It’s still night, but the sun is up. Nässjö rests quietly under the clear blue sky. There’s no wind whispering in the birches in Stadsparken, no motors humming along Rådhus Street, no train rushing towards the station. It’s so quiet that a single pigeon, bobbing his way across the market square, suddenly stops in his tracks and listens to how odd it is. He stands perfectly still with his head cocked to one side, vigilant and waiting, but suddenly he catches a glimpse of half a hot dog bun a bit farther on and forgets the whole thing. He quickly sets one red foot down in front of the other and scurries over to it, wordlessly happy about the binge to come. It’s not that he’s that hungry. Nobody is particularly hungry in Nässjö these days, not even the birds or the rats. There’s enough food here for everyone.
Nevertheless, Miriam dreams about hunger. For more than sixty years, she’s hidden herself in this city, and during that time, she hasn’t even been hungry for as much as one hour. Despite this, she dreams every night about how she starved in her youth. It has nothing to do with the life she’s living as an adult, or with the person she is today. Even so, she can’t get rid of these dreams. They glide in and take command, they force her sixty years back in time and more. They make her crouch and run away, lower her eyes and hunch her back. They make her steal a morsel of bread from someone who’s no longer in any condition to eat and try to feed a little brother who can’t even swallow. They make her stick close to Else during the morning stand-to and rattle off the alphabet under her breath, and a second later stare into Else’s abnormally large eyes, eyes that . . .
All of this happens again and again, night after night. And if Kaiser, the neighbour’s German shepherd, decides to bark when he’s let out into the yard in the morning, Miriam feels her eyes shoot wide open and her intestines burn with terror.
But on this night, Kaiser isn’t barking. He’s still sleeping in his flabby master’s bed. She can permit herself to wake up slowly and linger for a while in the middle room between sleeping and waking. This middle one is the room she loves the best, a very real room, although it only exists in her imagination. It’s a room where she can control her dreams and make them gentle and kind, a room where all of the dead are still alive, where she’s free to be anyone she likes and go wherever she wants, free to hover between times and places, between memories, dreams and reality. Although she doesn’t do it—not tonight. Instead, she stands and looks around, noticing that the middle room is entirely round today and that all of its doors are ajar. Yesterday there were eighty-four of them, but today there are eighty-five—she knows this without having to count. And what’s more, they’re all teak with shiny handles. The fact is, they look a lot like the cupboard doors in the first kitchen she could call her own—the kitchen she loved more deeply and passionately than she ever loved Olof, and that’s saying a lot.
But she’s not thinking of that just now. Instead, she’s standing in front of her cupboard doors and inspecting them, trying to figure out which ones are the first and which are the last, but taking care not to open any of them wide. But look! She catches a glimpse of striped cotton behind one door. It’s enough—she reaches out and slams it shut. Then she runs her hand across the fifteen doors before it and the five doors after, closing them all with short, precise slams. Bang! Bang! Bang! Then she peers around and lets her shoulders relax, smiles, and lays her long, white braid over her shoulder, brushing it under her nose as if it were a cuddly little pet. Now then. Now it’s time to celebrate my birthday, entirely by myself, before the rest of the family wakes up and disturbs my memories.
