‘How funny our Vanja is,’ Linda said. ‘You’re so funny, you are! My little bunny rabbit!’
She leaned forward and rubbed her nose against Vanja’s. I grabbed the culture section of the newspaper lying open on the table in front of Linda, took a mouthful of bread and chewed as I scanned the headlines. On the worktop behind me the kettle boiled and switched itself off. I got up, put a tea bag in a cup, poured the steaming water over it, went to the fridge to get a carton of milk, then sat down. Dunked the tea bag a few times until the brown billowing liquid slowly issuing from it had completely changed the colour of the water. Poured in a splash of milk and flicked through the paper.
‘Have you seen what they say about Arne?’ I said, looking at Linda.
She nodded and gave a little smile, but to Vanja, not me.
‘The publishers are withdrawing the book. What a defeat.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Poor Arne. But he only has himself to blame.’
‘Do you think he knew it was lies?’
‘No, not at all. He didn’t do it intentionally, I’m sure. He must have thought that was how it was.’
‘Poor devil,’ I said, raising the cup and sipping the mud-coloured tea.
Arne was one of Linda’s mother’s neighbours in Gnesta. He had written a book about Astrid Lindgren, which had come out this autumn, loosely based on conversations he’d had with her before she died. Arne was a spiritual person, he believed in God, although not in a conventional sense, and it must have surprised many people that Astrid Lindgren shared this unconventional belief in God. The papers were beginning to take an interest in the affair. No one else had been present during the conversations, so even if Lindgren had never expressed such attitudes to anyone else it could not be proved that they had been fictionalised for the occasion. But there were other things in the press, among them Arne’s readings of Lindgren, which turned out to be anachronistic: at the time he said that he had read Mio my Mio the book hadn’t been published. And so it continued throughout his book. The Lindgren family denied that she had such attitudes; she could not have said this. The papers did not leave Arne with much honour, the subtext was that he was a liar, as good as a pathological liar, and now the publishing house had decided to withdraw the book. The book that had kept Arne going for the last few illness-plagued years and of which he was so proud.
But Linda was right: he had only himself to blame.
I buttered another slice of bread. Vanja stretched her hands into the air. Linda lifted her out of the chair and carried her into the bathroom, from where soon there came the sounds of running water and Vanja’s little squeals of protest.
The phone rang in the living room. I froze. Even though I knew at once it had to be Ingrid, Linda’s mother — no one else would ring us at this time — my heart beat faster and faster.
I sat motionless until the ringing stopped, as suddenly as it had started.
‘Who was that?’ Linda asked when she emerged from the bathroom with Vanja hanging from her arms.
‘No idea,’ I said. ‘I didn’t answer it. But it was probably your mother.’
‘I’ll call her,’ she said. ‘I had planned to anyway. Will you take Vanja?’
She held her out as if my lap was the only other place she could be in the flat.
‘Just put her on the floor,’ I said.
‘Then she’ll scream.’
‘Let her scream. It’s no problem.’
‘O-K,’ she said, the way that meant the opposite. This is not OK, but I’m doing it because you say so. Then you’ll see what happens.
Of course, she started to cry as soon as Linda put her down on the floor. I stretched my arms out for her, then fell hands first onto the floor. Linda didn’t turn round. I pulled open a drawer, which I could reach now from a sitting position, and took out a whisk. Vanja wasn’t interested, even if I could make it vibrate. I held up a banana in front of her. She shook her head as the tears ran down her cheeks. In the end I lifted her up and carried her to the bedroom window, where I stood her on the sill. That did the trick. I named all the things we saw, she stared with interest and pointed at every car that passed.
Linda poked her head through the doorway with the phone held to her chest.
‘Mummy asks if we would like to eat there tomorrow. Would we?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘That’s fine.’
‘Then shall I say yes?’
‘Go for it.’
I lifted Vanja carefully down to the floor. She could stand but not walk yet, so she squatted and crawled towards Linda. This child could not show a second of dissatisfaction before her needs were fulfilled. For close on the whole of her first year she had woken up in the night every two hours and been fed. Linda had been almost out of her mind with tiredness, yet she wouldn’t make Vanja sleep in her own bed because then she would scream. I was in favour of a brutal course of action, putting her in her own bed and letting her scream as much as she wanted the whole night through, so that the next time she would understand that no one was going to come whatever she did, and resigned and perhaps angry, she would settle down to sleep on her own. I might just as well have told Linda that I would beat Vanja over the head until she was quiet. The compromise was that I rang my mother’s sister, Ingunn, who was a child psychologist and had experience of such things. She suggested a gradual weaning, emphasising that Vanja had to be patted and stroked a lot if she wanted to be fed or to get up but was not allowed, and that bit by bit we should defer the time when she was given the day’s final feed. So there I was, by her bed at night with a notepad, jotting down the exact times and patting and stroking her while she screamed her head off and glowered at me furiously. It took ten nights for her to sleep through. It could have been done in one. Because surely it didn’t hurt her to cry a little? The same happened in the play area. I tried to make her stay there alone so I could sit on a bench and read, but that was out of the question: a few seconds on her own and she was searching for me with her eyes and holding out imploring arms.
Linda rang off and came out with Vanja in her arms.
‘Shall we go for a walk?’ she suggested.
‘I don’t suppose there’s much else we can do,’ I said.
‘What do you mean?’ she asked warily.
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Where shall we go?’
‘Skeppsholmen maybe?’
‘OK, let’s do that.’
Since I’d had Vanja in the week, Linda took care of her now. She sat Vanja on her lap, dressed her in a small red knitted jumper we had inherited from Yngve’s children, brown corduroy trousers, the red romper suit Linda’s mother had bought for us, the red cap with the strap under the chin and the white brim and a pair of white woollen mittens. Until a month ago she had always sat still when we changed her, but of late she had begun to wriggle and squirm in our hands. It was particularly difficult when you had to change her nappy, the crap could end up anywhere as she kept wriggling, and more than once I had raised my voice. LIE STILL! Or LIE STILL FOR CHRIST’S SAKE! And my grip on her tightened more than was necessary. For her part, she thought it was funny to try and wriggle away, she always smiled or laughed whenever she succeeded and at first she simply did not understand the loud irritated voice. Sometimes she ignored it totally, or she stared at me in surprise, now what was that meant to be? Or she cried. First the lower lip puckered and started to quiver, then the tears flowed. What on earth was I doing? I thought. Had I gone completely mad? She was one year old, as innocent as only the innocent can be, and there I was, yelling at her!
Luckily she was easy to comfort, easy to make laugh, and luckily she had a short memory. From that perspective, it was worse for me.