The Night of the Fire

by Kjell Eriksson

  Edvard returned, picked up the rake, but rested on the shaft, looking around, as if he was searching for more tasks.

  “Listen, Ann,” he said in a strangely serious tone, and she started, fearing the worst. Now he would tell her that he’d met a woman on his damned island and for that reason couldn’t visit anymore, because that woman on the island, or in Östhammar, or in Hökhuvud, or wherever he’d met his ladies over the years … because that bitch was jealous. She recalled one of them, an artist who moved up from southern Sweden, red-haired and big. She’d seen them outside the state liquor store at Gränby Center. That’s the kind of woman he wants, she’d thought, with large breasts and a capable pelvis.

  “Yes?”

  “I met a woman last winter.”

  “I don’t want to hear.”

  Damn you! she thought about screaming, but her jaws were locked.

  “I putter around in my Gräsö place. My habits are somewhat eccentric, and even though I might long for a little company sometimes, I’m used to being on my own. During the winter it gets especially gloomy. It’s dark and dreary.”

  Jeez, she thought, coming from Edvard this was like a whole novel.

  “She still calls, pretty often actually.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Spring and summer there’s always the sea. You can get out, scatter your thoughts.”

  “You trawl for herring or set out duck decoys when you get horny, in other words.”

  He looked at her in surprise and then burst into laughter.

  “I’ve shot birds a single time in my whole life. It wasn’t fun.”

  “It was also illegal.”

  “I didn’t know that,” he said with a smile.

  Ann snorted. He was scared, it was that simple. Scared that he could fall in love with her again. Why did he even come to visit? To deliver herring and plant potatoes? She wanted to ask flat out, but was just as afraid as he probably was, injured as they were by life, by each other. By her betrayal, when she went to bed with an unknown guy, and that probably could have been overlooked, but against all odds she got pregnant. How many times hadn’t she looked at Erik and thought, dreamed about, wished: if Edvard were your father anyway, and then immediately regretted it, because it was somehow like rejecting her own son.

  Did he want to make her jealous? Or were his nonchalant comments about women a primitive way to get back, to show that he truly was desired, but not particularly interested himself? As if intimacy and love were all the same, he had his homestead on Gräsö and the sea.

  He smiled! That alone. The feeling of happiness made her ashamed, but she loved his smile.

  “Shall we set up the greenhouse?”

  She had mentioned that she’d bought a greenhouse by mail order, which now lay in a pile of unopened packages under a tarp.

  “A neighbor has promised to help out.”

  “Is that the carpenter?”

  “He’s sweet and helpful, but he’s gotten a little sad since the fire. He found one of the missing refugee boys. It took a toll on him.”

  “How did that happen?”

  “The boy got into Gösta’s car, and he froze to death there. He was lying curled up in the backseat with a blanket around him, but it was almost ten degrees below freezing that night.”

  “Was he going to steal the car?”

  “No, they think he was seeking shelter. He probably got scared and ran from the fire, it was chaotic. Gösta doesn’t use the car much in the winter, so he didn’t discover the boy until a few days later. Then the car was completely snow-covered. Imagine what a shock, you start to brush snow and scrape windows, and discover a dead boy on the other side of the windshield.”

  “Poor thing,” Edvard mumbled. “Where did he come from?”

  “Afghanistan, I think,” said Ann.

  “Many years ago I was forced to open Viola’s old atlas and look for all the countries they were talking about on the news. You want to understand a little in any event. All the wars, all the refugees. And now it’s even worse.”

  Ann was forced to turn away. Edvard’s innocent expression and the humanity in his comments, wanting to know, touched her. She knew his worry, even anxiety, so well, where people who suffer was concerned. And who used an atlas these days to get oriented?

  “Then he sold the car,” said Ann, “and bought another one.”

  “I’m out there on my island … they talk about the climate, refugees, and all the misery … I have no connection to anything, other than the little jobs I get, patching a foundation, excavating some pipe, fixing a veranda, or whatever it is. It’s a world that rolls along on its own. People are nice, we shake hands, I excavate, they pay, we shake hands again. Then I go home. Make dinner. The next day I take the boat out to the skerry. It goes around like that. There are so many pages in this atlas that I’ve never visited.”

  “Are you happy on the island? You saw more people before, didn’t you?”

  He shuddered at the question, shied away immediately, and she regretted it at once.

  “You were pretty active before, in the union, I mean,” she threw out to smooth over her question.

  “I was,” he said, without taking the thread further.

  “Where I work no one is in the union, except for me.”

  “Are you in the union? In the confederation?”

  Ann nodded. “The food workers’ union.”

  He looked at her, laughed, and gave her a tap on the shoulder. It was intended as a friendly gesture, she understood that, but she almost lost her balance.

  That was the closest to physical contact they came. While he helped her to clean the herring—he’d brought a whole bucket with him—she contemplated her hopes prior to his visit. She had changed the sheets. Admittedly she did that every Saturday, but not with such cool sheets as this time. She had brought home wine, which she also did every Saturday, but seldom such a good, expensive wine. In the fridge there was veal entrecôte and packages of various delicacies that she bought over the counter in Uppsala.

