Open Grave

Thirty-one

“Do you remember Evert Gustavsson?”

Agnes was staring at her sister. She did not understand how Greta could make small talk the way she had done most of the time since she came to the house. She shook her head.

“You must. Evert was part of the congregation. Father was lighthouse keeper before he went to sea again. He was torpedoed.”

Now Agnes remembered. Evert had been in love with Anna in that innocent way, surely never expressed but obvious to anyone and everyone. When Aron became increasingly fierce in his attacks against his own daughter Evert left the congregation; the visits became less frequent and then finally stopped completely.

“He died this week,” Greta reported.

Agnes sighed. Death was one of the few things that could really liven up her sister.

“He collapsed. Just like Father.”

They were packing. Greta carefully folded up her sister’s clothes and placed them in garbage bags that she had been sensible enough to buy on the way. She had also brought with her a couple of shopping bags and a suitcase, borrowed from Ronald, and in it Agnes packed small things she had collected over the years.

She was grateful anyway for her sister’s carefree talk. Greta seemed to be taking it lightly that Agnes so unexpectedly and hastily was going to leave Ohler and Uppsala. It made the leaving less troublesome.

Greta had also taken the worst blows with the professor, because at first he refused to believe Agnes when she told him that she was going to leave for good the following day. It was only when Greta showed up that he realized the seriousness and started blustering about breach of contract. Then Agnes chose to go upstairs, although she overheard Greta’s impudent reminder that the Master and Servant Acts had been repealed. The professor’s response consisted of an inarticulate roar, after which they continued to quarrel for quite some time. It did not stop until Birgitta started crying loudly.

Greta surprised her. Agnes would be eternally grateful for her unconditional support.

“What if he’d married Anna?” Greta continued her monologue on Evert Gustavsson. “Then they would have stayed on the island. Evert was a builder later, you know that?”

Agnes stopped. In her hand she was holding a silk cloth she had received once from the old professor’s wife. She sensed that Greta’s talk about Anna was because they were now in the process of ending an era that had been started by their big sister. But it felt unpleasant anyway. Anna had not been heard from in all these years.

She considered herself betrayed, Agnes understood that, but she thought that was unjust. She had only been a child and Greta a teenager, and they had not judged Anna. It was Aron and the congregation that rejected her.

“Why didn’t she ever call or write?” Greta asked, as if she was reading Agnes’s thoughts.

“She couldn’t bear to,” Agnes maintained. “The wound was too deep. It never healed.”

“We’ll never know,” said Greta sadly.

“We’ll never know,” repeated Agnes, who thought that the wound still persisted. The time when Anna lived with Viola was the period that they could remember with a certain measure of joy. Anna had been happy the times the little sisters defied their father’s prohibition and sneaked over to Viola. But then, when Anna disappeared from the island, all contact ended.

They looked at each other. This unexpected openness between them, airing a mystery they had actually never discussed, filled Agnes with a number of conflicting thoughts. She realized that they only had each other, and her sister had surely realized the same thing. Hence her support and involvement in the move.

She threw the cloth in the garbage bag.

“Are you going to throw it away?”

“I got it from Lydia,” said Agnes.

“I know, I got one like it. She must have found some excess inventory.”

Agnes smiled mournfully. Perhaps Anna got a cloth too? she thought, turning around to hide her emotion.

Packing Agnes’s belongings did not take long. They made the revolutionary decision not to clean the bedroom and drawing room, Birgitta could just as well do that, Greta thought.

Instead they sat down in front of the TV. They were both waiting for Birgitta to show up. The professor would never humble himself to knock on the door. He had not, as far as Agnes could remember, set foot in the drawing room since it was transformed into her living room.

Birgitta came after half an hour. Quite certainly she had listened through the door and heard that the TV was on. She knocked and opened the door at the same moment. Her attempt to look unconcerned made an almost comic impression, or else she had been tricked by the sound of the TV, thought they had canceled the plans for retirement and now were staring at TV. But when she caught sight of the suitcase and the garbage bags Birgitta turned pale and the mask fell.

“Is this the thanks we get, Agnes?” she whimpered in a broken voice.

The crushed expression and the outstretched arms-Agnes happened to think of a biblical figure depicted in the illustrated scriptures of her childhood-completed the spectacle of a theatrical composition, presented to create a bad conscience, nothing else. Birgitta no doubt understood at that moment that Operation Persuasion was meaningless. If nothing else Greta’s discouraging expression and posture vouched for that. The sister was also the one who answered.

“Thanks for what?”

Birgitta took a few quick steps into the room. Agnes knew what was coming. The spitting image of Papa Bertram. Now the heavy artillery is waiting.

But she did not have her father’s perseverance, because after only a couple of minutes she fell silent, apparently drained. The final argument was that she was really the one who had arranged that Agnes got access to the drawing room.

“And how many domestic servants can live so regally?” she concluded the tirade.

Agnes stared at Birgitta. She remembered a ten-year-old girl who came running into the kitchen to seek shelter or consolation, or was simply eager to tell something, perhaps with a schoolbook or a drawing in hand. She remembered their chat in the kitchen only a few days ago.

Neither of the sisters commented on Birgitta’s outburst, which was followed by increasingly loud and uncontrolled sobbing. Agnes withstood the impulse to get up, but said something to the effect that it would surely work out. Greta glowered. Clearly she had firmly decided not to lift so much as a little finger for Birgitta.

At the same moment Liisa Lehtonen stepped into the drawing room, which reinforced the image of a scene where yet another actor made an entrance. But she had no lines, only gave the sisters a furious look before she placed her arm around Birgitta’s shoulders and led her out of the room. If the Finnish woman had had a pistol in her hand they would have been shot, thought Agnes.

“That was one round,” Greta commented, getting up, going over to the door, and closing it with a bang.

Agnes saw that she was very content, presumably because they had stood up so well. She herself was shaken. She wanted to cry but did not really understand why. Preferably she would have left the house immediately, disappeared, but Ronald was not coming until the next morning. How she would be able to make her way down the stairs, through the hall, and out the front door she did not know. Would she say goodbye to the professor? After all, they had shared a roof for more than half a century. Would he shake her hand and thank her for the time that had passed or would he just make a fuss? Would she look around with a sense of loss? There were so many questions, so many emotions tumbling over one another that she could simply hide her face and sob.

“We’ll soon be out of here,” said Greta. “You know that gratitude has never been the Ohlers’ strong suit. We don’t need to feel ashamed. We’ve done what’s been asked of us, and then some.”

Agnes straightened her back a little and removed her hands from her face. Of course that’s how it was. All three of them, Anna, Greta, and herself, had done good work. Still she felt a guilty conscience. She was deserting. Should she have waited perhaps until after the Nobel Prize ceremony? The professor’s heart was not strong. Perhaps he would die of fury before he was able to receive the prize. Then she would be blamed for his death. And rightly so.

“Greta,” she said. “Maybe-”

“Never!” her sister exclaimed. “We are not moving from this spot. Now we’ll sit here like two old ladies who can’t move. Then we’ll go to bed. Ronald is coming at eight sharp.”

Agnes did not reply. She peered at the garbage bags and happened to think about the gardener at Lundquist’s. He had also carried black bags around. Now he was gone too, probably for good.

“Time lives a life of its own,” she said.

Greta stared at her but said nothing and turned her attention to the TV.