For almost half an hour, she peeks into the many cupboards in her memory. There’s Thomas, now a toddler, rushing straight at her. She swoops him up into her arms, hugs him hard and spins around and around. Her dotted skirt brushes past and the child’s giggles make her laugh, too. And now she’s a bridesmaid at Hanna’s wedding, and the bouquet trembles in her hands when Hanna bursts into a heartrending cry at the same time as Egon slides the ring onto her finger. So happy, Hanna sobs, and, inappropriately enough, wipes her nose with her gloved right hand. Sorry! I’m just so happy! And everyone smiles. Egon smiles, and Olof smiles, the mayor and the notary smile and Miriam smiles, but suddenly Thomas starts to fret in his buggy, and she bends down to tuck the light-blue cotton blanket around him. And behind the next cupboard door, she herself is a bride. She can see that she’s very beautiful as she walks up the aisle in her white gown. Very young, very dark, and very beautiful, but Olof looks a bit nervous walking beside her. Maybe he’s thinking about his first wedding, his real wedding, held in the town cathedral. But that marriage lasted only a year, until the day when his young wife gave birth to Thomas and then stopped breathing and stopped letting her heart beat and under no condition would allow anyone to lure her back into this life. Or could it be that he’s anxious that Miriam, without saying a word to him, went to the parish office the day after Olof proposed and explained that she wanted to give up the faith of her fathers and become a member of the Church of Sweden, if it were at all possible? Indeed, it was quite possible. Vicar Klintberg practically drooled with greed and booked a baptism for the following Sunday. Olof knows that Miriam isn’t really sure that God exists, and besides, he shares her doubts, but even so, her decision distresses him. Can it be she just converted for the sake of this wedding? Because she wanted to walk up the aisle in Saint Valborg’s Chapel wearing a white gown, veil and myrtle crown? Because she wanted to stand on the chapel steps afterwards wearing her beloved white rabbit fur while his relatives and friends threw rice over them? And in that case, what kind of person did that make her?
It made me a person who loved you, Miriam whispers in answer, more than sixty years later. A person who had already lost everything, including herself, and who knew that she wouldn’t survive losing you as well. A person who was ready to lie and forswear herself in order to make sure you would never, ever leave me, and who, in her complete innocence, believed that a church wedding would mean more to you, be more important and make our marriage more secure and more long-lasting than a civil wedding. You couldn’t leave me! That’s why we had to get married in the church. Despite God. For the sake of security.
Security was the most important word at the time—she had understood that already back then. All these secure Swedes wanted to have more security, greater security, absolutely superhuman security. The ghosts of the past haunted them and howled constantly about what had been. The last great famine a mere four decades ago! The poverty and humiliation of joblessness two decades ago! The war that licked the borders of the country just one decade ago—the war in which people were shot and slit open, starved and gassed, battered to a pulp and worked to death in forced labour. It seems nothing could smother the memory of their horrible screams, but nobody in this country could cope with hearing them anymore, nobody wanted to think about the fact that there were moments of betrayal—in fact, quite a few moments of betrayal—no, at most they wanted to think about a few moments of belated heroism—in fact, quite a few moments of heroism—but most of all, they just wanted to think about this: that everyone, even workers, could now have a roast on Sunday. They could eat meatballs and sausage instead of fried herring on any weekday. Everyone, every last person, could enjoy a three-week paid holiday every summer, and some of the most diligent workers had enough money to afford a car as well. Your own car! A tiny little Beetle in front of your own tiny little house. So the future was no longer on its way—the future was here.
And that’s the future Miriam had, too. She can see it when she looks behind the door that opens just after the wedding. There she is smiling, walking out into her garden carrying a tray, and it’s summer all around her. The apricot-coloured roses are opening in the garden bed, the pink peonies have bloomed and the buds of a shy, newly planted jasmine bush have just burst, showing off their white stars. On her tray she’s carrying the rhubarb drink she bottled last year, a pound cake she’s just pulled from the oven, and fluffy cinnamon buns—her current pride and joy. Olof smiles at her and says that he would love a glass of rhubarb drink before his coffee, because Miriam’s rhubarb drink is actually the best in the whole world. And Thomas comes up, pressing close against her, and agrees. The best in the whole world.
Behind the next door, Thomas has already got bigger and more angular, but he’s still her little boy. He never swears at her or makes faces behind her back, but in return, she makes sure not to crowd him. Only seldom does she kiss him on the cheek, and she only takes his hand to check whether his mittens still fit, and when they no longer do, she asks him what colour yarn he’d like so she can knit him a new pair. Grey? Good. So she’ll knit him a new pair of mittens.
