by Lars Sund
“Would you mind speaking up?” Beda Gustavsson said from the podium.
Inger started again.
“There are almost a hundred strangers buried at Tjörkbrant’n now. What if even more arrive? It will soon be full up.” She swallowed hard: “So where are we to be put to rest when our time comes?”
With her heart pounding she almost fell back into her chair. She felt Klas-Åke’s hand seeking hers.
It has not been possible to ascertain who was the first to applaud.
That is what happened, however. One pair of hands began clapping and then another pair joined in. Then there were four pairs, then ten, fifteen and twenty. The applause stirred the heavy air in the hall.
Someone attempted to shush them. Someone else shook his head. But a third person called out: “No, there shouldn’t be strangers lying in our graveyard!”
The time was just a few minutes past nine at that point.
Then Judit stood up, right at the back of the hall. Hardly anyone had noticed she was there since she had slipped in quietly when the meeting had already been under way for some time.
A number of the people said later that she looked as if she had aged twenty years in just a few days.
Her face was an open wound.
People wanted to show sympathy for her. She is, when all is said and done, one of us. Then they looked into her eyes and saw two icy black chasms filled with a savage rage that made people step back.
Judit waited until the applause subsided. She didn’t bother to ask permission to speak. Her voice grated, harsh as the cry of the greater blackback.
“I just wish Anna had been here. I wish Anna had been at this meeting. She would have been able to sing to you. She was wiser than all of us.”
That was all that Judit said.
But by that stage it was already too late.
Beda Gustavsson, who was chairing the meeting, proposed that discussion was now at an end. She read out a statement that had been drafted in advance of the meeting and asked those present to approve it.
Signs of Life
Subject:Signs of life at last
From:[email protected]
To:[email protected]
Hello!
Sorry about the silence. The day before yesterday my laptop and mobile were stolen from the hotel I’m staying at. It happened while I was down at the reception enquiring about renting a car. Fortunately I had my handbag with my purse and tickets with me otherwise I’d have been completely stranded. The policeman I reported the theft to was very friendly, but he shrugged his shoulders and said that thefts from hotel rooms are a frequent occurrence down here and I was unlikely to get my things back.
I’m wondering whether it was pure chance that the thieves broke into my room in particular and stole my laptop. Am I just being paranoid? Anyway, I must admit to feeling a bit uneasy.
I’ve been travelling around talking to people the last few days and trying to understand what’s going on. Filling in bits of the puzzle, so to speak. I’ve been in contact with various human rights activists and trades union representatives who have been trying to organise the workforce in the factories set up in the free zones down here. They produce everything from Christmas decorations to electronic goods, which are then sold cheap back at home.
I’m still not very sure as to what this journey has revealed. I am fairly certain, though, that the bodies washed up on Fagerö came from down here, but proving what really happened to them and why they died and ended up in the sea is very difficult. I have my suspicions, but unfortunately suspicions are not a sufficient basis for a radio report. And I’m beginning to wonder whether there’s any point to most journalism anyway – of course people get upset and angry when suffering and injustice are exposed, but they forget very quickly. We are awash with information but there is a sense in which we actually know less and less.
In spite of which I still feel that coming here was the right thing to do. Quite a lot of things have become clearer. I admit it’s been both difficult and disturbing, but it has been worthwhile.
What kind of world are we living in? One in which economics and profits are more important than everything else – including life itself, sometimes.
But I suppose we knew that already.
Time to finish – I’ve been rambling on too long. I’m in an Internet café and my time is about to run out anyway. I’m flying home tomorrow. Can we get together when I eventually make it out to Fagerö?
Ghita
Riggert von Haartman was reading the text on his computer screen. It was early morning and the Old Police House was silent. Silence had been building up there for too long and the sound of the waves and the screams of the gulls through the open window only served to emphasise it.
“I’m glad she finally got in touch,” Riggert von Haartman said aloud. “I was getting a bit worried about her. I hope you can understand that, Elisabeth.”
He could have added that he wasn’t so much worried that something might have happened to her as that she might not have wanted to contact him again.
“You don’t need to be jealous,” he said.
And then he added angrily: “Christ Almighty, what difference does it make? We’re divorced, for God’s sake! It’s over – and has been for a long time! Just accept it!”
He thought for a moment about what Ghita Saarinen had said when they were sitting on the veranda drinking whisky: “I think you’re the sort of person who has a great deal of sympathy within him.” Or something like that.
He didn’t know whether he dared believe her. Did he really have the ability to enter into the feelings of others?
Perhaps I should try to believe her, he thought.
He sat for a while listening to the silence of the house and he became aware that it wasn’t utterly silent since he could hear the faint whisper of the fan in his computer. He closed his eyes and the faces of nameless dead strangers surfaced in his memory. He went through the pictures, studying them before setting them aside. Some of the images were sharp and clear, others blurred and faded.
