Stone Coffin

by Kjell Eriksson

  Perhaps an employee at the MedForsk branch in Málaga had been unfairly terminated or treated badly and was now turning to the person in Sweden whom he knew and trusted.

  Mortensen had promised to check with his Spanish contacts to see if there was or had ever been a Julio Piñeda on their books.

  The interpreter believed the letter came from the Dominican Republic. There was something about the handwriting, the quality of the paper, and perhaps above all the tone that suggested the Caribbean. He could not give any firm reasons, it was more of a feeling, he said, and Lindell believed him.

  Now the letter had been pasted together as well as could be, copied, and archived. Perhaps Julio Piñeda would emerge at some point in the future. Lindell had driven to the site of the accident by the Uppsala-Näs church, and on one occasion she saw someone standing by the side of the road whom she became convinced was Piñeda.

  That morning she had been poring over the letter with the interpreter and trying to understand it. It was as if the writer’s words had sounded out across the valley. Lindell had learned the words in the letter by heart. It was written in a primitive, almost childish manner.

  “We have experienced so much suffering,” the interpreter had quoted, “and now we turn to you with a prayer for…” The rest of the sentence was missing.

  “‘We have experienced so much suffering,’” Lindell had repeated as she stood by the side of the road. Josefin’s father would be forced to drive by this site many times during the remainder of his life. And he would always be reminded. The unjust, almost unimaginable events that had occurred in this place would carve deep wounds into him. Perhaps he would start taking another way around?

  What suffering had Julio Piñeda experienced? What role had Cederén played in all of this? Lindell walked along the road. A car went by slowly. The driver peered at her with interest and Lindell stared back grimly.

  A few words from Josefin’s diary returned to her. “Sven-Erik went out with Isabella. Was gone for two hours. Why does he drink so much? Jack says it is the stress, that he needs to rest. I don’t believe him. Sven-Erik loves stress. He doesn’t touch me anymore. He doesn’t love me.”

  If Cederén no longer loved his wife, why run her over? Was there a financial motive? Lindell dismissed the idea. What had happened that morning? He had fetched the paper, had chatted with the neighbor as usual, and had driven away, apparently on his way to work. He had taken the dog. Where was it now?

  Josefin had prepared for her annual pilgrimage to her mother’s grave. No one saw her leave the house. She spoke with no one that day, either on the telephone or on the road. She did as she had planned to do, had taken her daughter by the hand and walked out the door.

  Lindell could not understand it. And she hated not being able to understand.

  Fourteen

  In fourth grade, Ann Lindell had played a mole in a school play. She had worn a fur costume—extremely hot and much too big—and a hat altered to look like the animal’s snout and blind eyes.

  She had stumbled when she made her entrance but had recovered by improvising and scoring extra points with her clumsy moves. When she took her final bow, she had bowed so low that the hat fell off, and as she fumbled for it, she had looked out over the sea of people in the audience and spotted her father, clapping wildly, as flushed as she was, enthusiastic, his mouth open and his eyes on her alone.

  Everyone else in the school auditorium—parents and teachers—had faded away into a vague blur, still shouting and clapping but essentially faceless. Her father’s face was the only one.

  He had brought a case of soda for the entire cast to enjoy in the wings after the end of the show. Everyone had been talking excitedly at the same time. The costumes had come off and none of the sweaty ten-year-olds had yet recovered from the complete success that they now realized they had played a part in.

  Ann’s father had supplied soda and praise for the show. The teacher, Miss Bergman, had wept with joy. Ann had drunk Pommac. The crowded space behind the stage had smelled of sweat and happiness.

  Viola was outside the chicken coop wearing an incredible mole-brown coat with a worn fur collar. On her head she had a knitted cap in a gray shade, and on her feet, the obligatory boots with the tops turned down.