  “Maybe the carpenter would like a little herring,” he said when she saw his expression.

  “I’m sure he’ll be happy,” said Ann.

  “Plant Asterix too, so you have potatoes this fall” was his parting line.

  She looked after him, like always his upper body swaying a little, his back a bit more crooked, his hair a bit thinner, straggling in all directions, but basically the same Edvard that she got to know many years ago. She had also changed, of course. The move to the cottage had improved her physical condition, however, and helped her lose twenty pounds. She was moving more, eating more sensibly and at certain times, she was happier and for that reason drank less. She often felt fresh, with a litheness in her movements like seldom before. Didn’t he see that she was a different person?

  Without turning around he climbed into his pickup and took off. Where was he going, home to the island, or to some red-haired bitch in Norrskedika? What would he do on a Saturday evening? Should she have said something about the filet and the other goodies in the refrigerator? Should she simply have said something about her longing?

  “The hell with you,” she mumbled, casting a glance at the potato patch. She took the bucket of cleaned herring and trotted off. Gösta would probably want some, likewise Bertil and maybe his sister a little farther away.

  Three villagers, three testimonies that she was going to take, not document on tape or in a notebook, but even so. She was still an investigator.

  Eight

  First up was Bertil. She thought that Gösta would talk as usual, and for that reason it was better to take him last. But Bertil also wanted to get something off his chest, she realized that almost immediately. He was sitting apparently idle on a bench, leaning against the wall, but stood up immediately when Ann arrived.

  “A welcome visitor,” he said in a voice that betrayed a cold coming on.

  “I thought maybe you’d like a little herring.” Ann held o
ut the bucket.

  He went into the house and came back with a plastic bag. “Gladly,” he said. “Cleaned and ready besides.”

  After the completed transaction they stood there. Bertil looked at her and smiled.

  “How long have you lived here now?”

  “Two years.”

  “You like the job?”

  She nodded. Out with it now, she thought, setting down the bucket.

  “Yes, it’s a nice village, but a lot has changed,” he said. “Before there was more solidarity.”

  She’d heard that before, how community parties and arrangements had gradually disappeared.

  “Since the school burned it’s gotten even worse.”

  “Of course that has an impact, a school means something.”

  “It was arson,” he said suddenly.

  “Did you see something that night?”

  “Not me, but now I’ve heard two people say that. Who saw.”

  “Independent of each other?”

  “What do you mean? Yes, now I understand, yes, they don’t even know one another!”

  Bertil swung the bag of herring. A car passed on the road and reflexively he raised the other hand in a greeting. Ann waited for him to continue, but he said no more. She suspected that Bertil was good at keeping quiet.

  He’d lived alone ever since his parents died, about twenty years ago. Gösta had told her a little about his friend and neighbor, that he could be uncommunicative and sometimes a little blunt, but the latter was not something she’d noticed.

  “Have you talked with the police?”

  “You’re the police, aren’t you?” he said with a mournful smile, as if that was deplorable.

  She didn’t comment on that, but instead made an attempt to wait him out, but in vain. Bertil Efraimsson kept quiet, hummed a little, and swung the bag of fish, as if he were a thoughtless child.

  “I’m going over to Gösta, but do you think your sister is interested in herring?” Ann had shamefully forgotten her name.

  “I would think so,” said Bertil.

  * * *

  Her name was on the mailbox: Astrid Svensson. They hadn’t had that much contact, talked a little about everyday things when Ann passed on her way to and from work. She opened the gate, which was taken from an old railroad car. Ann knew that her husband had been a railroad worker. She was considerably older than her brother, but gave a livelier impression.

  Ann hadn’t taken more than a few steps on the gravel path before Astrid opened the front door. “You’re coming with a bucket,” she observed. “It’s too early for cherries and not the season for potatoes or mushrooms.”

  “Herring,” said Ann. “I got a lot, so now I’m going around and sharing.”

  “That was a nice thought, but shouldn’t I pay something?”

  Ann shook her head. After she had tipped over a couple of kilos into a bowl, they remained standing awhile. Ann was fishing for information; perhaps Bertil had spoken with his sister? But she seemed completely uncomprehending when Ann mentioned that evidently there were witnesses who had seen someone set fire to the school.

  “Lord have mercy,” Astrid exclaimed. “Is it the police who are saying that?”

  “No, there’s talk about it in the village,” said Ann, feeling like a real gossip going around with loose rumors.

  “You were over at Bertil’s too, I saw. He loves herring. When he was young he could tuck in twenty at a time. He loved to eat.

  “You should know,” the woman said at last, as Ann was preparing to continue her herring tour. “There’s been a lot of talk. There are those who say that it’s folks from outside who set it. There’s talk of foreigners, gypsies.”

  This was the most imaginative Ann had heard till now, but she wasn’t particularly surprised.

  “And what do you think?”

  “You can say a lot about those beggars, but they don’t burn down schools. No, I think it was Mattsson’s boys. They’ve never had any sense. Like their father.”

  “You mean the farmer?”

  “Waldemar, yes.”

