Britt Holmstrom

The Wrong Madonna Britt Holmstrom

It is the day before Easter Sunday, 1965. A young foreign girl can be seen sitting by a grave in the Mirogoj cemetery in Zagreb. She is holding a small infant in her arms, trying not to look at it. "Child," she says out loud. "Oh, child. You picked the wrong madonna." Weeping, burdened by guilt, she tells the sleeping infant what is about to happen. Ten days later, a girl named Lisa Grankvist arrives in London, hoping to have a good time and to forget the past she has left behind. Apart from a wad of cash, she is carrying a bag of clothes, a Viennese teacup, her dead father's tools and his false teeth wrapped in a handkerchief (hoping he will one day rejoin his smile). She also brings with her several dark secrets. Her new friends, the groovy young things of swinging London, see her as mysterious and deep, lonely but self-sufficient. Lisa finds a peaceful corner in this new world: a room in a house in Chiswick full of various nationalities and spicy foods. Here she grows a beautiful garden, and imagines that she has found a permanent refuge. One night after drinking to much with her friend Pru, Lisa in an unguarded moment asks the question: Why do men rape women? Pru, guessing that buried inside the question is a component of the story Lisa insists in keeping to herself, and demands to know more. Lisa refuses at first, but the story does unravel, slowly in long conversations between the two friends, beginning with a night's confession. It ends after twenty years of letters, long-distance phone calls, and an unexpected reunion. It's an shocking ending Lisa herself could never have imagined.