Chain of Events

by Fredrik T. Olsson

  It went on for longer than William and Janine had expected.

  The mountains echoed to the thunder and roar and clatter of stones striking stones against even more stones. Bit by bit the castle seemed to pull itself apart and one section after another fell down into the cloud and disappeared.

  The building that had started the day as a medieval castle, almost a city of masonry that sprang from the mountain and reflected in the lake with a beauty that was only known to a few, that building was reduced to a thick curtain of dust, hovering over a crater of fire and heat as if the mountain had opened a door to the centre of the planet.

  And all that time, they lay there. Shielded their faces from dust and rocks, watched and didn’t watch and wondered when it was going to end.

  And then, finally, it did.

  No walls were left to crumble, no towers to collapse, and the huge cloud of smoke was slowly starting to drift to the ground again, settling like a thick, transparent soufflé in the pot that were the mountains.

  And then came the silence.

  The rumble had stopped, and no one had noticed.

  It had faded out into a crackling hiss, the rumble lingering as an echo across the lake, like waves after a storm that had passed. And in the midst of the silence the mountain seemed to sigh. One last, suffering breath that swallowed everything, and when the castle was gone the flames reached the surface.

  And they danced towards the sky as if celebrating a victory.

  It was supposed to end in a fire.

  That was how it was written.

  It would be large and violent and end it all.

  And perhaps this was it.

  Perhaps it was some other fire, somewhere else.

  Whichever it was, it didn’t matter any more. Whichever fire it meant, it wasn’t the last thing to happen.

  64

  The season seemed to have been waiting for the news.

  Now that it had arrived, it was as if the snow dared to melt, the earth dared to begin smelling of spring, grass that had been glued to the ground dared to stand up, slowly like after a fight, ducking yellow straws in a wind that dared to be warm.

  The danger was over.

  No new cases had been reported in the amount of time that the authorities had specified and around the world health organisations cautiously lifted their restrictions. No new bodies were lined up in overcrowded ice rinks, no new homes were sealed off and people moved freely outside without being stopped.

  It had been a war with no victor. In the cities there were no parades and no confetti, everyone had lost and the only thing that remained was to piece the world back together.

  The main thing was, the danger was over.

  Four months had passed, and it was over.

  And reality didn’t mind clichés.

  The new season arrived with a vitality that belonged on a chocolate box, fluffy clouds hung above the mountains, layer upon layer of distant alps in increasing shades of blue the further away they were.

  It was spring.

  And just like every other year it brought with it a sense of wonder that life could begin again.

  She found him out on the hillside.

  William sat gazing over the landscape, the plains and the meadows and the firing range that they couldn’t see but that lay there, somewhere beyond the hills and the roads that swirled like ribbons over soft parcels, down into the valley and vanishing in the sunny haze.

  Janine sat down next to him.

  Laid down, her back in the cool grass.

  And they lay there, side by side, two copies of the same page in one eternal book, surrounded by other pages all around them on the ground and in the air and watching them from the distant cliffs.

  They lay there until the sun moved on and settled behind the mountains.

  Until the sounds of cars began to hum in the distance.

  Neither of them had to say it.

  They knew. Like migratory birds, they knew.

  The time had come to leave.

  The people who returned to the alpine village were few in number, but nobody could know whether more would come or if this was all.

  The reunions were fond but sad, and in the streets there were cars with open trunks, bags in rows between trickles of snowmelt, people of every age hugging and opening doors and removing protective boards from their windows.

  And all of this they saw from their car.

  They saw them pass outside their windows, the people who’d been their involuntary hosts, the people who’d fled and come back, and with tyres crunching against gravel Leo steered them out of the village, left it like a shrinking Tyrolean scene behind them.

  They had been on the road for hours, taking shifts to drive and taking turns to sleep, when Janine leaned over towards the front seat.

  William sat in the passenger seat, watching as the road lines kept disappearing under their car, his mind empty of thoughts.

  He sensed Janine’s head next to his.

  Didn’t say anything, and neither did she. Perhaps she had nothing to say, perhaps there was nothing more to talk about, and they sat with their heads close, mile after mile, and there was nothing strange about that.

  ‘If they’d never found the texts,’ she said at last.

