“Like old, tired animals,” Ellinor said, “that no longer have the strength to be afraid. Hey, what’ll you give me for that one?”
“Ten plus!” May cried. “They’re too tired even to be afraid. They just howl.”
Regina stood up and said she was going to the ladies’ room. On the way, she walked past the bar and asked if they didn’t have any younger music. “So we won’t feel so old,” she added, and laughed. The waiter said that they had younger music but maybe it would make her feel even older. All the way downstairs, Regina wondered if he’d been cheeky, too familiar, and in that case, what she should have said. In any case it was too late now. The ladies’ room was large and cool, tulle curtains knotted above the windows, each little stall provided with a faded family name, easy chairs covered in shiny chintz. Someone had left a red lifebelt hanging on a peg. Down here she cold hear the ships’ foghorns much better. Regina grew melancholy. She stood and looked at her face in the neon light that made everything hard and hollow and thought it had been somehow less heavy in the old days. Her face had grown too long over the years, and her nose as well. She went back upstairs and said to the others, “I can’t understand why he never calls.”
“He’s so rarely in town,” Ellinor said. “But maybe we could dance.”
“Speaking of dancing,” Regina said. “That time. They couldn’t stop playing to dance. There was an atmosphere of tension, a kind of fear, if you know what I mean. The ones playing for high stakes, I mean insane sums of money, were fenced in with a rope. Four people with a fence around them so no one would disturb them. There was dead silence. No one dared say a word.”
“How strange,” May said. “Have you ever been back?”
“No. I thought about it once, but it never happened.”
Some people came in at the other end of the veranda, very young people. “Like a flock of birds,” said Ellinor, “a swarm of birds that settle for a moment, for as long as it suits them.” The music suddenly changed to something entirely different. It had grown dark outside, and the harbor lights were sharp and distant. It was as if the island and the restaurant had slipped farther out to sea, as if they were floating away.
“I’m so happy,” May said. “It’s as if nothing was important anymore. Is this our second bottle?”
“Yes,” Ellinor said.
The young people were not dancing. Why should they? They could afford not to. Wherever they went, their own music followed them. They talked quietly and were completely involved with one another.
“What would you say to an Irish coffee?” Regina said. “For the fun of it. You know, something unusual. I mean, now that the three of us are out together for once. She put her arms on the table and tried to sing along—ba-ding, ba-ding, doo-ah, doo-ah. “It’s got a nice beat, doesn’t it? Why don’t they dance? The Count should be here.”
“He’s probably just polite,” said Ellinor.
“Do you think any of them know you’re an author? We could talk to them a little. Garçon! Ciao. Three Irish coffees. You don’t get a lot of customers in the fall.”
“No, not this late,” the waiter said. “We’ll be closing soon for the winter.”
“Doesn’t it get lonely here sometimes?” Regina said. “I mean, without customers. And all the rooms so large and nothing but empty chairs.”
May said she’d imagined whipped cream. Some of the young people began to dance, almost absentmindedly, by themselves. Regina said she was going to the ladies’ room.
“But you just came back.”
She said, “I want to look around. It’s not often I get to places like this.” She walked over to the young people at the bar and said, “Hi, are you having a good time? Nice music, isn’t it?”
“It’s good,” said a boy.
She took her White Lady with her, and as she passed their table she raised her glass and smiled, a little greeting, a disarming, dismissive gesture. “They’re nice,” she said when she came back. “Friendly and polite. We could treat them to something. I was always getting treated when I was young.”
May said they hadn’t whipped the cream, just stirred it in. It wasn’t real Irish coffee. Now the music grew heavier, it forced itself upon them, stubbornly repeating the same phrases again and again, over and over. Ellinor said it was like a pulse.
“Then it’s someone with a bad heart,” May said. “He’s not feeling well.” She said she was going to the ladies’ room to make herself pretty.
“Drink your Irish coffee while it’s warm,” Regina said. “And you’re not going to get any prettier, neither here nor there.”
“I don’t want to drink it while it’s warm. You’re like my mother. I want to drink something clear and cold.”
Regina said, “Green, white, red, yellow! Whatever you’d like.” She laughed and threw herself back in her chair.
“Regina, you’re drunk,” Ellinor said.
