The Shadow Girls

by Henning Mankell

Tea-Bag and Tanya were waiting for him down on the street. They looked at him attentively. Tea-Bag leaned forward with frank curiosity.

  ‘Did you see her face?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’ve seen it. It looks like someone carved a map into it: islands, crags and waterways.’

  ‘I don’t want to hear any more. Please call a taxi. Our priority right now is figuring out what to do with you. Where are you going to hide?’

  ‘I have to hide too,’ Tanya said. ‘And Leyla. We all need hiding.’

  They returned to the Chief of Police’s house where Torsten and Leyla were waiting for them.

  ‘How long can we stay here?’ Humlin asked.

  ‘Someone may be coming tomorrow morning. We should be gone by then.’

  ‘That gives us a few more hours, until dawn. Who might be coming?’

  ‘A cleaning lady.’

  ‘When does she get here?’

  ‘Not before nine o’clock.’

  ‘Then we’ll leave at eight.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Humlin returned to the armchair where he had fallen asleep a few hours before. Tea-Bag and Tanya went upstairs. I have to take care of this, he thought. I don’t know exactly what I have got myself into, nor what my responsibilities are. But I’m caught all the same, like having a foot stuck in the railway tracks when the train is thundering down the line.

  He tried to sleep but the image of the woman with the light-blue headscarf wouldn’t leave him. Tea-Bag and Tanya were also in his dreams, rowing a boat over an ocean the same colour as the silk scarf.

  *

  He woke up at dawn.

  He still didn’t have the faintest idea what they were going to do next.

  18

  A RUBBISH TRUCK clattered past outside.

  Humlin got up out of the armchair where he had been trying – in vain – to get some sleep. He had forced himself to arrive at a decision. He didn’t know if it was the right thing to do, but at least there seemed to be no better alternative. He went up to the first floor and looked into the room where Tanya and Tea-Bag were sleeping. Tea-Bag had finally removed her coat, Tanya lay curled up with a pillow over her face. Tea-Bag woke with a start when Humlin entered the room. He saw the flash of fear in her eyes.

  ‘It’s me. It’s time for us to leave.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘I’ll tell you when we’ve assembled downstairs.’

  He left the room and knocked on the other bedroom door. Torsten called out something unintelligible in a weak stammer.

  ‘Come in,’ Leyla’s voice shouted.

  They lay with the blanket pulled up to their necks. Torsten looked tiny next to Leyla.

  ‘Get up and get dressed,’ Humlin said. ‘The girls and I have to go.’

  ‘I’m coming along too,’ Torsten said.

  ‘Don’t you have work to go to?’

  Torsten started to stutter his reply.

  ‘He only temps right now,’ Leyla answered. ‘My grandmother already has someone else helping her.’

  It was seven o’clock. Humlin walked down the stairs. He already dreaded the phone call he was about to make; there was nothing his mother hated as much as being woken up early in the morning.

  He sat down at a desk with a phone. He heard Tea-Bag and Tanya’s voices rising and falling from the upper floor. My family, he thought. All these children Andrea is always pestering me about. He lifted the receiver and dialled the number. His mother picked up after fourteen rings. She sounded as if she were about to die. This is her real voice, Humlin thought bitterly. Not a voice ready to moan for money or a voice ready to commandeer the rest of the world. It is the voice of an old woman who feels the earth calling out to her, trying to claim her.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘It’s me.’

  ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Seven.’

  ‘Are you trying to kill me?’

  ‘I have to talk to you.’

  ‘I’m always asleep at this time, as you know. I had only just managed to get to sleep, in fact. You’ll have to call back tonight.’

  ‘I can’t. I only need you to stay awake for a few more minutes so you can hear what I have to say.’

  ‘You never have anything to say.’

  ‘Today I do. I’m calling from Gothenburg.’

  ‘Are you still carrying on with those Indian girls?’

  ‘They’re not Indian. There’s one from Iran, Russia, Nigeria and also a boy named Torsten who stutters and is from Gothenburg.’

  ‘That sounds like quite a mixed bag. What about the boy – why does he stutter?’

  ‘I don’t know. When I was younger I used to stutter whenever I was nervous. Or when I talked with someone else who had a stutter.’

