Юхан Теорин - Echoes From the Dead

“Was there any point to this visit?”

“We got coffee and cookies,” said Gerlof. “Isn’t that enough? And it’s always nice to see Gösta. He was the captain of a Baltic cargo ship, just like me. There aren’t many of us left now...”

Julia turned onto Badhusgatan and drove past the empty sidewalks. They hardly met any cars either. Ahead of them at the end of the street was the white harbor hotel.

“Turn in here,” said Gerlof, pointing to the left.

Julia blinked, then turned onto an asphalt area where a sign saying BLOMBERG’S AUTOS hung in front of a low building housing both a workshop and a used-car lot. A few newer Volvos had the honor of being positioned inside behind glass, but most of the vehicles were parked outside. Handwritten signs behind each windshield showed the price and mileage.

“Come on,” said Gerlof when Julia had pulled up.

“Are we buying a new car?” she asked, bewildered.

“No, no,” said Gerlof, “we’re just going to pop in and see Robert Blomberg for a few minutes.”

His joints had grown warmer and coffee with the Engströms had perked him up. His aches and pains had subsided somewhat, and he was able to walk across the asphalt with only his cane for support, although Julia did go ahead of him to open the door of the workshop.

A bell rang, and the smell of oil hit them.

Gerlof knew a lot about boats but far too little about cars, and the sight of engines always made him feel unsure of himself. There was a car standing on the cement floor, a black Ford surrounded by welding gear and various tools, but nobody was working on it. The place was deserted.

Gerlof walked slowly over to the little office inside the workshop, and looked in.

“Good morning,” he said to the young mechanic in grubby overalls who was sitting at the desk, intent on the cartoon page of Ölands-Posten. “We’re from Stenvik, and we’d like to buy some oil for the car.”

“Oh? We actually sell that in the other place, but I can get it for you.”

The mechanic got up; he was a little taller than Gerlof. This must be Robert Blomberg’s son.

“We’ll come with you and have a look at the cars,” said Gerlof.

He nodded to Julia and they followed the young man through a door to the sales area.

There was no smell of oil here, and the floor was spotless and painted white. Rows of shining cars were parked in the showroom.

“Motor oil?” the mechanic asked.

“That’ll be fine,” said Gerlof.

He saw an older man come out of a small office and position himself in the doorway of the showroom. He was almost as tall and broad-shouldered as the mechanic, and he had a wrinkled face with cheeks flushed red by broken blood vessels.

They had never spoken to one another, because Gerlof had always conducted any business involving cars in Marnäs, but he knew immediately that this was Robert Blomberg. Blomberg had come over from the mainland and opened his car workshop and small showroom in the middle of the 1970s. John Hagman had had some dealings with the old man, and had told Gerlof about him.

The older Blomberg nodded to Gerlof without saying anything. Gerlof nodded silently back. He’d heard that Blomberg had had some problems with alcohol a while ago, and maybe he still did, but it was hardly a promising topic of conversation.

“There you go,” said the young mechanic, handing over a plastic bottle of engine oil.

Robert Blomberg slowly withdrew from the doorway and went back into the office. He was swaying slightly, Gerlof realized.

“I didn’t need any oil,” said Julia when they were back in the car.

“It’s always good to have some spare oil,” said Gerlof. “What did you think of the repair shop?”

“It looked like any other repair shop,” said Julia, pulling out onto Badhusgatan. “They didn’t seem to have that much to do.”

“Drive toward the harbor.” Gerlof pointed. “And the owners... the Blombergs? What did you think of them?”

“They didn’t say much. Why?”

“Robert Blomberg was at sea for many years, or so I’ve heard,” said Gerlof. “Sailing the seven seas, all the way down to South America.”

“Right,” said Julia.

It was quiet in the car for a few seconds. They were approaching the harbor hotel at the bottom of Badhusgatan. Gerlof looked at the harbor beside the hotel, and felt a quiet sorrow.

“No happy ending,” he said.

“What?” said Julia.

“Many stories have no happy ending.”

“The most important thing is that they have an ending, isn’t it?” said Julia. She looked at him. “Are you thinking about anyone in particular?”

“Yes... I suppose I’m thinking mostly about seafaring and Öland. It could have turned out better. It ended too quickly.”

Borgholm harbor had just a few concrete quays, and they were completely empty. Not one single fishing boat was in. A huge anchor, painted black, had been propped up on the asphalt beside the water, possibly as a reminder of livelier times.

“In the fifties the cargo boats would be lined up here,” said Gerlof, looking out the window at the gray water. “On a day like this in the autumn they would have been loading up or having maintenance work done, there would have been people all around them. The air would have been filled with the smells of tar and varnish. If it was sunny, the captains would have hoisted the sails to air them in the breeze. Ivory-colored sails all lined up against a blue sky, it was a beautiful sight...”

He fell silent.

“So when did the ships stop coming here?” asked Julia.

“Oh... in the sixties. But they didn’t stop coming here — it was more that they stopped sailing from here. Most captains on the island needed to exchange their boats for more modern ships around that time, so they could compete with the shipping companies on the mainland, but the banks wouldn’t approve any loans. They didn’t believe in seafaring on Öland anymore.” He stopped speaking, then added, “I couldn’t get a loan either, so I sold my last schooner, Nore ... Then I went to evening classes to learn about office administration, to make the time pass in the winter.”

“I don’t remember you being at home in the winter,” said Julia. “I don’t remember you being home at all.”

Gerlof looked away from the empty quays, at his daughter.

“Oh, but I was at home. For several months. I’d intended to get a job as a captain on an oceangoing ship the following year, but then I got an office job for the local council, and there I stayed. John Hagman, who had been my first mate, bought his own boat when I came ashore, and he had that for a couple more years. It was one of Borgholm’s very last ships. It was called Farewell, appropriately enough.”

Julia had allowed the car to roll slowly forward, away from the quays and toward the imposing wooden houses that lay to the north of the harbor, behind neat wooden fences. The house nearest to the harbor was the biggest, wide and painted white and almost as big as the harbor hotel.

Gerlof raised his hand.

“You can stop here,” he said.

Julia pulled in at the side of the road in front of the houses, and Gerlof leaned slowly forward and opened his briefcase.

“The Öland boat owners were too stubborn,” he said, taking out a brown envelope and the slim volume he had brought with him from his desk. “We could have got together enough capital between us to buy new, bigger ships. But that wasn’t for us. Strength lies in working alone, I suppose we thought. We didn’t dare to make a big investment.”

He handed the book over to his daughter. Malm Freight — Forty Years was the title, and on the cover was a black-and-white aerial picture of a big motorized ship plowing through an endless ocean in the sunshine.