My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry(76)

“Of course we have a computer,” says Lennart, puzzled. “Who doesn’t these days?”

Quite right, thinks Elsa, and decides to bring it up with Wolfheart next time he turns up. If there is another time.

Lennart leads her past the bedroom. In the little study at the far end of the flat, he explains that their computer is very old, of course, so she has to have a bit of patience. And on a table in there is the most unwieldy computer Elsa has ever seen, and at the back of the actual computer is a gigantic box, and on the floor is another box.

“What’s that?” says Elsa, pointing at the box on the floor.

“That’s the actual computer,” says Lennart.

“And what about that?” asks Elsa and points at the other box.

“That’s the monitor,” says Lennart and presses a big button on the box on the floor, then adds: “It’ll take a minute or so before it starts, so we’ll have to wait a bit.”

“A MINUTE!” Elsa bursts out, then mumbles: “Wow. It really is old.”

But when the old computer has eventually started and Lennart after many ifs and buts has got her on to the Internet and she has found what she is looking for, she goes back into the kitchen and sits opposite Maud.

“So it means a dreamer. An idealist, I mean. It means a dreamer.”

“Yes, yes, you could probably say that,” says Maud with a friendly smile.

“It’s not that you could say it. It’s what it actually means,” Elsa corrects.

And then Maud nods, even friendlier. And then she tells the story of the idealist who turned into a cynic, and Elsa knows what that means because a teacher at Elsa’s preschool once called Elsa that. There was an uproar when Elsa’s mum found out about it, but the teacher stood his ground. Elsa can’t remember the exact details, but she thinks it was that time she told the other preschool pupils how sausages were made.

She wonders if she’s thinking about these things as a kind of defense mechanism. For this tale really has too much reality in it. It often happens, when you’re almost eight, that there’s just too much reality.

Maud describes how Sam went off to a new war. He had his friend with him, and for several weeks they had been protecting a village from attack by people who, for some reason unknown to Maud, wanted to kill all who lived there. In the end they received an order to abandon the place, but Sam’s friend refused. He convinced Sam and the rest of the soldiers to stay until the village was safe, and took as many injured children as they could fit into their cars to the nearest hospital, many miles away, because Sam’s friend knew a woman who worked as a doctor there, and everyone said she was the most skillful surgeon in the whole world.

They were on their way through the desert when they hit the mine. The explosion was merciless. There was a rain of fire and blood.

“Did anyone die?” asks Elsa, without really wanting to know the answer.

“All of them,” says Lennart, without wanting to speak the words out loud. Except Sam’s friend and Sam himself. Sam was unconscious, but his friend dragged him out of the fire, Sam was the only one he had time to save. The friend had shrapnel in his face and terrible burns, but when he heard the shots and realized they’d been ambushed, he grabbed his rifle and ran into the desert and didn’t stop firing until only he and Sam lay there in the desert, panting and bleeding.

The people who had been shooting at him were boys. Children, just like the children the soldiers had just tried to save. Sam’s friend could see that, as he stood over their dead bodies, with their blood on his hands. And he was never the same again.

Somehow he managed to carry Sam through the desert and didn’t stop until he came to the hospital and Elsa’s grandmother came running towards them. She saved Sam’s life. He would always have a slight limp in one leg, but he would survive, and it was at that hospital that Sam started smoking Granny’s brand of cigarettes. Granny also apologizes about that in the letter.

Maud carefully places the photo album in front of Elsa, as if it were a small creature with feelings. Points at a photo of the boy with a syndrome’s mother. She’s standing between Lennart and Maud and wearing a bridal gown and they are laughing, all three of them.

“I think Sam’s friend was in love with her. But he introduced her to Sam and they fell in love instead. I don’t think Sam’s friend ever said anything. They were like brothers, those two, can you imagine? I think his friend was just too kind to mention his own feelings, do you understand?”

Elsa understands. Maud smiles.

“He was always such a soft boy, Sam’s friend. I always thought he had the soul of a poet. They were so different, him and Sam. It’s so terribly difficult to imagine he would do all that he did to save Sam’s life. That the place they were in could have made him such a fearsome . . .”

She is silent for a long time, overcome with sorrow.

“Warrior,” she whispers, turning the page of the photo album.

Elsa doesn’t need to see the photo to know who it’s of.

It’s Sam. He is standing somewhere in a desert, wearing a uniform and supporting himself on crutches. Next to him stands Elsa’s granny with a stethoscope around her neck. And between them stands Sam’s best friend. Wolfheart.





25





SPRUCE