The Best Intentions (3 page)

Professor Sundelius:
I suggest, Mr. Bergman, that you take a walk in the botanical gardens. There is a great deal there to marvel at at this time in the spring. Either one believes in Almighty God, or one doesn't. Good-bye, Mr. Bergman, and welcome back at the end of November. Perhaps I should add that my introductory statement does not apply to you. I think you will be a good priest, regardless of the Symbolum or the Apostolic Fathers.

The professor nods, indicating thereby that Henrik should retire. No one can maintain that the Dreaded Sundelius smiles, but he looks at Henrik Bergman with something resembling curiosity. Then it's all over. Out through the door. Out into the dining room where the parquet floor is being polished on all fours. Out into the hall to take down his student cap. Down the marble staircase, which echoes. The great door bangs. A band is blaring away in the middle of the street, the sun blazing down, people stopping to stare or marching along in time. A gangling youth, bareheaded, with thin dark hair, dark eyes, and a trim mustache, stops in front of Henrik and touches his arm with an elegant walking stick.

Ernst:
Hello, Bergman. You won't forget choir practice tonight, will you? Hugo Alvén is coming. At the Zwyck afterward.

He nods and is gone.

Now we'll talk about Frida Strandberg, Henrik's fiancée for the last two years. Of course, it's a very secret engagement, known only to their closest friends. Neither Henrik's mother nor the Elfvik aunts know about it. The girl's family in Ångermanland know nothing either. But it is an engagement all the same, with an exchange of rings, sacred promises, lighted candles, and tender kisses.

Frida is three years older than her fiancé, and she works as a waitress at the Gillet, the town's most genteel hotel. She and several of the other staff live in wretched, drafty hovels right at the top in the attics of that massive building. The moral consequences of this mixed residence do not bother the management, but going in and out of bedrooms at night is prohibited. The only staff entrance is guarded by a Cerberus and his wife, who seem to lack the normal need for sleep.

Frida is beautiful, a fine figure of a woman, big-boned, with high breasts and round hips under her long tight skirt. She wears her ash-blonde hair in bangs over her forehead and gathered into a knot on the top of her head. Her eyes are large, almost round, and observant, appraising and curious. She laughs often, surprisingly loud laughter, her lips shapely and chin round and definite. She looks determined with a chin like that. Her nose is long and nobly shaped. She speaks rapidly, with a broad accent, moves quickly, and carries herself well, whether bearing heavy trays in the hotel dining room or taking a Sunday walk in Fyris Park with her fiancé.

They had met by chance. One of Henrik's friends who often joined him for a meal at Cold Märta's had inherited some money from an aunt and wanted to celebrate. They went to the Flustret down by Svandammen. Frida had a temporary summer job there, working upstairs in the private rooms. It was a warm evening, with heavy balmy scents coming through the open windows and military music from the pavilion.

They were very drunk, Henrik most of all. When the party broke up to make their way to the brothel in Svartbäcken, the theologian proved impossible to resuscitate, so was left to his fate or Frida, who eventually (after finishing work at two o'clock in the morning) got hold of a cab. She managed to coax his address out of him and, with the help of the cabdriver, carried and dragged the still blind-drunk
student up the stairs to his room. Nothing happened that night, except that Henrik vomited on Frida's skirt, hit his head on the edge of the table, and bled fairly profusely.

Two days later, Henry set off for the Flustret with a bunch of what to him were expensive flowers. He found her at the sordid back quarters, where she happened to be taking a break with a cup of coffee and a cigarillo. Both of them were profoundly confused. Henrik apologized for his appalling behavior and offered to pay for the cleaning of Frida's skirt. She did not know what to say, since the skirt was ruined and couldn't be washed, and she realized it was unlikely that Henrik could afford to buy her a new one.

She finished her coffee, carefully stubbed out the cigarillo, and put the rest of it into a little tin. Then she got to her feet and said that her break was now over — but if he cared to come and meet her, she finished work at two o'clock. He sat down at a round marble table out in one of the large lilac arbors, ordered a mineral water, and sat watching the people and listening to the regimental music, the ducks quacking, and the water rushing under the bridge.

