The Best Intentions (17 page)

The temptation is irresistible. Anna flops down to her knees and embraces her father: “Papa, dearest Papa, can't you look after me? I can't cope with anything anymore! I don't know what I'm going to do. I know I have to be responsible, but Papa, I just
can't cope!”

At long last Anna is really weeping, coughing, sniffing, and crying, just like when she was a little girl — utterly inconsolable. Mrs. Karin comes in with a glass of steaming-hot Ems water. She is almost horrified, puts the glass down on the bedside table, and pulls up a chair to be close to her daughter, patting her now and again on the shoulder and back.

Karin:
I'm going to tuck my little girl into bed and phone for Dr. Fiirstenberg, and to Matron. I'll come and sit with you after dinner, and then we can have a little talk. Then you'll be given something to make you sleep and you'll feel much better tomorrow, so we can decide what to do. Wouldn't that be nice, my dear?

Anna nods in silence. Yes, that might be nice.

The next scene takes place a few days later. The setting is Henrik's room. An unexpected guest is sitting at the desk. It is Oscar Åkerblom, the wholesaler, in a fur coat, galoshes on his feet, his Astrakan cap set aside on top of the Holy Scriptures. Henrik makes his entrance and expresses astonishment. Oscar at once starts to speak.

Oscar Åkerblom:
Good day to you, Mr. Bergman. Please excuse my unannounced intrusion, but your good friend Justus Bark thought he could let me in without running too great a risk. It really is hellishly cold in here, Mr. Bergman. Please excuse an old man for keeping his coat on. No, no, please don't light the stove for my sake. Wild young minds perhaps need a little cool around their foreheads. How would I know? Please be so kind as to sit down. I won't take up much of your precious time, Mr. Bergman. Please sit down, I said.

Henrik:
What's this about?

Oscar Åkerblom:
It won't take long, I promise you it won't, young man. Don't look so indignant. I'm not your enemy I'm just a conveyer of information. The family considered that you should be told and that I was the most appropriate messenger.

Henrik:
Tell me what you have to say and then go.

Oscar Åkerblom:
Oh, so that's how it's going to be, is it, young man! Well, that makes things very much easier.

Henrik:
Good.

Oscar Åkerblom:
I've been sent here to tell you the following. Please listen carefully now, Mr. Bergman. My young sister Anna is ill. She has tuberculosis. One lung is affected, and the other is at risk. She is being cared for at home at the moment. As soon as her health permits, her mother will take her to a sanatorium in Switzerland, where she will be well looked after. Please be silent, Mr. Bergman. May I finish speaking without interruptions. My sister Anna sends her regards and says she no longer wishes to have anything more to do with you, Mr. Bergman. She
expressly
asks you not to write or telephone or wait for her outside the gate or in any other way force yourself on her. She wishes
unconditionally
to forget your very existence, Mr. Bergman! Our doctor says that this will be of great importance to her recovery. My last message is an undeserved benevolence on the part of my family. In this envelope there is a thousand kronor. Here you are, Mr. Bergman. I'll leave the envelope on your blotter. Our conference is over now, and I shall leave. Allow me just to add a personal reflection on what has just been said. I'm sorry for you, and I regret your unhappiness. I'm sure you're a very pleasant young man. My brother Ernst maintains quite definitely that you're eminently suited to the serious vocation of the priesthood. In time, you will no doubt benefit from what has occurred.
(He leans forward.)
Invisible barriers run through our lives. It is pointless to try to force these barriers, in either direction. Think about that, Mr. Bergman. And now a speedy farewell. There's no need to see me out.

Let's speed up the telling of this story. Thus, two years are annihilated, plunging into the river of time and vanishing, leaving almost no trace behind them. But this is no chronicle, requiring a strict accounting for reality. It's not even a document. I'm reminded of my childhood, when I used to work on a kind of picture in magazines that consisted of nothing but dots and numbers; the objective was to draw lines between the numbers and gradually an elephant or a witch or a castle appeared. I possess fragmentary notes, brief tales, isolated episodes. Those are the numbered dots. I draw my lines in what may well be a vain hope of a face appearing. Perhaps a glimpse of the truth of my own life. Why should I otherwise take so much trouble?