  ‘One can always overcome a stutter. It’s only a matter of willpower.’

  ‘Tell that to the people who have suffered from it their whole lives. Anyway, I didn’t call you at seven to discuss the issue of stammering.’

  ‘I’m going back to bed.’

  ‘Not before you’ve heard me out.’

  ‘Good night.’

  ‘If you put that phone down I’m going to cut off all contact with you – I mean it.’

  ‘Well then, what is it that’s so important, Jesper?’

  ‘Later on today I’ll be coming by your place with them.’

  ‘Why would you do that?’

  ‘They’re going to stay with you, I don’t know for how long exactly. But it’s extremely important that you don’t mention this to anyone. Understood?’

  ‘Can I go back to bed now?’

  ‘Sleep well.’

  Humlin noticed that his hand was shaking when he put down the phone. But he was convinced his mother had understood the main thing: that she was not to say anything about Humlin making his way to Stockholm with an unorthodox assortment of companions.

  *

  They arrived in the early afternoon. During the trip he had made them spread out to various parts of the train. When they were just pulling out of the Södertälje station he asked to borrow one of Tanya’s phones.

  ‘Whose phone is this?’

  ‘It works fine.’

  ‘That’s not what I was asking. Am I still using phones that belong to police officers and prosecutors?’

  ‘This one belongs to one of the train conductors.’

  Humlin was taken aback. Then he locked himself in the toilet and called his mother, who picked up immediately.

  ‘I’m waiting for you. When will you get here?’

  ‘We’ve just passed Södertälje.’

  ‘I thought for a while that I had been dreaming. I take it you are bringing them here because they need a place to hide out?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How many are they? Ten, twelve?’

  ‘Just four.’

  ‘Are you also staying here?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’m looking forward to meeting these Indian girls. I’m wearing an Indian shawl your father gave me while we were engaged.’

  ‘They’re not Indian, Mother. I told you this morning. Take off that shawl and don’t make any strange food. I would also be grateful if you could refrain from moaning on the phone this evening.’

  ‘I’ve already called the others about it.’

  Humlin was horrified.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Naturally I said nothing about you coming over with the girls. I just said I didn’t have the energy to work tonight.’

  Humlin finished the conversation and then tried to flush the phone down the toilet. It got stuck. He left the toilets and went back to his seat.

  Once they got to the Central station he looked for a taxi big enough to hold them all. A police car drove by and Tanya and Tea-Bag waved to it. One of the officers waved back. They think I can guarantee their safety, Humlin thought. They don’t understand that I’m unable to give guarantees of
any sort.

  *

  The initial meeting between his mother and the girls did nothing to assuage Humlin’s fears. The girls embraced his mother with an outpouring of affection and warmth from the first. He was forced to admit to himself that she could be charming when she wanted. She mixed up their names, insisted that Leyla was Indian, called Tea-Bag ‘the beautiful girl from Sumatra’ and kept referring to Tanya as ‘Elsa’. But it didn’t seem to matter. The girls even appeared to change their attitudes to him now that it turned out that he had such a wonderful mother.

  There seemed to be a limitless sense of security in her large apartment, as if it were sealed off from the rest of the world by diplomatic immunity. She had made up all available beds and after only a few minutes they had all been shown to their spot. Tea-Bag and Tanya were still sharing a room, Leyla had her own and Torsten was camped out on a folding camp bed in the hallway.

  ‘I simply can’t let an unmarried couple share a room.’

  ‘That’s very old-fashioned of you, Mother.’

  ‘I am old-fashioned.’

  ‘What about the Mature Women’s Hotline?’

  His mother didn’t reply. She had already turned her back to him.

  *

  A little later Humlin left to go shopping. He took Tanya along to help him carry the groceries. He had asked Torsten first but Leyla had looked so unhappy about this that he changed his mind. On the way to the shop Tanya suddenly stopped outside a bar.

  ‘I’m thirsty.’

  She opened the door and walked in. Humlin followed her, just in time to see her order a beer.

  ‘I’ll get you one too, if you like,’ she said. ‘But you’re paying. I have phones, not cash.’

