Before the Frost

by Henning Mankell

  “I won’t have my picture taken with those two people and their fake smiles when I know they’re about to leave each other,” he said.

  She could remember to this day how that had hurt. Even though she knew how insensitive he could sometimes be, the words still felt like a slap in the face. When she had collected herself she asked him if what he had said was true, if he knew something she didn’t.

  “It won’t help matters if you keep turning a blind eye,” he said. “Go on. You’re supposed to be in that picture. Maybe I’m wrong about all this.”

  Her grandfather was often wrong, but not this time. And he had refused to be in the picture, which they took with the self-timer on the camera. The following year—the last year her parents lived together—the tensions in their home only escalated.

  That was the year she had tried to commit suicide. Twice. The first time, when she had slit her wrists, it was her dad who found her. She remembered how frightened he had looked. But the doctors must have reassured him, since he and her mother said very little about it. Most of what they communicated was through looks and eloquent silences. But it propelled her parents into the last series of violent disputes that finally persuaded Mona to pack her bags and leave.

  Linda had often thought how remarkable it was that she hadn’t felt responsibility for her parents’ breakup. On the contrary, she felt that she had done them a favor and helped catapult them out of a marriage that in all but name had ended long before.

  He didn’t know about the second time.

  That was the biggest secret she kept from her father. Sometimes she thought he must have heard about it, but in the end she remained convinced he had never found out. The second time she tried to kill herself it was for real.

  She had been sixteen years old and had gone to stay with her mother in Malmö. It was a time of crushing defeats, the kind only a teenager can experience. She hated herself and her body, shunning the image she saw in the mirror while she also strangely enough welcomed the changes she was undergoing. The depression hit her out of nowhere, beginning as a set of symptoms too vague to take seriously. Suddenly it was a fact, and her mother had had absolutely no inkling of what was going on. What had shaken Linda the most was that Mona had said no when she pleaded to be allowed to move to Malmö. It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with her dad; she just wanted to get out of Ystad. But Mona had been surprisingly cool.

  Linda had left the apartment in a rage. It had been a day in early spring when there was still snow lying on the ground here and there. The wind blowing in from the sound had a sharp bite. She wandered along the city streets, not noticing where she was going. When she looked up she was on an overpass to the freeway. Without really knowing why, she climbed up onto the railing and stood there, swaying slightly. She looked down at the cars rushing past below with their sharp lights slicing the dark. She wasn’t aware of how long she stood there. She felt no fear or self-pity; she simply waited for the cold and the fatigue spreading in her limbs to get her finally to step out into the void.

  Suddenly there was someone by her side, speaking in careful, soothing tones. It was a woman with a round, childish face, perhaps not much older than Linda. She was wearing a police uniform and behind her there were two patrol cars with flashing lights. Only the officer with the childish face approached her. Linda sensed the presence of others farther back, but they had clearly delegated the responsibility of talking that crazy teenager out of jumping to this woman. She told Linda her name was Annika, that she wanted her to come down, that jumping into a void wouldn’t solve anything. Linda started defending herself—how could Annika possibly understand anything about her problems? But Annika hadn’t backed down, she had simply stayed calm, as if she had infinite patience. When Linda finally did climb down from the railing and start crying, from a sense of disappointment that was actually relief, Annika had started crying too. They hugged each other and stood there for a long time. Linda told her that she didn’t want her father to hear about it. Not her mother either, for that matter, but especially not her dad. Annika had promised to keep it quiet, and she had been true to her word. Linda had thought about calling the Malmö police station to thank her many times, but she never got further than lifting the receiver.

  She put the photograph back into the bookcase, thought briefly about the police officer who had been killed, and went to bed. She was woken up in the morning by Kristina getting ready for work. Kristina was her brother’s opposite in almost every regard: tall, thin, with a pointed face and a shrill voice that Linda’s dad made fun of behind her back. But Linda loved her aunt. There was something refreshingly uncomplicated about her, and in this way too she was her brother’s opposite. From his perspective, life was nothing but a heap of dense problems, unsolvable in his private life, attacked with the force and fury of a ravenous bear in his work.

  Linda took the bus to the airport shortly before nine in the hopes of catching a plane to Malmö. All of the morning headlines were about the murdered police officer. She got on a plane leaving at noon and called her dad when she got to Sturup.

  “Did you have a good time?” he asked when he came to pick her up.

  “What do you think?”

  “How could I know? I wasn’t there.”

  “But we talked on the phone last night—remember?”

  “Of course I remember. You were rude and unpleasant.”

  “I was tired and upset. A police officer was murdered. No one was in a good mood after that.”

  He nodded but didn’t say anything. He let her off when they got to Mariagatan.

  “Have you found out anything more about this sadist?” she asked.

  At first he didn’t seem to understand what she was referring to.

  “The bird hater? The burning swans?”

  “Probably just a prank call. Quite a few people live around the lake and someone would have seen something if it wasn’t.”

