The Winter War I
It was a week before Easter and snowing so hard Lennart had to tuck the bouquet of tulips inside his coat. The cold weight of the stems pushed against his chest. It was April the eighth, his grandfather Bent’s ninetieth birthday. Lennart was on his way to his grandfather’s apartment. To coincide with the arrival of spring, Moderna Museet was hosting the premiere of a piece of digital artwork called The Winter War. Bent was a surviving veteran of the actual Winter War, a fact upon which the Strand family had hung much pride for more than half a century. Bent rarely spoke of the war with his grandchildren, but as he got older it seemed to Lennart that Bent’s memories of the war became fresher, more present. He would occasionally recount surprisingly detailed events from his time in Finland — the names of other soldiers, the results of a particular battle. There were more gruesome stories too. The sight of blood freezing solid the instant it fell to the snow from a neck torn open by gunfire. A leg severed by a mortar round, upright, boot still strapped to ski. When Lennart had seen the announcement for the premiere, he’d immediately invited Bent to attend. It was a birthday gift. He was the only one of his siblings who still visited their grandfather. Magnus and Ulrika lived abroad, and Matilda was always busy with her own family. Their father, Rolf, had died a year ago in June and since then Bent had become Lennart’s responsibility. He’d been home from the United States just short of a year. His time there was so long ago, only a memory untethered to his life now. Since he’d been home he and Marie had been together again. They were in love in high school and hadn’t seen each other in years. But in December, he’d run across her and her daughter, Tove, in front of the NK Christmas window displays. He’d gone, as he did every year when he was child, to see the spectacle, when he saw Marie in the crowd. She was standing in front of a home decor display, eyeing a low yellow table and a red Margrethe bowl full of silver apples. Tove stood with her face close to the fingerprinted glass of the window display. At first he didn’t think it could be her, but as he passed, she turned, smiled at him, and said his name. It was snowing.
He chose not to believe in fate, but here they were only a few months later, the three of them a family. He supposed he should have been grateful for whatever coincidence had brought them together again, and he was, but he was also bothered by the pressures of the story. It felt scripted. The expectations he and Marie had, and those that were placed upon them by family and the mutual friends they still had, were unreasonably high. The chance meeting at the department store after all those years suggested an inevitability to the relationship that struck him as unfair.
After they’d graduated from school, they planned on attending Stockholm University together, where they both wanted to study biology and math and become schoolteachers. It was going to be a nice life, a comfortable one, and they both longed for it. But over that summer, Lennart was unexpectedly admitted to Chalmers University of Technology. The choice to attend was much easier than he’d anticipated. He studied engineering, got a job with Ericsson, and moved every couple years from one country to another. Sweden, then Morocco, then the United States, now back to Sweden. Of course, he and Marie lost touch during that time, but he also hadn’t found anyone else. Neither had Marie. Tove’s father was an Englishman named Ronnie whom Marie had met on a ski vacation in Austria. According to Marie, it was nothing serious and was over even before Tove was born. The whole thing felt arranged to Lennart, like it was being forced on him.
Bent’s apartment building was pastel green and six stories high. The neighborhood was quieter than his and the apartment was much bigger. He and Marie had talked about moving in together, though not much, as she thought waiting for Bent’s death was a little morbid. The apartment had plenty of room. Five bedrooms, an airy formal dining room used mainly as a library, a huge balcony with wrought iron railings. Lennart probably could take over the apartment even now, but Bent had refused to move into the assisted living facility and Lennart didn’t press the issue. After a long bureaucratic battle with the municipal health administrators, Bent won the right to have a nurse come four days a week to help with necessities.
Lennart let himself in with his spare key. From the hallway he said, “Hello, hello!” and was sure to make enough noise that Bent would hear him. He hung his coat and unwrapped the plastic from the tulips and stuffed it into his coat pocket.
The television was on in the living room. A large frowning sun rushed from one side of the screen to the other. Then a drab meteorologist with a bald head and wispy ponytail called for snow on Easter Day. Lennart kissed his grandfather on the cheek. “Hello,” he said again. The channel went to commercial. A normally expensive mattress shop was offering sharply reduced prices (up to 50 percent) on Jensen mattresses if it snowed on Easter. “It’s a bold move,” Lennart said.
“I suppose it is,” Bent said. “One has to take risks now and again.”
“Happy birthday, Grandpa.”
“There’s a war looming.”
“I brought flowers,” said Lennart, ignoring his grandfather. He’d had to learn to do this increasingly as his grandfather got older. “Tulips. I’ll put them in a vase for you.” He went to the kitchen and pulled a vase down from a shelf and filled it with cold water. “How are you today?” he called over his shoulder in the direction of the living room. He broke the stems off under running water and arranged the flowers in the vase.
“I’d like a beer,” Bent said. His doctors recently forbade alcohol. Switching to beer was as close to obedience as Bent was willing to go. Lennart hadn’t pressed the issue. Bent was ninety years old. Every week, Lennart restocked his grandfather’s refrigerator. He took out two beers. There was a glass on the counter and he tucked this under his arm on his way out of the kitchen. Bent turned the volume on the television down and breathed loudly out of his nose. “Who are you again?”
“Your grandson,” Lennart said and opened one of the beers, pouring half of it, too quickly, into the glass. “Lennart. I’m here to take you to the museum. The Winter War, remember?” Snow had accumulated on the balcony. Beyond this, he watched cars pulse across the bridge.
“I thought you were my nurse. He steals from me.”
When the foamy head of the beer had settled, Lennart gave his grandfather the glass of beer and then sat down on the corner of the coffee table. “Do you want me to call the agency again?”
“Salim says he’s from Tripoli,” Bent said. “Is that a real place?”
“It’s a city in Lebanon,” Lennart said. “There’s also a Tripoli in Libya.”
“I thought I’d made it up,” said Bent.
Lennart switched the television off. “It’s a real place,” he said. “Two real places.”
“Anyway, I’ve never been there.”
“You should wear a suit tonight,” Lennart said. “Do you need help getting dressed?” He’d arranged an official invitation for his grandfather from the Arts Council on the grounds that Bent was a veteran. He had the invitation mailed to his grandfather’s apartment, where he knew Salim would read it aloud. Every afternoon, Salim opened and sorted the mail according to its nature. Bills he stacked on the table in the hall for Lennart to collect and pay, which he did the twenty-seventh of every month from an account at Nordea Bank. He’d taken this task over from his father, and though he was not very good at managing his own finances, he always paid his grandfather’s bills on time.