The Demon of Dakar - Kjell Eriksson [31]
She tore open the envelope. Inside was a full-size sheet of paper. The text consisted of only a few lines:
Dear Ann,
I hope you are well. I just wanted to tell you that Viola has broken her hip and is at the Akademiska Hospital. It happened in the hen house. She is in the orthopedic wing, 70E. I’m working mostly.
She would be grateful to have a visitor.
Regards, Edvard
Ann read it again. So typical of Edvard. Short sentences, a jumble of hen houses and hospitals. No personal information other than that he was working. As if that was new. Nothing about how he was or what he was thinking.
She read it a third time. Perhaps Viola was in bad shape? She was over ninety years old, after all. That must be it, Ann thought, otherwise he would not have written. He thinks she is going to die and knows I would not forgive him if he had not told me. Perhaps Viola asked him to write? Perhaps the idea had been hers alone?
After Edvard left his family many years ago he had lived in Viola’s house in Gräsö. It was an old archipelago homestead from the 1800s, and Edvard rented the whole upstairs. He had eventually acclimatized to the island, found a job with a builder, and regarded himself as a permanent Gräsö inhabitant. For Viola it was both a security and a comfort to have Edvard as a tenant. She lacked family, and after he had lived there for a couple of years she decided that it was Edvard who would be her heir.
At first Viola had seen Ann as a threat, someone who would perhaps convince Edvard to move away. But in time the old woman had accepted her, seemingly against her will and gruffly, as was her manner. She had perhaps hoped that Edvard and Ann would become a couple on Gräsö.
Viola herself had had an unhappy love affair in her youth—Victor, an old childhood friend of the same age. At some point Viola had let slip that she once, seventy years ago, had hoped that they would marry. But nothing came of it. Victor went to sea, was away from the island for a few years, came back and took over his parents’ farm. They still saw each other. Victor came by almost every day. Ann saw them as the world’s most devoted noncohabiting couple.
Perhaps it was there, in the old peoples’ unconsummated life together, the material source for why Viola had let Ann come close. She saw that however intimate Ann and Edvard were, they didn’t manage to make it.
Ann didn’t know anything about what it meant to break a hip, but imagined that for an old person it could mark the beginning of the end. Perhaps Viola sensed this and wished to see Ann one last time?
Candy and juice had perked Erik up and he crawled down from the chair. Ann watched him as he disappeared into his room. He was largely independent now and she thanked the gods for it.
Of course she had to visit the old woman. She wanted to go to the hospital immediately, but she couldn’t take Erik. Ann also didn’t want Viola to meet him, since he was the reason why Ann and Edvard had broken up.
She decided she would go there tomorrow directly after the morning meeting at work. She would spend the evening with her speculations. She read the letter one more time and wished she could have seen Edvard when he wrote it.
Twelve
Lorenzo Wader ordered a Staropramen, then took the beer to the room beyond the bar, lit a cigarillo, and leaned back in an armchair. The little man would arrive in ten minutes.
Lorenzo did not trust him, why should he? A little rat spreading gossip. But he was a useful rat. Lorenzo smiled to himself and gave a couple of the other hotel guests a nod as they walked past on their way into the bar. They had exchanged a few words the day before and the men had told him they were attending a seismology conference with participants from around the world. Lorenzo had pacified their curiosity by telling them that he was a businessman who was looking for new markets and contacts, which was true. He wanted to expand.
At the agreed-upon time the rat slunk in through the entrance, gave the receptionist a worried look, caught sight of Lorenzo Wader,