After the Fire

by Henning Mankell

  Those who understood death best were the children. That wasn’t only my experience; it was something we doctors often discussed. How could it be that often very young children, who ought to have their whole lives before them, behaved with such calm composure when they were dying? They would lie quietly in their beds, knowing what was to come. Instead of the life they would never have, there was another unknown world waiting for them.

  Children almost always died in silence.

  I don’t often think about my own death, but as I sat there in the car with Louise driving so badly, thoughts of the end came into my head. I used to believe that doctors died a different death from those people we can characterise as patients. A doctor is familiar with all the processes that lead to the heart, the brain and other organs ceasing to function; therefore a doctor ought to be able to prepare himself or herself in a different way from people with a different life and a different profession. Now I realised that was far from the truth. Even though I am a doctor, death is just as mercilessly unwanted, just as difficult to prepare for as it would be for anyone else. I do not know if I will die calmly or desperately resisting. I know absolutely nothing about what is to come.

  I looked over at Louise, who still seemed distracted. What was she thinking? Did death even form a part of her view of the world? What had Harriet’s death meant to her? What did the child she was expecting mean to her? And what did the child mean to me?

  There was a heavy downpour as we parked behind the bank; people ran to get out of the rain. We stayed in the car and divided up the errands between us. I was surprised when she asked me to do the food shopping; I thought she would want to take care of that herself. However, she said she had other things to do, although she didn’t explain what they were.

  We decided to meet for lunch at the restaurant in the bowling alley in an hour, then we sat in silence waiting for the rain to stop. I wondered whether I should drive into town to buy a pair of wellingtons instead of waiting for the new order to arrive at the chandlery. I didn’t reach a decision.

  When the rain stopped we went our separate ways. I was heading for the grocery shop when I heard Louise calling to me. She waved, ran back and gave me the car keys.

  ‘You might be finished before me,’ I said.

  ‘No, I won’t.’

  She turned and hurried away. I wondered why she was in such a rush and what she was going to do. I watched her until she went into the bank.

  It took me half an hour to buy the food I thought we would need for the next week. The shop was almost empty. The assistant, who was approximately the same size as fru Nordin, had nodded off at the till. I bought a couple of crossword books, then I put my bags in the car and wondered whether to go to the chemist’s but decided not to bother; I didn’t really need anything at the moment.

  It was too early to go to the restaurant, so I walked up to the old railway station, which was no longer in use. The tracks had been ripped up long before I moved to my grandfather’s island. I peered into various shops to see if Louise was in there, but there was no sign of her. The window display had changed in the shoe shop where I had failed to find any wellingtons, and now featured autumn and winter shoes. I tried to peer inside, but without success. When I reached the station I remembered all the times I had arrived here as a child and been met by my grandfather. I always made the trip with a sense of freedom when the school term ended in the spring. A sense of freedom that now, all these years later, seems totally incomprehensible. Are we really the same person, the child I used to be and the adult I am today? The thought of my distant childhood made me desperately sad. I left the station as quickly as I could.

  I stopped outside a modest antique shop and contemplated the items crammed in the window. I tried to imagine the people whose former possessions now lay there with price tags like little white tails. Who had owned the fob watch with an inscription on the case? Whose was that elegant cut-throat razor?

  For many years my father had a special pen when he worked as a waiter. It was with that pen and only that pen that he took orders on his notepad and wrote out the bills. It had been given to him as an extra tip by an elderly gentleman who frequented the restaurant where my father happened to be working; the gentleman finished his meal that day and stated that he wouldn’t be coming back. He didn’t say why, or where he was going, but a few days later my father read in the newspaper that he had committed suicide. He had shot himself in the head. From then on, my father never used any other pen. When he died I searched for it for a long time, but I never found it. What he did with it remains a mystery.

