After the Fire

by Henning Mankell

  ‘Rut is dead,’ I explained. ‘Rut Oslovski. I found her in the garage, where she’d been working on her old car. They’ll be taking her body away shortly.’

  Veronika recoiled, as people do when something unexpected has occurred. Her eyes filled with tears. I knew she was one of the few people Oslovski used to talk to. They might only have chatted about the weather, but at least they had a conversation.

  ‘But what on earth has happened?’

  ‘She was lying on the floor with a spanner in her hand. I’m guessing she had a stroke or a haemorrhage. She hadn’t been attacked, anyway.’

  We sat there talking quietly, neither of us really able to process the morning’s events. Veronika brought coffee, along with sandwiches defrosted from the previous day.

  ‘She was lonely,’ Veronika said.

  ‘Lately I had a feeling she was frightened,’ I said.

  Veronika frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I thought she’d changed.’

  ‘She was always frightened, all the years I knew her.’

  ‘Do you know why? Did she ever say anything?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But what do you think?’

  ‘I don’t know. I suppose you can be scared without knowing why.’

  ‘Where did she come from?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. There was always something…inaccessible about her.’

  ‘She repaired jetties and worked on her car. Who was she really?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Jansson would be here soon. I wanted to distract Veronika before I left.

  ‘How’s the woman who won twenty-five thousand kronor a month for twenty-five years getting on?’

  ‘Just because you have an arsehole it doesn’t mean you have to be one,’ Veronika said pensively. ‘But that’s exactly what she is. She’s boasting about the fact that she’s going to spend the winters in Thailand.’

  I’d never heard Veronika talk that way before. As far as I was concerned, she had always been the quiet owner of the cafe, but now she was suddenly something different. Something more. I was embarrassed.

  I saw Jansson’s boat approaching and got up to leave. Veronika was lost in thought.

  ‘We’ll miss her,’ I said.

  She nodded but didn’t say anything.

  Jansson was waiting on the quayside.

  ‘Is it really true? Is Oslovski dead?’

  ‘You don’t know me very well if you think I’d lie about something like that.’

  He pulled a face. ‘There are too many people dying. It’s like an epidemic.’

  ‘It’s just coincidence,’ I said. ‘Death is breathing down the back of our necks, but no one knows when the blow will fall.’

  I stowed my bag and my groceries in the boat. I didn’t want to make this conversation any longer than necessary; I wanted to get home to my caravan. Jansson understood; he cast off and clambered aboard with some difficulty. That particular activity exposes the ageing process. About five years ago I had discovered that I could no longer leap easily into my boat without losing my balance. My joints had grown stiffer. Old age has arrived when you can no longer jump aboard. I watched as Jansson shuffled along, almost hating those stiff joints of his, and reversed away from the quayside. I sat in the prow, hunched against the wind and the autumn chill.

  We travelled to my island in silence. Once again I was surprised not to see the house among the bare trees. I still hadn’t managed to get used to the blackened ruin.

  Jansson skilfully hove to. The ability to come alongside a jetty with a barely noticeable bump hadn’t left the former postman. I lifted my bags ashore and was about to give Jansson his hundred-kronor note when he took off his cap. I knew this meant that he wanted to say something.

  ‘What do you want? Can’t it wait? I’ve had a long journey – I’m tired.’

  ‘My heart feels funny. I’m frightened.’

  Under normal circumstances, when Jansson turns up with his aches and pains and asks me to examine him, I know from the start that it’s all in his mind. But this morning it was different. I nodded in the direction of the bench and climbed out of the boat. Jansson followed suit. I went into the boathouse and fetched my stethoscope. When I came out he was already taking off his thick jacket.

  ‘Take off your shirt and jumper too,’ I said.

  Jansson did as I asked. He sat there, naked to the waist, his skin covered in goose bumps in the cold wind. I listened to his lungs and his heart, asked him to take deep breaths. His lungs sounded fine, but as soon as I picked up his heartbeat, I knew there was something wrong. I must have checked Jansson’s heart a hundred times over the years; I had never had any cause for concern. But now it was different: I could definitely hear an arrhythmia.

