After the Fire

by Henning Mankell

  I thanked her, paid for my coffee and went back to the hotel. A brief power cut on the Metro was alarming; what if I wasn’t there to receive Louise and Madame Riveri’s bill? Fortunately the problem was short-lived and I was there in time. While I was waiting I asked Monsieur Pierre if there was a room available for tonight. There was, but I didn’t make a booking because I had no idea what Louise’s plans might be.

  It had stopped raining. I went out into the street as the appointed time approached. I thought I caught a glimpse of Lisa; I never wanted to see her again. No, that wasn’t true. I didn’t want to give up my dream, however hopeless it had turned out to be.

  Madame Riveri and Louise arrived by taxi. Louise was very pale. We went into the hotel; Madame Riveri went off to the ladies’ powder room and left us alone in the deserted bar.

  ‘I know nothing about the life you live here,’ I said, ‘but if you like you can stay in the hotel tonight. They have a room.’

  She nodded without saying a word. I went back to reception and booked a single room.

  ‘It’s for my daughter,’ I said.

  ‘I assume she’s the lady sitting in the bar?’ Monsieur Pierre said. ‘May I ask if the lady who arrived with her is your wife?’

  ‘No. Louise’s mother is dead. I’m on my own.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Monsieur Pierre said sadly. ‘It’s not good for any human being to live alone.’

  Madame Riveri returned; she was in a hurry. I thanked her for everything she had done and asked if it had been difficult to secure Louise’s release.

  ‘I explained that she was pregnant and pointed out that she didn’t have a criminal record. Then it was fairly straightforward, particularly as the judge and I get on very well. I also told him that Louise’s father had come to Paris to take her home.’

  ‘She’s staying here tonight, then we’ll see what happens.’

  Madame Riveri took an envelope out of her bag.

  ‘There’s no rush as far as the payment is concerned, but don’t forget about it. If you do, you’ll be sorry.’

  She said goodbye to Louise, then swept out of the hotel.

  I went up to Louise’s room with her, which was on the same floor as mine. She didn’t have a bag with her; I asked if she had any money. She didn’t.

  ‘I need clothes,’ she said.

  I gave her some money. I wanted to ask her where she had been living in Paris, where her belongings were, but I knew this wasn’t the right time. No doubt she was grateful for my help, but she didn’t want to be under an obligation to me.

  Before I left her room I asked if she’d like to have dinner with me later.

  ‘I’m too tired,’ she said. ‘I want to wash off the dirt from prison, then I need to sleep.’

  ‘I’m in room 213,’ I said. ‘We’ll have breakfast together tomorrow when you’re feeling better.’

  That evening I ate in a Chinese restaurant nearby, then watched a black and white Fernandel film on the television in my room. Louise wasn’t the only one who was tired.

  I woke just after midnight; someone was knocking on my door. I stumbled across the room to find Louise standing there. She seemed to be shivering.

  ‘Can I sleep here?’ she said.

  I didn’t ask why. I had a big double bed; she lay down on the unused side and turned away from me.

  I switched off the light. After a little while she reached out with one hand. I took it and held it, then we both fell asleep.

  CHAPTER 18

  My house was on fire. The staircase leading to the ground floor seemed endless, not the twenty-three steps I had counted out loud as a child. I kept on running, but the staircase just kept on growing longer as the fire came closer and closer. I stumbled and fell, and then I woke up.

  Louise was fast asleep. She hadn’t moved at all; her hand was still in mine.

  I listened to her breathing. I could hear the breathing of many of the people I had listened to during my life. My father’s heavy, often irregular snores that came and went, silence giving way to something like a growl, then silence once more. My mother’s virtually inaudible breathing. My grandfather: sometimes he didn’t seem to be breathing at all, then he would loudly draw air into his lungs. My grandmother’s snores, often accompanied by whistling noises, as if the wind was blowing through the gaping cracks in the boathouse.