  Wallander drove back to the police station and Linda walked up to the apartment. Her father had left a note by the phone. It was a message from Anna, Important. Call back soon. Then her father had scribbled something she couldn’t read. She called him at work.

  “Why didn’t you tell me Anna called?”

  “I forgot.”

  “What have you written here—I can’t read your handwriting.”

  “She sounded worried about something.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Just that. She sounded worried. You’d better call her.”

  Linda called but Anna’s line was busy. When she tried again there was no answer. At seven o’clock in the evening, after she and her dad had eaten, she put on her coat and walked over to Anna’s place. As soon as Anna opened the door Linda could see what her father had meant. Anna’s expression was different. Her eyes darted around anxiously. She pulled Linda into the apartment and shut the door.

  It was as if she were in a hurry to shut out the outside world.

  5

  Linda was reminded of Anna’s mother, Henrietta. She was a thin woman with an angular, nervous way of moving, and Linda had always been a little afraid of her.

  Linda remembered the first time she had played at Anna’s house. She must have been around eight or nine. Anna was in another class at school and they had never been able to figure out exactly what had drawn them to each other. It’s as if there’s an invisible force that brings people together. At least that’s the way it was with us. We were inseparable—until we fell in love with the same guy, that is.

  Anna’s father had never been present except in pale photographs. Henrietta had carefully wiped away all traces of him, as if she were telling her daughter that there was no possibility of his return. The few photos Anna owned were stashed away in a drawer, hidden under some socks and underwear. In the pictures he had long hair, glasses, and a reluctant stance, as if he hadn’t really wanted to pose for the camera. Anna had showed her the pictures in the deepest confidence. When they became friends her father
had already been gone for two years. Anna quietly rebelled against her mother’s determination to keep the apartment free of all traces of him. One time Henrietta had gathered up what remained of his clothes and stuffed them in a garbage bag in the basement. Anna had snuck down there at night and rescued a shirt and some shoes that she hid under her bed. For Linda this mysterious father had been a figure of adventure. She had often wished that she and Anna could trade places, that she could exchange her quarreling parents for this man who had simply vanished one day like gray wisps of smoke against a blue sky.

  They sat on the sofa and Anna leaned back so half of her face was in shadow.

  “How was the ball?”

  “We heard about the murdered police officer in the middle of it and that pretty much ended it right there. But my dress was a success. How is Henrietta?”

  I know what she’s doing, Linda thought. Whenever Anna has anything important to talk about she can never come right out and say it. It always takes time.

  “Fine.”

  Anna shook her head at her own words.

  “Fine—I don’t know why I always say that. She’s actually worse than ever. For the past two years she’s been composing a requiem for herself. She calls it ‘The Unnamed Mass’ and she’s thrown the whole thing in the fire at least twice. Both times she managed to salvage most of the papers, but her self-esteem is about as low as a person with only one tooth left.”

  “What does her music sound like?”

  “I hardly even know. She’s tried to hum it for me a couple of times—the very few times she’s been convinced that what she was working on had value. But it doesn’t sound like anything close to a melody to me. It’s the kind of music that sounds more like screams, that pokes and hits you. I have no idea why anyone would ever listen to something like that. But at the same time I can’t help admiring that she hasn’t given up. Several times I’ve tried to persuade her to do other things in life. She’s not even fifty yet. But every time she’s reacted like an angry cat. It makes me wonder if she’s crazy.”

  Anna interrupted herself at this point as if she were afraid of having said too much. Linda waited for her to continue.

  “Have you ever had the feeling you were going crazy?”

  “Only every single day.”

  Anna frowned.

  “No, not like that. I’m not kidding.”

  Linda was immediately ashamed of her lighthearted comment.

  “It happened to me once. You know all about that.”

  “You’re thinking of when you slit your wrists. And then tried to jump off the overpass. But that’s despair, Linda. It’s not the same thing. Everyone has to face their despair at least once in their life. It’s a rite of passage. If you never find yourself raging at the sea or the moon or your parents, you never really have the opportunity to grow up. The King and Queen of Contentment are damned in their own way. They’ve let their souls be numbed. Those of us who want to stay alive have to stay in touch with our sorrow and grief.”

  Linda had always envied Anna’s fanciful way of expressing herself. I would have had to sit down and write it all down if I were going to come up with anything like that, she thought. The King and Queen of Contentment.

  “In that case I guess I’ve never really been afraid of losing my mind,” she said lightly.

  Anna got up and walked over to the window. After a while she returned to the sofa. We’re much more like our parents than we think, Linda thought. I’ve seen Henrietta move in just the same way when she’s anxious: get up, walk around, and then sit down again.

  “I thought I saw my father yesterday,” Anna said. “On a street in Malmö.”

  Linda raised her eyebrows.

  “Your father? You saw him on the street?”

  “Yes.”

  Linda thought about it.

  “But you’ve never even seen him—not really, I mean. You were so young when he left.”

  “I have pictures of him.”

  Linda did the math in her head.

  “It’s been twenty-five years since he left.”

  “Twenty-four.”

  “Twenty-four, then. How much do you think a person changes in twenty-four years? You can’t know. All you know is that he must have changed.”

