Astrid and Veronika Read online




  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Author’s note

  Sources of poetry cited in the text

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  ASTRID & VERONIKA

  LINDA OLSSON was born in Stockholm, Sweden. She graduated from the University of Stockholm with a Bachelor of Law, then pursued a career in banking and finance until she left Sweden in 1986. She has lived in Kenya, Singapore, Britain and Japan and has been a permanent resident in New Zealand since 1990. In 1993 she completed a Bachelor of Arts in English and German literature at Victoria University of Wellington. In 2003 she won the Sunday Star-Times Short Story Competition. She lives in Auckland and this is her first novel.

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  First published in New Zealand under the title

  Let Me Sing You Gentle Songs by Penguin Books (NZ) 2005

  Published in Penguin Books (USA) 2007

  Copyright © Linda Olsson, 2005 All rights reserved

  Pages 259–267 constitute an extension of this copyright page.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Olsson, Linda.

  [Let me sing you gentle songs]

  Astrid & Veronika / Linda Olsson

  p. cm.

  Originally published under title: Let me sing you gentle songs

  eISBN : 978-1-101-53694-0

  1. Female friendship — Fiction. 2. Sweden — Fiction.

  I. Title. II. Title: Astrid and Veronika.

  PR9639.4.O47 2007

  823’.912 — dc22 2006050660

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

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  For Anna-Lisa, my grandmother, my friend

  I drift around my rooms and write to shadows, thinking as I always did, that writing only can make peace, can right and heal that which a life made sordid.

  BO BERGMAN, ‘Sömnlös’ (Sleepless) in Äventyret (The adventure), 1969

  PROLOGUE

  Astrid

  July 1942, Västra Sångeby, Dalarna, Sweden

  When the sun dipped behind the wall of trees, we lay down and the white night swallowed us. It has been night ever since.

  Veronika

  November 2002, Karekare, New Zealand

  Above us the pitiless sun, while the world swirled incomprehensible around the stillness that was the two of us. Then the violent crashing of the victorious sea.

  1

  . . . as the day breaks.

  There had been wind and drifting snow during her journey, but as darkness fell, the wind died and the snow settled.

  It was the first day of March. She had driven from Stockholm in the gradually deepening dusk that seamlessly became night. It had been a slow journey, but it had given her time to think. Or erase thoughts.

  She turned off the main road by the church, then on to the narrow steep road up the hill, and took the last turn on to the unsealed road. No cars had passed here since the new snow had fallen and the road had a pristine soft whiteness between the rounded banks of packed snow. She drove slowly, her eyes adjusting to the darkness. She had been told there were only two houses up here, and she saw them outlined against the sky. Both lay dark; there were no lights anywhere.

  She passed the larger house and, further along, left the road altogether, driving through the snow into the front yard of the second house. She parked near the steps leading up to the porch. A path had been cleared in preparation for her arrival, but new snow had fallen since and it was now just a soft indent in the white blanket. When she stepped out of the car, she saw stalks of dead grass sticking through the snow, and there were icy patches just underneath. Being careful not to slip, she trod cautiously as she moved back and forth between car and house, emptying the boot and back seat. The only sound as she carried bags and boxes into the house was the brittle crunching of snow under her feet. She kept the headlights on and the light slanted across her footprints in the snow.

  The neighbouring house was a silent shadow, looming in the darkness beyond the tunnel of light where she walked. The air was dry and cold and her breath left her lips in whiffs of white vapour dissolving in the night. The sky was a black infinity without stars or moon. She felt as if she had dropped through a tunnel into a world of absolute silence.

  That night, she lay in a bed where her body was an unfamiliar shape, in this house that didn’t know her yet. In the silent darkness, it was as if she were nowhere. She felt light as air.

  Next morning the sun was barely able to penetrate a white sky. She opened the window to a light wind and the possibility of more snow in the air. She stood looking out, pulling her red bathrobe tight over her chest. She thought about her journey, but refused to let her mind follow the road back to the starting point. Instead, she thought about the many journeys before. Unpacking in unfamiliar places, making a home wherever a certain journey ended, with her father the only constant. She knew that this journey was different. All her life
she had travelled in his company, her hand in her father’s, on their way towards a new overseas posting. Since her mother left it had always been the two of them. And somehow, even the most exotic place had become just another stop on their journey together. But the father she had visited in Tokyo in December now had his own life, separate from hers. They were no longer fellow travellers. This journey was a solitary one. A flight, an escape. A journey without a goal. Her life felt as uncertain as the light. Poised in a white nothingness.

