The Lily Pond (20 page)

Stephie looks up from the letter and right into Uncle Evert’s eyes.

“Is it that bad?” he asks.

She nods mutely.

“They aren’t going to be able to leave?”

She shakes her head.

“What about later?”

“Maybe.”

Her voice sounds strangely distant, as if it were someone else’s.

Aunt Märta comes into the sitting room from the adjacent kitchen.

“What on earth has happened?”

“Stephie’s parents never left for America,” Uncle Evert tells her.

Their voices are distant, too. Nothing around her seems
real. Stephie feels as if huge iron tongs have her by the chest and are closing. She can’t breathe. Everything goes black before her eyes.

When she comes to, she’s lying on the kitchen settle. Aunt Märta is bathing her forehead with a washcloth soaked in ammonia solution. The powerful odor makes Stephie sneeze.

“I guess I fainted.”

“You fell like a broken mast,” says Uncle Evert.

“Hush now,” says Aunt Märta. “Let the poor girl rest.”

They leave her lying on the settle. Aunt Märta prepares dinner and Uncle Evert goes upstairs to have a wash and change his clothes. Eyes closed, Stephie lies there, listening to the familiar sounds: the clatter of plates and kitchen utensils, steps on the stairs. She’s there, but a part of her is elsewhere.

Behind her eyelids she sees a different room, a hospital ward with lots of beds. Her mamma is lying in one of them. Her face, surrounded by her black hair, is as white as the pillowcase. Her lips, too, are pale, not red with lipstick as they used to be, and she has big black rings under her eyes. Her cheeks are hollow, and the skin over her high cheekbones is pulled tight. Papa is sitting on the edge of the bed. He’s wearing his white doctor’s uniform. He’s holding Mamma’s hand and talking softly to her.

Stephie can see it all as clearly as if it were a film, a silent movie. But it’s not beautiful and romantic, as in
’Til We Meet
Again
, with the fatally ill woman going around in gorgeous ball gowns. It is nothing but horrible.

Though there are no sounds to go with the images, Stephie knows what her papa is saying to her mamma.

“Please don’t die; you mustn’t die.”

“What are you saying, dear?”

Stephie opens her eyes. Aunt Märta is holding her shoulders, shaking her lightly.

“Nobody’s going to die, my dear girl,” she says, running a hand over Stephie’s forehead. “Don’t be afraid. Nobody’s going to die.”

elevator stops at the fourth floor. Stephie gets out, closing the gate behind her. She finds her key, inserts it in the lock, and turns it. Christmas vacation is over. She’s back in the city again.

Putte is waiting by the door, wagging his tail. She bends down and scratches him behind the ears. Then he lies on his back, legs in the air, so she’ll scratch his stomach.

“Putte’s missed you,” Sven says from the far end of the hall.

And what about you?
Stephie wonders.
Did you miss me?

“How was your vacation?” he asks while she’s hanging up her overcoat.

“Fine,” she answers.

She doesn’t have the energy to tell him about her parents’ not having left for America. Not right now.

“I heard May was going out to visit you,” says Sven. “I bumped into her in town one day.”

“In town,” he says, as if they met just anywhere! He’s playing a game, and Stephie chooses to play along.

“Oh,” she says, matching his light tone of voice.

“Did she tell you we’d seen each other?”

Is Stephie wrong to sense a shade of worry under his nonchalance? Is there something about their meeting May didn’t tell her?

“Yes, on Kaptensgatan,” she says. “With Putte.”

Sven nods. “We were out for a long walk, me and Putte.”

She tries approaching the matter from a different angle. “I called,” she said, “to wish you a happy new year. But you weren’t home. Elna said you’d gone to a friend’s country place with him.”

“Right,” Sven says very fast. Maybe a little too fast? “Erik, a classmate. His family has a country place at Särö. It was just like you said, a little dull being on my own for the whole vacation.”

Everything he says sounds perfectly reasonable. Still, she feels that he’s keeping something from her. She doesn’t know why, but she’s absolutely sure. If only she could figure out the right question to ask to clear it all up. But before she can open her mouth, Sven goes on.

“Gosh, I should have thanked you for the letter opener
right away! It’s really beautiful. I’m ashamed that I didn’t get you anything. That was thoughtless of me.”

“Not at all,” Stephie says, though she doesn’t really mean it. She would actually have loved it if he had given her something. Nothing big or expensive, just something to show that he was thinking of her.

“It’s a bit late now,” Sven says, “but … well, here you are.”

He hands her a little package, a square box in wrapping paper. It looks like something from a jewelry store. Could it be jewelry? A ring?

She unwraps the package and raises the lid. The box contains something that looks like a silver coin about the size of a two-krona piece. But it’s not an ordinary coin with the profile of the king on one side and the coat of arms of Sweden on the other. Instead of the king, there’s an angel, and on the other side are two clasped hands.

Two hands—hers and Sven’s?

“It’s an amulet,” Sven explains. “For good luck. I found it in a strange little shop, full of the most amazing things.”

“Where is it?”