He opened his eyes and read through Ghita Saarinen’s email once more.
He wrote an answer to her hotmail address. She might have time to read it before travelling home.
VIII
Beda Gustavsson Listens to Herself
“You have to understand that I have very strong – very strong, indeed – feelings for Fagerö,” Beda Gustavsson heard herself saying. “We’ve enjoyed many summers here and I did the fieldwork for my dissertation in systematic botany out here. I feel as if Fagerö is my second home. What has happened here – all these corpses being washed ashore, I mean – well, I began to think that we had to do something about it. It couldn’t be allowed to continue.”
“But given that you’re a summer visitor, do you really think it’s your business?” Beda Gustavsson heard a man’s voice ask. Once again she was aware of a sharp edge to his voice and it was obvious he was trying to provoke her.
“Of course it’s my business! It affects all of us, summer visitors and residents. Over the years I’ve got to know many people out here, many real characters,” she heard herself saying in response. “The people of Fagerö have been afflicted by this … this invasion … through no fault of their own. It’s not their responsibility, our responsibility, to deal with these foreigners. But they said nothing and suffered in silence. Someone had to take the initiative to get the issues discussed.”
Beda Gustavsson was rather pleased with her reply. It sounded better than she remembered.
“So you were the one who took the initiative, were you?” The question came very quickly and the sarcastic tone was even more marked than before.
“It wasn’t only me by any means. Many islanders also thought something had to be done, that measures needed to be taken. Islanders make up a majority in the People for Fagerö association we have formed – it’s their association, in fact.”
That all sounded rather good was the thinki
ng in Beda’s mind.
“The meeting that you took the initiative …” the man’s voice began.
“The meeting that we took the initiative to organise,” Beda said and grimaced slightly on hearing herself say it. She shouldn’t have interrupted him: journalists and reporters don’t like being interrupted. “There was very strong support and a lively discussion. Residents and summer visitors alike were totally involved and we had many signatures on the petition we sent round.”
Beda Gustavsson was sitting in a garden chair in the yard at Klås with a glass of rosé in her hand. There was a transistor radio standing on the table in the middle of all the cutlery, plates and glasses, and she was listening to herself being interviewed on national radio by a young reporter for a current affairs programme. Her brother-in-law Knut Alfthan, the sheriff-depute, dressed in a striped apron, was standing by the electric barbecue. Sirloin steaks were sizzling away on the barbecue and he had his tongs at the ready. The sheriff-depute turned the meat over as he listened to the radio. His wife, half-lying on a sunlounger, her naturally curly blond hair glinting in the sunlight, was listening too. Ulrike, her nose in a book, was sitting on the front steps and absent-mindedly scratching a mosquito bite on her shin.
“You come over really well,” Karin Alfthan said to Beda.
“Shh,” her husband said, taking a sip from his glass. He was drinking whisky.
“So what you are demanding is that if any further bodies come ashore they should not be dealt with and buried on Fagerö?” the reporter said. He sounded slightly superior and it was even more obvious he was trying to provoke Beda.
“That’s right.”
“But there have been no bodies for several weeks now.”
“We have no guarantee, however, that more bodies won’t be washed up. It could be tomorrow. So we have to be prepared, to have a plan of action.”
“And you are also concerned that the cemetery will soon be too full, which is why you are demanding that the strangers already buried there should be moved. Is that right?”
“We simply cannot have a great crowd of dead foreigners filling our little graveyard. That was what the meeting decided. I hadn’t actually considered that point until one of the people present at the meeting brought it up, and I realised at once that it was right. The best solution would, of course, be for these outsiders to be sent back to wherever they came from and buried there. Or cremated.”
That was calm, factual and sounded convincing, Beda Gustavsson thought.
“Not everyone at the meeting took that view, though, did they?”
“No, opinions differed, as you might expect. And, of course, everyone was at liberty to put forward their view. But we concluded that our demand that the bodies be removed from the cemetery had strong support among those present.”
“What are the cost implications of moving almost a hundred bodies?”
“We don’t have an answer to that at present. The sensible solution would be for the government to assume responsibility for the move. If not, we are prepared to organise a collection to raise money.”
“Mightn’t this initiative of yours be seen as somewhat xenophobic?”
Beda Gustavsson suddenly realised the direction he was taking.
“Nonsense!” she heard herself saying on the radio.
“But a number of right-wing extremist groups have applauded your initiative.”
“I know nothing about that and we certainly don’t want any truck with right-wing extremists. We are just ordinary people who find the situation upsetting.”
“That was Dr Beda Gustavsson,” the radio reporter said, “summer visitor to Fagerö in the south-west archipelago and organiser … one of the organisers … of the recent and controversial meeting on Fagerö at which the removal of almost one hundred bodies buried on the island was demanded. Support for this demand was, however, far from unanimous and critical voices have spoken out since the meeting. The island of Fagerö is divided and …”
Beda Gustavsson turned off the radio.
