After the Fire

by Henning Mankell

  ‘So what’s going on in the world?’ she asked.

  ‘Everything. All over again. Or afresh. Always the same, always different.’

  Outside Norrköping we stopped at a service station for something to eat. Lisa tasted her food, then pushed away the plate.

  ‘We ought to complain,’ she said. ‘That’s inedible.’

  ‘I’ll go and say something.’

  ‘No – if I can’t do it myself, nobody is going to do it for me.’

  She pulled the plate towards her and ate small forkfuls of the fish gratin. A quarrel flared at a nearby table: a couple of young men started fighting before their companions managed to calm them down.

  We drove on through the darkness. I had to slam the brakes on just past Söderköping when a hare ran across the road. We didn’t say much during the journey, we just shared the silence, which I found difficult. I wanted to talk to her, but I didn’t know what I wanted to talk about.

  We arrived at Lisa’s apartment block shortly after ten. The cold rain was still falling. I put my jacket over my head and lifted her suitcase out of the boot.

  ‘How are you going to get home tonight?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know yet.’

  ‘Stay here.’

  I could hear from her voice that this wasn’t an offer made on the spur of the moment; she had been thinking about it for a while. I grabbed my bag, locked the car, and we hurried over to the door.

  As we reached the bicycle stands I stumbled and cut my leg. By the time we reached Lisa’s apartment, I was bleeding heavily. In the bathroom she washed and bandaged the wound.

  The trip to Paris was over.

  As I sat on the toilet watching her tend to my leg, I knew that we were getting close to a critical moment.

  I just didn’t know what it was.

  PART FOUR

  The Emperor’s Drum

  CHAPTER 20

  The first thing Lisa did after bandaging my leg was to open the balcony door wide. The chilly night air came pouring in.

  I watched as she gathered up her post. She was obviously a woman who read a lot of journals and magazines and disliked junk mail.

  She asked me what I wanted to eat. Tea. Sandwiches – liver pâté, sardines. She told me to make myself comfortable on the sofa. I offered to help her get it ready, but she just shook her head.

  I realised she was having doubts about whether she should have invited me to stay.

  I sat down and thought about all the times I had been in a similar situation: alone with a woman with no idea what might happen.

  I recalled the first time I had made love, well over fifty years ago. Some friends had told me this girl had ‘loose morals’ and was always up for it. I think her name was Inger and she used to turn up at the school dance. I was fourteen years old. I danced badly and regarded these occasions as a necessary evil in order to lure girls into adventures. At least that’s what I told myself. I spotted her over by the wall. The girls were waiting for the charge from the opposite side of the room, where the boys were poised on invisible starting blocks. I had fortified myself with arrak supplied by Hasse the baker’s son, who pinched it from his father’s bakery, then sold it at a premium in small glass bottles that he bought from the pharmacy. I wasn’t drunk, just far enough gone to have the nerve to dash across the floor. Inger hadn’t a clue who I was. We moved around the floor like small, sweaty icebreakers, forcing our way through the crowd. This wasn’t a dance, more an evening of pushing and shoving. I don’t think we said a single word to one another.

  After two ‘dances’, I suggested that we should go. She asked where. I didn’t know. Just away from this dance floor that stank of sweat, booze and cheap perfume. Then she made it very clear that there was no one at home.

  She lived in a suburb – I can’t remember the name of it. Bagarmossen, perhaps? We travelled on the underground, still not talking. She was wearing a brown skirt, boots that indicated she had big feet, a white blouse and a dark red coat. She didn’t look in the least like a girl with loose morals who was prepared to go to bed with just about anybody. Then again, what did that kind of girl look like?

  She lived in a three-room apartment in a 1950s block. On a shelf I saw a photograph of her father in a conductor’s uniform. I sat down on the sofa, which was covered in cushions, embroidered with various quotations that I have long since forgotten.

