Хеннинг Манкелль - Italian Shoes

‘I think it’s time to conclude this conversation.’

‘What conversation? Answer my question!’

‘There’s nothing to answer.’

Sima looked away, and seemed to have tired of trying to talk to me. I felt offended. The accusation that I was a paedophile was beyond anything I could ever have imagined. I looked furtively at her. She was intent on chewing her fingernails. Her hair seemed to be a mixture of red and black, and was tousled, as if she had combed it while in a temper. Behind that hard exterior, I thought I could discern a very small girl in clothes much too big and black for her.

Agnes came into the room. Sima immediately withdrew. The lion-tamer had arrived, and the beast had slunk away, I thought. She sat down on the same chair that Sima had occupied, and tucked her legs underneath her, as if she were imitating her foster-daughter.

‘Aida is a little girl, and words have suddenly started pouring out of her,’ she said.

‘What’s happened?’

‘Nothing at all. She’s just been reminded of who she is. A big, hopeless nothing, as she puts it. A loser among lots of other losers. If somebody started a Loser Party in Sweden, there’d be no shortage of members to contribute lots of experience. I’m nearly thirty-three years old. What about you?’

‘Twice that.’

‘Sixty-six. That’s old. Thirty-three isn’t much at all. But it’s enough to realise that there has never been so much tension in this land of ours as there is today. But nobody seems to have noticed. At least, none of the people you might think ought to have their fingers on the pulse. There’s an invisible network of walls in Sweden, and it’s getting worse by the day — dividing people up, increasing the distance between them. Superficially, the opposite might seem to be the case. Get on a tube train in Stockholm and go to the suburbs. It’s not very far in terms of miles, but nevertheless, the distance is enormous. It’s rubbish to talk about entering another world. It’s the same world. But every station on the way out from the city centre is another wall. When you eventually get to the outskirts, it’s up to you if you choose to see the truth of the matter or not.’

‘And what is the truth?’

‘That what you think is the periphery is in fact the centre, and it’s slowly recreating Sweden. The country is slowly rotating, and outer and inner, near and far, centre and outskirts are changing. My girls exist in a no-man’s-land in which they can see neither backwards nor forwards. Nobody wants them, they are superfluous, rejected. It’s no wonder that every morning when they wake up, the only thing they can be sure about is their own worthlessness, staring them in the face. So they don’t want to wake up! They don’t want to get out of bed! They’ve had bitterness drilled into them since they were five, six years old.’

‘Is it really as bad as that?’

‘It’s worse.’

‘I live on an island. There aren’t any suburbs there, just little skerries and rocks. And there certainly aren’t any screwed-up girls who come running at you wielding a samurai sword.’

‘We treat our children so badly that, in the end, they have no means of expression except through violence. That used to apply to boys only. Now we have incredibly tough girl gangs who don’t think twice about inflicting harm on others. We really have reached rock bottom when girls are so desperate that they think their only choice is to behave like the very worst of the gangsters among their boyfriends.’

‘Sima called me a paedophile.’

‘She calls me a whore when the mood takes her. But the worst thing is what she calls herself.’

‘What does she say?’

‘That she’s dead. Her heart can’t cope. She writes strange poems, and then leaves them on my desk or in my pockets without saying a word. It could well be that ten years from now, she’ll be dead. Either by her own hand or somebody else’s. Or she’ll have an accident, full of drugs or other shit. That’s a highly probable end to the wretched saga of her life. But I can’t give up on her. I know she has an inner strength. If only she can overcome that feeling of uselessness that pursues her everywhere. I have no alternative but to succeed with her. She’s riddled with decay and disillusionment: I have to revitalise her.’

She stood up.

‘I must get on to the police and nag them to put more effort into looking for Miranda. Why don’t you take a walk to the barn, and then we can continue our conversation later?’

I left the room. Sima was peering out from behind the curtains, following my every move. Several kittens were clambering over the bales of hay in the barn. Horses and cows were in boxes and pens. I recognised vaguely the smell from my very earliest childhood when my grandparents used to keep animals on the island. I stroked the horses’ muzzles, and caressed the cows. Agnes Klarström seemed to have her life under control. What would I have done if a surgeon had done the same to me? Would I have become a bitter wino and rapidly drunk myself to death on a park bench? Or would I have won through? I don’t know.

Mats Karlsson came into the barn and started feeding the animals with hay. He worked slowly, as if he were being forced to do something he hated doing.

‘Agnes asked me to tell you to go back to the house,’ he said suddenly. ‘I forgot to say.’

I went back inside. Sima was no longer at the window. There was a light breeze, and it had started snowing again. I felt cold and tired. Agnes was standing in the hall, waiting for me.

‘Sima’s run away,’ she said.

‘But I saw her only a few minutes ago.’

‘That was then. She’s disappeared now. In your car.’

I felt for the car key in my pocket. I knew I had locked the car. As you grow older, you find you have more and more keys in your pocket. Even if you live alone on a remote island in the archipelago.

‘I can see that you don’t believe me,’ she said. ‘But I saw the car leaving. And Sima’s jacket is nowhere to be seen. She has a special getaway jacket she always wears when she does a runner. Maybe she believes it has the power to make her invulnerable, invisible. She’s taken that sword with her as well. The stupid girl!’

‘But I have the car keys in my pocket.’

‘Sima used to have a boyfriend — his name was Filippo — a nice guy from Italy, who taught her all there is to know about opening locked cars and starting engines. He would always steal cars from outside swimming pools or buildings containing illegal casinos. He knew that the car owners would be preoccupied for quite a long time. Only hopeless amateurs steal cars from ordinary car parks.’

‘How do you know all this?’

‘Sima told me. She trusts me.’

‘But nevertheless she steals my car and vanishes.’

‘You could interpret that as a sign of trust. She expects us to understand what she’s done.’

‘But I want my car back!’

‘Sima usually burns out engines. You took a risk in coming here. But you couldn’t know that, of course.’

‘I met a man with a dog. He used expressions like “bloody kids”.’

‘So do I. What sort of a dog was it?’

‘I don’t know. It was brown and shaggy.’

‘Then the man you met was Alexander Bruun. A former swindler who worked in a bank and cheated customers out of their money. He was arrested for fraud, but wasn’t even sent to prison. Now he’s living the life of Riley on all the money he embezzled and the police never found. He hates me, and he hates my girls.’

She rang the police from her office and explained what had happened. I grew increasingly worried as I listened to what sounded like a cosy chat with a police constable who didn’t seem to think there was anything urgent about catching the runaway who was evidently intent on smashing up my already ailing car.