  Midsummer’s Eve. The sun had just broken out from behind the clouds. Viola had been collecting eggs in the chicken coop. She had just stepped out into the yard and was standing completely still, watching Ann as she drove up in front of the house and parked her car. The sun revealed her gaunt frame. Viola smiled, not too warmly or too long, but enough for some of Ann’s nervousness to pass. She stepped out of the car and walked over to the old woman.

  They stood in front of each other. It had been six months since the last time. Ann resisted the impulse to hug her.

  “Happy Midsummer!”

  Viola snorted in reply.

  “The hens have taken a vacation,” she said sourly, and rattled the basket where a dozen or so eggs lay tucked into a bed of newspaper.

  “We can make do with that,” Ann said.

  “Did you see Victor?” Viola asked. “He was supposed to come over this morning.”

  She always managed to make it sound as if her neighbor were a great imposition, but Ann knew that if there was anyone Viola wanted to have over, it was Victor. They had been born on nearby farms, had gone to school together, and had lived as neighbors on Gräsö Island their whole lives. Perhaps they had also once nurtured thoughts of living together. That is not how things had turned out, but Viola and Victor were the most touching and vivid example of a lifelong friendship that Ann had ever seen.

  “It’s only nine-thirty,” Ann said.

  “He’s such a lazybones.”

  Viola took a couple of steps toward the house before she stopped and peered back at Ann, saying in an unusually kind voice that Ann should feel very welcome. Then she kept on walking.

  Ann watched her go. Her feet slipped around in her boots and the worn coat looked as if it could fall apart at any moment. She appeared to have an endless supply of ragged old clothes from old trunks and cupboards. Ann guessed the coat had belonged to Viola’s mother. It looked as if it was as old as she was.

  Viola banged the veranda door shut and left Ann alone in the yard. If she hadn’t known the old woman from before, she would have felt unwelcome. In this case it was almost the opposite. Viola was her usual self; nothing had changed in the past six months. Ann had turned up as an old friend.

  Edvard was still nowhere to be seen and Viola had not said a word about him. Ann had a feeling he was down by the water and walked around the side of the house in order to catch sight of him.

  They had not seen each other since Christmas. Would he look the same? How would he greet her?

  She pulled off her thin summer jacket and let the wind bring the sea to her. The sounds of the birds, the heavy scent of meadowsweet, the year-old alder cones scattered across the sun-warmed earth like large rabbit droppings. Gräsö Island. She breathed in its name, allowing it to fill her lungs and bring oxygen to her blood.

  She closed her eyes. The cries of the gulls across the bay. Maybe Edvard was cleaning fish. These sounds belonged to her. Even if the nor’easter was going to push its violent hand into the sound and whip the water into churning dark-green ferocity, her life in this moment was smooth as a mirror.

  She was simply here, in the force field between Viola’s house—a wooden palace for Roslagen princes and princesses, her fairy castle—and the heavy mass of the sea. Edvard rowing, his hands moving across the gray-blue shimmering surface, his smile and the ripple of his muscles under the faded T-shirt as his quiet but powerful strokes transported her into ever-deeper waters.

  The dinghy was one of the few occasions where she could watch him without his becoming self-conscious or averting his gaze. She thought it had to do with the fact that he was engaged in work. He had his own style of rowing. He leaned forward so far that he almost touched her knees with
his knuckles, placed the blades of the oars far forward, and with an elegant motion leaned his body so far back that he was almost horizontal. For a split second, before his next stroke, he stared up at the sky and Ann saw the glint from the whites of his eyes.

  Up with the blades, the start of a new stroke, the knuckles toward her knees, and then pulling on the oar. A half-circular motion that was propelling them out into the bay. Her desire to watch him did not wane.

  He claimed to have learned the technique from the Vikings. That was how the Vikings in their easterly expeditions made their way, he claimed. Nothing halfhearted about it. From time to time he paused, taking a look at where they were going, and Ann could see the sense of freedom in his face.

