You’re laughing. Yes, OK.
But you understand…the whole point is that it will hurt me too. That’s the whole point. Can you understand that?
Of course you’re not as au fait with these matters as I am. But if you were. If you had devoted an entire lifetime. To trying to…grasp. These issues. Then I think…
[---]
Did everything work out OK with the money?
Good.
I mean, it hasn’t been all that easy for me to…stage this, as you perhaps realise. Neither when it comes to you, nor to those who will be here in ten minutes. You don’t exactly belong to…my normal circle of friends, if I can put it that way. It’s dead, incidentally.
My normal circle of friends. Is dead. Nothing strange about that. It’s time. Of those who attended the seminary with me, only I and one other are still alive.
The seminary. That’s where you train. That’s what it’s called. The seminary for priests.
I don’t want you to drink any more now.
Good.
[---]
I remember when I was…yes, even when I was only…thirteen or fourteen. I started thinking about these things.
What it was really like.
The actual experience. It’s much more central than we are really prepared to admit, in fact. Here in Sweden, at any rate.
What?
Yes, they’ll get half of what you get. Their task is also quite… unpleasant, after all.
There is one thing I’m wondering about.
Do you find any form of…how shall I put it…moral satisfaction in this?
No. I don’t mean it like that.
I mean…
When you’re a child. And you’re pretending to be someone else. You’re pretending to be…Robin Hood. And while you’re that person, you can…
No. That’s a different matter.
Have you never wondered?
No. Most people don’t, after all. Not even in my profession.
You must understand that this is something that has preoccupied me all through my life. In a way which is perhaps…unhealthy. But there’s nothing I can do about that. We are how we are.
Some people are driven down into the depths of the sea. Others up to the peaks of mountains. Some study the stars. All their lives. In order to understand. Whatever that means.
For my part…
I saw a man pierced by a scythe when I was eleven years old. In through his stomach and out through his back.
I mean, you might think that would be…enough.
But he died immediately.
What?
No, it wasn’t anybody I knew.
[---]
Do you have anyone…particularly close?
Why is that, then?
No, I suppose it’s these…what are they called…pimples, in that case. Otherwise I think you have a nice face.
No, don’t drink any more.
[---]
This project…
Right. It’s seven o’clock. The others will be here at any moment.
This project has been on my mind for quite a while.
The fact is, I wish I had done it a long time ago.
As things stand now…
Well, it will be more like a last wish.
Not something from which I will be able to…gain any benefit.
And I suppose that’s how it should be, in some way.
[---]
It’s a bell-headed nail. It’s used for fixing tin roofs, normally.
Nails with the kind of head you really need for this…you can’t buy them. Not any more.
There. That was the doorbell. It’s time.
Can you go and answer it, I can’t get up.
I think it’s best if you…don’t get to know each other.
Majken
My friendship with Majken began with a telephone call.
I’d been annoyed with the Konsum supermarket chain for a long time; they make such a big thing out of being environmentally friendly, but they wrap their turnips in plastic. I can understand them doing that with peppers, or Spanish cauliflowers. But to wrap plastic around whole local turnips and then to call themselves ‘Green Konsum’ just isn’t acceptable. It’s hypocrisy, and nothing less.
I’m no expert when it comes to dealing with vegetables, but one thing I do know: turnips keep just as well as potatoes if you treat them the right way. And they don’t use plastic on potatoes. So every time I came home with a turnip and had to peel off a layer of thin plastic film before I could use it, I got annoyed.
The earth’s finite resources, fossil fuels, oil, plastic. You know all that stuff. I always have a couple of cotton bags with me when I go shopping. Little things, insignificant you might say. But many drops make a huge river, and a few tonnes of plastic will undeniably turn into a mountain eventually. A mountain of plastic. And what do we do with that?
So I made a phone call.
We really want to hear what you think, it says on their blue and white packaging. KF customer services, and the telephone number.
‘Majken,’ replied a voice on the other end.
I explained why I was ringing, expecting cool approval, an assurance that we are working to make our stores more environmentally friendly, thank you for ringing, your views are important to us. Something along those lines. I’ve done this before.
But Majken did more than agree with me. She chimed in. Did I know that Konsum spent more money on marketing its environmental policy than on implementing it? Did I know that a significant proportion of the goods labelled ‘ecological’ are actually produced by workers earning starvation wages, and using methods that would never be accepted in Sweden?
Well yes, I had read something about that, but now I was getting the information from the inside, so to speak, it had a different kind of credibility.
We talked about where all the money goes. Where the profits actually go. I said I always tried to shop at Konsum, because I believe in the idea of a co-operative, even though it’s gone a bit off course in recent years.
Majken laughed. ‘Gone a bit off course? You could say that. You could also say it’s been flayed alive, ripped to shreds and thrown on the rubbish dump. Do you know what the bosses at KF earn?’
I didn’t. She told me.
