The Blood Spilt

15

THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 7

At half past six in the morning, Mimmi took her breakfast break. She’d been working in the bar since five. The aroma of coffee and newly baked bread mingled with the meaty smells of freshly made lasagne and stew. Fifty aluminum food containers stood cooling on the stainless steel worktop. She’d been working in the kitchen with the door propped open so that it wouldn’t be so hot. And because they liked it, the old men. It was company for them, she supposed. Watching her fly about, working, filling up the coffee pot. And they could eat in peace, no critical eyes watching if they happened to chew with their mouths open or spill coffee down their shirts.
Before she sat down to eat her own breakfast, she dashed out into the dining room and gave the customers a little treat, going round with the coffee pot to offer a top-up. She pressed them to accept and offered round the bread basket. At that moment she belonged to all of them, she was their wife, their daughter, their mother. Her stripy hair was still damp from her morning shower, done up in a plait under the handkerchief she wore tied around her head. The looks she got said it all. She would never run around in the bar with loose, wet hair, dripping onto her tight sweater from H&M. Miss Wetter and Wetter T-shirt. She put the coffee pot down on the hot plate and announced:
“Just help yourselves, I’m going to sit down for quarter of an hour.”
“Mimmi, come over here and have a chat,” one of the men sang out in reply.
Some of them were on their way to work. They were the ones taking quick little gulps of coffee to get it down as rapidly as possible, although it was still too hot, bolting their sandwich in two bites. The others spent an hour or so here before they ambled home to loneliness. They tried to start conversations and flicked aimlessly through the previous day’s newspaper, today’s wouldn’t be here for ages. In the village people didn’t say they were unemployed or off sick or had taken early retirement. They said they were at home.
Their overnight guest Rebecka Martinsson was sitting alone at a table by the window, looking out over the river. Eating her muesli and drinking coffee, in no hurry.
Mimmi lived in a one-room apartment in town. She’d hung on to it although she practically lived with Micke in the house nearest the bar. When she’d decided to stick around for a while her mother had said something feeble about moving in with her. It had been so obvious that she’d felt obliged to offer, it would never have occurred to Mimmi to say yes. She’d been running the bar with Micke for just about three years now, and it wasn’t until last month that Lisa had given her a spare key to the house.
“You never know,” she’d said, looking everywhere but at Mimmi. “If anything was to happen… I mean, the dogs are in there.”
“Of course,” Mimmi had replied, taking the key. The dogs.
Always those bloody dogs, she’d thought.
Lisa had seen that Mimmi was annoyed and sullen, but it wasn’t her style to pretend she’d noticed something and to try and talk. No, it was time to leave. If it wasn’t a meeting of the women’s group, then it was the animals at home, maybe the rabbit hutches needed cleaning out or one of the dogs had to go to the vet.
Mimmi clambered up onto the oiled wooden worktop next to the refrigerator. If she drew up her legs she could squeeze in next to the fresh herbs growing in tin cans that had been washed out. It was a good place. You could see Jukkasj?rvi on the other side of the river. A boat, sometimes. That window hadn’t been there when the place was a workshop. Micke gave it to her as a gift. “I’d like a window just here,” she’d said. And he’d sorted it.
It wasn’t that she was angry with the dogs. Or jealous. Most of the time she called them her brothers. But when she was living in Stockholm, Lisa never once came to visit. Didn’t even ring. “Of course she loves you,” Micke always said. “She’s your mother after all.” He didn’t understand anything.
There must be something genetically wrong with us, she thought. I mean, I’m incapable of loving as well.
If she met a guy who was a total shit, she could fall in love, of course—no, that was far too tame a word, the cheap supermarket version of the feeling she had; she became psychotic, dependent, an abuser. It had happened. There was one time in particular, when she lived in Stockholm. When you tore yourself free of a relationship like that, you left great chunks of flesh behind.
