Britt-Marie Was Here (9 page)

Somebody presses a few keys on her register. The money tray opens, revealing not very much money at all inside, and then the register spits out a pale yellow receipt.

“That’ll be six hundred and seventy-three kronor and fifty öre,” says Somebody.

Britt-Marie stares back as if she’s got something stuck in her throat.

“For baking soda?”

Somebody points out of the door.

“For dent in car. I have done one of those, what’s-it-called? Bodywork inspection! I don’t want to, what’s-it-called? Insult you, Britt-Marie! So you can’t have credit. Six hundred and seventy-three kronor and fifty öre.”

Britt-Marie almost drops her handbag. That’s how grave the situation is.

“I have . . . who . . . for goodness’ sake. No civilized person walks around with that much cash in her handbag.”

She says that in an extra-loud voice. So that everyone in there can hear, in case one of them is a criminal. On the other hand, only the bearded coffee-drinking men are there, and neither of them even look up, but still. Criminal types do sometimes have beards. Britt-Marie actually has no prejudices about that.

“Do you take cards?” she says, registering a certain amount of rising heat along her cheekbones.

Somebody shakes her head hard.

“Poker players do cards, huh, Britt-Marie. Here we do cash.”

“Ha. In that case I’ll have to ask for directions to the nearest cash machine,” says Britt-Marie.

“In town,” says Somebody coldly, crossing her arms.

“Ha,” says Britt-Marie.

“They closed down the cash machine in Borg. Not profitable,” says Somebody with raised eyebrows, nodding at the receipt.

Britt-Marie’s gaze flickers desperately across the walls, in an attempt to deflect attention from her bloodred cheeks. There’s a
yellow jersey hanging on the wall, identical to the one in the recreation center, with the word “Bank” written above the number “10” on its back.

Somebody notices her looking at it, so she closes the register, knots the bag of baking soda and Faxin, and pushes it across the counter.

“You know, no shame here with credit, huh, Britt-Marie. Maybe shame where you come from, but no shame in Borg.”

Britt-Marie takes the bag without knowing what to do with her eyes.

Somebody takes a slug of vodka and nods at the yellow jersey on the wall.

“Best player in Borg. Called ‘Bank,’ you know, because when Bank play for Borg it was like, what’s-it-called? Like money in the bank! Long time ago. Before financial crisis. Then, you know: Bank got ill, huh. Like another sort of crisis. Bank moved away. Gone now, huh.”

She nods out of the door. A ball thumps against the fence.

“Bank’s old man trained all the brats, huh. Kept them going. Kept all of Borg going, huh? Everyone’s friend! But God, you know, God got a shit head for numbers, huh. The sod gives both profitable and unprofitable person heart attack. Bank’s dad died a month ago.”

The wooden walls creak and groan around them, as old houses do, and old people. One of the men with papers and cups of coffee fetches more coffee from the counter. Britt-Marie notes that you get a free top-up here.

“They found him on the, what’s-it-called? Kitchen floor!”

“Pardon me?”

Somebody points at the yellow jersey. Shrugs.

“Bank’s old man. On the kitchen floor. One morning. Just dead.”

She snaps her fingers. Britt-Marie jumps. She thinks of Kent’s
heart attack. He had always been very profitable. She takes an even firmer grip on her bag of Faxin and baking soda. Stands in silence for so long that Somebody starts to look concerned.

“Hey, you need something else? I have that, what’s-it-called? Baileys! Chocolate spirit! You know, it’s a copy, but you can put O’boy and vodka in it, and then, it’s okay to drink, if you drink it, you know . . . fast!”

Britt-Marie shakes her head briskly. She walks towards the door, but something about that kitchen floor may possibly cause her some hesitation. So she cautiously turns around, before she changes her mind, and then turns around again.

Britt-Marie is not a very spontaneous person, one certainly needs to be clear about that. “Spontaneous” is a synonym for “irrational”—that’s Britt-Marie’s firm view, and if there’s one thing Britt-Marie isn’t, it’s irrational. This is not so very easy for her, in other words. But at last she turns around, then changes her mind and turns around another time, so that by the end she’s facing the door when she lowers her voice and asks, with all the spontaneity that she can muster:

“Do you possibly stock Snickers chocolate bars?”

Darkness falls early in Borg in January. Britt-Marie goes back to the recreation center and sits by herself on one of the kitchen stools, with the front door open. The chill doesn’t concern her. Not the waiting either. She is used to it. You do get used to it. She has plenty of time to think about whether what she is going through now is a sort of life crisis. She has read about them. People have life crises all the time.

The rat comes in through the open door at twenty past six. It settles on the threshold and focuses a very watchful gaze on the
Snickers bar, which is on a plate on top of a little towel. Britt-Marie gives the rat a stern look and cups one hand firmly in the other.

“From now on we have dinner at six o’clock. Like civilized people.”

After thinking this over for a certain amount of time, she adds:

“Or rats.”

The rat looks at the Snickers. Britt-Marie has removed the wrapper and placed the chocolate in the middle of the plate, with a neatly folded napkin next to it. She looks at the rat. Clears her throat.

“Ha. I’m not especially good at starting these types of conversations. I’m socially incompetent, you see, that’s what my husband says. He’s very socially gifted, everyone says that. An entrepreneur, you see.”

When the rat doesn’t answer, she adds:

“Very successful. Very, very successful.”

