Хеннинг Манкелль - The Man from Beijing

‘What I remember is that the water was really cold.’

‘But I have no memory of what we thought at the time.’

‘We didn’t think anything. That was the point. We obeyed the thoughts of other people. We didn’t realise that we were supposed to act like robots in order to liberate mankind.’ Karin shook her head and burst out laughing. ‘We were like little kids. We took ourselves so seriously. We claimed that Marxism was science, just as true as anything said by Newton or Copernicus or Einstein. But we were also believers. Mao’s Little Red Book was our Bible. We didn’t realise that what we were waving was not the word of God, but a collection of quotations from a great revolutionary.’

‘I remember having doubts,’ said Birgitta. ‘Deep down. Just as I did when I visited East Germany. I remember thinking: This is absurd, it can’t go on for much longer. But I didn’t say anything. I was always afraid that my uncertainty would be noticed. And so I always yelled out the slogans louder than anybody else.’

‘We lived in a state of unparalleled self-delusion, even though we meant well. How could we possibly believe that Swedish workers enjoying a bit of sun would be prepared to arm themselves and overthrow the present system in order to start something new?’

Karin Wiman lit a cigarette. Birgitta recalled that she had always been a smoker, always felt instinctively for a pack of cigarettes and a book of matches.

They carried on talking until evening about friends they had known and what had become of them. Then they went for a walk through the little town. Birgitta realised that both she and Karin had the same need to think their way back into the past in order to understand more of their current life.

‘Still, it wasn’t all naivety and lunacy,’ said Birgitta. ‘The idea of a world based on solidarity is still very much alive in me today. I like to think that, despite everything, we stood up to be counted, we questioned conventions and traditions that could have tipped the world even further to the right.’

‘I’ve stopped voting,’ said Karin. ‘I don’t like it, but I can’t find any political truth that I can subscribe to. But I do try to support movements that I believe in. And they do still exist, in spite of it all, just as strong and intractable. How many people today do you think care about the feudal system in a little country like Nepal? I do. I sign petitions and send money.’

‘I barely know where Nepal is,’ said Birgitta. ‘I have to admit that I’ve become lazy. But sometimes I still long for that feeling of goodwill that was everywhere. We weren’t just crazy students who thought we were at the centre of the world, where nothing was impossible. There really was such a thing as solidarity.’

Karin burst out laughing.

They made dinner together. Karin mentioned that the following week she would be going to China to take part in a major conference on the early Qin dynasty, whose first emperor laid the foundations for China as a united realm.

‘What was it like when you first visited the land of your dreams?’ Birgitta asked.

‘I was twenty-nine when I went there for the first time. Mao had already gone, and everything was changing. It was a big disappointment, difficult to cope with. Beijing was a cold, damp city. Thousands and thousands of bicycles that sounded like an enormous swarm of grasshoppers, but then I realised that, even so, an enormous change had come about. People had clothes to wear. Shoes on their feet. I never saw anybody in Beijing starving, no beggars. I remember feeling ashamed. I had flown into this country from all the riches we take for granted; I had no right to regard developments in China with contempt or arrogance. I began to fall in love with the thought that the Chinese had won the trial of strength in which they had been embroiled. That was when I finally made up my mind what I was going to do with my life: become a Sinologist. Before that moment I’d had other ideas.’

‘Like what?’

‘You’ll never believe me.’

‘Try me!’

‘I’d thought of becoming a professional soldier.’

‘Whatever for?’

‘You became a judge. How does anyone make these decisions?’

After dinner they returned to the conservatory. The lights made the white snow outside glow. Karin had lent her a sweater, as it was becoming rather cold. They had drunk wine with the meal, and Birgitta was feeling a bit tipsy.

‘Come with me to China,’ said Karin. ‘The flight doesn’t cost an arm and a leg now. I’m bound to be given a big hotel room. We can share it. We’ve done that before. I remember the summer camps when you and I and three others shared a little tent. We were lying more or less on top of one another.’

‘I can’t,’ said Birgitta. ‘I’ll probably be cleared to go back to work.’

‘Come with me to China. Work can wait.’

‘I’d like to. But you’ll be going there again sometime, right?’

‘Of course. But when you get to our age, you shouldn’t put things off unless you have to.’

‘We’ll live for a long time yet. We’ll live to an old age.’

Karin said nothing. Birgitta realised that she’d put her foot in it. Karin’s husband had died at the age of forty-one. She had been a widow since then.

Karin understood what her friend was thinking. She stretched out her hand and stroked Birgitta’s knee.

‘It’s OK.’

They continued talking. It was almost midnight when they retired to their rooms. Birgitta lay down on her bed with her mobile phone in her hand. Staffan was due home at midnight and had promised to call.

She had almost dozed off when the telephone in her hand began to vibrate.

‘Did I wake you up?’

‘Nearly.’

‘Did everything go well?’

‘We’ve been talking non-stop for more than twelve hours.’

‘Will you be coming home tomorrow?’

‘I’ll sleep as long as I can. Then I’ll head home.’

‘I assume you’ve heard what’s happened? He’s said how he went about it.’

‘Who?’

‘The man in Hudiksvall.’

She sat up immediately.

‘I know nothing at all. Tell me!’

‘Lars-Erik Valfridsson. The man they charged. The police are looking for the weapon at this very moment. He evidently told them where he’d buried it. A home-made samurai sword, according to the news.’

‘Is that really true?’

‘Why would I tell you something that isn’t true?’

‘Of course you wouldn’t. But anyway. Has he said why?’

‘Nobody has said anything apart from it being revenge.’

When the call was over, she remained sitting up. During the whole day with Karin she hadn’t devoted a single thought to Hesjövallen. Now everything that had happened came flooding back into her mind.

Perhaps the red ribbon would have an explanation that nobody had foreseen?

Why couldn’t Lars-Erik Valfridsson also have eaten at that Chinese restaurant?

She lay down and switched off the light. She would go home tomorrow. She would send the diaries back to Vivi Sundberg and start work again.

There was no way she would go to China with Karin, even if that was what she would really like to do above all else.

When Birgitta Roslin got up the next morning, Karin Wiman had already left for Copenhagen, as she had an early lecture. She had left a note on the kitchen table.

Birgitta. I sometimes think that I have a path inside my head. For every day that passes it gets a bit longer and penetrates deeper into an unknown landscape where it will eventually peter out one of these days. But that path also meanders backwards. Sometimes I turn round, like I did yesterday during all the hours we were talking, and I see things that I’d forgotten about, or prevented myself from remembering. I want us to continue with these conversations. The bottom line is that friends are all we have left. Or rather, perhaps, the last line of defence we can fight to maintain. Karin.