After the Fire

by Henning Mankell

  We woke up at almost the same moment. When I opened my eyes and turned my head, Lisa was lying there looking at me.

  ‘I just woke up,’ she said.

  It was seven o’clock. She sat up.

  ‘I’m glad you didn’t throw me out yesterday.’

  ‘Why would I do that?’

  ‘I shouted at you.’

  ‘I expect you felt you had good reason.’

  She lay back down after gently moving aside my outstretched arm.

  ‘Thank you for not trying it on,’ she said. ‘You might have thought I came here offering myself on a plate.’

  ‘Why would I have thought that?’

  ‘Because it would have been a perfectly natural reaction.’

  ‘Not for me.’

  She leaped out of bed and pulled back the curtain.

  ‘What is it that makes you different from other men?’ she asked.

  ‘I am the way I am.’

  She looked irritated, and the conversation stalled. I got up and she disappeared into the bathroom. I stood by the window looking down into the courtyard while I waited. She had come to the hotel, and she had stayed the night. That must mean something, even if I still didn’t know what it was.

  She emerged from the bathroom with the same energy about her that I recalled from the first time we met. I suggested that we should have breakfast together, but she shook her head with a smile.

  ‘We could have had dinner on the train if you weren’t flying home,’ she said.

  She gently stroked my face before she left the room. For some reason I hoped Rachel wouldn’t see her.

  After Lisa’s abrupt departure, I went down to the breakfast room even though I wasn’t hungry. Monsieur Pierre was on reception, gazing at his computer screen.

  The breakfast room was very quiet, with just the odd guest concentrating on their boiled eggs and coffee.

  When I couldn’t bear to sit there any longer, I went to Monsieur Pierre and asked for my bill. I paid with my card, but I was suddenly worried in case there wasn’t enough money in my account.

  There was no reason to be concerned. If I didn’t start spending significantly more money, there would always be enough. In spite of everything I had a good pension from my career as a doctor.

  I left a tip of ten euros and asked Monsieur Pierre to pass some of it on to Rachel.

  ‘She’s an excellent person,’ he said. ‘We’re very glad to have her.’

  I headed towards the lift, then turned.

  ‘Who owns the hotel?’ I asked.

  ‘Madame Perrain, whose father started the business in 1922. She’s ninety-seven years old, and unfortunately she’s very ill. The last time she came here was twelve years ago.’

  I thanked him and got into the lift. When I stepped out on the second floor, my key in my hand, I made a decision without really thinking things over. I would catch the same train as Lisa Modin. I wouldn’t fly. Seat 32B might be occupied, but not by me.

  I slept for a few hours more then left the hotel. Even though it was still quite a long time before the train was due to depart, I took a taxi to the Gare du Nord. I was done with the city; I would return only if it was to see Louise and her family. I was ready to leave Paris for good.

  The taxi driver had dreadlocks and was playing Bob Marley. I hummed along, and as we were waiting at a red light he turned and smiled. His teeth were white, but sparse on the top row. I thought about my visit to the former jazz club where they now played reggae; I asked him if he knew the place.

  ‘Of course,’ he replied as the lights changed to green.

  I left Paris to the sound of ‘Buffalo Soldier’. I gave the driver a generous tip when he dropped me off at the station. I had arrived here the first time I came to Paris, as a very young man with terrible toothache and hardly any money. Now I was leaving. I had got into a taxi in this spot back then; now I was getting out of one. In spite of the distance between those two journeys, they were somehow linked.

  I bought a ticket, assuming that Lisa would be travelling second class. I wandered around the station, trying to remember what it had looked like fifty years ago. I was sure my train had been pulled by a steam engine, and that I had sat in the very last carriage.

  I called Jansson. I didn’t tell him I was on my way home. He had nothing new to report about the fire, but everyone on the islands was getting worried; they were afraid a seriously malevolent individual was on the loose.

