Хеннинг Манкелль - Italian Shoes

‘I think you’re an extraordinary woman, no hesitation in coming aboard my hydrocopter and then venturing out on to the ice.’

‘It was an experience,’ said Harriet. ‘But I wouldn’t want to repeat that journey out to the island.’

I got up and walked up the hill. The sounds from the other side of the house reached me in the form of clinking crockery and sporadic shouts. I thought I could see Grandma sitting down there on the bench by the apple tree, and Grandfather on his way up the path from the boathouse.

It was an evening when the living and the dead could have a shared party. It was an evening for those who still had a long time to live, and for those like Harriet who were standing close to the invisible borderline, waiting for the ferry that would transport them over the river, for the final crossing.

I went down to the jetty. The caravan door was open. I walked over to it and peered in surreptitiously through the window. Andrea was trying on Louise’s clothes. She was tottering on high-heeled light blue shoes, and was wearing a strange dress covered in glistening sequins.

I sat down on the bench, and suddenly remembered that evening at the winter solstice. When I’d been in the kitchen thinking that nothing in my life would ever change. That was six months ago, and everything had changed. Now the summer solstice had begun to project us back towards darkness. I was listening to voices on my island that is normally so quiet. Romana’s shrill laughter, and then Harriet’s voice, as she raised herself above death and all that pain and shouted for more wine.

More wine! It sounded like a hunting call. Harriet had mobilised the last of her strength in order to fight the final battle. I went back to the house and uncorked the bottles we had left. When I came out, Jansson was embracing Romana in a swaying, semi-conscious dance. Hans had moved over to Harriet. He was holding her hand, or perhaps it was the other way round, and she was listening as he laboriously and unsuccessfully tried to explain to her how lighthouses in shipping channels made it safer for vessels to sail along them even at very high speeds. Louise and Andrea emerged from the shadows. Nobody apart from Harriet noticed pretty Andrea in Louise’s imaginative creations. She was still wearing the light blue shoes. Louise saw me looking at Andrea’s feet.

‘Giaconelli made them for me,’ she whispered in my ear. ‘Now I’m giving them to that girl who has so much love inside her but nobody will ever have the courage to accept it. An angel will wear light blue shoes created by a master.’

The long night passed slowly in a sort of dream, and I no longer recall clearly what happened or what was said. But on one occasion when I went for a pee, Jansson was sitting on the front steps, sobbing in Romana’s arms. Hans was dancing a waltz with Andrea, Harriet and Louise were whispering confidentially to each other, and the sun was climbing unobtrusively out of the sea.

The band that made its way along the path to the jetty at four in the morning was anything but steady on its feet. Harriet was supported by her walker and assisted by Hans. We stood on the jetty and said our goodbyes, untied the mooring ropes and watched the boats leave.

Just before Andrea was about to clamber down into the boat with the light blue shoes in her hand, she came up to me and hugged me with her thin, mosquito-bitten arms.

Long after the boats had vanished round the headland I could still feel that embrace, like a warm film round my body.

‘I’ll go back to the house with Harriet,’ said Louise. ‘She needs a really good wash. It’ll be easier if we’re on our own. If you’re tired you can have a lie-down in the caravan.’

‘I’ll start collecting the plates and things.’

‘We can do that tomorrow.’

I watched her helping Harriet back to the house. Harriet was exhausted now. She could barely hold herself upright, despite leaning on the walker and her daughter.

My family, I thought. The family I didn’t get until it was too late.

I fell asleep on the bench, and didn’t wake up until Louise tapped me on the shoulder.

‘She’s asleep now. We ought to get some sleep as well.’

The sun was already high over the horizon. I had a headache, and my mouth was dry.

‘Do you think she enjoyed it?’ I asked.

‘I hope so.’

‘Did she say anything?’

‘She was almost unconscious when I put her to bed.’

We walked up to the house. The cat, who had disappeared for most of the night, was lying on the kitchen sofa. Louise took hold of my hand.

‘I wonder who you are,’ she said. ‘One day I’ll understand, perhaps, But it was a good party. And I like your friends.’

She unrolled the mattress on the kitchen floor. I went up to my room and lay on the bed, taking off nothing but my shoes.

In my dreams I heard the cries and shrieks of sea gulls and terns. They came closer and closer, then suddenly dived down towards my face.

When I woke up I realised that the noises were coming from downstairs. It was Harriet, screaming in pain again.

The party was over.

A week later the cat vanished. Louise and I searched every nook and cranny among the rocks, but found nothing. As usual I thought about my dog. He would have found the cat immediately. But he was dead, and I realised that the cat was probably dead now as well. I lived on an island of dead animals, with a dying person who was struggling through her final painful days together with an ever growing anthill that was slowly threatening to take over the entire room.

The cat was never seen again. The heat of high summer formed an oppressive blanket over my island. I used my outboard motor to get the boat to the mainland, and bought an electric fan for Harriet’s room. The windows were left open all night. Mosquitoes danced on the old mosquito windows my grandfather had made long ago. There was even a date, written in carpenter’s pencil, on one of the frames: 1936. I began to think that despite the poor start, this July heatwave would turn the summer into the hottest I’d experienced here.

Louise went swimming every evening. Things had gone so far now that we were always within earshot of Harriet’s room. One of us needed to be on hand at all times. Her agonising pains were coming increasingly often. Every third day Louise phoned the home health service for advice. The second week in July, they wanted to send a doctor to examine her. I was on the porch changing a light bulb when Louise talked to them. To my surprise, I heard her say that a visit wouldn’t be necessary as her father was a doctor.

I made regular trips to the mainland in order to collect new supplies of Harriet’s medication from the chemist’s. One day Louise asked me to buy some picture postcards It didn’t matter what of. I bought the entire stock of cards from one shop, and postage stamps to go with them. When Harriet was asleep, Louise would sit down and write to all her friends in the forest. Occasionally she would also work away at a letter I gathered was going to be very long. She didn’t say who it was to. She never left her papers on the kitchen table, but always took them with her to the caravan.

I warned her that Jansson would certainly read every single card she gave him for posting.

‘Why would he want to do that?’

‘He’s curious.’

‘I think he’ll respect my postcards.’

We said no more about the matter. Every time Jansson moored his boat by the jetty, she would hand him a bundle of newly written cards. He would put them in his sack without even looking at them.

Nor did he complain about his aches and pains any more. This summer, with Harriet lying in my house, dying, Jansson seemed to have suddenly been cured of all his imagined ailments.