Shadows in the Twilight

by Henning Mankell

  Joel had suddenly had an idea during the geography lesson.

  He would invent a geography game. He wasn't quite sure how it would work, but it would involve dice and a race to see who could travel round the world fastest. He was in a hurry to get home and start working on the game. He had a collection of old maps that he could cut up or draw on.

  He very nearly forgot that he had to buy some potatoes and milk. But he was in luck again when he got to Ljunggren's Grocery Store: he was the only customer in the shop and didn't need to wait. Then he forgot that he'd promised to call in at the bar and thank Sara for the pastilles. He was almost home before he remembered.

  His first reaction was not to bother – he could just as well thank her tomorrow.

  But then he changed his mind. She had given him not just one box of pastilles, but two, after all. He turned round and retraced his steps.

  And that was when The Miracle happened.

  He didn't look both ways before running across the street. There was a cement mixer roaring and rattling away outside the ironmonger's, and a lorry was sounding its horn over by the bookshop.

  He suddenly found himself bang in front of a big bus. Perhaps he heard the driver's frantic braking? Perhaps he didn't hear anything? But just as he was about to be crushed by one of the enormous wheels he slipped and fell over backwards. The bus drove over the top of him and crashed into a lamppost outside the bar.

  Joel lay perfectly still. He could smell the oil and feel the heat from the bus's exhaust pipe that was coiled like a dirty steel snake a few centimetres away from his face.

  It had all happened so quickly that he hadn't even had time to feel frightened.

  As he lay there under the bus, he didn't understand what had happened.

  Why was he lying there? And what was this thing above his face?

  He turned his head to one side and saw feet moving backwards and forwards. A drop of oil hit him just below one eye. Somewhere out there he could hear voices shouting and screaming.

  He heard somebody shouting that a child had been run over by the bus.

  Was it him?

  If it was him, why wasn't he dead?

  He wasn't dead, surely? Everything was as usual, except that he was lying on his back on the wet street, and oil was dripping onto his face.

  There must surely be a difference between being alive and being dead?

  Then he felt somebody taking hold of his arm. A face edged its way closer to him. He recognised it. It was Nyberg's face. Nyberg was the bouncer in the bar where Sara worked.

  'Are you all right, milad?' said the face. 'For Christ's sake, I do believe you're alive.'

  'Yes,' said Joel. 'I think so.'

  That was the moment he started to feel frightened, and it slowly dawned on him that he had experienced a Miracle.

  A bus had run him over. But at precisely the right moment he'd slipped and landed between the wheels. In addition the satchel with his school things and the milk and the potatoes had slid down by his side. If it had stayed on his back, his face would have been hit by the bus's chassis.

  The Ljusdal bus, he thought. It has to be the bus to Ljusdal.

  The Ljusdal bus had presented him with his Miracle.

  He closed his eyes. Hands began to take hold of him, carefully, as if he were dead after all. Voices were whispering and shouting on all sides. He felt himself being dragged over the wet asphalt. Then somebody lifted him up onto a bed that was swaying back and forth. Metal doors closed and an engine started turning.

  Somebody was sitting beside him, holding his hand.

  He looked cautiously, hardly opening his eyes. He'd often practised that in front of Samuel's shaving mirror. Looking in such a way that nobody could see he was looking.

  The woman holding his hand was Eulalia Mörker, who ran a hairdressing business next to the ironmonger's. Eulalia spoke with a foreign accent and chased away children when they were too noisy outside her shop door. She would come running out brandishing a pair of curling tongs, shouting and threatening, and everybody was a bit scared of her, because you could never be sure what she was saying in her peculiar language.

  Now she was sitting beside Joel, holding his hand.

  Joel looked again, to make certain his eyes hadn't deceived him.

  He turned his head slowly to see what sort of a car it was he was travelling in.

  An ambulance. The only vehicle with a bed.

  When he was transferred onto another stretcher at the hospital, he thought it would be best if he groaned. Not a lot, just a little one. Perhaps it wasn't a good idea to let people know too quickly that he'd experienced a Miracle.

  He was examined by Dr Stenström. Joel didn't like it when the nurses took off all his clothes. He was especially worried about them discovering that he had a large hole in his underpants. And he wasn't sure that his feet were properly clean. Somebody who had just experienced a Miracle maybe ought to have just got out of the bath?

