by Håkan Nesser
My new lover isn’t lying beside me in bed, but I can hear him pottering around in the kitchen downstairs. We have a new year, and we have a new situation.
Jeremy was allowed a sip of champagne at the stroke of midnight, but he didn’t like it. He spat it out, and washed away the unpleasant taste with a large glass of Fanta. As I lie here in bed I have the feeling that he might actually like me. In any case, he seems to accept that I associate with his father in this way, and if I have understood Mark rightly it would not be routine for Jeremy to do so. He admitted yesterday that he was taking a considerable risk in inviting me to dinner that last time: he didn’t know how Jeremy would react, but decided to chance his arm. The last time he was visited by a woman, two-and-a-half years ago, everything went wrong – but he hasn’t given me any details.
I look out at the dense foliage outside the window. It doesn’t allow much light in. The house really is hidden away from the world, and it feels as if you are both protected and inaccessible here. Mark told me yesterday that the house had been empty for nearly ten years when he bought it, and that putting it into decent shape nearly drove him mad. The middle floor, where I am currently lying in bed, contains Mark’s bedroom and study: I’ve only glanced into the latter, as he was reluctant to show me what a mess it is in. There are piles of papers and files all over the place, and computers, and a stuffed parrot in a green wooden cage that he claims has magical powers. The bird, that is, not the cage. In any case, it can apparently solve difficult computer problems if you know how to ask it properly. I was on the point of asking him – Mark, that is, not the parrot – about my little password problem, but I managed to check myself. It wouldn’t be a good idea for him to be aware that it was somebody else’s computer, not my own; and if he eventually managed to open the document I shudder to think what he might conclude.
Now that I come to think of it, it strikes me that I could maintain that it is just something I’m writing about: a main woman character who has that little problem. But I decide not to push it. Another day, perhaps, but not today. Despite everything, I might well not want to know what happened when six men, each of them armed with a revolver, went out at dawn one day thirty-two years ago.
I can smell that he’s frying bacon downstairs. Perhaps he intends to serve me breakfast in bed, but I’m not keen on eating in bed, so I throw the duvet to one side and go out into the bathroom.
A new year, and a new situation, I think again.
I look for Castor, but realize that he is downstairs with Mark. Let’s face it, a kitchen is a kitchen after all. Castor has never had the problems of prioritizing that have troubled his missus.
We decide to walk back up to Darne Lodge and leave Mark and Jeremy at about noon. We can walk back again tomorrow and collect the car – we don’t need it for the rest of today.
In my pocket I have a mobile phone that works. Orange instead of Vodafone, that’s the key difference. Mark rings to check before we’ve gone more than a few hundred metres. I answer and say that it seems to be working, and we close the call. It feels remarkable: I realize that I could hear Synn’s or Gunvald’s voice within a few seconds simply by pressing a few buttons. Or Christa’s? Or Eugen Bergman’s?
I put the mobile back into my pocket and promise myself not to press any such buttons. Not in any circumstances. Instead, when we are back in Darne Lodge I sit down at my table and try to sort out what I have been putting off for such a long time.
Planning. Accepting once and for all that there is a whole ocean of days, weeks and months ahead of me. Perhaps even years. It’s high time I took that into account. A new situation?
The fact is that I have an idea, and I sit there the whole evening playing around with it. It is in fact no more than a very primitive thought, a sort of whim that I have purposely left undeveloped inside its shell, intending to give birth to it in the new year.
Yes, I like to imagine it all in that way: you conclude things in December, and you start anew in January. It’s feeling more and more like a hang-up, but if it’s all to do with magical thoughts, then so what? It doesn’t disturb me in the least.
The equation has only one unknown – at this point, just for a moment, the image of my old maths teacher Bennmann comes into my mind: he was anything but magical, and used to pooh-pooh any problem that didn’t have at least two unknowns. Toss his head and adjust his bow-tie that was always askew underneath his pointed goatee beard, and either red with white dots or blue with white dots. But I don’t want to be disturbed by him at this stage, and I send him back to the cemetery in central Sweden where no doubt he is lying by now.
One unknown, then, and this is the question I must sort out with both patience and precision. If my suspicions turn out to be justified, and my husband in some miraculous way or other managed to crawl out of that damned bunker, that hell-hole I can’t bear to think about any more . . . if against all the odds he survived both the cold and the rats, then the fact is that the game is up. More or less in any case, depending on exactly what one means by the word up.
But enough of that. Let me go on instead. If the conclusions I have drawn from various experiences – pheasants, hire cars, missing dogs, written messages on filthy car doors, false e-mails and all the rest of it – if those conclusions are really true, then I can state that . . . Well, what exactly can I state? Mr Bennmann rolls over in his grave and tries to fix me with his gaze through six feet of solid earth – there’s something for you to think about, you berk, I think, and remember now that I had him in philosophy as well: logic and argumentation analysis, for Christ’s sake.
