Castle Gripsholm Page 4

  They are deliberate in Sweden – very deliberate. There are two types of Swede: the agreeable Swede – a quiet, friendly man – and the disagreeable Swede. He is extremely proud and so obtuse he doesn’t notice how pig-headed he is. We were dealing with one of the helpful sort. An interpreter, yes, they had one, and they would send him along to our hotel the next morning. Then we went to eat.

  The Princess knew about food, and in Sweden they ate well, so long as you stuck to cold hors d’oeuvres – to Smörgåsbord. Unsurpassable. Their cooking was average, and they didn’t have a clue about red wine, which rather distressed me. The Princess didn’t drink red wine much. Instead – and she was the only woman I’ve ever met who did – she liked whisky. Most women say it tastes just like a dentist’s mouthwash, but if it’s good whisky, it tastes of smoke.

  The next morning the interpreter arrived.

  A fat man appeared, a mountain of a man. This was Bengtsson. He could speak Spanish and very good English, as well as German. Or rather: I listened once . . . I listened twice . . . he must have learned his German in America, because he had the brightest, loveliest and funniest American accent. He spoke German like a circus clown, but he was what Berliners call ‘proper’. He understood immediately what we wanted, and immersed himself in maps, timetables and brochures. By the afternoon we were on our way.

  We went to Dalarne. We toured the countryside around Stockholm, and rattled along dusty country roads to the remotest villages. We saw sullen fir-trees, stupid pines and majestic old deciduous trees under a blue summer sky scattered with white, cotton-wool clouds; but we didn’t find what we were looking for. And what was that? We wanted a very small, very quiet little cottage, secluded, comfortable, peaceful, with a little garden . . . that was what we had dreamed of. Perhaps no such thing existed.

  Our fat man was absolutely tireless. While we drove around looking, we asked him about his job. Yes, he guided foreigners around Sweden. Did he really know all the things he told them about? By no means – but he had lived in America for a long time, and he knew his Americans. Figures! He gave them plenty of figures: dates and dimensions and prices and figures, figures, figures . . . Didn’t matter if they were wrong. His German became more fluent with every day he spent with us, but it also became more American.

  Three weeks back,’ he said, when we had just returned from another unsuccessful expedition and were having supper, ‘three weeks back, there was this American family in Stockholm. I said to them, it takes just one visit to America, and you realise that the whole of the rest of the world is like an Amurrican callany. Yup. After that, the people rilly took to me in a big way. Bottoms up!’

  Bottoms up? We were in Sweden, he should be saying ‘Skål!’ Skål is the same as ‘shawl’. Seeing that the Princess was a poor foreigner who didn’t understand us Swedes properly, I said, ‘Shawl to you!’ and all three of us understood.

  The fat man ordered himself another schnaps. He stared dreamily into his glass. ‘In Göteborg lives a guy with a big cellar – he’s got everything there, whisky, brandy and cognac, red and white wine and champagne. But, instead of drinking it, he’s saving it all! I think that’s rilly turrific!’ With that, he knocked his own glass back.

  By now the days were passing, and we had listened to endless conversations, and heard innumerable people saying what Swedes always say, at everry possible juncture, ‘Yasso . . .’ and ‘Nedo’, and all the other things people say when they have nothing to say. Our fat man had guided us to many beautiful places, through wonderful rich forests. ‘Here are some fine-looking trees!’ he would say. The Princess was beginning to jib a little.

  ‘He’s laughing all the way to the bank,’ she said. ‘My dear lovely Pops, we’re no Rockefellers. Now put your foot down once and for all and tell him what we want!’

  What now? Our fat man was walking ahead of us, pensive, but pretty well pleased with the world. He banged the pavement with his stick and was thinking hard; you could tell from his broad back how hard he was thinking. Then he growled because he had thought of something.

  ‘We’ll go to Mariefred,’ he said. ‘That’s a little place . . . it’s all right! We can go there tomorrow!’

  The Princess shot me an ominous look. ‘If we don’t find anything there, Poppa, I’ll stick you in a children’s home, and go off and join my boss in Abbazia. That’ll concentrate your mind!’

  But the next day we did see something.

