live
with all the memories.'
'Do
me a favour,' Beckman said and pulled out on to the road. She glanced at the
clock on the dashboard. 'We've only got three more places to visit. That's the
advantage of investigating a murder in the middle of nowhere.'
Gonzales
cackled.
'True.
But there are one or two disadvantages as well. These
farmers, for a start. If I was in their shoes, regardless of whether I
had anything to do with the murder or not, and if I wasn't mentally subnormal,
I certainly wouldn't have behaved as suspiciously as most of the ones we've met
so far.'
'If
you weren't mentally subnormal, you say…'
----
Chapter
13
1993
As
time went by, Maya began to settle at the school.
The
actual work was no problem, in fact it turned out to
be a source of pleasure. She had dropped out of grammar school in a fit of
existential questioning and had caught the commuter train into Gothenburg every
morning to hang out in the Northern Station cafe with a gang of other kids on
the loose. They would meet in the morning, scrape together enough for a cup of
tea each, preferably Twinings Söders Höjder; then they would sit there with the
same infiiser, and by the afternoon would always end up drinking 'silver tea' -
a mixture of hot water and sugar. They wrote on serviettes and in visitors'
books, and smoked roll-ups.
The youth centre, which was the only thing on offer to those who
refused to study, was totally uninteresting. They were obliged to spend
two days in a remedial class and three doing some crap job for no pay. Maya
became aware of this after only a week, and not without a certain elitist
attitude towards her classmates - boys with bum-fluff moustaches who nicked
cars. None of this bothered her as much as the fact that they couldn't actually
spell their own surnames. Nor did she feel any kind of affinity with their
admiring girlfriends, all chewing gum and bleached blonde hair.
At
the root of Maya's aversion to staying on at grammar school, and of her
contempt for the unfortunate remedial kids, was a refusal to conform. School
was classed as the most obvious form of oppression. And when it came to Maya's
mother, she had not merely contented herself with trying to persuade her
children to carry on studying by means of bribes, threats and guilt; in
addition, she had limited their choice of study options to the subjects she
herself would have liked to pursue but had not been allowed. As a general rule,
Maya's mother had always found it difficult to distinguish where she ended and
other people began.
Up
to this point Maya had never realised that learning could be fun; it had
certainly never struck her that she had a talent for absorbing knowledge. But
it did now. She was praised for her writing in Swedish, lost herself in the
study of literature and also, quite unexpectedly, science, which extended
before her like an exotic country waiting to be explored. She flicked through
university prospectuses and chose unashamedly among completely diverse
professions: architect, biologist, psychologist, school teacher.
The
social aspect of school life was considerably more difficult. A Maya she had
not seen in daylight for several years came creeping out, the quiet and
submissive girl who melted into the wallpaper. She was the only alternative to
the truculent mask of the past few years. It was like starting afresh, sitting
there in class and waiting in agony for the teacher you have had for six months
to remember your name.
The
students at the school came from different social backgrounds and were all
there for different reasons. Many simply wanted a break, to find some peace, or
perhaps to find themselves . Some were there to get to
know other people, to break out of their isolated existence. At seventeen Maya
was the youngest, and she felt ignorant yet also
weighed down by experiences she just couldn't share. There was a boy
with all the memories.'
'Do
me a favour,' Beckman said and pulled out on to the road. She glanced at the
clock on the dashboard. 'We've only got three more places to visit. That's the
advantage of investigating a murder in the middle of nowhere.'
Gonzales
cackled.
'True.
But there are one or two disadvantages as well. These
farmers, for a start. If I was in their shoes, regardless of whether I
had anything to do with the murder or not, and if I wasn't mentally subnormal,
I certainly wouldn't have behaved as suspiciously as most of the ones we've met
so far.'
'If
you weren't mentally subnormal, you say…'
----
Chapter
13
1993
As
time went by, Maya began to settle at the school.
The
actual work was no problem, in fact it turned out to
be a source of pleasure. She had dropped out of grammar school in a fit of
existential questioning and had caught the commuter train into Gothenburg every
morning to hang out in the Northern Station cafe with a gang of other kids on
the loose. They would meet in the morning, scrape together enough for a cup of
tea each, preferably Twinings Söders Höjder; then they would sit there with the
same infiiser, and by the afternoon would always end up drinking 'silver tea' -
a mixture of hot water and sugar. They wrote on serviettes and in visitors'
books, and smoked roll-ups.
The youth centre, which was the only thing on offer to those who
refused to study, was totally uninteresting. They were obliged to spend
two days in a remedial class and three doing some crap job for no pay. Maya
became aware of this after only a week, and not without a certain elitist
attitude towards her classmates - boys with bum-fluff moustaches who nicked
cars. None of this bothered her as much as the fact that they couldn't actually
spell their own surnames. Nor did she feel any kind of affinity with their
admiring girlfriends, all chewing gum and bleached blonde hair.
At
the root of Maya's aversion to staying on at grammar school, and of her
contempt for the unfortunate remedial kids, was a refusal to conform. School
was classed as the most obvious form of oppression. And when it came to Maya's
mother, she had not merely contented herself with trying to persuade her
children to carry on studying by means of bribes, threats and guilt; in
addition, she had limited their choice of study options to the subjects she
herself would have liked to pursue but had not been allowed. As a general rule,
Maya's mother had always found it difficult to distinguish where she ended and
other people began.
Up
to this point Maya had never realised that learning could be fun; it had
certainly never struck her that she had a talent for absorbing knowledge. But
it did now. She was praised for her writing in Swedish, lost herself in the
study of literature and also, quite unexpectedly, science, which extended
before her like an exotic country waiting to be explored. She flicked through
university prospectuses and chose unashamedly among completely diverse
professions: architect, biologist, psychologist, school teacher.
The
social aspect of school life was considerably more difficult. A Maya she had
not seen in daylight for several years came creeping out, the quiet and
submissive girl who melted into the wallpaper. She was the only alternative to
the truculent mask of the past few years. It was like starting afresh, sitting
there in class and waiting in agony for the teacher you have had for six months
to remember your name.
The
students at the school came from different social backgrounds and were all
there for different reasons. Many simply wanted a break, to find some peace, or
perhaps to find themselves . Some were there to get to
know other people, to break out of their isolated existence. At seventeen Maya
was the youngest, and she felt ignorant yet also
weighed down by experiences she just couldn't share. There was a boy
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