Away with Bennmann for the last time. In any case, there is . . . yes, that’s the fact of the matter, and I can feel something positive and hopeful stirring in my mind as I come to this simple and obvious conclusion: there is only . . . there can be only two beings who know the truth, the solution to the equation – apart from Martin himself, of course: my dog and Professor Soblewski not far from Miȩdzyzdroje in Poland.
Castor and Soblewski.
That’s right, isn’t it? That really must be the fact of the matter. These are the two paths to clarity that are being offered to me. A dog and a professor of literature.
I start with the dog and an acceptable dose of magical thinking. Kneel down on the floor in front of him, look him straight in the eye and say: ‘The boss?’
He puts his head on one side.
‘Have you been with the boss lately?’ I ask. ‘The boss? You know who I mean.’
He leans his head on the other side.
‘If you’ve been with the boss, hold out your right paw.’ This is magical thinking of a calibre I’ve never tried out before.
He thinks for a while, then holds out his left paw.
I can’t make up my mind what that means. I try another approach.
What would be the point of my undead husband stealing Castor from me, keeping him for a couple of days and then returning him? Where’s the logic in that?
Where’s the logic in silver-coloured hire cars and dead pheasants and prowling around in the background all this long time? Where’s the logic in anything at all?
But I brush this aside as well. Shove it down into Bennmann’s grave and return to square one. I try to think of what point there would be in stealing Castor.
It takes a while, but then the penny drops.
A message.
Some sort of indication on my dog that makes me understand where he’s been.
Precisely, I think, and feel the buzzing inside my head change key. That is exactly how Martin Emmanuel Holinek would think. I look hard at Castor. Why haven’t I thought of that before? It’s more than a week since he went missing and then came back.
How do you leave an indication on a dog? What would I do?
It’s not many seconds before the thought strikes me. His collar. That’s the only possibility. You attach something small to his collar, perhaps a rolled-up scrap of paper under a piece of Sellotape . . . Or you write somet
hing.
I remove Castor’s collar. Examine it closely. I can’t see anything new and different on it. Nothing taped onto it, or fastened in some other way. I examine the inside, check it meticulously centimetre by centimetre: this is how I would do it, I think, just like this. Write Death or whatever I would want to note down and pass on, and that is also what Martin would do. I know him. We’ve spent a lifetime together.
Nothing.
No letter, no sign of any kind.
I slide the collar back over Castor’s head and thank him. Tell him to go and lie down in front of the fire and think about something else. To forget the boss.
I move on to Professor Soblewski.
The buzzing inside my head has died down: instead a sad little creature raises its head and tells me that I’m mad. And that I should be grateful that I don’t have to submit to a mental examination today.
I tell the creature to shut up, and that I need to concentrate.
‘Mark Britton?’ it says even so. ‘And how do you intend to deal with that little problem?’
‘Shut your gob,’ I tell it. ‘Crawl back to wherever you’ve come from. Mark Britton has nothing at all to do with this. He’s just a way of spending the time.’
‘Huh, kiss my arse,’ says the creature. But then it has enough sense to keep quiet. I wish I had a cigarette, which is not a good sign of course, and it soon passes.
Then I get no further. Not a millimetre further.
Much later that evening:
Bach. Wrong.
Handel. Wrong.
Brahms. Wrong.
46
It’s Alfred Biggs who’s on duty. It’s morning, and there are no other customers in the centre, tapping away at their keyboards. He brightens up when I come in and wishes me a Happy New Year. I return the compliment. He goes out into the kitchen to make tea without even asking if I want any. I’ve forgotten to bring biscuits with me yet again.
I start with Martin’s inbox and find that I’m in luck: there actually is a message from Soblewski, just as I had been hoping. He wishes Martin a Happy New Year and attaches the short story he had mentioned in his previous message. ‘Change of Wind’ by Anna Słupka. He points out that the translation probably needs a bit more revision, but he wants Martin to read it and give his opinion of it.
And he asks Martin to pass on greetings to fru Holinek.
I read the ten lines twice, very carefully, and open the attachment: it strikes me that sending the text of a short story like this suggests that my theory about Soblewski being an accomplice is over the top. Why would they need to go to such lengths if it is all a fake?
Change of Wind? I drop the idea – at least until I’ve read fröken Słupka’s text properly. I also recall that the Swedish short story they had talked about had been written by a young author called Anderson, Anderson with only one s, but I make up my mind not to overdo the interpretation. The world is full of possible messages, and one way of going mad is to try to read all of them.
Nevertheless I have to be very careful of course when it comes to my (Martin’s) reply to Soblewski’s message, and it takes a whole cup of tea and twenty minutes before I’m satisfied with what I’ve written. I wish him a Happy New Year and say thank you for the short story. I promise to read it as soon as possible, and get back to him with a judgement within a week (Alfred Biggs helps me to print out the twelve pages); and with a minimum of fuss I describe how we have celebrated Christmas and the New Year down here in Morocco. In the end I write:
And I sincerely hope no new bodies have turned up in your village. Have they identified the last one yet?
Best, Martin
I was going to put ‘on your beach’ but I changed it to ‘in your village’. There was nothing about a beach in the previous e-mail – and nothing about a village either, come to that, but I can’t think of a better way of expressing it. I also think that my (Martin’s) tone is exactly right: a bit jokey but even so sufficiently serious for him to answer the question in his next message.
