Astrid and Veronika (4 page)

They walked down the hill, and when they turned into the main road at the bottom, they walked on the left side in single file, the old woman leading. Then they crossed the road and entered the path through the strip of forest. Here they could walk side by side again, and Veronika found herself falling into the rhythm of the other woman’s steps.

‘Are you all right?’ Astrid asked, turning her head a little, but not stopping.

‘Yes, thank you, I am fine,’ Veronika replied, and they continued. There were no mosquitoes yet and they walked slowly. Veronika felt that the old woman might purposely have slowed her gait for her sake. It was cool in the shade under the dark firs, with an occasional shaft of light shooting across the path where the sun found a gap in the wall of trees. As they reached the other side of the small forest they followed the path across the open fields. Suddenly the old woman stopped, her eyes focusing on a cluster of new buildings surrounded by struggling saplings. Veronika followed her gaze, reflecting on the strange choice of land for a housing development — on the muddy flat, fully exposed to the weather and with no view.

‘My father used to grow flax here,’ Astrid said, her eyes fixed on the group of brick buildings huddling together, braced against some unidentified threat. ‘But then he sold it. My husband did. He sold the land to the council.’ She stood silent for a moment, then turned abruptly and continued across the fields towards the river, her steps quicker than before. Veronika followed, a little out of breath. They walked along the riverbank for a while, looking for a good place for a rest. The river took a sharp turn and the bank scooped gently, creating a sheltered area, facing south and protected against the wind. Astrid took off her cardigan and spread it on the grass, and Veronika did the same with her fleece jacket. They both sat down and the old woman pulled off her boots, exposing pale bare feet with yellowing toenails. The sun was warm and the two women lay back, saying nothing.

Veronika stared up at the sky, where five seagulls drifted soundlessly. She thought nothing, allowed herself to doze. She started as Astrid gently tapped her arm, holding out a chocolate bar. Like Veronika, she kept her eyes on the sky. Veronika helped herself to a piece and closed her eyes again. The sun was warm against her face and she let her thoughts wander.

‘My name is Astrid,’ the old woman said. ‘Astrid Mattson.’ The words jolted Veronika back and she opened her eyes and turned her head. The old woman was still lying on her back, eyes closed now. Her hands were clasped on her stomach, as if in prayer. Or folded, after death. ‘And you are Veronika.’ She paused. ‘There are no secrets here. Everybody knows everything about everybody. Or they would like to think they do. Secrets have to be well guarded, and the price is high.’ She opened her eyes, squinting in the sun. ‘Solitude. The price is solitude.’

The seagulls hovered above the water, sinking and rising like puppets on strings.

Astrid opened her eyes and turned her head, and for the first time Veronika noticed that her eyes were bright blue, cornflower blue. The effect was startling against the papery pale skin and wisps of grey hair.

Veronika sat up and hugged her shins, chin on her knees. She looked out over the river where the seagulls continued their intricate play.

‘You mustn’t misunderstand,’ said Astrid. ‘I am not after your secrets. I have no interest in other people’s lives.’

She turned her head back and closed her eyes again. Veronika let her hand stroke the dry grass beside her and her fingers closed around a small stone. She lifted her arm and threw the flat pebble towards the water. It arched, disturbing the seagulls, causing them to lift with annoyed shrieks. The stone fell and broke the surface with a little splash.

‘I have lived in this village my entire life,’ the old woman said. ‘And most of my life I have been alone.’ Veronika looked at her face, but it gave no indication of her feelings. The eyes remained closed. ‘I am old now. Nearly eighty years old. And with each passing day, it seems as if time goes ever more slowly. A day now seems longer than the entire life that went before. A season is an eternity.’

Veronika threw another pebble, missing the water and hitting a small bush on the bank. Her eyes were fixed on the slowly undulating surface of the river.

‘And in this time without end, I have been alone in my house. Waiting. Guarding my secrets.’ Astrid struggled to sit, rolling over on her side and pushing herself up with both hands. ‘I have become good at keeping my secrets and I am an expert on solitude. But now . . .’ Her sentence was left unfinished and they sat in silence.

