Astrid and Veronika by Linda Olsson

them,’ she said. She took Veronika’s hand and led her to one of the doors in front of them. ‘This used to be my room,’ she said, and opened the door. The air inside was still and dark; a blind was pulled over the window. ‘Later, when I was married, my father used it as his bedroom. He died in here.’ Astrid’s eyes swept over the narrow bed, covered with a white crocheted bedspread. ‘When I found him he was already dead. Curled up, with his eyes wide open. I closed them and covered his face.’
    She turned and closed the door behind her. ‘This here is another bedroom,’ she said, but didn’t stop to open the door. ‘A guest room, I suppose you could call it, although there have been no guests for such a long time.’ She nodded towards the next door, told Veronika it was the bathroom, then walked across the landing. With her hand on the doorhandle of the fourth room she paused. ‘The room over there is just a small bedroom. I . . .’ She didn’t finish the sentence, just nodded in the direction of the room to the far right, her eyes on her hand. Then she opened the door in front of her.
    ‘This is the master bedroom,’ she said, and stood aside for Veronika to enter. A large double bed took up most of the space, and a small writing desk with a chair stood against the opposite wall, beside a large free-standing wardrobe. All the furniture was old, the wood dark. The air was cool and Veronika couldn’t pick up any smell. The impression was a little like a museum, a display of a distant past.
    ‘I air the rooms once a week, but otherwise I never come upstairs.’ Astrid walked through the room and opened the double doors to a balcony that ran the length of the house. Both women stepped outside and stood leaning on the bannister, looking out over the apple trees, still bare, across the fields, where the grass was still last year’s, dry and flat, and down over the village and the distant hills beyond. The air was chilly and a light fog was rising from the valley below, like softly rippling grey gauze. ‘Such a beautiful view. But, you know, it has never given me the slightest pleasure.’ Astrid turned and walked inside. She waited for Veronika to follow, then closed the doors.
    Later, as Veronika walked back to her own house, she took a deep breath. Although the new grass had only just begun to penetrate last year’s dead groundcover, and the birch leaves still had a week or two to open, she could smell the budding growth. The days extended long into the evening now.
     
    It was the week before Pentecost. Veronika wrote the note while she had morning coffee and put the envelope in Astrid’s mailbox when she walked past. Afterwards, it struck her that perhaps the old woman wouldn’t often check her box. She decided to give it a day or two. During the last few weeks she had seen Astrid outside, hard at work most days, weeding and clearing a small patch on the southern side of the house. Veronika hadn’t tried to approach her neighbour, but had gone about her own life, taking her daily walks and writing most afternoons and long into the light evenings.
    She checked Astrid’s mailbox the following morning. The note was gone. Yet she didn’t hear from her that day. Nor did she see her at work in her garden. But the window was open when she walked past and she thought the old woman was inside, watching. Suddenly, Veronika was able to see how beautiful the house and the garden must once have been: large birch trees in the front, their buds now pale purple and ready to burst, and the wide slope down towards the village at the back. Several large bird cherry trees stood on the western side, and beneath them an unkempt old lilac hedge. Veronika could imagine how beautiful it would look in a couple of weeks’ time when the blossoms had opened. Along the back there was a small overgrown orchard with old apple trees, their trunks covered in grey lichen and with sporadic buds sprouting on bare branches. There