  She closed the window but remained standing, looking out. She could see beyond the river and the village, into the blue distance of forests and mountains. The landscape before her seemed ancient, rounded mountains polished by ice and wind, slow-moving rivers and still lakes. It was land that provided sparingly, and only after hard toil.

  She turned and looked across the field. What had been in shadow the evening before was now starkly exposed in the bleak morning light. The other house was larger than it had seemed: a generous two-storey wooden building that might once have been painted yellow but was now fading into indistinct pale grey, blending in with the colours of the sky and the snow. The windows were empty black squares. Still no signs of life.

  There was firewood in a basket by the stove, thoughtfully prepared with fine dry sticks on top and larger pieces underneath. She decided to make a fire, and she also turned on the electric cooker to heat water for a coffee. She sat at the table with the mug between her hands while the fire slowly began to crackle.

  She had arrived without a timeframe and had brought only a few bags with her personal belongings, books and CDs. The decision had been sudden, leaving little time for preparations. In fact it hadn’t been so much a decision as a series of almost unconscious swift actions. She felt she had no plans, no thoughts; yet at some level, her mind and her body had taken action and catapulted her into this pool of stillness.

  By the second day the house still kept its distance. There were signs of recent renovation — new wallpaper, new bathroom fittings and tiles. New cupboards in the kitchen, smart and practical but a little out of place. It was a modest, unassuming house with an abandoned quality about it. Minimally furnished, with a table and six chairs in the kitchen, two small sofas and a coffee table in the sitting room, and two beds in the upstairs bedroom. The wooden floors were crisscrossed by strips of hand-loomed rag rugs and the windows had no curtains, just plain white blinds. She hadn’t bothered to have the telephone connected, but she had brought her mobile. She kept it turned off, in the drawer of the bedside table.

  She was an orphan tenant in an orphan house.

  Her life slowly found its own organic rhythm. After a week she had established her morning routine. She got up early, had coffee at the kitchen table and watched the room absorb the growing daylight. It felt as if the house had accepted her, as if they had begun their life together. The soles of her feet had become familiar with the wooden steps of the staircase, her nose accustomed to the smells of the walls, and she was gradually adding her own imprint, leaving minute traces. She shifted the sofas around in the sitting room so she could sit and look out the window, and she bought a potted geranium for the kitchen windowsill. She had created a workplace of sorts on one end of the kitchen table: the laptop stood open, ready to register words; her notebook, dictionaries and pens were neatly stacked on one side. Fingers poised on the keys, she spent time staring into the screen, but what little writing she did, she erased again.

  Each day began with a walk, regardless of the weather. Unless she walked all the way down to the village, she rarely saw another person. One morning, a deer stood watching as she walked across the front yard. It remained there, still, its eyes locking with hers, before soundlessly turning and disappearing behind the barn in one swift movement. She saw the tracks of moose and foxes in the snow. The nights were still cold, and in the darkness winter reclaimed what had been conceded during the days. Each morning began grey and icy.

  The house across the field remained dark and silent. For the first few days she wasn’t sure whether it was inhabited. Then one day she exchanged a few words with the woman at the checkout in the village shop and introduced herself.

  ‘I am Veronika Bergman. I’m renting the Malms’ house up on the hill.’

  ‘Ah, so you are Astrid’s new neighbour,’ the woman replied. She smiled and rolled her eyes. ‘Astrid Mattson, the village witch. Doesn’t like people. Keeps to herself. Not much of a neighbour, I’m afraid.’ She handed Veronika her change, then added, ‘As you will discover, no doubt.’

  It was two weeks before she saw her neighbour for the first time. The old woman looked almost obscenely exposed, a hunched solitary figure in a dark heavy coat and rubber boots, uncertainly navigating the icy road on her way to the village. Her house had been her protector until then, the dark windows loyal keepers of the secrets of the life inside.

  After her daily walk, Veronika sat down in front of the laptop, but her eyes drifted from the screen to the window and the landscape beyond. There had been a time when she had felt that the book was absolutely clear, perfectly shaped in her mind, and that the process of typing the words would be a mere technical exercise, swift and easy. That all that was required was her withdrawal from the world, and she would see. Stillness. Peace.

