Хеннинг Манкелль - After the Fire

I asked for the bill. I paid and gave her a hundred francs. She took the money and smiled; I stood up and left. People were still partying. In the distance I could see the flare of rockets soaring into the air in Montmartre. I lingered for a little while; after ten minutes, just as I had decided to move on, Anne came out. She was wearing a suede coat trimmed with fur and a beret. I said hello as she walked past; she looked at me as if she had been molested. I was definitely someone she no longer knew.

I walked through Paris on that long, cold winter’s night, and the following day I flew home. I hadn’t bought any shoes. Nor could I bring myself to end our relationship. It wasn’t until the beginning of February that I managed to say the words, to harden my heart against her despairing sobs, and finally to walk out never to return. Thirty years later I happened to bump into her; by then she was married and had three children. One of the first things she said was that now, with hindsight, she was very glad I had left her. If I hadn’t, our life together would have been a disaster.

I walked around Place Pigalle trying to remember where that bar had been. All the buildings looked just as they had back then, but I still couldn’t work out where it was. Eventually I thought I’d found it; I was sure I recognised the door, the closed curtains. It was still a bar. I hesitated before I went in. I was afraid I would be opening a door to the past. I even feared the same woman would be sitting there smoking her Gitanes. In order to bring myself back to the present day, I took out my phone and looked at the picture of the fire again. Should I call Jansson? I decided against it, put away my phone and went into the bar.

Everything was different. A new counter, brighter lights, a television with the sound off. A few men were sitting at the bar; there was a young barmaid with a ring through her nose and a gemstone in her left ear.

There were no other women; this came as a relief rather than a disappointment. However, the relief worried me; did I no longer know what I wanted? Was I incapable of drinking without keeping my thoughts under control?

I left the bar, hailed a taxi and went back to my hotel. I dropped my clothes in a heap on the floor and got into bed. From the room next door I could hear the sound of a television. I looked at my watch; it was quarter past two. I banged my fist on the wall behind the bed a few times, and the noise stopped.

This is the point I have reached, I thought. I’m just an old man, lying alone in his bed in a hotel in Paris, feeling unwell. My daughter is under arrest in the bowels of a French police station, and a woman who doesn’t love me is staying in a hotel nearby.

I was woken by my phone ringing: Jansson. It was six o’clock. The curtains were moving in the draught from the window; during the early hours of the morning the wind had got up over Paris.

‘The fire is out,’ Jansson said. ‘Did I wake you?’

‘No. Do they know how the fire started?’

‘Alexandersson seems to think it’s exactly the same as your house.’

‘What?’

‘The fire started simultaneously in several different places.’

‘So we have a lunatic on the loose in the archipelago. I was fast asleep when my house went up in flames, and now someone has set fire to an eighty-five-year-old lady’s home.’

‘The dog must have woken her,’ Jansson said thoughtfully. ‘If she hadn’t had the dog, the smoke could have killed her before we got there.’

‘Thanks for letting me know. Have the police been looking for me? Do people still think I set fire to my own house?’

‘I’ve no idea what people think.’

‘I’ll be back in a few days.’

‘I’ve never been to Paris. Sometimes I feel as if I’ve never been any further than Söderköping.’

‘Didn’t you go to the Canaries, years and years ago?’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘Send me another picture,’ I said finally. ‘If you’re still there.’

The picture arrived a couple of minutes later; the house was a ruin. The fire had died down, although I could still see smoke and glowing embers. The coastguard had rigged up bright floodlights, illuminating the remains of the house with a ghostly brilliance. It was just possible to make out the shadowy figures of those who had helped to put out the blaze.

I got out of bed and looked down at the courtyard. Leaves and rubbish were swirling around in the strong wind. There was no sign of the rat I had spotted the previous day.

Lisa was waiting in reception when I went downstairs at ten o’clock. She rose to her feet as soon as she saw me.

‘Let’s go out,’ she said. ‘I need some fresh air.’

She turned into Rue de Vaugirard without knowing what she was doing. I hadn’t told her that this had once been my street, the longest in Paris. We walked towards Porte de Versailles; after about half an hour, when the gusts of wind were making it hard to walk, she led me to a bistro that I recognised from the time when I used to live nearby.

I remembered an occasion when I had had some money and decided to treat myself to breakfast before I embarked on the long trek to the clarinet workshop in Jourdain. I had ordered a hot chocolate and a sandwich. The elderly man who served me, who was probably the owner of the bistro, had stopped dead and bent double, banging his head on the metal counter. Everyone could see that he had been stricken with severe pain of some kind. It was early in the morning, and the bistro was full of people eating and drinking before they went to work. A man in blue overalls was standing next to me with a glass of red wine; he knocked it back just as the man behind the counter collapsed.

I don’t know what happened next. I couldn’t cope with the groaning, so I emptied my cup, picked up my food, put the money in a little plastic dish and walked out.

I went back the next day — in fact I went there almost every day for a month — but I never saw the elderly man again.

One day, over a month after the incident, the waiters were wearing black armbands on their white shirtsleeves.

I had never been back since then. Until now. I recognised the colour of the walls, although the tables and chairs had been replaced. Of course I didn’t recognise any of the staff or customers. What was familiar, I realised, was the sound of glasses being dipped into the washing-up bowls.

Lisa led me to a corner table next to the window overlooking the pavement section, which was closed. The tables and chairs were piled up and chained together. I felt as if I were looking at animals in a stall, waiting for the winter.

‘I used to live near here,’ I said. ‘But you couldn’t possibly have known that.’

‘You must be wondering why I’ve come to Paris,’ Lisa said. ‘We don’t know one another. You’re here to look for your daughter. But why have I come? I’ve even lied to my editor about the reason for my trip.’

‘What did you say to him?’

‘That’s my business. It’s nothing to do with you.’

Her tone was sharp, and we didn’t say anything else for a while.

After we’d finished our drinks, we continued on our way. Rue de Vaugirard seemed endless, just as I remembered from when I had lived there. I recalled a Saturday afternoon when hordes of young people came pouring down the street. Later I found out they were on their way to a concert at Porte de Versailles where an English pop group that everyone was talking about was playing. They were called the Beatles. I knew nothing about their music; I lived in the world of jazz, although I did occasionally attend the organ recitals in the church at Saint-Germain.

This whole excursion seemed utterly pointless. I stopped.

‘Where are we going?’