As the conversation went on I got a strange, sinking feeling in my stomach. Majken was the last person I would have expected to talk like this. I mean, she was the face of the company—or rather its voice—as far as the public was concerned, and her job was to deodorise and sanitise anything shady rather than highlighting it. I asked her why she was so critical.
‘Is there any other way to be?’ she asked. ‘I know how things are, and I can’t just sit here and lie to you, can I?’
I had also expected the conversation to be short. A couple of minutes at the most. But I think we talked for over half an hour. I ended up telling her quite a lot about my life and my job as well. Twenty years as a cleaner and five as a carer for my husband, Börje.
‘How much do you earn?’ asked Majken.
‘Ten seven.’
‘After tax?’
‘No. Before.’
A long sigh.
‘Can you manage on that?’
‘Yes and no,’ I said. ‘It’s…well, that’s why I buy turnips. As I said. Some months are a bit tight. If it weren’t for Börje’s disability pension, I don’t know what we’d do.’
There was a brief silence.
‘Why don’t you do a bit of shoplifting?’
The feeling in the pit of my stomach, which had disappeared while we were talking about other things, came back again. But still I answered, quietly, ‘I do.’
Majken laughed again, and a doubtless foolish smile spread across my lips. It was an appreciative laugh.
‘I’m pleased to hear it,’ she said. ‘Shoplifting is the only reasonable answer.’
‘Hm,’ I said. ‘But what was the question?’
I really liked her laugh. It
came so easily, bubbling out. Her voice was an old person’s, if women of my age are old, but her laugh was something different, it came from a different source. The picture of her I had in my mind grew younger. I saw big blue eyes, a sparkle.
‘The question every store, every aspect of the consumer society asks us,’ she said. ‘Have you earned this?’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘That one.’
‘Sorry,’ said Majken. ‘Am I getting confused, or didn’t I get your name?’
‘You don’t sound confused to me. My name is Dolly.’
‘Goodness. After Dolly Parton?’
Now it was my turn to laugh. ‘I’m not that young, ‘I said. ‘It says Dolores on my birth certificate.’
‘That means sorrows.’
‘It does.’
It was only now, as the conversation was drawing to an end, that I realised how much I wanted it to continue. I wanted her to ask me how I came to be called Dolly, anything at all. At the same time a rational voice told me that it was Konsum customer services on the other end of the line and not an old friend, even if it felt that way. She must have lots of calls waiting.
Does she talk to everybody like this? I wondered, but I just said, ‘Anyway, thanks for the chat. I enjoyed it.’
‘Me too,’ said Majken.
There was silence for a few seconds. I studied the pattern on the rag rug in the hallway, let my gaze wander along to the front door, battered from all the bumps with Börje’s wheelchair. Let my thoughts carry on out into the silence of the stairwell. The silence everywhere that would return when I put the phone down.
Majken said, ‘Maybe we could do it again.’
‘Yes,’ I said. A little too eagerly, perhaps, but goodness me, we were two mature ladies, not shy teenagers. Our integrity might grow over the years, but we can do without superficial prestige. I was very lonely and Majken was a little breath of life. No point in pretending otherwise.
‘In that case I’ll give you a ring one day, if that’s OK,’ said Majken.
‘Yes. My phone number—’
‘I’ve got it here on my monitor.’
‘Right. Of course, yes.’
I still haven’t got used to the technological advances when it comes to communications. I find it difficult to speak to an answering machine.
I got her private number too, one of those that begins with 070, which I have learned means it’s a mobile phone. Majken was obviously more modern than me. We exchanged farewell phrases and hung up.
The silence wasn’t as deafening as I had feared; it was as if there was a little song inside my head. Which one? Oh, maybe one of those Svante Thuresson hits from the sixties. The ones that paint pictures in pastel shades, giving you the feeling that the world has just been created.
Do you know what I mean?
A couple of months ago there was an exhibition of photographs up in the library here in Blackeberg. It was about the first ten years, 1954–64. A lot of the pictures were black and white, but when it came to the colour photos you could kind of hear ‘You’re a Spring Breeze in April’ playing as background music.
The sensibly arranged shops, the subway station. People in the square: women in plain coats, men in hats. A kind of freshness mixed with emptiness, as if the people had just discovered that this place existed, were trying to get their bearings. In some ways that’s exactly how it was, I’m sure.
I remember those days. We came here before they’d even finished building. Our place on Björnsonsgatan was ready, but the earthmovers were still working further up the street. It was a good time. Lots of children. There was a sense of expectation in the air: We’re going to live our lives in this place!
Lena was six, and Tomas was born six months after we moved to Blackeberg. They had plenty of friends to play with, and the forest was just behind our building. It should have been a good childhood.
Perhaps it’s no coincidence that the exhibition focused on those particular years. The idyllic years, the ones you can go back to in order to reflect on what went wrong. One thing I do know: it was after this period that my own life started to go in a different direction from the one I had hoped for.
Talking of Svante Thuresson.
