After the Fire

by Henning Mankell

  Nordin was astonished at her behaviour. He probably wasn’t used to people raising their voices because of something for which he wasn’t even responsible. I tried to intervene, to calm things down, but Louise pushed me away.

  ‘Who do I talk to at the council?’ she demanded.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Nordin replied. ‘Various people look after the showers.’

  ‘Who has the keys? Who makes sure there’s hot water?’

  ‘During the season it’s me.’

  ‘So that means you have the keys?’

  ‘I can’t hand them over out of season.’

  ‘People need a shower even though it’s autumn.’

  Both Louise and I saw Nordin glance towards a key cupboard on the wall. That was enough for Louise to march over, open the cupboard and grab the key attached to a large piece of wood with SHOWERS written on it in luminous ink. Without a word she left the chandlery with her rolled-up towel under her arm.

  Nordin was shaking. It was as if someone had robbed him, not of possessions but of an obligation that he had sworn a symbolic oath to defend and uphold. I realised that he needed a solace I was unable to provide.

  ‘She doesn’t mean any harm,’ I said feebly. ‘She just feels dirty. The sea is too cold for her. We’ll sort it out with a couple of big bowls, some buckets and an electric hotplate.’

  I left him with his half-unpacked box of gloves and went over to the shower block. I could hear the sound of running water; Louise had brought soap and a bottle of shampoo wrapped in her towel.

  As I stood there in the bitter wind, I thought that it might have been better if she hadn’t come back. I would have been able to handle the disastrous fire more easily without her. However, I knew that wasn’t entirely true. Without Louise I would never be able to make a decision about what to do with the remains of my life. My pipe dream about some kind of relationship with Lisa Modin was nothing but a way of escaping reality.

  Louise emerged with wet hair, the towel wound around her head.

  ‘Did he die?’ she asked.

  I felt a sudden urge to hit her, slap her hard across the face. Needless to say, I didn’t. I simply snatched the key, which was dangling from her fingers.

  ‘I don’t like you upsetting my friends,’ I snapped. ‘If you’d left it to me, Nordin would have given us the key. Stay here while I take it back and apologise. I’ll tell him you’re too embarrassed to do it yourself.’

  She opened her mouth to protest. In a vain attempt to put an end to the impossible situation, I yanked off the towel, which was the same shade of yellow as my Chinese shirt. It landed on the wet quayside.

  ‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ I said. ‘If you’re here, we’ll go and do some shopping. If you’re not, I’ll assume you’ve gone off on one of those trips you never bother to tell me about.’

  I turned away and went into the chandlery. The box of gloves still hadn’t been unpacked. Nordin was sitting on his stool by the counter where he cut fishing line and mooring rope to the lengths customers wanted. He was clutching a pencil in one hand. He didn’t look at me as I put down the key in front of him, together with a fifty-kronor note, mumbling an apology on Louise’s behalf.

  I have to admit I wasn’t entirely truthful. I said that Louise had been very badly affected by the fire.

  Nordin put down the pencil, got up and replaced the key. I had a feeling that he wanted to be alone. I shut the door behind me and went up to Oslovski’s house to fetch my car. The gate and the front door were closed. There was no sign of Oslovski.

  As I was about to pull out onto the road, I glanced in the rear-view mirror and saw a curtain move. I caught a glimpse of Oslovski’s face before the curtain fell back into place. So she was at home. And she was still afraid.

  I was filled with a growing sense of unease. First of all my daughter’s quarrel with Nordin, and now Oslovski peeping through her window, frightened of being seen. Something was happening. My burned-down house was merely a part of something bigger.

  I picked up Louise, who had wound the towel around her head once more. We drove in silence. I had to slam on the brakes when a fox ran across the road.

  I had never seen a fox around here before; plenty of elk and deer, but no foxes. I had also heard from Jansson that the number of wild boar was increasing.

  ‘Look out!’ Louise said.

  ‘It’s the fox who needs to look out.’

  As usual I parked behind the bank. While I went shopping for groceries, Louise took off somewhere else. I noticed that the shoe shop was closed, in spite of the fact that it was within normal opening hours.

  We met back at the car. I recognised the plastic bags Louise was carrying; she had been to the shop where I bought my Chinese shirts. We drove to a DIY store just outside the town and bought a hotplate, light bulbs, large bowls and buckets. I don’t know whether Louise found the silence uncomfortable, but I was beginning to lose patience, driving around with a daughter who didn’t say a word.

  We loaded the last of our purchases into the car.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ I said. ‘But if you’re going to carry on like this, I don’t want to eat with you.’

  She was holding a red woolly hat that she’d bought. She pulled it on and burst out laughing.

  ‘Of course we’re going to eat together! I think it’s nice that we don’t always have to talk. The world we live in is full of unnecessary chatter.’

  We went to a restaurant in a ten-pin bowling alley, where we ate fried fish and drank water. The construction workers I had seen down by the harbour the other day were sitting at one of the tables. To my surprise they were still discussing whether or not one of them had actually seen a perch.

  We had coffee after our meal. The construction workers left. Louise placed her hand on my arm.

