After the Fire

by Henning Mankell

  I went over the conversation in my mind. I didn’t feel any better, and I still couldn’t decide where the anxiety was coming from.

  I accelerated and headed home. A few Canada geese were flying around beneath the grey clouds, unable to find their route south.

  Back home I solved a chess problem in the local paper; it was much too easy. The most stupid amateur could work out that a combination of moves involving a castle and a bishop would quickly lead to checkmate for the black pieces. I felt like contacting the paper to complain about the way they regarded their readers as idiots, but of course I didn’t do it. Those occasions when I have felt like protesting and have actually done so are few and far between.

  It was hot inside the caravan. In spite of the fact that darkness had fallen, I undressed, picked up my torch and went to the boathouse. I climbed down into the water and forced myself to swim a few strokes before the cold got too much for me. I was on my way up the ladder when I heard my phone ringing; I had left the door of the caravan ajar. I set off at a run, but slipped and fell over one of the wet stones in the grass.

  I put my clothes back on before I checked to see who had called. I could only think of two people: Louise or Jansson.

  It was Lisa Modin. I called her back, but it was ages before she picked up. I was about to give up when she answered, sounding surprised to hear my voice.

  ‘You called me but I couldn’t get to the phone in time,’ I explained. ‘I’d just been for a dip and I was down by the jetty.’

  ‘I didn’t call you.’

  ‘But my phone is showing your number.’

  ‘I don’t understand that – I didn’t call you.’

  ‘And I’m not mistaken.’

  She was breathing heavily, as if she had just run a long way uphill.

  ‘I’ll call you back,’ she said. ‘I need to check this out.’

  I sat down to wait; she rang me after ten minutes.

  ‘I didn’t call you,’ she said yet again. ‘I must have accidentally pressed a button when the phone was in my pocket.’

  ‘So you didn’t intend to speak to me?’

  ‘Not right this moment, no.’

  ‘In that case it’s probably best if we end this conversation now.’

  I rang off before she had the chance to say any more and threw my phone down on the bed. It was still lying there when it started ringing again. I ignored it. I couldn’t work out what I was doing.

  I did, however, send a text an hour later. You’re still welcome to come to the New Year party. Unless you’ve changed your mind.

  She didn’t reply until after midnight, by which time I had given up hope that she would still come. The display showed just one word: Yes.

  I lay there for a long time, thinking about that one word. Yes.

  I was woken at dawn by cramp in one leg. I wondered if I had developed diabetes; cramp in the calves is a common symptom. However, I wasn’t drinking large amounts of water or getting up to pee during the night.

  I dug out a blood glucose meter from one of the plastic bags where I keep my medical supplies; the reading was 6.9. I didn’t have diabetes.

  In a burst of impatient energy I tidied the caravan. I hadn’t really touched the place since I moved in. I lit a fire in an old oil drum where my grandfather used to burn his rubbish and chucked in all the crap I had accumulated over the past few weeks. I got rid of one of the blue Chinese shirts; the colour had already faded, the cuffs were frayed and the stitching around the buttonholes was coming undone. I fed the shirt slowly into the flames.

  When I was a child, if I had toothache I would sometimes take revenge by pulling the wings off insects. A painful bruise could be eased by drowning a pretty butterfly or by laying a perch on the shore and letting it suffocate.

  Now I took my revenge by torturing things that were already dead. This time the Chinese shirt would pay the price.

  Later in the day I rowed out to the skerry. The tent was still there, although the recent storm had ripped out some of the pegs. The stones and twigs I had positioned to reveal the presence of an intruder were exactly where I had left them. Nor had anyone lit a fire among the soot-covered rocks.

  The sea was calm now. On my way back to the island I looked for the drift net I had seen earlier in the autumn, the net that carried on fishing even though no one would ever empty it.

  That night there was a heavy snowfall in the archipelago. At dawn I undressed and went down to the water completely naked, using my torch to pick a path through the snow.

  Winter had arrived. Soon it would be Christmas, then New Year.

