Читать онлайн «The Princess of Burundi»

Kjell Eriksson

The princess of Burundi

The first book in the Ann Lindell series, 2006

Translated from the Swedish by Ebba Segerberg

One

The plate trembled, knocking over the glass. The milk flowed out over the waxed tablecloth like a white flower.

Typical-we have almost no milk left, she thought. She quickly righted the glass and wiped up the milk with a dishrag.

“When is Dad coming home?”

She twirled around. Justus was leaning up against the doorpost.

“I don’t know,” she said, throwing the dishrag into the sink.

“What’s for dinner?”

He had a book in his hand, his index finger tucked in to mark the page he was reading. She wanted to ask him what it was, but then she thought of something and walked over to the window.

“Stew,” she said absently. She looked out at the parking lot. It had started to snow again.

Maybe he was working. She knew he had talked to Micke. He always needed extra workers for his snow-removal crew, and it had been coming down for days now. John wasn’t afraid of heights, either.

Berit smiled at the memory of how he had climbed the drainpipe to her balcony long ago. It was only on the second floor, but still. He could have broken his neck if he had fallen. Just like his father, she thought, and her smile faded.

She had been furious with him, but he had just laughed. Then he had scooped her up in a tight embrace, with a strength you would never have thought John’s slender body was capable of.

Later-clearly flattered-she liked to tell the story of his climb and his persistence. It was their earliest and most important shared memory.

Snow removal. A small tractor drove across the parking lot and pushed even more snow up over the heavily laden bushes by the edge of the lot.

Harry was the one who had set Justus to work, giving him a summer job when no one else was hiring. Lawn mowing, clearing out trash, weeding. Justus complained, but he had been bursting with pride at his first paycheck.

Berit’s gaze followed the snowplow. Snow was falling thickly. The orange signal light revolved on the roof of the tractor. Darkness settled in over the buildings and the parking lot. The light was flung to the far corners of the grounds. Harry was certainly busy. How many hours had he had to work the past few days?

“This weather’s going to send me to the Canary Islands,” he had shouted to her the other day when they met outside the front door.

He had leaned on his shovel and asked her about Justus. He always did.

She turned and meant to say hello from Harry but Justus had already gone.

“What are you doing?” she cried out into the apartment.

“Nothing,” Justus yelled back.

Berit assumed he was sitting in front of the computer. Ever since August, when John had dragged home the boxes, Justus had sat glued to the screen.

“The kid has to have a computer. He’ll be left behind otherwise,” John had said when she complained at the extravagance.

“How much did it cost?”

“I got it cheap,” he had told her, and quickly showed her the receipt from the electronics store when he caught her look. That accusing look, the one he knew so well.