Axel leaves the ISP office at ten o’clock in the morning to work from home. He puts all the paperwork needed into his briefcase. He still feels cold from being so tired, and now he’s hungry as well. He drives to the Grand Hotel and picks up brunch for two people.
Axel carries the food into his kitchen. Beverly is sitting cross-legged on top of the kitchen table, right in the middle, and she’s flipping through the bridal magazine Amelia Brud & Bröllop.
“Are you hungry?” he asks.
“I don’t know if I want to wear white when I get married,” Beverly says. “Maybe light rose …”
“I like white,” Axel mumbles.
Axel prepares a tray and then the two of them ascend the stairs to the drawing room where a red rococo sofa group is placed next to the large windows. As part of the grouping there’s an eight-sided table from the eighteenth century. It shows how much that era appreciated intarsia; this motif shows a garden with peacocks and a musician, a woman playing the erhu.
Axel sets the table with the family china. It is imprinted in silver. He sets matching silver-grey napkins and heavy wineglasses beside the plates. He pours Coca-Cola into Beverly’s glass and mineral water with slices of lime into his own.
Beverly’s childish face has a tiny, chiselled chin above a fragile neck. The entire curve of her head is clear under the fuzz of hair. She drinks the entire glass, then stretches her upper body indolently; a beautiful, innocent movement. Axel thinks that she’ll do it exactly that way when she’s an adult, maybe she’ll stretch that way even as an old lady.
“Tell me more about the music,” she asks him.
“Where were we?” Axel directs the remote towards his music system.
Alexander Malter’s incredibly perceptive interpretation of Arvo Pärt’s Alina comes out of the speakers. Axel sets his glass down on the table. The bubbles of the mineral water dance. Axel wishes with all his heart that it were champagne in that glass, champagne to go with this food. He wishes for another heart’s desire—sleeping pills to get through the night.
Axel pours more Coke into Beverly’s glass. She looks at him in thanks. He stares right into her large, dark eyes and doesn’t notice that he’s over-pouring until the Coke starts spreading over the table. The entire Chinese landscape darkens as if its sun is covered by a cloud. The liquid film shimmers over the park with its peacocks.
Axel stands up. He sees Beverly’s reflection in the glass of the windows. The curve of her chin is so strong … and then he makes a sudden blinding connection. He realises all at once that she resembles Greta.
How could he not have seen this before?
All he wants to do now is run away, run from this room, run from this house. Instead, he forces himself to get a cloth to wipe up the spill until his heart has a chance to slow and return to its normal rhythm.
It’s not as if the two women would ever be confused one for the other, but now he spots one reminder, one trait after the other that they both share.
Axel stops and wipes his mouth. His hand is trembling.
There is not a single day when he does not think of Greta. And every day he does his best to forget.
The day after the competition still haunts him.
It was thirty-four years ago, but in his mind, everything since has been darkened by that event. His life was so new then; he was just seventeen, but all the bright hopes had come to an end.