  Strangely enough, I had no recollection of Harriet’s breathing from when she had slept beside me. She would often complain that I woke her up with my snoring. She had left no traces of her sleep; I searched my memory, but I couldn’t find her sound.

  Thinking about all those sleeping people made me drop off again. When I woke a few hours later, Louise had got up. She was standing by the window peeping through a gap in the curtains, the grey light falling on her. Her belly was clearly visible now. A baby was growing in there, and I didn’t even know the name of its father. The sight evoked an intense feeling of joy. I had never experienced anything like it.

  Louise noticed that I was awake. She turned to me, still holding onto the curtain.

  ‘Thanks for not snoring,’ she said. ‘I’ve slept away those terrible days in prison.’

  ‘You were certainly in a deep sleep,’ I said. ‘I woke up and thought you were far, far away.’

  ‘I dreamed about a dog. It was wet, and its fur almost looked like a coat of rags. Every time I tried to get near it, it started howling as if it was frightened of me.’

  She crawled back into bed, while I got up, shaved and had a wash. I dressed and went down to the breakfast room. Louise joined me after half an hour. Now I recognised her. That washed-out pallor had gone, and she ate with a good appetite.

  ‘Why haven’t you asked me where I live?’ she said.

  ‘You usually complain when I ask you questions.’

  ‘That’s just your perception. What are you going to do today?’

  ‘That’s entirely up to you, but maybe we should go back to Sweden?’

  She looked at me searchingly, as if my words had taken her by surprise.

  ‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘I want to show you where I live. If you’re interested?’

  ‘Of course I am.’

  I thought I ought to tell her that Lisa Modin was in Paris, but I decided to leave it for the time being. If there was one thing I didn’t want right now, it was my daughter storming out of the hotel in a temper.

  I told her about Jansson’s calls and showed her the pictures he had sent.

  ‘Weird,’ she said. ‘Creepy. Where’s this island?’

  I tried to explain but without success. She said she understood, but I was pretty sure she hadn’t a clue which island I was talking about. However, she was relieved that I could no longer be suspected of arson.

  ‘Did you believe it?’ I asked. ‘Did you believe I set fire to my grandparents’ house?’

  ‘Not really, but you have to remember that I don’t know you particularly well.’

  ‘The torch,’ I said. ‘Why did you deny that it was you flashing the torch?’

  At first she didn’t seem to know what I was talking about, then she shook her head with a smile.

  ‘It amused me, messing with your head.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘Perhaps because you treated Harriet so badly.’

  ‘But I looked after her when she was sick!’

  ‘Maybe, but not before. Not when you were together. She told me.’

  ‘You made me row across from the skerry in the middle of the night – wasn’t that enough?’

  ‘No. I thought about you and Harriet a lot that night.’

  I didn’t want to hear what Harriet had said about me, so I changed the subject.

  ‘Did you steal my watch when you brushed against me?’

  ‘If I have a speciality, it’s taking people’s watches.’

  ‘You must be very skilful; I didn’t notice a thing. But you could have told me it was you.’

  ‘I knew you’d realise event
ually – that’s why I left it behind.’

  She got to her feet, even though she didn’t appear to have finished her breakfast.

  ‘Let’s go,’ she said. ‘I want to go home.’

  We went upstairs and put on our outdoor clothes. I allowed myself to be led by my daughter, just as I had followed Lisa Modin the previous day.

  We took the Metro and changed trains at Châtelet, using the same line on which I had travelled to Jourdain all those years ago. I wondered if it really was such a small world – would we end up getting off there? However, Louise didn’t move until Télégraphe, two stations further on. Many of those who disembarked were North Africans. Around me I could hear just as much Arabic as French. The station was terribly run-down, with the alcoholics who had always been there sitting or lying on several of the benches. They looked like statues that had fallen over.

  When we emerged from underground, I thought of Morocco or Algeria.

  Louise glanced at me with an unexpected smile.

