The Red Address Book. Sofia Lundberg

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СКАЧАТЬ There he stood. Pappa. His cry echoed from the stone walls, and blood pulsed from his hand, staining red the layer of frost covering the grass. There had been an accident in his workshop, and a piece of metal was wedged in his wrist. His cry ebbed, and he sank to the ground. We ran down the steps and into the yard, towards him; there were many of us. Mamma tied her apron around his wrist and held his arm in the air. Her cry was as loud as his when she shouted for help. Pappa’s face was worryingly pale, his lips a shade of bluish-purple. Everything that happened next is a haze. The men carrying him to the street. The car that picked him up and drove him away. The solitary dry white rose growing on the bush by the wall, and the frost embracing it. Once everyone had gone, I stayed where I was in the yard and stared at it. That rose was a survivor. I prayed to God that my pappa would find the same strength.

      Weeks of anxious waiting followed. Every day, we would see Mamma pack up the remains of breakfast — the porridge, milk, and bread — and head off to the hospital. She would often come home with the food parcel unopened.

      One day, she came home with Pappa’s clothes draped over the basket, which was still full of food. Her eyes were swollen and red from crying. As red as Pappa’s poisoned blood.

      Everything stopped. Life came to an end. Not just for Pappa, but for all of us. His desperate cry that frosty November morning was a brutal end to my childhood.

       The Red Address Book

      S. SERAFIN, DOMINIQUE

      The tears at night weren’t mine, but they were so constant that sometimes I would wake and think they were. Mamma started sitting in the rocking chair in the kitchen once Agnes and I had gone to bed, and I got used to falling asleep to the accompaniment of Mamma’s sobs. She sewed and she cried; the sound came in waves, through the room, across the ceiling, to us children. She thought we were sleeping. We weren’t. I could hear her sniffing and swallowing, trying to clear her nose. I felt her despair at having been left alone, no longer able to live securely in Pappa’s shadow.

      I missed him too. He would never sit in his armchair again, deeply absorbed in a book. I would never be able to crawl into his lap and follow him out into the world. The only hugs I remember from my childhood are the ones Pappa gave me.

      Those were difficult months. The porridge we ate for breakfast and dinner became more and more watery. The berries, which we had picked in the forest and then dried, started to run out. One day, Mamma shot a pigeon with Pappa’s gun. It was enough for a stew, and it was the first time since he had died that we were all full, the first time the food had made our cheeks flush, the first time we had laughed. But that laughter would soon die out.

      “You’re the oldest, you’ll have to look after yourself now,” she said, pressing a scrap of paper into my hand. I saw the tears brimming in her green eyes before she turned away and, with a wet cloth, began frantically rubbing at the plates we had just eaten from. The kitchen we stood in at the time, so long ago, has become a kind of museum of childhood memory for me. I remember everything in detail. The skirt she was busy sewing, the blue one, draped over the stool. The potato stew and the foam that had run over during cooking, drying down the side of the pot. The lone candle, which bathed the room in a dim glow. My mother’s movements between the sink and the table. Her dress, which swung between her legs when she moved.

      “What do you mean?” I managed to ask.

      She paused but didn’t turn to look at me.

      I continued, “Are you kicking me out?”

      No reply.

      “Say something! Are you kicking me out?”

      She looked down at the sink.

      “You’re a big girl now, Doris. You have to understand. It’s a good job I’ve found for you. And as you can see, the address isn’t too far away. We’ll still be able to see each other.”

      “But what about school?”

      Mamma looked up and stared straight ahead.

      “Pappa would never have let you take me out of school. Not now! I’m not ready!” I shouted at her. Agnes whimpered anxiously in her chair.

      I slumped down at the table and burst into tears. Mamma came to sit next to me and placed her palm on my forehead. It was still cold and damp from the dishwater.

      “Please don’t cry, my love,” she whispered, pressing her head to mine. It was so quiet that I could almost hear the heavy tears rolling down her cheeks, mixing with my own.

      “You can come home every Sunday, that’s your day off.”

      Her comforting whisper became a faint murmur in my ears. Eventually, I fell asleep in her arms.

      I woke the next morning to the brutal and undeniable truth that I was being forced to leave my home and my security for an unfamiliar address. Without protesting, I took the bag of clothes that Mamma held out to me, but I couldn’t look her in the eye as we said goodbye. I hugged my little sister and then left without a word. I carried the bag in one hand, and three of Pappa’s books, tied together with a thick piece of string, in the other. There was a name on the scrap of paper in my coat pocket, written in Mamma’s ornate script: Dominique Serafin. That was followed by a couple of strict instructions: Curtsy nicely. Speak properly. I wandered slowly through the streets of Södermalm towards the address below the name: Bastugatan 5. That was where I would find my new home.

      When I arrived, I paused for quite some time outside the modern building. Red window frames surrounding big, beautiful windows. The façade was made of stone, and there was an even walkway leading into the yard. It was a long way from the simple, weathered wooden house that had been my home until now.

      A woman came out through the door. She was wearing glossy leather shoes and a shiny white dress without a defined waist. She had a beige cloche hat pulled down over her ears, and a small leather bag in the same shade hung from her arm. Ashamed, I ran my hands over my own worn, knee-length wool skirt, and wondered who would open the door when I knocked. Whether Dominique was a man or a woman. I couldn’t know; I had never heard such a name before.

      I walked slowly, my feet pausing on each step of the polished marble staircase. Two floors up. The double doors, made from dark oak, were taller than any doors I had ever seen. I took a step forward and lifted the knocker, a lion’s head. The sound echoed faintly, and I stared straight into the lion’s eyes. A woman dressed in black opened the door and curtsied. I began to unfold the note for her, but another woman appeared before I had time to finish. The woman in black moved to one side and stood with a straight back against the wall.

      The second woman had reddish-brown hair, which she wore in two long braids wound into a thick bun at the nape of her neck. Around her neck hung several strings of white pearls, slightly varied in size and shape. Her three-quarter-length dress, with a pleated skirt, was made of shiny emerald-green silk, which rustled when she moved. She was wealthy; I knew that immediately. She looked me up and down, took a drag on the cigarette that she held in a long black holder, and then blew the smoke towards the ceiling.

      “Well, what do have we here?” She had a strong French accent, and her voice was hoarse from smoking. “Such a pretty girl. You can stay. Come, come inside now.”

      With that, she turned and disappeared into the apartment. I remained where I was on the doormat, my bag in front of me. The woman in black nodded for me to follow her inside. She took me through the kitchen to the adjoining maids’ bedroom, СКАЧАТЬ