Хеннинг Манкелль - Italian Shoes

I fell asleep with the light still on. At two o’clock I was woken up by Harriet’s screams. I stuck my fingers in my ears and waited for the painkillers to kick in.

We were living in my house in a silence that could be shattered at any moment by a roar of intense pain. I found myself thinking more and more frequently that I hoped Harriet would die soon. For all our sakes.

The heatwave lasted until 24 July. I noted in my logbook that there was a north-easterly wind and the temperature had started to fall. Troughs of low pressure queuing up over the North Sea brought changeable weather. In the early hours of 27 July, a northerly gale raged over the archipelago. A few tiles next to the chimney were ripped off the roof and smashed on the ground below; I managed to climb up on to the roof and replace them with spares that had been stored in a shed since the barn was demolished in the late 1960s.

Harriet’s condition grew worse. Now that the weather had started to deteriorate she was awake for only short periods of every day. Louise and I shared the chores, but Louise washed her mother and changed her pads for which I was grateful.

Autumn was creeping up on us. The nights were getting longer, the sun was losing its strength. Louise and I prepared ourselves for the fact that Harriet could die at any moment. When she was conscious, we would both sit by her bed. Louise wanted her to see the pair of us together. Harriet didn’t say much. She might ask about the time, and if it would soon be time to eat. She was becoming more and more confused. Sometimes she thought she was in the caravan in the forest, at other times she was convinced she was in her flat in Stockholm. She was not aware of being on the island, in a room with an anthill. Nor did she seem to be aware that she was dying. When she did wake up, it seemed to be the most natural thing in the world. She would drink a little water, perhaps swallow a few spoonfuls of soup, then drop off to sleep again. The skin on her face was now stretched so tightly round her cranium that I was afraid it might split and expose her skull. Death is ugly, I thought. There was now almost nothing left of the beautiful Harriet. She was a wax-coloured skeleton under a blanket, nothing more.

One evening at the beginning of August, we sat down on the bench under the apple tree. We were wearing warm jackets, and Louise had one of my old woolly hats on her head.

‘What are we going to do when she dies?’ I wondered. ‘You must have thought about it. Do you know if she has any specific wishes?’

‘She wants to be cremated. She sent me a brochure from an undertaker’s some months ago. I may still have it, or I might have thrown it away. She had marked the cheapest coffin and an urn on special offer.’

‘Does she have any sepulchral rights?’

Louise frowned. ‘What does that mean?’

‘Is there a family grave? Where are her parents buried? There’s usually a link to a particular town or village. In the old days, they used to talk about sepulchral rights.’

‘Her relatives are spread all over the country. I’ve never heard her mention visiting her parents’ grave. She’s never expressed any specific wish regarding her own grave. Although she did say quite firmly that she didn’t want a headstone. I think she would prefer to have her ashes cast into the wind. You can actually do that nowadays.’

‘You need permission,’ I said. ‘Jansson has told me about old fishermen who wanted their ashes scattered over the ancient herring grounds.’

We sat without speaking, thinking about what to do. I had bought a plot in a cemetery: there was probably no reason why Harriet shouldn’t lie by my side.

Louise put her hand on my arm.

‘We don’t really need to ask permission, in fact,’ she said. ‘Harriet could be one of those people in this country who don’t exist.’

‘Everybody has a personal identity number,’ I said. ‘We’re not allowed to disappear when it suits us.’

‘There are always ways of getting round things,’ Louise said. ‘She will die here, in your house. We’ll burn her just like they cremate dead people in India. Then we’ll scatter her ashes over the water. I’ll terminate the contract on her flat in Stockholm and empty it. I won’t supply a forwarding address. She’ll no longer collect her pension. I’ll tell the home health-care people that she’s died. That’s all they want to know. Somebody might start to wonder, I expect, but I shall say that I haven’t had any contact with my mother for several months. And she left here after a short visit.’

‘Did she?’

‘Who do you think is going to ask Jansson or Hans Lundman about where she’s gone to?’

‘But that’s just it. Where has she gone to? Who took her to the mainland?’

‘You did. A week ago. Nobody knows she’s still here.’

It began to dawn on me that Louise was serious. We would take care of the funeral ourselves. Nothing more was said. I got very little sleep that night. But I eventually began to think it might just be possible.

Two days later, when Louise and I were having dinner, she suddenly put down her spoon.

‘The fire,’ she said. ‘Now I know how we can light it without giving anybody cause to wonder what’s happening.’

I listened to her suggestion. It seemed repulsive at first, but then I began to see that it was a beautiful idea.

The moon vanished. Darkness enveloped the archipelago. The last sailing boats of summer headed back to their home ports. The navy conducted manoeuvres in the southern archipelago. We occasionally heard the rumble of distant gunfire. Harriet was now sleeping more or less round the clock. We took it in turns to stay with her. While I was a medical student, I had sometimes earned some extra pocket money by doing night duty. I could still remember the first time I watched a person die. It happened without any movement, in complete silence. The big leap was so tiny. In a split second the living person joined the dead.

I recall thinking: This person who is now dead is someone who has in reality never existed. Death wipes out everything that has lived. Death leaves no trace, apart from the things I’ve always found so difficult to cope with. Love, emotions. I ran away from Harriet because she came too close to me. And now she will soon be gone.

Louise was often upset during those last days. I experienced an increasing fear that I myself was approaching the end. I was afraid of the humiliations in store for me, and hoped I would be granted a gentle death, one which spared me from having to lie in bed for a long time before I reached the final shore.

Harriet died at dawn, shortly after six o’clock, on 22 August. She had endured a restless night — the painkillers didn’t seem to help. I was making coffee when Louise came into the kitchen. She stood beside me and waited until I had counted up to seventeen.

‘Mum’s dead.’

We went to the room where Harriet lay. I felt for a pulse, and used my stethoscope to search for any sign of heart activity. She really was in fact dead. We sat down on her bed. Louise was crying quietly, almost silently. All I felt was a worryingly selfish feeling of relief that it wasn’t me lying there dead.

We sat there without speaking for about ten minutes, I listened again for any heart activity — nothing. Then I draped one of Grandma’s embroidered towels over Harriet’s face.

We drank coffee, which was still hot. At seven o’clock I telephoned the coastguard. Hans Lundman answered.

‘How’s your daughter?’

‘She’s fine.’

‘And Harriet?’

‘She’s left.’

‘Andrea is staggering around on those beautiful light blue shoes. Pass that message on to Louise.’

‘I’ll do that. I’m ringing to say that I’m intending to have a big bonfire today, to get rid of lots of rubbish. Just in case anybody contacts you to report a fire on the island.’