Юхан Теорин - Echoes From the Dead

“Where are we going, Gunnar?” he asked quietly.

Ljunger didn’t reply — it was as if he were no longer listening to Gerlof. He was looking only at the sodden gravel track ahead of the car, avoiding the potholes and bumps with a light touch on the wheel. He was smiling.

Gerlof’s forehead was greasy with sweat.

He ought to say something, make some casual, everyday remark. A polite question about how things were going in the hotel industry, perhaps. But he was tired and his head was completely empty of small talk at this moment.

In the end Gerlof could come up with only one question:

“Have you ever been to South America, Gunnar?”

Ljunger shook his head, still smiling.

“I haven’t, unfortunately,” he replied, then added, “The closest I’ve been is Costa Rica.”

From the passenger seat of a blue Volvo, high up on the new bridge, Nils Kant leans forward toward the windshield and looks out across Kalmar Sound. It’s afternoon, and a mist hangs over the water; a thick bank of fog has been created in the sound, and is on its way in over the island.

“It’ll be a foggy night,” he says.

“Just what we were hoping for,” says Fritiof beside him.

“We?” says Nils. “Are there more of you?”

Fritiof nods. “You’ll get to meet them soon.”

Nils tries to relax and look out over the railings. He can almost see himself as a young man down there in the sound, swimming for his life toward the mainland, barely twenty years old.

How could he get so far in the cold water? He’s forty-six now, and couldn’t even swim a hundred yards.

The Öland Bridge is enormous, tons of steel and concrete erected above the water to form a structure that is almost as wide as a freeway and several kilometers long. Nils could never have imagined that his island would have such a link to the mainland.

“How old is the bridge?” he asks.

“Pretty new,” says Fritiof at the wheel.

He hasn’t said very much since he came to Nils in Jönköping the previous evening. He gave Nils dark clothes for the journey and a black knitted hat to pull down over his forehead, but he’s hardly said a word.

The cheerful, charming Fritiof Andersson who sought him out in Costa Rica more than ten years ago is gone; actually, he’s been gone since the man from Småland drowned in the sea north of Limón. Since that night Fritiof has mostly treated Nils like a parcel, moving him around from place to place and from country to country, renting small, cheap apartments or rooms in hostels in seedy parts of town for him, and only getting in touch by telephone once or twice a year.

The night before they left for Öland, Fritiof started on about the treasure again. Where was it? Where had Nils hidden it? In the house?

Nils shook his head. And in the end he told Fritiof:

“It’s buried on the alvar, just to the east of Stenvik. By the old memorial cairn. We’ll go and get it together.”

Fritiof nodded. “Good, that’s what we’ll do.”

Nils has waited a long time to make this final journey. Now he’s here.

“I’m going to stay at home from now on,” he says to Fritiof.

He closes his eyes as they drive across the new bridge. Back on Öland, at last.

“I’m going to stay at home,” he says again. “I’m going to stay with my mother and make sure nobody sees me.” He pauses, then asks, “She’s still well... Vera?”

“Yes indeed.”

Fritiof Andersson nods briefly, then the car speeds up as they drive out onto the great alvar, heading toward Borgholm.

A great deal has changed on Öland since he was young, Nils realizes. There are more shrubs and trees on the island, and the narrow gravel track to Borgholm has become a broad, asphalt highway, just as even and straight as the bridge. The railway which ran from north to south must have been shut down, because Nils can’t see any tracks out on the alvar any longer. The rows of windmills that towered above the shoreline to catch the wind from the sound are gone too; only a few remain.

It seems as if there are fewer people on the island — but yet there are plenty of new cottages down by the water. Nils nods toward them.

“Who lives in all those houses?” he asks.

“Summer residents,” replies Fritiof tersely. “They earn their money in Stockholm and buy cottages here on Öland. They drive across the bridge and lie in the sun on vacation, then they drive back fast to earn some more money. They don’t want to be here in the winter... it’s too cold and miserable.”

It sounds as if he sympathizes with them.

Nils says nothing. Fritiof seems to be quite right about these summer residents, because virtually every car he sees is driving in the opposite direction, traveling away from the island. The summer is over, it’s autumn.

The ruined castle is still there, at least, and it looks just as it always has, with its empty eye sockets on the hill above Borgholm.

Once they’ve driven past the castle, they’re almost down in the town, and the fog is beginning to fill the air. Fritiof slows down and pulls into a small parking lot just on the edge of the town, within sight of the ruined castle. He stops the car with no explanation.

“Okay” is all he says. “I told you we’d be having company.”

He opens the car door and waves.

Nils looks around. Someone is walking slowly along the road: a man who looks as if he were in his fifties. He’s wearing a gray woolen sweater, gabardine trousers, and shiny leather shoes that look expensive, and he nods to Fritiof.

“You’re late.”

The man is wearing a hat, pulled down low over his forehead. He isn’t carrying anything except a half-smoked cigarette. He takes one last drag and looks warily around before coming over to the car.

“Nils, I think you should get in the back now,” says Fritiof quietly. “It’ll be safer when we get to Stenvik.”

Then he gets out of the car. There’s a telephone kiosk at the far end of the parking lot, and Nils watches Fritiof walk quickly over to it. He pushes in some coins, dials a number, and speaks very briefly into the receiver.

Nils also gets out of the car, and the expensively dressed man tosses his cigarette aside, grinds it out with his right foot, and merely looks at him without saying hello. He gets into the front seat.

Nils doesn’t get into the back seat right away. He walks along the road, enjoying being back and being able to move about freely on the island once again.

His island.

Suddenly a couple of cars drive past on the main road. Nils sees pale faces staring back at him from behind the windshields. He follows them with his eyes, until they disappear in the fog.

“Come on!” shouts Fritiof behind him in an irritated voice.

He’s back at the car.

Nils walks back reluctantly, opens the back door, and hears the man in the front seat asking quietly: “Did it go okay, Gunnar?”

Then he looks quickly around at Nils, nervous and guilty, as if he’s let the cat out of the bag.

The man who has called himself Fritiof all this time also turns around and smiles.

“It doesn’t matter, we might as well all introduce ourselves properly now,” he says. “I’m Gunnar, and this is Martin. And Nils Kant is with us in the back seat. But we all trust each other here, don’t we?”

Nils nods briefly and closes the door. “Of course.”

So Fritiof is called Gunnar. And Nils knows he’s met him somewhere, but he still can’t remember where.

“Let’s head for Stenvik, then,” says Gunnar, firmly.

The car pulls out onto the road again, past Borgholm and northward. The landscape is becoming more and more familiar to Nils, but the fog from the sound is growing thicker, smearing and then erasing the horizon.