But behind the next door, she sees herself sitting in the beautiful living room, in the beautiful house Olof has inherited, with the beautiful furniture Olof has bought—because he earns a good salary, he’s a dentist, and no other dentist in Nässjö earns as much as he does—and she’s sitting on the lovely Carl Malmsten sofa knitting when all of a sudden, everything disappears. Her chequered skirt becomes a striped prisoner’s dress, her stockings melt away and her shoes glide off into nothingness, the parquet under her feet suddenly becomes raw concrete, and all that remains is the grey, wintry dusk outside her window and the snow falling, and for a little while she’s back in Ravensbrück and Else is staring emptily in front of her with wide eyes as the fever shakes her and Miriam screams, she screams and hears herself scream and claps her hands over her mouth to force herself to stop. Then she sits for a long time in silence, eyes shut, pressing back the scream. Finally she opens her eyes slowly and looks around. Everything is just as it always is. It’s the 1960s and quiet dusk in February, she’s sitting in her beautiful living room, and in her lap lies a half-finished grey mitten that her stepson will soon wear.
But no. She doesn’t want to remember that afternoon. She doesn’t want to remember any of those afternoons, so she hurries past the other cupboards and runs up to the last door that’s ajar, opens it wide and peers in, and then smiles at the familiar image that meets her. There she is, lying in her pleasant little bedroom, and it’s a new decade and a new millennium. The walls are pastel blue, the duvet cover in dark blue and white checks, the curtains a gauzy white. Against the far wall she sees the gift that once made her a true lady: Hanna’s writing desk in shiny mahogany. Olof’s wing chair stands next to the open balcony door—the one she had reupholstered three years after his death. It was twelve years ago now, but you can’t tell. The material is still thick and dark blue; many afternoons of sun haven’t been able to bleach it. Her new robe hangs over the armrest, also a light, misty blue. Blue is her favourite colour. She loves all of its nuances: everything from ice blue to indigo, from azure to powder blue, from turquoise to sky blue, from cornflower to cobalt.
Once, a long time ago, Hanna said that blue is sober. If you choose blue, you’re always on the safe side. And young Miriam nodded earnestly and made a mental note. Sober. Afterwards she had to go to her room and look up the word in the Swedish Academy’s dictionary to find out what it meant. Moderate. Simple. Tasteful. She nodded and smiled. Of course she wanted to be sober. Nowadays that word seldom came to mind since it had become entirely self-evident. She’s a lady, of course. A true lady. A lady who wears blue quite often. But never blue stripes.
Now this lady is dreaming that she’s getting out of bed, although in fact she’s still lying down. She inspects herself in the mirror on the short wall and straightens her spine a bit. She gives herself her first birthday present by imagining that she’s a little younger and a little more beautiful than she actually is, before she puts on her robe and knots it tightly around her waist. Her braid lands inside the collar, but she pulls it out with one quick movement and lays it over her shoulder, strokes it with her hand and notes with some satisfaction that it’s still thick and full, at least in her imagination, like a well-fed snake. Then she places one extremely well-manicured hand on the top of her head and presses down. And the miracle occurs—the miracle that occurs every day on her birthday. Her skull opens up and she can reach her hand into her own head and lift out her brain—she can hold it in her cupped hands while she tosses her head so that her skull clicks shut again. For a moment she simply stands looking at her brain, smiles a little at it and considers how what she’s holding in her hands is usually called the most miraculous of all the wonders of this universe, perhaps even the most miraculous thing that exists in any universe. The human brain. A little clump of grey and pink that can learn everything there is to learn, that can remember and forget, lie and speak the truth, dream and fantasize. A little clump that knows it’s alive, and just as certainly knows that it’s going to die, even though it’s constantly coming up with excuses and hideaways to avoid the inevitable. And she has one. She possesses a human brain. She’s holding her brain in her hands, and knows that because she is, she’s also holding the universe.
Not bad, she whispers to herself. Not bad at all.
