The buildings on the other side. They looked so familiar. The black water. And a boat gliding along the quay.
It was not the same, and yet I was positive that it was here I’d stood. That time thirty years ago, in one of the only memories I had. When he had put his strong hands around my waist and lifted me high up so I could see the boats better.
I moved a few steps to the side. It was right here. I stared at the dark surface of the water, and all the traffic noise vanished. I heard a sound in my head, a deep voice speaking behind me, as if caressing the back of my neck.
In school they’ll tell you that it’s the Vltava …
His voice! Warm and close to my ear as he held me up so I could see. And the boat down there was very small, with only an old man on board, wearing a cap on his head.
… but it’s all the rivers of the world. It flows north and merges with the Elbe in Germany, and then they both continue west and absorb smaller rivers and flow into the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, and all the oceans and rivers of the world are connected to one another, everything is one body of water.
And I see the vapour curl past my ear, the vapour from his mouth because it’s so cold, and I exhale too and laugh when the vapour from my mouth mixes with his.
We are also water, he says. Above all else, we are water.
No, I say. Nijak ne.
And I laugh at such a silly idea, because I’m certainly not water, and I turn around to tell him that, and then I see him.
I see him.
Slightly crooked teeth and thin lips. He spins me around so I’m looking into his eyes, and they are brown, and the scarf wrapped around his neck is blue. My face is very close to his. A stern glint, a hint of darkness in his eyes.
Don’t trust what anyone tells you … Alena milenka …
Then he laughs and lifts me onto his shoulders. I howl because I want to get down and find out what he means. I don’t understand.
But he walks towards the bridge, taking jaunty strides, and he is singing so loudly that people turn around to stare. And I can hear the words in my head so well – about strangers and strange people and faces that come out of the rain – but it’s not Jim Morrison I hear. It’s my father’s voice. A hint of a Czech accent. And I know every word because I’ve listened to that song so many times, over and over again, not knowing that it was always there, among the memories that I’d lost.
The theatre was located on a nondescript side street to Václavské Námeˇstí. I noted that the posters for the performance had been put up inside the display case next to the entrance, printed in dirty brown tones, which carried over to the stage set and were meant to make the audience think of the Communist days. It was a week until the opening night.
The girl in the ticket booth hardly raised her eyes. She was deeply immersed in a textbook. Inside, the foyer was deserted. Probably taking a break in the rehearsals. I stopped in front of the stage, quietly murmuring several Czech sentences to myself as I studied the set design.
‘There stands an oak on the shore, with golden chains around its trunk.’
I listened as often as I could, trying to bring the rhythm and the poetry into my meagre language. Trying to stop feeling like a child.
There was something that didn’t fit. I tilted my head, first one way and then the other, to see what was bothering me about the stage set. There was a symmetry that hadn’t been properly accomplished.
The set was pared down and sombre. The director had chosen to move the frame of Chekhov’s Three Sisters to the Cold War and an unidentified Communist state in which the dream was to go to the United States. It was not an entirely workable interpretation, but the public interest was high, even before the premiere.
It took a few minutes before I saw what was wrong. Quickly I went up the small flight of stairs to the stage and took down the portrait of James Dean that hung on the wall as a symbol of the sisters’ longing for the West. I wiggled the hook loose and then licked my thumb before pressing it against the wallpaper so the hole wouldn’t be seen.
Then I moved a metre to the left, stuck in the hook, and hung the picture up again. I backed up to the edge of the stage to look at the result.
‘What are you doing? Are you crazy?’
I gave a start and turned around. It was one of the stagehands. A guy with blond hair.
‘You know you’re not supposed to touch the stage set.’
‘Sorry.’ I clumsily climbed down from the stage. Damned belly. The stagehand held a screwdriver in one hand and was carrying a ladder, on his way to adjust the lighting. I couldn’t help casting a glance at the stage set. Now it worked.
‘What were you doing on the stage?’ He pointed the screwdriver at James Dean. ‘Were you thinking of swiping the picture, or what?’
‘No, I just wanted to … Sorry. It’s nothing. You don’t need to tell anyone.’
He merely shook his head as he climbed the ladder. I went out through a side door that led backstage. I lowered my eyes when I ran into one of the actors in the corridor. No more blunders.
Back to being invisible.
With my eyes fixed on the floor, I went over to the janitor’s closet next to the dressing rooms, opened the door, and took my smock from a hook. It hid the shape of my body and made me look overweight rather than pregnant. I picked up the mops and backed out. Turning the cleaning cart around, I pushed it in front of me as I headed down the hall.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to Julien Bobroff and Sarah Hercule Bobroff for invaluable help with research in Paris. To Ulla Kassius for insight into the profession of set designers, to Richard Reiss for orienting me in the East Village, to Anna Erman for explaining French law, and to Tomas Lindbom for offering analyses of French politics. Thanks to Elizabeth L. Fort at the Joyce Theatre in New York, to Juan Triviño Domínguez at Cruz Roja in Tarifa, and to Johanna Eriksson-Strand at the National Board of Forensic Medicine in Umeå.
Special thanks to Boel Forssell, Claes Forssell Andersson, Kina Alsterdal, Olivia Taghioff, Kicki Linna, Nikolaj Alsterdal, and to all the others who have helped out, answered questions, read the manuscript, and contributed in other ways. To Kristoffer Lind, because you believed in this story, to Kajsa Willén and all the other superb colleagues at the Swedish publishing company.
My thanks to Liza Marklund — as always! For reading and rereading, for encouraging and offering incisive criticism. I couldn’t have done it without you.
Finally, my eternal thanks to Elsa Bolin, for everything.
Tove Alsterdal
About the Author
Tove Alsterdal is an established and well respected Swedish journalist, novel dramaturge and script writer. For the last 25 years she has written for theatre as well as paper media, television, radio, and film. She is also known as the editor of Liza Marklund’s best selling crime novels.
In 2009 Tove Alsterdal published her successful debut The Forgotten Dead. The second one, Grave of Silence, was published in January 2012 and has been equally praised for the suspense and language, as well as a story that extends the boundaries of the genre.
Tove Alsterdal was born in 1960 in Malmö. Her family has its roots in the very north of Sweden, a rural borderland where her second novel takes place.
She now lives in Stockholm with three daughters.
www.tovealsterdal.se/books/
Facebook.com/tove.alsterdal
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street
Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
http://www.harpercollins.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor
Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada
http://www.harpercollins.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
>
http://www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London, SE1 9GF
http://www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
195 Broadway
New York, NY 10007
http://www.harpercollins.com
The Forgotten Dead Page 35