‘I used to come here with my mother,’ Astrid suddenly said. ‘We used to rest here on our way back from the lake. Strange, it is over seventy years ago, yet I can see her as clearly as I can see you. It is as if time is irrelevant. My life’s memories take up space with no regard to when they happened, or to their actual time-span. The memories of brief incidents occupy almost all time, while years of my life have left no trace.’ She looked at Veronika with a slight shrug of her shoulders and a hint of an embarrassed smile, her lips firmly closed and her cheeks blushing. ‘I don’t know why I am telling you this,’ she said.

‘I am scared of losing the memory of the most precious time in my life,’ said Veronika, looking out over the river. ‘Because it has happened to me before. I have no memories of my mother. I think now that perhaps I had to let them go in order to live. To remember her would have meant acknowledging the fact that she abandoned me. I don’t think I could have lived with that.’

‘I don’t think I could have lived without those memories,’ Astrid said.

Veronika stared at the old woman, her brows knitted. ‘Yes,’ she said after a pause. ‘I am beginning to understand that I will have to remember. That I will have to hold on to every day. Take them out one by one, and make sure nothing is lost. But it is so very hard.’

‘Let me tell you about my mother,’ the old woman said. ‘About a day that has stayed with me all these years, clearer in my memory than yesterday.’

It was June, early summer and a day very much like today. We had been down by the lake, just the two of us, walking along the shore. Wading in the still icy-cold water, splashing and jumping. Laughing. When my mother laughed, tears streamed down her cheeks. It never ceased to disturb me, though she would always notice and say, ‘Oh, my little Astrid, I am only laughing.’ And she would wipe away her tears like a child, rubbing both eyes with her fists. I never heard her laugh in the house, only when we were away from home, just the two of us.

That day, we ran along the edge of the water, chasing each other. Laughing. A duck with its flock of little ducklings watched from a safe distance. Eventually we sat down on the sand, panting. My mother wore a green skirt and the hem was soaked. She gathered the material in her hands, wringing out the water, exposing her white legs and bare feet. Her hair had come loose and fell over her shoulders and chest, and when she let go of the skirt she lifted her arms and pulled the hair away from her face, gathering it in her hands and piling it on her head. She sat very still, looking out over the lake. When she dropped her hands she pulled me towards her. Her hand stroked my hair and I looked up at her face. Her green eyes locked with mine for a moment before she pressed me to her chest. ‘Remember this, my little Astrid,’ she said. ‘Always remember how the sun glitters on the water. How the mother duck cares for her babies. How blue the sky is. And how I love you.’ And I knew with absolute certainty that there would be no more days like that.

On our way back we cycled past here. I sat behind her on the bicycle, my arms around her waist, pressed against her warm body. Her long copper hair blew around my face and I could feel the muscles in her back move with each push on the pedals. Our shoes were in the basket on the handlebars and she kept telling me to keep my feet wide, away from the wheel. ‘Astrid, watch your feet!’ she cried, turning her head to look quickly over her shoulder. The sky was absolutely clear; there was a smell of soil in the air from the potato fields either side of the road. It was such a happy day, but as I buried my nose into my mother’s back I was fighting tears.

That afternoon she came downstairs, dressed to go out and with her hair tucked into her hat. In the kitchen she lifted me up, held me and pressed her face against my neck. I could feel her lips moving, but there was no sound. I looked out over her shoulder and saw the hoya on the windowsill, covered in clusters of velvety pink flowers. All these years I have kept a hoya in that spot in the kitchen window and each summer when the flowers open the perfume brings back that moment. I sat by the window, my nose pressed against the glass, and watched my mother climb into Mr Larsson’s carriage. I kept watching as he whipped the horses and the carriage rolled off down the road. My mother never turned around to wave. It looked as if she was holding her gloved hands to her face.

