Shame

another place to survive.’
    She tapped her index finger against her silvery head.
    ‘In here. At eight o’clock every evening they lock the door and after that you’re alone with your thoughts. And I promise you, some of them you would do anything to avoid. The first year it made me terrified, I thought I’d go crazy. But later, when I couldn’t fight against it any longer and just surrendered …’
    She left the sentence unfinished and Maj-Britt waited impatiently for the rest. Vanja sat silently, staring out into space, and seemed to have finished talking. But Maj-Britt wanted to hear more.
    ‘What happened then?’
    Vanja looked at her as if she had forgotten she was there but was glad to see her.
    ‘Then you realise that you can hear quite a bit if you only dare to listen.’
    Maj-Britt swallowed. She wanted to talk about something else now.
    ‘What are you going to do when you get out?’
    Vanja shrugged. Then she turned her head and sat looking at the picture she had examined earlier. The forest-covered landscape.
    ‘You know, there’s only one thing I think I’ve longed for out there. Know what it is?’
    Maj-Britt shook her head.
    ‘To ride a bike, on a gravel path, through the woods. Preferably in a strong headwind.’
    She looked at Maj-Britt again. Smiled, almost with embarrassment. As if her longing would seem ridiculous.
    ‘It might be hard for those of you on the outside to understand how someone can long so much for something like that. Because you can do it every day if you want.’
    Maj-Britt looked down at the tabletop. She felt herself blushing and didn’t want Vanja to see it. Her own truth was a reproach in this context. Sixteen years Vanja had paid. Maj-Britt herself had thrown away thirty-two of her own free will. She hadn’t been near a gravel path. Or a forest. And if the wind was blowing a little she would close the balcony door. She had voluntarily entered her prison and thrown away the key, and, as if that wasn’t enough, she had let her body become the final shackle.
    ‘No government can grant me a pardon.’
    Maj-Britt was hauled out of her thoughts by the sorrow she heard in Vanja’s voice.
    ‘What do you mean?’
    But Vanja didn’t answer. Just sat there looking at the picture. Maj-Britt suddenly felt that she wanted to offer solace, reassurance, for once be the person who was there for Vanja instead of the other way round. She searched urgently for the right words.
    ‘But what happened wasn’t your fault.’
    Vanja gave a deep sigh and ran her fingers through her hair.
    ‘If you knew how tempting it’s been for all these years to hide behind the argument that none of what happened was my fault. To blame everything on Örjan and what he did.’
    Maj-Britt grew more excited.
    ‘But it was his fault!’
    ‘What he did was horrid, unforgivable. But he wasn’t the one who …’
    Vanja broke off and closed her eyes.
    ‘Imagine, after all these years I still can’t say it. Not without my whole body hurting.’
    ‘But he was the one who drove you to it, he was the one who made you do it. He made you believe that there was no other way out. You wrote to me yourself and explained it all in the letter.’
    ‘But we’re talking about years. All those years when I stayed and let it happen. It began long before we had children. I even wrote an article about it once, saying that you should leave after the first time you’re struck.’
    She sat in silence for a moment.
    ‘I don’t know whether anyone can understand how ashamed I was that I let it happen.’
    Vanja passed her hand across her face. Maj-Britt wanted to say something but couldn’t find the words.
    ‘Do you know what my biggest mistake was?’
    Maj-Britt slowly shook her head.
    ‘That instead of finally leaving I chose to see myself as a victim. That was when I let him win, it was like going over to his side and telling him he was right to behave the way he did, because all a victim does is give in, she can’t do anything about her situation. I simply couldn’t break the pattern that I had been used to from the beginning in my own family.’
    Maj-Britt thought about Vanja’s home. She had experienced it as a refuge from God’s stern countenance, a place where there was always a blessed commotion. Everyone knew that Vanja’s father got drunk sometimes, but most often he was happy and never scared her. It was mostly his stupid jokes that could be so tedious. You never saw much of Vanja’s