When the time came, he went with Frida to the Gillet, where he kissed her hand, something he had learned from his mother, and he also explained that he was alone in Upsala, in Sweden, in the World, and in the Universe. Frida laughed, surprised and slightly uneasy, and suggested an outing to Graneberg. She had the next Sunday off.

Thus began their time together, which rapidly developed into living together. Henrik was tormented by a sense of sin, lechery, and an ungovernable jealousy. Frida used cunning, wisdom, white lies, and strategy to calm this disturbed and confused child. She also taught him how to avoid consequences, which in turn brought on attacks of retrospective jealousy. Frida coaxed, and Henrik made a fuss. They were soon inseparable.

After a while, they became engaged . . . secretly. Henrik didn't dare tell his mother about Frida, but Frida had no objections. She was biding her time. To be the wife of a minister might be a future. She often hoped and dreamed about such a life but kept her dreams to herself. Frida was well aware of the realities and was wise enough to draw her own conclusions and make plans. Henrik, on the other hand, was aware of nothing, because a mountain of demands blocked his view. He lived in a mire of his own constraints and other people's expectations. With Frida, he would suddenly feel a stab of happiness, or whatever he was to call this unfamiliar feeling, which surprised him and caused hot tears to rise in his eyes.

When Frida came back home to Henrik on the evening of the oral
exam, it was already rather late. With the gracious permission of the head waiter, she had managed to change her hours. As the cathedral clock struck ten, she arrived to find the door open and the room almost in darkness. Henrik was lying on the bed with his arm across his face. As she cautiously approached, he sat up.

Frida:
Justus came by and told me. Have you had anything to eat? You haven't eaten all day? I thought as much, so I brought some beer and cold cuts with me from the kitchen. Miss Hilda sends her regards — you know, we met her at the concert in Holy Trinity Church. She said she thought you were good looking but far too thin. Can I light the lamp and then set the table — I could move the books a little, couldn't I?

She busies herself in silence, stubbornly. Henrik looks at her, feeling both burdened and relieved, but he is also bursting to relieve himself.

Henrik:
I must go and have a pee. I haven't had a pee all day.

Frida:
Surely no one can be that miserable!

Henrik smiles faintly and disappears out into the corridor, and she hears him clattering down the stairs. Frida pours beer into a glass, sits down at the table, lights a cigarillo, and looks at the photograph of Henrik's mother. Then she turns her eyes to the window and looks down at the wall and the courtyard. Henrik is standing there, faintly illuminated by the light in the doorway He is buttoning his trousers and probably senses she is looking at him, so turns to look up at the light from the window and sees her there framed in the yellow square. She smiles, but he does not smile in reply. She waves to him to come on up, raising her glass and taking a sip. Then she opens her blouse, pulls down her bodice, and exposes her right breast.

Frida gets up at dawn to make her way home.

Frida:
No, you stay there. It'll be light soon, and I like walking along the river when the town's empty and quiet.

Henrik:
I have to go home next week. Can you imagine what it'll be like? Mother waiting there on the platform, fat and expectant. I'll go up to her and tell her I've messed it up, failed the exam. And then she'll start crying.

Frida:
Poor Henrik! I could come with you.

They laugh somewhat joylessly at such an inconceivable idea, and Henrik jumps out of bed and dresses. Then they're on their way
through the chilly, still morning. When they get to Ny Bridge, they stop and look down into the dark, swiftly running water.

Henrik:
When I was a child, Mother got a carpenter to make a little altar. She made a lace altar cloth herself and then bought a plaster model of Thorwaldsen's Christ, took two pewter candlesticks from the dining room, and put them on the altar cloth. We held communion on Sundays. I was the minister in cassock and dog collar. Mother and some old girl from the old people's home were the congregation. Mother played the organ, and we sang hymns. We even took communion — just imagine! Later on, I had to ask Mother to stop all that embarrassing playacting. I began to think we were committing some awful sin — it was all so silly and humiliating — I thought God would punish us. Mother was somehow so reckless. She was miserable, of course. She had gone and done all that for my sake, and I — anyhow over the last few years — had done it for her sake. It was a miserable business. And now, on a day like today, I wonder whether I am going to be ordained for Mother's sake and because my father didn't want to be a priest, although the whole family thought he ought to be. And I wonder what he thought when he gave up his studies, after being so promising. I wonder what he thought. And a pharmacist — he became a pharmacist! Can you imagine what Grandfather and the rest of the family thought? The shame of it! Yes.

