It was Sigfrid Kloss.
The priest sighed.
‘Oh, very well, you’d better bring him up. I’ll go and telephone Dr Blom.’
Daniel Blom was one of the two doctors in the parish.
Bengtsson put down his spade, sighed loudly and looked at Gerlof.
‘Will you go down, Davidsson? With Aron?’
Gerlof gazed down into the darkness of the grave. Did he want to go down there? No. But what if Edvard Kloss had woken up and was suffocating inside the coffin? If that was the case, they had to hurry.
He scrambled down into the hole and cautiously stepped on top of the lid, which was covered in soil. He remembered what he had read in his confirmation class, about Jesus’s encounter with Lazarus:
The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, ‘Unbind him, and let him go.’
Gerlof listened as hard as he could for any sound from inside the coffin, but there was nothing. However, he didn’t like being down there; the air was icy cold. At some point in the future he too would end up in a place like this. For all eternity. Unless Jesus came along and raised him from the dead.
A scraping noise behind him made him jump, but it was only the boy clambering down on to the lid of the coffin, clutching a spade. Aron Fredh from Rödtorp. Gerlof nodded to him in the darkness.
‘Let’s dig,’ he said quietly.
Aron was staring down at the coffin. He whispered something – just one word.
‘What? What did you say?’
‘America,’ the boy repeated. ‘That’s where I’m going.’
‘Really?’ Gerlof was sceptical. ‘How old are you, Aron?’
‘Twelve.’
‘In that case, you’re too young.’
‘Sven’s going to take me. I’m going to be a sheriff when we get there!’
‘Oh yes?’
‘I’m a good shot,’ Aron said.
Gerlof didn’t ask any more questions. He didn’t know who Sven was, but he’d heard of America. The promised land. Things weren’t going too well in America at the moment, with the Wall Street Crash and high unemployment, but the attraction was still there.
At that moment, standing on top of Edvard Kloss’s coffin, Gerlof decided to stop being a gravedigger. He would leave Stenvik and his strict father. He didn’t want to go to America; he would go to sea instead. He would take himself off to Borgholm and get a job on some cargo ship travelling between the island and the mainland.
Do something that would give him more freedom. Become a seaman in the sunshine.
‘How’s it going?’ Bengtsson shouted from above his head. Gerlof looked up.
‘Fine.’
He and Aron, the future sheriff, began to dig, and they quickly cleared all the earth from the lid of the coffin.
‘Done!’
Bengtsson threw down the ropes. Gerlof managed to get them around each end of the coffin, then climbed out of the grave as quickly as he could.
Edvard Kloss was lifted out and carried into the cool sacristy.
‘Put it down,’ the priest said quietly.
The coffin was placed on the stone floor with a scraping sound.
Then there was silence. Edvard Kloss was dead.
And yet he had knocked.
Dr Blom arrived twenty minutes later, carrying his black medical bag. His shirt was soaked in sweat and his face was bright red with the heat, and he was clearly in need of an explanation. He asked just one question, his voice echoing loudly beneath the vaulted stone ceiling: ‘What’s going on here?’
The men waiting in the aisle looked at one another.
‘We heard something,’ the priest said eventually.
‘You heard something?’
‘Yes.’ The priest nodded in the direction of the coffin. ‘A knocking noise from down in the ground … Just when they started filling in the grave.’
The doctor looked at the lid of the coffin, filthy and covered in scratches from the spades.
‘I see. In that case I’d better take a look.’
The Kloss brothers stood in silence as Bengtsson removed the screws and lifted the lid.
Lazarus had spent four days in his grave, Gerlof recalled. ‘Lord, by this time he stinks,’ his sister, Martha, had said to Jesus as they stood before the stone.
The lid was off now. Gerlof didn’t move closer, but he could still see the body, washed and arranged for its final rest. The arms were crossed over the big belly, the eyes were closed and there were black bruises on his face, possibly from the wall that had killed him. But Edvard Kloss was smartly dressed; the corpse was wearing a black suit made of thick fabric.
‘If you dress the deceased as well as you speak of him, he will have a smile on his face when he is lying in his coffin,’ Gerlof’s grandmother used to say.
But Edvard Kloss’s mouth was no more than a narrow, straight line, his lips hard and dry.
Dr Blom opened his leather bag and bent over the corpse; Gerlof turned away, but he could hear the doctor muttering to himself. A stethoscope rattled against the stone floor.
‘No heartbeat,’ the doctor said.
There was silence, then came Gilbert’s voice, sounding strained:
‘Open a vein so we can be absolutely sure.’
That was enough for Gerlof. He went out into the sunshine and stood in the shade of the church tower.
‘Now will you have a beer?’
Bengtsson came over, carrying two fresh bottles.
This time, Gerlof nodded and gratefully accepted a drink. The bottle was ice cold, and he raised it to his lips and drank deeply. The alcohol went straight to his head and slowed down his thought processes. He looked at Bengtsson.
‘Has this happened before?’
‘What?’
‘Have you heard noises before?’
The gravedigger shook his head.
‘Not personally, at any rate.’ He gave a tight little smile, took a swig of his beer and looked over at the church. ‘But of course the Kloss brothers are a bit different … I have a problem with that family. They just take whatever they want. All the time, all over the place.’
‘But Edvard Kloss …’ Gerlof said, struggling to find the right words. ‘He can’t have …’
‘Calm down,’ Bengtsson broke in. ‘This isn’t your problem.’ He had another drink, and added: ‘In the old days, they used to tie the hands together. When someone died, I mean, so that they’d lie still down there in the coffin. Did you know that?’
Gerlof shook his head and didn’t say another word.
After a few moments the church door opened, and Gerlof and Bengtsson quickly hid the bottles of beer. Dr Blom stuck his head out and waved them over.
‘I’ve finished.’
‘And he’s …’
‘He’s dead, of course. No sign of life whatsoever. You can put him back where you got him from.’
The interment was repeated. The coffin was carried out of the church, the ropes were slipped underneath and it was lowered into the grave. Gerlof and Bengtsson started shovelling earth into the hole once more, clutching their spades with a certain amount of grim determination; they were feeling a little unsteady after the beer. Gerlof looked around for Aron Fredh, but both the boy and the man with the limp had disappeared.
Everyone gathered around the grave, including Dr Blom, who was holding tightly on to his leather bag.
The earth thudded against the coffin lid.
Then the sound came again: three sharp raps from down in the ground. Quiet but clear.
Gerlof froze in mid-movement, his heart pounding. Suddenly, he was completely sober, and frightened. He looked across at Bengtsson on the other side of the mound of earth; he, too, had stopped dead.
Sigfrid Kloss looked tense, but his brother, Gilbert, seemed to be absolutely terrified. He was staring at the coffin as if mesmerized.
Even Dr Blom had stiffened at the sound. Gerlof real
ized the scepticism was gone, but the doctor shook his head.
‘Fill in the grave,’ he said firmly.
The priest was silent for a moment, then he nodded.
‘There’s nothing more we can do.’
The gravediggers had no option but to comply. Gerlof shivered in spite of the sunshine, but he set to work. His spade felt as heavy as an iron bar in his hands.
The earth began to thud against the coffin lid once more; the rhythmic beat was the only sound.
After twenty shovelfuls the lid had begun to disappear beneath a layer of earth.
There was still no other sound in the churchyard.
But, suddenly, someone sighed next to Gerlof. It was Gilbert Kloss, edging towards the grave. The sigh sounded like a long, heavy exhalation; he lifted his feet and moved slowly across the grass. He stopped by the open grave and tried to take a deep breath, but his lungs managed only a thin whistling.
‘Gilbert?’ Sigfrid said.
His brother didn’t reply; he stood there motionless, his mouth open.
Then he stopped breathing, and his eyes lost focus.