  In these moments he wore an expression of energy and happiness. He was working and she could watch him to her heart’s content. His hint of a beer belly had vanished in Gräsö—whether it was from the rowing or the frequent jobs with Gottfrid, the builder he was assisting, she did not know, but his stomach had grown flat and muscular. His hands had always been strong. A country laborer’s hands, a rower’s.

  He had also talked more in the boat, become chatty in a relaxed and nonchalant way that she wished he would be more often, even on land. Why did he have to sit in a boat in order to speak freely?

  * * *

  For the first time she understood Edvard’s longing for the sea. She wanted to scream out her joy, that life could caress her, surround her in this natural, uncomplicated way. No riches in the world could make up for this, she thought, and suddenly felt dizzy, forced to make her way to the boulder where Viola liked to rest her aching legs. She pulled off her shoes and pushed her feet gently into the grass. It was still a little damp and the stalks tickled her shoe-pinched feet pleasantly.

  He would gaze at her with love. She was beautiful and desired. She untucked her tank top and let a little air onto her belly.

  She drummed her fingers against the stone, picking off some moss, looking out toward the water. Then she stood up, grabbed her jacket and shoes, and walked hesitantly back toward the house. The gravel in the yard stuck to her bare feet.

  She walked to the car and fetched her bag in order to put her things upstairs, then changed her mind, dropped it on the ground, and instead went straight to the rickety bench next to the chicken coop. She sat down. The temperature had risen even more and she had the impulse to pull her top off completely. She felt pale. If Viola hadn’t been there behind the kitchen curtains, she would have undressed and sunned herself against the warm wall.

  What was he doing? Now the question no longer had the ominous undertone it had had when she repeated it to herself through the winter and spring. He was down by the water and would soon turn up. She stroked her belly, pulled the top up so that at least her navel would get a little color. Soon he would come around the corner and they would lay eyes on each other. Would he have changed?

  She bent over and picked up a handful of gravel. “Loves me, loves me not,” she said as she dropped the pebbles one by one.

  Her stomach growled. She raised her gaze, thinking she heard something, and only now noticed the young birches that Edvard had arranged by the door. They stood in a red plastic bucket, surrounded by Viola’s white plastic flowerpots. Red-and-white-striped petunias, some yellow flowers, and some pink ice begonias. Only Edvard and Viola could create such a combination, Ann thought and smiled.

  * * *

  Viola peeked out from between the curtains. She was sitting by the chicken coop. Why doesn’t she go down? But she knew why. Ann preferred to wait for him. Edvard was taking his time for the same reason. He must know she had already arrived but was slow leaving the shore. Viola sometimes became aggravated and also anxious when he was late. It was the island woman’s inherited sense of worry when the menfolk lingered too long on the water. Only Stockholmers did that, lolling on exposed rock or just standing and looking out at the waves.

  Edvard was almost one of them, and yet not. He sometimes dreamed down by the sea even if he usually tried to think of a rationale to go down there. Sometimes she went with him. In the fall they had picked sea buckthorn together, something she hadn’t done since the thirties. Between the two of them, they had gathered fifteen liters. Edvard had sold the berries to a physician who lived in the direction of Svartbäck. They had met at the mill and had apparently started talking about buckthorn. It was exceedingly healthful, the physician had told him. Edvard had come back with seven hundred and fifty kronor, and Viola had laughed the whole afternoon.

  She didn’t know what to think as she watched Ann pining on the bench like a lovesick hen. Viola had sat there herself many times. It was a good place to wait.

  One thing she knew: Her time with Edvard as a renter had been two good years. They got along well together. He made her life easier, went shopping, handled all practical matters, and gave her life a meaning these last years that she had to live. Even Victor came more often to the house when Edvard was around. There was life in the house. She loved to hear him bustle about in the morning, his footsteps on the stairs, how he came in with the firewood or when he wound the clock in the parlor.

  She had made him her heir. He would inherit all of her belongings except the grandfather clock, which was going to a second cousin in Stockholm. Perhaps she had written her will with a touch of calculation—anything to keep him longer on the island—but the more time that went by, the better she grew to know her renter and the more her generosity was driven by pure caring and love. He had become the son she had never had, the one that Victor should have given her.

