Shame

16

She was standing in front of the mirror in her room, twisting and turning and trying to see how she looked from the back as well, but to see that view she had to contort her body in the most awkward way. The way she looked there in the mirror wouldn’t be how she looked at all when she was facing straight ahead. And it was important how she looked from the back, because that was the direction he usually saw her from. But not today. Today it was going to be special.

She had been allowed to borrow Vanja’s new blouse. Vanja, the only one who knew, the only one she had dared tell. It was so strange with Vanja. They had been friends for years but she really didn’t understand why, they were such an improbable pair. Vanja was so brave; she didn’t hesitate a second to say what she thought and she would stand up for her views in any situation. Maj-Britt knew that she had a tough time at home. Her father was a notorious figure in the community; everyone knew about him, and especially about his alcohol problem. But Vanja didn’t let herself be dragged down by the gossip. If she so much as caught an inkling of any condescension she would strike back like lightning. She punched like a verbal boxer. And Maj-Britt would stand beside her and admire her, wishing that she could speak so frankly, and that, above all, she also dared stand up for her own point of view.

No God was mentioned in Vanja’s home, but Satan was invoked frequently. Maj-Britt had a hard time deciding what she should think. She didn’t like swear words, but in some strange way it was easier to breathe at Vanja’s house. It was as though God had made a little refuge here on earth, and it was situated right in Vanja’s home. Even when her father was drunk and sat muttering to himself at the kitchen table and Vanja was allowed to say the most awful things to him without being interrupted, even then it was easier to breathe there than it was at her own house. Because in her home God was ever-present. He noticed the slightest change in behaviour, He saw every thought and action, and later He would weigh them against any possible merits. No locked door, no lamps turned off, no solitude could shield her from His sight.

As long as Maj-Britt could remember, Vanja had been her porthole to the world outside. A little opening where fresh air streamed in from somewhere else. But she was careful not to show at home how much this connection really meant to her. Her parents would have preferred that she associate only with the young people in the Congregation, but while they hadn’t done much to hide what they thought of Vanja, they hadn’t expressly forbidden Maj-Britt to see her friend. Maj-Britt was deeply grateful. She didn’t know how she would manage without Vanja. Who else could she turn to with her problems? She had tried asking Him, but He had never answered.

Vanja might not think that Maj-Britt had any real problems, everything seemed perfectly normal, but Maj-Britt knew better. It was because of all those thoughts and the foul and loathsome things they led her to do that God didn’t want her. She was terrified of going blind, or of hair growing on her palms. That’s what happened to people who did what she’d been doing, but she’d never dared talk to Vanja about all that.

She heard her mother working in the kitchen. Dinner would soon be ready; after they ate, Maj-Britt was supposed to head off for choir practice. It was no longer the children’s choir, which she had left when she turned fourteen. The past four years she had been singing in the church choir. Altos and sopranos and basses and tenors. She was a talented singer and had managed to convince her parents to let her sing in the parish choir, not just the one at her own Congregation. They’d agreed eventually on condition that she sing with the Congregation choir if there were ever a day when both choirs needed her.

He sang first tenor, and he did it with bravura. The choirmaster always chose him if the piece contained difficult passages.

‘Göran, you take the high G. The rest of you can stay on the third if you can’t reach that high.’

He had noticed her, she knew that, even though they had only exchanged a few words. She always sat with the other sopranos during the break, but sometimes their eyes found their way to each other amongst the altos and basses, just flicking over each other for a moment before shyly moving on. But this evening would be different. This evening there would be no choir to hide their glances, it would just be the two of them and the choirmaster, because they had been chosen as soloists for the Christmas concert. It was a tremendous feeling to have been selected. And especially with Göran.

As she approached the church she saw him from a distance. He was standing on the church steps reading his sheet music. Unconsciously, she slowed down because she didn’t know if she could dare be alone with him. If the choirmaster was late they would be left standing there on the steps, and what would she say then? He raised his eyes and caught sight of her, and with her heart pounding she kept walking. He smiled as she approached.