With Micke it was something quite different. She could have a child with him, if she’d actually believed she was capable of loving a child. But he was good, Micke was good.
Outside the window some of the hens were scratching about in the autumn grass. Just as she sank her teeth into her freshly baked bread, she heard the sound of a moped out on the track. It pulled into the yard and stopped.
Nalle, she thought.
He was always turning up at the bar in the mornings. If he woke up before his father and managed to sneak away without being heard. Otherwise the rule was that he was supposed to have breakfast at home.
After a little while he materialized outside the window where she was sitting and knocked on the glass. He was wearing a pair of bright yellow dungarees that had belonged to a telecom engineer once upon a time. The reflector strip down by his feet was almost completely worn away through frequent wearing and washing. On his head he had a blue cap of imitation beaver with big earflaps. His green fleecy jacket was much too short. Stopped at the waist.
He gave her one of his priceless crafty smiles. It split his powerful face, the big jaw shifting to the right, eyes narrowing, eyebrows shooting upward. It was impossible not to smile back, it didn’t matter that she wasn’t going to be able to have her sandwich in peace.
She opened the window. He shoved his hands into his jacket pockets and fished out three eggs. Looked at her as if he’d performed an amazing trick. He usually went into the henhouse and collected the eggs for her. She took them off him.
“Brilliant! Thanks! So, is it Hungry Harry who’s come to visit us?”
A rumbling laugh emerged from his throat. Like a starter motor that isn’t keen, in slow motion, hmmm-hmmm.
“Or maybe it’s Dennis the Dishwasher?”
He answered with a delighted no, knew she was joking with him, but still shook his head vigorously to be on the safe side. He hadn’t come here to wash up.
“Hungry?” she asked, and Nalle turned on his heel and vanished around the corner.
She jumped down from the worktop, closed the window, took a gulp of coffee and a big bite of her sandwich. By the time she got into the dining room, he was sitting opposite Rebecka Martinsson. He’d hung his jacket over the back of the chair next to him, but kept his cap on. It was a habit of his. Mimmi took off the cap and ruffled his thick, short hair.
“Wouldn’t you rather sit over there instead? Then you can see if any cool cars go past.”
Rebecka Martinsson smiled at Nalle.
“He’s welcome to sit with me,” she said.
Mimmi’s hand reached out and touched Nalle again. Rubbed his back gently.
“Do you want pancakes or yogurt or a sandwich?”
She knew the answer, but it was good for him to talk. And to make his own decisions. She could see the word being shaped in his mouth for a few seconds before it came out. His lower jaw moved first in one direction, then the other. Then, decisively:
“Pancakes.”
Mimmi disappeared into the kitchen. She took fifteen little pancakes out of the freezer and chucked them in the microwave.
Nalle’s father Lars-Gunnar and her mother Lisa were cousins. Nalle’s father was a retired policeman, and had been the leader of the local hunt for almost thirty years. That made him a powerful man. He was physically big too, just like Nalle. A policeman who commanded respect, in his day. And nice too, according to what people said. He still went to funerals when some old petty criminal died. On those occasions it was often only Lars-Gunnar and the priest who were there.
When Lars-Gunnar met Nalle’s mother, he was already over fifty. Mimmi remembered when he brought Eva to see them for the first time.
I can’t have been more than six, she thought.
Lars-Gunnar and Eva sat on the leather sofa in the living room. Lisa dashed in and out of the kitchen with cake and milk and more coffee and heaven knows what. That was the time when she was trying to fit in. Later on she got divorced and gave up baking and cooking altogether. Mimmi can almost imagine how Lisa eats her dinner in the cottage. Standing up, her bottom leaning against the worktop, shoveling down something out of a tin, maybe cold meat soup.