  ‘Some people feel scared when they arrive here,’ she said.

  ‘Not me. I might not know for sure, but I have a good idea of what the world really looks like.’

  We followed a winding street lined with old buildings, with crumbling plaster facades and layer upon layer of graffiti, which somehow managed to intensify the greyness rather than brightening the place up. A woman in a full hijab came towards us carrying a screaming child. A group of men sat smoking in a doorway. When I peered into the darkness I saw an elderly man feeding another man with a soup spoon, his movements slow and measured.

  Louise was walking quickly. She seemed to be in a hurry to get home, but I thought she was also running away from the time she had spent in that subterranean cell.

  She turned into a cul-de-sac and stopped at the last building, which was next to a high wall. It was a four-storey apartment block, just as dilapidated as everything else I had seen on our way from the Metro.

  ‘This is my island,’ she said, pushing open the door.

  The stairwell was filled with the aroma of exotic spices. From one apartment I could hear music that mostly consisted of the sounds of a monotone flute, beautiful and melancholy. We went all the way up to the top floor; it annoyed me that I was out of breath. Louise waited for me on the landing.

  ‘This is where I live,’ she said. ‘But I don’t live alone.’

  She had a bunch of keys in her hand and turned towards the door.

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ I said. ‘I need to know what to expect.’

  ‘My apartment.’

  ‘You just said you don’t live alone?’

  ‘I live with my partner.’

  ‘Your partner?’

  She placed a hand on her belly. ‘My baby has a father.’

  ‘I’ve asked you about him, and you wouldn’t tell me anything. And now all of a sudden I’m going to meet him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Does he have a name?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Any chance you could tell me what it is? What he does? How long you’ve been together?’

  ‘Do we have to have this discussion on the landing? His name is Ahmed.’

  I waited for her to go on, but instead she unlocked the door. I followed her into a dark hallway; it reminded me of the apartment in which I had lived on Rue de Cadix.

  ‘Ahmed will be asleep,’ she said, pointing at a closed door. ‘He works nights as a security guard. He’s from Algiers.’ She led me into the kitchen, which was small and cramped. I tried to picture Ahmed, to whom I would be related when the child was born, but nothing came into my head.

  The kitchen was freshly painted and smelled of turpentine. The cooker and the fridge were old; the table and chairs could easily have been retrieved from a skip. I realised that Louise and this man called Ahmed were poor. Obviously life as a security guard and a pickpocket wasn’t very lucrative.

  Louise made coffee; I sat down on the chair nearest the window. The adjacent block was just a few metres away, and a radio or some kind of stereo was playing loud music in the distance.

  ‘I have to know,’ I said. ‘Do you really make your living as a pickpocket? You’re clearly not very good at it – you got caught.’

  ‘You know what I used to be like,’ she said. ‘When we first met.’

  I remembered only too well. Louise had turned up in a picture in the newspaper, which Jansson, needless to say, had got hold of. Louise had stripped naked in front of a group of international politicians to protest about something or other – I no longer recall what it was. I had realised then that my daughter was a rebel, as unlike me as it was possible to be. Where I had always been frightened and insecure and put on a front, pretending to be brave, she had burned with a passion for her beliefs and had thought it possible to bring about change through a lone protest.

  I wondered what had happened to all the anger that had been directed at politicians and a world she couldn’t bear?

  ‘I have to make a living somehow.’

  ‘That’s why you became a pickpocket?’

  ‘I’ve never stolen from anyone who couldn’t afford to lose what I took.’

  ‘How can you possibly know that?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘Does Ahmed know about this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And is he a pickpocket too?’

  She hesitated before she answered.

  ‘There’s a part of my life you don’t know about,’ she said eventually. ‘I’ll tell you. The year after Harriet died, I hitched all the way to Barcelona. On a few occasions I had to fight off men who thought I’d got into their cars to do them a service; I always had a steel tail-comb at the ready. In the Pyrenees I once had to stab a guy in the cheek. I was afraid he might die; the blood was spurting all over the place.

