The Shadow Girls

by Henning Mankell

  I got off the tram in Nydalen and it had started to snow even harder. The ground was almost totally white. Nana lives on the ground floor in the building that is the furthest away from the edge of the cliff. I walked into the stairwell where someone had scrawled ‘Terror’ on the wall and again I started wondering what I was doing there. Why wasn’t I still at home or on my way to school? But I rang the doorbell and thought maybe she’ll be happy to see me. I know she likes me, she pays almost no attention to anyone else when she comes over to our house.

  The door opened and at first I thought I had made a mistake. A young man had opened the door. He was about my age and he stared at me as much as I stared at him. I saw at once that he was Swedish, not because he was blond, which he wasn’t, but because he had that look in his eyes that only those people born in this country have when they look at people who are not from here. Oh God, I thought, but I kept looking at him and he kept looking at me.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked.

  ‘Who are you?’ I replied.

  ‘My name is Torsten and I’m Nasrin’s assistant.’

  ‘Nana doesn’t have an assistant. You’re a burglar.’

  He started to protest but I was panicking at the thought that something had happened to Nana. I had never heard that she had any help at home and I was sure I would have since Dad loves to talk about Nana even though he can’t stand her. But Nana was sat in a chair watching TV, even though she couldn’t understand a single thing the people were saying. She lit up when she saw me.

  ‘I dreamed about you last night,’ she said. ‘There was a red bird pecking at the pillow next to my ear. The sound forced its way all through my dream and that’s how I knew you would come. Every time a bird visits me in my dreams I know you are on your way. When I dream of wriggling fish washed up on the shore it is your father who is coming.’

  ‘I didn’t know you had help, Nana.’

  Nana looked momentarily confused, as if she too had no idea what the stranger with the duster was doing in her apartment. Then she waved me closer and whispered that it was a secret. She and Mum had agreed to go behind Dad’s back on this since he was so stingy. Mum paid for the help, and arranged for Nana’s other children to chip in and Dad was on no account to hear of any of it.

  I asked her why she hadn’t come to me for help with cleaning the apartment and combing her hair but when she said she didn’t want me to neglect my studies I felt bad for the first time that I almost never go to school. But of course I didn’t say anything about that. I took off my coat and the whole time we were talking the guy called Torsten was dusting Nana’s photographs. Nana’s apartment almost looks like a photo studio because there are so many photographs on all the walls. There are even old photographs in the bathroom that are so faded you can hardly make out the outlines of people’s faces any more.

  Technically in our religion we aren’t supposed to even own photographs. I don’t know why exactly. But Nana wants all these old pictures on her walls, she says the photos ward off evil spirits and the thoughts of those who don’t wish her well – the ones who forced us to flee. This way, wherever she is in the apartment, she has loving eyes looking at her and that helps calm her down. Every time I come over Nana leans on my arm and then we walk around together looking at all the pictures. Even if I have been there two days in a row she forgets that she’s just showed me the pictures. She tells me who they are and what their names are and says they are family, even though it’s not true.

  Mum is the one who told me that ever since she came to Sweden Nana has been collecting old pictures that others have thrown out. She’s looked for them around the rubbish bins and in the basement storage area, and every single picture she’s found has gone up on the wall. She gives the faces names and makes them cousins or second cousins or even more remote family connections. She has given them dates of birth and decided if they died peacefully in their beds or in terrible accidents. She has given them occupations and let them be poets or singers or remarkable prophets who have wandered in the desert and had visions, or women who have given birth to children with diamonds in their mouths. Even though I know nothing of what she tells me is true I always go around with her and she never changes a single word of her stories. These pictures are Nana’s family and sometimes it feels as if it were all quite real.

  The whole time we walked around together Torsten was cleaning in the background. I felt him looking at me when my back was turned and I blushed even though he couldn’t see my face. The picture Nana always ends with is of a man carrying a rifle. He is laughing and Nana calls him Ajeb, the chieftain who hides out somewhere in the desert and who will one day perform a miracle that will transform our lives. I once tried to press Nana on exactly what this miracle was going to be, but that made her angry and she slapped me. It is the only time she’s ever done that. She doesn’t want me to ask anything, just listen.

  When we were finished with our tour of the photographs and Nana was back in her chair in front of the TV with a blanket over her legs, Torsten came and said he was done for the day and that he was going to be leaving now but that he would be back on Friday. I was disappointed and wanted to say something but I didn’t dare. Nana patted him on the cheek and then he left.

  ‘He’s a good boy,’ Nana said and ran a hand over her hair. ‘I never knew before that a man could be so good at combing hair.’

  I saw then that Nana’s hair had been brushed so it gleamed. She has long hair that reaches all the way down her back. I couldn’t understand how Nana who is so afraid of everything in this country could let a boy like Torsten comb her hair. I wanted to ask her more about him, where he came from and how they had found him, but I didn’t because I was afraid she would get angry.

