Midwinter Sacrifice

11

What does this world do to a person, Tove?

I was twenty.

And we were happy, your dad and I. We were young and happy and we loved each other. The love of young people, pure and uncomplicated, clear and physical, and then there was you, our ray of sun to beat all rays of sun.

There was nothing beyond the three of us.

I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life, apart from love the two of you. I could ignore his cars, how methodical he was, how different we were. It was like I had been given love, Tove; there was no doubt, no waiting, even though that was what everyone said, wait, take it slowly, don’t tie yourselves down, live a little first, but I had got a scent of life, from my love for you, for Janne, for our life. I was vain enough to want more of it, and I thought it would last for ever. Because do you know what, Tove? I believed in love and I still do, which is something of a miracle. But back then I believed in love in its purest, simplest form, what we could maybe call family love, cave love, where we simply warm one another because we are human beings together. The first sort of love.

We argued, of course. I longed for other things, of course. And of course we had no idea what to do with all our time. And of course I understood when he said he felt as if he were trapped in a hole in the ground, even if it was in paradise.

Then he came home one day with a letter from the Rescue Services Agency, saying that he had to report to Arlanda Airport the next day for a flight to Sarajevo.

I was so angry with him, your dad. I told him that if he went, then we wouldn’t be there when he got back. I said that you don’t abandon your family for anything.

So, my question to you, Tove: Can you understand why your father and I couldn’t manage back then?

We knew too much and too little at the same time.