Her reaction had surprised her. Maybe she thought that the sheer physical departure from her childhood home in Hudiksvall would have taken her farther. She was the first in her family to go to university. Her parents had supported her even though she sensed their vacillation when they had to defend her against those who thought she’d turned uppity. In her parents’ house, they only spoke about concrete things, and words were not to be wasted. Thoughts were something you kept to yourself, and the general view was that everything got better if you didn’t talk about it. Books were something that educated people read, of a different class of society more elegant than their own – teachers, doctors and managers. Respect for the powers that be had been passed down for generations and was a natural part of life. It was thought best to keep to their own sort, which seldom required any expansion of their horizons. There was no bitterness; a great sense of solidarity with the other families in the area prevailed, and even when times were hard, people helped each other out in any way they could. And had a booze-up on the weekend to recharge the batteries. But they were always at a dis advantage to those allied with words. Lowered heads and caps in hand at PTA meetings and visits to the doctor. And anyone who tried to make his way beyond his circle, as though it wasn’t good enough, was regarded as a traitor. Writers were something mysterious and other, with a distant, elevated mystique. Like magicians, they knew about things that were impossible for other people to grasp; they could capture the unattainable and describe what nobody else could see.
She remembered how proud she was at first to bear the Ragnerfeldt name. Her friends would get a dreamy look in their eyes whenever he was mentioned, and they wanted to hear all about what he was like. But when they noticed her ambivalence and lack of enthusiasm, she was met with suspicion, as if her words had sprung from envy. No one wanted to hear anything negative about Axel Ragnerfeldt, the national treasure. With all his wisdom about good and evil he had chiselled such astonishing stories out of their Swedish language. She stopped saying what she felt and wholeheartedly joined his crowd of admirers, at least outwardly. It was easier that way. The tremendous awe she felt for her father-in-law had made her tongue-tied, and she had never got to know him. Now he was the one who was mute, and even though she would never in her life admit it openly, it sometimes felt like a liberation.
‘I’m off now.’
Louise got up from the kitchen table and tightened her dressing-gown belt. ‘Wait a second!’
‘But I have to be there in ten minutes.’
She rushed through the flat and caught up with her daughter in the hall. She hugged her quickly and zipped up her jacket.
‘Bye then. It was at seven o’clock, wasn’t it? Did Pappa ring you?’
‘No.’
Louise swallowed and struggled to smile. ‘He’ll show up, you’ll see.’
Ellen didn’t reply. The door closed and Louise was left standing there. She closed her eyes and cursed the fact that she’d become part of this. Her own suffering was nothing compared to what she saw in her daughter’s eyes. The appeal for attention. That just once he might notice her.
Thirteen years had passed since they first met. She was thirty then and Jan-Erik was thirty-seven. Two years earlier, after an eight-year relationship, she had been left by the man she had thought was the one. Her biological clock was not yet ticking, but the sadness and humiliation she felt at being dumped had made her wary. Then she had met Jan-Erik. His courtship had been the symbol that great true love arrives as suddenly as lightning. His determination had overwhelmed her. Nothing had been too expensive, no road too far to travel, no phone conversation too long. Eagerly, almost furiously, he had swept her up. Beyond all doubt and all suspicion, as if they were running a sprint. She interpreted his haste as a proof of genuine passion. The days were filled with surprises, and at night he slept close to her. As though he were a child afraid that she might disappear if she didn’t hold on to him. His glowing devotion made her dizzy, and after having been rejected and dumped she now felt restored, the centrepiece of Jan-Erik Ragnerfeldt’s universe.
A little over a year after they met, Ellen was born.
With that result achieved, Louise realised that he had been courting her the same way an estate agent impatiently hurries a prospective buyer through the rooms of a dilapidated house.
She went into the bathroom. Stuck her hand in the shower, turned on the water, and stood on the pleasantly warm floor waiting for the water to heat up. The bathroom had recently been renovated. Jan-Erik had given her carte blanche to make it just the way she wanted. She would have preferred to discuss how they would like it, but Jan-Erik hadn’t had time, and she didn’t know him well enough to know what he liked. It was a vicious circle. Their outgoings demanded that he work a lot, but the more he worked, the greater their outgoings seemed to pile up. She looked at the three specially commissioned nameplates above the towel racks: Ellen, Jan- Erik and Louise. If she didn’t know better, she might think that those three names belonged together in one family.
She hung up her dressing gown and stepped into the shower.
Maybe Jan-Erik had seen her as an attractive prize. She had just had her fifteen minutes of fame when he whirled into her life. At least in the direct spotlight that prevailed in the world of high culture, the world to which the subsequent disintegration had shown it was so important for him to belong. After the wearisome separation from her by now ex-boyfriend, she had suddenly felt a need to write her story, even though she’d never before seriously concerned herself with words. In a moment of self-confidence she had sent off her efforts to a publisher. The poetry collection had attracted great attention, and the now yellowing clippings from the newspapers’ cultural pages were filled with words of praise. An exceptional debut, they had written. A promise for the future, she had been called. But during the thirteen years that had passed, both her existence and her writing skills had fallen into oblivion. If she had believed in her naïve stupidity that her new surname would help her literary ambitions, she soon realised that she was mistaken. Her creation had been sucked into the black hole that surrounded the name of Axel Ragnerfeldt; any attention that might compete was effectively shooed off into the wings.
She turned off the tap and reached for the towel. She dried herself and methodically rubbed in moisturising lotion.
With hindsight it was difficult to discern the various twists and turns. Or know which tiny steps had inevitably led them to where they found themselves now. She believed that Jan-Erik’s attention had faded at the same rate as her name had vanished from the newspapers. Maybe it was a trophy he sought, something to decorate the Ragnerfeldt family living room. But when the plain pine of her talent was revealed it turned out to clash with the elegant mahogany of the bookshelf. Once the centre of Jan-Erik Ragnerfeldt’s universe, she had been relegated to the caretaker in his empire.