  Suddenly Nana grabbed my hand and pointed to the screen. There was a programme on about a refugee camp in Africa. A little black girl – so very thin – was walking around in a desert landscape dotted with low bushes. She walked slowly and hesitantly and then she pointed to something on the ground. Suddenly crushed skulls and white pieces of bone appeared on the TV screen. The girl cried and she was speaking a language I couldn’t understand but I could follow the subtitles that said her parents had been killed here by soldiers who had been crazed by alcohol and blood lust and she had seen everything and everyone had died except her because her mother fell on top of her when she died.

  We sat completely still and Nana was holding my arm so tightly it almost hurt. She forced us to watch that girl who wandered around and cried among all the dead and all at once both Nana and I started crying. Suddenly the girl turned towards the camera or the people operating the camera and it looked as if she were turning towards us, as if she had heard us crying. Then the programme ended simply by cutting to a black screen and then – without even a moment’s pause – a programme came on about cultivating tomatoes in a cold climate.

  It was quite a shock to find ourselves looking at tomatoes after that girl weeping among her dead. I tried to hear if the sound of her crying reached the studio where they were talking about soil acidity but there was nothing. Nana grabbed the remote control angrily. She pushes all the buttons – since she doesn’t know how it works – until the TV shut down. Then we drank some tea without saying anything. It was as if that little girl was in the apartment with us. I thought about her and I thought about Torsten and Nana was thinking about something so far away that she closed her eyes and forgot to touch her tea until it was cold. It was still snowing outside but not as much. Nana finally pushed her teacup away and asked me why I wasn’t in school.

  ‘There’s no school today.’

  ‘How can that be?’

  ‘It’s some kind of holiday – I don’t know exactly.’

  ‘All the children in this building left for school as normal.’

  It was getting harder and harder to lie, but there was no way out of it now.

  ‘It’s a holiday today in Stensgården.’

  Nana nodded. I don’t know why I returned t
o the idea of Nydalen and Stensgården being different countries, just like I had been thinking about on the bus when I was still irritated by the fact that I couldn’t sleep. But Nana accepted my answer and didn’t pressure me with any more questions. I washed the teacups and then I was at a loss as to what I should do next. I couldn’t go home because then Mum would nag at me for not being in school. I supposed I could go to school late and say I had had a stomach ache or that Nana had been ill – no one really cares if you go or not. But I didn’t want to go there today. I didn’t want to stay with Nana either. If I did she would make me play this card game that she has invented, a game I still don’t understand all the rules to and that takes several hours.

  I stood up and said I was going home. Nana nodded again, got up awkwardly from her chair and stroked my cheek. When she does that her eyes are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I get completely relaxed when she touches me, I stop thinking about the cat with its paws chopped off and I feel how the world calms down around me. When I was younger I used to imagine that I would one day see the man I was going to marry at one of these times when she was touching me. But God help me – the only thing I saw this time was Torsten’s face.

  I flinched as if Nana’s hand had burned me – she couldn’t know that I had seen Torsten and not one of the beautiful men she used to talk about like one of Mum’s cousins who wasn’t simply a picture on the wall but a living person who lived somewhere in a country far away or in a refugee camp. We have relatives all over the world, in Australia, the USA, even in the Philippines. It is as if families on the run are shattered by something other than just grenades. The flight and fear tears us apart and those parts land in all kinds of places – we don’t even know where. But we always try to find them afterwards.

  I remember a time two years ago when we got a letter from Taala, one of Mum’s four sisters who had disappeared and who had now traced us and said she lived in a city called Minneapolis in America. Mum started dancing when she got this letter, Dad sat on the sofa and watched her, he looked so young, like a little boy, and he watched her moving through the rooms of our apartment almost as if he were embarrassed to see her happy after so many years of fear and grief and imprisonment. She danced so the walls started crumbling and the windows opened and she stepped out of herself and she became the person she really was and all because Taala wasn’t dead. Taala had breathed on her through that letter and memories had risen up from her words and Mum danced as if she were a young girl again.

  But when Nana touched my cheek I saw Torsten. He looked just like he had when he opened the front door and saw me. He was holding a duster in one hand and he was wearing a silly red apron with blue hearts and we stared at each other. You can’t love someone who wears a red apron with blue hearts. Nana looked at me and wanted to know what I was thinking. I always blush when I get questions I don’t want to answer and she noticed of course and asked me sternly if I had been thinking about a boy and who was it? I don’t know how I thought of this but the words came of themselves as if they had been stored inside me for so long they needed to get out.

  ‘I was just thinking of Ahmed.’

  ‘And you call that “just”! To be thinking of your dead brother!’

  ‘I don’t mean it like that.’

  ‘How do you mean it?’

  ‘It was so unexpected. It was as if he was there in your hand.’

  Nana calmed down.

  ‘He is always in my hand,’ she said. ‘He is in my hand like I am in God’s hand.’

  Then she walked back to her chair in front of the TV, pushed some buttons on the remote control and started watching. A programme came on with several men seated around a table, discussing something. Sheep, I think. They talked about sheep-shearing. I said goodbye, took my coat and left. When I came out I looked down into the snow and tried to figure out which footprints belonged to Torsten and which were the ones that I had left.