Regina answered slowly. “I hadn’t expected that. I really hadn’t expected that from you. You’re usually much more subtle.”
“Girls, girls,” May burst out. “Don’t fight. Is anyone coming to the ladies’ with me?”
“Oh the ladies’ room, the eternal ladies’ room,” said Ellinor. “What do you do there all the time?” The whole scene was like something from an early talkie, with too much gesturing. It wasn’t a very good film; the direction was definitely second-rate. “Just go,” she said. “I want to look at the fog on the ceiling.”
On their way to the stairs, Regina and May stopped at the bar. “Ciao,” the waiter said, grinning. “What’ll it be? Irish coffee?”
“Absolutely not,” May said. She spoke with great care. “I would like a Cognac.”
The tape stopped. Outside it was pitch-dark, a great autumn darkness. They stood with their backs to the bar. Regina raised her glass and cried, “Cheers for the springtime of youth! Cheers, everyone!”
They raised their glasses to her toast. One of them stood up and came to the bar. He looked at May and asked, “Are you the lady writer?” The waiter put on a new tape, an explosion of sound. Speech was out of the question; they smiled at each other. Ellinor appeared and shouted over the music, “What became of you? What are you doing here?”
Regina leaned towards the young man and shouted, “Here’s the author! Ellinor! You all use first names these days, right? Another Cognac. One for you, too. Isn’t this wonderful, just completely unreal? And you all dance so beautifully. This new way of dancing is so right. You just move, each person on his own. Like this . . .”
The waiter laughed. The young man put down his glass and bowed to Regina.
“Here we go!” she called out playfully, in English.
They stood and looked for a while and then May said, “She’s making a scene. Gyrating and carrying on. Ellinor, I don’t feel well.”
They went down to the ladies’ room.
“Funny,” Ellinor said. “I write books for young people and they don’t know who I am. And I know nothing about them, either. Funny, isn’t it?”
May had taken a seat in one of the chintz chairs. “What time is it?” she said. “But you don’t write anymore.”
“I don’t know. It’s stopped.”
“I admire you, but anyway . . . Listen, I can’t go in that motorboat. I don’t feel well. It was the cream.” After a while she said, “I detest Irish coffee. Have you got an aspirin?”
“No. They’re in my other purse.”
A young girl came in and went to the mirror. Ellinor asked if she had an aspirin.
“Terribly sorry,” the girl said, “but I’m afraid I don’t.” She looked at May and said, “Is it her heart?”
May said, “Certainly not. There’s nothing wrong with my heart. Anyway, I’m feeling better now.” She went into one of the stalls and slammed the door behind her.
On the stairs she said, “Why should I have a problem with my heart? If someone wants an aspirin, it’s because they’ve got a headache.”
“Don’
t be angry,” Ellinor said. “It was just the lighting.”
Regina was sitting at the young people’s table. She waved them over and called out, “Hi! Come here! Guess what, Peter’s grandmother and my father knew each other! It’s a small world, isn’t it? This is Ellinor, who’s a writer, and this is May.” The young people stood and greeted them. One of them brought two extra chairs. “Now, let’s go all in for gin!” Regina said, being playful in English again. “Ellinor? You’re not in a bad mood, I hope. This is my friend Erik. He’s just started at the university. What was it you were studying again?”
“Humanities.”
“Oh yes. Humanities. The study of mankind. God, it’s so lovely seeing nothing but pretty, friendly faces.”
“You talk too much,” Ellinor said.
The waiter turned up the music.
“Just look at these beautiful faces!” Regina cried. “I haven’t seen such beautiful faces since I was in Venice!”
The young people got up to dance, as if on some common signal. The music was deafening, thudding, without melody. They danced solemnly. Unreachable, they moved with exquisite self-control.
“Like a ritual,” Ellinor said.
“What did you say?” Regina yelled. “I can’t hear you in this racket.”
“A ritual!” Ellinor screamed. “Deadly serious. Priests and priestesses in the temple of Eros! Do you hear what I’m saying? I don’t know a thing about books for young people and I want to pay the bill and go home!”
“What are you talking about?” May said. “Now I’m feeling ill again.” But no one heard what she said. Regina shouted that she didn’t want to go home. She had made a connection with the young people and wanted to share.