But that time. Lars-Gunnar on the sofa with his arm around Eva’s shoulders, an unusually tender expression for a man in this village, and particularly for him. He was so proud. She was, maybe not pretty, but much younger than him, like Mimmi now, somewhere between twenty and thirty. Mimmi can’t imagine where this social worker, a tourist on holiday, met Lars-Gunnar. But Eva gave up her job in… Norrk?ping, if Mimmi remembers rightly, got a job with the council and moved into the family home, where he still lived. After a year, Nalle was born. Although at the time he was called Bj?rn. A suitable name for a big bear of a baby, but now everybody called him Nalle—“teddy bear.”
It can’t have been easy, thought Mimmi. Coming from a big town to live in a little village. Hauling the pram back and forth during her maternity leave, only the old dears to chat to. It’s a wonder she didn’t go crazy. Although that’s exactly what she did, of course.
The microwave pinged and Mimmi cut two slices of ice cream and spooned strawberry jam over the pancakes. She poured a big glass of milk and spread butter on three thick slices of coarse bread. Took three hard-boiled eggs out of a pan on the gas stove, put the whole lot on a tray with an apple, and took it out to Nalle.
“And no more pancakes until you’ve eaten the rest,” she said firmly.
When Nalle was three, he got inflammation of the brain. Eva rang the emergency helpline. She was told to wait awhile. And so things turned out the way they did.
And when he was five, Eva left. She left Nalle and Lars-Gunnar, and went back to Norrk?ping.
Or ran away, thought Mimmi.
There was a lot of talk in the village about how she’d abandoned her child. Some people just can’t cope with taking responsibility, they said. And they asked how she could do it. How could she? Abandon her child.
Mimmi doesn’t know. But she does know how it feels to be suffocated in the village. And she can imagine how Eva fell to pieces in the pink concrete house.
Lars-Gunnar stayed in the village with Nalle. Didn’t like to talk about Eva.
“What could I do?” was all he said. “I mean, I can’t force her.”
When Nalle was seven, she came back. Or, to be more accurate, Lars- Gunnar fetched her from Norrk?ping. The next door neighbor told everyone how he’d carried her into the house in his arms. The cancer had almost eaten her away. Three months later, she was gone.
“What could I do?” said Lars-Gunnar again. “She was the mother of my son, after all.”
Eva was buried in Poikkij?rvi churchyard. Her mother and a sister came up for the funeral. They didn’t stay long. Stuck around for the coffee and sandwiches afterward just as long as necessary. Carried Eva’s shame for her. The other guests at the funeral didn’t look them in the eye, stared at their backs.
“And Lars-Gunnar stood there consoling them,” people said to each other. Couldn’t they have looked after the woman when she was dying? Instead it was Lars-Gunnar who’d taken care of all that. And you could see it to look at him. He must have lost fifteen kilos. Looked gray and worn out.
Mimmi wondered what would have happened if Mildred had been there then. Maybe Eva would have fitted in with the women in Magdalena. Maybe she’d have got a divorce from Lars-Gunnar but stayed in the village, managed to look after Nalle. Maybe she could even have managed to stay married to him.
The first time Mimmi met Mildred, the priest was sitting on Nalle’s moped. He was going to be fifteen in three months. Nobody in the village said a word about the fact that an underage mentally handicapped boy was driving around on a moped. Good God, he was Lars-Gunnar’s boy. Heaven knows they hadn’t had an easy time. And as long as Nalle stuck to the road through the village…
“Ouch, my arse!” laughs Mildred inside Mimmi’s head as she jumps off the moped.
Mimmi is sitting outside Micke’s. She’s taken one of the chairs outside and found a place sheltered from the spring breeze; she’s smoking a cigarette and turning her face up toward the sun in the hope of getting a bit of color. Nalle looks pleased. He waves to Mimmi and Mildred, turns and rides off, the gravel spraying up around him. Two years earlier he’d been one of Mildred’s confirmation candidates.
Mimmi and Mildred introduce themselves to each other. Mimmi is a bit surprised, she’s not sure what she was expecting, but she’s heard so much about this priest. That she’s wonderful. That she’s so wise. That’s she’s off her head.
