Юхан Теорин - Echoes From the Dead

They could have everything that was in it as well, except for the receipt from Ramneby Wood Museum, which Gerlof had hidden in his desk.

“You’re an honest man, Gerlof,” said Astrid.

“A place for everything, and everything in its place,” he said. “I don’t like loose ends.”

They were among the graves now, moving slowly among all the familiar gravestones. Ernst had carved many of the most beautiful ones before he retired — Ella’s broad headstone, among others. It was clean and attractive, and there was plenty of room for Gerlof’s name and dates beneath those of his wife.

Ernst’s newly dug grave was in a row of Stenvik residents who had been buried in the churchyard. The congregation had gathered around it in a semicircle, and Astrid pushed Gerlof firmly in among the mourners. He saw the deep hole in the ground opening up in front of his wheelchair. The grave was black and cold and impossible to get out of if you fell into it. He had no desire to end up down there himself, despite the fact that Sjögren was tearing at his joints in the cold air.

The pallbearers had paused by the grave, and now they began to lower the coffin carefully into the ground. Out here Gerlof could see several familiar faces: Bengt Nyberg, the editor of the local newspaper, was standing on the opposite side of the grave, without a camera in his hand for once, and Gerlof tried to remember how long he’d been living and working in Marnäs. Fifteen or twenty years. He’d come from the mainland, like so many others.

Beside him stood Örjan Granfors, the farmer who’d had some cows taken away from him once in the eighties, from his farm northeast of Marnäs. He’d been convincted of cruelty to animals, Gerlof recalled.

Standing close together, next to Granfors, were Linda and Gunnar Ljunger, the hotel owners from Långvik. They were talking quietly to each other, presumably about new building going on down in the holiday village. And next to them stood Lennart Henriksson, the policeman. He was wearing a black suit today, not his uniform.

Gerlof looked down into the grave again. What did Ernst want him to do? How should he move forward with this?

Ernst had kept returning to the subject of Nils Kant and little Jens several times during his visits to Gerlof earlier that autumn, as he was going over and over both mysteries, convinced they were linked by something nobody else could see.

As the years had gone by, Gerlof had come to terms with the fact that Jens had disappeared without a trace, in the same way that he had come to terms with Ella’s death, as far as possible.

But Ernst had come to the home in Marnäs to talk to Gerlof at the beginning of September. He’d brought with him a slim book with a soft cover.

“Have you seen this, Gerlof?” he’d asked.

Gerlof had shaken his head and leaned forward.

It was the book celebrating the anniversary of the Malm Freight company. Gerlof had seen in Ölands-Posten that it had been published a month or so earlier, but he hadn’t read it.

“You know Martin Malm, don’t you?” Ernst had asked. “This is an old photo of him from the end of the fifties, at the Kant family’s sawmill in Småland.”

“I don’t know Martin particularly well,” Gerlof had replied, taking the book from Ernst with some surprise. “We met mostly in various ports, when we were skippers.”

“And after that, when you came ashore?”

“Very rarely. Three or four times, maybe. The odd dinner for old sea captains.”

“Dinner?” said Ernst.

“In Borgholm.”

“Do you know where Martin got the money from for his first oceangoing ship?” asked Ernst.

“Yes... no. I don’t think I do,” said Gerlof. “From the family?”

“Not his own,” said Ernst. “It came from the Kant family.”

“Does it say that in the book?” said Gerlof.

“No, but that’s what I’ve heard,” said Ernst. “And look at this picture. August Kant is standing there with his arm around Martin. Would you do that?”

“No,” Gerlof had said.

But it was true: August Kant, the dour company boss, had his hand resting amicably on the shoulder of the equally sour-faced sea captain Martin Malm. Strange.

Ernst didn’t want to say any more, but there was no doubt that he knew things he didn’t want to talk about. He’d seen something, or heard something, which had given him new ideas. He’d gone to Ramneby Wood Museum to look for something, without telling Gerlof. And a few weeks after that, he’d arranged to meet someone at the quarry, presumably for some kind of discussion that Gerlof wasn’t to be told about either.

“Would you like to go and say goodbye, Gerlof?”

Astrid’s question in the churchyard jerked him back from a sea of thoughts. He shook his head briefly.

“I’ve already done that,” he said.

The last roses were tossed down onto the lid of Ernst’s coffin, and the funeral was over. Everyone began moving toward the community center next to the church for a short gathering.

“It’ll be nice to have a cup of coffee,” said Astrid.

She moved backward, pulling the wheelchair, and set off toward the center.

Despite the fact that Sjögren was biting the back of his neck, Gerlof stretched sideways to look across the churchyard in the direction of an old gravestone by the west wall.

Nils Kant’s grave.

Who was actually lying in there?

The town by the water is dark and noisy, and stinks of mud and dog piss.

Nils Kant has turned his back on it. He is sitting at his usual table on the veranda of Casa Grande, the harbor bar, with a bottle of wine in front of him; his face is turned toward the sea, the Caribbean outside Costa Rica. Even if the smell of silt and rotten seaweed isn’t much better than the stench that hangs over the narrow streets of the town, at least the water is not close.

During the day he often stands on one of the quays, gazing out over the sea as it sparkles in the sun.

The way home. The sea is the way to Sweden. When he has enough money, all Nils has to do is go home.

Worth a toast.

He picks up his glass of warm red wine and takes a deep draft, to forget the major problem regarding his journey home. Because the truth is that he no longer has enough money. It’s almost gone. He loads bananas and oil drums down in the harbor a couple of days a week, but that gives him just about enough for food and rent. He should really work more, but he doesn’t feel very well.

“Estoy enfermo,” he mutters into the night.

He often has stomach pains and headaches, and his hands have become shaky.

How many toasts to Sweden has he drunk on the veranda of the Casa Grande? To Öland? To Stenvik? And to his mother, Vera?

It’s impossible to count the toasts and the bottles he has emptied. This evening is like all the others in the bar, except for the fact that tonight Nils is celebrating his thirtieth birthday. But there isn’t actually anything to celebrate — he knows that, and it makes him feel even worse.

“Quiero regresar a casa,” he whispers into the darkness.

He has slowly learned to speak Spanish, and a fair amount of English, but it is Swedish that is still most alive within him.

He has been on the run for more than ten years now, ever since he sneaked aboard the cargo ship Celeste Horizon in the port of Gothenburg the summer after the war.

On board the Celeste Horizon he was given a cabin that was as narrow as a coffin, a coffin made of steel.

He has sailed on several old ships along the coasts of South America since then, but Celeste was definitely the worst. There wasn’t a single dry patch on board; the moisture from the sea penetrated everywhere, and anything that wasn’t wet and moldy was either broken or had fallen to pieces with rust. Water trickled or dripped from every surface. The light didn’t reach through the porthole in his cabin for over a month, because it was on the port side, and the constant leaks made the whole ship list to that side.