Хеннинг Манкелль - After the Fire

There was no reason for my fear of being left alone. My mother regarded it as her life’s work to make sure I was always clean and nicely dressed, while my father believed that a good upbringing was the key to success in life. He was rarely at home because he was always working as a waiter in various restaurants. However, whenever he did have time off or was unemployed because he had been sacked for some perceived insolence towards the maître d’, he would open up his very own training academy for me. I would have to open the door between our kitchen and the cramped living room and pretend to show a lady in ahead of me. He would set the table for a fine dinner — perhaps even the Nobel dinner — with countless glasses and knives and forks so that I could learn the etiquette of eating and drinking while at the same time conversing with the elegant ladies sitting on either side of me. Now and again I would be faced with the winner of the Nobel Prize in physics, or the Swedish foreign minister, or the even more distinguished prime minister.

It was a terrifying game. I was pleased when he praised me but constantly worried about doing something wrong in the world into which he led me. There was always an invisible venomous snake lurking among the glasses and cutlery.

My father had actually worked as a waiter at the Nobel dinner on one occasion. His station had been down at the end of the furthest table, which meant he had never been anywhere near the prize-winners or royal guests. But he wanted me to learn how to behave in situations that might arise in life, however unlikely.

I don’t remember him playing with me when I was a child. What I do remember, however, is that he taught me how to do up my own tie and how to knot a cravat before I was ten years old. I also learned how to fold serviettes into a whole array of artistic shapes.

I must have fallen asleep eventually. It’s not unusual for me to seek refuge in sleep when I have suffered some kind of trauma. I can drop off at any time of the day, wherever I happen to be. It’s as if I force myself to sleep, in the same way I used to search for hiding places when I was a child. I set up secret dens among the bins and heaps of coal in the yards behind the apartment blocks where we lived. I would seek out thickets of undergrowth among the trees. Throughout my life I have left a series of undiscovered hiding places behind me. But none of these hiding places has ever been as perfect as sleep.

I woke up shivering. I had left my watch on the bedside table in the house, so that was gone. I went outside and looked at the ruin, which was still smoking. The odd ragged cloud was scudding across the sky; judging by the position of the sun, I guessed it was somewhere between ten and eleven o’clock.

I went down to the boathouse and carefully opened the black-painted door, because the hinges are in poor shape. If I pull too hard, the door comes off completely. There was a pair of dungarees and an old sweater hanging on a hook inside; among the tins of paint I also found a pair of thick socks that my grandmother had knitted for me many years ago. They had been far too big at the time, but now they were a perfect fit. I searched among the spent batteries and rusty tools until I found a woolly hat advertising a television set that had been sold in the 1960s. ALWAYS THE VERY BEST PICTURE it said in barely legible letters.

The mice had been at work — it looked as if it had been peppered with pellets from a shotgun. I pulled it on and went back outside.

I had just closed the door when I spotted a paper bag on the jetty. It contained a mobile phone, some underwear and a packet of sandwiches. Jansson must have come back while I was asleep. He had also left a note on a torn-off piece of a brown envelope.

Phone charged. Keep it. Underpants clean.

Next to the bag stood a wellington boot for the right foot. Mine were green, but this one was black. It was also larger because Jansson has big feet.

There was another note inside the boot.

Sorry, haven’t got green.

I wondered briefly why he hadn’t brought the other half of the black pair, but Jansson operates according to a logic I have never understood.

I took the bag and the boot back to the caravan. Jansson’s flimsy underpants were far too big, but there was something deeply touching about the fact that he had brought them.

I kept my pyjama jacket on as a shirt and pulled on the dungarees and the sweater. I found some paper bags in a drawer, screwed them up and used them to pad out the black wellington boot then sat on the bed and ate a couple of Jansson’s sandwiches; I needed the strength to decide what I was going to do.

A person who has lost everything doesn’t have much time. Or perhaps the reverse is true. I didn’t know.

I heard the sound of an approaching boat. I could tell it wasn’t Jansson; after all the years I have spent living out here, I have learned to identify different types of engine and individual boats.

I listened as the vessel came closer and closer, and identified it as one of the coastguard’s smaller boats, a fast thirty-foot aluminium launch equipped with two Volvo diesel engines.

I put down the sandwiches, put on my holey hat and went outside. The blue-painted boat swung around the headland before I had reached the jetty.

There were three people on board. To my surprise, a young woman was at the helm. She was wearing the coastguard uniform, her blonde hair spilling out from beneath her cap. It was the first time I had seen a woman working on a patrol boat.

She looked alarmingly young, little more than a teenager in fact.

The man standing legs wide apart in the prow, holding the mooring rope, was called Alexandersson. He was about ten years younger than me and the direct opposite of me in physical terms: short and overweight. He was also short-sighted and his hair was thinning.

He was a police officer. A few years ago, after a spate of break-ins at closed-up summer cottages early in the spring, he had called on all the permanent residents to see if we might have noticed anything suspicious. They never found out who was responsible, but Alexandersson and I got on very well. I had no idea whether he knew anything about my past, but after his first visit I thought he could have been the brother I never had.

He owned a little summer cottage on one of the small skerries, which were known as Bräkorna. Whenever he came to see me, we would have a cup of coffee, talk about our health, then discuss the wind and the weather. Neither of us had any reason to get into more serious issues. We would quite happily sit in silence for long periods of time, listening to the birds or the wind soughing in the treetops.

Alexandersson had been married for many years, and his children were grown up. Then all of a sudden his wife left him. I have no idea why; I never asked. I sensed a deep sorrow within him. Perhaps I recognised myself in his grief? Yet another of those questions I am incapable of answering.

Alexandersson landed clumsily on the jetty. He looped the rope around one of the bollards before shaking my hand. A man I had never seen before came out on deck and also jumped ashore. He had seemed unsure of how to behave on a boat that was never completely still. He shook my hand and informed me that his name was Robert Lundin and that he was a fire investigation officer. I couldn’t place his accent right away, but I suspected that he came from somewhere up in Norrland, away from the coast.

The young woman had switched off the engine and made fast the stern mooring rope. She came over and nodded to me. She really was very young.

‘Alma Hamrén,’ she said. ‘I’m very sorry about your house.’

I nodded in return, suddenly on the verge of tears. Alexandersson realised what was happening.