Хеннинг Манкелль - After the Fire

Jansson appeared beside me once more. He has a curious way of moving, as if he has paws instead of feet. He comes from nowhere and suddenly materialises. He seems to know how to stay out of another person’s field of vision all the time.

Why hadn’t his wretched house on Stångskär burned down instead?

Jansson gave a start as if he had picked up on my embittered thought, but then I realised I had pulled a face, and he thought it was because he had come too close.

‘You can come and stay with me, of course,’ he offered when he had recovered his equilibrium.

‘Thank you.’

Then I noticed my daughter Louise’s caravan, which was behind Jansson in a grove of alders alongside a tall oak tree that had not yet lost all its leaves. The caravan was still partly concealed by its low branches.

‘I’ve got the caravan,’ I said. ‘I can live there for the time being.’

Jansson looked surprised but didn’t say anything.

All the people who had turned up during the night were starting to head back to their boats, but before they left they came over to say they were happy to help with whatever I needed.

During the course of a few hours my life had changed so completely that I actually needed everything.

I didn’t even have a matching pair of wellingtons.

I watched as one boat after another disappeared, the sounds of the different engines gradually dying away.

I knew who each person was out here in the archipelago. There are two dominant families: the Hanssons and the Westerlunds. Many of them are sworn enemies who meet up only at funerals or when there is a fire or a tragedy at sea. At such times all animosity is set aside, only to be resurrected as soon as normal circumstances resume.

I will never be a part of the community in which they live despite all those long-running feuds. My grandfather came from one of the smaller families out here, the Lundbergs, and they always managed to steer clear of any conflict. In addition, he married a woman who came from the distant shores of Åland.

My origins lie here in the islands, and yet I do not belong. I am a runaway doctor who hid in the home I inherited. My medical expertise is an undoubted advantage, but I will never be a true islander.

Besides, everyone knows that I am a winter bather. Every morning I open up the hole I have made in the ice and take a dip. This is regarded with deep suspicion by the permanent residents. Most of them think I’m crazy.

Thanks to Jansson I knew that people were puzzled by the life I led. What did I do, out here all alone on my island? I didn’t fish, I wasn’t a part of the local history association or any other organisation. I didn’t hunt, nor did I appear to have any interest in repairing my dilapidated boathouse or the jetty, which had been badly affected by the ice over the past few winters.

So, as I said, the few remaining permanent residents out here regarded me with a certain measure of distrust. The summer visitors, however, who heard about the retired doctor, thought how fortunate I was to be able to retire to the tranquillity of the archipelago and escape the noise and chaos of the city.

The previous year an impressive motor launch had moored at my jetty. I went down to chase the unwanted visitors away, but a man and a woman carried ashore a crying child who had erupted in a rash. They had heard about the doctor living on the island and were obviously very worried, so I opened up my boathouse clinic. The child was placed on the bench next to the area where my grandfather’s fishing nets still hung, and I was soon able to establish that it was nothing more than a harmless nettle rash. I asked a few questions and concluded that the child had had an allergic reaction after eating freshly picked strawberries.

I went up to my kitchen and fetched a non-prescription antihistamine. They wanted to pay me of course, but I refused. I stood on the jetty and watched as their ostentatious pleasure craft disappeared behind Höga Tryholmen.

I always keep a good store of medication for my own private use, and several oxygen cylinders. I am no hypochondriac, but I do want access to drugs when necessary. I don’t want to risk waking up one night to find that I am having a heart attack without being able to administer at least the same treatment as I would receive in an ambulance.

I believe that other doctors are just as afraid of dying as I am. Today I look back and regret the decision I made when I was fifteen years old to enter the medical profession. Today I find it easier to understand my father, a permanently exhausted waiter; he looked at me with displeasure and asked if I seriously thought that hacking away at other people’s bodies was a satisfactory choice in life.

At the time I told him I was convinced that I was doing the right thing, but I never revealed that I didn’t think I had any chance whatsoever of gaining the qualifications to train as a doctor. When I succeeded, much to my own astonishment, I couldn’t go back on my word.

That’s the truth: I became a doctor because I had told my father that was what I was going to do. If he had died before I completed my training, I would have given up immediately.

I can’t imagine what I would have done with my life instead; I would probably have moved out here at an earlier stage, but I have no idea how I would have earned a living.

The last boats disappeared into the morning mist. The sea, the islands, greyer than ever. Only Jansson and I were left. The stinking ruin was still smoking, the odd flame flaring up from the collapsed oak beams. I pulled my raincoat more tightly over my pyjamas and walked around the remains of my house. One of the apple trees my grandfather had planted was a charred skeleton; it looked like something from a theatre set. The intense heat had melted a metal water butt, and the grass was burned to a crisp.

I felt an almost irresistible desire to scream, but as long as Jansson stubbornly hung around, I couldn’t do it. Nor did I have the strength to get rid of him. Whatever happened, I realised that I was going to need his help.

I rejoined him.

‘Can you do something for me?’ I said. ‘I need a mobile phone. I left mine in the house, so it’s gone.’

‘I’ve got a spare one at home that you can borrow,’ Jansson replied.

‘Just until I manage to get a new one.’

Obviously I needed the phone as soon as possible, so Jansson went down to his boat. It’s one of the last in the archipelago that has a so-called hot bulb engine, which has to be started with a blowtorch. He had a faster boat when he used to deliver the post, but the day after he retired he sold it and started using the old wooden boat he had inherited from his father. I have heard everything about that boat, including how it was built in a little boatyard in Västervik in 1923 and still has its original engine.

I stayed where I was, beside the smoking ruin. I heard Jansson spin the flywheel. He stuck his head out of the wheelhouse hatch as he waved goodbye.

Everything was quiet in the aftermath of the storm. There was a crow sitting in a tree contemplating the ruin. I picked up a stone and threw it at the bird, which flapped away on weary wings.

Then I went over to the caravan. I sat down on the bed and was overwhelmed by sorrow and pain, by a despair that I could feel all the way down to my toes. It made me hot, like a fever. I let out a yell so loud that the walls of the caravan seemed to bulge outwards. I began to weep. I hadn’t cried like that since I was a child.

I lay down and stared at the damp patch on the ceiling, which to my eyes now resembled a foetus. The whole of my childhood had been shot through with an ever-present fear of being abandoned. At night I would sometimes wake and tiptoe into my parents’ room just to check that they hadn’t gone off and left me behind. If I couldn’t hear them breathing I was terrified that they had died. I would put my face as close to theirs as possible until I was sure I could feel their breath.