Echoes From the Dead (4 page)

was cabbage soup on the menu today, and Gerlof picked up his spoon as he waited for the food trolleys to arrive.

After dinner most of the residents would settle down to watch TV for the rest of the evening.

These were different times. All the stranded ships had disappeared from Oland’s shores, and no one told stories in the twilight hour any longer.

Dinner was over. Gerlof was back in his room.

He placed his cane beside the bookshelf and sat down at the

desk again. It was evening now outside the window. If he leaned over the desk and pressed his nose right up against the glass, he would just be able to catch a glimpse of the fields north of Mamas and beyond them the shore and the dark sea. The Baltic, his former workplace. But he couldn’t manage such gymnastic contortions any longer, and had to content himself with looking out across the birch trees behind the old people’s home.

It wasn’t called an “old people’s home” by those who decided these things any longer, but of course that’s what it was. They were always trying to come up with new words that would sound better, but it was still a collection of old folk bundled together, far too many of whom simply sat around waiting for death.

A black notebook lay beside a pile of newspapers on the desk, and he reached out and picked it up. After sitting at his desk just staring out of the window for the whole of his first week at the home, Gerlof had pulled himself together and gone into the village to buy the notebook in the little grocery store. Then he’d begun to write.

The notebook consisted of both thoughts and reminders. He

wrote down things that had to be done, and crossed them out when they’d been accomplished, except for the reminder shave! which was written at the top of the first page and was never crossed out, as it was a daily task. Shaving was necessary, and was something he’d remembered to do earlier today.

This was the first thought in the book:

PATIENCE IS WORTH MORE THAN VALOR; BETTER A DISCIPLINED

HEART THAN A STORMED CITY.

This was a worthwhile quotation from Proverbs, chapter sixteen.

Gerlof had started to read the Bible at the age of twelve, and had never stopped.

At the back of the book were three lines that hadn’t been

crossed out. They read:

PAY THIS MONTH’S BILLS.

JULIA COMING WEDNESDAY EVENING.

TALK TO ERNST.

He didn’t need to pay the bills for the telephone, newspapers, the upkeep of his wife Ella’s grave over in the churchyard, and his monthly fees for staying at the home until next week.

And Julia was on her way, she’d finally promised to come.

He mustn’t forget about that. He hoped Julia would stay on Oland for a while. After all these years she was still full of sorrow, and he wanted to take her away from that.

The last reminder was just as important, and also had to do

with Julia. Ernst was a stonemason in Stenvik, one of the few people who lived there all year round these days. He and Gerlof and their mutual friend John spoke on the telephone every week.

Sometimes they even sat there in the twilight hour telling each other old stories, something Gerlof really appreciated, even though he’d usually heard them already.

But one evening a few months earlier, Ernst had come to

Marnas with a new story: the one about the murder of Gerlof’s grandchild, Jens.

Gerlof wasn’t at all ready to hear the storyhe didn’t really want to think about little Jensbut Ernst had sat over there on the bed and insisted on telling his tale.

“I’ve been giving some thought to how it happened,” said

Ernst quietly.

“Oh yes,” said Gerlof, sitting at the desk.

“I just don’t believe your grandchild went down to the sea

and drowned,” Ernst had said. “I think perhaps he went out onto the alvar in the fog. And I think he met a murderer out there.”

“A murderer?” said Gerlof.

Ernst had fallen silent, his callused hands folded on his knee.

“But who?” Gerlof had asked.

“Nils Kant,” said Ernst. “I believe it was Nils Kant he met in the fog.”

Gerlof had just stared at him, but Ernst’s gaze had been

serious.

“I really believe that’s what happened,” he said. “I believe Nils Kant came home from the sea, from wherever he’d been, and caused even more misery.”

He hadn’t really said any more on that occasion. A short story in the twilight hour, but Gerlof hadn’t been able to forget it. He hoped Ernst would soon come back and tell him more.

Gerlof kept flicking through his notebook. There were far

fewer thoughts noted down than reminders, and soon he’d got to the end.