  Ann threatened all this and had done so since the first time she stepped across the threshold. She had created anxiety, trying to get him to move closer to Uppsala.

  Viola had been relieved last Christmas when it seemed that Ann had disappeared for good. Now here she was again, leaning up against the chicken coop with her attractive young body. How would Edvard be able to resist her this time? And yet she found it hard to dislike the policewoman. She was a good woman, as Victor said, considerate and never intrusive. Ann was a positive influence on Edvard. He had become happier, more open. That was something he learned from Ann, and it was something Viola also benefited from.

  Perhaps she could move out to the island? Viola watched as Ann dropped pebble after pebble onto the ground and sensed what was going on in Ann’s head. She was here at Edvard’s behest, she knew that, and Ann had showed up and that was answer enough as to what was on her mind. She wouldn’t have come if she didn’t love Edvard.

  Viola took out the large tray. They would be sitting outside. Two couples. Victor and she had never managed to get together, had never even kissed each other. And then there were these two youngsters, who had bedded each other so the whole house shook. She had never said anything or indicated how thin the walls were, how the sounds of their lovemaking had traveled through walls and floors and kept her awake as she had thought of her life and her aches.

  Viola scrubbed the new potatoes briskly and tossed them one by one into the pot. They had grown these potatoes themselves. Edvard had helped her make the rows and then covered them in plastic to hasten the setting of the tubers. This variety was called Rocket, and Viola was unhappy with the fact that it was so watery. They should have planted the variety called Puritan, which she had suggested instead.

  * * *

  Ann waited, couldn’t make herself go up. Perhaps he would like it if she marched in as if she were taking everything for granted. I am still a guest, she thought. I wonder how he has made the beds? Perhaps he didn’t have a thought of resuming the relationship? The fact was that she wasn’t sure herself. This Midsummer celebration would have to determine how things would be. There were worse ways to frame a lover’s meeting, she thought, and the ache in her belly returned.

  Then he suddenly rounded the corner. He didn’t see her, but he did spot the car and peered in through Viola’s window. He took some hesitant steps toward the porch. His uncertainty made her smile. It s
truck her that he was as nervous as she was. He pulled his hand through his hair and tucked his shirt into his pants. In one hand he was carrying a bucket.

  She called his name. Edvard spun around, saw her, but made no attempt to walk over.

  “Hello,” he said simply and put the bucket down.

  Ann got up. They looked at each other. He walked closer.

  “Welcome.”

  “Thank you.”

  He looked like he did before.

  “I’m glad you could come.”

  She nodded.

  “It’s been a while.”

  He was tan, his hair longer than usual, and he still had the same self-conscious smile. She felt as though he was a stranger, and yet so familiar. She looked at him. Would she have fallen for this threadbare middle-aged rustic if she met him for the first time today? He smiled wryly, aware of her gaze, and made a gesture that could be interpreted as What you see is what you get.

  He prepared to say something, but the sound of a tractor stopped him. They turned to the road and saw Victor’s Little Grey Fergie tractor come bouncing along, Victor at the wheel. His three cousins—Sven-Olle, Kurt, and Tore—as well as Tore’s wife, Gerd, were being jostled in the wagon.

  “The whole gang’s here.” Edvard chuckled.

  The entourage drove in a circle around the yard and Victor honked and waved. Ann saw Viola’s face in the window. Sven-Olle tossed a kiss toward the house.

  “I brought the entire congregation,” Victor yelled and pulled up so abruptly that Gerd was almost thrown off the vehicle.

  “Be careful of the herring,” she screamed.

  Gerd was known for her vocal resources. The ferrymen called her “Screamer-Gerd.” She took the moped to Öregrund two times a week and always placed herself at the front by the boom, blocking the cars as they tried to exit. The ferrymen put up with her, happy to have someone who could frustrate the city folk.