Buried Angels

FJÄLLBACKA 1951

It was most unexpected. She wasn’t ill-disposed towards children, but as the years passed and nothing happened, she had calmly come to the conclusion that she would never have any of her own. Sigvard already had two grown sons, so he didn’t seem concerned about the fact that she was barren.

But then a year ago she suddenly began to feel terribly and inexplicably tired. Sigvard presumed the worst and sent her to their family doctor for a thorough examination. She too thought it might be cancer or something equally fatal, but it turned out that at the age of thirty she had suddenly become pregnant. The doctor could offer no explanation, and it took Laura several weeks to assimilate the news. These days her life was largely uneventful, and that suited her just fine. She preferred to stay at home, in the house where she was the mistress and everything had been deliberately chosen and arranged. Now something was going to erase the perfect order that she had so meticulously established.

Along with the pregnancy came peculiar symptoms and unwelcome physical changes. The realization that there was something inside of her body that she could not control brought her to the verge of panic. The actual birth was horrible, and she decided that never again would she allow herself to be subjected to such an experience. She refused to undergo the pain, powerlessness, and bestial condition of giving birth to another child, so Sigvard had to move into the guestroom for good. He didn’t seem to mind, satisfied as he was with his life.

She had spent the first days with Inez in a state of shock. Then she found Nanna, blessed and wonderful Nanna, who lifted from her shoulders all responsibility for the baby and allowed her to go on with her own life. Nanna immediately moved into the house, and her room was next door to the nursery, so she could quickly tend to Inez in the night or whenever she needed attention. Nanna took over her care completely, and Laura was then free to come and go as she pleased. Usually she would stop by the nursery for a short visit, and on those occasions she was able to enjoy being with her daughter. By the time Inez was eighteen months old, she could be charming and sweet, as long as she wasn’t crying because she was hungry or needed to be changed. But such matters were Nanna’s concern, and Laura thought that everything had been arranged so well, in spite of the unexpected turn that her life had taken. She wasn’t fond of changes, so the less the birth of the baby altered her life, the easier it was for her to accept her daughter.

Laura straightened the framed photos on the bureau. There were pictures of her and Sigvard and of Sigvard’s two sons with their families. They still hadn’t managed to frame any photographs of Inez, and she would never dream of displaying a picture of her mother. She preferred to forget all about her mother and grandmother.

To Laura’s relief, her mother now seemed to have disappeared for good. It had been two years since she’d last communicated, and no one in the area had seen hide nor hair of her. Yet their last meeting was still fresh in Laura’s mind. Dagmar had been released from the mental hospital a year earlier, but she hadn’t dared turn up at the house where Laura and Sigvard lived. People said that she was often seen staggering around town, exactly as she’d done when Laura was a child. When Dagmar finally stood on their doorstep – toothless, filthy, her clothes in rags – she was as crazy as always, and Laura couldn’t understand why the doctors had discharged her. At least in the hospital Dagmar had been given medicine, and they hadn’t let her touch any booze. Much as Laura would have liked to tell her mother to get lost, she let her into the house, moving quickly so that the neighbours wouldn’t see.

‘What a fancy lady you’ve become,’ said Dagmar. ‘Looks like you’ve come up in the world.’

Laura clenched her fists behind her back. Everything that she’d chased away, everything that now appeared only in her dreams, had suddenly caught up with her.

‘What do you want?’

‘I need help.’ Dagmar sounded on the verge of tears. She moved in a strange, lurching fashion, and her face twitched.

‘Do you need money?’ Laura reached for her purse.

‘Not for me personally,’ said Dagmar, fixing her eyes on the purse. ‘But I need money so I can go to Germany.’

Laura stared at her. ‘Germany? What are you going to do there?’

‘I never had a chance to say goodbye to your father. I never said goodbye to my Hermann.’

Dagmar started to cry, and Laura glanced around nervously. She didn’t want Sigvard to hear something and come out to the hall to find out what was going on. He mustn’t see her mother here.

‘Shh! I’ll give you the money. But calm down, for God’s sake!’ Laura held out a bundle of bills. ‘Here! This should be enough for a ticket to Germany.’

‘Oh, thank you!’ Dagmar flung herself forward and seized the money. Then she grabbed her daughter’s hands and kissed them. Disgusted, Laura yanked her hands out of Dagmar’s grasp and wiped them on her skirt.

‘Go now,’ she said. The only thing she wanted was to get her mother out of the house, out of her life, so that perfection would reign once again. After Dagmar left, she sank with relief on to a chair in the hall.

Now a couple of years had passed, and it seemed likely that her mother was dead. Laura doubted that the money would have taken her very far, especially in the chaos after the war. And if Dagmar had raved about saying goodbye to her Hermann Göring, she probably would have been seen as the crazy woman that she was and been stopped somewhere along the way. It was not a good idea to speak of knowing a man like Göring. The brutality of his crimes was not diminished simply because he had killed himself in prison a year after the war ended. Laura shuddered at the thought that her mother had continued to tell people in the area that he was the father of her child. It wasn’t a matter for boasting. Laura had only a vague memory of visiting his wife in Stockholm, but she did remember the shame, and the look that Carin Göring had given her. Carin’s eyes had been filled with sympathy and warmth, and it was undoubtedly because of Laura that she hadn’t called for help, even though she must have been terrified.

Well, that was all in the past now. Her mother was gone, and no one talked any more about Dagmar’s deranged fantasies. And Nanna saw to it that Laura could live her own life, as she was used to doing. Order had once again been restored and everything was perfect. Exactly as it should be.