  ‘I want to rebuild the house so that it’s as much like the old one as possible. That’s where I want to live at some point in the future.’

  ‘Of course you do,’ I said.

  We headed back to the harbour. I wondered whether Louise felt as relieved as I did. We drove in silence once again, but it was a different silence now.

  A fox ran across the road in exactly the same spot as earlier.

  ‘A different fox,’ Louise said. ‘This one was smaller.’

  ‘Are you sure it wasn’t bigger?’

  ‘It was smaller.’

  I didn’t argue with her. Today had been difficult enough as it was. I dropped her off at the boat and unloaded all our bags and boxes, then I took the car back to its usual place. There was no sign of movement behind Oslovski’s curtains. I realised I was worried about her. Where did her fear come from? Why was she hiding?

  I walked down to the quayside. To my surprise I saw that Nordin had put up the CLOSED sign at the chandlery. I had a horrible feeling that he was sitting inside weeping. Once again I felt a spurt of anger at my daughter’s behaviour, but I had no intention of saying anything. Not right now, anyway.

  I cast off from the quayside.

  ‘I want to drive,’ Louise said.

  I sat down in the prow; she yanked the cord and started the engine. She had been a boxer when I first met her, and she was fast and strong. She knew the shipping lane, although I did think she was a bit too close to the shallow known as Bygrundet, which was invisible.

  As we rounded the last headland I saw Jansson’s boat moored at the jetty. He was sitting on the bench. We slid inside the boathouse and I left Louise to unload the boat while I went to see what Jansson wanted.

  Syrén, the new postman, had given him a letter for me. Perhaps those responsible for the mail still thought I didn’t want any correspondence?

  It was from the police. I opened it; I was required to attend an interview at the police station in town with regard to suspected arson. I had to be there in four days, at eleven o’clock.

  Jansson looked enquiringly at me.

  ‘There’s no reply,’ I said. ‘You don’t need to wait.’

 
I stood on the jetty and watched him go. I wondered how many people in the archipelago already knew that I had been called in for questioning.

  Was I the last to know?

  PART TWO

  The Fox Runs Towards Golgotha

  CHAPTER 8

  The next few days felt like a long period of waiting. At night the horses charged around inside my head. I didn’t say anything to Louise about the letter I had received. She had seen Jansson give me the envelope and had looked at me curiously, but she didn’t ask questions.

  As we ate dinner in the caravan that first night, we started chatting again. We talked about the contents of the LPG cylinder, the fact that we needed a new frying pan, and washing powder to keep our clothes clean. We avoided anything that might require a serious approach.

  After we arrived home I had spent the day in the boathouse while Louise stayed in the caravan. At one point I peeped in through the window; she was sitting on the bed talking on her phone. I tried to make out what she was saying, but without success. Her expression was grave. Perhaps she was angry or sad; I couldn’t tell. When she ended the call I moved away and went back to the boathouse. I had opened a tin of tar – not because I was going to use it, but because I loved the smell. Tar runs through the ages out here in the archipelago.

  Behind the boathouse lay an ancient leaky skiff that I hadn’t bothered putting in the water for the last few years. I pushed it in now and saw that it wasn’t in as bad a state as I had feared. I fetched the oars and old tin bailer and clambered in. I would be able to use the skiff to travel back and forth between the island and the skerry where I had pitched my tent.

  During my childhood there had been a large rowing boat on the island. It was black, completely soaked in tar, and my grandfather used it when he went out fishing with nets. At first my grandmother used to row, but when I was old enough to manage the oars, and to understand what to do with the nets, the responsibility passed to me.

  I remembered an incident that had taken place when I was ten or eleven years old. My grandfather spotted a deer, swimming along. He dropped the net he was holding, pushed me out of the way and grabbed the oars. He caught up with the animal, stood up and hit it on the head with one of the oars.

  The oar snapped in half. The deer carried on swimming, but my grandfather leaned out of the boat and managed to seize one of its horns. He took out his Mora knife and slit its throat. It happened so fast that for a few seconds I didn’t realise what was going on. It was only when he dragged the dead animal on board, his hands dripping with blood, that I understood. The deer stared at me with huge, shining, unseeing eyes.

  I had met death.

  From that day onwards I was always a little afraid of my grandfather. I had seen something in him that I had never previously suspected. Snapping the necks of fish as he picked them out of the nets was one thing, but I had been completely unprepared for this slaughter out at sea.

  When we came ashore and he hauled the dead body onto the jetty, I threw up. He looked at me with distaste but said nothing. He shouted to my grandmother, and together they butchered the deer. By then I had walked away.

  It was at least fifty-five years since that day, and yet I could still see that powerful gesture as he slit the animal’s throat. He exuded pure hatred as he brought the oar down on its head. I think he would have carried on rowing with the broken oar all the way to the Finnish coast in pursuit of the deer if necessary.

  Even as a ten-year-old, the incident made it clear to me that people are never completely what we believe they are. Including me. There is always something unexpected within those we meet, those we think we have got to know.

  I rowed back, dragged the skiff ashore and bailed out the water that had found its way in. I wondered whether to dig up one of the anthills on the island in order to seal the skiff, but I decided against it. I knew that my daughter would be furious if I killed a colony of ants just to make an old skiff watertight.

