The Red Address Book

The Red Address Book

A. ALM, ERIC DEAD

Have you ever heard a real roar of despair, Jenny? A cry born of desperation? A scream from the very bottom of the heart, which digs its way into every last atom, which leaves no one untouched? I have heard several, but each has reminded me of the very first, and most terrible.

It came from the inner yard. 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, where the slender bed that would be mine stood alongside two others. I placed my bag on the bed. Without being told to, I picked up the dress lying there and pulled it over my head. I didn’t know it at the time, but I would be the youngest of the three servants, left with the jobs the others didn’t want.

I sat on the edge of the bed and waited, my feet pressed firmly together and my hands tightly clutched on my lap. I can still remember the feeling of loneliness that enveloped me in that little room; I didn’t know where I was or what awaited me. The walls were bare and the wallpaper yellowed. There was a small bedside table next to each bed, with a single candle in a holder. Two half-burned down, one new, its wick still waxy.

It wasn’t long before I heard loud footsteps on the tiles and the rustle of my new mistress’s skirt. My heart was racing. She paused in the doorway, and I didn’t dare meet her gaze.

“Stand up when I come into the room. There. Back straight.”

I got up, and she immediately reached for my hair. Her slim, cool fingers moved all over me; she craned her neck and came closer, inspecting every millimetre of my skin.

“Nice and clean. That’s good. You don’t have lice, do you, girl?”

I shook my head. She continued to inspect me, lifting wisp after wisp of hair. Her fingers moved behind my ear; I felt her long nails scraping my skin.

“This is where they usually live, behind the ear. I hate creepy-crawlies,” she mumbled, a shiver passing through her body. A ray of sunshine had found its way in through the window, highlighting the fine, downy hairs on her face, which rose above a layer of light powder.

The apartment was big and full of paintings, sculpture, and beautiful furniture in dark wood. It smelled of smoke and something else, something I couldn’t quite place. It was always calm and peaceful during the day. Life had been kind to my employer, and she never had to work; she was well-off enough. I don’t know where her money came from, but sometimes I fantasised about her husband. About her keeping him locked up in the attic somewhere.

Guests often came over in the evening. Women in beautiful dresses and diamonds. Men in suits and hats. They entered, wearing their shoes indoors — a practice I find odd even to this day — and strolled around the drawing room as though it was a restaurant. The air filled with smoke and conversations in English, French, and Swedish.

My nights in the apartment introduced me to ideas I had never heard of before. Equal pay for women, the right to education. Philosophy, art, and literature. And new behaviours. Loud laughter, furious arguments, and couples kissing openly in the bay windows and corners. It was quite a change.

I would crouch down when I crossed the room to collect glasses and mop up spilled wine. High heels moved unsteadily between the rooms; sequins and peacock feathers floated to the floor and became wedged between the hallway’s broad wooden tiles. I would have to lie there until the early hours, using a small kitchen knife to remove every last trace of the festivities. When Madame woke, everything had to be perfect again. We worked hard. She expected freshly ironed table runners every morning. The furniture had to be shiny, the glasses free of flecks. Madame always slept until late morning, but when she eventually left her bedroom, she would walk through the apartment, inspecting it one room at a time. If she found anything noteworthy, it was always me, the youngest, who got the blame. I quickly learned what she might spot, and would do one last loop through the apartment before she woke, righting the things the other maids had done wrong.

The few hours of sleep I got on the hard horsehair mattress were never enough. The seams of my black uniform irritated my skin, and I was constantly tired from the long days. And from the hierarchy and the slaps. And from the men who laid their hands on my body.

The Red Address Book

N. NILSSON, GÖSTA

I was used to people occasionally falling asleep after having too much to drink. It was my job to wake them and send them on their way. But this man wasn’t asleep. He was staring straight ahead. The tears ran slowly down his cheeks, one by one, as his eyes focused on an armchair where another man — young, with a halo of golden-brown curls — was sleeping. The young man’s white shirt was unbuttoned, revealing a yellowed undershirt. On the tan skin of his chest, I could see a tattoo of an anchor, unsteady lines in greenish-black ink.

The man noticed me.

“You’re upset, sorry, I …” I hurried to leave.

The man turned his head, lowering his shoulder to the leather armrest so that he was now half-lying across the chair.

“Love is impossible,” he slurred, nodding towards the armchair he was staring at.

I tried to make my voice sound firm. “You’re drunk. Please, sir, get up; you need to leave before Madame wakes.” His hand gripped mine as I struggled to pull him to his feet.

“Don’t you see, miss?”

“Don’t I see what?”

“That I’m suffering!”

“Yes, I can see that. Go home and sleep it off, and your suffering will feel a little lighter.”

“Just let me sit here and look at this perfection. Let me enjoy this perilous electricity.”

He tangled his words as he attempted to capture his mood. I shook my head.

It was my first meeting with this delicate man, but it certainly wouldn’t be the last. Often, as the apartment emptied and the new day dawned over the rooftops of Södermalm, he lingered, lost in thought. His name was Gösta. Gösta Nilsson. He lived further down the street, at Bastugatan 25.

“One can think so clearly at night, young Doris,” he would say whenever I asked him to leave. Then, with drooping shoulders and a bowed head, he would stagger off into the night. His cap was never straight, and the tattered old jacket he wore was too big; it hung slightly lower on one side, as though his back was crooked. He was handsome. Often tan, his face had classical features — a straight nose and thin lips. There was plenty of goodness in his eyes, but he was usually sad. His spark had gone out.

Only after several months did I realise that he was the artist whom Madame worshipped. His paintings hung in her bedroom, huge canvases featuring brightly coloured squares and triangles. No theme to speak of, just explosions of colour and shape. Almost as if a child had been let loose with a brush. I didn’t like them. Not at all. But Madame bought and bought. Because Sweden’s Prince Eugen did the same. And because surrealist modernity had a particular power that most people couldn’t understand. She appreciated the fact that Gösta, like her, was an outsider.

It was Madame who taught me that people come in many different shapes. That others’ expectations of us are not always right. That there are many routes to choose from on the journey we are all making towards death. That we might find ourselves at difficult junctions, yet the road may still straighten. And that the curves aren’t dangerous.

Gösta always asked a lot of questions.

“Do you prefer red or blue?”

“To which country would you travel if you could go anywhere at all on earth?”

“How many one-öre sweets can you buy with one krona?”

After that last question, he always tossed me a krona. He flicked it into the air with his index finger and, with a smile, I caught it.

“Spend it on something sweet, promise me that.”

He could see that I was young. That I was still a child. He never reached to touch my body the way the other men did. He never made comments about my lips or budding breasts. Sometimes he even helped me in secret: picking up glasses and taking them to the corridor between the dining room and kitchen. Whenever Madame noticed, she would slap me afterwards. Her thick gold rings left red marks on my cheeks. I covered them with a pinch of flour.

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