She glides very quietly into the living room but doesn’t look around. In her peripheral vision, she can sense that everything is just as it should be. The powder-blue contours of the Carl Malmsten sofa appear to her left and the portrait of Olof’s paternal grandmother smiles just as kindly as it always does to her right, but Miriam doesn’t look at them. She keeps her eyes focused on the grey clump in her cupped hands and rushes swiftly out into the hall, on through the closed door down the stairway, hurries through the front door without opening it, but then hesitates on the porch outside. She stands there and allows herself to enjoy what she sees for a moment. The gorgeous garden. The white lilac, still in bloom. The path she raked yesterday. The paved street on the other side of the fence and the grass beyond that. Then Ingsberg Lake. And then the outline of Nässjö beyond the lake. Stadsparken. The town hall. And way over there, the church tower, pointing to heaven as if to summon its parishioners. Suddenly the image of another city and another church tower floats in and blocks what she ought to see, but she refuses. She doesn’t let it crowd in and take over. She forces herself back to the place that has, in fact, been her home for more than six decades, because she’s not in Ravensbrück and she’s not seeing the tower of Fürstenberg Church. She’s in Nässjö. The church tower that so haughtily and commandingly points heavenwards over there belongs to the church in Nässjö. And the smell, that stench of burning skin and flesh which suddenly fills the entire world—well, she’s about to do something about that.
In the next second she’s standing at the shore of the lake. A brown-speckled mother duck quacks in annoyance and rushes her newly hatched ducklings out of their slumber in a small stand of reeds. What’s this? Why does that long-legged being think she has the right to gad about by the lake during the time of day reserved for animals? Well? She tosses her head a bit and swims out onto the lake with her seven golden balls of fluff after her, stops and turns around, lets her eyes meet Miriam’s.
“I’m so sorry,” Miriam says, “but I simply must do this.”
And so she does. She makes the brown water of Ingsberg Lake clear and icy blue, she makes all of the bottom plants disappear and replaces them with barren sand. She makes every little mosquito in the air and every tiny microbe in the water cease to exist. Then she drops to her knees, still with her hands cupped around her brain and without trembling in the least. She has perfect balance, and nothing hurts, not even her arthritic knees. She sinks down to the ground with the agility of a young ballet dancer, bends forward and dips her brain in the glassy lake, allows its water to penetrate every space, every empty chamber, float around and wash every cell, make her brain free from all of the repulsive old smells first, and then free from all of the horrid memories, and finally from all evil thoughts. Then she wrings it out like a sponge and lays her hand on her head again. She presses down and her skull opens. Carefully she places her freshly washed brain in its place and tosses her head so that the top clicks into place.
Then she looks around and takes a deep breath. Now the world smells good. Now there’s a scent of wild cherry and lilac, roses and lily of the valley. And it’s beautiful. The leaves on the birches in her garden shimmer in the sunshine, and the house behind it—her own house!—shows off a deeper warmth in its red paint, and the four white pillars flanking the porch stairs have become a bit thicker so that their proportions are finally correct. The saliva in her mouth suddenly tastes as fresh as pure spring water. A nightingale sings somewhere nearby. It’s a funny melody that makes every person who sleeps by an open window start to dream the most blissful dreams. Dreams of longing. Dreams of desire. The wind laughs behind Miriam and pulls her around, caresses her with its cool silk and lifts her, allows her to fly out over the lake for a moment, but then wafts her very carefully back towards the shore, lifts her to the upper floor of her house and places her carefully down on the balcony outside her bedroom. Miriam smiles and waves at the mother duck on the lake out there. There, now you have your world back. The water’s brown again, the flies are buzzing above your head, and the delicious sea grass just keeps growing. And now I’m free of my memories.
But at that moment, Kaiser begins to bark.
*
The barking awakens Miriam once and for all. She sits up in bed and slaps one hand over her mouth to keep herself quiet and the other over her heart, as if to slow its beating. She’s not back in the past. That’s history. She’s not in Germany. She’s not sitting in a cell in the penalty block of the concentration camp.