‘Hi.’

She greeted him quickly and then lowered her eyes. She felt as if she were burning when she looked directly at him, and her eyes kept flicking off in other directions.

There was a long silence, a little too long to be comfortable. They both stood there, leafing through their sheet music as if they had never seen it before. Maj-Britt realised in amazement that Göran, who otherwise was always used to being noticed and listened to, didn’t seem to know what to say either.

‘Have you had time to practise at all?’

She replied gratefully. ‘Yes, a little bit. But I think it’s quite hard without accompaniment.’

Göran nodded, and the next moment he said the strangest thing, which in the days to come she would keep repeating to herself.

‘I’m almost more nervous about singing in front of just you than I am about the entire Christmas concert.’

He smiled shyly. And with the sound of the choirmaster’s footsteps on the gravel path her eyes dared meet his for the first time.

‘So we’ll take it from the top without the introduction, and then you go directly to the second verse after the refrain.’

Maj-Britt had sat down on the edge of one of the pews. Although Göran had admitted how nervous he was, she felt thankful that she didn’t have to go first. He wasn’t the only one who was nervous. In a daze she sat there, astonished at his words. She watched him in front of her, following his slightest movement; he was so talented and so handsome. With his eyes closed he began to sing. His sonorous voice was jubilant, and she felt a chill run down her spine. Göran had laid his jacket on the pew next to her, and she secretively stuck her hand in it and touched the lining at the very spot that usually pressed against his heart. No man had ever been allowed to come near her, but now a little stray desire fluttered inside her chest. She wanted to be close to him, assure herself that she held his interest, because when he wasn’t there he was still present inside her heart. It was inconceivable that a person who had never had anything to do with her life could suddenly fill her whole being.

When he was finished singing he opened his eyes and looked at her. In a moment of silent understanding they both knew.

Afterwards she told Vanja all about it. Again and again she told her what had happened and what he had said and in what tone of voice and how he had looked when he said it, and Vanja listened with patient interest and offered precisely the interpretations that Maj-Britt wanted to hear. In the evenings she lay in bed and counted the hours to the next choir practice when she would get to see him again. But nothing turned out the way she had hoped. Mixed in with the rest of the choir they were again like strangers to each other. Göran was the centre of attention as he always had been, and there was not a trace of the uncertainty he had revealed to her. The few times their eyes met they lost contact at once and drifted off amidst the choir.

Vanja had given her some good advice.

‘But, Majsan, you have to talk to him, you know that, don’t you?’

But what was she going to say?

‘Well, think up something you know will spark his interest. What else does he do besides sing in the choir? There must be something else he’s interested in. Or drop something right in front of him so you have a reason to start talking. You must have some sheet music or something that you could drop…’

It was easy for Vanja; she was so brave. But Maj-Britt’s sheet music was almost glued to her hands, and to make it flutter all the way over to the tenors would take a miracle. But He who performed such things was very clearly not interested. And Vanja was not satisfied. After each choir practice she rang to hear all the details.

Finally, Vanja herself solved the problem. Through shrewd detective work amongst her friends, she ascertained that Göran was interested too. So, when pressuring Maj-Britt didn’t work, she took the matter into her own hands. One evening she rang Maj-Britt and asked her to come down to the kiosk. Maj-Britt didn’t want to, and for the first time Vanja got angry and called her a bore. Maj-Britt didn’t want to be a bore, especially not in Vanja’s eyes, so in spite of her parents’ surprise she put on her jacket and headed off. She wasn’t allowed to use make-up, but she usually borrowed some from Vanja, carefully wiping it off before she got home. She hadn’t even brushed her hair before she set off, and she fretted about it as she neared the kiosk. Because there he stood. Right next to the ice-cream sign by the bicycle stand. He smiled and said hi and she did too and then they just stood there, shy and embarrassed, and it felt just like it did the time they had stood on the church steps. Vanja never showed up. Or Bosse, the boy that Göran was waiting for. Maj-Britt kept glancing at her watch to assure him that she really was waiting for someone, and Göran did his best to keep the conversation going. They talked exclusively about the two people who hadn’t shown up yet. And why they hadn’t. It took them twenty minutes before they clicked. Bosse was Vanja’s cousin, and as the seconds ticked by Maj-Britt realised that Vanja probably had no intention of appearing at the kiosk that evening either. She had decided to give fate a little push. Göran was the first to figure it out.

