The Princess of Burundi - Kjell Eriksson [5]
“No one,” Haver said defensively.
Rebecka Haver snorted.
“Go on, please. I’d like to hear the rest,” he said, and stretched out his hand for the salt shaker.
She shot him a look as if she were deciding whether or not to go on telling him about the situation at her workplace.
“He’s a threat to public health,” she said, pointing at the photograph in the county-administration newsletter.
“Surely that’s taking it a bit far.”
Rebecka shook her head while she again tapped her finger on the bearded county-politician’s face. I wouldn’t want to be under that finger, Haver thought.
“This is about everyone in our community, the aged, the weak, the ones who neither dare nor have the ability to speak up for themselves.”
He had heard this particular line of reasoning before and was starting to get sick of it. He salted his food a second time.
“Too much salt isn’t good for you,” Rebecka said.
He looked at her, put down the salt shaker, grasped his spoon, and ate the rest of his overly hard-boiled egg in silence.
Haver stood up, cleared the table, and put his coffee cup, saucer, and egg cup in the dishwasher, hastily wiped down the kitchen counter, and turned off the light over the stove. After these habitual actions he usually checked the temperature on the outside thermometer but this morning he remained standing in the middle of the kitchen. Something stopped him from moving over to the window, as if he were restrained by an invisible hand. Rebecka looked up briefly but went back to her reading. Then he knew. After checking the thermometer he would bend down and kiss his wife on the top of her head, say something about how much he liked her. The same routine every morning.
This time he hesitated, or rather it was his body that hesitated, that refused to take those two paces to the window. This discovery confused him.
Rebecka had stopped reading and was watching him with a kind of professional attentiveness, ingrained after many years of hospital rounds. He made a gesture as if to close the door to the dishwasher, but it was already shut.
“How are you feeling?”
“Fine,” he said. “I was just thinking.”
“Do you have a headache?”
He made a sweeping motion with his hand as if to brush this aside. During the fall he had suffered recurrent attacks of blinding pain in his forehead. It had been several weeks since the last attack. Had she noticed the reason for his hesitation? He didn’t think so.
“Our division is getting a new guy today,” he said. “From Gothenburg.”
“Strip him of his gun,” Rebecka said tartly.
He didn’t bother to reply; suddenly he was in a hurry. He left the kitchen and disappeared into the next room, which they used as an office.
“I’m going to be late,” he said, from halfway inside the closet. He threw on a sweat suit, shoes, and a sweater that Rebecka had made for him. He pulled out a bag from the clothing store Kapp Ahl from under some boxes, shut the door to the closet, and quickly walked out through the kitchen.
“I’m going to be late,” he repeated, and hesitated in the hallway for a few seconds before he opened the front door and stepped out into the chilly December morning. He took a few deep breaths, setting off with his head down.
December. The time of darkness. For Rebecka—or so it seemed—the darkness was heavier than it had been in years. Haver couldn’t remember her ever having been so low. He had been watching her strained attempts to put on a good face, but under the frail exterior her seasonal depression, or whatever it was, tugged at the thin membrane of control stretched over her pressed features.
A few snowflakes fluttered down. He met Josefsson from apartment 3, who was out with his poodle. This neighbor, who admired police officers and was always full of effusive praise for members of his profession, smiled and said a few words about the winter that was now upon them. Josefsson’s enthusiastic cheeriness always rubbed him the wrong way. Haver mumbled something about having to work.
He thought about Rebecka. She should start working again. She needed to have people around, the stress