After the Fire

by Henning Mankell

  I didn’t go to a shoe shop; I went straight to Arlanda and flew to Paris. In my dishonest message I had written that of course I loved her but that I needed to be alone for a few days. My love was just too overwhelming.

  In Paris I found a cheap hotel not far from Clichy, slept until twelve every day and spent my nights in various bars in the Pigalle or Les Halles, which at that time were in the city centre. The whole time I was trying to pluck up the courage to approach a prostitute. The women on the street scared me. I fancied one of the women who hung out in a bar I frequented, but I didn’t have the nerve to speak to her either. Every night I slunk around like a randy tomcat, sticking close to the walls to avoid a stray kick. It wasn’t until New Year’s Eve, the day before I was due to fly home, that I ventured into one of the many bars where I thought I might find prostitutes.

  Heavy curtains covered the window, a single lamp burned outside. As I seized the door handle, I had no idea what to expect. Would there be a lot of people, a lot of women? I stepped into the dimly lit room and discovered that it was virtually empty. An elderly man who resembled little more than a shadow was moving around behind the bar, the bottles sparkling in the mirrored wall. He glanced at me, assessing whether I was a punter who should be allowed in or someone who was likely to cause trouble, and gave me a nod. I had a choice: the empty tables and red chairs, or one of the leather-covered stools. The only woman in the place was sitting at the far end of the bar smoking a cigarette. I avoided looking at her, ordered a glass of wine and tried to appear as relaxed as possible. Music poured out of invisible speakers. I ordered another glass of wine, and the bartender wondered if I would like to buy the woman a drink. Naturally I said yes, and he gave her something that might have been a weak Martini. She raised her glass, I did the same. Despite the poor lighting I could see that she was in her thirties. She had brown hair cut in a pageboy bob, she wasn’t heavily made up, and was as far from my idea of a prostitute as it was possible to be. However, I was aroused by the thought that she was for sale. I had three hundred francs in my inside pocket; was that enough? I hadn’t a clue about the price of women in Paris, neither then nor now.

  I stayed there until the bells had rung in the New Year on the radio behind the bar. Only one other male customer turned up all evening, and he and the woman knew one another. Perhaps he was her pimp. Just before he left they had a row about her lighter, which she insisted he had taken. It got quite nasty, and I wondered if I ought to leave. But the lighter turned up, everything calmed down, and the man disappeared. When the door closed and the curtain keeping out the cold fell back into place, the woman suddenly moved to the stool next to mine. She told me her name was Anne. I don’t remember what I said, possibly that my name was Erik or Anders. She asked where I came from; I said Denmark. What was I doing in Paris? Taking a break from my post as the manager of a bank in Copenhagen. I removed all traces of who I actually was. As if that made any difference. She asked for another drink; I nodded to the bartender, although I was starting to worry in case the drinks were sold at inflated prices. Surely the business couldn’t be profitable if they only had one customer on New Year’s Eve?

  I wondered what my girlfriend in Stockholm was doing. Was she sitting in her parents’ apartment thinking about me? I didn’t know, but I was glad I had flown to Paris. When I got back I must find the courage to tell her that our relationship had no future.

  Anne gently nudged me with her leg.

  ‘You know we can get together in the room at the back,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, I know.’

  I didn’t say any more; I was grateful that she didn’t push it.

  It was half past twelve. From the street came the sound of the odd firework and the shouts of people celebrating. I offered her another drink; I was terrified that she would suggest we withdrew to the other room. The initial temptation was gone; all I wanted now was an escape route. We sat there in silence. Every fifteen minutes, almost as if she were obeying an inaudible signal, she lit a cigarette with her Ronson lighter. As the flame sprang into life, I saw that her nails were bitten to the quick.