  But the screen remained blank.

  The grey weather prevailed. It was as if time stood still. It didn’t snow, but nor was there any sun. Invisible crows cawed in an otherwise silent world.

  One morning, as she passed by her neighbour’s house on her daily walk, she noticed that the kitchen window was open. It was just a chink, wide enough for someone to look out, but offering no view of the interior. Veronika waved as she walked past. She imagined the old woman there, in the darkness behind the glass, but she couldn’t be sure.

  She was thinking about the book, about the continuous process of reshaping and reassembling all her ideas and plans. It was as if the book she had begun in another world, in another life, had been written by someone else. The words no longer had a connection with the person she had become. Here, there were no distractions other than those she carried within, and everything lay exposed. It was time to find new words.

  Then, finally, the promise of spring. Veronica stood on the porch and looked up into a sky that was an endless blue canvas, with a flight of migrating birds like delicate drifting black calligraphy. The morning had dawned with no hint of a change and she had cut short her morning walk. Now, with the sun on her face, she decided to walk down to the river. She strolled down the hill, crossed the road and carried on through the stretch of forest. Grainy snow still piled in the shade at the foot of the firs, but down at the river the ice was breaking, sending large chunks bobbing on the dark surface. The spring flood was yet to arrive: the snow in the mountains hadn’t begun to melt. She kept her face upturned towards the sun, and when she got back home she sat down on the front steps for a while. The stones were warm under her buttocks. She pulled out her notebook from the small backpack by her side and started to write. When she put down her pen, she was surprised to see that the day was gently folding, the slanting rays of sun filtering through the treetops across the road. She closed the book, lifted her face to the last light and slowly drew a breath.

  And realised how long it had been since she had properly filled her lungs.

  2

  The smallest whirl, a ripple . . .

  Astrid stood naked looking out the window. It was late and very dark. If not for the white snow, she wouldn’t have been able to see much. Just the yellow eyes of the windows across the field, startled awake after such a long sleep.

  Her own house was in darkness, as always. Dark and warm. She kept it well heated. It was an organic part of her and its shapes were ingrained in her body: she navigated the space effortlessly without lights. Also, the darkness sometimes brought the animals close: the moose, the owls, even the lynx. Self-contained observers like her, with their own space, only briefly visiting hers.

&n
bsp; She rarely looked out the windows: the view had lost all meaning.

  Yet there she was, by the window, enveloped in the warm darkness of her house, intently following the movements across the white field. She crossed her arms over her chest, cupped her breasts with her hands. They were warm to the touch, heavy. She bent forward, her forehead almost touching the glass. In the stillness of the night all she could see was the dark outline of a woman moving in the bright tunnel of light from the headlights of a car. The front door was wide open, a gaping yellow square in the night. She ran her tongue over her teeth, let it glide over sharp edges and over stretches of soft gum, sucking away the saliva. All the while, she kept her eyes on the other house.

  Long after the headlights had been turned off and the front door closed, she remained by the window, embracing herself, letting her hands run over the papery skin of her arms. Staring into the space that separated the houses.

  She had expected the arrival, but she was taken by surprise at her own reaction. The fact that she was here, by the window, watching.

  The following morning she woke early, as always, in the room behind the kitchen that was her bedroom. She had moved downstairs a long time ago, made her bedroom where once there had been a small dining room. She hadn’t made any major changes, just pushed the table up against the window, so that the four chairs on the far side were hard against the wall in order to make room for a narrow bed. She kept her clothes in the hallway outside the kitchen.

  There was no blind, only strips of faded chintz pulled back on either side of the window. She liked to wake up in darkness. She dreaded the return of spring and the relentless white nights of summer.

  She lay still, watching the shade of the ceiling change, her ears alert. The sounds of darkness were faint but familiar. She could hear the snow adjusting to the slowly rising temperature, the wind preparing to pick up, the rustling of small bodies scuttling across the hard crust of snow that had thawed and frozen over again. The night had folded; the day had arrived. She heard the first sound of morning: the cawing of a crow. As if carried on the light, the sound invaded her room. She didn’t move but her eyes were open, her ears sharp. The sound and the light stretched their tentacles around the room, fingered the walls, the ceiling, the floor. Glided over her blanket and paused. She watched the light on the ceiling as the first bleak rays of sun crossed the grey expanse. There was no escape; eventually she must surrender. It was there. She had to concede and begin another day.