The Cruel Stars of the Night

Fourteen

The knee-length grass swayed as if a giant hand was stroking it. Laura Hindersten thought there was something comforting about the movement. It was as if the wind in a gentle gesture took leave of what was left of the summer.

A rotted apple landed with a thud on what had once been a gravel path but was now woven through with weeds. The path led to an oval sitting area, paved in slate and surrounded by some gangly roses that Laura’s mother had planted. Laura could still remember the name of the rose: Orange Sensation. She remembered where and when they had bought them. It was at the nursery on Norbyvägen and Laura had just turned ten. Laura thought the talkative gardener was a distant relative because he used the same words as her mother and because the ends of his sentences disappeared and were replaced by a gesture or an expressive face, exactly like her grandfather’s.

He took them to an earth cellar on the edge of the nursery where they were greeted by the smell of raw earth. The roses were arranged on shelves, packed into bundles and with tiny pale shoots coming up from the stems. He carefully chose a bundle, cut the string, and inspected each rose one at a time. He saw poorly but compensated for this with touch and stroked the stems with his fingers. He put roses with shrivelled branches to one side.

“Those are B-quality,” he explained, “and that isn’t what you want.”

Laura got the impression that he was treating her mother very well. Few people were as polite to her as this old gardener.

“Is the young miss also interested in roses?”

Laura nodded. The man smiled at her. It seemed as if he enjoyed lingering in the earth cellar. He read the different names of the roses bundled on the groaning shelves. There was Poulsen rose, Alain, Nina Weibull, Peace, and many others.

“The Poulsen I only keep because…”

He smiled again and nodded.

“Well, you know, memories…”

She had watched the garden passively for an hour. She was so cold she was shivering but could not bring herself to go inside the house.

If someone had entered the garden and discovered her pressed up against the French windows, with the grocery bags at her feet, then Laura would have given the impression of a person without hope. Her inability to cross the threshold had imparted a strange stiffness to her pale face. Her gaze moved restlessly as if it was searching for a place to rest. The movement in the grass and the sound of the falling apple had of course not spurred her to open the terrace door and step into the warmth but it did wake her from her paralysis. She pulled her right hand across her face while the left one felt for the door handle behind her back.

Right here, a very long time ago on a warm summer’s day, was where her father and mother had stood. For once very close to each other, perhaps even hand in hand for a moment, in the no-man’s-land between her father’s domain-the house-and her mother’s, which was the garden.

The terrace door had been completely open. There was a great deal of traffic between the bushes and the trees, where small birds flew around with food in their beaks. The day before she had found a dead baby bird by the mock-orange bush and buried it behind the compost.

Laura had been sitting at the foot of the apple tree playing with a new gift. Happy voices had come from the house. The toy was uninteresting. It was the voices that meant something. She had fled out into the garden but not so far that she couldn’t hear the exhilarated guests’ avid conversation and the volleys of laughter that echoed like frightening bursts of thunder.

Her parents looked at her and smiled. Ulrik Hindersten was dressed in a dark suit and her mother wore a green dress with white lace around the neck. Laura thought they looked like a bride and groom.

“Dinner will be ready soon,” her mother said.

They went back in and Laura tried to understand why they had walked out onto the terrace together, so close to each other and apparently enjoying each other’s company.

Laura stared out over the garden and could see herself sitting under the apple tree. That was the day everything started. The previous conflicts between her and her father were nothing but outpost skirmishes compared to the drawn-out war that came after, a war that went on for over twenty years.

She finally opened the door and stepped over the bags in the dining room. The heavy chairs and table, the candelabra on the massive tabletop had been there that time. She sat down, letting her gaze go from chair to chair and called to mind, as her father must also have done many times, the different guests and their placement at the table. She even recalled the scent of perfume and food and the young student’s sweat.

All books and folders were gone, the curtains pulled back, and the light created a whole new room. On the table there was a white linen tablecloth and it was laid with the china that was usually stored in the oak sideboard.

Laura was called in but remained standing in the doorway. Mrs. Simonsson, who Laura saw for the last time at her mother’s funeral, was bringing out dishes and tureens. She wore a little apron and a white cap. Laura couldn’t help but laugh.

The adults were already seated. An older man whom Laura recognized from her father’s workplace was the one who talked most frequently and loudly. The women on both sides of him listened attentively.

Ulrik Hindersten asked for their attention and said he hoped the food would please them. He concluded his brief remarks by saying a few words in Latin-Laura thought they came from Livius, an author from whose work Ulrik Hindersten would often read aloud in the evenings. Many people around the table laughed.

It was the twentieth of July, Petrarch’s birthday, a day that was always celebrated in this house. But this time it was a twofold celebration. Over the summer a rumor had started and stubbornly grown stronger: that this fall the long-awaited recognition of Ulrik Hindersten’s scholarly contribution would finally be forthcoming. He was going to be appointed to the professorial chair.