  The snow stayed until Christmas but melted away on the third day, when warmer winds blew in from the south. I hung coloured lanterns between the boathouse and the caravan. Veronika brought extra chairs and crockery, along with some of the food. We did a trial run, setting everything out in the caravan; it was a tight squeeze, but it would be OK.

  New Year’s Eve was cold and clear, and there wasn’t a breath of wind. At three o’clock in the afternoon Veronika got everything ready and gave me my final instructions concerning the food. In order to make things easier for me, the soup was in Thermos flasks; she had also lent me an extra LPG hob, which we set up in a sheltered spot behind the caravan.

  We drank a toast to wish each other a Happy New Year, then said our goodbyes on the jetty as I waved her off on her trip to Iceland.

  Jansson arrived at seven, having picked up Lisa Modin. Burning torches lit the way to the caravan. Jansson spent half an hour sorting out his firework display.

  The three of us sat down at the little table and we ate and drank from half past seven until just after eleven. By then we were all tipsy, the food was gone, and it was so hot inside the caravan that Jansson had taken off his shirt and was sitting there bare-chested. When Lisa went out for a pee, I asked Jansson if it wasn’t time for a song. He brightened up as if he had been afraid that I wouldn’t mention it. However, he didn’t want to sing just yet; he would prefer to wait until midnight.

  ‘ “Ave Maria”,’ I said. ‘You have to sing “Ave Maria”.’

  ‘I promise, but I have another song too.’

  I couldn’t help wondering what it might be.

  ‘ “Buona Sera”,’ he said. ‘Made famous by Little Gerhard in Sweden in the 1950s.’

  I thought I remembered the song he was talking about, but I would have preferred the combination of ‘Ave Maria’ with something other than Little Gerhard.

  ‘Excellent,’ I said. ‘Very good.’

  Lisa came back, her gaze slightly unfocused. She tripped and laughed at her own clumsiness.

  I had a bottle of champagne on ice: Veuve Clicquot. I remembered the name from a wedding anniversary that my father hadn’t forgotten, much to my mother’s surprise. He had come home with this very label. When Louise arrived with Agnes, Ahmed and Muhammed one day, we would also celebrate with Veuve Clicquot.

  We finished off a bottle of red first, then I went outside and called Louise, who was at the hospital.

  ‘You’re drunk,’ she said. ‘I’m glad to hear it!’

  Midnight was approaching. Jansson insisted that his watch was accurate to the second; none of us wanted the TV or radio on. The thermometer by the caravan door was showing plus two. The coloured lanterns were reflected in the calm, shining water, and ragged clouds drifted slowly above our heads. Jansson led the way up to my grandfather’s bench; I could hear him quietly warming up his voice. I took Lisa’s arm when she stumbled, and she didn’t pull away.

  We were surrounded by silence. Jansson fixed the beam of the torch on his magic watch. I tried to picture Louise, Agnes and her family, Muhammed in his wheelchair, all of them perhaps gathered by a window.

  We stood there on the hill as if we were the last people in the world. Jansson began to count down the remaining seconds of the old year. I gripped Lisa’s cold hand, and still she didn’t pull away. With the other hand I felt in my pocket to make sure I had my cigarette lighter
to give to Jansson so that he could start his firework display.

  ‘Now,’ Jansson said, his voice trembling with excitement and emotion.

  The year was over. Jansson launched into ‘Buona Sera’. Lisa clearly recognised the song but was as taken aback as I had been at Harriet’s last midsummer party, when Jansson astounded us all with his powerful voice. He held the torch so that it illuminated his face from below, giving him a ghostly pallor, but neither Lisa nor I were bothered about his appearance. It was his voice that exhorted us to look to the future. And then came ‘Ave Maria’. The cold winter’s night disappeared, and summer bloomed all around us. I could see Harriet sitting there with a glass of white wine in her hand and Jansson standing at the end of the table singing in a way that simply knocked all the air out of our lungs.