‘If Bosse doesn’t come and Vanja doesn’t either, what do you think we should do?’

Maj-Britt had no idea. What do you do on a Tuesday evening when you’re eighteen and have just realised that your secret love is no longer secret, and that he is standing on the other side of the bicycle stand and has also just been revealed? At that precise moment it began to rain, and neither of them really wanted to leave. It wasn’t a little drizzle, it was a cloudburst that came out of nowhere. The kiosk owner had started to close and was winding in the awning that would have protected them.

It was Göran who first started to laugh. He tried to hold it back, but then the rain came down so hard that there was no resisting it any longer. Maj-Britt began to laugh too. Liberated, she let him take her hand and they ran off together under the cover of his jacket.

‘We could go over to my house for a while if you want.’

‘Can we do that?’

They had stopped on the other side of the road where they normally would have parted. He seemed surprised by the question.

‘Why not?’

She didn’t answer, only smiled uncertainly. Some things were so simple for other people.

‘I have my own entrance so you don’t even have to meet my mother and father if you don’t want to.’

She hesitated a tiny, tiny bit, but then nodded and let herself be drawn into all the wondrous things that were about to happen.

As he had described, he had his own entrance. A door at the end of the house and behind it a stairway to the second floor. He even had a little cooker with two burners and an oven, almost like his own flat. And why shouldn’t he? He was twenty years old, after all, and could have moved away if he’d wanted to. She could have moved out too, for that matter. Yet, the idea was inconceivable.

He opened a cupboard in the hallway and gave her a fluffy towel to dry off the worst of the rain. He hung her soaked jacket on the back of a chair and moved it in front of the heater. He had only a small hallway and one room with a dark-brown bookcase, an unmade bed and a desk with a chair. The sound of a TV in his parents’ part of the house revealed that you could hear every sound in the house.

‘I wasn’t sure if you would come.’

He went over to the unmade bed and tossed the spread over it.

‘Would you like some tea?’

‘Yes, please.’

He picked up a saucepan from the cooker, which stood on the low bookshelf.

‘Sit down if you like.’

He disappeared into the hall, going to what she assumed was a bathroom, as she heard water running and the clink of china. She looked around to find somewhere to sit. It was either the chair with the wet jacket on it by the heater, or the unmade bed. She stood where she was. But after he had made tea and she held one of the mismatched cups in her hands and he asked whether she wouldn’t like to sit next to him, she complied. They drank their tea and he did most of the talking. He told her about his future plans. He wanted to move away and maybe apply to the music college in Stockholm or Gothenburg. He was tired of this provincial town. Hadn’t she, who sang so well, ever thought about doing something with her voice? She let herself be swept along by his dreams, amazed at all the possibilities he suddenly conjured up. Even though she was eighteen and an adult, the thought had never entered her mind that there were alternatives to those the Congregation regarded as acceptable. She had never realised that being an adult meant that she was a grown-up with the right to make her own decisions about her life. There was only one thing she knew for sure at that moment: she didn’t want to be anywhere else than where she was right now. In Göran’s room with an empty teacup in her hand. Everything else was unimportant.

And after that evening everything was as it should be. Months went by and outwardly everything looked the same. But inside a change was stirring. A reckless curiosity was emerging which began to question all limitations.

No God in the world could have anything against what she finally was able to experience. Not even her parents’ God.

But for safety’s sake it was best that her parents didn’t find out a thing.