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However tired of each other they must have grown from time to time, there was always great solidarity among Pastor Fredrik Hammarsten’s children—four boys and two girls The girls married quite young and moved to other countries, far enough away that the others could think of them without concern or annoyance But Torsten, Einar, Olov, and Harald continued to live in Stockholm, where Grandfather was the preacher at Jakob’s Church Maybe they knew one another too well to socialise in the usual way, but they couldn’t help being aware of one another’s various activities and sometimes foolish opinions   Sister Elsa married a priest and moved to Germany, and Mama married a sculptor and went to Finland She signed her drawings Ham, but Uncle Einar called her Signe   I knew that when they were young and Uncle Einar’s studies were at their most intense, it was Ham who watched over his work and saw to it that none of his strength or confidence went to waste She was tireless and ambitious on his behalf   And then she went away What a triumph it must have been when she learned that Uncle Einar had been named Professor of Medical Chemistry at the Karolinska Institute! He must have written to tell her, because we had no telephone   Mama never said a word about being homesick, but as often as she could, she took me out of school and sent me over to her brothers to see what they were up to and to tell them what was happening with us, and the most important part was seeing Uncle Einar and trying to get a sense of how his scientific work was going   ‘It’s going all right,’ he said ‘You can tell Signe that I think it’s moving in the right direction, but very slowly’   ‘How so?’ I said, sitting at the ready with pen and paper   Uncle Einar gazed at me for a moment and then said very amiably that cancer was like a string of beads where it’s impossible to remove one of the beads from the others without the whole necklace going to pieces   I was disappointed Apparently