He closed the book. He couldn’t do much more at the desk,

but remained there anyway, watching the swaying birch trees in the darkness. They reminded him a little of sails in a stiff breeze, and from that thought it wasn’t far to the memory of himself standing on deck in autumn winds like these, watching the coast of Oland slipping slowly by, either at close quarters with its rocks and cottages, or as just a dark strip along the horizonand just as he was picturing the scene, the telephone on the desk suddenly rang.

The sound was shrill and loud in the silent room. Gerlof let it ring once more. He could often sense in advance who was calling; this time he wasn’t sure.

He lifted the receiver after the third ring.

“Davidsson.”

No one answered.

The line was open, and he could hear the steady hiss of electrons or whatever it was that whirled around the telephone cables, but the person holding the receiver didn’t say a word.

Gerlof thought he knew what the person wanted anyway.

“This is Gerlof,” he said, “and I received it. If it’s the sandal you’re calling about.”

He thought he could hear the sound of quiet breathing on the other end.

“It came in the mail a few days ago,” he said.

Silence.

“I think it was you who sent it,” said Gerlof. “Why did you

do that?”

Only silence.

“Where did you find it?”

The only thing he could hear was the hissing noise. When

Gerlof had been pressing the receiver to his ear for long enough, it began to feel as if he were sitting there all alone in the entire universe, listening to the silence of black outer space. Or to the sea.

After thirty seconds, someone gave a deep cough.

Then there was a click. The receiver at the other end had

been put down.

julia’s Elder sister, Lena Lundqvist, was clutching the keys firmly and looking nervously at the car. She glanced briefly at Julia, then looked back at their shared car.

It was a small red Ford. Not new, but still with shiny paintwork and good summer tires. It was parked on the street, next to the driveway of Lena and her husband Richard’s tall brick house in Torslanda; they had a big garden, and although there was no sea view, they were so close to the sea that Julia thought she could smell the tang of the salt water in the air. She heard the sound of shrill laughter from one of the open windows, and realized all the children were home.

“We’re really not keen on lending it out… When did you last drive?” asked Lena.

She was still holding the car keys in one hand, her arms firmly crossed over her chest.

“Last summer,” said Julia, adding a quick reminder: “But it is my car … at least, half of it is.”

A cold, damp wind swept along the street from the sea. Lena

was wearing only a thin cardigan and skirt, but she didn’t ask Julia to come inside where it was warm so they could discuss things furtherand even if she had, Julia would never have agreed. Richard was bound to be inside, and she had no desire to see either him or their teenage children.

Richard was some kind of big boss at Volvo. He had his own

company car, of course, as did Lena, who was head of a primary school in Hisingen. They were very fortunate.

“You don’t need it,” added Julia, her voice steady. “You’ve only had it while … while I haven’t wanted to drive.”

Lena looked at the car again. “Well, yes, but Richard’s daughter is here every other weekend, and she wants”

“I shall pay for all the gas,” Julia interrupted her.

She wasn’t afraid of her older sister, she never had been, and she had made the decision to drive to Oland.

“Yes, I know you will, it isn’t that,” said Lena. “But it doesn’t feel right, somehow. And then there’s the insurance. Richard says”

“I’m only going to drive to Oland in it,” said Julia. “And then back to Gothenburg again.”

Lena looked up at the house; there were lights behind the

curtains in almost every room.

“Gerlof wants me to go,” Julia went on. “I spoke to him yesterday.”

“But

why now?” said Lena, then went on without waiting for

an answer. “And where are you going to stay? I mean, you can’t stay with him at the homethere aren’t any guest rooms there, as far as I know. And down in Stenvik we’ve closed up the cottage and the boathouse for the season …”

“I’ll sort something out,” said Julia quickly, then realized that she didn’t actually know where she was going to stay. She hadn’t even thought about it. “But I can take the car, then?”

She could sense that her sister was on the point of giving in, and wanted a quick answer before Richard came out to help his wife put off lending her the car.

“Well…” said Lena. “All right, you can borrow it then. I just need to get a few things.”

