Хеннинг Манкелль - Italian Shoes

‘I’m quite sure you could. Nobody had a sense of direction and distance anywhere near as good as yours.’

I couldn’t challenge Harriet’s claim. I can always find my way through even the most complicated maze of streets. And I never get lost in the countryside.

‘I suppose I might be able to find it if I think hard enough. It’s just that I don’t understand why.’

‘Because it’s the most beautiful promise I’ve ever been given in my life.’

‘The most beautiful?’

‘The only genuinely beautiful one.’

Those were her very words. The only genuinely beautiful promise. It was as if she’d started off a large orchestra playing inside my head, such was the power of her speech.

‘We’re always being made promises,’ she said. ‘You make them yourself and you listen to others giving theirs. Politicians are always going on about providing a better quality of life for people as they get older, and a health service in which nobody ever gets bedsores. Banks promise you high interest rates, some food promises to make you lose weight if you eat it, and body creams guarantee old age with fewer wrinkles. Life is quite simply a matter of cruising along in your own little boat through a constantly changing but never-ending stream of promises. And how many do we remember? We forget the ones we would like to remember, and we remember the ones we’d prefer to forget. Broken promises are like shadows dancing around in the twilight. The older I become, the more clearly I see them. The most beautiful promise I’ve ever been given in my life was the one you made to take me to that forest pool. I want to see it, and dream that I’m swimming in it, before it’s too late.’

I would take her. The only thing I might be able to avoid was setting off in the middle of winter. But perhaps she didn’t dare wait until the spring, because of her illness?

I thought that perhaps I should tell her I knew she was mortally ill. But I didn’t.

‘Do you understand what I mean when I talk about all the promises that accompany one’s journey through life?’

‘I’ve tried to avoid being taken in. One is so easily fooled.’

She stretched out her hand and placed it over mine.

‘There was a time when I knew you. We walked along the streets of Stockholm. In my memory, it’s always spring when we’re out walking there. The person I had by my side then is not the same person that you are now. He could have become anything at all — apart from a solitary man on a little island on the edge of the open sea.’

Her hand was still lying on top of mine. I didn’t touch it.

‘Do you recall any darkness?’ she asked.

‘No. It was always light.’

‘I don’t know what happened.’

‘Nor do I.’

She squeezed my hand.

‘You don’t need to lie to me. Of course you know. You caused me endless pain. I don’t think I’ve got over it even now. Do you want to know what it felt like?’

I didn’t answer. She took away her hand and leaned back on the sofa.

‘All I want is for you to keep your promise. You must leave this island for a few days. Then you can come back here, and I’ll never bother you again.’

‘It’s not possible,’ I said. ‘It’s too far. My car isn’t up to it.’

‘All I want is for you to show me how to get there.’

It was obvious she wasn’t going to give up.

It was starting to get light. The night was over.

‘I married,’ she said out of the blue. ‘What about you?’

‘I divorced.’

‘So you got married as well? Who to?’

‘You don’t know them.’

‘Them?’

‘I was married twice. My first wife was called Birgit, and she was a nurse. After two years we had no more to say to each other. And she wanted to retrain as a mining engineer. What did I care for stones and gravel and mine shafts? My second wife was called Rose-Marie, and was an antiques dealer. You can’t imagine how often I left the operating theatre after a long day and accompanied her to some auction sale or other, and then had to ferry home an old cupboard from some peasant’s kitchen. I lost count of how many tables and chairs I had to soak in lye in an old bathtub in order to get rid of the paint. That lasted for four years.’

‘Have you any children?’

I shook my head. Once upon a time, ages ago, I had imagined that when I grew old, I would have children to lighten the darkness of my old age. It was too late now — I’m a bit like my boat, out of the water and covered by a tarpaulin.

I looked at Harriet.

‘Do you have any children?’

She eyed me for a long time before answering.

‘I have a daughter.’

It struck me that she could have been my child, had I not abandoned her.

‘She’s called Louise,’ said Harriet.

‘That’s a lovely name,’ I said.

I stood up and made coffee. Morning was now in full swing. I waited until the water started to boil, counted to seventeen, and then let it brew. I took two cups from the cupboard, and sliced up the loaf of bread that had thawed by now. We were a couple of OAPs sitting down to coffee in the middle of January. We were one of the thousands of coffee mornings that take place every day in this country of ours. I wondered if any of the others were taking place in circumstances anything remotely like the one in my kitchen.

After drinking her coffee, Harriet withdrew into her anthill room and closed the door.

For the first time in many years I skipped my winter bath. I hesitated for some considerable time, and was about to get undressed and fetch the axe when I changed my mind. There would be no more winter baths for me until I had taken Harriet to the forest pool.

Instead of my dressing gown I put on a jacket and walked down to the jetty. There had been an unexpected change of weather: a thaw had set in, and the snow stuck to my boots.

I had a few hours to myself. The sun broke through the clouds, and melting snow and ice began dripping from the boathouse roof. I went inside, fetched one of my tins of tar and opened it. The smell calmed me down. I almost fell asleep in the pale sunlight.

I thought back to the time when Harriet and I were together. I felt that nowadays I belonged to an epoch that no longer existed. I lived in a strangely barren landscape for those who were left over, who had lost their footing in their own time and were unable to live with the innovations of the new age. My mind wandered. When Harriet and I were together, everybody smoked. All the time, and everywhere. The whole of my youth was filled with ashtrays. I can still recall the chain-smoking doctors and professors who trained me to become a person with the right to wear a white coat. In those days, the postman who delivered mail to the skerries was Hjalmar Hedelius. In winter he would skate from island to island. His rucksack must have been incredibly heavy, and that was before the modern obsession with junk mail.

My rambling thoughts were broken by the sound of an approaching hydrocopter.

Jansson had already been to the widow Mrs Åkerblom, and was now heading for me at full speed, bringing all his aches and pains. The toothache that had been pestering him before Christmas had gone away. The last time he moored by my jetty, he had asked me to examine a few brown moles that had formed on the back of his left hand. I calmed him down by assuring him that they were normal developments as a man grew older. He would outlive all the rest of us on the islands. When we pensioners have gone, Jansson will still be chugging along in his old converted fishing boat, or rushing around in his hydrocopter. Unless he’s been made redundant, of course. Which will almost certainly be his fate.

Jansson glided up to the jetty, switched off the engine and began wriggling out of all his coats and hats. He was red in the face, his hair was standing on end.