TE22 Potpourri

Andrea Lundgren

Nordic Fauna

The same old paintings hang on the walls – nature scenes. Mallards. Geese in formation framed against the sky. A woodpecker like the letter V pasted to the trunk of a birch tree. Precisely the kind of artwork you’d see at a flea market among the coffee sets, old barometers and stacks of flowerpots. The images are exactly what the people around here see when they open their front door. He’s got the mallards down by the river, and the geese move in annually, arriving and departing again, that’s what they do. The woodpecker lives in the Swiss pine on the neighbour’s property. The brown leather armchair faces the window with its worn armrests and cushion, reclined slightly. The television is a few metres away, on a metal trolleywithwheels. There’s a bit of dirt on the floor and a fewdirty plates on the table. Onmyway back to the kitchen I notice that all the gardening tools are leaning against the wall in the hallway. The rug underneath them is a muddy mess. He is sitting right where I left him, brushing together a few grains of sugar, pressing his finger against them and popping it into his mouth. He asks about Mum and I tell him about Roger. Then about the tango lessons. ‘She sends her regards,’ I tell him. He asks me to return the greeting.

slicing through the white cardboard.

‘I have a hard time sleeping at night,’ he adds eventually. I watch him, chewing.

‘I wake up after a while and get out of bed.’

‘You’re probably drinking too much coffee.’

But that’s not it.

‘It’s that bird,’ he says.

He sounds defeated, almost a little ashamed.

‘The crane?’

‘It’s not a crane, I told you.’

‘Have you seen it?’

‘I know what cranes sound like.’

He can’t get back to sleep, he says. Sometimes he’s up all night.

‘So, how are things with you?’ I ask after a moment.

‘You must be exhausted,’ I say. ‘I go completely crazy when I can’t sleep. You’ve got to see the doctor and get some sleeping pills or something. Or get some of that all-natural tea. Herbal.’

At first he tells me things are fine. I take a little more bread, although I’m no longer really in the mood for it. Slip a piece out of the plastic wrapper, cutting it carefully so as to avoid 132

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