“You were really good,” Karin Alfthan said.
“The interview was cut in places,” Beda Gustavsson said. “I said a lot more and tried to explain my position, but no, that was cut. And see the way that reporter actually tried to make me appear to be some sort of racist?”
“That’s the way journalists work, isn’t it? You shouldn’t let that worry you,” the sheriff-depute said over by the barbecue.
“Yes, but all the same …” Beda Gustavsson said, shaking her head.
“Ugh, this whole business is so awful. If only they would move all those strangers, it would be so much better. As things are, I don’t like going anywhere near the church,” Mrs Alfthan said.
“The meat’s ready, I think,” her husband said, prodding one of the steaks with his tongs. “Can you call the children, my dear?”
A Conversation in the July Dusk
Ghita said: “It would somehow have felt better if these people had died in a major disaster. Like the Estonia, or Chernobyl.”
Riggert said: “I don’t understand. In what way would it have felt better?”
Ghita said: “At least we wouldn’t have felt complicit in some way.”
This time it was Riggert von Haartman waiting for Ghita Saarinen, not her waiting for him. She came on the ferry Arkipelag, on its late afternoon run. Just as on her last visit to Fagerö the weather was turning. The greyish white covering of cloud had furrows like a ploughed field turned upside down in the sky, and the radio was forecasting no more than moderate visibility with the wind veering round to the north. It was the third day of Riggert von Haartman’s holiday.
He was spending the day replacing a couple of rotting boards in the door to the glass veranda of the Old Police House.
He enjoyed playing at being a joiner and dressing in overalls with a metre rule in the front pocket and a hammer at his hip. Sawing, planing, fitting the boards, stroking the smooth surface of the wood with his fingertips and inhaling the sweet smell of wood glue provided him with a sort of resigned satisfaction.
It was actually his wife – his former wife, rather – who had fallen in love with the Old Police House when they first came out here over ten years ago. At that stage the place was empty, its windows boarded up and sightless. The weatherboarding was blasted by wind and rain, and red-brown patches of rust speckled the tin roof. Elisabeth had dreamt of buying the Old Police House and turning it into a summer place for them to use after they had moved back to the mainland in due course. In those days he had still believed they would share their dreams in sickness and in health until death them did part, and he joined in with her dream about the Old Police House. Her love became his love – he wanted to make that happen with everything that was hers. He joked that the Old Police House should be renamed the New Police House once they had moved in and he saw before him long summers in a house full of children and even, one day, grandchildren.
But then Elisabeth became afraid. He had failed to understand that her dream of the house had perhaps never really been serious. By the time he understood it was too late. He and Elisabeth never did buy the Old Police House together, but he bought the house alone.
He got it cheap. The rooms echoed with the same emptiness as he did and they smelled of dust and mould and decay. And he thought, what the hell have I done? He spoke Elisabeth’s name aloud, many times. He often had to swallow hard, and it wasn’t just because of the dust in the still, heavy air.
He was advised to sell the house as soon as possible, but he couldn’t bring himself to do so.
Quite by chance he happened to see in the newspaper that the further education school in Örsund was offering evening courses in house renovation. Without any great hopes he signed on and on the first night of the course he seriously considered dropping out. But he stayed on anyway and to his surprise discovered that he was becoming interested. He, a man who had never knocked in a nail and had only achieved mediocre grades in practical subjects at school
, learnt the joinery skills necessary for renovation. After some time he would look at his hands and be amazed at what they were capable of. He bought his own tools and, with the help of the course instructor, went through the whole house deciding what needed to be done first. He ordered timber and one spring ten years earlier Riggert von Haartman started renovating the Old Police House.
“And I’ve kept at it ever since,” Riggert von Haartman said to Ghita Saarinen as they stood on the grass in front of the Old Police House. The work on the door had taken him longer than he expected and her car had turned into the gravel drive while he was still rehanging the door on its hinges. The new timber gleamed yellowish white and even though she was no expert when it came to joinery she could see that the work had been done with care and skill.
An opening in the cloud cover revealed the evening sun out to the west and rays of moisture-laden golden light illuminated the sea in the colours of a nineteenth-century religious print.
“It’s a never-ending job,” he said. “And, given that I’m on my own, what on earth am I doing with a house this size?”
“I had no idea at all that you were so practical,” Ghita smiled.
He shrugged his shoulders but she could see that her praise, however formulaic, was well-received. “You’ve caught me in filthy overalls,” he said. “I must go and change.”
“It doesn’t matter to me, I like men in working clothes,” she said and immediately bit her tongue. That had come out too hastily and sounded altogether too personal. But he didn’t seem to notice. Or perhaps he did? He smiled.
“I could always start a joinery business if I get tired of the law. Anyway, are you hungry? I’m not the world’s best cook but there’s cold meat and salad in the fridge and ready meals in the freezer, if that’s okay with you?”