Shame

20

For three days no one from the home help agency had called. Neither Ellinor nor anyone else. She had enough food to last, there was no danger of that, but she began to wonder a little. Maybe Ellinor had been so angry that she hadn’t even arranged for a replacement, thought she’d leave the problem to Maj-Britt to solve as best she could. That would be just like her.

But at least there was food. After three days, with no replenishment needed. She hadn’t called the pizza delivery in weeks. Something had changed, and she suspected that it had to do with the pain she was feeling. And the blood in her urine. It just wasn’t possible to eat like she did before; her desire for food had vanished like everything else. Her dress that she had been afraid she would outgrow had suddenly become roomier, and sometimes she even imagined that it was a little easier to get up out of the arm chair. But despite all that she was sadder than ever, and she had lost all her incentive.

She stood at the living-room window and looked out over the courtyard. That woman she didn’t know was out there at the swings with the child again. With endless patience she pushed the swing, over and over. Maj-Britt looked at the child but couldn’t focus on the image. So many years had passed. The memory had lain untouched so long, yet it had not lost any of its sharpness. Everything had been much simpler when the details hovered within reach. What good were memories that were impossible to endure?

‘Is it really true?’

She wondered at once how she ever could have doubted. How in her wildest imagination she could have believed that he might not be happy. She had worried that he might think it was interrupting his plans for a musical education, that he thought it would be all right to wait a bit. But now he stood there beaming with joy and was simply happy that he would soon be a father. She was already in her fourth month. Anyone who wanted to could quickly figure out that it had happened before the wedding, but that didn’t matter anymore. She had chosen sides and did not regret it.

Things had turned out just as her father had predicted that day. Her parents hadn’t even come to the wedding, even though it was held in the church only a few hundred metres from their home. Maj-Britt wondered what they were thinking when they heard the church bells ring. She found it so peculiar. That the same God who in her home had damned Göran’s and her love, only a few hundred metres away would bless their marriage.

The bridegroom’s side of the church was full, but on the bride’s side sat only Vanja. In the middle of the front pew.

She loved Göran and he loved her. She refused to accept that there could be any sin in it. But sometimes doubt would come over her when she thought about the folks at home who no longer wanted to have anything to do with her. Then it was hard to stand firm and hold fast to her conviction that she had done the right thing. Because everyone was gone. They had purged her like a weed from their lives and their community. She had been a part of the Congregation since the day she was born, and when everyone disappeared they took the greater part of her childhood with them. Nobody was left who shared her memories. She would miss the fellowship, being included, being able to take part in the strong community. Everything she was used to, knew about, felt at home with, everything was gone and she was no longer welcome. There was nothing to go back to, should it be necessary one day. Or to visit, if she was struck by homesickness.

Even though the anger was still strong, she sometimes felt a lump in her throat when she thought about Mother and Father. But then she began to think the way Vanja had said: Don’t let them destroy this too. Show them instead!

Sometimes she woke up at night and it was always the same dream. She was standing alone on a rock in a stormy sea and all the others had climbed aboard a ship. They all stood there on the deck, but no matter how she screamed and waved they pretended not to see her. When the ship vanished in the distance and she realised that they intended to leave her to her fate, she would wake up with terror like a noose around her neck. She tried to explain to Göran how she felt, but he didn’t even try to understand. He just called them crazy people and in that way he became just as condemning as her father had been. As if that were any better.

The only one she had left was Vanja, but they lived so far apart. And it was already getting harder to think of anything to talk about on the phone or in letters, now that they lived such completely different lives. Vanja’s life in Stockholm seemed so exciting and adventurous, while nothing much happened at Maj-Britt’s house. She pottered about in the little house they had rented just outside town and tried to make the days pass while Göran was at school. They would only be living there temporarily. There was neither a bath nor a toilet, and when the temperature dropped below freezing it was hard to get any real heat in the house. For the time being they were making do with an outhouse, since it was just the two of them. When the baby was born things would get worse.

But then there was the other difficulty. It was something that gave her great pleasure, although it was hard to admit that she actually liked it. She had hoped that it would get a bit easier after they were married, but it hadn’t. There was still something in her that said they didn’t have the right to devote themselves to such things. Not merely as pure enjoyment. Not unless it had some purpose.