And now she’s standing here looking completely normal. Boring, in fact, if she’s completely honest. Mimmi had expected some kind of electrical field around her, but all she sees is a middle-aged woman in unfashionable jeans and practical Ecco shoes.
“He’s such a blessing!” says Mildred, nodding in the direction of the moped chugging along the village road.
Mimmi mumbles and sighs and says something about how things haven’t been easy for Lars-Gunnar.
It’s like a conditioned reflex. When the village sings its song about Lars-Gunnar and his feeble young wife and his handicapped boy, the chorus is always the same: “feel sorry for… what some people have to go through… things haven’t been easy.”
A deep crease appears between Mildred’s eyebrows. She looks searchingly at Mimmi.
“Nalle is a gift,” she says.
Mimmi doesn’t reply. She doesn’t buy any of that all-children-are- a-gift-and-there-is-a-purpose-in-everything-that-happens.
“I don’t understand how people can keep talking about Nalle as if he were such a burden. Has it occurred to you what a good mood it puts you in, just being with him?”
It’s true. Mimmi thinks about the previous morning. Nalle is too heavy. He’s always hungry, and his father has his hands full making sure he doesn’t eat all the time. An impossible task. The ladies in the village can’t resist Nalle’s pleas for food, and sometimes neither can Mimmi and Micke. Like yesterday. Suddenly Nalle was standing in the kitchen of the bar with one of the hens under his arm. Little Anni, a Cochin, not much of a layer, but nice and affectionate, doesn’t mind being patted. But she doesn’t want to be carted away from the flock. She’s kicking with her little hen’s legs and cackling uneasily under Nalle’s huge arm.
“Anni!” says Nalle to Micke and Mimmi. “Sandwich.”
He twists his head to the left and bends his neck so that he’s looking at them sideways under his fringe. Looks crafty. It’s impossible to decide whether he knows he’s not fooling them for one second.
“Take the hen outside,” says Mimmi, attempting to look stern.
Micke bursts out laughing.
“Does Anni want a sandwich? Well, she’d better have one then.”
With a sandwich in one hand and the hen under the other arm, Nalle marches out into the yard. He puts Anni down and the sandwich disappears into his mouth at top speed.
“Hey!” Micke shouts from the veranda. “I thought that was for Anni?”
Nalle turns toward him with an expression of theatrical regret.
“Gone,” he says haplessly.
Mildred is still talking:
“I mean, I know it’s been difficult for Lars-Gunnar. But if Nalle hadn’t had these problems, would he really have brought any greater happiness to his father? I wonder.”
Mimmi looks at her. She’s right.
She thinks about Lars-Gunnar and his brothers. She can’t remember their father. Nalle’s grandfather. But she’s heard stories. Isak was a hard man. Kept the children in line with the strap. Sometimes worse. He had five sons and two daughters.
“Shit,” said Lars-Gunnar once. “I was so scared of my own father that I wet myself sometimes. Long after I’d started school.”
Mimmi remembers that comment very clearly. She was small then. Couldn’t believe that great big Lars-Gunnar had ever been scared. Or little. Wet himself!
How they must have tried not to be like their father, those brothers. But yet he’s there inside them. That contempt for weakness. A hardness passed down from father to son. Mimmi thinks about Nalle’s cousins, some of them live in the village, they’re in the hunting fraternity, they drink in the bar.
But Nalle is immune to all that. Lars-Gunnar’s occasional outbursts of bitterness toward Nalle’s mother, his own father, the world in general. His irritation over Nalle’s shortcomings. The self-pity and hatred that only come out properly when the men are drinking, but are always there just beneath the surface. Nalle can hang his head, but for a few seconds at the most. He’s a happy child in a grown man’s body. Gentle and honest through and through. Bitterness and stupidity don’t touch him.
If he hadn’t been brain damaged. If he’d been normal. She can work out how the landscape between father and son would have looked then. Barren and poor. Tainted by that contempt for their own enclosed weakness.