Many of his colleagues were assembled at the table but also several acquaintances from the neighborhood, not the most immediate neighbors but two couples who lived farther down the street. There was also a literature expert from Stockholm among the guests and some older men who spoke Italian.

It was a real party. There was an abundance of food, made by Mrs. Simonsson from Tobo, one of the few of Alice Hindersten’s childhood friends with whom she was still in contact. Mrs. Simonsson would come two, three times a year and clean the house. Always before Christmas, but also in the spring and in September. Sometimes her husband came along, a quiet man who Laura was afraid of, mostly on account of his enormous hands. He performed minor repairs around the house, fixed gutters, re-caulked the windows, and oiled squeaky doors. One time Laura had seen him kill a stray cat that Ulrik Hindersten found annoying. First Simons-son had lured the cat over with some herring, then he twisted the cat’s neck without a word and buried it in a corner of the garden.

Mrs. Simonsson brought everything out, the guests ate and drank and became increasingly noisy. Laura was sitting between one of the Italians and a student from her father’s department. The student was as pale and timid as Laura, and ate cautiously. It looked as if he was having difficulties with Mrs. Simonsson’s food.

“Your father will become famous,” was the only thing he said to Laura during the entire dinner.

Laura didn’t know what that meant. She understood the word but not how this fame would affect her and her family. Famous, she thought, and imagined her father’s voice issuing from the radio in the living room and how he would appear on television.

She also did not understand where all the strange people had come from. There were never guests at the table and all of a sudden the room was bursting with unknown voices and laughter. Laura knew it had to do with the approaching fame.

She looked at her father. He spoke with food in his mouth, gesturing with the knife in his hand. He looked as if he wanted to stab his dinner guests. A spot of gravy on his shirt stood out like a flower. Laura saw how her mother watched him closely. But there was also an unusual expression around her mouth that could be interpreted as a faint smile.

Mrs. Simonsson carried out new tureens, dishes, and bottles. Everything disappeared at an incredible rate as if the guests were uncertain how long the hospitality would be extended. One of the biggest eaters sat directly across from Laura and she knew immediately who he was. Her father had talked about “The Horse,” a colleague in the department, who at present was shoveling in mounds of leek gratin, veal steak, and gravy with great relish.

After several mouthfuls “The Horse” interrupted himself, wiped his mouth on the napkin, struck his glass, and called for silence. His exhalations came intermittently across the table. As the speech progressed his pale cheeks were transformed. “Livores mortis” her father later called those glowing patches. “The Horse” continuously turned his knotted hands with veins like living worms under the blotchy skin, as if he wanted to strangle the linen napkin in his hand.

He began by describing the heights that Ulrik Hindersten had set his sights on and thereby started a path where only very few had been able to leave a mark. This got a rousing response, especially from Laura’s partner. He clapped and shouted something about the apt metaphor. Laura, who had been raised in the presence of Petrarch, figured that “The Horse” must have alluded to something in the writer’s work.

The speech was long. He talked about the meaning of obstinancy and her mother’s smile was extinguished. He talked about humility and several guests chortled. Even Ulrik smiled. “The Horse” spoke of Ulrik’s taking on Truth in single combat and now everyone laughed.

The student began to fidget when “The Horse” started in on the situation at the department. One of the Italians burped discreetly into his napkin. Someone tittered nervously. Mrs. Simonsson made an extra clattering noise with the dessert plates. Ulrik Hindersten’s colleague went on at full steam, apparently unaware of the reactions around him.

“There are powers,” he said, “that do not have the will nor the intellectual capacity to completely appreciate our host’s brilliant ability to shed light on Petrarch’s poetry. The contradictory elements of the medieval fourteenth-century mind… the complexity of man’s remorseful struggle for fusion with… for an understanding of… that Ulrik has already approached in a trailblazing manner in his dissertation… cannot be emphasized enough… with an envious pettiness the critics have put aside all scholarly… our hostess… charming daughter… a home that breathes… gathered… a pleasure… the fullest extent…”

He went on in this way. The horselike aspect in his appearance was reinforced as he became carried away by his own eloquence and neighing laughter. The guests squirmed nervously in their chairs; Mrs. Simonsson became more impatient as she was serving ice cream for dessert.

The colleague concluded his remarks with a toast. Laura felt a purely physical relief as the guests reached for their glasses. Her intuition signaled catastrophe.