She was strict about having the lights out. She still covered herself if Göran ever happened to see her naked. At first he had laughed at her, not unkindly but lovingly, but lately she thought she could sense a touch of annoyance in his voice. He used to say how beautiful she was and how much he liked seeing her naked and that it made him feel aroused. Maj-Britt didn’t want to listen to that, she really didn’t; it was one thing to do it in the dark but quite another matter to talk about it. His habit of putting words to what they did embarrassed her, and she always asked him to stop. It was as if the words in themselves made the whole thing indecent. Just as if they had been doing it with the lights on, so it was all visible. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to. She loved it when he touched her. It was as if their unity grew even stronger when they were so close to each other, as if they shared a great secret. But afterwards the guilt feelings always followed. More and more often she would doubt whether what they were doing was actually right and proper. Whether it was really possible to justify all the pleasure she permitted herself. And sometimes she imagined that someone was standing there peeking at her, shocked at her loose ways and meticulously jotting down everything in a notebook.

They had agreed that Göran should finish his year at the local college. They paid so little rent that they could get by well enough on his school loan. But when the baby came he would have to get a job, anything at all he said, just so it paid enough. She sensed what he was feeling deep inside, that his dreams of the music college could not be curbed quite so easily as he would have her believe. Sometimes his mother would ring. Maj-Britt wanted so much to hear whether she had seen her parents, but she never asked. No one mentioned them anymore; they were obliterated, as if they had never existed. Just as they and the Congregation had done with her.

Days came and went and it grew harder and harder to fill the hours. She knew nobody but Göran and some of his classmates in that town, but the few times she went along and joined them she felt even more lonely. They all had their training in common, and they had developed a special jargon that she couldn’t follow. Göran was the oldest student at the school, and she thought he acted childishly when they were with his classmates. They drank whisky and soda and listened to music, and it was all so far removed from what she was used to and how things had been before they moved. Back then the two of them had had the choir in common, and in the evenings they preferred to spend time with each other. Reading books, talking, making love. She always felt inferior to the others in the group, especially the women. She would sit there with her growing belly, silent and bored because she never had anything to talk about, and Göran didn’t seem to understand that she got tired early and that most of all she wanted to go home. She longed for Vanja, who would have understood how Maj-Britt felt and taken her side. Vanja would have said all the things she was unable to say herself. She especially didn’t like Harriet; there was something about the way she looked at Göran that bothered her. Silently she imagined what Vanja would have done if she had seen those looks. Then things felt a little easier.

One Friday evening she came home and she could smell that he had been drinking. She couldn’t tell by the way he was acting, but she was standing at the sink in the kitchen and he came and stood behind her and put his hands on her shoulders and then she could smell it on his breath. She kept washing dishes. His hands fumbled along her sides and found their way underneath her jumper, and when he pressed against her she could feel he was aroused. She closed her eyes, trying to control her breathing. She was not going to give in, not this time. She would show him that she could control her desire and that she wasn’t a slave to lust.

‘Stop it.’

Göran kept on caressing her.

‘Göran, please stop it.’

His hands disappeared. And she heard the front door slam.

It took her almost an hour to get over the desire he had awakened.

Her belly kept growing. Signs of life from Vanja came less and less often, and Göran’s days at school never seemed to end. Sometimes he didn’t come home before eight in the evening. There were extra rehearsals and choir practice and all sorts of things that kept him at school and were obligatory for all students. Her belly was big and heavy and she convinced herself that that was why they never touched each other anymore.

That it was the reason she had pulled away.

Over time he had stopped even trying.

She had plenty of time to worry in her solitude. Her thoughts raced around wildly in circles and never met any counter-arguments since they were never spoken. She had thought that everything would be so much easier once she got away from all those watching eyes. That she would finally feel complete after she freed herself from all the pressure and was able to take part in the world that had been revealed to her only in glimpses over the years, partly through Vanja, but above all through Göran. She had thought it would be much better if she had to take responsibility for her own life and her own decisions, instead of merely accommodating Him, who still never answered or showed what He thought. But that’s not the way it had turned out. Instead she now understood how uncomplicated her old life had been, when she could simply surrender to the Congregation’s common outlook and guidelines. How simple it had been when she didn’t have to think for herself. Out here she stood utterly alone.

A poisonous root that was banished so it wouldn’t spread its infection.

And she had chosen it of her own free will.

She had been so sure that their love and everything it implied was natural and healthy. That it was her father and mother and the Congregation who had been wrong. Now she realised how selfishly she had behaved. She had only been thinking of herself and her own satisfaction. Now that the anger had subsided and the sorrow caught up, she realised in what despair she must have left her parents, what shame they must have felt. There was no compassion in what she had done, only a huge, detestable egotism. She had believed that she could trade her fear of God for the love she felt for Göran, that it would heal her; she had accused them of forcing her to choose. But now the suspicion had arisen that she might simply have given in, that her choice was really only based on her inability to keep her desire in check. The pastor’s words haunted her.

The purpose of sexuality is children, just as the biological purpose of eating is to nourish the body. If we ate whenever we felt like it and ate as much as we wanted, some of us would inevitably eat too much. Virtue demands control of the body and virtue brings light. There is no conflict between God and nature, but if we mean by nature our natural desire, then we must learn to keep it in check, if we do not want to destroy our lives.

