Хеннинг Манкелль - Italian Shoes

‘Why?’

‘Because it’s beautiful. Because it’s a telescope. It’s on Mount Wilson, near Los Angeles. I shall go there before I die. You can see stars through the telescope. And things you could never imagine. That telescope is more powerful than any other.’

She started whispering now, as if in raptures, or as if she wanted to confide in me a highly valuable secret.

‘It’s so powerful that you can stand here on earth and make out an individual person on the moon. I would like to be that person.’

I sensed what she was trying to say. A harassed little girl running away from everything, especially from herself, thought that although she was invisible here on earth, she might become visible through that powerful telescope.

I had the feeling I was beginning to grasp a small fragment of who she was. I tried to keep the conversation going by talking about the starry skies we had here in the islands on clear, moonless autumn nights. But she drew back into her shell, not wanting to talk; she seemed to regret having said what she had.

We sat in silence for a while. Then I asked her once again why she had come here.

‘Oil,’ she said. ‘I intend going to Russia and becoming rich. There’s oil in Russia. Then I shall come back here and be a pyromaniac.’

‘What do you intend burning down?’

‘All the houses I’ve been forced to live in against my will.’

‘Are you intending to burn down my house?’

‘That’s the only one I shall leave alone. That and Agnes’s. But I shall burn down all the rest.’

This girl was mad. Not only did she run around brandishing a lethal sword, she also had the most confused ideas about her own future.

She seemed to read my mind.

‘Don’t you believe me?’

‘To be honest, no.’

‘Then you can go to hell.’

‘Nobody speaks like that in my house. I can have the coastguards here faster than you think.’

I slammed my fist down on Grandma’s old coffee saucer that Sima had used as an ashtray. Shards of china shot across the kitchen. She sat there motionless, as if my outburst had nothing to do with her.

‘I don’t want you to get angry,’ she said calmly. ‘I only want to spend one night here. Then I shall go away.’

‘Why did you come here at all?’

Her reply surprised me.

‘But you invited me here.’

‘I’ve no recollection of that.’

‘You said you didn’t think I would ever come. I wanted to prove to you that you were wrong. Besides, I’m on my way to Russia.’

‘I don’t believe a word you say. Can’t you tell me the truth?’

‘I don’t think you want to hear that.’

‘Why wouldn’t I?’

‘Why do you think I have the sword with me? I want to be able to defend myself. There was a time when I couldn’t. When I was eleven.’

I realised that this was probably true. Her vulnerability cut right through her anger.

‘I believe you. But why have you come here? You can’t really mean that you are on your way to Russia?’

‘I know I shall be successful there.’

‘What will you do? Dig for oil with your bare hands? They won’t even let you into the country. Why can’t you stay with Agnes?’

‘I have to move on. I left a note saying I was heading north.’

‘But this is south!’

‘I don’t want her to find me. She’s like a dog sometimes. She can sniff down anybody who runs away. I only want to stay here for a short time. Then I shall be off.’

‘You must realise that this isn’t possible.’

‘I’ll let you if you allow me to stay.’

‘Let me what?’

‘What do you think?’

It suddenly dawned on me what she was offering.

‘Who do you think I am? I shall forget you ever said that. I didn’t hear anything.’

I was so upset that I stormed out. I thought about the rumours that Jansson was no doubt busy spreading all over the islands. I would be Fredrik, the man who was secretly taking advantage of young girls imported from some Arabian country or other.

I sat down on the jetty. What Sima had said didn’t only embarrass me, it also saddened me. I was beginning to understand the scale of the burdens she was dragging around with her.

After a while she came down to the jetty.

‘Sit here,’ I said. ‘You can stay here a few days.’

I could feel her anxiety. Her legs were shaking. I couldn’t just throw her out. Besides, I needed time to think. A fourth woman had now invaded my life, and she needed my help, though I had no idea how to give it.

We ate the last hare steak from the freezer. Sima poked around at the food rather than eating it. She didn’t say much. Her worries seemed to be increasing all the time. She didn’t want to sleep in the room with the anthill. I made a bed up for her in the kitchen. It was barely nine o’clock when she said she wanted to turn in.

The cat would have to spend the night out. I went upstairs and lay down on my bed to read. It was all quiet down in the kitchen, but I could see light coming from the kitchen window. She still hadn’t switched the light off. As I drew my curtains, I could see my cat sitting in the light from the kitchen.

She would soon be leaving me as well. It was as if she had already turned into an ethereal being.

I was reading one of my grandfather’s books from 1911 about rare birds, especially waders. I must have dozed off without putting the light out. When I opened my eyes, it still wasn’t eleven o’clock. I had been asleep for half an hour at most. I got up and opened the curtains slightly. The kitchen light was out, and the cat had vanished. I was just going to lie down again when I heard something. There were sounds coming from the kitchen. I opened my door and listened intently. Sima was crying. I hesitated. Should I go downstairs? Did she want to be left in peace? After a while the sobbing seemed to fade away. I closed the door as quietly as I could, and went back to bed. I knew exactly where to put my feet in order to avoid making the floorboards creak.

The book about waders had fallen on to the floor. I didn’t pick it up, but lay in the dark and wondered what I should do. The only right and proper thing to do was to phone the coastguards. But why should I always do the right and proper thing? I decided to phone Agnes. She could decide. Despite everything, Agnes was the person closest to Sima in this life, if I had understood the facts correctly.

I woke up as usual shortly after six. The thermometer outside the bedroom window showed plus four degrees. It was foggy.

I got dressed and went downstairs. I was still treading carefully as I assumed Sima would still be asleep. I thought I would take the coffee pot with me to the boathouse where I have an electric hotplate. It’s been there since my grandfather’s day. He used it to boil mixtures of tar and resin to make his boat watertight.

The kitchen door was ajar. I opened it slowly as I knew it creaked. Sima was lying on top of the bed in her underclothes. The lamp in the corner by the sofa was switched on and acted like a spotlight to reveal that her body and the sheet were covered in blood.

I couldn’t believe what I saw. I knew it was true, but it felt as if it couldn’t possibly have happened even so. I tried to shake some life into her, at the same time looking for the deepest cuts. She hadn’t used the sword, but one of my grandfather’s old fish knives. For some reason that made me even more desperate, as if she had dragged him, the friendly old fisherman, into her wretched misery. I yelled at her to wake up, but her body was inert, her eyes closed. The worst wounds were around her abdomen, her stomach and her wrists. Strangely enough, there were also wounds in the back of her head. How she had managed to stab herself there was beyond me. The most serious one of all was in her right arm — I had noticed the previous day that she was left-handed — she must have lost a lot of blood. I made a pressure bandage from some kitchen towels. Then I took her pulse. It was faint. All the time I was trying to shake her into life. I didn’t know if she had taken any pills as well, or perhaps used some drug or other — there was a smell in the kitchen I didn’t recognise. I sniffed quickly at an ashtray, another of Grandma’s old coffee saucers that she had taken from a cupboard. She had presumably been smoking hash or pot. I cursed the fact that all my medical instruments were down at the boathouse. I ran out, stumbling over the cat sitting just outside the door, fetched a blood pressure cuff and returned to the kitchen. Her blood pressure was very low. She was in a serious condition.