  Inger disappeared into the bathroom. I heard the toilet flush and wondered what to do. What awaited me was both terrifying and irresistible.

  She emerged from the bathroom, stood in front of me and offered me an unexpected helping hand. ‘Do you want to fuck now, or shall we wait a bit?’ she said.

  She didn’t explain what we would be waiting for.

  ‘Now,’ I said, feeling my face go red.

  She nodded, walked towards the door of her little bedroom, then turned and raised her eyebrows. I immediately got to my feet and followed her. She pointed to the bathroom.

  ‘You can use the blue towel.’

  I have almost no memory of what happened after that. She had turned off the light, undressed and got into bed; there were soft toys everywhere. I took off my clothes and got in beside her. During a fumbling embrace when I sometimes wasn’t sure whether I was groping teddy bears or her breasts, I pushed inside her and immediately came. She giggled, I cursed my incompetence and angrily tossed several furry creatures on the floor.

  ‘It’s impossible to fuck among a pile of bears,’ I snapped.

  Inger giggled again but said nothing.

  I stayed for an hour. We still didn’t talk. Then I got dressed and left.

  ‘See you,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘You won’t.’

  I sat on Lisa Modin’s sofa all these years later, wondering what Inger had meant. Didn’t she want to see me again, or did she realise that I had got what I came for and was no longer interested in her?

  I wondered briefly what had happened to Inger, with her brown skirt and her alleged loose morals. Was she still alive? Had she had a good life? I never saw her again.

  My reminiscences of that first inept and humiliating experience were pushed aside as Lisa asked me to join her in the kitchen.

  —

  Lisa and I ate and chatted about nothing in particular, then she asked me to clear away and wash up while she used the bathroom. I wiped the table, closed the balcony door then sat on the sofa until she came out in her bathrobe and went into the bedroom.

  ‘There’s a towel on the side of the bath,’ she called out.

  I thought about Inger. So different, and yet so similar.

  ‘Is it blue?’

  ‘It’s white – why?’

  By the time I had showered and dried my hair, she had turned off the bedroom light, leaving only a floor lamp burning in the living room. I walked over to the bed, let the towel fall and crept between the sheets.

  We lay in silence in the darkness. I reached for her hand, but it was clenched into a fist. I didn’t try to open it.

  She was asleep when I got up at six and left.

  It was cold as I walked to the car. The place was deserted. Driving along the road was like passing through a skilfully constructed set on which no film would ever be made. I imagined that everyone who lived there carried a clapperboard around with them all the time, hoping that they would be able to use it one day.

  I drove to the water and got out of the car. In spite of the chill I walked up and down the wooden quay trying to make sense of what had happened last night. My only conclusion was that I really didn’t understand Lisa Modin. Why had she travelled to Paris?

  There were no answers. I carried on down to the harbour; I met a car en route and had to slam on my brakes. I thought I recognised a marine engineer, who was clearly drunk. Jansson had once hinted that this guy was an alcoholic, but then you could never be sure when it came to Jansson. People he disliked were always alcoholics.

  I pulled into my parking space at Oslovsk
i’s house. A light drizzle had begun to fall. I got out my bag and was about to call Jansson to ask him to pick me up when I decided to check whether Oslovski was at home and had already started working on her car in the garage. I knew she was an early riser. The gravel drive was freshly raked, the curtains closed. I listened for any sounds from the garage, but all I could hear was the wind blowing off the sea. I thought I might as well go up to the garage anyway. As I rounded the corner of the house, I saw that the door was ajar. Oslovski must be there; she was always very careful about locking up.

  Nordin had told me that Oslovski had once been in his shop, searching for money in her trouser pocket. She had taken out the biggest bunch of keys Nordin had ever seen. He had often wondered how a person who lived in such a small house could possibly need as many keys as a prison guard.

  I knocked on the door, simultaneously pushing it open. The light was on.

  Oslovski was lying on the cement floor behind the car, which was jacked up. As usual she was wearing her blue overalls, with the company name ALGOTS just visible in faded letters.

