A Darker Shade of Sweden Read Online Free PDF Page B

are jokingly chattering about who slept in the upper beds that time.
    Johanna watches them and wonders which one of them actually came up with the idea of a reunion. She has just assumed that Marina did. Her parents had some kind of connection to the scout organization that owns the cottages. Marina, her hair almost black, though by now she surely must dye it—there are only slight touches of gray that paradoxically make her look younger. Almost more beautiful than she remembers her.
    â€œDidn’t you bring a sleeping bag, Jojjo?” Agge asks when the others are throwing their overnight things on the bunk beds.
    â€œNo, I’m not sure if I can . . . ” She feels all of their eyes. It was a long time since anyone called her Jojjo. “I have to get up early and . . . ”
    â€œWhat are you saying, aren’t you going to stay the night? Wasn’t that the whole thing?” Agge’s deep voice, always sounding as if something was self-evident. She has put on at least sixty pounds and it’s still impossible to disagree with her. “I’ve got blankets in my car,” she says, “it’ll be all right.”
    Johanna nods and smiles. Why did she agree to this? Her first reaction on seeing the invitation was a ringing NO. And yet. Just that someone invited her, remembered her. Pia already has the coffeemaker going. Just as back then she slides in without saying much but still ends up at the center, the prettiest of them all. Tiny, attractive wrinkles around her eyes when she laughs.
    â€œWhat the hell,” Agge says, “let’s have some champagne.”
    And the cork bounces against the ceiling.
    The fire is burning, a genuine campfire. Their faces glow. The midsummer dusk is blue and transparent. They pull their sleeping bags around themselves. She knows that she is drinking too fast and too much.
    Marina’s idea: that they toast each other, all round. They have toasted Marina’s new executive position at the staffing company and Pia’s new lover who has proposed, third time lucky! They have toasted that Marina has run the women’s six-mile race and that Agge has retrained as a gardener; at last she is living her dream! Here’s to our dreams! Marina has been married for eighteen years and still loves her husband— skÃ¥l! —and Pia has gotten new tits after her pregnancies— skÃ¥l to them!—and to all their kids who are all doing so well in school— skÃ¥l! skÃ¥l! skÃ¥l! —and particularly to Agge’s eldest who has been picked for the junior national swim team.
    â€œAnd what about you, Jojjo, out with it!”
    She knows it was a mistake to come here. Her life is nothing you hold up for inspection at reunions. She manages a toast to her daughter, Lisette, getting a job after graduating high school, then slips away, saying that she has to take a trip into the forest.
    Nowadays there are toilets behind the cabins, but she does it the way they did back then. Squats down behind a spruce.
    A little urine squirts on one of her shoes. Between branches she sees the fire die down to embers and the silhouettes of the ­middle- aged women around it.
    What else could she toast? That she’s divorced and has been unable to find someone new? That her apartment is mute now that Lisette has moved out? She can’t even do Internet dating, since it makes her feel like the last passenger on the late-night bus going home from town, where everyone is desperately grabbing whatever is offered. And she knows that thousands of people are finding love on those sites, so of course it’s all her fault. Like missing the last night bus and being left standing outside in the cold. A toast to that! She sleeps badly, because there will be more cutbacks and nobody knows who will be laid off. And here’s to the body going downhill while time runs out, skÃ¥l!
    As she is pulling her pants up she hears a sound. Branches creaking.