Work Text:
18) Ilunga. From tshiluba: a person who forgives the first time, the second tolerates and the third has no mercy.
Events didn’t always followed a logical order in Saga Noren’s life, even though her desire, her maximum wish, was that everything was clear, precise and in order.
For many years, after Jennifer, after the pain and the surrender to emotions, after endless nights thinking about whether the idea of suing her parents was really the only way to save her sister, Saga’s life had been a series of days work dedicated only.
Weeks.
Months.
Years.
Crazy working time, irregular food, too many sandwiches also in the evening and excess calories, a metabolism that managed to sustain all the up and down of her diet, books to digest, many, and men to assimilate, few, who passed quickly without a connection to a future made only of loneliness.
And now Saga had to think, carefully, she had to decide what to do with her life and her freedom.
Only one thing was certain, there was only one fixed point, a single rock to anchor Saga after having lost all her other certainties.
For the first time, someone and not just something was waiting for her at home.
---
The Paris hotel receptionist had three thin braids on her left head side and her skin was dark with shiny silky reflections.
After many years, Saga remembered her classmate - black like the most saturated black of hand printed photos - escaped from the hunger and drought of Africa to end up in a land of cold and ice and snow.
With her strange skin, sat next to Saga’s creamy. A refugee, like many others.
The skin color was irrelevant, the girl was silent, she knew little Swedish, Saga liked it, she wasn’t the type for long conversations.
She remembered how at school the other classmates made fun of Msolu - it was the girl's name - and how she had reacted in crescendo, defending herself from aggressions, the first time with silence, the second with words, the third with decisive gestures; she was tall and thin, could run fast and could hit hard.
In crescendo.
Saga had always remained apart, not attacking Msolu, not defending her, until the blade of a knife flashed behind Msolu and Saga moved quickly to kick the aggressor's wrist.
And Msolu explained Ssaga the meaning of the word from her distant language.
Ilunga.
In crescendo.
To live. To survive.
And Saga attacked and destroyed her parents, her own source of life, harshly, without mercy. To save and defend her sister.
And police became atonement and guilt, because if she had already started from such decisive and strong action, what would Ilunga be for her?
If it was impossible to forgive her mother and father - instead she had to destroy them, using the law - what could she become? A murderer? Would she let herself be dominated by instincts she had read about and that were only mysterious dreams in the night, when Jennifer cried and she cradled her like she was her mother?
---
Martin, after.
Her friend, the only friend in forty years of life.
How much she had accepted Martin, learning to appreciate his laughter, his increasingly white beard - he didn’t become gray but silver, something precious - Martin was only Martin.
And the warmth of Martin and Mette's house, wood, in the woods. Driving across the Black Forest Saga felt close to them. Their house-shelter, that later became a danger trap and Saga failed to save one of the pack's cubs.
That failure made her more tolerant of Martin's mistake, even though her logic forced her to report him, to reveal to the world the crime committed.
---
And then, Henrik.
What shouldn't have happened, what couldn't be true, a new Martin, so different, the opposite, the darkness of his clear eyes against the white of Martin's smile.
Henrik, sombre and mysterious and immediately with her, in her, under the skin, more intimate than a penis inside a vagina, their minds jointed since the first day of the case.
The missing part, which Saga thought she didn't need, until she met him and understood the void she had inside and that he could fill
And forgiving him was easy, right, the best choice of Saga's life, because forgiveness brought salvation, signed with the ribbon of the train to bind them forever.
How Henrik had saved her and how on the same day she had saved him.
---
Being forgiven became sweet, a repairing balm, a blessing, because she, Saga Noren, the woman who always divided the world into right and wrong, also could make a mistake, out of inexperience, out of fear, out of love.
Perhaps if she had immediately told Henrik that the child was too much, too early, too difficult, if she had opened up to him instead of deciding alone, Henrik would have understood her and would have followed her again in the search for his daughters.
It was impossible for Saga to realize, then, that for Henrik a new child, by her, was the most beautiful miracle.
Instead that embryo, fetus, baby had become everything for him and the greatest fear for her.
Her mind had entered an unexplored territory where there were no points of reference, just Henrik's impassive face and then his harsh, icy words, while sending her away.
---
But Henrik had forgiven her, he’d have done it even without Astrid's return, because - as Henrik whispered crying on the phone, the night Saga was under Mont Saint Michel and sent him a picture of the mount with the sky full of stars - Saga was all he had left, all he loved.
And Saga was ready to return, her circle was complete, she too had a family now.
Saga got back in the car with a last goodbye to the bay and headed north-east towards home.