The fact that the body hasn’t been identified is of course the only possible answer.
As for the rest of Martin’s e-mails, the only one I bother to respond to is a brief greeting from Bergman. In accordance with my plan I write that I (Martin) have fallen a bit behind with my writing, but I hope that things will buck up in the new year. ‘A few problems have cropped up and I can’t see a satisfactory way round them just yet,’ I add.
That is all I need to say at this stage. I think my plan is working well.
My own inbox, which I don’t open until I’ve finished dealing with Martin’s, produces something unexpected – totally unexpected. Violetta di Parma writes that her mother back in Argentina has fallen seriously ill, and that her family wants her to come home as soon as possible. They say it can be a matter of months, possibly even weeks, and Violetta writes that she has made up her mind. Her contract with the Opera Ballet runs until the middle of April, but most of the work will be finished in January. The première will be in the middle of February, and she has already been given the okay by the powers that be to leave at the end of January.
And so Violetta writes that she wants to leave our house on the first of February, three months earlier than intended, and that is what she would like to discuss with us. How should we go about it? Would we like her to find a new tenant to look after the house for the remainder of the period? What shall we do about the money she has already paid in rent for the remaining three months? If we can’t find any other solution she realizes that she will have to abide by the contract as originally agreed.
It is a long and emotional message: she apologizes for causing us problems in this way, but she can’t see any other possibility for herself apart from going back home to Córdoba.
My first reaction is also that fate has been most unkind. I really need these months, this spring, in order to pull this off. As so often recently, I have no idea about what I mean by pulling this off: but after sitting and brooding over the e-mail – and being served another cup of tea by Alfred Biggs – I begin to see things in quite a different light.
What is there to stop me speeding things up a bit?
Why shouldn’t I be able to carry out my plan in one month rather than three?
In fact, might that even improve the outcome?
I spend the whole of the afternoon’s walk round Selworthy Combe and Bossington thinking about this new situation, and by the time we shut ourselves into Darne Lodge as dusk falls I am quite clear about what to do next.
We shall leave Morocco a month from now. It will work all right, and even make everything more credible if I handle it correctly. It needs more activity on my part, of course: but if there is one thing I have missed during my stay on the moor, it is active involvement in something.
As if to confirm that this conclusion is absolutely correct, this is what happens late in the evening:
Signe. Wrong.
Vivianne. Wrong.
Ingrid.
The screen flickers twice, and then the document ‘At Dawn’ opens.
Signe is his mother. Vivianne, as I have already explained, is his dead sister. His mother is also dead, incidentally.
Ingrid, on the other hand, is the woman with whom he was unfaithful in the middle of the nineties. She is most probably still alive, and he has evidently not forgotten her.
And I will not forget the password.
47
At Dawn
But I’m on the wrong track already. The distance between darkness and light is short, and there is hardly any dawn as such. The sun is rising over crests of the mountains in the east like a gigantic red balloon, while we are still standing outside the wall, waiting for H and Gusov. I don’t know what we are letting ourselves in for, but there is something I can’t explain driving us on.
Me and Soblewski. Grass and Megal. The Frenchman looks to be near the point of collapse, there is no trace left of his air of superiority. He’s older than the other three of u
s, considerably older: perhaps he suspects what this theatrical performance is all about. Perhaps he’s been through it before – I have that impression. None of us says anything, I am feeling more and more the after-effects of that drug we smoked. Both Grass’s and Soblewski’s pupils are very dilated. Megal is wearing sunglasses.
When we have been standing there waiting for about five minutes H comes out of the front door. He is on his own, one of us asks about Gusov and H explains that he will join us later.
Before we set off we have something to drink. It is a dark red, strong drink that almost burns your throat, and it seems to contain a mixture of tastes: I can identify anise, mint and bitter almonds. H serves it from a bottle into plastic mugs which we eventually leave in a pile next to the wall. H hands out our revolvers, explains that they are loaded but the safety catches are on, and asks us not to speak during the short walk that lies ahead of us.
‘Twenty minutes,’ he says. ‘We’ll be there in twenty minutes. Let me thank you already for taking part.’
And so we set off along a well-trodden path. It slopes gently upwards, and we are heading out into the desert-like countryside, directly towards the sun. Lizards scamper back and forth in front of our feet, and in the far distance an ass is braying. It’s getting warmer by the minute.
We come to a little copse of trees, halfway up the slope, and make a short pause in the shade and relative coolness. I check my watch and see it is still only half past six. H explains that we shall soon reach our destination, and asks us to have our guns ready. We drink some more of the red liquid, this time directly from the bottle. There is no doubt that doing so helps to reinforce our feelings of solidarity. I haven’t had a wink of sleep all night, and feel that most of all I would like to lie down here in the shade and doze off. I can see that the others feel similarly. All we want is to lie down and close our eyes, that would be for the best. When we set off again Grass has to support Megal, who hasn’t the strength to walk unaided.