  As I stepped back I could see the fear in his eyes. Jansson had become an old man.

  ‘It might be a good idea if you pop into the clinic, ask them to do an ECG,’ I said.

  ‘Is it serious?’

  ‘Not necessarily. It might be nothing, but at our age it’s a good idea to have an ECG now and again.’

  ‘Is it fatal?’

  ‘If you don’t go to the clinic, it could be. Put on your clothes and go home; tomorrow you can take the bus into town. The clinic will look after you.’

  Jansson got dressed in silence as I put the stethoscope away. I came out of the boathouse to find him bent forward on the bench, hands clasped as if he had suddenly felt the need to say a prayer. He looked up at me as the door creaked shut.

  ‘Why don’t you tell me the truth?’

  ‘I am telling you the truth. You need to go to the clinic. Don’t worry unnecessarily. I just picked up a little murmur; I’m sure there’s an explanation, and medication can work wonders these days.’

  ‘I’ve been reading about the heart,’ he said. ‘It starts beating long before we’re born. I think a lot of people believe that doesn’t happen until the umbilical cord is cut.’

  ‘It happens on the twenty-eighth day,’ I said. ‘That amazing muscle starts working on the twenty-eighth day, and after that it usually stops only once. Death is the end of a race, after all, but we don’t charge through and break a tape. If the heart were a bird with wings, you could well have flown to the moon and back several times before it decides that it’s time for those wings to rest.’

  Jansson nodded. I realised he knew all about the wonderful heart muscle’s life and death.

  We sat in silence on the bench, two old men in a spot meant for major and minor truths. Jansson was sixty-nine years old, I was seventy. So together we were one hundred and thirty-nine. If I counted back in time, that took us to 1875, when surgeons operated wearing a starched collar, sometimes evening dress.

  ‘We’re not allowed to learn to die,’ Jansson said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘In the past death was a part of life. Now it’s completely separate. I remember I was six years old when my grandmother died. Her body lay on a door in the parlour at home. There was nothing odd about that. Death was a natural part of our lives. Not any more. We no longer learn to die in this country.’

  I understood what Jansson meant. His fear was totally genuine, and yet there was something about his reaction that puzzled me. It was as if the Jansson I had known was casting off his skin, like a snake.

  ‘How do you learn to die?’ he whined.

  I had no answer. Of all the dead people I have known while they were alive, none has given me a rational explanation of the ability to handle death, which sooner or later will catch up with me too.

  We don’t just die alone. We never know how we are going to die, even if a medical diagnosis can be made.

  As I sat there next to a worried Jansson I thought about a black and white photograph I had seen many years earlier – an image that had frightened me more than any photograph I have ever come across.

  It must have been taken during the early 1950s. A chimney sweep on a roof in Stockholm decides that it is time
to end his life. He is about sixty years old. He attaches a steel cable to one of his brushes, loops the cable around his neck, and fixes the other end to the square chimney. Then he balances on the ridge. He must have been standing there for quite a long time, because he has been spotted. Some men up a ladder are trying to persuade him not to go through with it; there must be a photographer up another ladder, but of course I can’t see him. Their efforts are in vain; the sweep throws himself off the roof. The camera clicks a fraction of a second before the cable is pulled tight, and the man dies as it breaks his neck and slices into the skin and sinews of his throat. The chimney sweep dangles there for ever in that final void. On his face is etched either determination or despair; I have never been able to decide which, in spite of the fact that I have spent many hours staring at that photograph.

  Did the chimney sweep teach me to die? Does the picture reveal anything of the mystery hidden in that final moment? What is it about the chimney sweep’s leap out into the unknown that has both repelled and fascinated me over all these years?