  ‘Anyway, I managed to get out of the car before anything happened. I was going to Barcelona to join a demonstration against Spain’s abortion laws. I had a friend, Carmen Rius, who lived in a part of the city called Poble Sec; the people there are not exactly rolling in money. We took part in the demo, but then Carmen asked me to go with her to Las Ramblas, an area frequented by tourists. She didn’t tell me what we were going to do, she just said I should stick close to her and take anything she passed to me. Her English wasn’t very good, and my Spanish was even worse, but I went along with her all the same. I watched as she approached a Japanese tourist, a guiri as she put it. The woman had a rucksack on her back, and one of the pockets was open. Carmen removed a wallet so fast that I hardly saw her do it. She gave it to me and hissed at me to hide it. I slipped it into my handbag and Carmen disappeared. The Japanese tourist hadn’t noticed a thing. I realised then that Carmen was a carterista, a pickpocket. I was astonished at how easy it had been.

  ‘When I asked her how it felt to be a thief, she insisted that no one who lost their wallet or phone would go under. She never went for the poor, only tourists who could afford to travel, and therefore could also afford to lose a few possessions. I allowed myself to be persuaded, and she taught me how to do it. After a few weeks Carmen let me have a go. An Asian tourist with her money in her back pocket was my first victim. It went well, and Carmen said I was now a fully-fledged carterista. Strangely enough I wasn’t nervous at all. I stayed for six months and became part of a group of four women working together.’

  She paused and waited for my reaction.

  ‘Now you know how it started.’

  I was sure that she was telling the truth. She really did want me to know.

  ‘Ahmed,’ I said. ‘You said he’s from Algiers, but you’re telling me about Barcelona?’

  ‘I didn’t meet him there. Carmen was arrested, and I moved to Paris. I met him through friends of friends, and we were a couple.’

  ‘Did you tell him you were a pickpocket?’

  ‘Not right away. Not until I was sure we were really together.’

  ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘Not much. Nothing. But he�
��s not a pickpocket, even though he does have fantastic fingers.’

  ‘But he lets you do it? What kind of a man is he?’

  Louise leaned across the table and grabbed my hand.

  ‘A man I love. The only man I’ve ever loved before, although in a different way, was Giaconelli the shoemaker. When I met Ahmed, I understood what love could be.’

  I gave a start; there was a man standing in the doorway. I had no idea how long he’d been there. He was unshaven with cropped dark hair and was wearing a white vest and striped pyjama trousers. His bare feet were extremely hairy.

  ‘This is Fredrik, my father,’ Louise said in English. ‘And this is Ahmed, my partner.’

  I stood up and shook his hand. He was considerably younger than my daughter, probably no more than thirty years old. He smiled at me, but his expression was watchful.

  He pulled out a stool and sat down at the table. He looked as if he was expecting me to say something. Everything to do with my daughter was completely incomprehensible as far as I was concerned. I would never be able to work out how she had become what she had become.

  ‘I believe you’re a security guard,’ I said tentatively. ‘I hope we didn’t wake you.’

  ‘I don’t sleep much,’ Ahmed replied. ‘Perhaps deep down I’m already an old man. I believe you sleep less as you get older.’

  I nodded. ‘Before that final slumber we sleep less and less over a number of years. As a doctor I ought to know why, but I can’t give you a reason.’

  Louise poured coffee; Ahmed didn’t want any. I could see the love in her eyes when she looked at him. As she walked past him with the coffee pot, she quickly stroked his hair.

  I asked Ahmed about his parents.

  ‘My father is dead. He worked on the docks in Algiers, and he was struck by a steel hawser from a ship. The tension was too tight, and it broke. He lost both legs and bled to death.’

  ‘I’m very sorry to hear that.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘And your mother?’

  ‘Dead.’

  He didn’t explain how she had died, and I didn’t ask.