Italian Shoes

by Henning Mankell

  He got back into his boat, which was bumping and scraping against the jetty.

  ‘I haven’t got any post for you,’ he said, ‘but Hans Lundman asked me to bring you a newspaper.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He didn’t say. It’s yesterday’s.’

  He handed me one of the national dailies.

  ‘Didn’t he say anything at all?’

  ‘He just asked me to give it to you. He doesn’t waste words, as you know.’

  I pushed out the bows as Jansson started reversing into the teeth of the gale. As he turned he very nearly ran aground in the shallows. But at the last moment he squeezed enough power from the engine to get out of the inlet.

  As I left the jetty I saw something white floating just off the shore where the caravan was standing. I went to investigate and saw that it was a dead swan. Its long neck slithered like a snake through the seaweed. I went back to the boathouse, placed the newspaper on the tool bench and put on a pair of working gloves. Then I picked the swan up. A nylon fishing line had dug deeply into its body and become entangled in its feathers. It had starved to death as it hadn’t been able to search for food. I carried it up and laid it on the rocks. It wouldn’t be long before the crows and sea gulls ate the carcass. Carra came to investigate and sniffed at the bird.

  ‘It’s not for you,’ I said. ‘It’s for other hungry creatures.’

  I suddenly grew tired at the prospect of the jigsaw puzzle, walked to the boathouse and fetched one of my flat-fish nets, sat down in the kitchen and started to repair it. My grandfather had taught me how to splice ropes and mend nets. The techniques and know-how were still there in my fingers. I sat there working until dusk fell. In my head I conducted a conversation with Agnes about what had happened. Reconciliation is possible in the world of the imagination.

  That evening I ate the rest of the chicken. When I’d finished, I lay down on the kitchen sofa and listened to the wind. I was just going to switch the radio on and listen to the news when I remembered the newspaper Jansson had brought with him. I took my torch and walked down to the boathouse to get it.

  Hans Lundman rarely did anything without a specific purpose. I sat at the kitchen table and started to scrutinise the newspaper to find what he wanted me to see.

  I found it on page four, in the section devoted to foreign news. It was a picture from a top-level meeting for leading European statesmen – presidents and prime ministers. They had lined up to be photographed. In the foreground was a naked woman holding up a placard. Underneath the picture were a few words about the embarrassing incident. A woman wearing a black raincoat had succeeded in entering the press conference, using a forged pass. Once inside, she had taken off the raincoat and lifted up her placard. Several security guards had quickly hustled her away. I looked at the picture, and felt a pain in my stomach. I had a magnifying glass in one of the kitchen drawers. I examined the picture again. I became increasingly worried as my suspicions were slowly confirmed. The woman was Louise. It was her face, even if it was slightly averted. There she was, making a triumphant and challenging gesture.

  The text on the placard was about the cave, where the ancient wall paintings were being ruined by mould.

  Lundman was a sharp-eyed individual. He had recognised her. Perhaps she had told him at the midsummer party about the cave.

  I took a kitchen towel and wiped away the sweat from under my shirt. My hands were shaking.

  I went out into the wind, shouted for the dog and sat down on Grandma’s bench in the darkness.

  I smiled. Louise was out there somewhere, smiling back. I had a daughter I could really be proud of.

  CHAPTER 3

  ONE DAY IN the middle of November, the letter I had been waiting for arrived at last. By then the whole of the archipelago knew that I had a daughter who had caused a stir in front of Europe’s leading statesmen.

  No doubt Jansson had contributed to spreading and exaggerating the rumours: Louise was alleged to have performed a striptease and wiggled back and forth in erotic fashion before being led away. Then she had viciously attacked the security guards, bitten one of them, apparently splashing Tony Blair’s shoes with blood. And then she was eventually sentenced to prison.