  Her voice was relaxed, it was calm and silent, as if it was the most natural way in the world to start a conversation.

  And he nodded, still watching the lines.

  He already knew what she would say, it was the same question again, but she was about to turn it around and ask it backwards.

  He knew, because it was the question he asked himself. Over and over again.

  ‘If they hadn’t read them,’ she continued, ‘and hadn’t made a virus, and never caused all this to happen. Would the predictions still have said the same thing?’

  William raised his eyes, watched the landscape billow past. Felt his thoughts walk in circles around the question. Would it somehow have happened anyway, just because that’s what was written? Or would the predictions have read differently, because the disease would never occur?

  If a tree falls in the forest, he thought. Who the hell cares.

  But he didn’t say that.

  ‘No matter how much we ask ourselves that question,’ he said, ‘we’ll never ever get to know.’

  She nodded.

  And then he turned in his seat. And looked at her.

  ‘I think that is for the better.’

  Neither of them spoke again for hours.

  It was a warm and peaceful silence that nobody had to talk to fill.

  They travelled north along empty highways, passing town after town, some were empty and would stay that way, others were alive with people who’d returned and were cautiously trying to start afresh.

  The future had begun.

  And nobody knew what it held.

  After all, that was how the future worked best.

  They parted ways in Amsterdam.

  They did it without ceremony, quietly nodding their goodbyes.

  There were bigger things to mourn, they were the ones who were left and there was no reason to waste sorrow on someone you could see again, probably wouldn’t, but could; they knew how to get in touch if they wanted, but nobody knew if they should. They had survived together. And maybe that was enough. When everyday life returned and things went back to normal, who knew if they would have anything left in common?

  William stood up too, got out of the car in a wordless goodbye, and now he stood behind the car and watched Janine and her fiancé disappear down the street.

  Past the crossing where Albert had seen Neijzen’s men.

  Down the street where the blue Golf ran down one of their pursuers.

  Memories that ran through Albert’s head, but that William couldn’t imagine; all he saw was a street that was empty and starting to bloom and that waited for everyone who was still alive to return to their homes.

  Only once they’d gone inside did William get back into
the car.

  Leo sat behind the wheel. Looked at William, said nothing.

  They were parked up against the kerb, a drain cover half-hidden under the car on William’s side. And for a moment William sat there, staring at the asphalt through the open door.

  He pressed himself back into the seat. Reached into the inside pocket of his jacket. There.

  The black notebook.

  And before closing the door, he leaned back out of the car, felt his way with the edge of the book along the ground until its spine slotted between the bars of the drain cover. Let it go, watched it drop into the darkness.

  Because who the hell reads a diary.

  When you’re gone, who wants to know what you did some Monday in March?

  Leo remained silent.

  And William looked straight ahead.

  ‘Mind if I sleep for a while?’ he said.

  Leo nodded.

  Started the car.

  If he drove without stopping they’d make Stockholm by sunrise.

  65

  The apartment on Kaptensgatan had had a sheet of plywood nailed to the doors where his shattered windows had been, and he paused in the stairwell with the key in his hand before finally summoning the courage to unlock them.

  Inside, the security door stood open. Unlocked and sawn to pieces and impossible to close. And behind it hung the smell that always came when the apartment was left for long enough. The smell of reality, the one that took over when nobody was there to create the illusion that the world had a natural scent of lemon and was a neat and tidy place, and that there was nothing strange about that, in spite of the chaos and hell that was life.

  On his doormat the newspapers had grown into piles. Their headlines larger and larger as things had evolved, their pictures darker and sadder.

  The last one dated January.

  Then they’d stopped coming.

  They lay on his floor, like a record of the last months’ events. Like a timeline, not in code, but in black and white. Written after they happened, and not the opposite.

  It had only just blown over.

  And yet it seemed distant.

  Nothing had happened.

  And everything had changed.

  He remained standing inside his door for minutes.

  Didn’t breathe. Didn’t know what to do.

  Looked into the apartment. Into his place. His life.

  Finally, he took off his coat, hung it over a chair by the door.

  Continued down the hallway.

  He was home.

  William Sandberg walked into the bathroom and turned on the taps.