But at least there was food. After three days, with no replenishment needed. She hadn’t called the pizza delivery in weeks. Something had changed, and she suspected that it had to do with the pain she was feeling. And the blood in her urine. It just wasn’t possible to eat like she did before; her desire for food had vanished like everything else. Her dress that she had been afraid she would outgrow had suddenly become roomier, and sometimes she even imagined that it was a little easier to get up out of the arm chair. But despite all that she was sadder than ever, and she had lost all her incentive.
She stood at the living-room window and looked out over the courtyard. That woman she didn’t know was out there at the swings with the child again. With endless patience she pushed the swing, over and over. Maj-Britt looked at the child but couldn’t focus on the image. So many years had passed. The memory had lain untouched so long, yet it had not lost any of its sharpness. Everything had been much simpler when the details hovered within reach. What good were memories that were impossible to endure?
‘Is it really true?’
She wondered at once how she ever could have doubted. How in her wildest imagination she could have believed that he might not be happy. She had worried that he might think it was interrupting his plans for a musical education, that he thought it would be all right to wait a bit. But now he stood there beaming with joy and was simply happy that he would soon be a father. She was already in her fourth month. Anyone who wanted to could quickly figure out that it had happened before the wedding, but that didn’t matter anymore. She had chosen sides and did not regret it.
Things had turned out just as her father had predicted that day. Her parents hadn’t even come to the wedding, even though it was held in the church only a few hundred metres from their home. Maj-Britt wondered what they were thinking when they heard the church bells ring. She found it so peculiar. That the same God who in her home had damned Göran’s and her love, only a few hundred metres away would bless their marriage.
The bridegroom’s side of the church was full, but on the bride’s side sat only Vanja. In the middle of the front pew.
She loved Göran and he loved her. She refused to accept that there could be any sin in it. But sometimes doubt would come over her when she thought about the folks at home who no longer wanted to have anything to do with her. Then it was hard to stand firm and hold fast to her conviction that she had done the right thing. Because everyone was gone. They had purged her like a weed from their lives and their community. She had been a part of the Congregation since the day she was born, and when everyone disappeared they took the greater part of her childhood with them. Nobody was left who shared her memories. She would miss the fellowship, being included, being able to take part in the strong community. Everything she was used to, knew about, felt at home with, everything was gone and she was no longer welcome. There was nothing to go back to, should it be necessary one day. Or to visit, if she was struck by homesickness.
Even though the anger was still strong, she sometimes felt a lump in her throat when she thought about Mother and Father. But then she began to think the way Vanja had said: Don’t let them destroy this too. Show them instead!
Sometimes she woke up at night and it was always the same dream. She was standing alone on a rock in a stormy sea and all the others had climbed aboard a ship. They all stood there on the deck, but no matter how she screamed and waved they pretended not to see her. When the ship vanished in the distance and she realised that they intended to leave her to her fate, she would wake up with terror like a noose around her neck. She tried to explain to Göran how she felt, but he didn’t even try to understand. He just called them crazy people and in that way he became just as condemning as her father had been. As if that were any better.
The only one she had left was Vanja, but they lived so far apart. And it was already getting harder to think of anything to talk about on the phone or in letters, now that they lived such completely different lives. Vanja’s life in Stockholm seemed so exciting and adventurous, while nothing much happened at Maj-Britt’s house. She pottered about in the little house they had rented just outside town and tried to make the days pass while Göran was at school. They would only be living there temporarily. There was neither a bath nor a toilet, and when the temperature dropped below freezing it was hard to get any real heat in the house. For the time being they were making do with an outhouse, since it was just the two of them. When the baby was born things would get worse.
But then there was the other difficulty. It was something that gave her great pleasure, although it was hard to admit that she actually liked it. She had hoped that it would get a bit easier after they were married, but it hadn’t. There was still something in her that said they didn’t have the right to devote themselves to such things. Not merely as pure enjoyment. Not unless it had some purpose.
She was strict about having the lights out. She still covered herself if Göran ever happened to see her naked. At first he had laughed at her, not unkindly but lovingly, but lately she thought she could sense a touch of annoyance in his voice. He used to say how beautiful she was and how much he liked seeing her naked and that it made him feel aroused. Maj-Britt didn’t want to listen to that, she really didn’t; it was one thing to do it in the dark but quite another matter to talk about it. His habit of putting words to what they did embarrassed her, and she always asked him to stop. It was as if the words in themselves made the whole thing indecent. Just as if they had been doing it with the lights on, so it was all visible. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to. She loved it when he touched her. It was as if their unity grew even stronger when they were so close to each other, as if they shared a great secret. But afterwards the guilt feelings always followed. More and more often she would doubt whether what they were doing was actually right and proper. Whether it was really possible to justify all the pleasure she permitted herself. And sometimes she imagined that someone was standing there peeking at her, shocked at her loose ways and meticulously jotting down everything in a notebook.
They had agreed that Göran should finish his year at the local college. They paid so little rent that they could get by well enough on his school loan. But when the baby came he would have to get a job, anything at all he said, just so it paid enough. She sensed what he was feeling deep inside, that his dreams of the music college could not be curbed quite so easily as he would have her believe. Sometimes his mother would ring. Maj-Britt wanted so much to hear whether she had seen her parents, but she never asked. No one mentioned them anymore; they were obliterated, as if they had never existed. Just as they and the Congregation had done with her.
Days came and went and it grew harder and harder to fill the hours. She knew nobody but Göran and some of his classmates in that town, but the few times she went along and joined them she felt even more lonely. They all had their training in common, and they had developed a special jargon that she couldn’t follow. Göran was the oldest student at the school, and she thought he acted childishly when they were with his classmates. They drank whisky and soda and listened to music, and it was all so far removed from what she was used to and how things had been before they moved. Back then the two of them had had the choir in common, and in the evenings they preferred to spend time with each other. Reading books, talking, making love. She always felt inferior to the others in the group, especially the women. She would sit there with her growing belly, silent and bored because she never had anything to talk about, and Göran didn’t seem to understand that she got tired early and that most of all she wanted to go home. She longed for Vanja, who would have understood how Maj-Britt felt and taken her side. Vanja would have said all the things she was unable to say herself. She especially didn’t like Harriet; there was something about the way she looked at Göran that bothered her. Silently she imagined what Vanja would have done if she had seen those looks. Then things felt a little easier.