Юхан Теорин - The Voices Beyond

‘Stenvik doesn’t really seem to have been affected,’ John said. ‘The problem is mainly at the Ölandic Resort.’

‘That’s unfortunate.’ Gerlof sipped his coffee. ‘Right in the middle of the high season, too... It’s a bit of a disaster, I’d say.’

‘Absolutely. Apparently, the sewage disposal system on the campsite has broken down, things are so bad... and people have started to leave. They’re packing up their tents and caravans and heading home.’

Gerlof had expected John to look pleased, but he knew that if something was bad for one campsite, it was bad for all of them. People who went home because of a bad experience in a holiday village or campsite usually bad-mouthed the whole island.

He liked standing here in the glow of the setting sun, with a warm breeze blowing in off the Sound. But he wouldn’t be here for much longer. In five days, he was due to move back into his room at the residential home in Marnäs, and in a way the summer would be over, as far as he was concerned. It would be much more difficult to get out and about.

Which was a shame. This might be his last summer in the village.

Gerlof swatted a fly away from his cheek and looked to the south. The inlet was quiet. A few people were swimming by the jetty, and there were still plenty of sun-worshippers on the beach.

A short distance away, he could see the cairn, and thought about what he had told Jonas. That’s not the real cairn.

Then he screwed up his eyes; something wasn’t right.

‘The bunker door is open,’ he said.

John stopped what he was doing. ‘What are you talking about?’

Gerlof pointed to the other end of the inlet, at the debris the stonemasons had left behind on the rocks above the shore.

‘The door of the old bunker... it’s open. It’s usually closed, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right,’ John said. ‘The army fixed a padlock to it many years ago. I haven’t checked, but I should think it’s still there.’

Gerlof saw signs of movement; a figure emerged from the bunker, but he was too far away for Gerlof to be able to make out any details.

He thought back to what Jonas Kloss had said about the man who suddenly appeared by the cairn, then simply disappeared.

‘Perhaps he’s a phantom soldier,’ he said.

The Homecomer walked slowly out of the bunker and into the diminishing warmth of the sun. He secured the door with a padlock he had brought from Einar Wall’s collection.

His back was stiff and aching. He had been stooping beneath the low concrete ceiling for over an hour. It had felt like being back in that endless ditch in the Soviet Union.

He had managed to get into a rhythm, digging inside the bunker, but it was a slow process. Behind each rock he dug out there seemed to be two more, bigger than the first. The ground here on the island consisted of more stones than earth. He drove the pickaxe into the wall, prised out stones and earth that came rattling down, then repeated the same movement two hundred times or more during the course of an evening, toiling away like a miner in a prison camp.

The sweat was pouring off him on this warm evening; his arms ached.

Outside, in the bottom of the dip, he stretched his limbs, looking to the south. He couldn’t see the Ölandic Resort from here, but he thought about the hum of the high-pressure pump he and Rita had used down there. It had done its job.

He glanced to the north. The shore was almost deserted by now, but there were still a few holidaymakers by the jetty. Perhaps they had come from the Ölandic, escaping the problems with the water in the resort.

On the other side of the inlet, he could see a couple of old fishermen by a boathouse, painting a wooden gig. It was a peaceful scene, and it made the Homecomer think of his grandfather, who would always work on his nets and boats in the evenings at Rödtorp, totally absorbed in the task.

A sense of peace.

He could go over to the old men, talk to them, swap stories. Find a little serenity, just for a while. But he knew who he carried inside him. Sooner or later, Vlad would emerge, and he was always on his guard.

Aron is eighteen years old. He wears his dead friend Vlad’s warm clothes, sleeps in Vlad’s bunk and eats out of Vlad’s mess tin. Some of the prisoners know or suspect that he is not really a Soviet citizen, that his name is not Vladimir, but Sven has managed to keep them quiet. So far.

Old Grisha is the biggest problem. Grisha knows , and he wants money to maintain his silence.

‘Ready money,’ he says to Aron one evening when they are alone. ‘Real roubles. Otherwise, I’ll go to Polynov.’

Vlad merely nods. Polynov is the commandant, a moustachioed former police officer who struts around with a riding crop when he inspects the prisoners. But Polynov is interested in only two things: an orderly camp and strong vodka.

Grisha is the only one who cares about money. He is the last capitalist in the camp.

Capitalists deserve to die.

Aron has to do something, but he can’t ask his stepfather for help. Sometimes, he can meet Sven’s eye in the exercise yard, but he dare not speak to him. Sven is a foreigner.

Nor can he visit Vladimir’s grave. Vlad was buried with the other prisoners who had died, in an ever-growing cemetery in the forest to the south of the camp. There is no cross over the grave, but on one of the walls in Aron’s hut Sven has carved ARON FREDH 1918–1936 next to hundreds of other names. For appearances’ sake.

Sven looks thinner and shorter each time Aron sees him. His stepfather reminds him of a restless dog, constantly moving. He sidles along by the huts, staring at people. If one of his fellow prisoners happens to say the wrong thing to him, there is always trouble; Sven spits or throws a punch, but he usually hits nothing but thin air. He can’t even fight any more.

Had Aron really been afraid of his stepfather when he was little? Now, as Vlad, he isn’t afraid of him at all. Sven is like an old mongrel among a pack of young dogs.

Sometimes, he sneaks into Vlad’s hut and hides little notes to Aron in his bed, written in Swedish. This is incredibly dangerous. Vlad rips them up and eats the scraps of paper; he daren’t even read what Sven has written.

Sven’s plan to make Aron a Soviet citizen has worked but, like Vlad, he no longer believes they will be able to escape from the new country.

How could it happen? How could Sven and Aron ever get away?

First of all, they would have to get through the barbed wire surrounding the camp, past the guards. Then they would somehow have to find their way through the vast Russian forests, through the snow and the cold. Through a country where, according to the rumours, citizens receive one hundred roubles if they go to the police with the severed hand of a fugitive.

It is too risky. And eventually it becomes impossible, because, one day, Sven is gone.

Aron assumes he was taken during the night, just like all the other foreigners. One day, there is no sign of him in the exercise yard, and when Aron looks in his hut he sees only an empty bed. Two days later, another prisoner has taken it over, because it is closer to the stove.

This happens all the time, of course; prisoners simply disappear. Someone comes for them during the night, and they are taken away. No one asks questions.

Vlad keeps quiet. He doesn’t care about foreigners.

But Sven is Aron’s only link with his home in Sweden, and he has to find him. He tries searching for Sven in different parts of the camp but is met with silence and frightened looks.

Only a white-haired farmer from Karelia gives him a thin smile one day as they stand in the mud in the yard.