They found her in a small hotel in Stockholm. She had cut her wrists and laid herself down by the window where there was no carpet. She had been lying there for three days. In the warm weather the blood had dried around her and they had to soak her skirt with water to get if off the floor. She was twenty-seven. I was six.

That evening, after my mother had left, I lay awake in my bed. It was still light outside, a pale summer night. The window was open and there was a breeze that made the cord of the roller-blind bounce against the windowsill. It was such a sad sound. Tap, tap, irregular and lonely. I lay on my stomach with my face pressed into the pillow and it was when I stuck my hands underneath that I felt the pendant. The little oval gold locket that my mother used to wear on a short chain around her neck. Inside, there was a lock of her hair. I sat in my bed, twisting the soft strands between my fingers, brushing them against my cheek, while the blind moved in the breeze. Tap, tap, tap against the window. I only found out what had happened to her many years later, but instinctively that night I knew that I had lost her for ever. I knew the moment she looked at me by the lake. I knew as I watched her come down the stairs. And I knew when she covered her face with her hands. I accepted the loneliness as a new state of life. Inevitable and permanent.

Perhaps that was when I became one with this house. It became my skin. My protector. It has heard all my secrets; it has seen everything.

I was an only child, like both my parents. After I lost my mother there was just the two of us, my father and I. There was a time when I longed for a family, for sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles, cousins. Now I am pleased there is nobody else. Just the house and me.

I am not sure whether my grandfather built the house with love, but I like to think so. I like to think he built the grandest house because he loved his only son. Because he wanted to give him the most beautiful view, the sweetest meadows with flowers, the fertile fields with flax and potato, the vast forests with trees to fell in the winter. I like to think there was love. I don’t know what kind of man my grandfather was — he died before I was born. I don’t know if it would have pained him to know what has become of his gift. To know that his son was not a farmer and had no love for the land. That money ran through his soft, slender hands like water, leaving only a dying house for the grandchild. To me, it seems right. It is all coming to an end.

When and where is the beginning? All these years while I have nurtured the memory of my mother, I think I made that moment the beginning and the end. Watching her climbing into the carriage, her back to me. It seemed to mark the end of all that was good, of life itself. And the beginning of a lifelong solitude. Thinking about it now, I wonder. I think that perhaps there are no such defining moments at all. Beginnings and ends are fluid, long chains of events where some links seem so insignificant and others so very momentous, while in fact all have the same weight. What may appear as a single dramatic moment is just a link between what was before and what comes after.

Astrid stopped talking as abruptly as she had started, and they stayed like that, Astrid on her back with her eyes closed, Veronika hugging her shins looking out over the river. She couldn’t be sure whether the old woman was awake — her hands rested folded together on her chest, lifting regularly with each breath. Finally, Veronika lay down, closed her eyes to the warm sun and dozed. She woke with a start to find Astrid standing by the river, her hands clasped behind her back and her eyes on the moving water. The sun had moved and they were in shade. Veronika stood up, shook her fleece jacket and pulled it on, and they started back. They walked in companionable silence, each left to her own thoughts. They took the main road, passing the shop. Veronika asked if Astrid needed anything, but the old woman shook her head and they continued up the hill.

It was after three when Veronika was back in her kitchen. She had expected to be exhausted, but instead felt strangely alert, as if her senses had been sharpened. She sat at the kitchen table all afternoon, reading and scribbling notes. She remained there while evening set in and the sun reluctantly withdrew in ever-extended rays of light, before finally dipping below the horizon. She had some cheese and crackers and a glass of wine. Still at the table, she rested her head on her arms and fell asleep, but woke with a start after a little while and went upstairs. She lay down on the bed fully dressed and closed her eyes. But her sleep was fretful and filled with elusive dreams. Eventually, she got up again and went downstairs. When she sat down at the table and looked out the window she noticed that there had been a subtle shift. The light had reached its most saturated grey and then turned, and the first birds had begun to sing. And with the return of the light she began to read again.