Хеннинг Манкелль - Italian Shoes

She hung up.

‘What are they going to do?’ I asked.

‘Nothing.’

‘But they have to do something, surely?’

‘They haven’t the resources available to start looking for Sima and your car. It will eventually run out of petrol. And so Sima will abandon it and take a train or a bus. Or steal another car. She once came back on a milk float. She always comes back eventually. Most people who run away don’t have any specific destination in mind. Have you never run away?’

It seemed to me that the only honest answer to that was that I’d been running away for the last twelve years. But I didn’t say that. I didn’t say anything at all.

We had dinner at six o’clock. Agnes, Aida, Mats Karlsson and me. Aida had laid places for the two girls who had run away.

We ate a tasteless fish au gratin. I ate far too quickly, as I was worried about my car. Aida seemed to be inspired by the fact that Sima had run away, and spoke non-stop. Karlsson listened attentively and kept encouraging her, while Agnes ate in silence.

When we’d finished eating, Aida and Mats cleared away and took care of the washing-up. Agnes and I went out to the barn.

I apologised to her. I explained as clearly as I could what had gone wrong that fateful day. I spoke slowly and at length, so as not to omit any details. But the fact was that I could have explained what had happened in just a few words. Something had taken place that should never have been possible. Just as an airline pilot has ultimate responsibility and has to ensure that a thorough test of his aeroplane has been done before he takes off, I had a responsibility to ensure that it was the correct arm that had been washed and exposed for amputation: and I had failed in that responsibility.

We each sat on our bale of hay. She looked hard at me all the time as I talked. When I finished, she stood up and fed the horses with carrots from a sack. Then she came to sit beside me on the bale of hay.

‘My God, but how I’ve cursed you!’ she said. ‘You will never be able to understand just how much it means to somebody who loves swimming to be forced to give it up. I used to imagine how I would track you down, and cut off your arm with a very blunt knife. I would wrap you up in barbed wire and dump you in the sea. There’s a limit to how long you can keep hatred going. It can give you a sort of illusory strength, but the fact is that it’s nothing more than an all-consuming parasite. The girls are all that matter now.’

She squeezed my hand.

‘Anyway, that’s enough of that,’ she said. ‘If we go on we’ll only get sentimental. I don’t want that. A person with only one arm can easily get emotional.’

We went back into the house. Very loud music was coming from Aida’s room. Screeching guitars, thumping bass drums. The walls were vibrating. The mobile phone Agnes had in her pocket rang. She answered, listened, said a few words.

‘That was Sima,’ she said. ‘She sends you her greetings.’

‘Sends me her greetings? Where is she?’

‘She didn’t say. She just wanted Aida to phone her.’

‘I didn’t hear you saying anything about her coming back here with my car.’

‘I was listening. She did all the talking.’

Agnes got to her feet and went upstairs. I could hear her shouting to make herself heard through the music. I had found Agnes Klarström, and she hadn’t shouted at me. She hadn’t drowned me in a torrent of accusations. She hadn’t even raised her voice when she described how she wanted to kill me in her dreams.

I had a lot to think about. Within a few short weeks three women had unexpectedly entered my life. Harriet, Louise and now Agnes. And perhaps I should add Sima, Miranda and Aida.

Agnes returned. We drank coffee. There was no sign of Mats Karlsson. The rock music continued thudding away.

The doorbell rang. When Agnes answered it, there were two policemen with a girl I assumed must be Miranda. The officers were holding her arms as if she were dangerous.

She had one of the most beautiful faces I had ever seen. A Mary Magdalene gripped by Roman soldiers.

Miranda said nothing, but I gathered from the conversation between Agnes and the police officers that she had been caught by a farmer in the act of trying to steal a calf. Agnes protested indignantly — why on earth would Miranda want to steal a cow? The conversation became more and more heated, the policemen seemed tired, nobody was listening to what the others said, and Miranda just stood there.

The police left, without it having become clear whether or not the alleged attempt to steal a calf had succeeded. Agnes asked Miranda a few questions in a stern voice. The girl with the beautiful face answered in such a low voice that I couldn’t catch what she said.

She went upstairs, and the loud music stopped. Agnes sat down on the sofa and examined her fingernails.

‘Miranda is a girl I would have loved to have as my own daughter. Of all the girls who have been here, who’ve come and gone, I think she is the one who will do best in life. As long as she discovers that horizon she has inside her.’

She showed me to a room behind the kitchen, where I could sleep. She left me to it as she had a lot to do in the office. I lay down on the bed and pictured my car in my mind’s eye. Smoke was coming from the engine. Next to Sima in the passenger seat was the newly sharpened sword. What would my grandparents have said if they’d still been alive and I’d tried to tell them about all this? They would never have believed me, never have understood. What would my browbeaten and kicked-around waiter of a father have said? My weeping mother? I switched off the light and lay there in the darkness, surrounded by whispering voices telling me that the twelve years I had spent on my island had robbed me of contact with the world I lived in.

I must have fallen asleep. I was woken up by the feel of something cold against my neck. The bedside lamp was switched on. I opened my eyes and saw Sima standing over me, with the sword pressed against my neck. I don’t know how long I held my breath until she removed the sword.

‘I liked your car,’ she said. ‘It’s old and it doesn’t go very fast, but I liked it.’

I sat up. She placed the sword on the window ledge.

‘The car’s standing outside,’ she said. ‘It’s not damaged.’

‘I don’t like people taking my car without permission.’

She sat down on the floor, her back against the radiator.

‘Tell me about your island,’ she said.

‘Why should I? How do you know I live on an island?’

‘I know lots of things.’

‘It’s a long way out to sea, and just now it’s surrounded by ice. In the autumn, storms can be so bad that they throw boats up on to land if you don’t moor them properly.’

‘Do you really live there all alone?’

‘I have a cat and a dog.’

‘Don’t you feel scared of all that empty space?’

‘Rocks and juniper bushes don’t often run at you with a sword. It’s people who do that.’

She sat there for a moment without saying anything, then got to her feet and picked up the sword.

‘I might come and visit you one of these days,’ she said.

‘I very much doubt that.’

She smiled.

‘So do I. But I’m often wrong.’

I tried to go back to sleep. I gave up at about five o’clock. I got dressed and wrote a note to Agnes, saying that I’d gone home. I slid it under the locked door of her office.

The house was asleep when I drove off.

There was a smell of burning from the engine, and when I stopped for petrol at an all-night filling station, I also topped up the oil. I arrived at the harbour shortly before dawn.

I walked out on to the pier. A fresh wind was getting up. Despite the vast stretch of ice, the wind brought with it the salty smell of the open sea. A few lamps illuminated the harbour, where a few abandoned fishing boats were gnawing at the car tyres.