  Mariefred is a tiny little place on the shores of Lake Maelar. The landscape was quiet and peaceful, with meadows and trees, fields and forests – but no one would have paid any attention to it, had it not been the site of one of the oldest castles in Sweden: Castle Gripsholm.

  It was a radiantly clear day. The red bricks of the castle glowed, its round domes seemed to erupt into the blue sky. But the building was solid, weighty, seigneurial. Bengtsson waved the guide away, he would show us round himself. We went into the castle.

  There were many fine paintings inside. They did nothing for me. I can’t see. There are visual types and aural types; I can only hear. A variation of an eighth of a tone in a conversation will still be with me four years later, but a painting is just something colourful. I don’t know anything about the architectural style of this castle – I only know that if I were to build one for myself, I would build it like that.

  Herr Bengtsson explained the castle to us, the way he might have explained it to his Americans. He’d been consulting a bottle or two, and after every date he added, ‘But I’m not quite sure about that,’ so we looked it up in Baedeker. It was all wrong, all of it, and we were delighted. There was a dungeon, where Adolfus the Unshaven had been kept locked up for years by Gustavus the Constipated. The castle had very thick walls, and there was a round cage for prisoners, and a gruesome oubliette, or perhaps it was a well . . . Man has always tormented man, only today it takes different forms. But the best thing was the theatre. They had a little theatre in the castle – perhaps so that they wouldn’t get bored during sieges. I sat down on one of the benches in the auditorium, and put on a pastoral comedy for myself, with love and duelling and sighing and refined tippling – and then the Princess became quite forceful. ‘Now or never!’ she said.

  ‘Right – Herr Bengtsson!’

  Like all good-natured men, our fat man was scared of women – he bent his soul as a traveller bends his back under a shower of rain. He made a big effort, and really threw himself into action. He was on the telephone for a long time and then disappeared.

  After lunch, he returned in high spirits, his fat rippling with contentment. ‘Come with me!’ he said.

  The castle had an annexe. If asked, Fatty would surely have replied, ‘In the twenty-first century . . .’ It was fairly new, long, smooth-fronted, handsome. We went in, and were met by a very friendly old lady. It turned out that there were two large rooms and another, smaller one to let in this castle-annexe. Right here in the castle? I looked disbelievingly at Herr Bengtsson. Here in the castle. And she would cook for us. But wouldn’t we be disturbed by countless tourists coming here to take in the paintings and the torture-chamber? They only came on Sundays, and they never came round this way, they went over there . . .

  We inspected the rooms. They were nice and big; there was old castle furniture in them, in a heavy, comfortable style. With my blind spot, I could see none of the details – but the style spoke to me, and it said yes.

  One of the windows overlooked the lake, another a quiet little park. The Princess, with female practicality, was assessing the bathroom situation . . . and came back satisfied. The price was surprisingly low. ‘Why is that?’ I asked Fatty. Even when faced with good fortune, we tend to be suspicious. The lady of the castle did it out of friendship for him, because she knew him. And people didn’t often come here for a longer stay. Mariefred was well known as a place for excursions; and such a reputation tended to stick to a place. So we took the rooms.

  When we had taken them, I spoke those golden words, ‘We
should have . . .’ and got a friendly smack from the Princess.

  ‘You old moaner.’ We celebrated the agreement with a big brandy for the three of us.

  ‘Do you know her well, the lady of the castle?’ I asked Herr Bengtsson. ‘She’s been so kind to us!’

  ‘You know,’ he replied thoughtfully, ‘everyone knows the monkey, but – the monkey knows no one.’ We had to agree with him there. Then Fatty said goodbye. The suitcases arrived and we unpacked. We re-arranged all the furniture until it was all back where it had been to begin with . . . the Princess took a trial bath, and I rejoiced at the way she crossed the room naked – like a real princess. No, not like a princess, like a woman who knows she has a beautiful body.

  ‘Lydia,’ I said, ‘there was a Dutch girl in Paris, who had a tattoo on her thigh, over the place she wanted to be kissed on. Can I ask you . . .’ She answered. And here begins section

  6

  We lay in a meadow, bathing our souls.

  The sky was flecked with white; when you had been roasted by the sun for a while, a cloud would come along, a light wind would blow, and the temperature would drop a little. A dog trotted over the grass, a good way behind us.