  She was sitting on the bench at the top of the island. I sat down beside her. It was time to tell her.

  ‘I’ve been called in for questioning by the police,’ I said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They think I burned down the house.’

  ‘And did you?’ she asked without looking at me.

  ‘No. Did you?’

  I got up and went back down to the boathouse. A mixture of anger and fear was growing inside me. I no longer thought that I would be able to control what was going on.

  There have been periods in my life when I have briefly turned to drink because of sorrow, fear or anger. Right now I wished I had a bottle of vodka, brandy or schnapps to take with me to my tent.

  I was nudging the skiff towards the water when I realised that Louise had followed me.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ she said.

  ‘Where? To the tent?’

  ‘To the police.’

  ‘I don’t want you to come with me.’

  ‘I don’t care. You won’t be able to cope.’

  There was an old cork float in the skiff. I picked it up and threw it at her.

  ‘You’re not coming with me!’ I yelled. ‘Why do I need someone with me when I know I didn’t set fire to my house?’

  I didn’t wait for an answer; I just slotted the oars into the rowlocks. Needless to say, one of them slid straight into the water. As I reached for it, just as my grandfather had reached out when he grabbed and killed the deer, I was soaked by a wave. I don’t know if Louise was still standing on the shore but I rowed out stern first so that I didn’t have to look. When I had rounded the headland I turned the skiff. There she was, arms folded. She reminded me of a Native American chief, watching as the white man in a Chinese shirt rowed towards his fate and his half-rotten tent.

  I lay awake most of the night, longing for something to drink. I wanted to get drunk, to liberate myself from the insanity of being called in for questioning by the police. When I eventually fell asleep, it was with the perception that I had come close to crossing a line. How would I cope with growing older, with a burned-out house and with the experience of living in a no-man’s-land where no one asked after me? Or where everyone thought I had gone crazy and started running around with cans of petrol and a box of matches?

  Even my daughter was starting to regard me as more and more of a burden. I was no longer the longed-for father who had finally come into her life.

  When I woke at dawn, I might as well have been drunk the night before. Tiredness made me feel hungover. I crawled out of my sleeping bag and went outside. The sea was grey, the air cold, the wind still light but somehow threatening, as it can be sometimes when a storm is approaching. Two eider ducks were bobbing up and down on the water. I clapped my hands and they flew away – heading directly north, oddly enough. I watched them until it was no longer possible to make them out against the sky.

  I didn’t row back to the island until the afternoon. The caravan smelled fresh and clean when Louise opened the door. We ate a simple dinner but didn’t talk much. Afterwards she walked down to the boathouse with me.

  ‘Why were you signalling with the torch?’ I asked her.

  ‘I wasn’t. You must have been seeing things.’

  There was no point in asking again. If she didn’t want to tell me, then she wouldn’t.

  We were both people who lied, I thought. But we lied in different ways.

  —

  I slept just as badly over the next few nights. The days were all the same, all uniformly grey. I walked around my skerry trying to prepare myself for what was waiting for me at the police station.

  The evening before the interview, we had food in the caravan, played a game of cards. Once again Louise accompanied me down to the jetty.

  ‘I’m coming with you tomorrow,’ she said.

  ‘No.’

  We didn’t say any more.

  That night I slept heavily; I was exhausted. My last thought was that I hadn’t taken my morning dip for several days, which was dep
ressing.

  I rowed back to the island in the morning feeling well rested at last. However, when I reached the boathouse I discovered that the boat with the outboard motor was missing. I knocked on the door of the caravan, but there was no reply. When I went in I saw that the bed was made and Louise’s rucksack was gone. She hadn’t left a note.

  I called her mobile; there was no answer, and I wasn’t able to leave a message. I slammed the door behind me as hard as I could. A piece of the roof edging came away. I left it dangling and went and sat down on the bench by the boathouse. I knew my daughter well enough to realise there was no point in waiting and hoping she would be back in time to enable me to get to the police station.

  I did what I had to do: I called Jansson. As usual he answered right away, as if he were sitting there with the phone in his hand. He was like a striking cobra.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with my engine this time,’ I said. ‘But I need a lift to the mainland.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Now.’

  ‘I’m on my way.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  I ended the call before he could ask why I couldn’t use my own boat.

  My clothes were still in the caravan. The dangling roof edging was in the way of the door, so I ripped it off and threw it on the grass. I chose the least dirty Chinese shirt, then searched around to see if Louise might have hidden a bottle of wine or spirits, but I couldn’t find anything.

  I sat down on the bench and waited. Jansson arrived after precisely twenty-six minutes. Of course he noticed that my boat was gone, but he didn’t say anything. Perhaps he thought he was transporting a prisoner, because he knew my interview with the police was scheduled for today.

  We travelled to the mainland without exchanging a single word. He refused to accept any payment when we arrived, but I placed a one-hundred-kronor note under a fishing spoon on the seat and walked away without mentioning that I would need a lift back when the police had finished with me.

  Nordin was outside the chandlery cleaning seagull shit off a window. We said hello; I had the distinct feeling he also knew where I was going.