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“The rat at least listened”
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In a bed borrowed from a hospital, Eva Vejde is looking up at the ceiling.
Rats have wreaked havoc, and the books he has collected over a 92-year life have been put away along with salvageable furniture.
The rest, clothes, sheets, everything has been thrown away.
The small tree in Skarpnäck, one of Stockholm’s southern suburbs, is nearly empty and a craftsman named Kjell carefully removes the masonite slabs from the interior walls.
It’s tempting to try and create a plague atmosphere that erupts during plague time and makes its way through the memories of an old woman.
But that image would not be true. That story is written by Stephen King, the author. That story has nothing to do with journalism.
– The rats came this summer. I could hear them at night. They seem to sleep during the day, says Eva Vejde.
The hunger for the landlord-tenant association’s central garbage system had failed. Like so many other things that were built in the early 80s, an architectural era that makes no one happy.
With four-story brick houses, the municipality has displayed garbage cans. It was enough for a local newspaper to write an ad.
Home delivery raised the alarm over it creaking behind the dishwasher. A caretaker came and set some traps. But the animals were too smart to be fooled.
Kjell, the craftsman, continues to lift the wall. He is basically a carpenter, but the company he works for takes various forms of remediation.
Drill and hammer blow. It’s hard to hear what Eva Vejde says. It’s lunch soon, but she doesn’t feel like getting out of bed.
Now sleep in the living room. Other rooms have been emptied. Here and there, holes in the walls testify to the progress of ambitious rodents.
– The older I get, the less I feel like I’m being heard. It is strange that nobody cares what experienced people have to say.
His life has been long and colorful. Born in Czechoslovakia in 1928, he grew up fast and wanted to go out into the world.
On the wall next to the makeshift bed, the one that had been thrown in a container all those years, hangs a small, yellowish portrait of a man in a doctor’s coat.
The picture shows his father, the farmer’s son who was educated, became a pediatrician and teacher, and married richly.
The money was there and Eva Vejde studied at the prestigious Sciences Po University in Paris, where, strictly speaking, the entire French political elite has received their higher education.
But in 1948 the communists seized power in Czechoslovakia and the new regime confiscated the family’s assets.
A 20-year-old woman was expelled from school, got a job in French radio and met Olle, a young Swedish man who traveled Europe and worked to build a continent that was in ruins after a terrible war.
They moved to Stockholm. Eva Vejde learned Swedish quickly. The nuances of language came to him through poetry.
He got a job as a cultural journalist at FLT, a news agency that existed in the world and that served as material for the country’s bourgeois rural newspapers.
The total circulation of all these newspapers was 1.5 million at most. Eva Vejde appeared in the newspapers day after day for 28 years.
But who does not make himself known in Stockholm is not known anywhere.
Kjell, the craftsman, was here last week and inspected.
– I think there were more rats then. In each case of the stool to judge. I have inhaled a lot, he says in a neglected Stockholm that belongs to the past.
– Now there’s probably only one left. Here behind the wall.
Photo: Magnus Wennman
The craftsman Kjell.
Ask with curiosity why Aftonbladet suddenly appears. You don’t get a good answer.
I have been groping for a reason to write this text. I tried to find a context to put the situation of Eva Vejde. Looking for something that makes these words more than a description of misery.
Have rats become more numerous?
Possibly. In any case, there was more effective poison in the past. But it was banned by the EU.
It is often claimed that there are as many rats as humans in the capital.
This may be true. But Tommy Tuvunger, a pest coordinator for the city of Stockholm, says it’s just a guess. We really don’t know.
Could it be that the pandemic has changed the behavior of these animals? Have they sought shelter from closed trash cans to residential areas?
Yes, experts say. This is how it has been seen in cities around countries with strict blockade. But in Sweden, restaurants and bars have been somewhat open.
Is it possible to be bothered by the deficiencies in the old woman’s home insurance?
A reading of the fine print indicates that it does not cover “direct or indirect damage caused by insects or rats and mice.”
Sure, but a simple Google search is enough to find out that newspapers, radio, and television over the years have done good consumer journalism and warned about precisely this. There is no news to download here.
Eva Vejde yawns and suggests that I write about Sweden, but that the weather is better in Paris.
Sven, the son, the fruit of a marriage that ended in the 1960s, stands out on the terrace and smokes a cigarette.
Dad died too A few years ago, 97 years. But the mother lives and should not have rats at home.
Eight months have passed. Anticimex has tried to do something with the misery. But it has only gotten worse.
– The renovation will cost a few hundred thousand. I have the money, but what do all the elderly who cannot get that help do?
The last piece of masonite, on the roof, doesn’t really want to give up. Kjell, the craftsman, ties and pulls and finally lets go.
A rat jumps forward and runs across the floor to the bathroom and hides. It goes so fast that I don’t have time to get scared.
Soon, Kjell, the craftsman, has tricked him out of the apartment. The little brown body disappears through the door and out into the open air.
Would the animal be happier knowing that research has finally absolved its ancestors of all responsibility for the Great Depression, the medieval plague that killed one in three people in Europe?
In the snow of a soccer field across the road, some elementary school-age children are playing. They chase each other, they throw snowballs, they laugh out loud, they are happy like the children of Stockholm when, for once, they experience a real winter.
Some people are at the beginning of their lives, others at the end. It is as it has always been.
Perhaps this story is something as banal as a reminder of something we already know. That even one of the richest countries in the world has its cracks and its emptiness.
This is how an elderly person can have it in Sweden in 2021.
Photo: Magnus Wennman
Eva Vejde, 92 years old.
Eva Vejde thinks do not get up today. He has slept for a while, but has awakened again.
The indoor air is nauseating. Ventilation appears to be as poor as the central sweep system. The extractor hood sounds soft and stubborn.
– It’s hard to be old. I have no one to talk to. Anyway, at least I didn’t go downstairs without explaining first.
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