  Another downpour was on the way. I hurried to the restaurant and got through the door just before the rain came down. Louise wasn’t there, but it was still only fifty minutes since we had parted company. It was lunchtime, so many of the tables were occupied; I sat down in a corner to wait for her. When she hadn’t appeared after half an hour, I ordered some food at the counter, paid and began to eat. If she didn’t turn up at the agreed time, that was her problem.

  There was still no sign of her when I had finished my meal. I waited a few more minutes, then went and got a cup of coffee. It had stopped raining. I put down the coffee cup on my table and went out into the street. I couldn’t see Louise anywhere.

  I began to wonder why she had come running back to give me the car keys. Something wasn’t right. Something was going on, but I couldn’t work out what.

  The coffee tasted bitter. I drank half of it, then pushed the cup away. The restaurant was beginning to empty. Over by the counter the girl on the checkout dropped a glass on the floor. A heated exchange broke out between her and a man who I assumed was the owner of the restaurant. I couldn’t say what language they were speaking. The argument stopped as quickly as it had started. Still no sign of Louise. I decided to wait another ten minutes, then she would have to fend for herself. She had a phone, she could call me, but my phone hadn’t rung, and I hadn’t received any text messages.

  I tried to tell myself that something had happened. An accident. But I couldn’t summon up any anxiety. She had simply ignored our agreement to have lunch together before we drove back to the harbour.

  Eventually I decided I couldn’t wait any longer. The sun was shining when I left the restaurant. Louise wasn’t waiting by the car. I had already got in when I spotted a note tucked underneath one of the windscreen wipers. Had I been given a parking ticket? Angrily I flung open the door and grabbed the note.

  It wasn’t a parking ticket. Louise had left me a message. The paper wasn’t wet, so she must have put it there after the rain had stopped – ten, fifteen minutes ago at the most.

  The message was very short: Go without me.

  I looked around to see if she was anywhere nearby, but there was no sign of her. I drove up and down the street, to no avail.

  I drove down to the harbour. The heat of the sun was suddenly very noticeable; it was almost like a summer’s day. I parked and looked around for Oslovski. Everything seemed to be closed up. I went over to the garage; there was no one around, but something gave me pause for thought. Oslovski was always very tidy; each of her tools had its place, either on a shelf or hanging on the wall. Now they were spread all over the dirty concrete floor.

  I went back to the house and did something I had never had the courage to do in the past: I knocked on Oslovski’s door. Once, twice, three times. No one came. The curtains were drawn. I put my ear to the door, but I couldn’t hear any movement inside.

  I took my bags down to the boat. Margareta Nordin was sitting outside the chandlery soaking up the sun. Somehow this seemed like a betrayal of the grief she should be feeling at the loss of her husband.

  ‘This heat is a bit strange, isn’t it?’ I said.

  ‘Everything is strange,’ she replied. ‘I’m sitting here trying to grasp the fact that my husband is dead.’

  ‘We can never make sense of death,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t obey any laws or follow any rules. Death is an intractable anarchi
st.’

  She looked curiously at me, not surprisingly. My words sounded peculiar to me as well, even if they were true.

  Alexandersson was standing smoking outside the coastguard’s office as I walked towards my boat. When he spotted me, he hurried inside, thinking I hadn’t seen him. Had things really gone so far that no one wanted to talk to me?

  I tossed my bags into the boat, cast off and pushed away from the quay before I had even started the engine. I didn’t care if I got wet when I sat down; I just wanted to get away as quickly as possible.

  Of course the engine decided to play up. I had almost drifted out of the harbour before it fired. I assumed Alexandersson was standing by a window watching the whole thing. I wondered if he regarded me with contempt or sympathy. I thought he probably saw me as a shady character, someone who had turned out to be a criminal.

  I headed for the island. The wind was warm, considering it was a November day. I was about halfway when I slowed right down and let the engine idle.