Father's old watch ticks indefatigably on its stand on my desk. I
took it from his bedside table one afternoon at the end of April 1970. The watch ticks. It's almost a hundred years old. But one day it inexplicably stopped. That made me downhearted; I thought that my father disapproved of my writing, and that he was gratefully declining this belated attention I was paying him. However much I wound, shook, poked, and blew on it, the second hand refused to move. I put the watch into a compartment in my desk — a little separation. I would miss the ticking heartbeat and the discreet reminder that time is measured. The watch lay in its compartment and pondered. The next morning I opened the drawer and looked, but with no expectations. The watch was ticking away to its heart's content. Perhaps that was a good omen. I relate this as an episode to smile at. However, I am serious.

Two years go by Gustav Fröding dies and is acclaimed a prince of poetry. A new hymn book comes out. In an automobile race on the stretch of road between Gothenburg and Stockholm, the winner sets a record time of twenty-two hours and two minutes. Prime Minister Staaff's second cabinet takes over. There are a thousand cars in the capital. In the summer a mixed bathing place was opened in Mölle, the international press and photographers all present. An adventurer flies across Öresund, and Archbishop Ekman opposes Bengt Lidfors's nomination as professor of botany on the grounds of the latter's irregular life-style. Cellar-master Johan Alfred Ander commits his bestial murder and is executed with the humane and newly imported guillotine. Halle/s Comet is thought to predict a worldwide catastrophe, perhaps the end of the world.

Actually, it's less than two years later: April 1911. Henrik Bergman has just been ordained. Anna is still in a sanatorium called Monte Verita by Lake Lugano and is considered practically cured. Svea Åkerblom has undergone a major operation for the removal of both breasts, her womb, spleen, and ovaries. She has grown whiskers and shaves every day. Carl has a new invention with which he is assaulting the Patent Office: with short but harmless electrical impulses, bed-wetting and ejaculation can be prevented in youths. Gustav Åkerblom's wife, the jolly, plump Martha, has acquired a lover. Every Thursday she goes to Stockholm, where she is taking instruction in the painting of miniatures. Her husband has similarly increased in girth and does not begrudge his wife her distraction. Their daughters have started senior high school and intend to take university entrance exams, something fairly unusual in those days. Oscar Åkerblom the wholesaler has
expanded his empire and opened branches in Vanersborg and Sundsvall. He is not just well-off these days, but regarded as wealthy Ernst has applied for a post as a meteorologist in Norway, a country far ahead of his own in this new science. Johan Åkerblom, the traffic superintendent, is rather fragile, the aftereffects of his stroke overcome but the pains in his leg and hip troublesome. Mrs. Karin, busy governing her extensive empire, has put on some weight, which does not worry her much. On the other hand, she has hemorrhoids and is also troubled with permanent constipation despite figs, prunes, and a special herbal tea of elderberry and dandelion.

After these interruptions, which would presumably make any experienced dramatist's hair stand on end, we shall return to the story or the action or the saga or whatever.

The scene is the marital bedroom one spring evening at the end of April. It is past ten o'clock and quiet in Trädgårdsgatan. Noise and music can be heard coming from the Gästrike-Hälsinge student residence, which is closer to the cathedral, where preparations for Walpurgis Night are underway.

Mrs. Karin is putting her long hair into a thick braid for the night. As usual, she is standing in front of the mirror in the spacious bathroom beyond the bedroom. This contains a newly installed bath and running water, tiled walls, and a bulky radiator below the window with its colored panes. It cannot really be said that Karin is beautiful, but her lips are victorious, her complexion fair and unlined, her forehead broad, nose determined, her mouth even more determined. “Not lips for kissing but for issuing orders,” as Schiller says. The gray blue eyes can be cold and observant, but can also turn black with rage. Mrs. Karin has never uttered the words “I love” or “I hate.” That would be inconceivable, almost obscene. Nevertheless, this does not mean that Karin Åkerblom, who is just forty-five, is a stranger to passionate emotional outbursts.