“Share what, for heaven’s sake?” a weary Ellinor asked in Regina’s ear, and Regina answered, “My experience! They listen to me!”
“I’m going to kill that waiter and his grin,” said Ellinor. “Give us our bill. We’re not friendly.” He leaned over them, came so close it was hard to see what he looked like. “We can’t stay,” she said. “It’s time for us to go.”
“I’ll pay for myself!” May shouted. “One for all and all for one . . .”
They had turned out the lights in the main dining room and at the other end of the long veranda. Quick hands were stacking chairs, coming closer and closer, and now that it was dark it was even more apparent that the fog had entered the room.
“Dramatic,” Ellinor said.
The bill came almost at once. When they stood up, the music abruptly stopped. The young people were standing on the dance floor looking at them. For several moments nothing happened and the silence was absolute.
“Thank you for a lovely evening,” Regina said. “It’s been wonderful.” Suddenly she was shy. “A terribly important contact.” She spoke slowly, with quiet dignity. “I’m certain that you’ve given my friend Ellinor many new ideas, and your charming thoughtfulness has made a deep impression on me, on us. And now we want to give you our best wishes for long lives and the best of everything.”
The young man named Peter took several quick steps forward and kissed her hand. All the way down the stairs, the music was silent. Only when they were walking across the lawn did it come back in all its uncontrollable but now distant vitality.
Regina was crying. “Wasn’t it wonderful?” she said. “Wasn’t that simply wonderful? It was like in Venice. Do you know what he said to me? He’d taken me back to my hotel, a squalid little place, but I thought it was splendid, and his stomach was hurting him the whole time, and then he said, ‘Dear, sweet girl, if I’d been thirty years younger, our evening would have ended in a different way.’ Wasn’t that too bad? You understand, he was really having trouble with his stomach. And the next morning he sent roses, dozens of roses, the first flowers anyone ever sent me.”
“I understand,” Ellinor said. “But now you need to pull yourself together. The boat’s coming.”
“Look!” May cried. “There it comes. Isn’t it like Charon’s ferry or something? You like similes.”
“By all means,” Ellinor said. She was tired and in no mood for anyone’s similes but her own.
Translated by Thomas Teal
THE DOLL’S HOUSE
ALEXANDER was an upholsterer of the old school. He was exceptionally skilled, and he took a craftsman’s natural pride in his work. He discussed commissions only with those customers who had taste and a feel for the beauty of materials and workmanship. Not wishing to show his contempt, he referred all the others to his employees.
His workshop was old. It lay in a cellar, down a flight of stairs from the pavement, but it was quite large. He was never short of work. Alexander himself took responsibility for ornamentation in wood and for difficult upholstering. Simpler jobs he assigned to others. There were still some people who wanted handcrafted decoration—there weren’t many, but they existed. They could be very particular about, say, the choice of wallpapers. Alexander gave them time. He conducted long, detailed discussions about the right background for period furniture. Occasionally he left the shop to attend auctions or to browse the best antique shops, and wherever he went, whether to buy or, with his silence, to reject, he was an honored guest. The most beautiful pieces found their way to his apartment, a place very few people had visited. It lay on a quiet street in the southern part of the city. For twenty years, Alexander had shared the apartment with his friend Erik, and both men had the same respect for the lovely objects that time and Alexander’s insight had gathered around them.
Sometimes Alexander would sit and read while at work. He read the classics, the French and the German among others, but primarily the Russian, which enchanted him with their heavy patience. They gave him a sense of the ineluctable constancy of things. With his thick eyebrows furrowed and his short, powerful body expressing concentration and voluntary solitude, he read during working hours and no one dared disturb him.
When Alexander retired, he sold his workshop judiciously and after mature reflection. He took with him quite a number of product samples of various kinds—old-fashioned tassels and braiding, books of wallpapers and ornamentation. Most of it was quite dated, but it had a beauty few people could see. At about the same time, Erik retired from the bank. They put Alexander’s samples in a cupboard and drank champagne to celebrate their new freedom.
It was difficult in the beginning. They weren’t used to spending their days together with nothing to do, and it all felt wrong. Erik’s eyes ached from watching television, and Alexander was most interested in Russian films. They bought a stereo and listened their way gropingly through piles of cassettes and LPs that they had purchased quite possibly because of an attractive jacket. Their friends Jani and Pekka gave them tips, and they admired the music but didn’t like it, at least not enough that they longed to hear it.
