At Orly I tried for the third time to reach the doctor whose name I had been give, but to no avail. He was either not able to come to the phone or not in every time I called so in frustration I dialed the number of Gisela Hojer to see if she knew anything about Martin's condition.
A woman answered the phone and when I asked to speak to Gisela Hojer she answered, "This is Gisela."
"This is Suze...Sanderson," I said using my maiden name. "Can you tell me how Martin is doing?"
"You are at the airport?" She responded.
"Yes, how did you know?" I asked.
"I can hear the flights being called." She answered.
"Yes and they just called my flight too." I told her.
"What is your flight number, I will pick you up at the airport?" She asked and told me in one quick sentence.
"It is SAS 339, but how will I recognize you?" I asked.
"I will be the one with the umbrella." She said in a laughing voice and hung up.
.....
On the flight I started to think about our conversation. Martin must be in very bad condition I thought because she avoided answering that question totally and she quickly offered to pick me up at the airport. Then I thought what if it's raining? Everyone will have an umbrella and even if it isn't raining how will I see her in the crowd carrying an umbrella?
When I arrived at Arlanda and came through customs into the public area I spotted Gisela immediately and knew that she was a non-conformist and fun person just as immediately. She was the only one in the airport with an open umbrella!
Gisella was in her 40's, tall and svelte. She carried herself with an assured dignity and quickly loaded my luggage into her SAAB that she had left at the curb.
After we got into her car I said, "I take it you're not superstitious."
"Why do you ask?" She answered laughingly as she put the car in gear and drove away from the airport.
"An open umbrella inside is suppose to bring bad luck." I answered.
"Superstition is simply and excuse for stupid decisions. If you walk under a ladder of course there is the chance that someone will drop a bucket of paint or a tool on your head. If you see a black cat cross your path and walk or drive into a tree it is not because of the cat but because you focused on the cat and not what you were doing. But superstitious people don't want to say they saw the ladder and the workmen but they chose to walk under the ladder because they were to lazy to go around, or I looked at the cat, slammed on my breaks, swerved to the left into oncoming traffic and that is why I had the accident."
Before I could ask about Martin she asked me, "Do you know what SAAB stands for?"
When I answered no she said, "So you don't speak Swedish."
"How does that follow?" I asked.
She laughed and said, "Few people know other than Swedes and Swedish speakers that it stands for Svenska Airplane Acta Bolag."
"OK, makes sense to me, but how is Martin?" I asked.
Gisela became serious and she said, "Not good, he is being operated on this evening and by this time tomorrow we should know if he is going to make it or not. I am taking you to his apartment. It is in the top part of the house where I live, where I grew up. My mother sold off various parts of the house years ago and Ulla and Martin bought the apartment above what was my room when I was a young girl. I now live in the ground floor of the house and the rest of the house is owned by Martin and two other families."
"Sounds like a big house." I said.
"It is a villa, the Villa Vegeta. It was named that because it was built by a man who came back to Sweden during The Opium Wars between China and England. He came with his wealth, his poppy seeds and his vegetarianism and because he was a vegetarian it is called the Villa Vegeta." She told me.
"What did he do with his poppy seeds?" I asked.
"He planted them in the garden for his own use and even though the garden is overgrown today, once in awhile in the spring you will see a poppy come up." She said with a wistful appreciation of her childhood home.
When we turned up that long curving driveway between the stone walls at Langangvagen 54 I was stunned. What a magnificent structure and what a magnificent setting I thought as Gisela stopped the car and pulled the key from the floor.
After she deposited me and my bags into a two room apartment overlooking the sea and a small Island between us and the city skyline she told me to take a few minutes to freshen up and to just come down and knock on the door she had pointed out as we came in and we would have dinner. When I told her that she didn't have to make me dinner she just smiled and said, "I want the company, you need the company and we can't do anything but wait until tomorrow."
After dinner we sat around the fire and Gisela told me about how Martin came to live there when he was a graduate student in his early twenties and she was in her very early teens. "He was so handsome and so charming. He always made you happy to be in his presence. He was my first school girl crush and when he met Ulla and brought her here I hated her at first, but Ulla was sweet and they often took me on picnics or sailing in the archipelago or to Grona Lund or Skansen. I had the room below them and there was a dumb waiter from their kitchen down to my room that was no longer used except as a cupboard, but the sound carried if you left the door to it open. I use to listen to them making love and I decided as a young girl that I wanted to grow up to be like Ulla and marry a man like Martin."
"Did you ever marry?" I asked.