Mildred. She doesn’t know how right she is.
But Mimmi doesn’t embark on any discussion. She shrugs her shoulders by way of a reply, says it was nice to meet you, but now she’s got to get back to work.
* * *

Mimmi heard Lars-Gunnar’s voice in the dining room.
“For God’s sake, Nalle.”
Not angry. But tired and resigned.
“I’ve told you, we have breakfast at home.”
Mimmi came into the dining room. Nalle was sitting with his plate in front of him, hanging his head in shame. Licking the milk moustache off his upper lip. The pancakes were gone, so were the eggs and the bread, only the apple lay untouched.
“Forty kronor,” said Mimmi to Lars- Gunnar, a fraction too cheerfully.
Old skinflint, she thought.
He had a freezer full of free meat from hunting. The women in the village helped him out for free with cleaning and washing; they turned up with home baked bread and invited him and Nalle to dinner.
When Mimmi started working at the bar, Nalle used to get his breakfast there free.
“You mustn’t give him anything when he comes in,” Lars-Gunnar explained. “He’s just getting fat.”
And Micke gave Nalle his breakfast, but because he didn’t really have Lars-Gunnar’s permission, he hadn’t the guts to take payment for it.
Mimmi had.
“Nalle’s had breakfast,” she said to Lars-Gunnar the first time she had a morning shift. “Forty kronor.”
Lars-Gunnar had looked at her in surprise. Looked around for Micke, who was at home fast asleep.
“You’re not to give him anything when he comes begging,” he began.
“If he’s not allowed to eat, then you keep him away from here. If he comes in, he can eat. If he eats, you pay.”
From then on, he paid up. Paid Micke too, if he was doing the morning shift.
Now he was even smiling at her, ordering coffee and pancakes for himself. He stood at the side of the table where Nalle and Rebecka were sitting. Couldn’t decide where to sit. In the end he sat down at the table next to them.
“Come and sit here,” he said. “Perhaps the lady wants to be left in peace.”
The lady didn’t answer, and Nalle stayed where he was. When Mimmi brought the coffee and pancakes, he asked:
“Can Nalle stay here today?”
“More,” said Nalle, when he saw his father’s mound of pancakes.
“The apple first,” said Mimmi, immovable.
“No,” she said then, turning to Lars-Gunnar. “I’m up to my eyes in it today. Magdalena are having their autumn dinner and planning meeting in here tonight.”
A shiver of displeasure ran through him like a draft. As it did with most men when the women’s group came up in conversation.
“Just for a little while?” he ventured.
“What about Mum?”
“I don’t want to ask Lisa. She’s got such a lot to do before the meeting tonight.”
“One of the other women then? They all like Nalle.”
She watched Lars-Gunnar consider the alternatives. Nothing in this world was free. There were women he could ask, no doubt about it. But that was just the problem. Having to ask a favor. Bother people. Owe someone a big thank you.
Rebecka Martinsson looked at Nalle. He was staring at his apple. Difficult to work out if he felt as if he were a nuisance, or if he just felt it was hard to be forced to eat the apple before he could have more pancakes.
“Nalle can stay with me if he’d like to,” she said.
Lars-Gunnar and Mimmi looked at her in surprise. She was almost surprised at herself.
“I mean, I wasn’t thinking of doing anything special today,” she went on. “Maybe go for a bit of a trip… If he’d like to come along, then… I’ll give you the number of my cell phone.”
“She’s staying in one of the cottages,” Mimmi said to Lars-Gunnar. “Rebecka…”
“… Martinsson.”
Lars-Gunnar nodded a greeting to Rebecka.
“Lars-Gunnar, Nalle’s father,” he said. “If it’s no trouble…”
Obviously it’s trouble, but she’ll brush that aside, thought Mimmi angrily.
“No trouble at all,” Rebecka assured him.
I’ve jumped from the top board, she thought. Now I can do whatever I want.