  I asked for the bill. I paid and gave her a hundred francs. She took the money and smiled; I stood up and left. People were still partying. In the distance I could see the flare of rockets soaring into the air in Montmartre. I lingered for a little while; after ten minutes, just as I had decided to move on, Anne came out. She was wearing a suede coat trimmed with fur and a beret. I said hello as she walked past; she looked at me as if she had been molested. I was definitely someone she no longer knew.

  I walked through Paris on that long, cold winter’s night, and the following day I flew home. I hadn’t bought any shoes. Nor could I bring myself to end our relationship. It wasn’t until the beginning of February that I managed to say the words, to harden my heart against her despairing sobs, and finally to walk out never to return. Thirty years later I happened to bump into her; by then she was married and had three children. One of the first things she said was that now, with hindsight, she was very glad I had left her. If I hadn’t, our life together would have been a disaster.

  I walked around Place Pigalle trying to remember where that bar had been. All the buildings looked just as they had back then, but I still couldn’t work out where it was. Eventually I thought I’d found it; I was sure I recognised the door, the closed curtains. It was still a bar. I hesitated before I went in. I was afraid I would be opening a door to the past. I even feared the same woman would be sitting there smoking her Gitanes. In order to bring myself back to the present day, I took out my phone and looked at the picture of the fire again. Should I call Jansson? I decided against it, put away my phone and went into the bar.

  Everything was different. A new counter, brighter lights, a television with the sound off. A few men were sitting at the bar; there was a young barmaid with a ring through her nose and a gemstone in her left ear.

  There were no other women; this came as a relief rather than a disappointment. However, the relief worried me; did I no longer know what I wanted? Was I incapable of drinking without keeping my thoughts under control?

  I left the bar, hailed a taxi and went back to my hotel. I dropped my clothes in a heap on the floor and got into bed. From the room next door I could hear the sound of a television. I looked at my watch; it was quarter past two. I banged my fist on the wall behind the bed a few times, and the noise stopped.

  This is the point I have reached, I thought. I’m just an old man, lying alone in his bed in a hotel in Paris, feeling unwell. My daughter is under arrest in the bowels of a French police station, and a woman who doesn’t love me is staying in a hotel nearby.

  —

  I was woken by my phone ringing: Jansson. It was six o’clock. The curtains were moving in the draught from the window; during the early hours of the morning the wind had got up over Paris.

  ‘The fire is out,’ Jansson said. ‘Did I wake you?’

  ‘No. Do they know how the fire started?’

  ‘Alexandersson seems to think it’s exactly the same as your house.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The fire started simultaneously in several different places.’

  ‘So we have a lunatic on the loose in the archipelago. I was fast asleep when my house went up in flames, and now someone has set fire to an eighty-five-year-old lady’s home.’

  ‘The dog must have woken her,’ Jansson said thoughtfully. ‘If she hadn’t had the dog, the smoke could have killed her before we got there.’

  ‘Thanks for letting me know. Have the police been looking for me? Do people still think I set fire to my own house?’

  ‘I’ve no idea what people think.’

  ‘I’ll be back in a few days.’

  ‘I’ve never been to Paris. Sometimes I feel as if I’ve never been any further than Söderköping.’

  ‘Didn’t you go to the Canaries, years and years ago?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’

  ‘S
end me another picture,’ I said finally. ‘If you’re still there.’

  The picture arrived a couple of minutes later; the house was a ruin. The fire had died down, although I could still see smoke and glowing embers. The coastguard had rigged up bright floodlights, illuminating the remains of the house with a ghostly brilliance. It was just possible to make out the shadowy figures of those who had helped to put out the blaze.

  I got out of bed and looked down at the courtyard. Leaves and rubbish were swirling around in the strong wind. There was no sign of the rat I had spotted the previous day.

  Lisa was waiting in reception when I went downstairs at ten o’clock. She rose to her feet as soon as she saw me.

  ‘Let’s go out,’ she said. ‘I need some fresh air.’

  She turned into Rue de Vaugirard without knowing what she was doing. I hadn’t told her that this had once been my street, the longest in Paris. We walked towards Porte de Versailles; after about half an hour, when the gusts of wind were making it hard to walk, she led me to a bistro that I recognised from the time when I used to live nearby.

