In the Name of Love (18 page)

They had been living on welfare until they got the job on the farm. At their ages, Josef said, their chances of getting any better work were small. A friend of his, an associate professor from the College of Agriculture and Forestry at Mosul University, was lucky to get work in a kebab restaurant. Such jobs were much sought after. Another, a forty-five-year-old eye surgeon, was delivering pizzas on a scooter.

‘Even the younger generation,’ Josef said, ‘the ones who’ve grown up here, they have problems getting work. With names like Selavas or Rabban who wants them?’

On the occasions when Nahrin came they reverted to Swedish though Josef had difficulty following.

‘After a certain age it’s too late,’ he maintained. ‘The lan­guage-learning part of the brain gives up. The cells are switched to other functions.’

Dan tried to communicate with Jamala through gestures. As his hands chopped the air laughter, puzzlement, agreement appeared on her face and vanished as fleetingly as wind across water. With small teeth she bit her lower lip or tossed her head in a movement a young deer might make. At moments he saw her take him in with a fierce childish candour. Her alertness was constant, as though, despite her deafness, she was forever listening for a sound she could not hear.

Occasionally Nahrin would sit outside with her back to a tree in Dan’s garden, Jamala beside her. Dan heard the words through the open window, words he didn’t understand though he recognized by now that they were Chaldean, a language Josef said had grown from Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke. Jamala watched her grandmother’s lips, her gestures. Judging by the changes in her expression – delight, fear, astonishment – she was being told a story. Her eyes narrowed as Nahrin’s tone changed, the soft pupils glittering with excitement. Her grandmother’s arms tightened around her in protection. Age-old myths unravelled in the tranquil garden outside Dan’s window.

Each time they left, Dan went to the doorway. Three of them called goodbye. Jamala waved. Silence then, and dark invaded the garden. He gave the cat that came by each day her milk. Steadily she lapped until the bowl was empty. Afterwards, she jumped onto the side of the range where the iron surface was still warm from lunchtime, and washed her face. Far off came the voice of a woman calling a dog. The cat stopped and looked at Dan, her pupils spreading. On one such day he remembered that it was his twenty-ninth wedding anniversary, the fourth he had spent alone.

By now August was nearing its end and Dan thought of Madeleine Roos, wondering when her baby would be born.

Lena sent him a tiger lily. It came with the same taxi as before.

‘I hope I didn’t wake you,’ the driver said. ‘I waited out in the lane. She told me five to seven or not at all.’

As usual there was a note with the flower:
Thank you for coming to Paris. And putting up with me when I was a bore. Exactly five thousand four hundred hours have passed since we first met. Only two thousand one hundred and twenty left to the ten-thousand mark. Plan now and avoid last-minute panic.
No name. No envelope either. An open card, signed Lena. It must have cost her well over a hundred crowns to send the flower like this. Where did she get the money? The taxi driver looked at him with interest.

Dan telephoned later that morning to thank her. Her aunt said she was away.

The day Anders appeared on the island the early September sky was immense, a huge dome of cloudless blue. Gabriel was removing tired summer flowers under Nahrin’s direction. Dan let her have her way. It was nice to hear her speak Chaldean. It was nice to have someone he could share decisions with. When she came he always went out to say hello, especially if Jamala was with her. His acrobatic attempts at conversation made Jamala giggle and sometimes burst into laughter.

‘Is good,’ Nahrin said. ‘Good. She not laugh, for a child too little.’

Unwilling to return indoors when everything was looking so beautiful, Dan had decided to walk to the shop and get a few weekend groceries. On the way home he made a detour along the coast. The sea was almost flat. Only light ripples gave life to the reflection of the blue sky.

When he turned inland and approached the house, he saw the car, a black BMW, the same one Madeleine had driven when she came with his birthday present. Anders stood looking at the view across the wide meadow. Something is wrong, was Dan’s first thought. Why drive all the way out here without ringing first?

This thought was still in his head as Anders approached, arms wide open. He took Dan in a warm embrace and, as they drew apart, Anders’s face opened in a smile, his eyes shining with happiness.

‘Dan, she’s here!’

‘Here?’