She went over to the car, opened the door, and took out some papers, a pair of sunglasses, and half a bar of Marabou chocolate.

She walked back to Julia, held out her hand, and let go of the keys. Julia caught them, then Lena handed her something else.

“Take this too,” she said. “So we can get hold of you. I just got a new one through work.”

It was a cell phone, a black one. Perhaps not the smallest

model, but small enough.

“I don’t know how to use these,” said Julia.

“It’s easy. There’s a code that you key in first… here.” Lena wrote it down, along with the telephone number, on a piece of paper. “When you make a call, you just key in the whole number, with the area code, and press this green button. There’s a bit of credit left on it; when that’s gone you’ll have to pay yourself.”

“Okay.” Julia took the phone. “Thanks.”

“Right… Drive carefully,” said Lena. “Love to Dad.”

Julia nodded and walked over to the car. She got in, smelled the fragrance of her sister’s perfume, started the engine, and drove off.

It was already dusk. And as she drove through Hisingen, at

twenty kilometers below the speed limit, she thought about why she and Lena could never look at each other for more than a few seconds at a time. They’d been close in the pastafter all, Lena was the reason why Julia had moved to Gothenburg once upon a timebut now it was just the opposite. And things had been this bad since that Friday several years earlier when Julia had been inside Lena and Richard’s house for the last time, at a small dinner party without the children, which had ended with Richard putting his wineglass down, getting up from the table, and asking: “Do we have to sit here constantly going over this tedious

nonsense about things that happened twenty years ago? I’m just wondering. Do we have to?”

He was angry and slightly drunk and his voice was rough

despite the fact that Julia had merely mentioned Jens’s disappearance in passing, simply as the reason why she was feeling the way she was.

Lena’s voice was calm as she looked at Julia, then made the

comment that had made Julia refuse to accompany her sister to Oland two years later, to help Gerlof move from the cottage in Stenvik to the residential home in Marnas: “He’s never coming back,” Lena had said. “I mean, everybody

knows that…Jens is dead,Julia. Even you must realize that?”

Standing up and screaming hysterically at her sister across the dinner table hadn’t helped at all, but Julia had done it anyway.

Julia got home, parked the car on the street, and went inside to pack. When she had packed clothes for a tenday stay, a few toiletries, and some books (and two bottles of red wine and some pills), she ate a sandwich and drank some water instead of wine.

Then it was time to go to bed.

But once in bed she lay staring up into the darkness, unable to sleep. She got up and went into the bathroom, took a prescription pill, and went back to bed.

A little boy’s shoe. A sandal.

When she closed her eyes, she could see herself as a young

mother, putting on Jens’s sandals, and that memory brought with it a black weight that settled on her breast, a heavy uncertainty that made Julia shiver under the covers.

Jens’s little shoe, after more than twenty years without a single trace of him. After all that searching on Oland, all that brooding through those sleepless nights.

The sleeping pill slowly began to work.

No more darkness now, she thought, half asleep. Help us to find him.

It was a long time before morning came, and it was still dark outside when Julia awoke. She had breakfast, then she washed up, locked the flat, and got into the car. She started the engine, switched on the windshield wipers to clear the leaves, then she was finally on her way out of the street where she lived, on her way out of the city in the sunrise and the morning traffic. The last traffic light turned to green, and she turned eastward onto the freeway, away from Gothenburg and out into the country.

She drove for the first few kilometers with the window down, letting the cold morning air blow away all trace of her sister’s perfume from the car.

Jens, I’m coming, she thought. I’m really coming, and no one can stop me now.

She knew she shouldn’t talk to him, not even silently to herself.

It was unbalanced, but she’d been doing it on and off ever

since Jens disappeared.

After Boras, the freeway came to an end and the houses grew

smaller and more sparse. The dense fir forests of Smaland crowded the road. She could have turned off and headed for an unknown destination, but the tracks into the forest looked so desolate. She drove on, heading across the country toward the east coast, and trying to take pleasure in the fact that she was undertaking a longer journey by herself than she had done for many years.