  That was the word he used – malevolent. It didn’t sound quite right on Jansson’s lips. If he had sung it in his fine tenor voice, it might have sounded more convincing, like something in an opera. I asked whether the police had found any similarities with the fire that had destroyed my house, but Jansson had no answers for me. He kept going back to the fear of something yet to happen.

  I went into a newsagent’s and bought an English medical journal, which I slipped into my bag.

  Half an hour before the departure time I made my way to the right platform. I stood next to one of the iron pillars supporting the roof; I wanted to see Lisa before she saw me.

  She arrived fifteen minutes later; the train had just pulled in. I followed her at a distance, like a scruffy private eye. As she climbed aboard I saw that I was right: second class.

  Just as the conductor was about to close the doors, I followed her on board. I stayed by the toilet until the train set off. After all these years my final journey home had begun.

  I could see Lisa in the sparsely occupied carriage. Her eyes were closed, her head resting on the wall by the window. Fortunately she had chosen a spot with an empty seat opposite. I sat down as quietly as I could. After a minute or so she opened her eyes and smiled.

  ‘I ought to be surprised,’ she said. ‘But somehow I’m not.’

  ‘The first time I came to Paris I travelled by train,’ I said. ‘As I told you last night. But I’ve never left Paris on a train. I’ve stood by the roadside with my rucksack many times, hoping for a lift, but now I have the opportunity to make that missing journey home by rail.’

  ‘It’s good to see you,’ she said. ‘I haven’t been looking forward to this trip, but now maybe it will be different.’

  ‘Why did you come? I can’t make this long trek without knowing the answer.’

  Before she had time to respond, the brakes squealed, triggering a memory of the very first time I arrived in the city. The same squealing brakes, people losing their balance, someone swearing. It was as if I had cracked through a shell and stuck my head out into a world that no longer existed.

  We travelled through the suburbs, the train picking up speed. There was no one else in this part of the carriage. Lisa had her back to the engine; I asked if she wanted to swap places.

  ‘Those who were going to be executed were always transported facing away from the direction in which they were going,’ I explained. ‘It was so that they wouldn’t see the gallows or the executioner’s block as they approached.’

  ‘I’m fine here, thank you.’

  Once again an incident from my youth came into my mind. I was standing out in the winter cold with a frightened girl; I think her name was Ada, and she had a great big Farah Diba hairstyle. I was drunk on arrak, somehow obtained from Hasse the baker’s son, the boy everyone wanted to be friends with. Before Ada had time to take evasive action I threw up all over her white shoes. The occasion was a school dance; I had been evicted because of my intoxicated state. Ada regarded herself as my girlfriend and had therefore felt obliged to share my humiliation. But now she ran straight back into the warmth, where well-behaved couples were dancing together to a jazz band with a blind double-bass player.

  What was I thinking now, as we sped through the outskirts of Paris and a little man dragged a big heavy suitcase along the aisle of our carriage? Was I hoping not to be abandoned, as I had been all those years ago?

  I rested my head against the wall and folded my arms.

  We crossed the Belgian border. Our tickets were on the
table in front of us; I pretended to be asleep when the conductor came along to check them.

  Lisa stood up.

  ‘I’m hungry. I’m going to the restaurant car.’

  I went with her. A man sitting across the aisle was watching a film on his tablet; I asked him to keep an eye on our bags, and he nodded. Lisa led the way; the restaurant car was packed, and we had to wait for a table. The waiter spoke French with an Eastern European accent. Outside the window darkness had fallen. We both ordered chicken; we ate, we drank.

  ‘You were crying in your sleep,’ Lisa suddenly said.

  ‘Was I?’

  ‘People rarely cry for no reason.’

  ‘I have no recollection of that at all. Nor of any dreams.’

  The waiter topped up our glasses. He had developed the skill of pouring drinks on a moving train without spilling a drop, even when the carriage jolted and lurched.