  I realised that Louise had gone. She hadn’t bothered to pack a suitcase, but I knew that when I got back to the caravan I would find that her passport was missing together with her money, her credit cards, everything she needed in order to move on. She had planned this; she had never intended to come to the restaurant. That was why she had given me the car keys; she knew exactly what she was going to do. She had probably caught a bus into town but I had no idea what she had done next, nor where she was going.

  She had taken her unborn child with her. Its father was waiting for her somewhere.

  I allowed the boat to drift. Her disappearance filled me with disappointment, but there was something else, a feeling, a rapidly growing suspicion.

  I remembered when Louise and I had been out on the skerry. How she had brushed against me when she went to pee. When I got home and was on my way up to the caravan, I had discovered that my watch was missing.

  The realisation hit me like a hammer blow. Louise had taken my watch. That must have been what happened. I had a daughter who was a skilled pickpocket.

  At first I refused to believe it; it was too astonishing, too frightening. But in the end it was impossible to deny the truth. Louise was a pickpocket. She made her living by stealing. There was no other explanation.

  She had asked me about my watch in the car simply because she wanted to know if I suspected anything. My answer must have convinced her that I had no idea of the reason behind the disappearance of my watch.

  I swore out loud, at Louise and at my own stupidity. I no longer wanted anything to do with her. I didn’t need her, or a grandchild. She had stolen my watch and gone off to some unknown man who was the father of her child.

  I moved into the prow of the boat, stretched out my legs and closed my eyes.

  I fell asleep, thanks to a combination of weariness and sorrow. I had been dreaming of Harriet when I woke because the engine had cut out. She was standing by the burned-out ruins of my house, and she looked exactly the same as she had done on the day when she made her way across the ice using her wheeled walker. In spite of the fact that it was late autumn in my dream, as in reality, she was dressed for winter, complaining that she was freezing cold. When I embraced her and bade her welcome, she bit me on the arm.

  Still half-asleep, I stumbled to the stern and pulled the engine cord. When I got back to the island, I went straight up to the caravan. Louise’s passport, money and various credit cards were gone. At the bottom of her bag I found my watch. I was furious; I hurled it at the wall, but when I picked it up it was still going. I put it on and lay down on the bed. The door of the caravan was ajar; there wasn’t a breath of wind.

  ‘Louise,’ I said out loud to myself.

  Just that. Nothing else. I wasn’t calling to her, I wasn’t pleading with her or begging her to come back. I just said her name.

  —

  I decided to row across to my skerry. Settling down with the oars always filled me with a great sense of calm. It didn’t take many strokes before the unease had left me. I rowed with no sense of urgency, resting often. I pictured Louise in different situations: on a bus, on a train, walking into an airport, aboard a ferry. I wondered why she had chosen this particular day to leave. Had I driven her away by asking too many intrusive questions about how she made a living? Or was she unable to cope with the thought of her father being accused of arson?

  A pickpocket. Yet at the same time she was helping terminally ill people to see Rembrandt’s paintings for one last time – it didn’t make sense.

  I rested on my oars once more. Perhaps she really did believe I’d burned down my house?

  I was sweating by the time I reached the skerry. I walked towards the tent, then stopped dead. Someone had been there and hadn’t managed to hide the telltale signs. Not Louise, but someone else.

  I had made a fire on a pile of stones; they had been moved, and the pile had grown. I opened the tent and crawled in; my sleeping bag was in the right place, but it was zipped up. I always leave it open during the day to air.

  I went back outside. Who had used the tent and lit a fire? I searched the whole skerry for further evidence but found nothing. I returned to the tent and sat down on the rock where I usually balance a plate of food or a cup of coffee on my knees. Was it my imagination? No, I wasn’t wrong. Someone had come to the skerry, rearranged my fire stones and gone inside my tent.

  If it had been summer I could have understood it more easily; some kids paddling kayaks might have spent the night there. But in late autumn? It couldn’t be any of the permanent residents of the islands either.