Johan Åkerblom is sitting on the edge of his bed in his redbordered nightshirt, his pince-nez on his nose. He is reading an English magazine called
The Railroad,
which describes in voluptuous terms a new steam locomotive of astonishing performance. The bedside light illuminates his thin, newly washed hair, the rather hunched figure, and the long nose. The ceiling light is already out, the room dusky, white-painted beds, side by side. Light curtains, artistically draped, a huge wardrobe with double doors and mirrors, comfortable pale-green upholstered armchairs, a wide rug in soft colors, sturdy,
ingeniously fitted-out bedside tables for carafes of water, medicine bottles, appropriate bedside books, and chamber-pot cupboards.

Inherited oil paintings hang on the walls: Karin when young in a white summer dress; a leafy tree against a brilliant summer sky; an Italian basilica in a square, three women in colorful costumes having stopped on the sun-drenched piazza.

Mrs. Karin closes the door into the bathroom. She has her glasses on her nose and pair of curved nail-scissors in her hand. She sits down on a low stool by the bed and starts cutting her husband's toenails.

Johan:
Ow, now you've cut my little toe off.

Karin:
It's so hard to see. Can't you turn a little?

Johan:
Then I can't see to read.

Karin: I
can't think
what
you do to your toenails.

Johan:
I bite them.

Karin:
You ought to go to a chiropodist, a foot person.

Johan:
Never! I'm no sodomite, am I?

Karin:
Here's a callus. You must let me scrape that away.

Johan
(
reading the magazine
): If you take it away, I'll lose my balance. I find it difficult enough to walk as it is.

Karin:
My patience is incredible. Incredible. Really.

Johan:
Don't be so namby-pamby, my darling. You love poking in ears, putting on bandages, squeezing pimples, lancing boils, pulling hairs out of anyone's nostrils.
And
not least — cutting toenails. You find it voluptuous.

Karin:
You could at least lift your foot up a bit.

Johan:
I don't like seeing you at my feet.

Karin:
I sit at your feet so that you don't get totally filthy.

Johan:
As long as you have a pure mind, you don't need to wash your feet.

Karin:
And you have?

Johan:
What do I have?

Karin:
You don't even listen to what you're saying yourself.

Johan:
Because you disturb me all the time. On these new great engine cylinders, they use what they call
airway ventilators,
which automatically open a link between the two ends of the cylinders, so no air compression shut inside the cylinder and consequent counterpressure can arise when the engine runs with the steam shut off. Listen to that now. Thank you, thank you, that's enough toenail cutting for now.

The traffic superintendent puts the magazine aside, swings his legs up with some difficulty, and creeps down under the covers. Mrs. Karin presses the button of an electric bell and patters around her bed. She is wearing a full-length peignoir. Standing by her bed, she takes three pills in rapid succession, tossing her head back and taking a gulp of water after each pill.

Johan:
When you take those pills, you look like a hen with a bad throat. And you blink.

There is a knock on the door, and Miss Siri comes in with a little silver tray holding a cup of steaming bouillon and a plate with two oatcakes spread with slivers of mild cheese. She puts the tray down on the traffic superintendent's bedside table, wishes them good night, and departs as soundlessly as she had come.

Johan munches on an oatcake and blows on the hot soup. Mrs. Karin is sitting on her bed writing in her diary with a thin pencil.

Johan:
Well?

Karin:
I don't know I'm writing down what happened yesterday, but the strange thing is I can't remember anything. What happened yesterday? Can you tell me?

Johan:
No. Yes, we had a letter from Martha. And I went to the dentist and had a wisdom tooth pulled. You bought an Arvid ödmann gramophone record.

Karin:
Sometimes I feel so mournful, Johan. (
She sighs
.)

Johan:
What's worrying you?

Karin:
I don't know. Yes, as a matter of fact I do.

Johan:
If you know, you should say what you know.

Karin:
Don't you think Ernst comes to see us less and less often?

Johan:
I haven't thought about it.

Karin:
Yes. Less and less often.

Johan:
You
were the one who wanted him to move away from home and set up his own household.