  ‘I once took the overnight train through Switzerland,’ I said. ‘I was on my way to Italy. In the restaurant car I was seated at a table with a woman of about my age who was on her own. I was very young at the time. For some unknown reason we were drinking some kind of sugary punch. I was knocking back three glasses to her one. I had the crazy idea that I might be able to tempt her to my sleeping compartment; I had booked first class in an excess of arrogance and because I had plenty of money. I don’t know why I was so well off; I had just started training to be a doctor. If I remember rightly, it was the Easter holidays, and I had decided to go to Rome on a whim. Nothing happened, of course. When the restaurant car closed, she thanked me and disappeared. I staggered back to my compartment, opened the window and passed out, drunk. When I woke up in the morning, the bed was covered in snow. The inside of my mouth felt as if it were coated in a layer of syrup that had set. I have never had such a terrible hangover, neither before nor since. I was ill for days. My only memory of Rome is the suffocating traffic; I was furious because I had wasted my money on such a dreadful trip. I had thrown away a wonderful experience for God knows how many glasses of punch.’

  ‘I also have a memory of Rome,’ Lisa said, ‘although my trip was a bit more successful. I went there with two friends, one whom was about to start working there as an au pair for a Swedish diplomat. We went along to provide moral support during her first week. One day I went for a walk on my own; the other two had caught a cold and stayed in bed. I met a man called Marius, and a few evenings later I lost my virginity behind a tree in the gardens of the Villa Borghese. The whole thing consisted of inept fumbling on both sides. We were supposed to meet the following day, but I didn’t turn up. I still wonder what became of him; I wonder if he ever thinks of me.’

  The restaurant car was beginning to empty. We were drinking coffee; Lisa had ordered a pudding, but it was far too sweet, and she hardly touched it.

  She suddenly asked why I had turned up at her apartment that evening.

  ‘You already know the answer.’

  ‘I know nothing. But I have a suspicion.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘That you were hoping I would let you into my bed. How could you think such a thing?’

  ‘I didn’t think anything. I hoped.’

  ‘You snooped among my papers. You found a secret in my wardrobe.’

  She angrily tossed aside her napkin, then she waved to the waiter, who appeared to be half-asleep on a stool by the kitchen door. He immediately brought over the bill, which he had already prepared. I wanted to pay, but Lisa took it. She said I had already spent more than enough. She gave the waiter a ridiculously large tip, and he beamed at her. It was the first time we had seen him smile all evening.

  We went back to our carriage; this time I led the way, opening the stiff doors as we moved through the train.

  The man who was supposed to be keeping an eye on our luggage was fast asleep, with the film still playing on his tablet. The bags were still there.

  ‘Where are we?’ Lisa asked when we had settled down. She had snuggled up under her coat, legs tucked up on the seat.

  ‘Maybe Germany?’ I said. I looked at my watch. ‘We’ll be in Hamburg in five or six hours; there’s always a break there.’

  ‘Wake me up when we get there. I love the fact that nobody knows where I am. A train racing through the night. If I could write novels, I would write about this journey.’

  ‘Would I be in your story?’

  She didn’t answer. She had already closed her eyes and pulled her coat over her head.

  I must have dozed off too. I woke up when the train stopped, and in the pale light on the platform I could see that we were in Hamburg. The man opposite got up and left. Lisa was still sleeping, one leg dangling off the seat.

  We were exactly on time; it was quarter to three in the morning. In contrast to my trip all those years ago, there was no need to change trains, although we would be waiting here for thirty-five minutes. I touched Lisa’s shoulder through her coat. She threw it off as if she had been attacked, blinking at me in bewilderment.

  ‘We’re in Hamburg,’ I said. ‘We’ll be here for half an hour.’

  ‘I was asleep,’ she said, still only half-awake. ‘Such a deep sleep. I dreamed about a hole that suddenly opened up.’

  ‘I’m going to get some fresh air,’ I said.

  Lisa pulled on her shoes, stood up and ran her fingers through her hair.

  ‘Can we leave our bags?’ she asked.

  ‘Someone usually walks up and down keeping an eye on the train. Anyway, we’ll be able to see what’s going on from upstairs.’

  We were quite close to an escalator leading to the upper floor, where shops, cafes and the ticket office were located. It was cold when we got off. A man in uniform was already patrolling the platform, monitoring the train.

