Before the Frost

“I came over because I had a fight with my dad,” Linda said. “I thought I would sleep on your couch since you were away.”

“You can still sleep here even though I’m back.”

“He made me so mad. My dad and I are like two roosters fighting on a dung heap. The more we struggle, the more we get mired into the muck. We were arguing about you, actually.”

“About me?”

Linda stretched out her hand and brushed Anna’s arm with her fingertips. Anna was wearing a robe on which the sleeves had been cut off for some reason. Anna’s skin was cold. There was no doubt that it really was Anna who had come back and not an impostor. Anna’s skin was always cold. Linda could remember that from their childhood when they — with the tingling feeling of exploring forbidden territory — had played dead. The game had made Linda warm and sweaty, but Anna had been cold, so cold in fact that they stopped playing. It had scared them both.

“I was so worried about you,” Linda said. “It’s not like you to disappear and not be home when we had agreed to meet.”

“You have to remember my world was turned upside-down. I thought I had seen my father. I was convinced he had come back.”

She paused and looked down at her hands.

“What happened?” Linda asked.

“I went to look for him,” she said. “I didn’t forget about our plans, but I thought you would understand. I had seen my father for a second and I had to find him again. I was so worked up I was shaking and couldn’t drive. I took the train down to Malmö and set out to look for him. It was an absolutely indescribable experience. I walked up and down the streets using all my senses, thinking there had to be a trace of him somewhere, a scent, a sound.

“It took me several hours to get from the station to the hotel where I had seen him. When I walked into the hotel lobby a fat lady was half-sleeping in the chair I had been sitting in. I became furious; she had taken my place! No one had the right to sit in the holy chair where I had seen my father and he had seen me. I walked up to her and shook her arm. I told her she had to move because the furniture was going to be replaced. She did as I asked, although I still don’t understand how she could think I was part of the hotel staff in my raincoat and with wet hair stuck to my cheeks. I sat down in the chair when she had left. There was no one outside. But I thought if I just stayed there long enough he would return.”

Anna stopped talking and left to go to the bathroom. Thunder rumbled in the distance. She came back and continued:

“I sat in the chair until the receptionists started looking at me suspiciously. I booked a room, but tried to spend as little time as possible there. To conceal my true purpose I pretended to be reading and taking notes. On the second day the fat lady came back. She must have been spying on me and felt that she had found me out because she said ‘You thief — you stole my seat!’ She was so worked up I thought she was going to hyperventilate. I thought to myself that no one would make up a lie about sitting in a chair in hopes of catching a glimpse of a father they hadn’t seen in twenty years. So I told her the truth and she believed me. She sat down in the chair next to me and said she’d be happy to keep me company while I waited. It was crazy. She talked nonstop, mainly about her husband, who was attending a conference in men’s hatwear. You can laugh — I didn’t, of course — but it was true. She told me all about it in excruciating detail, about the rows of somber men in airless conference rooms meeting to decide which kinds of hats to order for the new season. She talked and talked until I was ready to strangle her. But then her husband appeared. He was as fat as she was, and was wearing a broad-brimmed and probably very expensive hat. She and I had never actually introduced ourselves. As she was about to leave with her husband, she said to him, ‘This young lady is waiting for her father. She’s been waiting a long time for him.’ And the man asked, ‘How long?’ while he tipped his elegant hat. ‘Almost twenty-five years,’ she told him. And he looked at me, thoughtfully but also with great respect. And the entire hotel lobby, with its polished, sterile surfaces and strong smell of commercial-grade cleaning agents, was transformed into a church. He said, ‘One can never wait too long.’ Then he put his hat back on, and I watched them leave the hotel. The whole situation was absurd, almost unbelievably so, but that’s what made it so real.