped off the mat and left two halves of her footprints in melted snow on the parquet floor.
The Monster bends down with impressive fluidity and starts wiping the floor with a fresh white towel. When he has finished, he sprays the area with a small bottle of a cleaning agent that makes Elsa’s eyes smart, and wipes it with another small white towel. Then he stands up and neatly puts the towels in the laundry basket, and places the spray bottle very exactly on a shelf.