Хеннинг Манкелль - Italian Shoes

I put down the buckets to rest my arms.

‘Louise,’ I said aloud to myself. ‘I have a daughter called Louise.’

The words struck me dumb, made me a little afraid, but also exhilarated. Harriet had come to me over the ice in Jansson’s hydrocopter, bringing with her news about life, and not just the death that would soon claim her.

I picked up the buckets again and carried them to the caravan. I knocked on the door. Louise opened it. She was still wearing the high-heeled shoes, but she had replaced the pink dressing gown with trousers and a jumper. She had a very attractive figure. She made me feel embarrassed.

The caravan was cramped. Harriet had squeezed on to a bench-cum-bed behind a little table in front of the window. She was smiling. I smiled back at her. It was warm in the caravan. Louise was busy making coffee.

Louise had a lovely voice, just like her mother’s. If ice could sing, so could my daughter.

I looked round the caravan. Dried roses hanging from the ceiling, a shelf with documents and letters, an old-fashioned typewriter on a stool. A radio but no television set. I started worrying about the kind of life she led. It seemed reminiscent of my own.

And now you’ve turned up in my life, I thought. The most unexpected thing that has ever happened to me.

Louise produced a Thermos of coffee and some plastic mugs. I sat down on the bed next to Harriet. Louise remained standing, looking at me.

‘I’m pleased to note that I haven’t burst out crying,’ she said. ‘But I’m even more pleased to note that you haven’t gone overboard and insisted how happy you are about what you’ve just discovered.’

‘It hasn’t sunk in yet. But then again, I never get so excited that I lose control of myself.’

‘Maybe you think it’s not true?’

I thought about all those dust-covered bundles of legal documents containing statements made by young men swearing that they were not the father.

‘I’m quite sure it’s true.’

‘Do you feel sad because you didn’t know about me sooner? Because I’ve come into your life so late?’

‘I’m pretty immune to sadness,’ I said. ‘Just now I’m more surprised than anything else. Until an hour ago, I didn’t have any children. I didn’t think I ever would.’

‘What do you do for a living?’

I looked at Harriet. So she hadn’t told Louise anything at all about her father, not even that he was a doctor. That shocked me. What had she said about me? That her daughter had a father who was just a ship passing in the night?

‘I’m a doctor. Or was a doctor, rather.’

Louise looked quizzically at me, coffee mug in hand. I noticed that she had a ring on every one of her fingers, and her thumbs as well.

‘What sort of a doctor?’

‘I was a surgeon.’

She pulled a face. I thought about my father, and his reaction when I told him at the age of fifteen what I wanted to be.

‘Can you write prescriptions?’

‘Not any more. I’m retired.’

‘More’s the pity.’

Louise put down her mug of coffee and pulled a woolly hat over her head.

‘If you need a pee you go behind the caravan, then cover it up with snow afterwards. If you need to do something more substantial, you use the dry closet next to the woodshed.’

She went out, slightly unsteady on her high-heeled shoes. I turned to Harriet.

‘Why didn’t you tell me about her? It’s disgraceful!’

‘Don’t you talk to me about disgraceful behaviour! I didn’t know how you would react.’

‘It would have been easier if you’d prepared me for it.’

‘I didn’t dare. Maybe you’d have thrown me out of the car and left me by the roadside. How could I know if you really wanted a child?’

Harriet was right. She couldn’t have known how I would react. She had every reason to distrust me.

‘Why does she live like this? What does she do for a living?’

‘It’s her choice. I don’t know what she does.’

‘But you must have some idea?’

‘She writes letters.’

‘Surely she can’t make a living out of that?’

‘It seems to be possible.’

It occurred to me that the caravan walls were thin, and that my daughter might be standing out there with her ear pressed up against the cold plastic, or whatever it was. Perhaps she had inherited my tendency to eavesdrop?

I lowered my voice to a whisper.

‘Why does she look like she does? Why does she walk around in the snow wearing high heels?’

‘My daughter —’

‘Our daughter!’

‘Our daughter has always had a mind of her own. Even when she was five, I had the feeling that she knew exactly what she wanted to do with her life, and that I would never be able to make her out.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘She’s always chosen to live her life without worrying too much about what other people think. Her shoes, for example. They are very expensive. Ajello, made in Milan. Very few people dare to live the way she does.’

The door opened, and our daughter came back in.

‘I need to rest,’ said Harriet. ‘I’m tired.’

‘You’ve always been tired,’ said Louise.

‘I haven’t always been dying.’

For a brief moment, they were hissing at each other, like cats. Not exactly in a nasty way, but not exactly friendly either. In any case, neither of them seemed to be surprised by the other’s reaction. So Louise was aware of the fact that her mother was dying.

I stood up so that Harriet could lie down on the narrow bed. Louise put on a pair of boots.

‘Let’s go out for a walk,’ she said. ‘I need some exercise. And besides, I think we’re both a bit shaken.’

There was a well-worn path heading in the opposite direction to the abandoned farm. We passed an old earth cellar and entered a dense conifer wood. She was walking quickly, and I had difficulty in keeping up with her. She suddenly turned round to face me.

‘I thought I had a father who had gone to America and vanished. A father called Henry who was mad about bees, and spent his time researching into how they lived. But the years passed by, and he didn’t even send me a jar of honey. I thought he was dead. But you’re not dead. I’ve actually met you. When we get back to the caravan I’m going to take a photograph of you and Harriet. I have lots of photos of her, on her own or together with me. But I want a photo of both my parents before it’s too late.’

We continued walking along the path.

It seemed to me that Harriet had told Louise the facts. Or at least as much of the facts as she could, without telling a lie. I had gone to America, and I had vanished. And in my youth I’d been interested in bees. Moreover, it was certainly true that I wasn’t yet dead.

We continued walking through the snow.

She would get her photograph of her parents.

It wasn’t yet too late to take the picture she needed.

The sun had sunk down towards the horizon.

In the middle of a little field was a boxing ring, covered in snow. It looked as if somebody had thrown it out, and it had just happened to land there in the whiteness. Half hidden in the snow were a couple of ramshackle wooden benches that might well have been taken from a chapel or a cinema.

‘We have boxing matches in spring and summer,’ she said. ‘We generally start the season in mid-May. That’s when we have the weigh-in, using some old scales from a dairy.’

‘We? Are you telling me that you box as well?’

‘Of course. Why shouldn’t I?’

‘Who do you box with?’

‘My friends. People from around here who have chosen to live the kind of life they think suits them best. Leif, for instance, who lives with his old mum who used to run the biggest moonshine operation for miles around. Amandus, who plays the fiddle and has very strong fists.’