LITMIR.BIZ

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to speak to the entire staff,’ Oswald said. ‘So I’ll wait for her.’

      He crossed his arms over his chest.

      Bosse hurried off and an awkward silence followed. No one wanted to talk. Everyone stared straight ahead, avoiding each other’s eyes and, above all, trying not to stare at Oswald. The silence was cold as ice.

      At last a panting Bosse returned with Katarina in tow. She looked terrible: she was sweaty, her eyes were feverish, and she was so pale that her skin took on a green tinge in the cold light. She was still wearing her nightgown and slippers.

      ‘I was working late tonight while the rest of you were snoozing,’ Oswald began. ‘And on my way home I peeked in here to see how the renovations are coming along. Come on, I’ll show you how it looks.’

      He marched out of the dining room with the staff trailing him, and they headed down the corridor to the part of the building being renovated. The shorter staff members tried to crane their necks to see over the crowd, and there were bottlenecks at the doorways. Oswald didn’t say anything; he only walked around pointing at various boards, tools strewn about, piles of sawdust, safety glasses on the floor, and cans of paint that hadn’t even been sealed up for the night. Then he walked around, showing them the rooms. All twenty of them. There wasn’t a single finished room in sight. Sofia was flooded with relief even in the midst of her misery. It wasn’t the blog after all. Plus, she wasn’t responsible for this mess.

      ‘You have been working on this bloody project for three months,’ said Oswald. ‘Now I’m going to show you what happens when you make such a mess of things.’

      He strode out into the courtyard and everyone followed. They were almost immediately drenched by the cold, incessant rain. Sofia snuck an anxious glance at Katarina, who was coughing behind her. Oswald led them past the small barn to a wooded area.

      Anchored to the moss under a few pines was a large white tent. Oswald pulled the zipper down and showed them inside. There were sleeping bags, pillows, and blankets all in a pile, as well as several suitcases. Sofia, who had stuck close to Oswald, managed to poke her head through the opening. A heavy odour of mould and sweaty feet struck her.

      ‘This is where your household unit lives,’ Oswald said. ‘There is no room for them in the main building. Pleasant, isn’t it? This is how they are living, like pigs, on my property.’

      He didn’t say anything for a long time. The situation was absurd, bordering on comical. The rain fell harder, trickling into Oswald’s eyes and mouth and forcing him to blink and swallow again and again. The only sound that could be heard through the roaring downpour was Katarina’s rattling cough.

      Maybe he felt ridiculous, drenched as he was and with his voice drowned out by the rain, because he just shook his head and said, ‘I don’t want anything more to do with you. Not a single one of you bastards. Go back to the mainland, run home to mommy and daddy. Get a job you can handle. You don’t belong here.’

      Then he marched back into the main building.

      The whole staff stood there, at a loss, terrified and soaking wet.

      Bosse broke the silence: ‘Assembly in the dining room!’

       *

      Back inside, a small group congregated in one corner, whispering to each other: Bosse, Madeleine, and Benny and Sten, who were two peas in a pod. The pair could often be spotted riding around the property on their motorcycles or sitting in the booth at the front gate. They were large and obstinate but quite dull; they matched her idea of a typical guard perfectly. At first she thought they were cut out for the job, but now she wondered if it was such a good idea for them to be involved in decision-making.

      She considered joining the little group to prove that she cared, but decided to hold off. She wanted to avoid taking responsibility for the renovation project at all costs.

      Bosse hopped up onto a chair.

      ‘Now we’re going to shift into high gear,’ he said. ‘We’ll show Franz we’re a team. Everyone must pitch in and work on the renovation until it’s complete. No exceptions. Those of you who take care of the guests will just have to make sure that they have food and stuff. But otherwise we’ll work until it’s done.’

      Her hope of sneaking back to her warm bed was immediately extinguished. This didn’t look good. At all.

      Bosse divided them into groups that were to work on different parts of the renovation. She ended up in the painting group along with Elvira.

      And so began the craziest, most chaotic and sleepless period in her life thus far. Days and nights flowed together into the sort of mishmash that can only arise from a large group of people who have no plan or idea what to do. They sawed, swept, polished, sandpapered, and painted. Bosse and his new henchmen ran around trying to make everyone move faster by shouting things like ‘Faster!’ and ‘You have fifteen minutes to finish that!’ and since all these commands were perfectly meaningless, no one listened.

      They slept for a few hours each night; sometimes not even that much. After several sleepless nights, staff were dozing off here and there and had to be shaken into consciousness to get going again.

      Sofia tried to stay awake as best she could. She painted and painted. Her hands, arms, legs, feet, and hair were covered in white paint.

       What have I gotten myself into? What am I doing here?

      The thought returned to her daily, but she kept painting with Elvira. They became friends there among the cans, brushes, and turpentine. They shared water bottles and gum. They kept watch for each other when one slipped into the storage room to take a nap on the hard floor behind the shelves, when they simply couldn’t manage any longer. If someone in the leader group, as they called Bosse’s gang, headed for the storage room, all the person keeping watch could do was rush over and distract them. She would cough three times to wake the sleeper, to give her time to rub the sleep from her eyes. That was all it took — it was impossible to sleep deeply on the ice-cold floor. The three coughs broke through slumber like it was the first thin layer of ice on a pond; the alert brought the sleeper to her feet and she would dart out of the storeroom and go right back to painting.

      Each time it seemed they were done, something else popped up. The wrong colour paint somewhere; baseboards that weren’t high enough; mismatched furniture. And every time something went wrong, the group experienced new, greater levels of hysteria and frenzy.

      She was swallowed by exhaustion; it got worse each day. Her eyelids were leaden and the brush felt huge in her hand.

      But she gritted her teeth and kept painting.

      Then one day, all of a sudden, they were finished.

      They looked at each other in wonder, dumbfounded, almost positive that it couldn’t be true. There had to be something else that needed fixing. But after several checks, the leader group determined that the job was done.

      They hadn’t seen Oswald a single time since that horrible night in the rain, but now he had to be called to inspect their work.

      He made them wait for two days. They spent the time cleaning and polishing, moving furniture back and forth, burnishing door handles. They didn’t dare leave the floor out of fear that he might suddenly show up.

      When he arrived, he walked around the rooms three times.

      He didn’t utter a word. At last he nodded.

      The nightmare was over.

       *

      Oswald allowed them to celebrate with a party in the dining room. Food, wine, music, and dancing — it was like stepping into a new world. He attended the party too. He spoke with the staff, joking, laughing, and back-slapping.

      When he caught sight of Sofia, he made a sort of apology.

      ‘I know you’re new here,’ he said. ‘But sometimes it’s necessary to take off the kid

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