Хеннинг Манкелль - Italian Shoes

I didn’t respond. Perhaps I felt a little bit relieved: lies always weigh you down, even if they seem to be weightless at first. Harriet pulled the covers up to her chin.

‘Are you cold?’ I asked tentatively.

She sounded perfectly calm when she replied.

‘I’ve felt cold all my life. I’ve gone looking for warmth in deserts and tropical countries. But all the time I’ve had a little icicle hanging inside me. People always have baggage. For some it’s sorrow, for others it’s worry. For me, it’s always been an icicle. For you it’s an anthill in a living room in an old fisherman’s cottage.’

‘I never use that room. It’s not heated during the winter and in the summer I just air it. Both my grandfather and my grandmother died in that room. As soon as I enter it, I can hear their breathing and detect their smell. One day I noticed that there were ants inside the room. When I opened the door several months later, they had started to build a nest. I left them to it.’

Harriet turned over.

‘What happened? I’m not going to give up. I don’t know what happened in your life. Why did you move out to the island? I gathered from the man who took me out there that you’d been living on the skerry for nearly twenty years.’

‘Jansson is a rogue. He exaggerates everything. I’ve been living there for twelve years.’

‘A doctor who retires at the age of fifty-four?’

‘I don’t want to talk about it. Something happened.’

‘You can tell me.’

‘I don’t want to.’

‘I shall soon be dead.’

I turned my back on her, and thought that I should never have given way. It wasn’t the forest pool she wanted, it was me.

That’s as far as I managed to think.

She moved to snuggle up against me. The warmth from her body enveloped me, and filled what had long seemed to be nothing but a pointless shell. That was how we had always lain when we slept together. I used to carry her into slumber on my back. Just for a brief moment, I could imagine that we had always been lying together like this. For nearly forty years. A remarkable sleep that we were only now beginning to wake up from.

‘What happened to you? You can tell me now,’ said Harriet.

‘I made a catastrophic mistake during an operation. Afterwards, I argued that it wasn’t my fault. I was found guilty. Not in court, but by the National Board of Health and Welfare. I was admonished, and couldn’t cope with it. That’s as much as I can bring myself to say just now. Don’t ask any more questions.’

‘Tell me about the forest pool instead,’ she whispered.

‘It’s black, they say it’s bottomless, and there’s no shore. It’s a small poor relation to all those lovely lakes with inviting waters. It’s hard to imagine that it exists at all, and isn’t just a drop of nature’s ink that has been spilled. I’ve told you that I watched my father swimming there. But what I didn’t say was that the experience made me realise what life was all about. People are close to each other so that they can be parted. That’s all there is to it.’

‘Are there any fish in that pool?’

‘I don’t know. But if there are, they must be completely black. Or invisible, because you can’t see anything in that dark water. Black fish, black frogs, black water spiders. And down at the bottom — if there is a bottom — a solitary black eel slowly wriggling its way through the mud.’

She pressed herself up against me even harder. I thought about how she was dying, how the warmth she radiated would soon be an in sidious chill. What had she said? An icicle inside her? So as far as she was concerned, death was ice, nothing more. Everybody perceived death differently, the shadow hovering behind us always takes on a different form. I wanted to turn round and hug her as tightly as I could. But something prevented me. Perhaps I was still afraid of whatever it was that had made me leave her? A feeling of being too close, something I couldn’t cope with?

I didn’t know. But perhaps I now wanted to know, despite everything.

I must have dozed off briefly. I was woken up by Harriet sitting on the edge of the bed. To my horror, I watched her sink down on to her knees and start crawling towards the bathroom door. She was completely naked, her breasts heavy, her body older than I had imagined. I didn’t know if she was crawling to the bathroom because she was too exhausted to walk, or so as not to wake me up with the squeaking wheels of her walker. Tears welled up in my eyes, she was blurred as she closed the door. When she came back, she had managed to stand up and walk. But her legs were trembling. She snuggled up close to me again.

‘I’m not asleep,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what’s happening any more.’

‘You had an unexpected visitor on to your island. An old woman from your past came walking over the ice. Now you’re on your way to fulfil an old promise.’

I could smell spirits. Did she have a bottle hidden among her toilet things?

‘Medicines don’t mix well with strong drink,’ I said.

‘If I’m forced to choose, I shall stick to my booze.’

‘You’re drinking in secret.’

‘I’ve noticed you smelling my breath, of course. But I like drinking in secret even so.’

‘What are you drinking?’

‘Ordinary Swedish aquavit. You’ll have to stop at one of the booze shops tomorrow. The stuff I brought with me is almost finished.’

We lay there waiting for dawn.

She occasionally dozed off. The dog outside in the night had fallen silent. I got up again and stood by the window. I had the feeling that I’d turned into my own father. That day at the forest pool I had discovered his loneliness. I now realised that it was also my own. Despite the fifty-five-year gap, we had fused together and become the same individual.

It frightened me. I didn’t want it.

I didn’t want to be a man who had to jump down into freezing cold water every day, in order to confirm that he was still alive.

We left the inn shortly before nine.

Outside, there was patchy fog, a slight breeze, and it was a couple of degrees above freezing. The piano player had not returned. There was a young lady at reception. She asked if we had slept well, and had been satisfied with our stay. Harriet was standing with her walker a couple of yards away from me.

‘We slept very well,’ she said. ‘The bed was broad and comfortable.’

I paid and asked if she had a local map. She disappeared for a few minutes, then reappeared carrying a substantial atlas.

‘You can have it for nothing,’ she said. ‘An overnight guest from Lund left it behind a few weeks ago.’

We set off and drove straight into the fog.

We drove slowly. The fog was so thick, the road had disappeared. I thought of all the occasions on which I had rowed into patches of fog in my boat. When the mists came rolling in from the sea, I liked to rest on the oars and allow myself to be swallowed up by all the whiteness. I had always experienced it as a strange mixture of security and threat. Grandma sometimes used to sit on the bench under the apple tree and tell stories about people rowing themselves away in the fog. She maintained there was some kind of hole in the middle that people could be sucked into and never be seen again.

Now and then we would see a set of fog lights approaching, catch a fleeting glimpse of a car or lorry, and then we would be alone once more.

There was a state monopoly liquor store in one of the little towns we passed through. I bought what Harriet wanted. She insisted on paying herself. Vodka, aquavit and brandy, in half-bottles.

The fog had slowly begun to lift. I could sense that there was snow in the air.