Хеннинг Манкелль - Italian Shoes

‘It doesn’t matter. I sleep too much anyway.’

‘I’m coming now.’

‘Are you standing on the quay?’

‘Not yet. I’m intending to come out tomorrow, if it’s all right with you.’

‘Of course it’s all right with me.’

‘Can you collect me?’

I listened to the wind and the sound of the breakers crashing on to the rocks at Norrudden.

‘It’s too windy for my little boat. I’ll arrange for somebody else to fetch you. What time will you be on the quay?’

‘Around midday.’

She ended the call just as abruptly as she’d started it. She sounded worried and evidently wanted to see me urgently.

I started cleaning at five the next morning. I changed the bag in my ancient vacuum cleaner and realised that my house was covered in a layer of dust. It took me three hours to get it anywhere close to clean. After my usual bath, I dried myself, turned up the heating and sat down at the kitchen table to phone Jansson. But I rang the coastguard instead. Hans Lundman was out, doing something with one of the boats, but rang me back a quarter of an hour later. I asked if he could pick somebody up from the harbour and ferry them out to me.

‘I know you’re not allowed to take passengers,’ I said.

‘We can always send out a patrol past your island,’ he said. ‘What’s his name?’

‘It’s a she. You can’t miss her. She only has one arm.’

Hans and I were very similar in some ways. Unlike Jansson we were people who concealed their curiosity and didn’t ask unnecessary questions. But I doubt if Hans poked around in his assistants’ papers and belongings.

I took Carra with me and went for a walk round the island. It was 1 November, the sea was growing greyer and greyer, and the last of the leaves had fallen from the trees. I was really looking forward to Agnes’s visit. I realised to my surprise that I was excited at the prospect. I imagined her standing naked on my kitchen floor, with her one arm. I sat down on the bench by the jetty, and dreamt up an impossible love story. I didn’t know what Agnes wanted. But I didn’t think she was coming here to tell me about her love for me.

I carried Sima’s sword and her suitcase from the boathouse to the kitchen. Agnes hadn’t said anything about staying overnight, but I made up the bed in the room with the anthill.

I had decided to relocate the anthill to old pasture, which was now overgrown and covered in shrubs. But, like so much else, I’d never got round to it.

At about eleven I shaved but couldn’t settle on what to wear. I was as nervous as a teenager at the thought of her visit. I eventually decided on my usual clothes: dark trousers, cut-down wellington boots and a thick jumper that was threadbare in places. Earlier in the morning I’d already taken a chicken out of the freezer.

I went around dusting in places that I’d already dusted. At noon I put on my jacket and walked down to the jetty to wait. It wasn’t a post day, so Jansson wouldn’t turn up to disturb us. Carra was sitting on the edge of the jetty and seemed to sense that something was in the offing.

Hans Lundman came into sight in the big coastguard patrol boat. I could hear the powerful engine from a long way away. As the boat glided into the inlet I stood up. It was quite shallow by the jetty, so Hans merely nudged against it with the boat’s bows. Agnes emerged from the wheelhouse with a rucksack slung over her shoulder. Hans was in uniform. He was leaning over the rail.

‘Many thanks for your help,’ I said.

‘I was passing by anyway. We’re heading for Gotland to look for a sailing boat with nobody on board.’

We stood and watched the big patrol boat reverse out of the inlet. Agnes’s hair was fluttering in the wind. I had an almost irresistible desire to kiss her.

‘It’s beautiful here,’ she said. ‘I’ve tried to imagine your island. I can see now how wrong I was.’

‘What did you imagine?’

‘Lots of trees. Not just rocks and the open sea.’

The dog came towards us. Agnes looked at me in surprise.

‘I thought you said your dog was dead?’

‘I’ve got another one. From a police officer. It’s a long story. The dog’s name is Carra.’

We walked up towards the house. I wanted to carry her rucksack, but she shook her head. When we entered the kitchen, the first things she saw were Sima’s sword and her suitcase. She sat down on a chair.

‘Was it here it happened? I want you to tell me. Right away. Now.’

I gave her all the details that I would never be able to forget. Her eyes glazed over. I was giving a funeral oration, not a clinical description of a suicide that reached its climax in a hospital bed. When I’d finished she said nothing, just went through the contents of the suitcase.

‘Why did she do it?’ I asked. ‘Something must have happened when she came here, surely? I’d never have imagined that she would try to take her own life.’

‘Perhaps she found a sense of security here. Something she hadn’t expected.’

‘Security? But she took her own life.’

‘Maybe her situation was so desperate that she needed to feel secure in order to take the final step and commit suicide? Perhaps she found that feeling of security here in your house? She really did try to kill herself. She didn’t want to live. She didn’t cut herself as a cry for help. She did it because she no longer wanted to hear her own screams echoing inside herself.’

Agnes wondered if she could stay until the following day. I showed her the bed in the room where the ants lived. She burst out laughing. Of course she could sleep there. I said there would be chicken for dinner. Agnes went to the bathroom. When she reappeared she had changed her clothes and put her hair up.

She asked me to show her round the island. Carra came with us. I told her about the time when she had come running after the car, and then led us to Sara Larsson’s dead body. Agnes seemed disturbed by my talking. She just wanted to enjoy what she could see. It was a chilly autumn day, the thin covering of heather was crouching down in an attempt to avoid the harsh wind. The sea was blue grey, old seaweed was draped over the rocks, smelling putrid. Occasional birds flew out of rocky crevices as we approached, and soared on the upwinds that always form at the edge of the cliffs. We came to Norrudden where the bare rocks of Sillhällarna can just be seen breaking the surface of the water before the open sea begins. I stood slightly to one side, watching her. She was captivated by the view. She turned to look at me, and then shouted into the wind.

‘There’s one thing I shall never forgive you for. I can’t applaud any more. It’s natural to feel jubilation inside and then give expression to it by clapping the palms of your hands together.’

There was nothing I could say, of course. She knew that. She came up to me and turned her back on the wind.

‘I used to do that even when I was a child.’

‘Do what?’

‘Applaud when I went out into the countryside and saw something beautiful. Why should you clap only when you’re sitting in a concert hall, or listening to somebody talking? Why can’t you stand out here on the cliffs and applaud? I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything more beautiful than this. I envy you, living out here.’

‘I can applaud for you,’ I said.

She nodded and led me to the highest and outermost rock. She shouted bravo, and I applauded. It was an odd experience.

We continued our walk and came to the caravan behind the boathouse.

‘No car,’ she said. ‘No car, no road, but a caravan. And a pair of beautiful red high-heeled shoes.’

The door was open. I’d placed a piece of wood there to prevent it from closing. The shoes were standing there, shining. We sat down on the bench out of the wind. I told her about my daughter and Harriet’s death. I avoided mentioning how I had abandoned her. But Agnes wasn’t listening to me, her mind was elsewhere, and I realised that she had come here for a reason. It wasn’t only that she wanted to see my kitchen, and collect the sword and the suitcase.