And he quoted from Romans: For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells.

With each day that she wandered around in those closed circles she began to be more and more convinced that he had been correct. Because what they had done wasn’t right, she could sense that now. They had conceived a child almost within the bonds of marriage and that was fine, but to continue to do it was indefensible. It wasn’t because of her parents’ attitude that she had changed, but because she herself had come to a realisation. She had suddenly begun to feel dirty. Impure. And because she knew that it came from what they were doing, then it couldn’t be right, since it caused her so much anguish.

Impure.

The nature of the flesh is enmity towards God.

It was hard to wash herself clean enough at the kitchen sink, but buses passed by on the main road twice a day, and from the bus station in town it was only a few hundred metres to the bathhouse. She began going there daily but never said anything about it to Göran. She was always back by the time he came home. They would eat dinner and exchange a few words, but the conversations became more and more trivial and her thoughts more and more suffocating. She thought that surely everything would improve when the baby arrived and he left school so that it would just be them again. Then maybe they could start working on another baby. Then they could be together again without it being wrong.

She had found the phone number of the College’s office and had memorised it. The appointed day was approaching, and if she went into labour while Göran was at school she was supposed to call. He had already arranged to borrow a car so she didn’t have to worry. That’s what he said.

She was standing in the shower at the bathhouse when her waters broke. Utterly without warning she felt that something was happening, and when she turned off the shower the water kept running down her legs. There was an older woman in the stall facing hers and Maj-Britt had turned her back – it was unpleasant to expose her nakedness to other women in the shower-room as well. She grabbed her towel and went out and sat down on the bench in the changing room. The first pains came just as she got her underwear on. She managed to put on the rest of her clothes, and when she was dressed she asked the woman from the shower-room to find out where there was a telephone.

They grew closer to each other again during the delivery. He held her hand and wiped her brow and was so eager to do all he could to help her through the labour pains. Everything would be good again, she knew that now. She would talk to him about all the things she’d been thinking that were slowly but surely breaking her apart, try to get him to understand. She did her utmost to endure the pains that were tearing her body to bits and wondered why God was so cruel that He punished women so much for the sin that Eve had committed. The words from Scripture echoed in her head: Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me.

Time passed. The pains lashed her for hours but her body refused to open and release what it had created. It greedily kept its grip on the child that was struggling inside to emerge into life, and the midwife seemed more and more concerned. Twenty hours had passed when they were forced to give up. The decision was made and Maj-Britt was led away to the operating room to deliver the child by Caesarean section.

Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me.

‘Majsan.’

She heard the voice but it was coming from far away. She was someplace other than where the voice originated. A faint shimmer of light penetrated at intervals through the mists of her vision, and the voice she heard echoed as if down a long tunnel.

‘Majsan, can you hear me?’

She managed to open her eyes. Vague contours of what was close by took shape, and her eyes reluctantly adjusted their focus and then lost it again.

‘It’s a little girl.’

And then she suddenly saw. The anaesthesia was slowly releasing its grip and she could see that he was standing there with a newborn baby in his arms. Göran was still there, he hadn’t abandoned her. And the baby in his arms must be their baby, the one her body had been unable to give birth to on its own. The child in his arms was wearing white clothes, she could see that too. It was perfect and clear and washed and pure and was wearing white clothes.

‘Darling, it’s a little girl.’

He placed the little creature on her arm and her eyes desperately tried to adjust their focus to the new distance. A little girl.

The door opened and a nurse rolled in a pay phone.

‘You probably want to call and tell everyone the happy news.’

And Göran called his parents. And Vanja. Maj-Britt only managed to say a few words, but Vanja shrieked with delight on the other end.

But they never called anyone else.

Things didn’t turn out quite the way Göran had said. Instead of taking a job he asked his parents for financial help so he could finish his second year at the school. And the flat that he had promised they would move to would also have to wait for a while. But he had talked with the Council and it shouldn’t be any problem when they were ready. Or so they said.

Maj-Britt continued to keep her thoughts to herself but at least now she had something to distract her. They decided to name the girl Susanna; they would have her christened in the church back home, by the same pastor who had married them. She wrote a letter to her parents and told them that they now had a grandchild and about the date of the christening, but she never received a reply.