  ‘Isn’t it a little early in the day for a beer?’

  Tanya muttered something under her breath, then sat down at a table. Humlin joined her with a cup of coffee. He saw how tense she was – her eyes travelled nervously around the room.

  ‘Do you want to be left alone for a while?’ he asked.

  Again she didn’t answer. Humlin waited and she emptied her glass of beer. Then she got up and walked out to the toilets. One of her phones was lying on the table and it started to ring. That’s her, he thought. She’s doing what she did in the Yüksels’ apartment. She calls when she has something important to say. He answered the phone.

  ‘Associate Judge Hansson at the Administrative Court of Appeals wishes to speak to Prosecutor Westin. May I put him through?’

  ‘He’s in a meeting,’ Humlin said and hung up.

  The phone rang again. Humlin fumbled with the phone to see if there was caller ID, but didn’t find anything. He gave up and answered the phone.

  ‘I think we were interrupted. I was trying to get through to Prosecutor Westin?’

  ‘He’s still busy.’

  Humlin was starting to sweat. The doors to the toilets remained closed. After a while he got up and walked over to them. He listened for sounds from the women’s toilets but heard nothing. He knocked, but there was no reply. Then he opened the door. There was no one there. He tried to open the window at the far end but the latches were rusty and stuck. She didn’t leave by this way, he thought. Then he went into the men’s toilets.

  Tanya was sitting on the floor next to the urinals. She was holding a paper towel up to her face. At first Humlin thought she had had an accident and was trying to stem a nosebleed but then he realised she was sniffing something concealed in the paper towel. He grabbed it out of her hands. It looked like a messy bar of soap but then he saw it was a bar of scented cleaning solution that must have come from a urinal. He had heard about this from somewhere, that the urine released ammonia from these bars, which could then be inhaled. But it was still hard for him to believe his eyes: Tanya’s glassy gaze, the paper towel with the sticky blue bar. He tried to pull her up off the ground but she hit him in the face and screamed something at him in Russian.

  A man came in and Humlin ordered him to use the women’s toilets. The man quickly left.

  Humlin kept fighting Tanya for the scented bar. They crawled around on the floor. She scratched him in the face with her nails, which made him furious. He grabbed her around the waist and forced her up against the wall. Both of them were covered in urine. He screamed at her to calm down but when she kept resisting and tried to fish yet another scented block out of the urinal he slapped her. Her nose started to bleed and she became absolutely still.

  Humlin heard someone’s steps outside the door and forced her quickly into one of the cubicles. A man came in who coughed and urinated for a long time. Humlin sat down on the toilet with Tanya on his lap. She was breathing heavily and her eyes were closed. He wondered if she was about to pass out. After the man had left, Humlin shook her.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he asked. ‘Why are you doing this to yourself?’

  Tanya shook her head.

  ‘Let me sleep.’

  ‘We can’t stay here,’ he said. ‘We have to go pick up some food. The others are waiting for us.’

  ‘Only for a little while. I haven’t sat on anyone’s lap since I was a little girl and my aunt held me like this on her knee.’

  ‘We’re sitting on a toilet,’ Humlin said.

  Suddenly she got up and leaned against the wall.

  ‘I’m going to puke.’

  Humlin got up and left the cubicle. He heard her throw up, then everything was quiet. He opened the door and handed her a wet paper towel. She wiped her face and followed him out. As they were leaving the toilets they met a man who was pulling down his zip. He looked at Tanya with interest and then winked conspiratorially at Humlin, who came very close to punching him.

  They walked out of the bar. Tanya pointed to a small cemetery on the other side of the street.

  ‘Can’t we go there?’

  ‘We have to buy some food.’

  ‘Ten minutes. That’s all.’

  Humlin pushed open the rusty gate to the cemetery. An old woman sat propped up against a gravestone that was pushed half on its side. Its inscription was no longer legible. The woman’s clothes were tattered and several plastic bags and packets of newspapers wrapped up in twine lay strewn about her. Tanya stopped and looked at her.

  ‘Do you think she needs a phone?’ she asked.

  ‘I doubt she has anyone to call. But I suppose she could always sell it.’