  I didn’t need to touch her to know that she was dead. She was lying on her back with one leg bent underneath her, as if she had tried to stop herself from falling. She was holding a spanner in one hand, and blood had trickled from her head onto the hard floor. Her eyes were closed. I went over, knelt down and checked her pulse; she was dead but not yet cold. Nor had her skin begun to take on the yellow, waxy pallor that comes after death. She had been dead for an hour at the most. There was nothing to indicate an assault; she had suffered either a stroke or a heart attack. Or perhaps a haemorrhage had sent her to her death with no warning.

  I sat down on a grubby stool next to the wall where the tools hung in their designated places. I mourned her. Perhaps not as a friend, but as a person who had brought a certain security with her presence in my life.

  First Nordin, now Oslovski. I was increasingly surrounded by dead people. The child growing in my daughter’s belly only partly redressed the balance between the living and the dead.

  Afterwards I couldn’t explain why I did what I did, but I got up from the stool, took the bunch of keys out of Oslovski’s pocket and went over to the house. From the harbour I could hear the morning bus into town struggling up the steep hill. I waited until the sound of the engine had died away, then I unlocked the door.

  I had never been in there before. The closest I had come was on the odd occasion when Oslovski had appeared and we had chatted on her tiny veranda. I had always felt that she wasn’t just standing there to talk to me; she was acting as a kind of sentry, making sure no unauthorised person crossed the threshold.

  I stood there in the dark hallway; I was aware of the bitter smell that always seems to accompany loneliness. Had my own house smelled like that before it burned down?

  I switched on the lights and walked slowly through the three rooms. On the steep staircase leading up to the attic were piles of newspapers and countless carrier bags from various grocery shops. I realised that Oslovski, in her isolation, had become a manic hoarder. The whole place was in chaos. Clothes, bundles of fabric, shoes, galoshes, hats, skis, a damaged kick sled, furniture, broken lamps, fishing nets. It was indescribable. Only the room containing her bed was remotely tidy. I paused in the doorway, struck by something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Then I realised that in spite of the mess everything in the house was spotless. The piles of newspapers were dust-free, the sheets on the bed were clean. The cluttered kitchen contained a washing machine and a tumble dryer. In a bin bag on the floor next to the sink I could see the packaging from a French fish gratin, which might well have been Oslovski’s last meal. A single red chair with a plastic seat pad stood next to the small dark green Formica table.

  It was clear that Oslovski had never expected or wanted dinner guests.

  I went through the house one more time. Chaos and pedantic neatness, side by side.

  I stopped. I had the feeling I had seen something to which I should have reacted. At first I couldn’t work out what it was, then I realised it was to do with her bedroom.

  I went back up the stairs; as soon as I walked in I knew what it was.

  The sheets had a sky-blue border adorned with stars. I had seen those same sheets very recently – in the deserted house in Hörum. There was no doubt. The bed in that house was made up with exactly the same sheets as those on Oslovski’s bed.

  Oslovski must have been a lone vixen, I thought. She wasn’t running towards Golgotha, but perhaps she had a den with two exits. One where I was now, the other in the dilapidated house in Hörum. Perhaps she hid there when her fear of whatever it might be became too much for her?

  Oslovski had lived close to us for many years, yet she had remained a stranger. Had she ever wanted to develop a closer relationship with us? Perhaps her fear, wherever it came from, was so great that she preferred to live alone in her den, with more than one exit and entrance?

  She really had taken almost everything with her, I thought. She had left only a made-up bed in a house that was falling down, and a partially restored DeSoto in a garage. And a mystery no one will ever be able to solve: the mystery of loneliness.

  I was sure it was Oslovski who had used that bed in Hörum, although I would never know why.

  She had disappeared without a sound, leaving a cold, inaccessible trail.

  The stale, musty smell was making me feel sick. I went out onto the veranda and called Jansson.