I put the piece of paper with Majken’s phone number on it in the drawer under the phone and went in to see Börje. He was sitting on the sofa as usual, staring at the wall. It was only an hour since I had helped him to the toilet, and he’d had a good breakfast that morning, so for the moment there was nothing I could do for him.
Talk to him, you might well be saying. Get out and about.
He stopped talking three years ago. I don’t know if he understands what I say; he gives no indication that he does. He moves only if he absolutely has to, and then with great difficulty, so perhaps you can understand that the opportunities for getting out and about are limited.
In fact he shut himself off thirty years ago, when Lena died. But he kept functioning on a mechanical level. Carried on working as a ticket collector, came to the cinema, met up with friends. But the spark, the soul or whatever you want to call it—that had gone out. We were invited to visit other people less and less often, he lost interest in films. In the end his part-time job as a ticket collector was his only contact with the outside world.
That was when I started cleaning. Tomas was eighteen and perfectly capable of taking care of himself—after Lena, Börje had lost interest in him too, and from the age of fifteen Tomas essentially had no father—and we needed the money.
I’ll be honest with you: when Börje started sinking into this final catatonic state five years ago, I had to choose between putting him in a home, or giving up my job to look after him. I very nearly went for the first option. It might sound heartless, but I’d had enough. Frankly, if Börje hadn’t withdrawn into his shell so completely, I would probably have asked for a divorce.
I don’t know. Maybe he knew I felt that way, maybe it contributed to his decision to cut himself off from the world. Because I believe it was a decision. I still think he could talk if he wanted to. But to be honest I prefer this care package sitting on the sofa to the shadow of a human being who used to move from room to room under his own steam.
So I stayed. Or I kept him, I suppose you could say.
Am I talking too much?
You must forgive me, but I think all this is necessary if you want to understand. And I hope you do. For your own sake.
What do I mean by that?
You’ll see.
That afternoon drifted by like many others. When dusk started to fall I took a stroll down to the eco-cottage to see if anyone had thrown away anything I could use.
Ha ha, no, I don’t mean food. We haven’t got to that stage yet. I just mean something that might come in useful. A breadbin or a rug or a better vacuum cleaner than the one we’ve got.
It’s incredible what people throw away. Stuff that’s practically new. Although I suppose the really incredible thing isn’t so much the fact that they’ve thrown away an electric mixer that works perfectly well, but that they’ve bought a new one even though they had the old one. What do I know; maybe they suddenly decided to chuck out the mixer without buying a new one. But I don’t think so.
The only thing I found that afternoon was five brand-new plastic storage boxes for the freezer. I took them home.
In the evening we watched the news as usual. I’m not much of a one for TV, but I suppose that’s the only time of the day when Börje and I sit together. I mean, otherwise it’s impossible. Just sitting there staring at nothing.
When the news was over I went and lay down and read The Idiot. You can never really understand that book. Börje stayed put, watching some comedy or other. He’s OK on his own, he can get to the toilet and so on. It’s only when we’re going out I have to get the wheelchair, and we don’t do that so often in the winter when it’s icy.
Towards ten o’clock I went in to have a look at him. He looked tired and I asked him if he wanted to go to bed. Sometimes
I get an almost imperceptible nod in response.
I tried to get him to bed, but he resisted as he sometimes does. When that happens I usually make up a bed for him on the sofa. You could say that’s the only expression of will he ever shows these days: refusal. Refusal to eat, refusal to go to the toilet, refusal to go to bed. So I respect it.
In any case, there was some film on TV with soldiers running around shooting at one another. He likes that kind of thing, always has done. The last film we saw at the cinema together was called Platoon, and I thought it was horrific. Although I suppose it’s regarded as good.
Perhaps I don’t need to tell you any more about all that. I look after my husband, and that’s all there is to say. One day at a time. We sit in our tomb and nod to one another.
I don’t know what would happen if he died. I mean, the absurd thing is that I’m dependent on him. The amount I’m paid for looking after him, along with his meagre disability pension, keeps us afloat.
I am sixty-seven years old, which means I can’t get another job. My pension will be…well, will it be anything at all by the time they’ve finished speculating? I might end up owing the state money instead—what do you think?
So there we are. Each dependent on the other in our own way. Tomas rings sometimes, but he’s got enough to think about. I don’t blame him.
Anyway, let’s move on.
The following day I went into town in the morning. Perhaps you could say the road that has led me here began that morning in the cheese department in Åhlén’s department store.
I’ve been shoplifting for several years. Got caught twice. The second time I was fined. Fifteen hundred kronor. Perhaps that should have put me off doing it again, but it didn’t.
I mean, you have to think in economic terms these days, in which case shoplifting is extremely rational. I’ve stolen goods worth far more than the amount I was fined. Ten times more, perhaps. What puts most people off doing the calculation is the fear of being caught. The shame.
Oh yes, I’ve felt that way too. But there have been times when I just had to shoplift. We have enough money for basics, but then I smoke, and…well yes, I could stop buying books. But I don’t want to. So I take the risk, even if it’s felt like a low thing to do at times. Being a thief.