  Tanya took out one of her phones and laid it next to the sleeping woman’s cheek. They continued walking through the empty graveyard. Tanya sat down on a bench. Humlin joined her.

  ‘Maybe I should call the bag lady,’ she said. ‘The phone I gave her plays a lovely, old-fashioned lullaby when the phone rings. It’s a heavenly way to wake up.’

  ‘I’d let her sleep. What kind of life does she wake up to anyway?’

  Tanya whimpered, as if she had been struck by a whip.

  ‘Don’t say that,’ she said. ‘What kind of life do I wake up to, for that matter? Do you want me to wish I were dead? I have wanted that, I’ve stood on the bridge and almost thrown myself off, I’ve put needles in my arm without knowing or caring what was in the syringe. But deep down inside I’ve still always wanted to wake up again. Do you think I did what I did back there because I wanted to die? You’re wrong. I just wanted to get away for a little while, just to have a moment’s peace. No words, no voices, nothing. I remember when I was growing up that there was a little black pond in the forest nestled in between the high trees. I always went there when I was upset. The water was absolutely still and shiny like a mirror and I used to think that that was what I wanted inside. Peace, nothing else. I still crave that sense of peace.’

  Tanya stopped talking and looked around for something in her backpack. Humlin counted the phones that she laid out on the bench: seven. At last she found what she was looking for, which was a crumpled pack of cigarettes. He hadn’t seen her smoke before. She inhaled the smoke as if it were oxygen. But just as suddenly she dropped the cigarette into the gravel and killed
it with her heel.

  *

  What I don’t understand and what I will keep asking myself all my life and won’t even stop when I die is the question of how it could be possible for me to feel any joy after all the hell that I have been through. Or hasn’t it even been that bad? Yesterday, when Tea-Bag and I were lying on the police chief’s bed, she told me that I haven’t had it any worse than anyone else. Then she fell asleep. Is she right? I don’t know. But I don’t understand how I’m supposed to be able to laugh after all the humiliation I’ve been through. And I’m someone who thinks it’s necessary for people to be able to feel an uncomplicated, simple joy in their lives since we are going to be dead for such a long time. Death is not what is frightening to me, not the fact that the flame goes out, but this fact that we are going to be dead so very long.

  I still think about that time four years ago when we stood out by the main road, four girls in skirts that were much too short. We were the East, nothing more. We knew how Westerners saw us, as those poor Easterners, those wretches. And there we were in our short skirts in the middle of winter, still mired in the poverty and misery that was our life in the vodka-stinking hole that was all that was left after the Communist collapse. Four girls: fourteen, sixteen, seventeen and nineteen. I was the oldest and we were laughing as we stood out there in the cold, wild with joy – can you understand that? We were so close to being free! When that old rusty car came down the road it could just as well have been Jesus or Buddha or Muhammad come down from the clouds. It was the car that was going to carry us to freedom, no matter that it stunk of mould and unwashed feet.

  Why do people leave? Why do they pull up their roots and go? I suppose some people are chased away and forced to flee. Maybe it’s war or hunger or fear – it’s always fear. But sometimes you choose to leave because it’s the clever thing to do. A teenage girl might very well ask the same question as a holy patriarch: where can I find a life for myself, a life far away from everything here that I despise?

  There was an abandoned barn in a field behind Mischa’s cabin, Mischa who was old, crazy and a little dangerous. We used to hang out there, Inez, Tatyana, Natalia and I. We had all known each other so long we couldn’t even remember how we first met. We staged trials in that barn. Inez had stolen some rope from one of the barges that went up and down the river. She was crazy; she had jumped into the cold water with a knife between her teeth and cut off a few lengths of rope that she tied to her legs and swam back to shore with. We made a few nooses – Natalia had a brother who had been in the KGB so he knew what a real hangman’s noose looked like. Then we proceeded to hang our enemies. We put straw and stones in the bags, pronounced the sentence and hanged them from one of the beams in the roof, one by one. We hanged our teachers and our parents; Tatyana’s dad was particularly mean and used to beat her once a week. I don’t think we ever thought too closely about what we were doing. There was just life and death, punishment and mercy. But we didn’t show anyone mercy; they didn’t deserve it.