Hello, Söderboys, here’s your good old Annie…
Julia Caesar. Belting out ‘Annie from Amerrrica’, which had been a hit for her at the age of eighty-two.
I left my love, I left my ma, I went away
I set sail for the land of the YOO-ESS-AY!
Laila knew what was coming; her body tensed, her eyelids flickered and she clenched her jaw as Julia Caesar went for it: a scream that came from the toes up and made the speakers rattle. ‘YOONIGHTED STATES OF AMERRRICA!’
Laila forced her eyes open. The car was full of poisonous fog, and her muscles had been replaced with lead. From the radio Julia Caesar was still working her improbably powerful old lady’s voice.
Laila coughed. She managed to free her arms, and rubbed her eyes. A lump in her stomach was trying to force its way up into her throat.
What the fuck. What the FUCK.
Julia Caesar. Eighty-two years old. Standing at the microphone singing this absolute nonsense with such enthusiasm, for fuck’s sake. She’d seen her on TV. The grey, wavy hair, the old, heavy body, the arms flung wide and the glint in her eye as she roared out her ridiculous song.
No more. Laila managed to move her numb left arm so that it landed on the door handle. She pulled and the door opened. She hurled herself sideways and slithered out onto the garage floor. As she crawled towards the door the floor was swaying, side to side, and she might well have collapsed if the regular beat of the music hadn’t driven her on.
YOONIGHTED STATES OF AMERRRICA!
She’d forgotten how many verses the song had. She had to get out before it finished. This might be the last verse. But as her fingers went into spasm fumbling with the key, Julia Caesar took pity on her and set off again.
There’s plenty of things in Sweden
Both in the good old days and today
That come from the YOO-ESS-AY!
Laila managed to turn the key, pressed down the handle and fell out into the summer. She lay on her back on the concrete in front of the garage, glowering up at the sky. While waves of nausea flooded her body, she saw the green leaves on the lime tree fluttering against the clear blue as white cotton clouds drifted by.
She heard an eager scrabbling and rustling, then a squirrel came scampering down the trunk; he stopped and listened to the music coming from the garage, then disappeared around the other side of the tree as the song faded out.
Yes, there’s something about old Sweden
That’s certainly more than all right…
Laila had managed to recoup just enough strength to push the garage door with her foot, so that it closed on the further adventures of the comedian. Then she just lay there breathing, breathing.
After ten minutes she was able to sit up. After another ten minutes she managed to go back into the garage and turn off the engine. She pulled the hose off the exhaust pipe and left all the doors open. As she walked over to the house with the hose dangling behind her like a tame snake, something occurred to her.
She had misinterpreted the signs. It wasn’t the last thing she should have gone for. It was the first. The first place she had searched was the wardrobe containing their record collection. Something had told her to look there first. She remembered very clearly that she had actually seen ‘Annie from Amerrrica’ among all the singles and 78s.
She hadn’t given it a thought. But she did now.
In spite of everything, there was a consolation to be found, something that never let her down. Something that was so close to her she hadn’t been able to see it. The music. The songs. The records. Julia Caesar’s song didn’t have a message, but her performance did, and it was very simple: Don’t give up.
Laila threw the hose into the cleaning cupboard and went to the wardrobe to look for ‘You Are a Spring Breeze in April’ by Svante Thuresson. She would listen to that. Then she would listen to something else.
Towards the end of October Lennart began to feel that it was becoming unendurable. He had nothing against classic hits from the Swedish charts but for God’s sake-within reason! From morning to night it was Siw Malmkvist, Lasse Lönndahl and Mona Wessman.
Laila might at least have shown some kind of discrimination and worked her way, for example, through Peter Himmelstrand’s many superior compositions, but no. She played whatever she fancied, whatever she happened to find in their extensive record collection. You might get an hour’s relief with Thorstein Bergman, but immediately afterwards Tova Carson would be chirruping away at some clumsily translated German pop. Lennart would sit in the kitchen being lulled into a state of restfulness by ‘Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream’, only to be driven to flight by ‘Skip to My Lou’.
Only one thing stopped him snapping off the arm and hurling the damned record player through the window: Laila was happy. It was a long time since Lennart had had anything against Laila being happy; but it was also a long time since he had had enough love or energy to try to make her happy. Now she was taking care of it herself.
It wasn’t really a bubbling happiness, more a constant spiritual smile that meant she would prepare decent meals or do some cleaning, for example-during breaks in the music. So all he could do was grit his teeth as Anita Lindblom took a deep breath and bellowed ‘Thaa-aat’s life’ for the third time that day. It had to be worth it.
In any case, Lennart had started to spend a lot of time down in the cellar, where the pounding beat of Swedish pop could be heard only as a distant changing of the guard. The girl’s musical education ought to be expanded, so Lennart bought a portable CD player and started to play classical music to her.
The very first thing he played was one of his personal favourites: Beethoven’s Spring Sonata in F-major for Violin and Piano. He had decided to start simply with piano and violin sonatas, then move on to string quartets and finally full symphonies. Introduce the instruments one at a time, so to speak.
He would long remember how the girl reacted. She was standing in her cot as usual, sucking on the piece of rope with four knots in it, when Lennart pressed play.
The girl stiffened during the enchanting violin theme and soft piano accompaniment that introduce the first movement. When the roles were reversed and the piano, carefree as a spring brook, repeated the theme, the girl began to sway as she stared into space, her expression halfway between ecstasy and fear.
After forty seconds she frowned as if she sensed that something was about to happen. As the violin built up to the piano’s powerful descent, then emphasised it with a coarser stroke, the girl’s face contracted and she shook her head, her fingers tightly clutching the frame of the cot.
The piece grew calm once more, the violin became gentle and compliant, but the girl listened with suspicion in her face as if she sensed that the harsher elements were still lurking beneath the surface. As the violin became more agitated and the piano grew excited in the background, she began to shake and jerk back and forth in the cot, her face contorting as if she were in pain.
Lennart jumped up and switched off the CD.
‘What is it, Little One?’
The girl wasn’t looking at him, she never did. Instead she fixed her gaze on the CD player as she shook the bars of the cot. Lennart had never seen anyone react to music like that. It was as if the strings were stroking every nerve ending within her, or a hammer was hitting every single one. The music went right into her.