  Then he heard Stenström's authoritative voice.

  'This young boy has been incredibly lucky,' he said. 'He's fallen under a bus but hasn't got a single scratch. It can only be described as a miracle.'

  A Miracle!

  It was true. Dr Stenström had realised.

  Joel opened his eyes.

  A bright light was shining down on him. There was something smelly stuck up his nose. The lamp was as hot as the sun. He could make out faces gathered round him, looking like white shadows, staring at him.

  He suddenly thought about Jesus walking on water. That was Miss Nederström's favourite Bible story. He had no idea how many times she'd read it for them, but often enough for him to recall it almost by heart.

  What had the people on the shore shouted when Jesus walked over the waves?

  What was that long, difficult, incomprehensible word?

  'Hallelujah!' he shouted when he remembered what it was.

  'You can say that again,' said Dr Stenström. 'Let's see if you can stand up.'

  A nurse helped him up. He sat on the examination table, dangling his legs. He could see his underpants on a chair, with the big hole in them.

  Then he jumped down onto the floor.

  'Not a scratch,' said Dr Stenström. 'Guess who's going to be overjoyed.'

  'My dad Samuel,' said Joel, who thought he'd been asked a question.

  'I'm sure he will be,' said Dr Stenström, 'but I bet the bus driver is at least as glad.'

  Joel made as if to start getting dressed.

  'We'll keep you in overnight,' said Dr Stenström. 'Just to be on the safe side.'

  'I have to go home and prepare some potatoes,' said Joel. 'My dad will wonder what's going on if I don't.'

  'He's on his way here,' said one of the nurses. Joel suddenly recognised her voice. She was the mother of one of his classmates. Eva-Lisa, who could run faster than anybody else in the class. She was like a greyhound.

  Joel lay down on the examination table again.

  All he wanted just now was to be left in peace. He still wasn't quite sure what had happened.

  As if everybody in the room had read his mind, they all left. He quickly jumped down and hid his underpants beneath his shirt, so that the hole couldn't be seen. Then he checked to see if his feet were clean.

  They weren't. He took some balls of cotton wool from a glass dish and poured onto them some liquid with a strong smell from out of a brown bottle. Then he rubbed his feet until they were clean. He had only just crept back under the blanket on the examination table when the door opened.

  It was the bus driver.

  Joel recognised him. His name was Eklund and a year or two ago he had shot a bear. He was always the one who drove the Ljusdal bus.

  'Well, milad,' he said. 'If only you knew. If only you knew how pleased I am.'

  'I wasn't looking where I was going,' said Joel. 'I hope the bus isn't broken.'

  'Who cares about the bus,' said Eklund, wiping his runny nose with the back of his big, red hand. />
  Joel could see that his eyes were red.

  'I didn't have time to brake,' Eklund said. 'All of a sudden, there you were in front of the bus. I never thought you would survive. Never.'

  'I think it was a miracle,' said Joel.

  Eklund nodded.

  'I'll have to start going to church again,' he said. 'Hell's bells, I'll have to start going to church again.'

  The door opened once more. It was the Greyhound's mum who had come back again.

  'The boy's father has just arrived,' she said. 'You'll have to go now. As you can see, there's nothing wrong with the lad.'

  'Thank God for that,' said Eklund.

  'Make sure you keep a better lookout in future,' said the Greyhound's mum. 'You bus drivers think you can drive as if you had the roads to yourselves!'

  'I never drive too fast,' said Eklund.

  Joel could tell that Eklund was angry.

  'We all have our own ideas about that,' said the Greyhound's mum, shooing him out as if he'd been a cat intruding where he'd no business to be.

  Then Samuel came into the room.

  Joel thought it was best to give the appearance of being as wretched as possible.

  Samuel's face was as white as a sheet. He was breathing heavily, as if he'd run all the way from the forest to the hospital.

  He sat down on the edge of the bed, and looked at Joel.

  Joel kept his eyes closed.

  There wasn't a sound in the room.

  Another kind of silence, Joel thought. Not the same as in the forest yesterday. Not like it is when I wake up in the middle of the night. Or when we're intent on putting Miss Nederström on the spot.

