Henning Mankell - The Return of the Dancing Master

“Is it going to snow?” he said.

Lindman liked the dialect. There was something friendly about it, almost innocent. “Could be,” he said. “But isn’t it a little early? It’s only November.”

The man shook his head. “It can snow here in September, June even.” The man was quite old. His face was wrinkled and he could use a shave. “Are you looking for somebody?” he said, making no attempt to conceal his curiosity.

“I’m just visiting. And thought I’d take a walk.”

Lindman made up his mind on the spot. He’d told Larsson he wouldn’t talk to Berggren, but he hadn’t promised not to talk about her. “A nice house,” he said, pointing to the house he’d just passed.

The man nodded. “Elsa takes good care of her house. The garden too. Do you know her?”

“No.”

The man looked at him, as if he were waiting for the next step. “The name’s Björn Wigren,” he said, eventually. “The longest trip I’ve ever made was to Hede, once upon a time. Everybody travels the world nowadays. Not me. I lived on the other side of the river when I was a boy. I suppose I’ll have to go back over the river one of these days. To the cemetery.”

“My name’s Stefan. Stefan Lindman.”

“Just visiting, you say?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have relatives here?”

“No. I’m just passing through.”

“And you’ve come out for a walk?”

“That’s right.”

The conversation petered out. Wigren’s curiosity was natural, not aggressive at all. Lindman tried think of a way of leading the conversation towards Elsa Berggren.

“I’ve lived here in my house since 1959,” the man said. “But I’ve never known a stranger to take a walk here. Not at this time of the year, anyway.”

“There’s always a first time.”

“I could offer you a cup of coffee,” said Wigren. “If you’d like one? My wife’s dead. The kids have left the nest.”

“Coffee would be nice.”

They went in through the gate. Had Wigren been standing in the street specifically to catch somebody who could share his loneliness?

His house was a bungalow. On a wall in the entrance hall was The Gypsy Woman , her breast bared. There were also several trophies, including a pair of elk antlers. Lindman counted fourteen points, and wondered whether that was a lot or something less impressive. On the kitchen table was a thermos flask, and a plate covered by a napkin. Wigren produced a second cup, and invited Lindman to sit.

“We don’t need to talk,” he said, surprisingly. “You can drink coffee with a stranger and not say a word.”

They drank a cup of coffee and each of them ate a cinnamon bun. A clock on the kitchen wall sounded at the quarter hour. Lindman asked himself how people had managed to communicate with each other before coffee had penetrated as far as Sweden.

“I gather you’re retired,” Lindman said — and realized at once what a stupid thing that was to say.

“I worked in the forest for thirty years,” Wigren said. “Sometimes I think about how hard we worked — not that anybody has the slightest idea about that nowadays. We loggers were slaves under the thumb of the big forestry companies. I don’t think people realize what a blessing it was when the power saw was invented. But then I had back trouble and threw in the towel. I spent my last few years making roads. I don’t know if I was any use to them. I spent most of my time minding a machine and sharpening skates for schoolchildren. I did do one useful thing while I was allegedly helping to build roads. I learned English. Sat there night after night, wrestling with books and tapes. I was on the point of giving up several times, but I stuck it out. Then I retired, and two days after my last day at work, my wife died on me. I woke up in the morning, but she was already cold. That was seventeen years ago. I turned eighty-two last August.”

Lindman raised an eyebrow. He found it hard to believe.

“I’m not kidding,” Wigren said, seeing Lindman’s surprise. “I am eighty-two years old, and I’m in such good health that I’m counting on scoring ninety at least, and maybe more. Whatever difference that will make.”

“I’ve got cancer,” Lindman said. “I don’t know if I’ll even make it to forty.” The words came out of the blue.

Wigren raised an eyebrow. “It’s a bit unusual to tell somebody that you’ve got cancer, when you don’t know each other.”

“I have no idea why I said that.”

Wigren produced the plate with buns. “You said it because you needed to say it. If you want to say more, I’m all ears.”

“I’d rather not.’

“Okay, we’ll put that aside. If you want to say anything, okay. If you don’t, that’s also okay.”

Lindman saw how he could turn the conversation in the direction he wanted.

“If somebody wanted to buy a house around here like the one we were looking at, for example, how much would it cost?”

“Elsa’s house, you mean? Houses are cheap around here. I keep my eye on the ads. Not in the papers, on the Internet. I figured I had better find out how to do that. It took time, but I think I got there in the end. I’ve got plenty of time, after all. I have a daughter who works for the council in Gavle. She came here and brought her computer with her, and showed me what to do. Now I chat with a fellow in Canada called Jim — he’s ninety-six and also worked in the forests. There’s no limit to what those computer things can do. We’re busy trying to set up a site where old loggers and lumberjacks can talk to each other when they feel like it. What are your favorite websites?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know much about that; I don’t even have a computer.”

The man on the other side of the table looked worried.

“You must get yourself one. Especially if you’re sick. There are tons of people all over the world with cancer. I’ve seen that with my own eyes. I once looked up spinal cancer, which is the worst thing I can possibly imagine. I got 250,000 matches.” He paused. “Needless to say, I have no intention of talking about cancer,” he said. “As you said yourself.”

“It’s not a problem. Besides, I don’t have cancer of the spine. At least, not as far as I know.”

“I wasn’t thinking.”

Lindman returned to the question of house prices. “A house like Elsa’s — what would it cost?”

“Two or three hundred thousand, no more. But I don’t think Elsa has any intention of selling.”

“Does she live alone?”

“I don’t think she’s ever been married. She can be a bit standoffish at times. After my wife died, I thought I might make a move for her, but she wasn’t interested.”

“How old?”

“Seventy-three, I think.”

So. More or less the same as Molin, Lindman thought.

“Has she always lived here?”

“She was here when we built our house. That was in the late fifties. She must have lived in that house for forty years.”

“What did she do, anyway?”

“She said she’d been a dance teacher before she came here. No comment.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Who retires at the age of forty or younger? Something fishy there, don’t you think?”

“She must have had some means of support?”

“She inherited her parents’ estate. That’s when she moved here. Or so she says.”

Lindman tried to keep up. “So she wasn’t born here? She must have been an outsider?”

“Skåne, I think she came from. Eslöv? Can that be somewhere down where Sweden drifts to a halt?”

“That’s right. And so she came here. Why here? Did she have any family in Norrland?”

Wigren looked hard at him. “You’re talking like a police officer. Some people might even suppose that you were interrogating me.”