Her father, on the other hand, sensed nothing. His good mood made him open a dusty bottle of Taylor’s when the guests left. It was a gesture of goodwill to her mother, who loved port. They sat in the bay window. Ulrik Hindersten was optimistic. He talked about buying a house in Italy. Laura sat down on the floor by her parents and listened. Her mother sat and listened dumbstruck to how detailed the plans had become. Outside Arguà, not far from Petrarch’s grave, her father had seen an old three-story house, admittedly in disrepair but fully functional. With the house came an olive grove and a garden that sloped to the west. He described almost passionately the knotted olive trees and the little terrace with a pergola where grapevines created a pleasantly filtered light and coolness.

“We can live there large parts of the year,” he explained. “You can cultivate the garden and I can do research. Sometimes I will of course have to travel back to Sweden but I think the department will only be happy if I am not there so often,” he said, smiling with rare self-irony.

Her mother didn’t say anything, just stared out into the garden.

“You’ll have to leave the apple trees, but you’ll get oranges and olives instead,” Ulrik said and placed his hand on hers.

Laura didn’t know if it was the unexpected show of affection or the thought of the garden in Italy that made her mother suddenly burst into tears. Only later did she understand that her mother was more clearheaded than her father. She had known there would never be an olive grove.

“It won’t present any difficulties for Laura either,” her father continued. “Her Italian is as good as mine. She’ll adapt. Don’t worry.”

Laura shivered. How many times had she replayed this scene in the bay window to herself? She remembered every line, every expression, and her mother’s beautiful but sorrowful, almost transparent profile.

It was as if she did not have a body, as if her father were speaking to a creature whose veil-thin skin contained something immaterial.

Laura reached out and grabbed her mother’s ankle. The answer was an almost imperceptible head movement.

Several months later-when the garden was blanketed under the first snow-her mother returned to the topic of the dinner and especially “The Horse’s” speech.

“They’re not like other people,” she said. “When they say one thing they mean another. Remember how ‘The Horse’ talked, how he praised your father. Everything was a lie. Everyone sensed it, everyone except your father. If the decision to appoint your father to the professorship had been made, then ‘The Horse’ would not have said a single word, perhaps would not even have come for dinner. But he came, ate like a horse, and deliberately talked nonsense. He enjoyed it. He knew your father would never receive his title.”

“But why did he say those things?” Laura asked.

“So the fall would be even greater. The higher he could get Ulrik the greater the disaster. It’s like that china figurine,” her mother said and pointed to the figure of a girl in the window. “If it topples out of the window it will break in two, but if you drop it from a great height it will smash into a thousand pieces.”

Mother and daughter, united for a few minutes of conversation, knew their husband and father all too well. He would never make his peace, accept the way things were, and be content to end his career as an associate professor.

Laura allowed her gaze to glide from the figurine to the garden. A line of snow that rested on the lowest branch of the pear tree blew down at that moment and for an instant the air was filled with a whirling white smoke cloud.

There would never be a house in Arguà, never any day trips to Venice, never walks among olive trees. She knew this in the moment her mother got up from the table without a word of comfort. Not even when Laura picked up the china figurine and dropped it on the ground did her mother turn around. She walked into the kitchen. It was almost dinnertime.

Laura got up on stiff legs. Her body felt foreign to her. Her face flamed and grew hot, her limbs felt prickly, and she felt slightly dizzy. It wasn’t just the lack of sleep and food; it felt like the time she had taken a medication that did not agree with her. It had given her nightmares and she had vomited violently in the morning.

She put a hand on her crotch, which still ached. Stig would return, he had said this several times. She smiled suddenly. He loved her, she knew that now. And only Jessica stood in their way, the only thing that prevented him from coming back to her forever.

“Ulrik!” she yelled, as if to convince herself that her father was not there.

She dragged in the grocery bags from the terrace. A jar of honey fell out of a bag but she left it there. The exertion made her sweat. She unpacked the items in a trance-like state. The kitchen was one big mess. Masses of unwashed dishes were piled up on the counter, as well as glasses, teacups, and pots. On the kitchen table there were newspapers and unopened mail.

She ended up standing in front of the refrigerator. Inside it some shriveled vegetables, containers of margarine without lids, and dried heels of cheese were living their own life. Several slices of salami were covered in a green film of mold.

“Mrs. Simonsson,” she called out helplessly, but in an attack of will she pulled a garbage bag out of the pantry and filled it with all the leftover food.

Before replacing them with the newly bought items she had to sit down and rest.

She read the headline in the newspaper that was lying on top of the pile. The preamble talked about the “country butcher” who had struck again.

Laura unfolded the paper. The photograph on the front page made her wince. She felt that swinging sensation from her childhood. The stale air in the kitchen was replaced with the smell of freshly cut grass.

She put her hand over the picture and looked out through the window, and the longing for a diffuse sense of something, a possibility, missed many years ago, blocked her thoughts for a few moments as if a temporary electric error had created a short circuit in her brain.