  ‘What kind is it?’ I asked.

  ‘A bull dachshund,’ said the Princess. We let the wind blow over us some more, and said nothing. It’s nice to have someone you can share a silence with.

  ‘Damn,’ she said suddenly, ‘it’s awful – but I’m not really here yet. God damn my job in Berlin. My head is still buzzing with the old boss and all that . . .’

  ‘How is he now?’ I asked idly.

  ‘Well . . . same as ever . . . He’s fat, curious, cowardly and mean. Apart from that, he’s quite nice. Fat, that would be all right. I don’t mind fat men.’ I made a movement. ‘Don’t you start getting ideas . . . your little spare tire!’

  ‘You probably think you’re something special, just because your name is Lydia. Now let me tell you . . .’

  When the conversation had calmed down again, she continued, ‘All right then, fatso. But his curiosity . . . what he’d really like would be for me to give him some new bit of gossip from the trade every day. He’s a spiritual voyeur. He doesn’t himself participate in most things, but he wants to know exactly what everyone else is doing; how, who with and how much they earn – especially that! And what they live on . . . What? How does he earn his money? He does it by bare-faced cheek. Oh, Poppa, we could never do that! For four years I’ve had to watch how the Herr Generalkonsul manages, for instance, to avoid paying his bills on time . . . we couldn’t behave like that, which is why we’ll never be rich. You just wouldn’t believe it! It doesn’t matter who he’s dealing with; he’s so brazen, he’ll twist a signed contract or he’ll repudiate it altogether, then he’ll suddenly forget what his excuse was . . . No, Cheri, you’d never be able to operate like that. You might want to, but you’ll never do it!’

  ‘Do people let him get away with it?’

  ‘What else can they do? If you don’t like it, he says, you can sue me! But it’ll be the last time you ever get an order out of me! And he sticks to that quite rigidly. People know that – and in the end they give in. Just recently, the whole office was redecorated; you should have seen how he treated the workmen! But that’s how you get to go to Abbazia, while the workmen walk across the Alexanderplatz. That’s life.’

  ‘And in what way is he mean?’

  ‘That must be genetic – I think generations must have contributed to it. It can’t be the work of just one man. If his best friend wanted to do him a favour, he would have to break his leg on my boss’s birthday. I’ve never seen anything like it. He really looks for opportunities to rejoice at the misfortunes of other people . . . Maybe it’s so that he can prove to himself how superior he is. Whenever he’s being rude, he thinks he’s very superior to you. That must be it. He’s so unsure of himself . . .’

  ‘It’s often that way. Have you noticed how often rudeness can be attributed to uncertainty?’

  ‘Yes . . . What a jolly place Berlin is! But what am I supposed to do? They say, A woman like you! Whenever I hear that! Marry some drip . . . You may laugh, Poppa, I can’t bear that type. Well, their money. But it’s not just the wagon-lits and the big cars, it’s when they talk! And especially when they let themselves go a bit . . . Come on, let’s go in, it’s getting cold.’

  It was early evening by the clock, but here it was still light. Even though Gripsholm wasn’t that far north, the Arctic sun still shone and it was only dark for a few hours, and then not completely. We walked over the meadows and looked at the grass.

  ‘Let’s have supperas!’ said the Princess in Swedish.

  We ate, and very reverently I drank water with the meal. When you’re in a foreign country, first of all you have to let the foreign water gurgle inside you, to get the flavour of the place. We sat and smoked. Now the holiday began, the real holiday.

  The bedroom curtains were tightly drawn and pinned shut with needles. Men can only sleep in pitch darkness; the Princess saw this as a male characteristic. I read.

  ‘Don’t rustle the newspaper so angrily!’ she said.

  That night the Princess turned over and slept like a stone. She hardly breathed; I didn’t hear her. I read.

  Sometimes, in the grip of a nightmare, I would start up and cling to the Princess . . . ridiculous!

  ‘Do you want to save me?’ she would ask laughingly. It had happened two or three times – often I wouldn’t even know.

