Хеннинг Манкелль - After the Fire

Before I fell asleep I made a mental note that tomorrow I must convince Louise that the decision about what ought to happen next was hers alone. If she still saw herself living on the island in the future, then she must make up her mind what the new house should look like. I had taken out a very good insurance policy years ago in which it was stated that such an old house couldn’t possibly be rebuilt as it had once been. There would be no oak beams forming the framework. Under the terms of the policy, Louise had a free choice.

But what if the charred black ruin scared her away? What would I do if she suggested selling the island, if she said that she wanted part of her inheritance right now, while I was still alive? Could I take on the huge responsibility of having a new house built? Or would I live in the caravan on a permanent basis? Perhaps I could ask a local handyman to extend the boathouse, enabling me to live behind wooden walls rather than the laminated plastic of the caravan?

I could have my car brought over from the mainland and hitched up the caravan, as if I were getting ready to be transported across the Styx by car instead of by ferry...

I had almost dropped off when I was roused by Louise’s voice. She was talking quite loudly, as if she assumed I was still awake.

‘I’m going to make a garden.’

I heard the words clearly, but I didn’t understand. If there was one thing I thought I knew about my daughter, it was that she and I shared the same distaste for poking around in the soil with a trowel in order to get something to grow.

‘And where is this garden going to be?’

‘Here.’

‘Nothing grows on this island. The soil is very poor, and it’s full of stones. The oaks and the alders take any nutrients there might be.’

‘Obviously I shall make a garden that’s suitable for the prevailing conditions.’

‘I’ve never known you show any interest in plants.’

The caravan rocked as she leaped up, wrapped a blanket around her body and switched on the lamp. She sat down at the table as I lay there blinking in the light.

‘I went to the village where Giaconelli is buried. He had told me about a beautiful garden behind a wall that was almost completely hidden by ivy. I found the wall and climbed over it. The garden was overgrown, but I’m sure it had once been lovely. As I walked around I realised that I wanted to make a garden somewhere else. Giaconelli had shown me this one, but at the same time he knew that I would go my own way. The Ocean of Emptiness is what I want to create.’

‘What’s that?’

‘I’ll tell you tomorrow. I’m turning off the light now.’

Before I dozed off I tried without success to work out what she had meant by the Ocean of Emptiness.

I woke just after six. Louise was fast asleep with the covers pulled over her head and one foot sticking out, as if it had detached itself from the rest of her body. Cautiously I covered it with the end of the blanket. She twitched but didn’t wake up.

I picked up my clothes and one of the blue Chinese shirts to use as a towel, and went down to the jetty. The morning was dark and chilly. The wind had changed and was coming from the north. I took a deep breath and stepped down into the water. The cold struck my body hard as usual. It seemed to me that there was a certain point in the autumn when the feeling was exactly the same as it was immediately after the ice had broken up in the spring. Two contrasting seasons were somehow united.

I counted to ten as I always do before climbing out. The Chinese shirt left little blue threads all over my body as I rubbed myself dry. After I had got dressed I looked at the thermometer: three degrees. The wind was gusting slightly. The bitter chill from the north bit into my face and hands.

I sat down on the bench, huddled up in the darkness as the dawn began to break. What was it Louise had said late last night? The Heaven of Emptiness? No, the Ocean of Emptiness. It still didn’t make any sense to me.

The caravan door opened, and Louise shouted that it was breakfast time. She was dressed and had put up her hair with several slides.

‘I wish I could tolerate cold water like you,’ she said when we were sitting at the table.

The coffee she made was always far too strong for my taste, but as I knew what to expect, I didn’t complain.

‘You’re going to have to jump in sooner or later. We don’t have a bath tub, or any way of heating water.’

‘There’s a shower for sailors in the harbour.’

‘I very much doubt if it’s open now.’

‘Do you think they’d refuse to let us use it, knowing that your house has burned down?’

She was right, of course. We finished our breakfast in silence. Louise cleared the table, insisting I couldn’t help as there wasn’t enough room in the caravan for us both to move around at the same time. We decided to go over to the mainland later, when the shops were open.

‘The Ocean of Emptiness,’ I said when she had finished.

‘I’ll show you, and I’ll explain.’

Outside, the wind was still gusting and the cloud cover dense and low. It was eight o’clock. Louise marched determinedly up to the patch of grass behind the ruins of the house. If you sit on a rock and look towards the grass, you also have a clear view of the sea. She pointed to a flat rock and I sat down.

She told me about a trip she had made to Japan the previous year. She is fascinating when she wants to be. I often think she has a much stronger relationship with words than I have.

Needless to say, I had no idea that she had been to Japan, just as I knew nothing about her visits to Paraguay and Tasmania. Apparently she had gone there because she was thinking of importing special paper dragons to Europe. She mentioned it in passing, and I didn’t ask what had happened to that idea. She told me that she and a friend had visited Kyoto and the Zen Buddhist temple of Daisen-in, where she had stood before a garden made of stone and gravel, with not a blade of grass to be seen. The garden had been laid out in the sixteenth century, with the aim of creating a mystery in the landscape which would make it easier for visitors to concentrate when they were meditating.

‘I became utterly still,’ Louise said. ‘It was as if I had found something I had been searching for, even though I didn’t know it. I sat down on a bench and I was immediately drawn into that world of stone. I felt a great calmness, but I was excited at the same time. I immediately decided that one day I would make my own garden, as a nod to the Ocean of Emptiness — that was the name of the garden before me. And because nothing grows on this island, as you pointed out, I can’t think of a better place to create my garden of rocks and gravel. Then they can reach out their stony hands and wave to one another from Sweden and Japan.’

She suddenly broke off and ran back down to the caravan. She returned with a black and white photograph.

‘The Ocean of Emptiness,’ she said. ‘This is what it looks like.’

I sat there for a long time holding the picture. Louise left me and wandered around the patch of grass that she was intending to transform into something resembling the image in my hand.

I didn’t understand what she had found so captivating about the garden in Kyoto. Gravel, stone, maybe sand, a few small mounds that looked like petrified bubbles on the smooth ground.

My life seemed to be full of rocks and stones at the moment, I thought. There was nothing left of my house apart from the foundations. The previous day I had taken Lisa Modin to Vrångskär, where remnants of rock had reminded us of the people who had tried to survive there in spite of unimaginable poverty. I had talked about the fact that I sometimes believed that the stones that had been used to build houses on the skerry all those years ago were on their way back to the places from which they had come.