  Ann had met him just once, when she had stopped by to see Gösta. Mattsson drove up, stopped and parked a little carelessly by the side of the road, and got out. A sturdy fellow, the archetype for a successful farmer with a kingdom of his own, limited to be sure, but nonetheless a self-appointed local chieftain. He had waved Gösta to him. “I’ll wait here,” said Ann. They had been talking about payment for his work on the storeroom. It took a while, Gösta had a hard time squeezing out how much it would cost, but she insisted on paying, and for that reason stayed put.

  The two men had talked for several minutes, Mattsson leaning back against the car, a pickup striped with clay and dust. Gösta stood with his hands hanging along his sides, seemingly taciturn, as the farmer was doing most of the talking, gesturing in the air with one hand like a one-armed conductor.

  She didn’t know much about the Hamra farm, the farmer, and his family. She had no concept at all about his sons.

  “I knew his mother well, we were good friends you might well say. She was shy, a bit delicate, if you understand, and had difficulty with Albin, her husband. He was too big for her, if I’m going to be frank. They’re gone now, so it can be said.”

  He was too big, what might that mean? In bed, or what? Did he hit her?

  “He was big?”

  Astrid made a face, where distaste was mixed with anxiety.

  “Was he violent?”

  “He was hot-tempered, if I may say so.”

  Ann couldn’t keep from laughing.

  “Yes, we said that before, when we wanted to joke about it a little.”

  The old woman smiled. Ann felt as if she’d gained a confidant, who could subtly shift perspective with a change in facial expression or by using words that sometimes concealed, sometimes pointed ahead.

  “I’m turning eighty. There won’t be anything remarkable, but there’ll be a little coffee anyway. Next Saturday if that’s good. At noon perhaps.”

  “I’ll be happy to come,” said Ann. This was the first birthday party she’d been invited to in the village.

  “If the boy is here, he’s welcome too.”

  Ann’s first thought was Edvard, but then she understood that it was Erik she meant.

  * * *

  She took the main road back. After the “long curve” she saw her cottage, and when she turned around her workplace was visible behind the groves of young birch trees. Straight across the newly sown fields, the shoots like a light green sea, the red-painted outbuildings at Hamra farm shone, and over the roof tiles of the cream-white farmhouse a flock of birds, perhaps starlings, was flying. It was an idyllic rural scene, a sunny Saturday afternoon in May. Her world these days. When she met Edvard she could not fathom that he wanted to live in the country. In her youth she had longed intensely to get away from Ödeshög, which was still a fairly large community, and moved as soon as she got the chance. She wanted to be in a city, the bigger the better. During her time at the police academy it was Stockholm, then service in Uppsala, and then at last a real backwater with a closed store, a burned-down school, a community center, and a decaying wooden bulletin board up by the “big crossing.”

  A steady stream of cars passed, probably on their way home from an auction or an estate sale she’d seen advertised, but Ann stood there, as if her thoughts had slowed her down and the growing melancholy made the machinery stop completely. It wasn’t Edvard, she was so used to that wrestling that she’d learned it wasn’t worth being paralyzed for his sake. Instead it was a sense of aversion and irritation that had slipped up on her, like the one that haunted her during her years as a detective. When something didn’t fall into place. It was obviously the fire, it was no more complicated than that, the fire that remained a wound in the village and insisted on a solution. And now the call to the department, where someone had been looking for her, but that riddle was easier to solve. The simplest of course would be for her to call and
get this resolved, but did she want to be dragged into something, where “someone may die”? Did she really want that? “No” was the obvious answer. But I can always pass it on to Sammy, she thought, and headed for Gösta’s house. In the bucket there was no more than a kilo of herring left.

  * * *

  As usual he was working on something. “I’m puttering around a little,” he always said, even if it concerned fine carpentry. Like this time. He was standing at his workbench sawing thin rods of an unknown type of wood, and looked up when he noticed her shadow in the doorway. She stepped in and to the side.

  “These will be inlays for shutters,” he explained without being asked. “It struck me that it would look nice on the little cabin,” he added, completing his work without letting himself be disturbed.

  “Intarsia?”

  “Intarsia, we can call it that,” he confirmed with a smile, and Ann felt a bit pleased at knowing the right word.

  She observed the fine-toothed saw that he held in his hand, as if it were an extraordinary object. Then a shadow passed by; this time it was a memory.

  “It was actually in school that I got interested in woodworking. One of the old teachers, Edlund, did carpentry in his spare time. In the shed he had a workbench and a cabinet with tools. Some he’d inherited from his father, vises, a jointer plane and other planes, worn-out iron that could still chisel out the finest details, and with wooden handles worn smooth. I got to hang out there, he noticed that I thought it was exciting. That was where I became a carpenter.”

  School again, thought Ann. “What did he make?”

  “All kinds of things,” Gösta said in a tone that Ann perceived as reluctant. “You had to have met him to understand what an artist he really was.”

  In order to be a native you had to have met Edlund was her conclusion.

  “What about Mattsson? Is he an artist too in his own way?”

  “Waldemar?”

  “Exactly.”