  Louise was in Amsterdam. She wrote that she was staying at a little hotel near the railway station and the city’s red-light district. She was resting, and every day visited an exhibition at which the works of Rembrandt and Caravaggio were compared. She had plenty of money. Lots of anonymous people had given her gifts, and the press had paid vast sums for her story. She had not been punished at all for her demonstration. The letter ended with the news that she intended coming back to the island at the beginning of December.

  Her letter contained an address. I wrote a reply without further ado, and handed it to Jansson together with the letter I had been unable to send earlier. He was curious when he saw her name, but he said nothing.

  The letter from Louise gave me the courage to write to Agnes. There had been no word from her after her visit. I was ashamed. For the first time in my life I was unable to find an excuse for my behaviour. I simply couldn’t brush aside what had happened that evening.

  I wrote to her and begged for forgiveness. Nothing else, only that. A letter containing nineteen words, each one carefully chosen.

  She rang two days later. I had dozed off in front of the television and thought it must be Louise when I picked up the phone.

  ‘I received your letter. My first thought was to throw it away without opening it, but I did read it. I accept your apology. Assuming you really mean what you wrote?’

  ‘Every word.’

  ‘You probably don’t realise what I’m referring to. I’m asking about what you wrote regarding your island and my girls.’

  ‘Of course you can all come here.’

  I could hear her breathing.

  ‘Come here,’ I said.

  ‘Not now. Not yet. I have to think things over.’

  I replaced the receiver. I felt the same kind of exhilaration as I’d felt after reading Louise’s letter. I went out and looked up at the stars, and thought that it would soon be a year since Harriet had appeared on the ice, and my life had begun to change.

  At the end of November the coast was hit by another severe storm. The easterly gales reached a peak on the second evening. I walked down to the jetty and noticed that the caravan was swaying alarmingly in the wind. With the aid of a few rocks normally used for anchoring the nets, and some logs that had been washed ashore, I managed to stabilise it. I had already installed an old electric fire in the caravan, to make sure it was warm and cosy when Louise got back.

  When the storm had passed I went for a walk round the island. Easterly gales can sometimes result in a lot of driftwood littering the shore. This time I didn’t find any big logs, but an old wheelhouse from a fishing boat had been blown on to the rocks. At first I thought it was the top of a vessel that had been sunk by the storm, but when I investigated more closely I found that it was this battered old wheelhouse. After a moment’s thought I went back home and rang Hans Lundman. After all, what I had found might have been the remains of a sunken fishing boat. An hour later, I had the coastguard on my island. We managed to drag it ashore and secure it with a rope. Hans confirmed that it was not a new wreck and that there had been no reports of missing fishing boats.

  ‘It has probably been standing on land somewhere, but the gales have blown it into the sea. It’s rotten through and through, and can hardly have been attached to a boat for many years. I should think it’s thirty or forty years old.’

  ‘What shall I do with it?’ I wondered.

  ‘If you’d had any little children, they could have used it as a playhouse. As it is, I don’t think it’s of much use for anything apart from firewood.’

  I told him that Louise was on her way home.

  ‘Incidentally, I’ve never been able to understand how you noticed her in the newspaper. It was such a poor picture. But even so, you
could see that it was her?’

  ‘Who knows how and why we see what we see? Andrea misses her. Not a day passes without her putting on those shoes and asking after Louise. I often think about her.’

  ‘Have you shown Andrea the picture in the newspaper?’

  Hans looked at me in surprise.

  ‘Of course I have.’

  ‘It’s hardly a suitable picture for children to look at. I mean, she was naked.’

  ‘So what? It’s bad for children not to be told the truth. Children suffer from being told lies, just as we adults do.’

  He went back to his boat, and engaged reverse gear. I fetched an axe and started chopping up the old wheelhouse I’d been lumbered with. It was quite easy as the wood was so rotten.