There was something wrong with the girl, Maj-Britt could feel it. It wasn’t that she didn’t like her, but she felt it was necessary to maintain a certain distance. The baby needed so much, and it was important for her to learn from the start to control her needs. Raising a child was also about setting limits, and no responsible parent would let her child’s will subvert the authority of an adult. That would be doing them a disservice. She breast-fed every four hours as she had been advised to do, and let the child cry herself to sleep if she was hungry in between. At seven o’clock every evening she had to go to sleep; that was the proper time, as they had told her at the child care centre. It could take a few hours for the baby to fall asleep; eventually she couldn’t hear her shrieks any longer. But Göran had a hard time accepting this. The nights he came home before the baby went to sleep he would pace up and down, questioning more and more strongly the child-rearing methods that allowed a small girl to lie in bed alone and cry herself to sleep.

She was four months old when it was confirmed. Maj-Britt had known that something wasn’t right but she had refused to let her suspicions become fact. By means of various excuses she had succeeded in avoiding the latest check-ups at the child care centre, but finally they had called and threatened to pay a home visit if Maj-Britt didn’t bring the child in. Göran hadn’t been privy to her suspicions; she had borne them alone. Nor did he know that she was skipping the required check-ups. She didn’t want to go, didn’t want to sit there and get the news and pretend that she didn’t already know what was going on. Or the reason why it had turned out this way.

Self-abuse is what it’s called.

And it was as she had suspected. She received the news the same way she would have listened to road directions. She merely asked a few supplementary questions for clarification. In the evening she passed on the news to Göran in the same way.

‘She’s blind. They confirmed it at the check-up today. We have to go back in two weeks.’

From that day everything began to crumble. The last desperate remnants of their attempt to break away finally disappeared, and all that remained were shame, remorse and dread. The regret and the guilt ate through her body like acid, the body she hated more than anything on earth, and that never did her anything but harm. The same body on which the palpable proof of her sin was now dependent every four hours. An evil tree bears evil fruit. For the sake of sin each human being stands with real guilt before God and is threatened by His wrath and punishing justice. The overwhelming, dark desire for evil is propagated and is passed down from generation to generation, and this inherited sin is the cause of all other sins in thought, word and deed.

In her pride she had rebelled against God, and the punishment was more loathsome than she ever could have imagined. He had kept silent and ignored her, and He had turned His wrath on her offspring instead. He would let the next generation bear the punishment that she herself should have borne.

And then came the letter from her parents. They had heard it through the grapevine. They had not forgiven her, but the whole Congregation would offer prayers for her child who had been struck by God’s righteous retribution.

A few months passed. Göran grew more and more taciturn during the hours he was home. He didn’t even talk about the new flat anymore, the one they were supposed to move to in early summer. Two rooms and a kitchen on the ground floor, 68 square metres with a balcony. And a bathroom. Finally, they would get a bathroom so she could wash herself properly.

She had already started to pack because she needed something to do; it had become harder and harder to sit still. She had just opened the linen cupboard in the hall above the stairs and was reaching for a stack of sheets. They had got them from Göran’s parents, his initials were primly embroidered on them in blue. She saw that the girl was crawling across the threshold from the bedroom, that she bumped her head on the doorjamb and just sat there. There was no gate to protect her from the stairs. Maj-Britt walked past her and went over to the packing carton that was set up on the bed and placed the sheets inside. When she turned round she hit her shin on the bedstead. The pain was brief and explosive and only lasted a second, but it was as if the physical sensation swept away a barrier inside her. Everything turned white. The scream came first. She screamed until her throat hurt, but it didn’t help. The girl was scared by her wailing, and Maj-Britt saw out of the corner of her eye that she was sobbing and crawling farther out in the hall. Closer to the stairs. But her rage could not be quelled; it grew ever stronger, and she grabbed hold of the carton in front of her with both hands and hurled it with all her might at the wall.

‘I hate You! Hate You, do You hear that? You know that I was ready to sacrifice everything but it was never enough!’

She clenched her fists and shook them at the ceiling.

‘Do You hear me? Do You? Can’t You answer just once when someone speaks to You?’

All her pent-up fury exploded and gushed out like a tidal wave. She felt it throbbing in her temples and she tore the sheets off the bed and heaved them across the room. A picture on the wall was caught in their sweep and there was no gate on the stairs out in the hall, and now her blind daughter could no longer be seen, she had disappeared beyond the door frame. But something could no longer be stopped, something had once and for all shattered inside her, and now it had to get out or she would explode.

‘You think You can win, don’t You? That I’m going to pray and beg Your forgiveness now that it’s all too late, now that You’ve made her take the punishment I was supposed to have. Is that what You think, is it?’

There was nothing left to throw, so she picked up the carton and threw it one more time. She stood in the bedroom and threw a carton even though there was no gate in front of the stairs out there in the hall.

‘I can get along without You from now on, do You hear me?’

And afterwards she remembered that just at that moment she had to go out in the hall because there was no gate in front of the stairs and her blind daughter was alone out there on the floor, but she never made it that far.

She didn’t scream when she fell.

There were only a couple of thuds and then everything was quiet.