  Before I rowed back, I placed a little brown stone shaped like the point of an arrow just beneath the edge of the tent flap. If anyone undid the zip, the stone would move. It was safe from the wind, and no one would suspect that it was a trap.

  I made myself something to eat. From time to time I went up the hill and looked over at the skerry through my binoculars, but there was no one there. When I had finished my meal I sat down at the table and turned my attention to one of the crossword books, but I couldn’t concentrate. I tore up the paper grocery bags and tried to make a list of things that had happened over the past few weeks: the fire, the suspicion of arson and, not least, Louise’s pregnancy.

  I sat there scribbling until I noticed that I had started drawing grotesque, swollen faces. I screwed up the piece of paper and threw it on the draining board.

  I went up the hill one last time. It was too dark to use the binoculars, but I wanted to see if someone had lit a fire by the tent. Nothing.

  Once again I wondered who could have been there, and suddenly I remembered the made-up bed in the empty house in Hörum.

  I took one of my sleeping tablets and went to bed. The scent of Louise hit me as soon as I put my head on the pillow, bringing me to the verge of tears; I missed her.

  I thought about her unborn child; I hoped she had gone to the man who was its father.

  Just before the sleeping tablet began to take effect, my parents came into my mind. When I was a child, I once hid underneath the dining table. My parents thought I was asleep. I did it because I thought it would be an exciting adventure, not because I suspected something was going on that might affect me. I sat there looking at their shoes and bare feet. My father, whose legs ached after a long day and evening at the restaurant where he was working, always took off his shoes and socks when he got home – before he had even taken off his hat or coat. It was as if he couldn’t bear to have anything on his feet. After a particularly hard day my mother would prepare a footbath for him, and he would sit there with his feet in a bowl of water while they ate or had a cup of coffee or a glass of wine. My mother, on the other hand, always wore shoes. I can’t recall ever having seen her bare feet during my childhood.

  It was on one of those footbath evenings that I hid under the table. I could hear the clink of wine glasses. Then I heard my mother say that she would really like me to have a brother or sister. I remember trembling insi
de. It had never occurred to me that I might have a sibling. I had always thought of myself as an only child, and I had expected the situation to remain unchanged. There was no need for any more children. When I heard my mother express her wish, I felt as if it wasn’t a sibling she hoped for; she wanted to swap me for another child. I was a failure, I wasn’t enough for them.

  My father didn’t reply, but the wine glasses clinked once more. I realised I had to protect myself against my mother’s attack on me. I sank my teeth into her leg just above the shoe, and I bit her as hard as I could. She screamed and tried to pull her leg away, but I hung on. She got up, still screaming, knocking over her chair in the process, and dragged me out from under the table, where I was still clinging on. She was finally able to free herself. I remember looking at my father. He was holding his glass of red wine, his hand frozen on the way to his mouth. He was staring in surprise, or perhaps it was horror, at his son, who had blood all around his mouth like some repulsive vampire.

  That was the only time my mother hit me. She did it not out of viciousness, but out of fear. I can understand how unexpected and frightening it must have been to be bitten on the leg while she was sitting quietly with her husband, enjoying a glass of wine.

  I yelled out in pain and terror when she hit me, but I was most scared of being given away.

  That evening I changed from being a child to something else, although I didn’t know what it was until many years later. I wasn’t a child, I wasn’t an adult, I was someone living in a land that didn’t exist. My mother felt guilty for the rest of her life because she had hit me, even though we never talked about it. Every time she looked at me, I could see that she was wondering whether I had forgiven her or not. When she died, all our questions remained unanswered. All I know today is that I never had a sister or brother. Perhaps my violent protest under the table played its part. My father spoke of it only once, when I was thirteen or fourteen years old. He had just been sacked from a restaurant where he had fallen out with the maître d’ over certain routines. He had applied for a new job at one of the restaurants in the Tivoli amusement park, and took me with him to Copenhagen. My mother had merely looked at him with heavy eyes when he announced that the family might be moving to Denmark.