Хеннинг Манкелль - After the Fire

As we reached the bicycle stands I stumbled and cut my leg. By the time we reached Lisa’s apartment, I was bleeding heavily. In the bathroom she washed and bandaged the wound.

The trip to Paris was over.

As I sat on the toilet watching her tend to my leg, I knew that we were getting close to a critical moment.

I just didn’t know what it was.

The first thing Lisa did after bandaging my leg was to open the balcony door wide. The chilly night air came pouring in.

I watched as she gathered up her post. She was obviously a woman who read a lot of journals and magazines and disliked junk mail.

She asked me what I wanted to eat. Tea. Sandwiches — liver pâté, sardines. She told me to make myself comfortable on the sofa. I offered to help her get it ready, but she just shook her head.

I realised she was having doubts about whether she should have invited me to stay.

I sat down and thought about all the times I had been in a similar situation: alone with a woman with no idea what might happen.

I recalled the first time I had made love, well over fifty years ago. Some friends had told me this girl had ‘loose morals’ and was always up for it. I think her name was Inger and she used to turn up at the school dance. I was fourteen years old. I danced badly and regarded these occasions as a necessary evil in order to lure girls into adventures. At least that’s what I told myself. I spotted her over by the wall. The girls were waiting for the charge from the opposite side of the room, where the boys were poised on invisible starting blocks. I had fortified myself with arrak supplied by Hasse the baker’s son, who pinched it from his father’s bakery, then sold it at a premium in small glass bottles that he bought from the pharmacy. I wasn’t drunk, just far enough gone to have the nerve to dash across the floor. Inger hadn’t a clue who I was. We moved around the floor like small, sweaty icebreakers, forcing our way through the crowd. This wasn’t a dance, more an evening of pushing and shoving. I don’t think we said a single word to one another.

After two ‘dances’, I suggested that we should go. She asked where. I didn’t know. Just away from this dance floor that stank of sweat, booze and cheap perfume. Then she made it very clear that there was no one at home.

She lived in a suburb — I can’t remember the name of it. Bagarmossen, perhaps? We travelled on the underground, still not talking. She was wearing a brown skirt, boots that indicated she had big feet, a white blouse and a dark red coat. She didn’t look in the least like a girl with loose morals who was prepared to go to bed with just about anybody. Then again, what did that kind of girl look like?

She lived in a three-room apartment in a 1950s block. On a shelf I saw a photograph of her father in a conductor’s uniform. I sat down on the sofa, which was covered in cushions, embroidered with various quotations that I have long since forgotten.

Inger disappeared into the bathroom. I heard the toilet flush and wondered what to do. What awaited me was both terrifying and irresistible.

She emerged from the bathroom, stood in front of me and offered me an unexpected helping hand. ‘Do you want to fuck now, or shall we wait a bit?’ she said.

She didn’t explain what we would be waiting for.

‘Now,’ I said, feeling my face go red.

She nodded, walked towards the door of her little bedroom, then turned and raised her eyebrows. I immediately got to my feet and followed her. She pointed to the bathroom.

‘You can use the blue towel.’

I have almost no memory of what happened after that. She had turned off the light, undressed and got into bed; there were soft toys everywhere. I took off my clothes and got in beside her. During a fumbling embrace when I sometimes wasn’t sure whether I was groping teddy bears or her breasts, I pushed inside her and immediately came. She giggled, I cursed my incompetence and angrily tossed several furry creatures on the floor.

‘It’s impossible to fuck among a pile of bears,’ I snapped.

Inger giggled again but said nothing.

I stayed for an hour. We still didn’t talk. Then I got dressed and left.

‘See you,’ I said.

‘No,’ she said. ‘You won’t.’

I sat on Lisa Modin’s sofa all these years later, wondering what Inger had meant. Didn’t she want to see me again, or did she realise that I had got what I came for and was no longer interested in her?

I wondered briefly what had happened to Inger, with her brown skirt and her alleged loose morals. Was she still alive? Had she had a good life? I never saw her again.

My reminiscences of that first inept and humiliating experience were pushed aside as Lisa asked me to join her in the kitchen.

Lisa and I ate and chatted about nothing in particular, then she asked me to clear away and wash up while she used the bathroom. I wiped the table, closed the balcony door then sat on the sofa until she came out in her bathrobe and went into the bedroom.

‘There’s a towel on the side of the bath,’ she called out.

I thought about Inger. So different, and yet so similar.

‘Is it blue?’

‘It’s white — why?’

By the time I had showered and dried my hair, she had turned off the bedroom light, leaving only a floor lamp burning in the living room. I walked over to the bed, let the towel fall and crept between the sheets.

We lay in silence in the darkness. I reached for her hand, but it was clenched into a fist. I didn’t try to open it.

She was asleep when I got up at six and left.

It was cold as I walked to the car. The place was deserted. Driving along the road was like passing through a skilfully constructed set on which no film would ever be made. I imagined that everyone who lived there carried a clapperboard around with them all the time, hoping that they would be able to use it one day.

I drove to the water and got out of the car. In spite of the chill I walked up and down the wooden quay trying to make sense of what had happened last night. My only conclusion was that I really didn’t understand Lisa Modin. Why had she travelled to Paris?

There were no answers. I carried on down to the harbour; I met a car en route and had to slam on my brakes. I thought I recognised a marine engineer, who was clearly drunk. Jansson had once hinted that this guy was an alcoholic, but then you could never be sure when it came to Jansson. People he disliked were always alcoholics.

I pulled into my parking space at Oslovski’s house. A light drizzle had begun to fall. I got out my bag and was about to call Jansson to ask him to pick me up when I decided to check whether Oslovski was at home and had already started working on her car in the garage. I knew she was an early riser. The gravel drive was freshly raked, the curtains closed. I listened for any sounds from the garage, but all I could hear was the wind blowing off the sea. I thought I might as well go up to the garage anyway. As I rounded the corner of the house, I saw that the door was ajar. Oslovski must be there; she was always very careful about locking up.

Nordin had told me that Oslovski had once been in his shop, searching for money in her trouser pocket. She had taken out the biggest bunch of keys Nordin had ever seen. He had often wondered how a person who lived in such a small house could possibly need as many keys as a prison guard.

I knocked on the door, simultaneously pushing it open. The light was on.

Oslovski was lying on the cement floor behind the car, which was jacked up. As usual she was wearing her blue overalls, with the company name ALGOTS just visible in faded letters.