  ‘It’s me.’

  I knew he always recognised my voice.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’m fine, thank you for asking. I’m down by the harbour. Oslovski is dead.’

  There was a pause before Jansson responded; he sounded completely taken aback. ‘Oslovski is dead too?’

  ‘What do you mean, too?’

  ‘I was thinking about Nordin.’

  ‘Yes, Oslovski is dead. I found her in the garage. Either a massive stroke or a haemorrhage, I suspect.’

  When Jansson spoke again, after another pause, he was on the verge of tears.

  ‘She was so lonely.’

  ‘We all are. We die alone. At least when we’re born we have company.’

  Jansson’s lachrymose mood suddenly switched to anger. ‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’

  ‘It means exactly what I said: at least we have our mother with us when we’re born. Even if she’s half-crazy with pain.’

  Silence once more. This time I didn’t bother waiting.

  ‘I want you to pick me up,’ I said. ‘In two hours. I need to sort out this business with Oslovski first.’

  ‘What were you doing in her garage?’

  ‘I usually stop by to say hello. She never let anyone into the house, but I used to pop into the garage when she was working on her old car.’

  ‘A Cadillac, wasn’t it?’

  ‘A DeSoto.’

  ‘And she died, just like that?’

  ‘We can talk about it when you pick me up. In two hours. I need to call the police now.’

  Jansson reluctantly let me go. I went back into the garage and replaced the keys in Oslovski’s pocket. To be on the safe side, I checked her pulse one more time.

  Oslovski was and remained dead.

  I called the emergency number, gave my name and location, explained that I was a doctor and that I had found a dead woman in a garage. When I was asked if a crime could have been committed, I said no.

  The unnatural life Oslovski had lived had ended with her death from natural causes.

  I went out onto the road and waited. When it got too cold I went and sat in the car. In my mind my fingertips were caressing Lisa Modin’s shoulders.

  It was forty-five minutes before a police car and an ambulance arrived. When I saw them coming down the hill towards the harbour, I went out into the road to meet them. I didn’t recognise the two police officers. One of them reminded me of my daughter: the same determined look, which could be interpreted as stand-o
ffishness by those who didn’t know her.

  We went up to the garage with the paramedics, two older, stronger men. I told them about Oslovski and the fact that I had her permission to park my car on her property. We stopped outside the door.

  ‘She’s in there,’ I said. ‘I’m a doctor, and I’m sure she’s dead.’

  I waited outside. I was finding the thought that Oslovski was gone more and more depressing. I had never really known her, but we had lived at the same time. She was one of the people with whom I had shared my life, and now she was gone. A part of my world had disappeared.

  The paramedics came out.

  ‘We’re not allowed to transport dead bodies in the ambulance,’ one of them said.

  ‘We’ve sent for the body wagon,’ the other one said. ‘Looks like a stroke to me.’

  I went in to join the two police officers, who were gazing down at Oslovski.

  ‘There’s a wound on her head,’ the female officer said.

  ‘She would have sustained that when she fell,’ I said. ‘If you have a massive stroke you go down like a bird that’s been shot.’

  ‘We’d better take a look in the house,’ the other officer said.

  ‘She usually carries her keys in her pocket,’ I said.

  I waited on the veranda. They rummaged around in the house for a while and came out when they had found her ID card.

  ‘The way some people live,’ the woman said.

  I didn’t reply. I gave them my details, locked my car and walked down to the quayside. Another doctor would come to certify the death. While I was waiting for Jansson I did some food shopping and bought a newspaper. The cafe was open, so I decided to have breakfast.

  As soon as I saw Veronika, I realised she didn’t know about Oslovski. She hadn’t seen or heard the ambulance or the police car.

  ‘You’re early,’ she said with a smile. ‘Coffee? I can’t honestly recommend the Mazarins!’

  ‘Come and sit down,’ I said, pointing to a table by the window.

  She looked puzzled.