But even so, she is. Time doesn’t exist anymore. She hears an Aufseherin, a female guard, walk with clacking heels between the cells with her German shepherd, one of those incredibly obedient guard dogs in Ravensbrück, a creature that appears to know exactly what he’s expected to do in this corridor. The scent of the prisoners seeps out although the iron doors are closed tightly against the cement of the door frames. The molecules of terror glide through the air into his snout and fill him with a highly satisfying feeling of triumph. But a few of these molecules have another shape—it’s a very small deviation, but enough to upset him. Hatred! There are enemies sitting behind some of these doors, sitting there hating him and, what’s worse, hating his mistress. This is horrible! He will kill them!
But he’s not allowed to. In the penalty block, you’re supposed to die slowly—that’s what his mistress has been told, and that’s why she holds him on a short leash, even though she smiles at his deep growling. The lives of these women are supposed to drip out carefully. They’ll all be whipped this Friday . . .
*
But die Aufseherin stops all of a sudden in front of one door, fastens the dog’s leash on the hook next to it and pulls out her keys. She unlocks the door and opens the only thing separating one world from another. She sees and allows herself to be seen. She knows she’s beautiful—her blond hair is newly curled and her round cheeks are covered with a very thin layer of light powder. She wears her side cap at a jaunty angle on her head. Die Aufseherin’s black boots were just polished by a woman who belongs to the Jehovah’s Witnesses and they shine as brilliantly as the Witnesses’ dreams about earthly paradise. Her pant skirt is freshly pressed and the collar on her white blouse lies completely flat against the lapels of her uniform jacket. She’s also holding a whip behind her back. She doesn’t hit anything with it, doesn’t swing it, doesn’t even raise it. She keeps it behind her back as she stands but can hardly help smiling a little at the thought that the prisoner in there can see it anyway.
The prisoner isn’t beautiful. She’s tall and emaciated, but she’s so hunched over that she isn’t even a head taller than die Aufseherin—that’s fortunate for her. She stands there, bowed slightly forward like an old woman, although she can’t be much more than fifteen or sixteen, and she has dark rings under her abnormally large starvation eyes. Her mouth is half open as if she were about to start drooling like an idiot. She lets her gaze flicker between the dog and die Aufseherin, back and forth, back and forth.
“Raus!” yells die Aufseherin. “Come out of there!”
It takes fifteen seconds before her command is obeyed, fifteen seconds of doubt, while the girl’s eyes wander between the dog and the blonde woman three more times. And that’s enough. Die Aufseherin raises her whip.
“Didn’t you hear what I said, you bloody bitch? Are you deaf? Raus! Raus! Raus!”
And the girl, the young girl who’s turning eighty-five today, suffocates her scream and slips out into the corridor. At the same moment, she’s back in Nässjö, and she hears the steps padding outside her door—she can hear Thomas’s house shoes and Katarina’s morning slippers—and she hurries to wipe away the tears from the corners of her eyes and pulls the blanket taut. Then she puffs up the pillows behind her back a bit so that she can sit straight against the bedstead, lets her hand glide up and smooth her white hair. Then she lays one hand over the other on the chequered duvet cover to complete the picture of an old woman calmly waiting. She’s pushed everything away. She’s sitting there, waiting. And then they come in singing “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you . . .”
“Happy birthday,” Thomas says once they’ve stopped singing and smiles at her over a small package. He’s made a new attempt to hide his bald spot, this time by giving himself a buzz cut. It’s not helping.
“Dear Mother-in-Law,” says Katarina, who’s standing right behind him, cocking her head and, just as determinedly as Miriam, trying to play the role of calm, satisfied woman. She’s carrying a tray with a few coffee cups and sandwiches, and a lit candle with a trembling flame.