“On Vallgatan.”

“Is the shopkeeper an elderly man? With an accent?”

“How did you know?”

“That’s where I bought your opener!”

They bought their presents for each other at the same place.

It seems like a secret portent.

Since it’s Sunday and Stephie has just come back, she is invited to join the family in the dining room for dinner. She sits erect on one of the uncomfortable mahogany chairs, feeling a bit of the horsehair stuffing poking into her thigh.

“How are the Janssons doing?” Mrs. Söderberg asks in her most silken tone.

“Fine, thank you.”

“And the fishing is all right?”

“Yes, thanks.”

“It must be very isolated out there in the winter,” the doctor’s wife continues. “What a hard life they lead!”

“Ah, well,” the doctor interjects. “Just think of all the city problems they don’t have to deal with.”

“You sound as if you were talking about some savages at the ends of the earth,” Sven tells them.

“Absurd,” the doctor snorts. “You always have to misinterpret everything.”

As always, Mrs. Söderberg is quick to defuse a conflict.

“Stephie, I do hope you remembered to thank Mrs. Jansson for the lovely flowers?”

“Of course. She sends you best wishes for the new year.”

“And your parents, Stephie? How did their journey go?”

Sven looks surprised and a bit embarrassed, as if he wishes he had remembered to ask her himself.

“They weren’t able to leave,” Stephie says. “Mamma fell ill.”

She hopes there will be no more questions, at least not right now, while they’re sitting around the big table under the crystal chandelier, eating roast veal with cucumber salad.

But Mrs. Söderberg pursues the subject.

“Oh dear, she fell ill? I do hope it’s nothing serious.”

“Pneumonia,” says Stephie, who can hear how abrupt, and almost unfriendly, her own voice sounds. But suddenly a lump in her throat is making it difficult to speak.

“My, my,” says the doctor. “I hope she’s in good hands. But your father is a doctor, too, isn’t he?”

“She’s in the hospital.” Stephie gulps. “She’s getting better.”

“That’s fine, then,” says Mrs. Söderberg. “I’m sure it would do her the world of good to convalesce in the countryside. Could that be arranged? And then they can make their trip later, when she has recovered her strength.”

Stephie reaches the breaking point.

“You have no idea!” she bursts out. “No idea at all! You can’t imagine what it’s really like for them.”

Mrs. Söderberg gapes. Under her face powder, a red spot has appeared on each cheek. Although her mouth is open, for once she is silent.

“Go on,” Sven says to Stephie. “Tell them. They need to hear it.”

“That will be quite enough,” the doctor roars. “I won’t be insulted in my own home. If you aren’t comfortable here,
Stephanie, you’ll just have to find yourself somewhere else to lodge. And, Sven, I forbid you to exploit the girl for your political nonsense.”

Now his wife has regained her composure.

“Settle down now,” she says. “Let us put this little episode behind us. If everyone is finished, I will ask Elna to clear.”

By the time Elna comes in to take the main dish away, the doctor and his wife are deep in discussion about some of their friends. Stephie and Sven sit in silence.

Although Mrs. Söderberg said they should put the matter behind them, it’s still very much present. Later in the evening, she knocks on Stephie’s door.

“Stephanie, my husband and I would like a word with you,” she says. “Please come along into the library.”

Stephie follows her through the hall and into the room they call their library. What is going to happen now? Are they going to throw her out? Will she be able to continue her schooling?

The doctor is in his armchair. His wife sits down next to him. No one asks Stephie to have a seat, so she remains standing.

“My wife and I are anything but pro-German,” the doctor begins. “I’m sure you know that, Stephanie. On the other hand, we are not members of the irresponsible groups who shout about the evil deeds of the Germans and want to involve Sweden in the war. The Germans are harsh toward their opponents, possibly harsher than necessary, but they are not inhuman. That’s my view, and I stand by it.”

“Stephanie, we know that your family has been hit hard by this war,” Mrs. Söderberg continues. “That’s why we wanted to be helpful and ensure you the opportunity to go on with your schooling. But we cannot tolerate behavior of the kind you have displayed today.”

Here it comes. They want her to leave.

“Still, we have decided to give you one last chance,” Mrs. Söderberg goes on. “If anything of the kind happens again, we will unfortunately have to inform the Janssons that we cannot allow you to go on living with us, Stephanie. Have we made ourselves perfectly clear?”

“Yes.”

“And another thing,” adds the doctor. “Sven has any number of preposterous ideas about politics, about which I assume he has told you. You mustn’t pay any attention to him, Stephanie.”

“Really,” his wife interjects. “To tell the truth, I think you ought to spend less time with Sven altogether. And above all, I do not think it is appropriate for the two of you to be in his room in the evenings.”

“That will be all,” says the doctor. “Good night, and I hope we will not need to have any more discussions of this kind.”

“Good night.”

When Stephie has pulled the library door closed behind her, she stands quietly in the dusky hallway. She catches a glimpse of her own reflection in the tall mirror over the hall table. The pale oval that is her face seems to be suspended all on its own in the air.