Papa isn’t home, he mumbles.
It isn’t until then that they look at each other, uncertain of what to say, afraid of what might be said.
Oh, Gun whispers, but he should be home tonight.
Then she turns not only her gaze from him but her head, too, and looks up at the same staircase. There is a smooth gray wall beyond the staircase window, the wall of a newly built building, where she lets her gaze hang for a while, like a window washer hanging from his ropes. Bengt pulls the door toward him. He eventually decides to close it, but she holds her hand on the doorknob. So he lets the door stay where it is.
Papa’s at a fiftieth birthday party, he says. He’ll probably come home late. Very late.
Gun notices that he said “very late.” Or more precisely, she notices how he said it. Suddenly Bengt notices, too, and, confused, he wants to take it back since it’s none of her business. But instead of taking it back, he opens the door a little wider, and she lets go of the doorknob. Downstairs, the front door slams. Someone whistling is approaching, coming up quickly. Then it occurs to him that she can’t keep standing where she is, not when someone is coming.
Please come in for a bit, he says, I was just making coffee.
Of course, it isn’t true. She realizes this once she’s in the kitchen, and Bengt does, too. He sits down on the kitchen bench and stares down at his hands. He doesn’t look up until Gun turns on the gas. She is standing with her back to him, a slender, straight back in a red dress. It’s a dress he recognizes, but he isn’t sure he has ever seen this particular back before. She opens the jars on the shelf and finds the coffee in the last one. She is busy for a while washing spoons, drying cups, and slicing bread. She dries more cups than they need and slices more bread than they will be able to eat. He is glad that it’s taking so long, but he’s afraid it will suddenly be silent in the kitchen, and then he won’t know what to say. As she sets the table for him, he feels ashamed. It occurs to him that he’s sitting in his mother’s kitchen and that a stranger is using it as if it were her own. What will he say if his mother asks him about it? But when they sit on opposite sides of the table, they talk about something else.
They talk about Berit. And Bengt is the one who initiates the conversation. He has just written a letter to her, a still unsent letter. I sent her your regards, he says and looks at her, in a separate P.S. Then he realizes how stupid it is that he said “P.S.” It doesn’t matter whether he did it in a postscript or in the body of the letter. I think Berit is sweet, Gun says.
Papa thinks she’s ugly, Bengt replies.
Then he quickly adds:
But I don’t think so.
I don’t think so either, Gun says. I think she is very sweet.
So they both think she is sweet. They sit for a while thinking of what else they can say about Berit besides that she is sweet. But then Bengt realizes there’s nothing more to say, so he comes up with something else. He talks about Härjedalen and about her parents who live there. Gun mentions that she has also been to Härjedalen.
It was beautiful there, she says as she finishes her coffee, especially at night. We used to walk barefoot in the forest, and the cows roamed around with bells on.
It’s nice to walk barefoot, Bengt says; it’s almost the best thing there is.
He has also finished his coffee, but he knows they have to keep on drinking, so he gets up to get the pot. When he leaves the stove, he notices that the strap of her black shoe has come undone. Then he remembers that they were just talking about walking barefoot. He isn’t barefoot himself; he is wearing slippers, brown leather slippers that he got from his mother for Christmas. He didn’t like them then and neither did his father. They’re for hermits and oldsters, his dad had said. So it wasn’t until after his mother’s death that Bengt started wearing them. And he didn’t mean for Gun to see them, but she does anyway.
Nice slippers, Bengt, she says as he pours the coffee.
His hand is so tremulous that five drops fall on her plate.
Got them for Christmas, he says, from Mama.
After that, she doesn’t say anything else, nearly nothing the entire time it takes them to drink the next cup. Nor does Bengt say anything. He is looking down at his coffee, which is capped by a skin of cream. When his cup is empty, he stares down into the bottom of it, the whole time thinking of his mother. Then a ridiculous thought occurs to him. He thinks Gun might be wearing his mother’s shoes, but he isn’t sure, and he doesn’t really want to be, either. So he sits there thinking about the time his father came home with the black shoes. It must have been a Saturday, since he got home very early and was very drunk. He had a box under his arm, and he dropped it as he stepped over the kitchen threshold. His mother picked it up and put it on the table. She knew it was for her, but she didn’t bother to open it, because she was annoyed. So the father tore the strings and ripped off the paper himself and held up the shoes under the light. Do you think I’m seventeen? he now remembers her saying. Not particularly loud but she said it, although she was no longer annoyed. It sounded more as though she was sad that she wasn’t seventeen anymore.
But when the memory is over, there is nothing left to distract him. He slowly puts his cup aside as he leans over the edge of the table and looks down at Gun’s shoes. He can’t help it. No one can help it. He recognizes them all too well. But he doesn’t let her know.
The strap has come undone, is all he says.
To fasten the strap, he kneels down next to her, very gently and very quickly.
Bengt, I have to go, she says. But she knows it’s already too late. Wait, I have to fasten the strap, he whispers, whispers quite helplessly and puts his hand around her ankle.
But he does not fasten the strap. Instead, he takes off her shoe and sets it down by the leg of the table. She is not surprised. She doesn’t say anything, though she knows that she should. Instead, she places her other foot into his hands. Then he unfastens the strap of the other shoe, and carefully, as though it were made of glass, he places it next to the other one. Then he gazes up at her, not afraid but trembling, like someone on the edge of a diving board being forced to jump. She leans over and looks down at him as one looks down a well, uneasy yet very enchanted. She can’t help herself. But it isn’t his eyes at the bottom of the well. It is his lips. Slowly, they part as if somebody dropped a rock down the well.
After the kiss, he fumbles after her hands as if he can’t see a thing. Nor can he see anything, nothing but her blonde hair with the curved white comb in it. When he finds her hands, one on each hip, he pulls her down to him. She sinks silently to the floor. They sit for a long time between the chair and the table, like two children in the sand. Even though they know the situation is absurd, they are sincere and do not dare say a word. It’s completely silent in the kitchen. The evening casts nothing but shadows through the closed window, and the only thing they hear is each other, though no one is saying a word. Silent and afraid, they hold each other’s hands, each seeking the other’s help against their own bodies. They know that if they let each other go, they will be lost, but if they hold on any longer, they will be just as lost.
I’ve dreamt about your foot, Bengt whispers.
And it’s probably true. As she bends her nyloned foot, he realizes it’s the same foot he has already held in his dream. Then he frees his hands—though Gun tries to hold on to them—takes her foot, and raises it slightly off the ground. It is warm and dry, like a stone that has been basking in the sun. When he puts her foot back down, he says: