The sun was shining, the road was flat and straight. Jonas had a warm breeze on his face and the scent of wild flowers in his nostrils. Uncle Kent still had his window down, his left elbow sticking out as he steered the car with one hand, fingers resting lightly on the wheel. Nothing more.
His mobile rang. He answered using his free hand, listened for twelve or fourteen seconds then interrupted loudly: ‘No. A supporting wall, I said. What for? Support, of course! I want it to look old, kind of medieval, but modern at the same time. Made of stone, or railway sleepers. And I want the pipework under the wall, not next to it. Good … Has the digger arrived?’ He listened again. ‘Fantastic! In that case, we can … Hello?’ He lowered the mobile. ‘Lost the connection – typical.’
Uncle Kent had certain favourite words, like ‘typical’ and ‘fantastic’. He imbued them with an energy and self-confidence that Jonas could never manage, whatever he said.
Kent slipped his mobile into his pocket and said, ‘Shall we take the boat out when we arrive?’
‘Sure,’ Jonas’s dad agreed at once. ‘As long as it’s not too rough out there.’
Uncle Kent laughed.
‘Motorboats like waves, they just jump over them! We’ll take a little trip, then we can have a Cosmo on the decking.’
Niklas nodded, but he didn’t look particularly happy.
‘OK.’
Jonas had no idea what a Cosmo was, but he didn’t ask. The trick when it came to looking grown up was to listen and to look as if you knew exactly what was going on. And to laugh along with everyone else.
Kent glanced in the rear-view mirror.
‘We’re going to get you up on those skis this summer, JK. All right? Things didn’t go too well a couple of years ago, as I recall …’
He always called Jonas by his initials, JK.
‘I’ll give it a go,’ Jonas said.
He didn’t really want to think about water-skiing. He didn’t want to think about that summer either, when his father had just started serving his sentence and Jonas and Mats had come to Öland on their own.
He could see the expanse of the Sound now; they had reached the village and were passing the kiosk and the restaurant. They turned left on to the coast road, with the ridge on one side of the car and houses on the other.
Jonas hadn’t managed to get up on his skis once that summer. Uncle Kent must have tried to pull him up with the line from the motorboat at least fifteen times; Jonas had coughed up water and clung to the handle so tightly that his knuckles turned white, but he always ended up pitching forward after just a few metres. In the evenings, his legs had felt like spaghetti.
‘You’re not going to give it a go, JK, you’re going to do it! You’re much tougher this year. How old are you now?’
‘Twelve,’ Jonas said, although his birthday wasn’t until August. He glanced at his brother, afraid of a scornful correction, but Mats was gazing out at the water and didn’t appear to be listening.
They had arrived. The summer place was known as Villa Kloss, even though it consisted of two houses side by side, with huge panoramic windows overlooking the sea. Aunt Veronica and the cousins lived in the north house, Uncle Kent in the south.
Jonas’s father no longer had a house of his own. They would be staying in the guest chalets.
‘Twelve years old, that’s the best time of your life,’ Kent said as the Corvette swung into his drive. ‘You’re totally free. You’re going to have a fantastic summer here, JK!’
‘Mmm,’ said Jonas.
But he didn’t feel free. Just small.
Gerlof
Gerlof met the Swedish-American on the way to the dance.
He was late, leaning on his chestnut walking stick and making his way along the coast road as quickly as he could. He wouldn’t be dancing around the maypole himself, of course, but he enjoyed listening to the music. Midsummer came along only once a year, after all.
The problem was that he had forgotten something – two things, in fact – which was why he was late. His daughters and grandchildren were waiting for him, but when he got to the bottom of the steps and was standing in the garden, he couldn’t hear any birds singing in the treetops.
The device. He wasn’t used to it yet.
‘I’ll go and get it,’ his daughter, Julia, said.
She was carrying a small folding chair for Gerlof, but she put it down and went back indoors. A minute later she reappeared and handed over the small plastic ear buds.
‘Do you mind if we go on ahead? The boys really want to be there from the start.’
Gerlof inserted the hearing aids and waved her away.
‘I’ll follow you.’
He had only his stick and the birdsong for company as he set off towards the maypole down at the far end of the inlet.
He was pleased to be able to hear the birds, even if he needed some help to do so.
In the spring and summer, Gerlof left his room at the residential home for senior citizens in Marnäs and spent as much time as possible in the cottage on the coast, where he had the sea and the wind and all the birds – the migrants who came back from Africa in the spring. Back home to Gerlof’s garden.
Sparrows and bullfinches gathered on the edge of the little limestone bird bath in the corner of the lawn. Gerlof would watch them dip down for a drink of water, then they would open their beaks to chirrup and sing.
The problem was that he could no longer hear their song.
His hearing problem was nothing new; it had been creeping up on him for a long time. Gerlof had stopped hearing the crickets when he was about sixty-five years old, the year after he retired. He had stood on the veranda listening in the evenings, but there was only silence out there in the darkness. At first he had thought that pollution had killed them off, but then a doctor had explained that the sound the crickets made was on such a high frequency that his old ears couldn’t pick it up.
Old ears? His ears were the same age as the rest of him. But he could cope with not being able to hear the crickets; they were fairly irritating, and he didn’t really miss them. And, in any case, it wasn’t the crickets that chirped all day long, it was the grasshoppers.
But Gerlof did want to hear the birdsong. Last spring it had seemed a little more muted than before, as if they were singing through an invisible blanket. And this year the garden had been silent. At that point Gerlof had realized that something was seriously wrong, and had contacted Dr Wahlberg, who had sent him to Kalmar for a hearing test.
Gerlof had been expecting a neatly dressed technician in a white coat, with a pen tucked behind one ear, but the man who greeted him was wearing jeans and had a ponytail.
‘Hi, I’m Ulrik. I’m an audiologist.’
‘An archaeologist?’
‘Audiologist. I’ll be producing an audiogram showing the level of your hearing.’
All these new words made Gerlof feel dizzy. He had had to sit in a little booth wearing headphones, and had been told to press a button when he heard a range of sounds. For long periods, things had been worryingly silent.
‘How does it look?’ he asked when Ulrik released him.
‘Not too good,’ came the reply. ‘I think it’s probably time for a little technical assistance.’
Technical assistance? Was Gerlof going to have something stuck in his ears? He remembered that his old grandfather – a notoriously mean man – had developed hearing problems in his nineties, and had made himself a metal ear trumpet out of an old snuff tin. Simple and completely free.
Today everything was made of plastic. Ulrik took a cast of Gerlof’s ear canal so that a suitable model could be made.
In the middle of May, Gerlof was able to try out the hearing aid in his own garden, when Ulrik came over to Öland with a small computer.
‘We don’t normally do home visits,’ he said, ‘but I love this island … The sun and the scenery …’
Gerlof was delighted and took him out on to the veranda to see the birds. An olive-gr
een bird was sitting in the bath washing its wings.
‘A greenfinch,’ he said. ‘It sounds like a canary when it sings … if you can hear it.’
‘When we’ve finished, you’ll be able to hear it perfectly,’ Ulrik said, placing his computer on the table.
After a few minutes, Gerlof was sitting motionless on a chair on the veranda, with wires running from the computer to the buds in his ears, which fitted perfectly.
Ulrik gazed at the screen.
‘How’s that? Can you hear any whistling?’
Gerlof shook his head – very carefully, so that the wires wouldn’t come out. Then he closed his eyes and concentrated.
He listened. No, there was no whistling, but there was a faint sighing that he hadn’t heard for many years. It seemed to be coming from outside, and he realized that it was the breeze, blowing around the cottage.
And, through the breeze, he suddenly heard the pure, clear sound of birdsong. The greenfinch, warbling in the birdbath. And, somewhere over in the bushes, a whitethroat answered him.
Gerlof opened his eyes and blinked in surprise.
‘I can hear them,’ he said. ‘The birds.’
‘Good,’ Ulrik said. ‘In that case, we’re on the right track.’
Gerlof could hear the birds around him, but he couldn’t see them. It made him think about a mystery from his childhood, and he decided to ask the question while he had an expert on the spot.
‘Can a person hear noises even though they don’t exist?’
Ulrik looked confused.
‘What do you mean?’
‘If someone heard mysterious sounds, coming out of the ground, for example … could that be some kind of hallucination? Like an optical illusion, but to do with hearing instead?’
‘That’s a tricky question. I mean, sometimes we hear sounds that exist only in our heads, if someone has tinnitus, for example.’
‘This was nothing like that,’ Gerlof said. ‘It was knocking. Loud knocking from inside a coffin that had been lowered into the ground. I heard it when I was young, and so did several other people … Everyone who was there heard it.’
He looked at Ulrik, but the young man just shook his head.
‘I’m afraid I’m no expert on ghosts.’
As he approached the celebrations he could hear the buzz of a large crowd, like the sound of a rushing waterfall in the distance. There was an expectant hum; the dancing hadn’t started yet.
Gerlof knew there were a lot of people in the village at the moment, because the water pressure in his taps had dropped over the past few days. Water was less than plentiful on the island in hot weather, and in the summer many people had to share it.
His muscles ached as he hurried along the coast road, past the track leading down to the jetty. He could see a group of young people standing there, dressed in tiny trunks and bikinis. He thought back to the old days, when bathing suits were knitted and smelled of wool.
When Gerlof reached the long row of mailboxes and was about to turn inland towards the crowd surrounding the maypole, he noticed a man of about his own age standing there. He was tall, with white, wavy hair, and he was wearing a dark-brown jacket. He had an old Kodak camera around his neck.
Gerlof looked at the man, with a vague recollection of having seen him before.
The man returned his gaze, then held up the camera in front of him, almost like a shield, and snapped away in the direction of the mailboxes.
Gerlof remembered that he had resolved not to pre-judge strangers, so he went over to the man.
‘Good afternoon,’ he said. ‘We know one another, don’t we?’
The man hesitated, then stepped away from the mailboxes and looked Gerlof in the eye once more.
‘We’ve met,’ he said. ‘But it was a long time ago.’
He spoke with an Öland accent, but there was a hint of something else there. Gerlof held out his hand.
‘My name is Davidsson, Gerlof Davidsson.’
The man shook his hand.
‘OK, now I remember,’ he said. ‘Gerlof … we went out fishing one evening in your beautiful boat.’
‘She’s not so beautiful these days.’ Gerlof suddenly found the memory he was searching for. ‘And you’re a Swedish-American, aren’t you?’
The man nodded.
‘More American than Swedish, though. My name is Bill Carlson, and I’m from Lansing in Michigan. My cousin is Arne Carlson in Långvik … I’m visiting his kids this summer.’
He fell silent and glanced over at the mailboxes again. Gerlof realized that not all Americans were talkative.
‘I used to know Arne well,’ he said. ‘Welcome home, Bill.’
‘I’ve never lived here,’ the American said, looking almost embarrassed. ‘My father emigrated from Öland when he was young. But we spoke Swedish at home, and I usually come over to see the family every five years or so. But there aren’t many of them left. I was just looking at the names on these mailboxes, but I hardly recognize any …’
‘You’re not the only one,’ Gerlof reassured him. ‘So many new people come to the island in the summer these days … And you never see hide nor hair of them for the rest of the year.’ He nodded in the direction of the maypole. ‘Are you coming to listen to the music?’
‘Absolutely,’ said the American. ‘The song about the little frogs is my favourite!’
They set off together, with Bill taking long strides and Gerlof following as best he could. He struggled to keep up so that they could continue the conversation.
‘How old are you, Bill – if you don’t mind my asking?’
‘Almost eighty-six. But I don’t feel a day over seventy.’
Gerlof envied the ease with which Bill made his way over the grass. He found sprightly folk who were older than him a little difficult. Some people just never seemed to get old.
Lisa
Lisa slept badly the night before the trip, because Silas had gone out during the evening and hadn’t come back until dawn. In the summer he stayed out longer, and lived rough. When Lisa got out of bed at seven o’clock in the morning, it looked as if a pile of rags was lying on the sofa.
She tiptoed past without saying anything. There was no point. She packed quietly, locked the door behind her without a sound. No goodbyes. Silas would ring her soon in any case. Silas always rang her.
The old Passat was parked on the street. The lock was as useless as the rest of the car, so she kept her guitar and her records in the apartment. She stowed them in the boot and set off, heading south.
She had played almost every weekend over the past year, and had got used to driving, so she put her foot down once she hit the main road. However, only an hour or so after leaving Stockholm, she became aware of an acrid smell, like burnt rubber or something equally alarming.
Shit. But she was late for the midsummer gig, and she just had to hope the car would make it. She kept on going, blinking and yawning.
Lisa could never get to sleep when she was waiting for Silas. And the nights were too light as well. The summer heat was lovely, but she didn’t like it when the line between day and night became blurred.
The southbound traffic was heavy and slow; the midsummer revellers who were on the road now were seriously late. There were a lot of them, and they didn’t have much patience.
On the coast road down to Kalmar, Lisa glimpsed the island out in the Baltic several times, like a long, black strip on the horizon, and it was frustrating that the Öland bridge went over to the southern end of the island when she wanted to be in the north. She would have to drive down, then back up again.
Eventually, she reached the long, high bridge across the Sound. She had been here on a school trip fifteen years ago when she was only ten; it was cool to be back.
There was a solid line of cars on the bridge, like a shimmering ribbon, and as Lisa pulled up, the smell from the engine quickly got worse.
The bridge was one of the longest in Europe, and it certainly felt like it to
day as the traffic edged along. The waves glittered far below as the sun blazed down on the tarmac. She hoped her vinyl records wouldn’t melt in the heat. Surely things couldn’t get any worse.
She was wrong. As the car began the climb to the highest point of the bridge, the engine started smoking.
She clutched the wheel and took her foot off the accelerator. The car stopped dead, right in the middle of the traffic. There was nowhere to pull off the road, and soon the cars behind her were sounding their horns. It was midsummer, and ten thousand people had decided to go over to the island at the same time. Every single one of them just wanted to get there.
The sun burned in through the windows, the inside of the car grew hotter and hotter, and Lisa hadn’t thought to bring any water or soft drinks. All she had was chewing gum.
What should she do? Turn around and forget about Öland?
A traffic cop on a motorbike rode up between the cars and pulled into the gap that had appeared when Lisa stopped halfway up the hill.
Fuck. She lowered her head and hoped he would keep on going.
He didn’t, of course. He got off his bike and knocked on the window. She wound it down.
‘You can’t stop here,’ he said.
‘I don’t want to stop here,’ she said, nodding towards the bonnet. ‘Something’s wrong under there.’
‘With the engine?’ He sniffed the air. ‘I can smell burning.’
‘Me too …’
‘It’s probably the clutch. You’ve been overdoing it on the way up the hill.’ He pointed to the other side of the bridge. ‘It’s OK to drive, but pull off at the first car park and let the engine cool down. You’ll find some of my colleagues over there – they’ll help you out.’
Lisa nodded. She had held a driving licence for five years, but felt like a complete novice as she put the car in gear and gently pressed the accelerator to rejoin the queue of traffic.
She felt much better once she had passed the highest point and was on her way downhill. The acrid, burning smell was still powerful inside the car, but when she opened the window the stench of exhaust fumes came pouring in instead. The queue of vehicles and caravans stretched the entire length of the bridge, and was moving at roughly the same speed as a rowing boat. It was almost twelve thirty. The gig in Stenvik started at two – under normal circumstances, she would have had plenty of time.
The Voices Beyond: (Oland Quartet Series 4) Page 4