  Afterwards, when he had fallen silent, I saw that Lisa had tears in her eyes. So did I, and perhaps even Jansson himself. We passed the schnapps around, drinking straight from the bottle as you do when you are with friends. We wished each other a Happy New Year and praised Jansson’s wonderful voice. I asked him to start the firework display; the bangs and the not particularly impressive rockets echoed among the rocks and flared against the night sky, only to disappear in seconds. However, Lisa and I applauded Jansson’s brave attempt to frighten away the evil spirits with fire and smoke.

  When it was over we went back to the caravan. Jansson seemed tired and refused another drink.

  ‘I’m going to head home,’ he said. ‘It’s late for an old postman who isn’t used to performing.’

  ‘I had no idea you could sing like that,’ Lisa said. ‘A Jussi Björling out here among the rocks and skerries!’

  ‘I’m happier keeping quiet,’ Jansson said, getting ready to leave. He seemed anxious, restless.

  We walked down to the jetty with him. To my surprise he appeared to be stone cold sober as he made his way over the slippery rocks to his boat.

  He moved quickly, as if he were suddenly in a hurry. The feeling I had had before, that I didn’t understand him at all, came back to me. However, right now I just wanted to make sure he actually left and didn’t change his mind.

  ‘You sang beautifully,’ I said.

  ‘Mozart and Little Gerhard,’ Lisa said. ‘Extraordinary.’

  ‘Schubert,’ Jansson said. ‘Not Mozart.’

  ‘Who wrote the Italian song?’

  Jansson shook his head. He didn’t know.

  ‘Off you go,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t matter who wrote “Buona Sera”.’

  Jansson fired up the engine while Lisa and I stood shivering on the jetty. He had put on his leather cap, which was looking rather scruffy after all the winters he had worn it while delivering the post.

  We could hear the sound of bangs and whooshes in the distance.

  ‘Vattenholmen,’ Jansson said.

  ‘What’s the name of the people who live there? Erlandsson?’

  ‘They own a mail order company selling health products,’ Jansson said. ‘They’ve been reported to the police several times for making false promises, claiming that their creams and herbal preparations can cure everything from eczema to cancer.’

  ‘That house they built can’t have been cheap.’

  ‘No, but the smell of scandal lingers around most people who make a ridiculous amount of money.’

  With that he bobbed down through the hatch and started the engine with a good spin of the flywheel. He reappeared, waved a hand in farewell and reversed away from the island. We stayed there until the red and green navigation lights had vanished around the headland.

  I went into the boathouse and switched off the coloured lanterns, then we went up to the caravan.

  ‘He sang so beautifully,’ Lisa said.

  ‘I wanted it to be a surprise,’ I said. ‘He hides his voice as if he were carrying around a huge, possibly dangerous secret.’

  ‘Why was he in such a hurry to leave?’

  We had stopped outside the caravan. I didn’t have an answer; Jansson often resembled an indolent cat, reluctant to stir unnecessarily, but then he would suddenly turn into a completely different feline, moving across the rocks like lightning.

  We went inside. Veronika had supplied me with several black bin bags and some paper carriers. I asked Lisa to put the empty bottles in the paper bags, separating plain and coloured glass, while I dumped the remains of the food in a bin bag. I had asked Veronika why she had given me more than one black sack.

  ‘They come in useful if you want to throw up,’ she said. ‘Saves you doing it just outside the caravan.’

  I didn’t think anyone had suffered from the amount we had drunk, although I couldn’t swear to it of course.

  I tied up the bag and pushed it under the caravan, then put an untouched crate of beer in front of it.

  When I had finished I couldn’t resist glancing in through the window. Lisa was sitting on the bed with an unlit cigarette in one hand. In the other she held the lighter I had given Jansson to start his firework display.

  She looked up, straight at the window; I didn’t have time to move away. She called to me to come in, then she reached out and switched off the light.

  She had unrolled the mattress on the floor for me, and she got into the bed. I wanted to reach out and touch her, but I didn’t dare. Right now I was grateful that I didn’t have to be alone. I wondered if she felt the same.