  I had just finished and straightened up my back when I felt a stinging pain in my chest. Since I had often diagnosed coronary spasms during my life, I realised what the pain indicated. I sat down on a large stone, breathed deeply, unbuttoned my shirt and waited. After about ten minutes the pain went away. I waited for another ten minutes before walking very slowly back to the house. It was eleven in the morning. I phoned Jansson. I was lucky: it was his day off. I said nothing about my pain, simply asked him to come and fetch me.

  ‘This is a very quick decision,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘You normally ask me to pick you up a week in advance.’

  ‘Can you collect me or can’t you?’

  ‘I’ll be with you in half an hour.’

  When we had reached the mainland, I told him I’d probably be returning the same day, but I couldn’t say precisely when. Jansson was ready to burst with curiosity, but I said nothing.

  When I arrived at the health centre I explained what had happened. After a short wait I underwent the usual examinations and an ECG, and spoke to a doctor. He was probably one of the locums who nowadays move from one surgery to another because they can never manage to attract a doctor on a long-term basis. He gave me the medication and instructions I had expected, as well as a referral to the hospital for a more detailed examination.

  I called Jansson from reception and asked him to collect me. Then I bought two bottles of brandy and returned to the harbour.

  It was only later, when I was back on the island, that the fear kicked in. Death had taken hold of me and tested my powers of resistance. I drank a glass of brandy. Then I went out and stood on the edge of a cliff and yelled out over the sea. I was shouting out my fear, disguised as anger.

  The dog sat some distance away, watching me.

  I didn’t want to be alone any longer. I didn’t want to be like one of the rocks on my island, observing in silence the inevitable passage of days and time.

  I had a hospital appointment for 3 December. There was nothing fundamentally wrong with my heart. Medication, exercise and an appropriate diet should keep me going for a few years yet. The doctor was about my own age. I told him the facts, admitted that I had once been a doctor, but had then gone to look after an old fisherman’s cottage on an offshore island. He displayed a friendly lack of interest, and as I was about to leave, told me that I had a slight touch of angina.

  Louise arrived on 7 December. The temperature had dropped, and at last autumn was giving way to winter. Rainwater in the rock crevices began to freeze at night. She had phoned from Copenhagen and asked me to arrange for Jansson to pick her up from the harbour. The connection was cut before I had time to ask her any more questions. I switched on the electric fire in her caravan, polished her shoes, cleaned up, and remade the bed with fresh sheets.

  I hadn’t had a recurrence of the heart pains. I wrote a letter to Agnes and asked if she had finished thinking about my suggestion. She sent a picture postcard with her answer. The picture was of a painting by Van Gogh, and the text comprised two words: ‘Not yet.’

  I wondered what Jansson had thought when he read the card.

  Louise stepped on to the jetty carrying nothing but the rucksack she had taken with her in the first place. I had expected her to be struggling with large suitcases containing all the things she’d collected during her expedition. If anything, the rucksack seemed to be emptier now than it was when she set out.

  Jansson appeared unwilling to leave. I gave him an envelope containing the fee he’d asked for his ferrying activities, and thanked him for his help. Louise greeted the dog. They seemed to get along like a house on fire. I opened the door to the caravan, which had become nicely warm. She deposited her rucksack there, then accompanied me to the house. Before we went in, she paused for a moment by the little mound marking the grave under the apple tree.

  I grilled some cod for dinner. She ate it as if she hadn’t eaten in weeks. I thought she looked paler and perhaps even thinner than she was before. She told me that the plan to gatecrash the summit meeting had been hatched before she left the island.

  ‘I sat down on the bench by the boathouse and worked it all out,’ she said. ‘I didn’t feel there was any point in writing the letters any more. It had dawned on me that they might never have been meaningful for anybody apart from myself. So I chose another way.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say anything?’

  ‘I don’t know you well enough. You might have tried to stop me.’

  ‘Why should I have done that?’

  ‘Harriet always tried to make me do what she wanted. Why should you be any different?’

  I tried to ask her more questions about her expedition, but she shook her head. She was tired, needed to get some rest.