Frida:
Why shouldn't you become a priest, Henrik? It's a good profession. Honorable, solid, and good. You'll be able to support yourself and family, and not least your mother.

Clearly, Frida is teasing. Or perhaps her dialect makes the problem seem meaningless. Or perhaps Frida simply thinks her theologian is being awkward. It's not easy to know.

Johan Åkerblom, the superintendent of traffic, is resting, that is, he is shortening the boredom of the afternoon by taking a nap. He is also quite right to rest. He is over seventy and has retired from railway bridges, shunting yards, and signal systems, constructed and developed during the period of the greatest expansion of rail traffic. As a young man and a newly qualified engineer, he had applied to the State Railways and was noticed almost immediately for his quick and practical ideas. He advanced swiftly and easily in his career.

When he was twenty-four, he married the daughter of a wealthy wholesaler, purchased the newly constructed building at 12
Trädgårdsgatan, and moved into a ten-room apartment on the first floor. Three sons were born in rapid succession: Oscar, Gustav, and Carl. After twenty years of outward success and marital difficulties, his sickly wife died. Johan Åkerblom was left alone and nonplussed. His three sons were not yet adult and had been brought up much too strictly The home, run by a housekeeper, was falling apart at an accelerated rate.

The superintendent of traffic played the cello in his spare time and consorted with the Calwagen family, whose head of household had written a German grammar book destined to plague generations of Swedish children:
Die Heeringe der Ostsee sind magerer als die der Nordsee
(The herrings of the Baltic are smaller than those of the North Sea). And so on.

Together they formed a string quartet, which could be expanded into a quintet when necessary, for the elder daughter, Karin, was an ambitious amateur pianist, who made up for her lack of musicality with enthusiasm and determination. Karin felt great sympathy for this widower, more than thirty years older than herself. She could clearly see his household disintegrating after his wife's death, and one spring day, without beating around the bush, she suggested that she and Johan should marry. Overwhelmed by so much generosity and energy, moved and stammering, Johan could hardly do anything else but gratefully accept. They married six months later, and after what was for those days an extremely short honeymoon at a new railway junction in the town of Halle, Karin, twenty-two years old, and overflowing with goodwill, moved into the ten-room apartment on Trädgårdsgatan.

The three sons, all more or less contemporaries of hers, reacted with dismissive suspicion and the sophisticated bad behavior of those who've been brought up too strictly. Among themselves they were enemies, but now they suddenly found reason to unite against someone who was clearly threatening their freedom. Within a few months, however, the three young men knew they had met their match. After a period of severe defeats, they decided to lay down their arms and surrender unconditionally. Karin was an instinctive strategist even in her early years and clearly realized that she must not use her advantage to humiliate her opponents. On the contrary. She heaped blessings on them, not only from wisdom but also from affection. She liked her awkward, kind, and confused stepsons, and met their growing affection with gruff and cheerful tenderness.

Karin is now forty-four and has two children of her own, Ernst and Anna, both in their twenties. The household has four servants and
a large circle of friends. The two older brothers have also married and have families of their own, and they often come on more or less improvised visits.

When Karin married, she discontinued her training to be a teacher, a decision she never had occasion to regret. Daily life provided her with a continuous occupation. She was good with people, clearsighted, humorous, friendly, and cheerfully energetic. She was also quick-tempered, dictatorial, ruthless, and sharp-tongued. No one could say she was beautiful, but her whole little person radiated charm and physical vitality. It is scarcely credible that the superintendent and his thirty-years-younger wife loved each other in the romantic sense, but they acted their roles without protest and gradually became good friends.