  Then I started walking back to the tram stop and it was light now and the snowflakes didn’t feel cold for some reason. I wondered what I should do. When I entered the underpass that leads to the tram stop I stopped short. Torsten was standing there. I stared at him. I thought I must be mistaken. But it was him. He was just standing there and even though I couldn’t know, I did know. There was only one reason why he would be standing there and that was that he was waiting for me.

  *

  Leyla stopped reading abruptly. A man had just entered the room and Humlin recognised him. It was Leyla’s father.

  ‘I haven’t told you any of this,’ she hissed. ‘I haven’t said anything. Nothing about Nana, nothing about the underpass.’

  ‘What happened after that?’ Tanya asked.

  ‘I can’t tell you now. Don’t you get what I’m saying?’

  Leyla’s father approached the table. He was short and stocky. He looked around at them suspiciously and then turned to Humlin.

  ‘What is going on here?’

  ‘We’re conducting a writing seminar.’

  ‘It shouldn’t start without me.’

  ‘I’m sorry if there’s been some kind of misunderstanding. I start when all the girls are present. I can’t be expected to keep track of all their families.’

  ‘I am not simply a relative; I am Leyla’s father.’

  He turned to his daughter and grabbed her arm roughly.

  ‘Where have you been all day?’

  ‘At school.’

  ‘No, you haven’t. They called home and asked why you weren’t there. Where have you been?’

  ‘At the hospital.’

  ‘Are you sick?’

  ‘No,’ Tea-Bag said, interrupting, ‘she felt dizzy and went to hospital. She’s had nightmares and difficulty sleeping.’

  Leyla nodded. Her father paused, clearly hesitating as to whether or not he should believe this.

  ‘I can’t allow Leyla to participate in this course any longer.’

  Humlin saw how Leyla tried to swallow her disappointment – or was it anger? He looked at her round face, shiny with sweat, and thought that her plump exterior hid not only a beautiful face but also a strong will.

  ‘What exactly is the problem?’ Humlin asked.

  ‘She’s not telling me the truth.’

  ‘What is it that isn’t true?’

  ‘She hasn’t been to the hospital.’

  ‘I have too,’ Leyla said softly.

  Her father turned and shouted at her, a tirade of smattering sounds of which Humlin understood nothing. Leyla bowed her head submissively, but Humlin thought he could still see the streak of rebellion in her bearing. Törnblom stepped up and looked as if he were preparing for a boxing match.

  ‘I’m sure we can solve this somehow.’

  He didn’t get any further. Haiman rose to his feet at that moment and approached the table.

  ‘Of course Leyla will continue her work here.’

  ‘You are not her father. I am her father, I decide.’

  ‘Let the girl decide for herself.’

  The exchange between Leyla’s father and Haiman grew more heated. They used a kind of Swedish Humlin had never heard before. Suddenly Törnblom jumped in.

  ‘We’re expecting a TV crew to arrive soon. I would like to suggest that Leyla’s father be present for the interview as a representative of the parents. You would be interviewed with Leyla and Jesper. Damn it, we can’t have fights over little things like this.’

  Haiman gave Törnblom a stern look, and Törnblom in turn gave Humlin the same stern look. Humlin could not recall a previous mention of this supposed return of the TV crew. He assumed it was an attempt by Törnblom to diffuse the situation.

  ‘It is not a little thing when a father believes his daughter has lied to him.’

  ‘But I’m sure she was at the hospital, like she said. Weren’t you, Leyla?’

  Leyla nodded. Humlin heard Tanya mutter with anger on her behalf.

  ‘I was just going to suggest the same thing,’ Humlin said.
‘That you as Leyla’s father participate in the interview with us.’

  Leyla’s father looked unsure for a moment.

  ‘And what would I say?’

  ‘That you are proud of your daughter.’

  Leyla’s father thought about this.

  ‘What exactly am I proud of?’

  ‘That she wants to learn to write, that she wants to be a serious writer.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘I don’t care what she does. The most important thing is that she doesn’t lie to her family.’

  Leyla looked pleadingly at her father.

  ‘Dad, I want to be a soap star or a TV personality – if I don’t make it as a writer, that is. This might be my only chance.’

  ‘I also want to be interviewed.’

  Everyone looked at Haiman who had made the last comment. Humlin was starting to feel tired.

  ‘There isn’t time for everyone to be interviewed.’

  ‘I have much to say of great importance for the Swedish people.’

  ‘I don’t doubt that, Haiman, but this is hardly the right time and place to air your views.’

  ‘I will not participate if he does,’ Leyla’s father said.

  Humlin looked at the people around him. The main subjects of the conflict were still seated and following the discussion with sombre faces.

  ‘TV programmes like this are often very short,’ Humlin started carefully. ‘If everyone is to have a say it will take far too long for the slot they have in mind for us.’

  ‘Then we leave and Leyla will not be able to continue her participation here,’ Leyla’s father said firmly. ‘She cannot be left on her own. After a few times here she has started lying to us. She has never done that before.’

  Leyla drew a deep breath.

  ‘You’re right, Dad. I didn’t go to the hospital. I don’t know why I said that. I went to the library in the city centre. I started reading and forgot all about time. I was there to study so that I can do better in school. And to read books by good authors so that I will learn to write better.’