“Turn it off,” Alexander said. “I can’t read.” But in fact he didn’t care about reading as much as he once had. Perhaps books had tantalized him only as a stolen luxury in the middle of a working day.
“You’re not turning the pages,” Erik said. “Are you unhappy about something?” His voice was always the same—low, gentle, thoughtful. His strong eyeglasses reflected the light and hid the expression in his eyes.
“No,” Alexander said. “I’m not unhappy. Leave it on if you want.”
“No,” Erik said. “I don’t think I do.”
Erik did the cleaning. He polished the furniture, and every morning he ran his vacuum over the rugs. The mornings were best. They threw open all the windows, and, while they drank their morning coffee and shared the newspaper, Erik planned lunch and dinner, sometimes asking Alexander for advice. Alexander would laugh and say, “You decide. Surprise me. I’ve never been disappointed.” Erik went to the shop on the corner or to the covered market, which was farther away. Sometimes they’d have Jani and Pekka for supper and play the stereo. But there were always the long days.
It was sometime in September that Alexander began work on the
doll’s house. That is to say, he didn’t know it would become a doll’s house. He made a little oval table in mahogany with a carved base and then two Victorian chairs that he covered in red velvet.
Erik said, “They’re tiny and yet completely accurate. I don’t understand how you do it. But we don’t know any children.”
“What do you mean?” Alexander said.
“I mean, what are you going to do with them?”
“I just made them,” Alexander replied. “How about some coffee?”
He made a cabinet with glass doors. He made an étagère with hand-carved knobs. The parlor table where he worked was covered with newspapers, and Erik vacuumed the rugs twice a day. Finally they agreed that Alexander would move his toys out to the kitchen. Every morning after coffee in the parlor, he went straight out to the kitchen and went to work. He made an upholstered sofa and a little bed of thin brass tubing with round knobs. There was a moment when he thought he’d let Erik make the mattress, but mattresses are precise and difficult things. Erik was all thumbs when it came to anything other than numbers and housekeeping. So Alexander said nothing and made the mattress himself.
He made more and more furniture, more and more exquisite parlor furniture, kitchen furniture, veranda furniture, and, finally, old-fashioned furniture to store in the attic or hide away on a staircase. Alexander constructed all of it with the same loving care and attention. He made windows. French windows, attic windows, Carelian gingerbread windows, stupid ordinary windows—every sort. And doors. Complex or very simple doors, Wild West doors, and classic Greek portals.
Erik said, “I understand the furniture, but why are you making doors and windows? They don’t lead anywhere. And why can’t you clean up after yourself when you’re done?”
“That’s an idea,” Alexander said. “I’ve got an idea.” And he left everything where it was and went into the parlor and turned on the stereo. “This is lovely music,” he said, but he wasn’t listening.
“Turn it off!” Erik cried, and Alexander turned it off and went on thinking. He was imagining a house, the ultimate house. But he’d make no blueprints. The house would be allowed to grow however it wished, organically, room by room. The natural thing would be to start with the cellar. Alexander gathered materials. He went out to an abandoned stonemasonry at the edge of town and collected pretty shards of stone for the foundation. He assembled lumber—aspen, balsa, and pine—and he filled the kitchen cabinets with bottles and jars containing various glues, paints, and solvents. He was more and more in the way. Erik said the kitchen was not a hobby room, it was impossible to run the house without space to work in, and he didn’t want sawdust in the food. They agreed to divide the kitchen in two with a partition that reached almost to the ceiling. The window was on Erik’s side, but Alexander bought some powerful lighting. He also managed to maneuver a workbench into his cubicle. The kitchen cabinet on his side had to be emptied, and all its china was piled on improvised shelves in the kitchen. Alexander spent a long time arranging his tools lovingly in the cabinet, each tool easy to reach in its own appropriate place. He built the cellar and began on a miniature woodworking shop. In the middle of the wall dividing their kitchen, Alexander had built a little window, and from time to time he would look out and say, “Hi, what’s for lunch?” Or Erik would look in and say, “What are you making now?” And Alexander would carefully place the world’s smallest finishing plane in Erik’s hand to be admired and remarked upon.