  At midnight I saw her to the caravan. The thermometer outside the kitchen window was showing plus one degree. She shuddered in the cold and took my arm. That was something she had never done before.

  ‘I miss the forest,’ she said. ‘I miss my friends. But this is where the caravan is now. It was kind of you to heat it up for me. I shall sleep like a log, and dream about all the paintings I’ve seen during the past few months.’

  ‘I’ve brushed your red shoes for you,’ I said.

  She kissed me on the cheek before vanishing into the caravan.

  Louise kept out of the way for the first few days after her return. She came to eat when I shouted for her, but she didn’t say much and could become irritated if I asked too many questions. One evening I went down to the caravan and peered in through the window. She was sitting at the table, writing something in a notebook. She suddenly turned to look at the window. I crouched down and held my breath. She didn’t open the door. I hoped she hadn’t seen me.

  While I was waiting for her to become accessible again, I went for long walks with the dog every day, to keep myself in shape. The sea was blue-grey, fewer and fewer seabirds were around. The archipelago was withdrawing into its winter shell.

  One evening I wrote what was to be my new will. Everything I owned would go to Louise, of course. What I had promised Agnes kept gnawing away at me, but I did what I’ve always done in such circumstances: pushed nagging worries to the back of my mind and convinced myself that things would sort themselves out if and when they came to a head.

  In the morning of the eighth day after her return Louise was sitting at the kitchen table when I came downstairs at about seven.

  ‘I’m not tired any more,’ she said. ‘I can face other people now.’

  ‘Agnes,’ I said. ‘I’ve invited her to come here. Maybe you can convince her that she ought to move here with her girls.’

  Louise looked at me in surprise, as if she hadn’t heard properly what I’d said. I had no idea of the danger that was creeping up on me. I told her about Agnes’s visit, but needless to say didn’t mention what had happened between us.

  ‘I thought I’d let Agnes and her girls come to live here when they no longer have the house where she runs her care home.’

  ‘You mean you’re going to give the island away?’

  ‘There’s only me and the dog here. Why shouldn’t this island start being useful again?’

  Louise was furious an
d slammed her fist down on the coffee cup on the table in front of her. Bits of cup and saucer splattered into the wall.

  ‘So you’re going to give away my inheritance? Aren’t you going to leave me anything when you’ve gone? – I haven’t had a thing from you so far.’

  I found myself stuttering when I replied.

  ‘I’m not giving her anything. I’m just letting her stay here.’

  Louise stared at me long and hard. It felt as if I was confronted by a snake. Then she stood up so violently that her chair fell over. She took her jacket and stormed out, leaving the door open. I waited and waited for her to come back.

  I closed the door. At last I understood what it had meant to her that day when I turned up outside her caravan. I had given her a possession. She had even given up the forest for the sea, for me and my island. Now she thought I was taking all that away from her.

  I had no heirs apart from Louise. I had once entertained the thought of giving the island to some archipelago trust or other. But that would only mean that, at some point in the future, greedy politicians would sit on my jetty and enjoy the sea. Now everything had changed. If I fell down and died that very night, Louise would be my direct heir. What she did with it then would be entirely up to her.

  She didn’t appear at all the next day. In the evening, I went to the caravan. Louise was lying on the bed. Her eyes were open. I hesitated before knocking on the door.

  ‘Go away!’

  Her voice was shrill and tense.

  ‘We must talk this over.’

  ‘I’m getting out of here.’

  ‘Nobody will ever take this island away from you. You don’t need to worry.’

  ‘Go away!’

  ‘Open the door!’

  I tried the handle. It was unlocked. But before I could move she had flung it open. It smashed into my face. My bottom lip split open, I fell over backwards and hit my head on a stone. Before I could get up she had thrown herself on top of me and was hitting me about the face with what remained of an old cork lifebelt that had been lying nearby.

  ‘Stop it. I’m bleeding.’