Хеннинг Манкелль - After the Fire

We loaded the last of our purchases into the car.

‘I’m hungry,’ I said. ‘But if you’re going to carry on like this, I don’t want to eat with you.’

She was holding a red woolly hat that she’d bought. She pulled it on and burst out laughing.

‘Of course we’re going to eat together! I think it’s nice that we don’t always have to talk. The world we live in is full of unnecessary chatter.’

We went to a restaurant in a ten-pin bowling alley, where we ate fried fish and drank water. The construction workers I had seen down by the harbour the other day were sitting at one of the tables. To my surprise they were still discussing whether or not one of them had actually seen a perch.

We had coffee after our meal. The construction workers left. Louise placed her hand on my arm.

‘I want to rebuild the house so that it’s as much like the old one as possible. That’s where I want to live at some point in the future.’

‘Of course you do,’ I said.

We headed back to the harbour. I wondered whether Louise felt as relieved as I did. We drove in silence once again, but it was a different silence now.

A fox ran across the road in exactly the same spot as earlier.

‘A different fox,’ Louise said. ‘This one was smaller.’

‘Are you sure it wasn’t bigger?’

‘It was smaller.’

I didn’t argue with her. Today had been difficult enough as it was. I dropped her off at the boat and unloaded all our bags and boxes, then I took the car back to its usual place. There was no sign of movement behind Oslovski’s curtains. I realised I was worried about her. Where did her fear come from? Why was she hiding?

I walked down to the quayside. To my surprise I saw that Nordin had put up the CLOSED sign at the chandlery. I had a horrible feeling that he was sitting inside weeping. Once again I felt a spurt of anger at my daughter’s behaviour, but I had no intention of saying anything. Not right now, anyway.

I cast off from the quayside.

‘I want to drive,’ Louise said.

I sat down in the prow; she yanked the cord and started the engine. She had been a boxer when I first met her, and she was fast and strong. She knew the shipping lane, although I did think she was a bit too close to the shallow known as Bygrundet, which was invisible.

As we rounded the last headland I saw Jansson’s boat moored at the jetty. He was sitting on the bench. We slid inside the boathouse and I left Louise to unload the boat while I went to see what Jansson wanted.

Syrén, the new postman, had given him a letter for me. Perhaps those responsible for the mail still thought I didn’t want any correspondence?

It was from the police. I opened it; I was required to attend an interview at the police station in town with regard to suspected arson. I had to be there in four days, at eleven o’clock.

Jansson looked enquiringly at me.

‘There’s no reply,’ I said. ‘You don’t need to wait.’

I stood on the jetty and watched him go. I wondered how many people in the archipelago already knew that I had been called in for questioning.

Was I the last to know?

The next few days felt like a long period of waiting. At night the horses charged around inside my head. I didn’t say anything to Louise about the letter I had received. She had seen Jansson give me the envelope and had looked at me curiously, but she didn’t ask questions.

As we ate dinner in the caravan that first night, we started chatting again. We talked about the contents of the LPG cylinder, the fact that we needed a new frying pan, and washing powder to keep our clothes clean. We avoided anything that might require a serious approach.

After we arrived home I had spent the day in the boathouse while Louise stayed in the caravan. At one point I peeped in through the window; she was sitting on the bed talking on her phone. I tried to make out what she was saying, but without success. Her expression was grave. Perhaps she was angry or sad; I couldn’t tell. When she ended the call I moved away and went back to the boathouse. I had opened a tin of tar — not because I was going to use it, but because I loved the smell. Tar runs through the ages out here in the archipelago.

Behind the boathouse lay an ancient leaky skiff that I hadn’t bothered putting in the water for the last few years. I pushed it in now and saw that it wasn’t in as bad a state as I had feared. I fetched the oars and old tin bailer and clambered in. I would be able to use the skiff to travel back and forth between the island and the skerry where I had pitched my tent.

During my childhood there had been a large rowing boat on the island. It was black, completely soaked in tar, and my grandfather used it when he went out fishing with nets. At first my grandmother used to row, but when I was old enough to manage the oars, and to understand what to do with the nets, the responsibility passed to me.

I remembered an incident that had taken place when I was ten or eleven years old. My grandfather spotted a deer, swimming along. He dropped the net he was holding, pushed me out of the way and grabbed the oars. He caught up with the animal, stood up and hit it on the head with one of the oars.

The oar snapped in half. The deer carried on swimming, but my grandfather leaned out of the boat and managed to seize one of its horns. He took out his Mora knife and slit its throat. It happened so fast that for a few seconds I didn’t realise what was going on. It was only when he dragged the dead animal on board, his hands dripping with blood, that I understood. The deer stared at me with huge, shining, unseeing eyes.

I had met death.

From that day onwards I was always a little afraid of my grandfather. I had seen something in him that I had never previously suspected. Snapping the necks of fish as he picked them out of the nets was one thing, but I had been completely unprepared for this slaughter out at sea.

When we came ashore and he hauled the dead body onto the jetty, I threw up. He looked at me with distaste but said nothing. He shouted to my grandmother, and together they butchered the deer. By then I had walked away.

It was at least fifty-five years since that day, and yet I could still see that powerful gesture as he slit the animal’s throat. He exuded pure hatred as he brought the oar down on its head. I think he would have carried on rowing with the broken oar all the way to the Finnish coast in pursuit of the deer if necessary.

Even as a ten-year-old, the incident made it clear to me that people are never completely what we believe they are. Including me. There is always something unexpected within those we meet, those we think we have got to know.

I rowed back, dragged the skiff ashore and bailed out the water that had found its way in. I wondered whether to dig up one of the anthills on the island in order to seal the skiff, but I decided against it. I knew that my daughter would be furious if I killed a colony of ants just to make an old skiff watertight.

She was sitting on the bench at the top of the island. I sat down beside her. It was time to tell her.

‘I’ve been called in for questioning by the police,’ I said.

‘Why?’

‘They think I burned down the house.’

‘And did you?’ she asked without looking at me.

‘No. Did you?’

I got up and went back down to the boathouse. A mixture of anger and fear was growing inside me. I no longer thought that I would be able to control what was going on.

There have been periods in my life when I have briefly turned to drink because of sorrow, fear or anger. Right now I wished I had a bottle of vodka, brandy or schnapps to take with me to my tent.