  This is what I have left, I thought. Sitting on a bench with another old man who also finds it difficult to clamber into his boat without hurting his knees or losing his balance. Here we sit, hunched in silence, complaining that we don’t know how to behave when death comes for us.

  I didn’t like this. I didn’t want to sit here with Jansson, moaning and groaning about the misery of getting older. I nudged him with my elbow.

  ‘Do you want a cup of coffee?’

  ‘I was thinking about Oslovski. And now you’re shoving me as if you hate me.’

  ‘I don’t hate you,’ I said in astonishment. ‘Why would you think such a thing?’

  ‘You thumped me.’

  ‘I did no such thing, for God’s sake! I just gave you a nudge!’

  ‘I know you’ve always thought about killing me,’ Jansson went on. ‘Just as I learned to read a letter through the envelope, I can see what’s going on inside your head.’

  He got up, unhooked the mooring rope and did what he could no longer do: he jumped down into the boat. Needless to say he fell over as the boat rocked. He banged his head on the gunwale, opening up a small cut. I thought about Oslovski lying dead on the floor of her garage next to her DeSoto.

  Jansson reversed away from the jetty with blood dripping from his eyebrow. Perhaps he was in the first stages of dementia?

  I didn’t even wait until he had rounded the headland before going up to the caravan. A little mouse scuttled out when I opened the door. It’s one of life’s great mysteries, how mice can get into a sealed room.

  The phone rang just as I sat down with a cup of coffee. It was Lisa Modin; she asked about Oslovski straight away. I pictured her at her desk with her notepad in front of her.

  ‘How do you know about it?’ I asked.

  ‘I have people who keep me informed.’

  ‘Police officers?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Paramedics?’

  ‘Not so much.’

  ‘Undertakers?’

  ‘Occasionally.’

  ‘Is this where you say you are not at liberty to reveal your sources?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘I was the one who found her.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  I explained how I had pushed open the garage door and found Oslovski lying on the concrete floor with a spanner in her hand. As I told Lisa my story it was as if I was only just beginning to grasp what had happened. The death that comes to others is every bit as incomprehensible as that which will one day come to me.

  ‘Was there anything suspicious about her death, as far as you could see?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I’m asking you.’

  ‘The post-mortem will show natural causes – a stroke or a haemorrhage. It could be something else of course.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘I don’t know. You’ll have to wait for the post-mortem.’

  ‘Did she still have her glass eye?’

  The question took me by surprise. Who had told Lisa about Oslovski’s eye? Had I mentioned it?

  ‘You told me about her when we were out on that island,’ she said, answering the question I hadn’t asked.

  I vaguely remembered.

  ‘Yes, it was still there.’

  Silence; perhaps she was making notes.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

  ‘Drinking coffee.’

  The conversation came to an end even though I would have liked it to continue.

  After a few minutes the phone rang again; I hoped it was Lisa, but it was the churchwarden. He introduced himself as Lars Tyrén and he asked if I was happy to be one of the bearers for Nordin’s coffin. The funeral would take place at eleven o’clock on Friday morning; I promised to be there early in order to go over the ceremony in advance.

  ‘Isn’t he being cremated?’

  ‘He will be laid to rest in the family grave.’

  I drank my coffee, thinking that I needed to go and buy a dark suit.

  —

  Lisa didn’t contact me again, and I didn’t call her either. I did, however, speak to Louise every day. There was a different tone between us now. We talked about Harriet each time we spoke; I also noticed that she was pushing me to get things sorted out with the insurance company so that I could make a start on the construction of the new house.

  I went into town and bought a suit. I went into the most exclusive gentlemen’s outfitters I could find and chose black Armani. Because I didn’t know whether ties at the funeral were to be black or white, I bought one of each. Before I picked out a white shirt, I was assured that it wasn’t made in China, but in a factory in Turin.

  The suit cost six thousand kronor. In spite of myself, I was pleased that I had allowed myself to splash out.