‘Here in the world,’ Anders laughed. ‘They’re coming home from hospital tomorrow.’

‘Congratulations,’ Dan said. ‘I’m happy for you both.’

‘I was going to ring you but since I’d decided to come out anyway I thought I’d tell you in person.’

Instead of accepting Dan’s suggestion that they go into the house for a coffee Anders asked if they could take a walk. He wanted to get to know the island a little. But first he went to the car to fetch an envelope of photographs he said he had collected from the photography shop only that morning. In them Madeleine looked radiant. Her slender face was illuminated with an inner light that caught at Dan. Connie had looked like this when Carlos was born.

Anders showed him dozens of pictures of Madeleine and the baby, some with Madeleine sitting up, her head angled to watch Kajsa’s tiny face, some showing the two of them lying together, mother and baby asleep or awake, some showing Kajsa hungrily sucking Madeleine’s breast with Madeleine’s eyes heavy in acquiescence or raised to those of the person behind the camera, locking the three of them together in the hospital room.

Dan studied each of the photos carefully. Thank God! he thought. It’s all worked out. Meanwhile Anders was telling him that there were hundreds of other photos, starting on the day Madeleine went into the hospital and including her first visitors, her mother and then her father, followed by cousins and aunts and uncles.

‘I’d never been really conscious of us as a big family,’ he said happily, ‘until they all came pouring in to see Kajsa, the first of the new generation on Madde’s side as well as on mine.’

He went back to his car to fetch the camera he had used, the latest Hasselblad model, probably the most expensive camera then on the market, with a new feature he called a focal plane shutter. The phrase meant nothing to Dan and he couldn’t even begin to listen to the explanations with the bundle of photographs still in his hand, the images of the mother and child still fresh in his mind.

‘A gift from Madde’s father,’ Anders said. ‘He wants photos of Kajsa from day one. A historical record of her every move. But let’s set off. I want to see what it was that affected Madde so deeply, what it was that began to take her out of her prenatal depression.’

Dan made no answer but Anders was too full of good spirits to notice.

‘I mean everyone talks of postpartum depression, right? Prenatal depression is unnatural. What normal expectant mother could possibly feel down because of what’s happening in her body? That’s how the reasoning goes. But in fact I saw in a hospital magazine that one woman in ten goes through it. And Madde had it so bad that I began to worry about her and the effect it might have on the baby. But that day on the island turned out to be the beginning of her recovery. It didn’t come at once but little by little as her pregnancy neared its term her energy was back. It’s a different world in the archipelago, isn’t it? Have you read Strindberg? Yes, of course you have, you probably know his work better than I do. The magnificent plays he wrote out here. And the novels!
By the Open Sea
. Have you read it?’

‘Yes.’

They were walking over by the east coast now, where Madeleine and Dan had walked, but it wasn’t at all the same thing. Five months ago the spring light had scoured everything clean, the rocks and the trees and the sea. Now, in early autumn, they walked along a dry path while Anders spoke of his plans. The house outside Norrtälje had a prospective buyer, he said. He’d been to the agency in Norrtälje this morning with a power of attorney from Madeleine’s parents once the buyer confirmed. He’d also increased the bridging loan so that he could make an offer for a small house or a cottage here on the island. Their flat in Stockholm was everything they wanted but they felt it would be healthy for the baby to have an island place they could come to on fine weekends and during the summer.

‘While Madde is still in hospital I thought I’d sneak out here to have a look and I must say I agree with her. It really is beautiful. I’m hoping to surprise her if I can find some­thing good.’

They were on their way back now, walking past the church landing stage with the old patinaed bench, where Dan had so impulsively asked Madeleine if she was looking forward to the birth, and she had flinched beside him as if from a blow.

‘Dan, I’m going to ask a favour of you,’ Anders said. ‘You know the people out here and you know what’s going on. I was wondering – if you happened to hear of anything coming up, just something small and simple, could you give me a ring? It doesn’t have to be by the water. I’ll keep the boat in the marina near the ferry berth at Furusund. It’ll be easy to drive out to there. Use my business number when you ring so that Madeleine won’t suspect what we’re up to. I could come out and see it and maybe meet the owners before it’s even on the market. It would mean avoiding a lot of hassle, to say nothing of saving the seller an agent’s 5 per cent. Then I’d bring Madde out to see it and we’d clinch the deal. Do you think you could do that?’