  “It was him. My mother told me about his gaze. I’m sure it was him. It must have been him.”

  “I didn’t even know you were in Malmö yesterday. I thought you were going in to Lund, to study or whatever it is you do there.”

  Anna looked at her appraisingly.

  “You don’t believe me.”

  “You don’t believe it yourself.”

  “It was my dad.”

  She took a deep breath.

  “You’re right; I had been in Lund. When I got as far as Malmö and had to change trains. There was a problem with the line. The train was cancelled. Suddenly I had two hours to kill until the next one. It put me in a terrible mood since I hate waiting. I walked into town, without any clear idea of what I was going to do, just to get rid of some of the unwanted, irritating time. Somewhere along the line I walked into a store and bought a pair of socks I didn’t even need. As I was walking past the Saint Jörgen Hotel a woman had fallen down in the street. I didn’t walk up close—I can’t stand the sight of blood. Her skirt was bunched up, and I remember wondering why no one pulled it down for her. I was sure she was dead. A bunch of people had gathered to look, as if she were a dead creature washed up on the beach. I walked away, through the Triangle, and walked into the big hotel there in order to take their glass elevator up to the roof. That’s something I always do when I’m in Malmö. It’s like taking a glass balloon up into the sky. But this time I wasn’t allowed to do it—now you have to operate the elevator with your room key. That was a blow. It felt as if someone had taken a toy away. I sat down in one of the plush armchairs in the lobby and looked out the window and was planning to stay there until it was time to walk back to the station.

  “That’s when I saw him. He was standing on the street. Now and then a gust of wind made the windowpane rattle. I looked up, and there he was on the sidewalk looking at me. Our eyes met and we stared at each other for about five seconds. Then he looked down and walked away. I was so shocked it didn’t even occur to me to follow him. To be perfectly honest I still didn’t believe I had really seen him. I thought it was a hallucination or a trick of the light. Sometimes you see someone and you think it’s a person from your past, but it’s really just a stranger. When I finally did run out and look around, he was gone. I felt a bit like an animal stalking its prey when I walked back to the train station—I tried to sniff out where he could be. I was so excited—upset, actually—that I hunted through the inner city and missed my train. He was nowhere to be found. But I was sure that it was him. He looked just like he did in the picture I have. And my mother once said he had a habit of first looking up before he said anything. I saw him make that exact gesture when he was standing on the sidewalk on the other side of the window. When he left all those years ago he had long hair and thick black-rimmed glasses; he doesn’t look like that now. His hair is much shorter and his glasses are the kind without frames around the lenses.

  “I called you because I needed to talk to someone about it. I thought I would go nuts otherwise. It was him, it was my father. And it wasn’t just that I recognized him; he stopped on the sidewalk outside because he had recognized me.”

  Anna spoke with total conviction. Linda tried to remember what she had learned about eyewitness accounts—about the rate of accuracy in their reconstructions of events and the potential for embellishment. She also thought about what they had been taught about giving descriptions at the academy, and the computer exercises they had done. One assignment consisted of aging their own faces by twenty years. Linda had seen how she started looking more and more like her father, even a little like her grandfather. Our ancestors survive somewhere in our faces, she thought. If you look like your mother as a child, you end up as your fat
her when you age. When you no longer recognize your face it’s because an unknown ancestor has taken up residence for a while.

  Linda found it hard to accept the idea that Anna had actually seen her father. He would hardly have recognized the grown woman his little girl had become, unless he had been secretly following her development all these years. Linda quickly thought through what she knew about the mysterious Erik Westin. Anna’s parents had been very young when she was born. They had both grown up in big cities but been beguiled by the seventies’ environmental movement—the so-called green wave—and had ended up in a collective out in the isolated countryside of Småland. Linda had a vague memory that Erik Westin was handy, that he specialized in making orthopedic sandals. But she had also heard Henrietta describe him as impossible, a hashish-smoking loser whose sole objective in life was to do as little as possible and who had no idea what it meant to take responsibility for a child. But what had made him leave? He had left no letter, nor any signs of extensive preparations. The police had looked for him at first, but there had never been any indication of crime and they eventually shelved the case.

  Nonetheless, Westin’s disappearance must have been carefully choreographed. He had taken his passport and what little money he had—most of it left over from selling their car, which had actually belonged to Henrietta. She was the only one with an income at the time, working as a night guard at a local hospital.

  Erik Westin was there one day and gone the next. He had left on unannounced trips before, so Henrietta waited two weeks before contacting the police.

  Linda also recalled that her own father had been involved in the subsequent investigation. There had been little to go on, since Westin had no record—no previous arrests or convictions, nor any history of mental illness, for that matter. A few months before he disappeared he had undergone a complete physical and been given a clean bill of health, aside from a little anemia.

  Linda knew from police statistics that most missing persons eventually turn up again. Of those who didn’t, the majority were suicides. Only a few were the victims of crime, buried in unknown places or decomposing at the bottom of a lake with weights attached to them.