Хеннинг Манкелль - After the Fire

‘Maybe Germany?’ I said. I looked at my watch. ‘We’ll be in Hamburg in five or six hours; there’s always a break there.’

‘Wake me up when we get there. I love the fact that nobody knows where I am. A train racing through the night. If I could write novels, I would write about this journey.’

‘Would I be in your story?’

She didn’t answer. She had already closed her eyes and pulled her coat over her head.

I must have dozed off too. I woke up when the train stopped, and in the pale light on the platform I could see that we were in Hamburg. The man opposite got up and left. Lisa was still sleeping, one leg dangling off the seat.

We were exactly on time; it was quarter to three in the morning. In contrast to my trip all those years ago, there was no need to change trains, although we would be waiting here for thirty-five minutes. I touched Lisa’s shoulder through her coat. She threw it off as if she had been attacked, blinking at me in bewilderment.

‘We’re in Hamburg,’ I said. ‘We’ll be here for half an hour.’

‘I was asleep,’ she said, still only half-awake. ‘Such a deep sleep. I dreamed about a hole that suddenly opened up.’

‘I’m going to get some fresh air,’ I said.

Lisa pulled on her shoes, stood up and ran her fingers through her hair.

‘Can we leave our bags?’ she asked.

‘Someone usually walks up and down keeping an eye on the train. Anyway, we’ll be able to see what’s going on from upstairs.’

We were quite close to an escalator leading to the upper floor, where shops, cafes and the ticket office were located. It was cold when we got off. A man in uniform was already patrolling the platform, monitoring the train.

I asked if Lisa was hungry.

‘Are you?’ she said, sounding surprised. ‘At three o’clock in the morning?’

We bought two cups of tea to take away from a cafe. A long-haired man with a grubby rucksack was fast asleep at one of the tables. It seemed to me that he had been there for ever, the timeless vagabond, constantly reborn, always looking exactly the same. A small group of apathetic, possibly homeless youngsters was sitting at another table. They formed a sharp contrast to a couple in their thirties who were tenderly stroking each other’s cheeks and hair.

Lisa walked over to the barrier; from up here it was possible to see every platform in the almost deserted station, with its domed roof made of iron and glass, the panes grubby with the accumulated dirt of so many years. She placed her cup on the barrier.

I took a risk and put my arm around her. She didn’t resist, but she gently pulled away.

‘Don’t do that,’ she said. ‘Just stay where you are. If things happen too fast, they always go wrong.’

A scruffy, emaciated junkie came up to us, begging for money. I gave him one euro; when he asked for more, I shouted at him to clear off. He moved away; Lisa watched him go.

‘I don’t understand how people find the courage to have children,’ she said. ‘When the result could be a beggar in a railway station.’

‘That’s rather cynical. Life guarantees nothing but constant risk. That also applies to having children.’

‘Did you never think that way? When you were waiting for your daughter to be born?’

‘I knew nothing about her. I’ve already told you that.’

We threw our empty paper cups in the bin and went back to the train. Some new passengers had joined our carriage. I wondered whether to suggest that Lisa and I should move so that we could sit next to one another, but I realised she wouldn’t want to. There was no need to ask her. As soon as she sat down she had established the boundaries and closed her eyes, as if I had no access to her world.

We continued our journey northwards. I don’t know if Lisa slept, but she snuggled under her coat once more. I sat gazing out into the night, with fragments of memory swirling around in my mind like truncated film clips. When the conductor passed by, I asked if there was a buffet car open. He shook his head, explaining that there was a drinks machine at the back of the train. I knew it was unlikely to contain anything alcoholic.

We arrived in Stockholm on time, having eaten both breakfast and lunch on board. Lisa had accepted my offer of a lift home. Neither of us mentioned the brief embrace in Hamburg. I couldn’t decide whether it all seemed like a dream to her, something that hadn’t really happened. For me the reverse was true. I had sat opposite her for hours as the train took us to Copenhagen and on through the Swedish autumn landscape. I wondered if it was possible to yearn for a person who was less than a metre away.

She spent much of the journey absorbed in a book about the history of Swedish journalism. I had nothing to read but my pocket diary. I went through all the different names listed for each day of the year, tried to imagine myself as something other than Fredrik. Only Filip seemed even remotely possible. When I had run out of names to consider, I picked up my pen and made anagrams out of Fredrik Welin and Lisa Modin. Hers was easier to have fun with than mine.

Refkrid Nilew wasn’t as interesting as Masdi Olin.

We caught the train from the central station in Stockholm to the airport. A cold rain was falling. I collected my car and spent ages circling and trying various exits before I eventually found the right one and picked Lisa up outside Terminal 3.

Southwards through the rain. The heat inside the car was unpleasant. The traffic was heavy, everyone was in a hurry. It didn’t thin out until we were past Södertälje. I asked Lisa if she was hungry.

‘I’m just enjoying the trip; I don’t want it to end,’ she replied. ‘I’m like a child who can never get enough.’

‘Enough of what?’

She shook her head and didn’t say any more. I could see the wet surface of the road shimmering in the headlights, and I thought I probably felt the same. This trip could go on forever as far as I was concerned.

We had reached the dark depths of the Kolmården forest when she asked me to stop in a parking area. She got out of the car and disappeared into the gloom. I switched on the radio and listened to the news; it seemed to me that I had heard it all before. I turned it off as Lisa got back in the car. It was pouring with rain now and her hair was soaking wet.

‘So what’s going on in the world?’ she asked.

‘Everything. All over again. Or afresh. Always the same, always different.’

Outside Norrköping we stopped at a service station for something to eat. Lisa tasted her food, then pushed away the plate.

‘We ought to complain,’ she said. ‘That’s inedible.’

‘I’ll go and say something.’

‘No — if I can’t do it myself, nobody is going to do it for me.’

She pulled the plate towards her and ate small forkfuls of the fish gratin. A quarrel flared at a nearby table: a couple of young men started fighting before their companions managed to calm them down.

We drove on through the darkness. I had to slam the brakes on just past Söderköping when a hare ran across the road. We didn’t say much during the journey, we just shared the silence, which I found difficult. I wanted to talk to her, but I didn’t know what I wanted to talk about.

We arrived at Lisa’s apartment block shortly after ten. The cold rain was still falling. I put my jacket over my head and lifted her suitcase out of the boot.

‘How are you going to get home tonight?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know yet.’

‘Stay here.’

I could hear from her voice that this wasn’t an offer made on the spur of the moment; she had been thinking about it for a while. I grabbed my bag, locked the car, and we hurried over to the door.