Echoes From the Dead (31 page)

“Estoy enfermo,“he mutters into the night.

He often has stomach pains and headaches, and his hands

have become shaky.

How many toasts to Sweden has he drunk on the veranda

of the Casa Grande? To Oland? To Stenvik? And to his mother, Vera?

It’s impossible to count the toasts and the bottles he has emptied.

This evening is like all the others in the bar, except for the fact that tonight Nils is celebrating his thirtieth birthday. But there isn’t actually anything to celebratehe knows that, and it makes him feel even worse.

“Quiero regresar a casa, “he whispers into the darkness.

He has slowly learned to speak Spanish, and a fair amount of English, but it is Swedish that is still most alive within him.

He has been on the run for more than ten years now, ever

since he sneaked aboard the cargo ship Celeste Horizon in the port of Gothenburg the summer after the war.

On board the Celeste Horizon he was given a cabin that was as narrow as a coffin, a coffin made of steel.

He has sailed on several old ships along the coasts of South America since then, but Celeste was definitely the worst. There wasn’t a single dry patch on board; the moisture from the sea penetrated everywhere, and anything that wasn’t wet and moldy was either broken or had fallen to pieces with rust. Water trickled or dripped from every surface. The light didn’t reach through the porthole in his cabin for over a month, because it was on the port side, and the constant leaks made the whole ship list to that side.

The engines throbbed day and night. Nils lay half dead from

seasickness on a berth in the darkness, and District Superintendent Henriksson often stood mutely beside him with dark blood pouring from his chest; when that happened Nils would close his eyes and wish that the ship would hit a mine. The sea was full of them, despite the fact that the war was overthat bastard Captain Petri had reminded Nils of this fact several times. He had also made it clear that if the Celeste Horizon went down, Nils would be last in line for the lifeboat.

While the ship was loading in England, he’d had to stay in his cabin day and night for two weeks, and the isolation had almost driven him crazy before they finally set sail westward across the Atlantic.

At sea outside Brazil he had seen an albatross: a gigantic bird gliding above the crest of the waves with its wings outstretched, carefree and unrestrained in the warm air around the ship. Nils had taken it as a good sign, and decided to stay in Brazil for a while.

But in the port of Santos he had seen the bums for the first time, and they had filled him with terror. Pathetic creatures who came stumbling along the quay even before the Celeste Horizon had reached her mooring, with empty eyes and ragged clothes.

“Bums,” said a Swedish sailor contemptuously at the gunwale

beside Nils, and added a piece of advice: “Throw lumps of coal at them if they come too close.”

The bums were the forgotten men, the alcoholics, who were

at home neither on land nor at sea. Sailors from Europe who had drunk one round too many and been left behind when their ships sailed.

Nils was no bum, he could afford to stay in a hotel every

night, and he remained in Santos for a few months, leaving the Celeste Horizon and Petri the madman without a single regret. He drank wine in bars the bums couldn’t afford to frequent, he wandered along the chalkwhite beaches outside the town, learned a little Spanish and Portuguese, but didn’t speak to any more people than necessary. He lost some weight, but was still tall and powerful, and nobody ever tried to rob him. He constantly longed for his home on Oland. He sent his mother a postcard every month, with no sender’s name, to show her he was alive.

He traveled on up to Rio with a Spanish ship; there were more people there, poorer people, wealthier people, fatter cockroaches, and more bums in the port and on the beaches. And everything was repeated: the aimless wandering, the wine drinking, the longing for home, and finally a new ship away from it all. He made his money last longer by cleaning and washing up on board.

Nils visited a whole series of ports: Buenaventura; La Plata; Valparaiso; Chanaral; Panama; Saint Martin in the Caribbean, which was full of Frenchmen and Dutchmen; Havana in Cuba, which was full of Americans. And none of them was one iota better than the ones he’d left behind.

He sent a postcard to his mother as soon as he came ashore

in a new place. No message or name; she just needed to know

that Nils was alive and thinking about her. He kept out of trouble, didn’t throw money away on women, and almost never fought.

