Хеннинг Манкелль - After the Fire

When I had reached Arlanda and parked my car, I stepped straight into a world swarming with people. Long queues stretched from every check-in desk. I hadn’t a clue what to do. I couldn’t tell you when I was last in an airport.

It was a while before I managed to pull myself together sufficiently to start looking for a ticket office. According to one of the big electronic information boards, the 19:30 Air France flight to Paris was delayed by two hours. That was the only departure I could find, but luckily there were still spaces. I paid with the credit card I had collected from the bank earlier in the day. I was holding the ticket in my hand when I realised I had an important question for the woman behind the glass in her blue uniform.

‘I’ve left my passport at home,’ I said. ‘As a Swedish citizen, I assume I can travel to France without it?’

‘As long as you have ID, that’s fine,’ she replied. ‘Otherwise the police here in the airport can issue a passport which is valid for one journey.’

I went and sorted out a provisional passport, then changed some money, found the right check-in desk and went through security. In the departure hall I bought a cheap suitcase on wheels. I transferred the contents of Harriet’s old bag into it and purchased some more shirts and underwear. I sat down by one of the huge windows overlooking the tarmac, where the planes were squatting at their gates like beasts in their stalls.

I called Lisa Modin; she answered just as I was about to give up hope. I briefly explained what had happened — my daughter’s cry for help, my hurried departure.

‘Can I ask you a favour?’ I said. ‘I haven’t even managed to sort out a hotel. Could you possibly use your computer to find something that’s in the city centre but no more than three-star? From tomorrow — the plane’s delayed, so I’ll be arriving in the middle of the night.’

‘How much do you want to spend? And for how many nights?’

‘I’ve no idea about the cost — three-star is three-star. I need the room for at least two nights.’

‘No problem.’

She called me back after twenty minutes to say that she had found a hotel.

‘It’s called the Hotel Celtic, and it’s in Montparnasse, Rue d’Odessa, not far from Rue de Vaugirard.’

At first I wondered if she was joking. Of all the thousands of streets in Paris, Rue de Vaugirard is the one I know best. During my longest stay in the city, in 1963, I rented a room on Rue de Cadix, just off the far end of that long street, right next to the Porte de Versailles. It was a forty-minute walk from Montparnasse. When I was out and about at night I often saw packs of huge rats by the kerb moving from one drain to another. Some of them were as big as cats. It was frightening; I felt as if they could change direction and attack me at any moment.

At night my footsteps echoed on the cobblestones. My shoes were brown and far from clean. I had been given them by someone I met by chance in a jazz club in Rue Mouffetard. He thought the shoes I was wearing, with the left-hand sole coming away, looked dreadful. Late that night I accompanied him and his girlfriend to one of the streets behind the Jardin du Luxembourg. He lived right at the top of a house in one of the tiny garrets that had once provided accommodation for servants. He didn’t want to come all the way down again, so he tossed the brown shoes out of the window. They hit the cobblestones with a short, sharp smack. I put them on there and then, and they fitted perfectly.

‘Are you still there?’ Lisa asked. ‘Shall I make the booking? There are rooms available.’

‘Yes, please. Will they want my credit card number?’

‘I’ll give them mine to secure the booking, then you can pay with yours.’

‘Won’t you come with me?’

Only when I heard myself say those words did I realise that that was what I had been planning ever since I asked her to find me a hotel. I wanted to entice her to come with me, even though I would be searching for my daughter.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Exactly what I say. Come to Paris. I’ll pay for everything. To say thank you for the night I spent in your apartment.’

‘A trip to Paris is a big thank you for an uncomfortable sofa.’

‘You’re wrong.’

She laughed.

‘You’ve got my phone number,’ I went on. ‘Call me when you arrive and I’ll meet you.’

‘I’m not coming. We don’t know one another.’

‘I know myself. I mean what I say.’

‘Where are you?’

‘I’m at Arlanda, waiting for my flight. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more lonely in my life. I can’t imagine what it will be like when I’m dead.’

‘What do you mean?’ she said again.

‘That death seems to be a very lonely place, and an equally lonely state.’

‘I’ve got work to do. I can’t just swan off to Paris.’

‘Write about Paris. Write about the arsonist who’s on the run, looking for his daughter.’

‘Have you managed to get hold of her?’

‘No. I’m getting more and more worried.’

She didn’t say anything for a long time; life seemed to stop. Lisa Modin was present but silent. I was waiting for her to say that she loved me. I didn’t love her, I just had an overpowering need for a woman, any woman, and I was ready to say anything in order to persuade her.

When I was younger, a woman I had dumped accused me of being like a spider, catching my prey then watching it struggle. I never ate my victims, I just scuttled away to spin a new web.

‘Are you coming or not?’ I asked when the silence began to feel uncomfortable.

‘Not.’

‘I’ll wait for you.’

‘What exactly are you expecting?’

‘Nothing. Company, that’s all.’

‘This conversation is making me uneasy.’

‘That wasn’t my intention.’

‘I’ll text you the address of the hotel.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I can’t talk any more right now.’

‘Why not?’

She ended the call, and neither of us rang back.

The plane was indeed two hours late by the time we took off. When Paris finally lay glittering below us, we had to wait in a holding pattern before we were allowed to land. I stayed in my seat, observing my fellow passengers as they grabbed their outdoor clothing and hand luggage. It was as if they had all lost vital time and were now pushing and shoving to get off the plane as quickly as possible. I watched the whole thing with growing astonishment. A flock of people, desperate to flee. But from what? Cramped seats, fear of flying or their own lives? Had I been like them once upon a time, a person who regarded time as a game where winning or losing was all that mattered? I knew I had, but now that time really was an issue for me, the important thing was to be careful with whatever I had left.

I was the last person to disembark. One of the stewardesses was yawning so widely that I could almost hear her jaw crack. It reminded me of an occasion when I had arrived in Paris by train, having developed severe toothache the previous night in Hamburg. It was a very cold winter and I had stayed put on the train when it stopped at the Gare du Nord until a sour-faced conductor flung open the door of my compartment and ordered me to get off. I was sixteen years old at the time, escaping from a muddled decision to leave school.

The airport, with its many escalators, reminded me of a factory I had visited with my father when he was running the canteen there for a brief period. We arrived early in the morning, just before the first shift was due to clock on. I had the same feeling now as I approached passport control and customs. I was waved through without anyone asking for my passport or ID; no one was interested in my suitcase either.