  ‘Last night you saved me again . . .’ she would say the next morning. But it was the holidays now; I certainly wouldn’t be saving her tonight. I put my hand on her as she slept. She sighed gently and shifted in bed. It’s nice to be together. The skin doesn’t get cold. Everything feels quiet and good. Your heart beats calmly. Good night, Princess.

  Chapter Two

  As well as I could, said the boy –

  then they broke the stick over his back.

  1

  The girl stood by the window, thinking, When will this ever end? It will never end. When will this ever end?

  She had both arms propped on the windowsill, which wasn’t allowed – but for one instant, for one tiny, stolen instant, she was alone. The others would be arriving any minute now; it was your back that sensed them first of all, as it was nearest the door; there would be an expectant tickling in your back. And when the others arrive, that’s it. Because then she’ll be there too.

  The little girl shuddered: it was like the slight, sudden movement of a dog shaking itself dry. She didn’t even have to think about the things that were oppressing her. She was surrounded by sorrows, sitting on one lotus-leaf among many, with the others all watching her – the girl in the middle. And she knew all the lotus-leaves of her sorrows.

  The other children – her nickname ‘the child’ – this children’s home in Sweden – her dead brother Will – and now the needle of her fear shot up into the boiling red area: Frau Adriani, Frau Adriani with the red hair – and behind her the saddest thing of all, Mummy in Zurich. It was too much. She was nine years old – it was too much for nine. And she cried the bitterest tears that a child can cry: suppressed tears that no one can hear.

  The patter and scrape of feet. Doors shutting and opening. Not a word: a silent host was approaching. She was there too. Oh God! Oh God!

  The door opened majestically, as though of its own accord. In the doorway stood the Director, ‘the Limb of Satan’: Frau Adriani. Her nickname came from her own favourite term of invective.

  She wasn’t very tall: a squat, thick-set figure, with reddish hair, greyish-green eyes and almost invisible eyebrows. She spoke rapidly and had a way of looking at people that did them no good at all . . .

  ‘What are you doing here?’ The child cringed. ‘What are you up to?’ She went up to the girl and gave her a cuff on the head – it wasn’t a proper smack; it was a blow that didn’t acknowledge that there was a head there: it dealt with whatever material w
as available. Which happened to be a head.

  ‘I was . . . I . . . I’m er . . .’

  ‘You’re a limb of Satan!’ said Frau Adriani. ‘Mooning around up here, while there’s a gym lesson downstairs! No supper for you. Join the rest!’ The child crept off to join the others; proudly and with a show of contempt they made room for her.

  Läggesta was a children’s home, mainly for German children, and with a few from Denmark and Sweden. In this way, Frau Adriani made full use of her property on Lake Maelar. Two nieces helped her with the work: one, like an extension of her aunt, was as feared and hated as she was; the other was gentle but downtrodden and timid. She tried to intercede when she could, but she was rarely successful. When the older woman had one of her days, her two nieces were nowhere to be seen. She had forty children. She had no children. The forty had a hard time of it. The woman took trouble over the children, but she was hard and she beat them. Did she enjoy beating? She liked power. Every child that left the home before time was, in her eyes, a traitor – to what, she couldn’t have said – and every one that joined it was a welcome addition to the domain she ruled over. Even if many of the children complained and were taken away, there were many orphans, and new girls kept arriving.

  Giving orders . . . it wasn’t easy to do that otherwise. Because when the Swedes give way, they do it with a gracious bow, and because they have agreed. They only obey when, at a certain point, they see that it’s necessary, useful or honourable to do so . . . otherwise, someone wanting to give orders has few opportunities in this country. They wouldn’t understand him; they would laugh at him and do as they pleased.

  Frau Adriani made frequent changes in her staff, bringing new employees back from Germany, where she regularly went on visits. In winter, she sat up there almost deserted, only a few children left to her – like little Ada for example. Her husband . . . when Frau Adriani thought of her husband, it was like having to brush away a fly. That man . . . she didn’t even shrug her shoulders any more. He sat in his room, putting his stamps in order. She earned the money. All winter she would wait for the summer – summer was her time. In summer she could boom down the long corridors of her villa, commanding and forbidding and decreeing, and everyone around her would be asking each other what sort of mood she was in, and they would tremble with fear. She relished that fear to her fingertips. To feel other people’s wills under her own was . . . it was life itself to her.