He wanted to get to the USA, and got a berth on a French

boat across the gulf to the humidity of Louisiana. The lights of the bars in New Orleans were warm and goldenbut he wasn’t allowed into the USA without a Swedish passport, that was just the way it was. He couldn’t afford to bribe anyone anymore, and had to travel south again on the ship.

He couldn’t stand the thought of returning to South America, and in any case it was getting more and more difficult to get across the borders there too. So he went ashore in Costa Rica, in the port of Limon. And stayed there.

He has lived in Limon for more than six years, between the

sea and the jungle. In the steaming forests beyond the town there are banana trees and azaleas as big as apple trees, but he never goes out there. He misses the alvar. The tropical jungle smells like a moldy compost heap, and it suffocates him. Every time there’s a cloudburst, the arrowstraight streets of Limon turn into strips of mud, and the sewers overflow.

The days, the weeks, and the months have simply trickled

away.

After a year or so in Limon, he wrote a proper letter to his mother for the first time, telling her something of what had happened to him and giving her his address in the town.

He got a reply with a little money enclosed, and wrote again.

He asked his mother to help him get in touch with Uncle August.

Nils wants to come home now. He has been away from Oland for more than ten years, and that must be punishment enough.

If anyone can get Nils home, it’s Uncle August. His mother

wants him home, but she would never be able to organize his

journey on her own.

It took time, but now Nils is sitting with an envelope on the table in front of him next to his wine, with his address in Limon written on it in ink, and a Swedish stamp worth forty ore. The letter arrived from Sweden three weeks ago, with a check for two hundred dollars, and he has read it over and over again.

It’s from his uncle August in Ramneby in Smaland. August

has heard from his sister Vera that Nils is in Latin America, and wants to come home.

You can never come home, Nils.

That’s what Uncle August writes. The letter is only one page long and consists almost entirely of scolding, but that short sentence is the one Nils reads over and over again.

You can never come home.

Nils tries to forget those words, but it’s impossible.

He reads the sentence again and again, and it feels as if dead District Superintendent Henriksson is standing behind him, smiling and reading over his shoulder.

Never, Nils.

He pours more wine from the bottle. Mosquitoes as big as

a Swedish onekrona coin are humming above the beach, and a

shiny cockroach is crawling along the wooden balustrade.

Loud laughter can be heard in the darkness from inside the

bar; puttering motorbikes chug along the muddy streets of the town. It is never silent in Limon.

Nils drinks and closes his eyes. The world spins around;

he’s ill.

“Quiero regresar a casa,“he mutters into the darkness.

Never.

Nils is only thirtyhe’s still young.

He won’t listen to Uncle August. He’ll keep on writing to his mother instead. Beg her, plead with her. She’ll look after him.

You can come home now, Nils.

Those are the words he’s waiting for in a letter from her.

And they must come, soon.

Gerlof was sitting in his wheelchair on the way across the

churchyard, pondering. Ernst had failed to reach an agreement with somebody when he died, Gerlof believedbut an agreement about what?

Ernst had never been particularly interested in money, as

far as Gerlof knewhe’d been perfectly happy working in the

quarry and selling a sculpture to a tourist now and again to earn money for food and rent. That was enough for him. So why hadn’t he wanted to share his ideas about Jens’s disappearance with Gerlof?

He’d chosen the Kant stone. He’d definitely done that. And

what did it mean?

Gerlof could spend ages thinking about all these questions,

going round and round in circles. He still kept coming back to the same thing: if Nils Kant wasn’t dead, if he’d somehow arranged to fake his death and managed to return to Sweden under another name, as John believed, then the people who were trying to find out the truth would be a danger to him.

“Ready, Gerlof?” asked Astrid behind him as they reached

the community center.

He nodded.

“In we go, then,” she said, pushing the chair up the ramp.

There weren’t as many people inside as there had been at

the burial itself, but Gerlof and Astrid still had to weave their way through them. A few bent down to ask Gerlof how he was feeling, but after three such condescending conversations, he forced himself to his feet. He wanted to show that he could actually walk in spite of the pain, he wasn’t an invalid.