  An entirely new kind of silence.

  A Miracle silence.

  'The potatoes are in my rucksack,' said Joel. 'But the milk bottle broke.'

  He suddenly felt frightened. He was scared stiff, in fact.

  He thought about the broken milk bottle. The shards of glass and the white milk running out.

  It could have been him.

  The bottle of milk could easily have been his body that was crushed into a thousand pieces. The white milk could have been his blood.

  He felt unable to move a muscle.

  Now the penny dropped, and he realised what a narrow escape he'd had. He ought to be dead. But instead he was lying here on the examination table under the white blanket, and he hadn't suffered a single scratch.

  But even though he hadn't been injured, he started to feel the pain.

  It was a totally silent pain.

  He closed his eyes, and heard the Greyhound's mum enter the room.

  'The boy's tired,' she said in a low voice.

  'Is it absolutely sure that he hasn't been injured?' Samuel asked.

  'Dr Stenström is certain about that,' said the Greyhound's mum. 'But naturally, he had a bit of a scare. That's why we're keeping him in overnight for observation.'

  Joel felt himself being lifted from the examination table onto a trolley.

  He peered through half-closed eyes and noted that he was being wheeled down a corridor. A door opened, and he was transferred into a bed.

  'Can I stay here with him?' he heard his dad asking.

  'Of course,' said the Greyhound's mum. 'Ring the bell if there's anything you want.'

  A miracle, Joel thought.

  Jesus walked on water. And I was run over by a Ljusdal bus but escaped without a single scratch.

  He half-opened his eyes again.

  Samuel was sitting on a chair by the window.

  Joel knew what he was thinking about.

  Jenny. His mum Jenny who'd simply vanished carrying a suitcase, and left them to get by on their own.

  Joel knew that Samuel thought about her every time something unusual or unexpected happened. His dad might be sitting on the kitchen bench, or on the edge of Joel's bed, but he just stared into space. Joel would try to think the same thoughts as his father. Sometimes he had the feeling that he succeeded. But not always.

  And now he was much too tired. Despite the fact that it was only afternoon. He could make out the sun through the window. The shadows were lengthening in the room, and he knew that twilight was falling.

  Joel fell asleep, and didn't wake up until next morning.

  Samuel stayed at the hospital all night. He didn't go to work in the forest. They drove home in a black taxi.

  'Shouldn't I go to school?' asked Joel.

  'Not today. Tomorrow,' said Samuel.

  'Shouldn't you go to work in the forest?'

  'Not today. Tomorrow. Here we are, we're at home now.'

  Joel went to his room.

  This is where he lived. He would continue to live here, even though he'd experienced a miracle.

  Samuel made him a pork pancake. It got burnt, but Joel didn't complain.

  'What's a miracle?' he asked.

  Samuel seemed surprised by the question.

  'You'll have to ask the vicar about that.'

  'But I was run over by a bus? And I didn't suffer a single scratch?'

  'You were lucky,' said Samuel. 'Incredibly lucky. It's only people who believe in divine powers that talk about miracles.'

  Joel didn't bother to ask any more questions. He could tell from Samuel's tone of voice that his dad preferred not to talk about miracles.

  Joel knew that his father didn't believe in God. Once when Samuel had been drunk, he'd hurled a bucket at the wall and cursed and shouted that there were no such things as gods. If Miss Nederström was right, that meant that Samuel was a lost soul.

  Mind you, Joel had no idea what a lost soul was.

  But he realised that he would have to give serious thought to what he believed in connection with God, now that the Ljusdal bus had enabled him to experience a miracle.

  After dinner, when Samuel had fallen asleep on the kitchen bench, Joel took his logbook out of the showcase containing the Celestine. On the last page, where he used to list all his unanswered questions, there was hardly any space left. There was only just enough room for one word and a question mark.

  'God?'

  If you had experienced a miracle, you ought to thank God for it.

  But if Joel was in the same category as Samuel, a lost soul, how should he go about that?

  How do you thank a God that you might not believe in?

  And what would happen if you didn't say thank you?

  Would the miracle be withdrawn, so that you would be run over by the Ljusdal bus again?