‘Yes. Of course.’

They were back in the house, waiting for the coffee to percolate, when Anders said, with grave concern in his voice, that there was something else troubling him. That something else turned out to be Lena Sundman.

‘Dan, I don’t want to interfere and believe me I understand why you wanted to go to Paris, but Lena hasn’t been well since she came back. Nothing went… wrong between you two while you were there, did it?’

‘No.’

‘But you haven’t seen her since she came back?’

‘Anders, what are all these questions about?’

‘I think she’s heading for a breakdown, and Madde thinks the same. We met her at a friend’s place last week and she was very strange. This business of the farm out here – she’s convinced she’s being cheated out of it, cheated by that Iraqi family that’s moved in. But she trusts you, Dan, don’t you see that? You’re like a father figure for her.’

‘Surely some lawyer can clear up that farm business?’

‘The trouble is these Iraqis are in possession and how do you get them out? Madde feels really sorry for her. She had a raw deal as a child, you know. She adored her father. He was the one who used to bring her here when she was small. Did you know that?’

‘I know her father was brought up by the couple who owned the farm.’

‘But this family that’s moved in and refuses to get out? You know them?’

‘They were employed there, they took care of the old woman and ran the place for her.’

‘So they’ve talked to you about it?’

Dan waited before answering.

‘They’re refugees,’ he said. ‘They haven’t done anything wrong. As I understand it, it’s a purely legal question.’

‘The boy I saw when I was driving in. He was getting into a pick-up some woman was driving. A foreign-looking boy. He’s from the family who are trying to take over the farm?’

‘I’ve been told it was left to them.’

‘Does he declare his income from you?’

‘Anders, what the hell sort of a question is that?’

‘It may be an important one. Lena suspects her old aunt never even thought of things like that, she just gave them some cash now and then.’

‘Lena’s going to bring that up? It’s clutching at straws.’

‘No, it’s not. Someone suggested she look into it, some lawyer. He says that if they cheat in one way it may show they were willing to cheat in others.’

‘She has a lawyer working for her now?’

‘I don’t think it’s as formal as that. She’s talked to one. Chatted maybe.’

‘Look, they’re an ordinary decent family who’ve been through a hell most of us can’t even imagine. They’ve lost everything. And now they’re out here on this island where no one speaks their language, no one shares their history. I mean if they were European it’d be different, but they’re not. They’re like extra-terrestrials, dropped out of the sky.’

Anders regarded him. Dan could see that he was thinking over how to phrase what came next.

‘Listen, Dan. I mean this as a compliment. One of the nicest things about you is the way you never mistrust anyone. Madeleine said exactly the same thing once and believe me she’s an excellent judge. I don’t mean to say that you’re gull­ible, but maybe you don’t question people’s motives enough.’

The earnest way he said this, Anders of all people, so surprised Dan that he didn’t even think of laughing.

‘You don’t see how these people are using you, do you? What do we really know about why they fled from Iraq? Plenty of others are staying. Why should just they come here? And now they’ve fled again, according to what Lena’s told Madde, this time from their own community in Malmö. A community they have everything in common with, people who come from the same Iraqi region, with the same background, the same language, the same customs. They even have their own church there, the Chaldean Church, with their own priests, their own ceremonies. Why would they suddenly leave that and come here?’

‘I think they want their granddaughter to grow up somewhere peaceful. Away from all talk of violence, of revenge.’

‘Of course,’ Anders said, ‘that’s what they say. But is it the truth? Maybe there’s more to it than meets the eye. Lena’s been down in Malmö trying to find people who knew them and she couldn’t find a single one. Dan, I think she’s a little upset at the thought that you’ve taken these people’s side. That’s all I wanted to say. Lena gives the impression of being a confident young woman, but it’s a bit overdone, isn’t it? Acting brassy is something she doesn’t need – not with her looks, her intelligence. Maybe it’s a sign of insecurity, an insecurity she’s had since her pretty awful childhood.’