  She began to talk, perhaps because she had been drinking, perhaps for other reasons. She told me about a man who had once been part of her life, a man she still hadn’t forgotten.

  ‘It was before I started trying my hand at journalism,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t decide what I wanted to achieve – or if I actually wanted to achieve anything at all. I worked in a paint shop to earn a living; ask me whatever you like about different kinds of paint and brushes, and I’ll have an answer for you. One day a man came in and bought a small tin of blue paint. As soon as I saw him, I knew he was the one I wanted to live with. A few days later he came back and bought another tin. We started chatting; he was doing up an old cupboard. And so we became a couple. He had an incredibly boring job as an office clerk working for the local council, and every time he came home it was as if there was a great darkness surrounding him. He wasn’t much to look at either, but I loved him to distraction. And he loved me. We were together for four years, but one day he got home from work, surrounded by that black cloud, and told me he didn’t want to live with me any more. That was almost fifteen years ago, but to be honest I still haven’t forgotten him.’

  She fell silent.

  ‘Why are you telling me this?’

  ‘So that you’ll know.’

  ‘I don’t want to know.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Right now I’m just happy that you’re here. Tomorrow I might feel differently.’

  We both lay awake, and the conversation edged along. She had cautiously opened one or two of her doors, just a fraction, and allowed me to peep inside.

  It was very hot inside the caravan. The heater was on the highest setting, but neither of us could be bothered to get up and turn it off. I started to believe that there was a closeness between us after all, beyond all my expectations.

  My phone rang; it was too late for Louise. It must have been at least three o’clock in the morning. I swore and wiped the sweat off my face. Lisa told me to pick up; the caller was probably drunk, so it would be a short conversation.

  The person on the other end wasn’t drunk at all. It was Jansson, and he was scared. I could tell that his body was shaking just as much as his voice was trembling.

  ‘There’s a fire,’ he yelled in my ear. ‘Karl-Evert Valfridsson’s house is in flames! If you go outside you’ll see the glow in the north-west.’

  I did as he said; the flames were shooting up into the air from Karstensön, where the Valfridssons’ large house was located.

  ‘I’d only just fallen asleep. I don’t know what woke me up, but now I’m here,’ Janss
on shouted. ‘Anyone who can help needs to get over to the island!’

  ‘Are the Valfridssons out of the house?’

  ‘They’re away, the house is empty. It’s going to burn to the ground.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  Jansson didn’t reply, which was answer enough for me. The arsonist had struck again.

  ‘I’m on my way,’ I said. ‘We’re both on our way.’

  When I went back inside, Lisa had switched on the light and got dressed.

  ‘Another fire,’ she said. ‘Is it what I’m thinking?’

  ‘It’s arson,’ I said. ‘We need to go over there and do whatever we can to help.’

  ‘Has anyone died?’

  ‘No.’

  I got dressed as quickly as I could, then we hurried down to the boathouse.

  I asked Lisa to sit in the prow with the beam of the torch pointing out across the water as I didn’t have any navigation lights. I sat in the stern with a chart on my knee, illuminating it with my phone from time to time. It was no more than two nautical miles to Karstensön, but there were several reefs along the way that I wasn’t entirely sure of.

  As we swung out into the bay, the Valfridssons’ house blazed like an enormous midwinter sacrificial feast.

  We were heading straight into the fire.

  Boats were coming from all directions.

  The New Year had started with yet another burning house.

  CHAPTER 23

  Once again I saw a house transformed into a blackened ruin.

  The Valfridssons’ house burned with the same fury that had obliterated my home. The old house stubbornly resisted, but the blaze was stronger. It reminded me of a lion, its jaws embedded in the throat of a dying gazelle.

  There were about thirty of us running around with buckets of water and hosepipes, yelling at one another. Then the coastguard arrived and started up the pumps, and we stopped running around. Alexandersson, who was a little tipsy, took charge. I knew everyone there. We all wished each other a Happy New Year in the middle of the chaos, as we tried to do something useful.

  I noticed that Lisa Modin was extremely capable. She took the initiative, and people listened when she made suggestions.