“Happy birthday, Grandma,” says Camilla, sinking down on the bedside and releasing her son, Sixten. He’s two years old and looks like a little wasp in his sweatpants with black and yellow stripes, the most adorable little wasp imaginable. He crawls over to Miriam, wraps his arms around her neck and gives her a very wet kiss on the mouth. The taste of his saliva makes her remember what she had just been dreaming about. Spring water. She smiles.
“Oh my,” she says, hugging him. “Oh my, oh my!”
And then it’s just like it always is. Laughter and talk and the scraping of chairs. Thomas sets his package on the foot of the bed and drags in two chairs from the living room, one for Katarina and one for himself. Katarina places the tray on the nightstand and blows out the candle.
*
“Eighty-five years,” says Thomas and pats Miriam lightly on the hand. “And still completely healthy. Not bad. Not bad at all.”
Miriam smiles in reply. “Though actually I’ve never got older than eighteen.”
“Inside, of course.”
Camilla cocks her head to one side and smiles slightly: “I think you’re just a bit older than that. At least twenty.”
“Why?”
“You have an adult brain, don’t you? You didn’t stop growing before your frontal lobes were completely developed, right?”
Miriam wrinkles her forehead, smiles, and pretends to think.
“I have no clue, you know. Maybe so.”
Thomas lays his hand on Camilla’s shoulder. His gesture says, “Quiet. Nothing unpleasant, thank you.” Then he clears his throat.
“The medical student has spoken. But now it’s time for the present.” He reaches for the package on the bed. It’s white with curly gold ribbon. Princess curls. It seems heavier than it looks. He holds it in both hands to present it to Miriam.
“Happy birthday. This is from all of us.”
Miriam also grasps the package with both hands. It’s not so terribly heavy.
“Oh,” she says, “thank you. Thank you so much.”
It’s hard to open. The golden ribbons are tied tight and knotted in double knots. She has to pick and pull at them for a while before she can loosen them. As soon as she’s done, Sixten throws himself on them happily and stuffs them in his mouth, but Camilla immediately reaches out and pulls them away. No! Don’t do that! Meanwhile, Miriam tears the paper off the little box impatiently and opens it. She stares down at the light pink tissue paper, lifts it away quickly and reveals the gift itself.
It’s a cuff bracelet in silver. It’s very wide, with filigree work and wound threads, a bracelet very clean in form despite the many embellishments, and incredibly beautiful. Pappa, a voice says at the back of her mind, but, as usual, she doesn’t listen to her longing. She simply shakes her head slightly to drive it away.
“Oh,” she says, “so beautiful. Thank you!”
“Camilla is the one who found it,” says Thomas. “She thought it looked like it was made for you. And look under the clasp!”
Miriam turns the bracelet and looks at the inscription. To Miriam on her 85th birthday, it says. Plus the day’s date. Miriam.
“It’s Gypsy work,” says Thomas.
“You mean Roma,” says Camilla.
Something trembles within Miriam, and several more names come floating through space. There’s Anuscha, laughing, dark eyes gleaming as she runs across the yard. There’s Else smiling her hungry smile and introducing herself with her whole name, as if Miriam were someone worth introducing oneself to. Else Nielsen. And over there is a female guard raising her whip and yelling, “My name is Binz! You’d better learn it once and for all, ‘cause I’m not going to repeat it!” There’s her brother staring at her with a final question in his eyes. Why are you looking at me like that, Malika? It’s me, Didi, your little brother. The tears rise to her eyes and she has to blink a few times to get rid of them, and the words fly swiftly through her head—those words she cannot say, the words she hasn’t once said since she came to Sweden: My name is not Miriam. Then she sniffles and swallows, raises her head and looks at Thomas. She’s his mother in every sense except one, but, although he’s the person who is closest to her of all the people on this earth, he’s a stranger. She’s lied to him. She’s allowed him to grow up in a lie and live his entire adult life under the cover of this lie.
And then she says them. She lets those words tumble out over her lips.