Astrid pushed the wheelchair to one side, and Gerlof leaned

on his cane as he greeted various acquaintances. Thank goodness Gosta Engstrom from Borgholm wasn’t interested in his health, and even better was the fact that Margit wasn’t with him when Gerlof made his way over on shaky legs. They had a quiet conversation about the events of the autumn, and eventually Gerlof told him what he thought about Ernst’s death.

“Not an accident?” said Gosta.

Gerlof shook his head.

“You meanmurder?”

“Somebody pushed him into the quarry, then tipped that

sculpture on top of him,” said Gerlof. “That’s what John and I think.”

He was afraid Gosta would laugh at him, but Gosta’s expression was grim.

“Who would do such a thing?” he asked.

Gerlof shook his head again. “That’s the question.”

Then Margit Engstrom came over to say hello; Gerlof shook

hands with her, and tottered off.

He bumped into Bengt Nyberg from OlandsPosten, who was

fishing for news as usual:

“I’ve heard they’re shortstaffed up at the home in Marnas

these days. Is that true? Are the residents having problems with the service?”

Gerlof had nothing to tell him. It seemed as if everybody in the room wanted something from him. Before he’d even made it to the buffet tables, he met Gunnar Ljunger and his wife from Langvik. Gunnar got straight to the point as usual.

“I need six more, Gerlof,” said the hotel owner. “Has your

daughter spoken to you? She was in the hotel in Langvik the other day and I asked her to mention it to you: six more.”

He was talking about ships in bottles, of course.

“Isn’t it getting a bit crowded on your shelves?” asked

Gerlof.

“We’re expanding,” said Ljunger quickly. “They’re going to

go in the windows in the new part of the restaurant.”

He took out a notebook and a pen with the slogan shop and

enjoy in langvik! and jotted down some figures on a piece of paper, which he passed over to Gerlof.

“That’s what I’ll pay,” he said. “For each ship.”

Gerlof looked at the piece of paper. He wasn’t happy about

what the Ljungers were doing up in Langvik, it was pure exploitation of the areabut this fourfigure sum was enough to maintain both the cottage and the boathouse in Stenvik for at least another year.

“I’ve got two ships ready now,” he said quietly. “The others will take a whilemaybe till spring.”

“That’s fine.” Ljunger straightened happily. “I’ll buy them

then. Come down to Langvik and have a meal sometime.”

Gerlof shook his hand, his wife smiled at Gerlof, and the two moved on. Gerlof could finally make his way to the tables to have a cup of coffee and a slice of carrot cake.

Astrid and Carl were already sitting there, and when Gerlof

had sat down, with some difficulty, and had a cup of coffee in front of him, another man sat down on the other side of the table. It was Lennart Henriksson.

“So that’s that, then,” the policeman said to Gerlof.

Gerlof nodded. “But of course the sorrow is still with us.”

“Indeed. And you daughter … is she here?” asked Lennart.

“No. She’s gone back to Gothenburg.”

“Did she leave yesterday?”

Gerlof shook his head. “I assume she left this morning.”

Lennart looked at him. “Didn’t she call in to say goodbye?”

“No. But that doesn’t particularly surprise me.”

He could have added that he and Julia hadn’t succeeded in

getting all that close to each other during her stay on Oland, but Lennart could work that out for himself.

Lennart sat gazing down into his coffee cup. He wore a troubled frown, and was drumming faintly on the table with the fingers of his right hand.

Then he looked up at Gerlof. “But you’re sure she’s gone?”

“Astrid said the car had gone.”

“There was nothing on the ridge,” Astrid said. “And the blinds were pulled down in the boathouse, weren’t they, Carl?”

Her brother nodded.

“Did she say goodbye to you?” Lennart asked Astrid.

Gerlof couldn’t understand why he was so worried.

“Well, no,” said Astrid. “But you don’t always have time to get round to that sort of thing …”

“I’ll call her,” said Lennart firmly. “Is that okay with you, Gerlof?”

“Of course,” said Gerlof. “Did you want her for anything special?”

“No,”

said Lennart, taking out his cell phone.