  —

  A strong north-easterly was blowing as the day of the funeral dawned. It had been an unusually windy autumn. Jansson’s boat bobbed and rocked in the squall. He was wearing a black tie with his suit.

  Oslovski’s house was locked up when we picked up the car. Jansson gazed around curiously. He insisted on seeing where I had found Oslovski’s body, but the garage was locked too.

  We drove to the church. I managed to put on my black tie, with the help of the rear-view mirror.

  Nordin’s coffin was pale brown, with a bouquet of roses resting on the lid. The priest talked about Nordin as the eternal servant. His words made me feel sick; they sounded so false. Nordin had been a good person, but none of the residents of the archipelago had forgotten that he sometimes refused credit to those who were less well off. No doubt many people regarded him as a complete bastard.

  We carried the coffin through the gusts of wind to the family grave in the western corner of the churchyard. The oldest inscription informed us that landowner Hjalmar Nordin had passed away on 12 March 1872.

  As we lowered the coffin, I exchanged a glance with Jansson. I had the impression that he felt as if he were lowering his own coffin.

  The ceremony was over. We walked over to the parish hall for coffee and sandwiches, but all I really wanted to do was run away. Suddenly the proximity of death frightened me.

  It took me completely by surprise.

  I hurried into the hall.

  I took shelter inside the den.

  CHAPTER 21

  The first snow fell on the archipelago on 1 December. When I stepped out of the caravan, stark naked, to take my dip in the cold water, the ground was white. There wasn’t a puff of wind. Nature was holding her breath as autumn turned into winter. My bare feet left prints in the thin covering of snow. I climbed down the ladder, inhaled and counted to ten with my head under the water. The cold burned my skin. Back on the jetty, I was shivering so much my teeth were chattering. But I had no intention of giving up my dip, however cold it became or whatever thickness of ice I had to chop my way through.

  I hurried back to the caravan and made
my breakfast. On this particular morning I put on one of the blue Chinese shirts; the collar had already started to fray. I looked at my face in the shaving mirror: it was pale, my eyes increasingly sunken. My hair was thinner, the hairline receding. I had a sore that refused to heal at the left-hand corner of my mouth. It could be an ingrowing wart. As I stared into my eyes, I saw a person I only partly recognised.

  A duel was going on between the man in the mirror and the man standing on the floor of the caravan.

  Time had passed, and time continued to pass. It was already several weeks since the trip to Paris, Oslovski’s death and Nordin’s funeral. Veronika, who keeps herself well informed about what is going on in the archipelago, told me that Oslovski’s post-mortem had confirmed my suspicions: she had suffered a massive stroke and died in seconds. The PM had also revealed that her body was riddled with cancer, with the primary tumour in one of her adrenal glands.

  No one had been able to track down any relatives. I went to her funeral. She had left instructions stating that she wanted to be cremated. The church was sparsely populated. I couldn’t understand why Jansson wasn’t there; his absence upset me. His curiosity at least should have brought him there.

  I occasionally spoke to Lisa Modin on the phone. Every time our conversation ended I wanted it to continue. She would often call back the following day, and I began to realise that in spite of everything she had the same need to talk to someone as I did.

  Jansson had followed my advice and taken himself off to the clinic, where an ECG had revealed exactly what I had suspected: signs of a disturbance in the cardiac conduction system. He was now on medication and no longer had any symptoms. However, I noticed that he was constantly expecting the problem to recur. Every time he turned up I listened to his heart. When I assured him that it sounded perfectly normal, he didn’t believe me.

  He told me that the residents of the islands were afraid that there would be another fire. Apparently the police were getting nowhere. Jansson thought the arsonist was an outsider. That was the term he used: an outsider. Someone who travelled around starting fires, only to disappear.

  Louise and I continued to grow closer through our phone calls. I was visited by representatives from the insurance company. Kolbjörn Eriksson and a relative who was a carpenter were contracted to build the new house; in the best-case scenario, it would go up during spring and summer the following year.