Хеннинг Манкелль - After the Fire

I opened my eyes; I ought to turn back. But instead I got in the car and kept on going.

I drove down a steep hill, and then the trees began to thin out. I passed a few houses by the side of the road; some were empty, dilapidated, while others were perhaps still occupied. I stopped the car again and got out. No movement, not a sound. The forest had crept right up to the houses, swallowing the rusty tools, the overgrown meadows. A lost autumn bumble bee buzzed past my face. The two houses that might have been occupied, or at least still had curtains at the windows, lay in the middle of the little village. I saw a mailbox with the lid open; there was a sodden, half-rotten newspaper inside. It was the local paper that Lisa Modin worked for; three weeks old, its main story was about a horse that had died after being driven too hard in a trotting race.

But no people. No one peeping from behind their curtains, as I had seen at Oslovski’s house. No one wondering who I was. Right at the end of the village lay the house that was in the worst state. The grass was overgrown, the gate hanging off its hinges into the ditch. I went into the garden. The remains of a kick sled were hidden among the bushes. The porch door stood ajar; I went inside the deserted house. The rooms were empty, the wallpaper was peeling off, a broken table had been overturned. There were few traces of the former inhabitants. A dead mouse lay on the stairs. The whole place seemed to be a sad sarcophagus, waiting for the walls to collapse and bury everything that had been there, once and for all.

I went upstairs. In one of the bedrooms the roof had fallen in, and the floor had rotted because of the rain.

But there was a bed. I stopped dead. It was made up with sheets that couldn’t have been there for long; they were clean, ironed, perhaps even unused.

I went into the three other bedrooms: no beds or other furniture. Only in that one room, where the rain came in, was there a made-up bed.

Behind the peeling wallpaper I found a newspaper that had once been used to provide insulation. 12 May 1934. A landowner born in 1852 had passed away. A priest by the name of Johannes Wiman had spoken at his funeral.

There was a combine harvester for sale, and Svea Förlag were advertising a book that ‘seriously considered the difficult Jewish question’. The price was three kronor, and speedy delivery was guaranteed.

The newspaper crumbled away between my fingers.

But who slept in that bed? The question stayed with me as I left the house.

I returned to my car and drove back to the main road. When I parked at Oslovski’s house, I could hear someone hammering. The garage door was ajar; she must be at home. I pushed the door open and she turned around. Again I saw her fear, but as soon as she realised it was me, she relaxed. She was holding a bumper.

The day Oslovski bought the house, a truck had arrived with a vintage car in pretty bad condition. Nordin had seen the whole thing and had wondered what kind of strange female car enthusiast had moved in.

Now, after all these years, I knew the car was a 1958 DeSoto Fireflite four-door sedan, and that Oslovski was restoring it from something resembling a heap of scrap metal to a shining vintage car. I had shown no interest whatsoever, but she had informed me that it had 305 horsepower and that the compression was 10:1. Needless to say I had no idea what that meant, just as I didn’t understand the significance of the fact that the tyres were Goodyear, size 8 × 14.

However, I had realised how much passion this strange woman put into her car. When she had been away, she often returned with spare parts gleaned from some scrapyard.

‘A new find?’ I asked, nodding in the direction of the bumper.

‘I’ve been searching for this for four years,’ Oslovski said. ‘I eventually found it in Gamleby.’

‘Do you need many more parts?’

‘The clutch. I’ll probably have to go up north to find something suitable.’

‘Can’t you advertise?’

‘I want to find everything myself. I know it’s stupid, but that’s just the way it is.’

I nodded and walked away. After only a few metres I heard her eager hammer blows once again. I wondered where I would find the old car that could fill my life with meaning. Perhaps that was why my house had burned down? So that rebuilding it would give me a purpose?

As I was carrying my bags to the quayside I noticed an ambulance in front of the chandlery. Nordin was carried out on a stretcher. I put down my bags and ran. Nordin’s eyes were closed, an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth. The paramedics were very young.

‘I’m a doctor and a friend,’ I said. ‘What’s happened? Is it his head or his heart?’

One of the paramedics looked dubiously at me. He had freckles, and spots around his nose.

‘I’m a doctor,’ I repeated in a louder voice.

‘His head, we think,’ said the man, who was really no more than a boy.

‘Who made the call?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

I nodded and stepped back. Perhaps I should have gone with Nordin to the hospital, but when the door closed and the ambulance drove off, I just stood there.

I was surrounded by too much death, too much misery. Had Nordin been so upset by my daughter’s appalling behaviour that he’d had a stroke?

Veronika came running down from the cafe, wondering what was going on. I explained as best I could.

‘Why didn’t you go with him?’ she said. ‘You’re a doctor.’

I didn’t have a satisfactory answer to give her, and in any case she seemed to have lost interest in me.

‘I’ll call the family,’ she said. ‘Someone needs to lock up, and they won’t know what’s happened.’

Suddenly we heard the ambulance’s siren; it was already quite a long way off. We stood in silence, both equally upset. Veronika ran back upstairs, and I fetched my bags and put them under the projecting roof of the kiosk which sells smoked fish in the summer.

I walked out to the end of the quay as a light drizzle began to fall. I executed a few dance steps to shake off the bad feeling from the empty house and from what had befallen Nordin.

Then I called Jansson. He answered on the second ring. Of course he would come and pick me up.

I waited for him under the roof with my bags. The faint smell of the summer’s smoked fish lingered in the air.

Before I had even managed to stow my bags in the boat, Jansson wanted to know what was the matter with Nordin. How he could already know that something had happened was one of those mysteries I would never solve. He was like an old-fashioned telephone exchange operator, who put through calls then listened in.

‘It could be some kind of stroke,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure.’

‘Is he going to die?’

‘Let’s hope not. Can we go now?’

Deep down Jansson is afraid of me. Not just of me, but everyone. His constant desire to help, to be of service, hides his anxiety that we will all turn on him. He is afraid that we will tire of him and stop contacting him when we need help.

I noticed it now. He cowered as if I had delivered a physical blow, then started the engine and began to reverse out of the harbour — much too quickly, as if he feared my impatience.

I usually feel slightly guilty when I have been too sharp with people, but to my surprise I experienced a certain satisfaction at having given Jansson a bit of a scare. I made it clear that I had had enough of his ingratiating self-importance. His friendliness irritated me until I could no longer control my impatience. Several times when he had complained about his imaginary aches and pains I had been tempted to lie, to tell him that he was suffering from a fatal illness. I had never done it, but as I sat in his boat on the way home I thought it would soon be time to give him a serious fright. I would deliver a death sentence when he was lying on the bench outside my boathouse being examined by these doctor’s hands, which he respected more than anything in the world.