  I remembered an occasion when I had had some money and decided to treat myself to breakfast before I embarked on the long trek to the clarinet workshop in Jourdain. I had ordered a hot chocolate and a sandwich. The elderly man who served me, who was probably the owner of the bistro, had stopped dead and bent double, banging his head on the metal counter. Everyone could see that he had been stricken with severe pain of some kind. It was early in the morning, and the bistro was full of people eating and drinking before they went to work. A man in blue overalls was standing next to me with a glass of red wine; he knocked it back just as the man behind the counter collapsed.

  I don’t know what happened next. I couldn’t cope with the groaning, so I emptied my cup, picked up my food, put the money in a little plastic dish and walked out.

  I went back the next day – in fact I went there almost every day for a month – but I never saw the elderly man again.

  One day, over a month after the incident, the waiters were wearing black armbands on their white shirtsleeves.

  I had never been back since then. Until now. I recognised the colour of the walls, although the tables and chairs had been replaced. Of course I didn’t recognise any of the staff or customers. What was familiar, I realised, was the sound of glasses being dipped into the washing-up bowls.

  Lisa led me to a corner table next to the window overlooking the pavement section, which was closed. The tables and chairs were piled up and chained together. I felt as if I were looking at animals in a stall, waiting for the winter.

  ‘I used to live near here,’ I said. ‘But you couldn’t possibly have known that.’

  ‘You must be wondering why I’ve come to Paris,’ Lisa said. ‘We don’t know one another. You’re here to look for your daughter. But why have I come? I’ve even lied to my editor about the reason for my trip.’

  ‘What did you say to him?’

  ‘That’s my business. It’s nothing to do with you.’

  Her tone was sharp, and we didn’t say anything else for a while.

  After we’d finished our drinks, we continued on our way. Rue de Vaugirard seemed endless, just as I remembered from when I had lived there. I recalled a Saturday afternoon when hordes of young people came pouring down the street. Later I found out they were on their way to a concert at Porte de Versailles where an English pop group that everyone was talking about was playing. They were called the Beatles. I knew nothing about their music; I lived in the world of jazz, although I did occasionally attend the organ recitals in the church at Saint-Germain.

  This whole excursion seemed utterly pointless. I stopped.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Nowhere. Or to another cafe.’

  ‘Why have you come to Paris?’

  ‘Let’s keep walking,’ she replied.

  We went into a bistro near Rue de Cadix; it wasn’t lunchtime yet, and there were very few customers. We sat right at the back. The waiter was old and walked with a limp. Lisa ordered a bottle of red wine; she chose the most expensive item on the grubby wine list. Her selection made me feel even more anxious. The waiter – who stank of sweaty armpits – brought the bottle and two glasses. Lisa noticed the smell too. She smiled at me.

  ‘I came because I was wondering what you really think.’

  ‘Think about what?’

  ‘I’ve noticed how you look at me, from that very first time when I wanted to hear about the fire. I wasn’t really surprised when you turned up asking to stay the night. You’re not the first man who’s stood there howling on my doorstep.’

  ‘I wasn’t howling. And what I told you was absolutely true.’

  She frowned, as if my answer had annoyed her. When she spoke I realised she was angry.

  ‘You don’t have to lie to me.’

  ‘I haven’t lied to you.’

  She pushed away her glass and leaned across the table.

  ‘You’ve lied to me,’ she insisted.

  ‘I haven’t.’

  ‘You have!’

  This came out as a yell; she sounded like my daughter. In my peripheral vision I could see that the waiter had noticed what was going on, but he simply turned away and carried on wiping down tables.

  That’s what the world is like, I thought vaguely to myself. People turning away everywhere you look.