  I asked if Lisa was hungry.

  ‘Are you?’ she said, sounding surprised. ‘At three o’clock in the morning?’

  We bought two cups of tea to take away from a cafe. A long-haired man with a grubby rucksack was fast asleep at one of the tables. It seemed to me that he had been there for ever, the timeless vagabond, constantly reborn, always looking exactly the same. A small group of apathetic, possibly homeless youngsters was sitting at another table. They formed a sharp contrast to a couple in their thirties who were tenderly stroking each other’s cheeks and hair.

  Lisa walked over to the barrier; from up here it was possible to see every platform in the almost deserted station, with its domed roof made of iron and glass, the panes grubby with the accumulated dirt of so many years. She placed her cup on the barrier.

  I took a risk and put my arm around her. She didn’t resist, but she gently pulled away.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ she said. ‘Just stay where you are. If things happen too fast, they always go wrong.’

  A scruffy, emaciated junkie came up to us, begging for money. I gave him one euro; when he asked for more, I shouted at him to clear off. He moved away; Lisa watched him go.

  ‘I don’t understand how people find the courage to have children,’ she said. ‘When the result could be a beggar in a railway station.’

  ‘That’s rather cynical. Life guarantees nothing but constant risk. That also applies to having children.’

  ‘Did you never think that way? When you were waiting for your daughter to be born?’

  ‘I knew nothing about her. I’ve already told you that.’

  We threw our empty paper cups in the bin and went back to the train. Some new passengers had joined our carriage. I wondered whether to suggest that Lisa and I should move so that we could sit next to one another, but I realised she wouldn’t want to. There was no need to ask her. As soon as she sat down she had established the boundaries and closed her eyes, as if I had no access to her world.

  We continued our journey northwards. I don’t know if Lisa slept, but she snuggled under her coat once more. I sat gazing out into the night, with fragments of memory swirling around in my mind like truncated film clips. When the conductor passe
d by, I asked if there was a buffet car open. He shook his head, explaining that there was a drinks machine at the back of the train. I knew it was unlikely to contain anything alcoholic.

  We arrived in Stockholm on time, having eaten both breakfast and lunch on board. Lisa had accepted my offer of a lift home. Neither of us mentioned the brief embrace in Hamburg. I couldn’t decide whether it all seemed like a dream to her, something that hadn’t really happened. For me the reverse was true. I had sat opposite her for hours as the train took us to Copenhagen and on through the Swedish autumn landscape. I wondered if it was possible to yearn for a person who was less than a metre away.

  She spent much of the journey absorbed in a book about the history of Swedish journalism. I had nothing to read but my pocket diary. I went through all the different names listed for each day of the year, tried to imagine myself as something other than Fredrik. Only Filip seemed even remotely possible. When I had run out of names to consider, I picked up my pen and made anagrams out of Fredrik Welin and Lisa Modin. Hers was easier to have fun with than mine.

  Refkrid Nilew wasn’t as interesting as Masdi Olin.

  We caught the train from the central station in Stockholm to the airport. A cold rain was falling. I collected my car and spent ages circling and trying various exits before I eventually found the right one and picked Lisa up outside Terminal 3.

  Southwards through the rain. The heat inside the car was unpleasant. The traffic was heavy, everyone was in a hurry. It didn’t thin out until we were past Södertälje. I asked Lisa if she was hungry.

  ‘I’m just enjoying the trip; I don’t want it to end,’ she replied. ‘I’m like a child who can never get enough.’

  ‘Enough of what?’

  She shook her head and didn’t say any more. I could see the wet surface of the road shimmering in the headlights, and I thought I probably felt the same. This trip could go on forever as far as I was concerned.

  We had reached the dark depths of the Kolmården forest when she asked me to stop in a parking area. She got out of the car and disappeared into the gloom. I switched on the radio and listened to the news; it seemed to me that I had heard it all before. I turned it off as Lisa got back in the car. It was pouring with rain now and her hair was soaking wet.