Gerlof watched as Gilbert Kloss fell sideways by the grave. He saw Bengtsson simply standing there staring, along with the doctor and the priest.
Sigfrid called out behind them; Gerlof was the only one who rushed forward, but he was still several steps away when Gilbert’s heart stopped beating.
Gilbert’s body fell head first on to the grass beside the grave, rolled slowly over the edge and landed on the lid of the coffin like a heavy sack of flour.
Early Summer
When the sun gives the summer its streams then the nightingale wakes the dreams we have gathered around death like midsummer myths in the valley.
Harry Martinson
Gerlof
Could a boat die? And, if so, when was it dead? Gerlof gazed at his old wooden gig and considered the question. She should have been in the water on this sunny June day, but she was still ashore. Cracks all over the place, tipped on her side on the grass. The name of the gig was Swallow; it was carved on a little wooden nameplate on the stern, but she no longer flew across the water. A fat green fly was crawling idly around the dry hull.
‘What do you think?’ asked John Hagman, who was standing on the other side of the boat.
‘She’s a wreck,’ Gerlof replied. ‘Old and useless.’
‘She’s younger than us.’
‘Indeed. So that probably means we’re wrecks as well.’
Gerlof was eighty-four years old, while John would turn eighty next year. They had sailed across the Baltic on cargo ships together for almost three decades as captain and first mate, carrying limestone and oil and general cargo to and from Stockholm, through stormy weather and calm waters. But that was a long time ago, and now the Öland gig was the only boat they had left.
Swallow had been built in 1925, when Gerlof was just ten. His father had used her to fish for flounder for almost thirty years, then Gerlof had taken over in the fifties and had sailed her every summer for another forty years. But one spring in the early nineties, when the ice had receded out into the Sound and it was time to carry Swallow down to the water, Gerlof simply hadn’t had the energy.
He was too old. And so was Swallow.
Since then she had been lying there next to Gerlof’s boathouse as her planks dried out and split in the sunshine.
The light on Öland was intense, and on this cloudless day the sun was blazing down on the coast. A fresh, cooling breeze was coming off the sea in gentle gusts. So far, there had been no heatwave on the island; the really hot weather didn’t usually arrive until July, and sometimes it didn’t arrive at all.
Gerlof poked at the gig’s dried-out oak planks with his stick and watched as it penetrated the wood. He shook his head.
‘She’s a wreck,’ he said again. ‘She’ll sink in seconds if we put her in the water.’
‘She can be fixed,’ John said.
‘Do you think so?’
‘Absolutely. We can seal the cracks. I’m sure Anders will help out.’
‘Maybe … but the work would be down to the two of you, in that case. All I can do is sit and watch.’
Gerlof suffered from Sjögren’s Syndrome, a type of rheumatism that came and went. It was unpredictable; in the summer his legs usually felt better with the warmth, but sometimes he needed a wheelchair to get around.
‘There’s money in this,’ John said.
‘Really?’
‘Oh, yes. The Öland Wooden Boat Association usually supports projects like this.’
They heard a whining noise from the coast road behind them, and both men turned their heads. They saw a shiny black Volvo, an SUV, but it had foreign number plates and tinted side windows.
It was a Monday, the week before Midsummer’s Eve. And Stenvik, the fishing village that had turned into a holiday resort, had come back to life.
Nature had come to life in May, of course, turning the meadows and the alvar purple, yellow and white. Butterflies had emerged, the grass was green once more, the scent of herbs and flowers filled the air. But in spite of the early sunshine and the heat, the summer visitors had decided that the season didn’t really begin until now. They arrived in force at midsummer to unlock their chalets, dig out the hammocks and live the rural life, close to nature. Until the beginning of August, when they all set off back to the city.
The Volvo whizzed past, heading north. Gerlof caught a glimpse of several people in the car, but didn’t recognize them.
‘Was that the Norwegian family from Tönsberg?’ he said. ‘The ones who bought the Brown House a couple of years ago?’