  I tried to remain calm, to pick up my glass without shaking. I swallowed the contents and got to my feet. I put some money on the table without saying a word, then walked out. I headed down the street as fast as I could; when I reached the Metro station at Porte de Versailles, I hurried underground and caught the train to Montparnasse.

  I immediately regretted my actions. What had Lisa been trying to tell me? I sat in that rattling train carriage feeling totally exposed. She had seen inside my grubby old-man’s thoughts and decided to find out what I really wanted. Did I actually imagine that there could be any kind of romance between us? Didn’t I realise that she was offended now she had discovered what my motives were?

  I carried on past Montparnasse and didn’t get off the train until we reached the Right Bank. I was in Châtelet once more. When I emerged into the daylight, it had started raining. I went into a newsagent’s and bought an umbrella.

  I had just put it up when my phone rang. I stood outside a shoe shop under the projecting roof.

  It was Olof Rutgersson. He immediately asked where I was.

  ‘Out in the rain,’ I replied. ‘With a newly purchased umbrella.’

  ‘I just wanted to let you know that Madame Riveri will be picking up your daughter at three o’clock this afternoon. I knew she was good, but even so I have to say this is sensationally fast. She must have had a very positive personal relationship with the judge in charge of the case. Your daughter will be released. Madame Riveri is going to call you to arrange a meeting place. For the exchange.’

  ‘The exchange?’

  ‘She hands over your daughter, you pay her for her work.’

  ‘Is Louise being deported?’

  ‘I don’t know, but if our esteemed Madame Riveri says she’s going to be released, then she’s going to be released. And that’s the most important thing.’

  ‘Thank you for all your efforts too.’

  ‘The Swedish Foreign Office and our embassies are always happy when we manage to achieve a positive outcome in any situation. Please let us know when you and Louise are safely back in Sweden. It might be as well if she avoids any further pickpocketing activities in France; she now has a criminal record, and French justice has a long memory.’

  We ended the call with a few polite phrases. I put my phone away, thinking that Lisa Modin would never upset me again. Nor would I bother her with my dreams of some kind of relationship.

  I ambled along in the rain, choosing my route at random. I wondered if I had ever visited as many cafes as I had during these few days in Paris.

  Jansson called again. I a
sked if there was any new information about the fire, but there wasn’t. However, there were rumours of a connection between this latest blaze and the one that had destroyed my house.

  ‘Perhaps I’m no longer regarded as an arsonist?’

  ‘That was never the case.’

  ‘Don’t lie to me. There’s no point.’

  ‘People are afraid it will happen again.’

  I could understand that. Fear spreads quickly, especially among the elderly. I sat there at my table thinking how ironic it was that out in the archipelago I was one of the younger residents. At least during the autumn, winter and early spring.

  I was still thinking about Lisa. I tried to make myself feel contempt for her, but I couldn’t do it. I shouldn’t have walked out; I should have let her finish what she had to say. I’m sure I would have been able to convince her that she was wrong. I wasn’t the man she thought I was.

  I stayed in the cafe until lunch was over and there were only a handful of customers left. A blind woman patted her guide dog, who was lying at her feet. Seeing her wrinkled hand stroking the dog’s fur was like witnessing a movement that had gone on for all eternity.

  My grandfather had dominated my childhood out on the island, but my grandmother had been there too, providing the security I didn’t recognise or value until I was an adult. In the final years of her life she lived in a home, suffering with severe dementia. She used to go outside at night because she believed that my grandfather was at sea in a heavy storm. Even when there wasn’t a breath of wind, the storm raged within her; she was constantly worried about her husband.

  They died only a few hours apart. First her, then him. There was no life for the one left behind when the other had gone. According to what I had heard, from Jansson needless to say, my grandfather had found out in the morning that she had passed away. He had folded up the newspaper he was reading, put his glasses in their case and lain down on his bed. Two hours later he was gone too.

  My reminiscences were interrupted by the sound of my phone. This time it was Madame Riveri, suggesting that we should meet. She had made a note of my hotel; could I be there in an hour? She would bring Louise.