Life. A tiny moment between two eternities.
Far from all the cases she worked on spoke of lonely lives, even though the circle of friends may have diminished with time and the final years spent in loneliness. But some homes were the opposite of the neat doll’s houses – where the chaos and filth were so pungent that her body recoiled from stepping across the threshold. Ripped wallpaper and broken furniture that loudly proclaimed the desperation felt by the deceased. In those cases her report was a portrait of a mentally unstable person without a social network who got by as long as psychiatric support was available. Perhaps the person had lived in a home, but eventually felt better and was then considered too healthy to take up one of the few places offered by the state. Then he was expected to take care of himself and was provided with his own flat, where isolation quickly allowed the disease to regain lost ground. A lonely person who had been in need of care but, once rejected, had not had the strength to beg or plead. Then it was her duty to provide some form of redress, to do everything in her power to track down a relative who at least would come to the funeral. Sometimes there was no one. Just her, the pastor, the funeral director and the cantor who followed the deceased to his final resting place. In that case she had to try, with the help of photographs and mementos, to get some sense of the person, to give the funeral a personal touch if possible. Whenever she was the only one placing a flower on the coffin, she always prayed for forgiveness for society’s incompetence – that it had allowed this person to endure his misery without any intervention.
She turned and gave her companion a pair of gloves. On the first visit someone from the county council always had to accompany her. There should never be any question that everything had been done properly. Various colleagues took turns coming with her, depending on who had time. Today it was one of the aid workers from care for the elderly. Marianne knew the woman’s first name, but right now she couldn’t remember her surname.
Solveig pulled on the gloves, and Marianne put the key in the door. The hall floor was covered with flyers and a handful of copies of the free local newsletter. There was no stench, only a musty smell that needed to be aired. She glanced through the post as she gathered it into a stack and put it all on the hall table. As far as she could see, there were no bills to be paid or magazine subscriptions that needed cancelling. Only one letter was personally addressed to Gerda.
An offer from a broadband provider.
The flat seemed to be in order, but a thin coating of dust lay on all the clear surfaces. From the home help she had learned that someone came by to do the cleaning for Gerda every third week and to shop for food every Monday. She had declined other assistance, wanting to take care of herself. The dust was certainly no sign of negligence but rather a sign of poor eyesight. Marianne had witnessed this before: the flats of old people where everything was in order but the dust was allowed to settle undisturbed.
In the kitchen a plate and a glass stood in the dish-rack. Otherwise it was empty. A kitchen towel hung over the radiator, and the little table with two chairs was cleared, except for a wicker basket sitting on an oilcloth with a pattern of tiny flowers. She opened the refrigerator. The stench of rotting food rushed out. Marianne found the plastic rubbish bag she’d brought along. Two weeks had passed since Gerda had died, and after the ambulance took away the body, the home help had been forbidden entry to the flat. An open carton of low-fat milk, a tub of butter, caviar and a rotten cucumber were all consigned to the plastic bag, which she quickly sealed and set by the front door.
‘Look at this. She has books in the freezer.’
Solveig was still standing by the open refrigerator door when Marianne came back to the kitchen. A thick layer of ice had formed around the books, which were sealed in clingfilm and neatly stacked at the back of the freezer compartment. In one of the kitchen drawers Marianne found a spatula, which she used to prise the books from their prison. The plastic was frosted over, and she scraped her fingernail along the spine of one of the books. Let the Stones Speak by Axel Ragnerfeldt. One of the greatest. Not his most famous one, but then all his works were considered modern classics.
‘There might be money hidden between the pages,’ her colleague said. On several occasions Marianne had found banknotes hidden in the strangest places. But this book was empty, as were the others. All of them were by Axel Ragnerfeldt, and with some astonishment she discovered that they all had handwritten dedications. To Gerda with affection and To Gerda with the warmest thanks. And then an ornate signature above the printed name of the author. Marianne felt a warmth in her chest. As always she was glad to discover signs that this person who lived alone had at one time been part of some sort of community. That her life had not always been so solitary. In this case Marianne felt doubly satisfied. Generally, if no assets and nothing of value were found, there was little chance of a nice funeral. But these books could certainly be sold for a good price because of Axel Ragnerfeldt’s personal dedication, and she would see to it that as much as possible went towards the decoration of the church and a beautiful headstone. A testament of respect for the person whose life had now ended.
‘They don’t seem to have been damaged by being frozen. These books must be really valuable.’
Marianne nodded. The shy Nobel Prize-winner had achieved fame that was without precedent in the cultural life of Sweden, but he had seldom given interviews. She couldn’t remember hearing a single detail of his private life.
‘Gerda Persson was ninety-two. They must have been almost the same age, don’t you think?’
‘I didn’t realise he was that old. Do you really think so?’
Marianne wasn’t sure. And the book jackets provided no clue. They had been printed before the era of the cult of personality, back in the days when an author’s words were more interesting than his face.
The flat consisted of two rooms and a kitchen. They went into the hall, past the living room, and into the bedroom. A Zimmer frame lay on its side on the floor. The nightstand had been knocked over and the sheet torn off the bed. The rug was in a heap and on top of it clothes and magazines were jumbled together. A water glass lay on its side next to a tube of hand cream and a box of valerian. In the midst of all this an alarm clock kept on ticking. Marianne straightened up the nightstand and replaced the bedside lamp. In the little drawer there were magazine clippings, throat lozenges, a Bible, a necklace, some envelopes, and a small pocket diary. She turned to a page at random. Woke up at 6 a.m. Potatoes and meatballs. Hedda Gabler on TV. Most of the magazine articles were about heart disease, and the dates showed they’d been collected over a long period. Some were poems from obituaries with the names cut off. The first envelope contained a fifteen-year-old gift voucher for podiatric care, the second a card offering congratulations on her seventy-fifth birthday from her friends in the library pensioners’ group. The third envelope was thicker and well-thumbed. Marianne looked inside. Solveig opened a wardrobe but closed it again when she saw it contained only clothes.