‘The Brown House?’
‘Yes – well, it’s painted red now, but it was brown when the Skogmans owned it.’
‘The Skogmans?’
‘You remember – they were from Ystad.’
John nodded as he watched the Volvo.
‘No, it’s not turning in at the Skogmans’ place … I thought somebody from Holland bought their place?’
‘When?’ Gerlof asked.
‘Two years ago, I think … spring ’97. But they’ve hardly spent any time here.’
Gerlof shook his head once more.
‘I don’t remember. There are too many people around these days.’
In the winter, Stenvik was virtually empty, but at this time of year it was impossible to keep up with all the old and new faces. Gerlof had seen generations of summer visitors pass through the village, and these days he found it difficult to distinguish between fathers and sons, mothers and daughters.
No doubt the visitors didn’t know who Gerlof was either. He had lived in the residential home for senior citizens up in Marnäs for several years, and it was only recently that he had started coming down to his childhood home in the spring and summer, steadfastly battling the pain in his joints.
It seemed as if his legs were pretty tired of supporting him, and he was tired of it, too. Lately, he had tried turmeric and horseradish for the pain; it had helped to a certain extent, but he could still walk only short distances.
Take me back, he thought, to a period in my life when there was still time.
Several expensive cars were speeding along the coast road, but Gerlof turned his back on them and looked at the gig again.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘We’ll fix her up then, with your son’s help.’
‘Good,’ John said. ‘She’s a fine boat. Perfect for fishing.’
‘Indeed she is,’ Gerlof agreed, although he hadn’t been fishing for many years. ‘But can you fit it in?’
‘Definitely. The campsite more or less runs itself.’
John had leased the campsite in Stenvik every summer since he had come ashore at the beginning of the sixties. When his son, Anders, was old enough they had started to share the work between them, but John was still the one who went around the tents and caravans each morning and evening, collecting fees and emptying the bins. He hadn’t had a single free summ
er in thirty-five years, but he seemed to enjoy it.
‘That’s agreed, then,’ Gerlof said. ‘Perhaps in August we’ll be eating plaice that we’ve caught ourselves.’
‘Perhaps,’ John said. ‘But she can stay here for a while.’
A while. When it came to John, that could mean anything from three days to three years, but Gerlof assumed that Swallow would remain by the boathouse for a few weeks before Anders and John set to work on her.
He sighed and looked around. His village, the best place in the whole world. The wide bay with its deep blue waters. The row of boathouses. The old cottages and the new houses. The lush summer greenery of Öland in the background, so different from the treeless coastal landscape when Gerlof was a little boy. He had spent his childhood here in the bay before going off to sea as a teenager, eventually returning as a grown man to build a summer cottage for his family.
The road came to an end on the southern point, and that was where the village also ended. The coast was more dramatic over there, with a steep cliff leading down to flat, wide rocks along the shoreline and a burial cairn, known as a rör in the local dialect, up on the ridge above the water.
The finest summer cottages were also at the southern end of the village, lining the coast road. Last of all, completely separate, were the two houses belonging to the Kloss family.
The Kloss family. The three brothers, Edvard, Sigfrid and Gilbert. Edvard and Gilbert had died at almost the same time; only Sigfrid had lived to a decent age. He had inherited his father’s land and turned it into a holiday complex, which was now run by his grandchildren.
‘Have the Kloss gang arrived yet?’ Gerlof asked.
‘Indeed they have. Their place is already packed with cars, and people are out on the golf course.’
The Kloss family’s holiday complex lay a few kilometres south of the village, and was called the Ölandic Resort, but John always referred to it as ‘the Kloss place’. He regarded it as competition, in spite of the fact that his shop in Stenvik was no more than a shoebox in comparison. The Ölandic Resort had everything – a golf course, a campsite, a range of shops, a nightclub, a swimming pool and an entire holiday village.
The Voices Beyond: (Oland Quartet Series 4) Page 2