She briefly considers telling the rat about her life crisis. She imagines she’d like to explain that it’s difficult to know who you are once you are alone, when you have always been there for the sake of someone else. But she doesn’t want to trouble the rat with it. So she adjusts a crease in her skirt and says, very formally:

“I would like to propose a working arrangement. For your part, it would mean that a dinner would be arranged for you every evening at six o’clock.”

She makes an explanatory gesture at the chocolate.

“The arrangement, if we find it mutually beneficial, would mean that, if you die, I won’t let you lie and smell bad in the wall. And you will do the same for me. In case people don’t know we are here.”

The rat takes a tentative step towards the chocolate. Stretches its neck and sniffs it. Britt-Marie brushes invisible crumbs from her knee.

“It’s the sodium bicarbonate that disappears when one dies, you
have to understand. That’s why people smell. I read that after Ingrid had died.”

The rat’s whiskers vibrate with skepticism. Britt-Marie clears her throat apologetically.

“Ingrid was my sister, you have to understand. She died. I was worried she’d smell bad. That’s how I found out about sodium bicarbonate. The body produces sodium bicarbonate to neutralize the acidic substances in the stomach. When one dies, the body stops producing the sodium bicarbonate, so the acidic substances eat their way through the skin and end up on the floor. That’s when it smells, you have to understand.”

She thinks about adding that she has always found it reasonable to assume that the human soul is found in the sodium bicarbonate. When it leaves the body, there’s nothing left. Only complaining neighbors. But she doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t want to cause bother.

The rat eats its dinner but doesn’t comment on whether or not it enjoyed it.

Britt-Marie doesn’t ask.

E
verything begins in earnest this evening. The weather is mild, the snow turns to rain as it falls from sky to earth. The children play soccer in the dark, but neither the dark nor the rain seems to concern them in the least. The parking area is only blessed with light here and there, where it’s cast by the neon sign of the pizzeria, or from the kitchen window where Britt-Marie stands hidden behind the curtain watching them, but, to be quite honest, most of them are so bad at soccer that more light would only have a marginal effect on their ability to hit the ball.

The rat has gone home. Britt-Marie has locked the door and washed up and cleaned the whole recreation center one more time. She is standing by the window looking out at the world. From time to time, the ball bounces through the puddles onto the road, and then the children play Rock, Paper, Scissors to decide who has to go and fetch it.

Kent used to tell David and Pernilla when they were small that Britt-Marie couldn’t play with them because she “didn’t know how,” but that isn’t true. Britt-Marie knows perfectly well how to play Rock, Paper, Scissors. She just doesn’t think it sounds very hygienic to keep stones in paper bags. As for the scissors, it’s not even worth thinking about. Who knows where they’ve been?

Of course Kent is always saying Britt-Marie is “so darned negative.” It’s a part of her social incompetence. “Darn it! Just be happy instead!” Kent fetches the cigars and takes care of the guests and Britt-Marie does the washing-up and takes care of the home, and that’s how they have divided up their lives. Kent is a bit happy, darn it, and Britt-Marie is darned negative. Maybe that’s how it goes. It’s easier to stay optimistic if you never have to clear up the mess afterwards.

The two siblings, Vega and Omar, play on opposing sides. She is calm and calculating, gently moving the ball with the insides of her feet, as you might twiddle your toes against someone you love while sleeping. Her brother, on the other hand, is angry and frustrated, hunting the ball down as if it owes him money. Britt-Marie doesn’t know the first thing about soccer, but anyone can see that Vega is the best player in the parking area. Or at least the least bad one.

Omar is constantly in his sister’s shadow. They are all in her shadow. She reminds Britt-Marie of Ingrid.

Ingrid was never negative. As always with people like this, it’s difficult to know whether everyone loved Ingrid because she was so positive, or if she was so positive because everyone loved her. She was one year older than Britt-Marie and five inches taller—it doesn’t take much to put someone in your shadow. It never mattered to Britt-Marie that she was the one who receded into the background. She never wanted much.

Sometimes she actually yearned to want something, so much that she could hardly bear it. It seemed so vital, wanting things. But usually the feeling passed.

Ingrid, of course, was always falling to bits with wanting things—her singing career, for instance, and the celebrity status she was predestined to achieve, and the boys out there in the world who were so much more than the usual ones on offer in their apartment
block. The usual boys who, Britt-Marie realized, were infinitely too unusual to even look at Britt-Marie and yet far too usual in every way to deserve her sister.

They were brothers, the boys on their floor. Alf and Kent. They fought about everything. Britt-Marie couldn’t understand it. She followed her sister everywhere. It never bothered Ingrid. Quite the opposite. “It’s you and me, Britt,” she used to whisper at nights when she told her the stories of how they were going to live in Paris in a palace filled with servants. That was why she called her little sister “Britt”—because it sounded American.

Admittedly it seemed a bit odd to have an American name in Paris, but Britt-Marie had certainly never been the sort of person who opposed things needlessly.

Vega is grim, but when her team scores in the dark yard, in the rain, in a goal made of two soft-drink cans, her laugh sounds just like Ingrid’s. Ingrid also loved to play. As with all people like that, it’s difficult to know if she was the best because she loved the games, or if she loved them because she was the best.

A little boy with ginger hair gets hit hard in the face with the ball. He falls headlong into a muddy puddle. Britt-Marie shudders. It’s the same soccer ball they shot at Britt-Marie’s head, and when she sees the mud on it she wants to give herself a tetanus shot. Yet she has difficulties taking her eyes off the game, because Ingrid would have liked it.