‘Did you never think that way? When you were waiting for your daughter to be born?’
‘I knew nothing about her. I’ve already told you that.’
We threw our empty paper cups in the bin and went back to the train. Some new passengers had joined our carriage. I wondered whether to suggest that Lisa and I should move so that we could sit next to one another, but I realised she wouldn’t want to. There was no need to ask her. As soon as she sat down she had established the boundaries and closed her eyes, as if I had no access to her world.
We continued our journey northwards. I don’t know if Lisa slept, but she snuggled under her coat once more. I sat gazing out into the night, with fragments of memory swirling around in my mind like truncated film clips. When the conductor passed by, I asked if there was a buffet car open. He shook his head, explaining that there was a drinks machine at the back of the train. I knew it was unlikely to contain anything alcoholic.
We arrived in Stockholm on time, having eaten both breakfast and lunch on board. Lisa had accepted my offer of a lift home. Neither of us mentioned the brief embrace in Hamburg. I couldn’t decide whether it all seemed like a dream to her, something that hadn’t really happened. For me the reverse was true. I had sat opposite her for hours as the train took us to Copenhagen and on through the Swedish autumn landscape. I wondered if it was possible to yearn for a person who was less than a metre away.
She spent much of the journey absorbed in a book about the history of Swedish journalism. I had nothing to read but my pocket diary. I went through all the different names listed for each day of the year, tried to imagine myself as something other than Fredrik. Only Filip seemed even remotely possible. When I had run out of names to consider, I picked up my pen and made anagrams out of Fredrik Welin and Lisa Modin. Hers was easier to have fun with than mine.
Refkrid Nilew wasn’t as interesting as Masdi Olin.
We caught the train from the central station in Stockholm to the airport. A cold rain was falling. I collected my car and spent ages circling and trying various exits before I eventually found the right one and picked Lisa up outside Terminal 3.
Southwards through the rain. The heat inside the car was unpleasant. The traffic was heavy, everyone was in a hurry. It didn’t thin out until we were past Södertälje. I asked Lisa if she was hungry.
‘I’m just enjoying the trip; I don’t want it to end,’ she replied. ‘I’m like a child who can never get enough.’
‘Enough of what?’
She shook her head and didn’t say any more. I could see the wet surface of the road shimmering in the headlights, and I thought I probably felt the same. This trip could go on forever as far as I was concerned.
We had reached the dark depths of the Kolmården forest when she asked me to stop in a parking area. She got out of the car and disappeared into the gloom. I switched on the radio and listened to the news; it seemed to me that I had heard it all before. I turned it off as Lisa got back in the car. It was pouring with rain now and her hair was soaking wet.
‘So what’s going on in the world?’ she asked.
‘Everything. All over again. Or afresh. Always the same, always different.’
Outside Norrköping we stopped at a service station for something to eat. Lisa tasted her food, then pushed away the plate.
‘We ought to complain,’ she said. ‘That’s inedible.’
‘I’ll go and say something.’
‘No — if I can’t do it myself, nobody is going to do it for me.’
She pulled the plate towards her and ate small forkfuls of the fish gratin. A quarrel flared at a nearby table: a couple of young men started fighting before their companions managed to calm them down.
We drove on through the darkness. I had to slam the brakes on just past Söderköping when a hare ran across the road. We didn’t say much during the journey, we just shared the silence, which I found difficult. I wanted to talk to her, but I didn’t know what I wanted to talk about.
We arrived at Lisa’s apartment block shortly after ten. The cold rain was still falling. I put my jacket over my head and lifted her suitcase out of the boot.
‘How are you going to get home tonight?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know yet.’
‘Stay here.’
I could hear from her voice that this wasn’t an offer made on the spur of the moment; she had been thinking about it for a while. I grabbed my bag, locked the car, and we hurried over to the door.
As we reached the bicycle stands I stumbled and cut my leg. By the time we reached Lisa’s apartment, I was bleeding heavily. In the bathroom she washed and bandaged the wound.
The trip to Paris was over.
As I sat on the toilet watching her tend to my leg, I knew that we were getting close to a critical moment.
I just didn’t know what it was.
Part Four
The Emperor’s Drum
Chapter 20
The first thing Lisa did after bandaging my leg was to open the balcony door wide. The chilly night air came pouring in.
I watched as she gathered up her post. She was obviously a woman who read a lot of journals and magazines and disliked junk mail.
She asked me what I wanted to eat. Tea. Sandwiches — liver pâté, sardines. She told me to make myself comfortable on the sofa. I offered to help her get it ready, but she just shook her head.
I realised she was having doubts about whether she should have invited me to stay.
I sat down and thought about all the times I had been in a similar situation: alone with a woman with no idea what might happen.
I recalled the first time I had made love, well over fifty years ago. Some friends had told me this girl had ‘loose morals’ and was always up for it. I think her name was Inger and she used to turn up at the school dance. I was fourteen years old. I danced badly and regarded these occasions as a necessary evil in order to lure girls into adventures. At least that’s what I told myself. I spotted her over by the wall. The girls were waiting for the charge from the opposite side of the room, where the boys were poised on invisible starting blocks. I had fortified myself with arrak supplied by Hasse the baker’s son, who pinched it from his father’s bakery, then sold it at a premium in small glass bottles that he bought from the pharmacy. I wasn’t drunk, just far enough gone to have the nerve to dash across the floor. Inger hadn’t a clue who I was. We moved around the floor like small, sweaty icebreakers, forcing our way through the crowd. This wasn’t a dance, more an evening of pushing and shoving. I don’t think we said a single word to one another.
After two ‘dances’, I suggested that we should go. She asked where. I didn’t know. Just away from this dance floor that stank of sweat, booze and cheap perfume. Then she made it very clear that there was no one at home.
She lived in a suburb — I can’t remember the name of it. Bagarmossen, perhaps? We travelled on the underground, still not talking. She was wearing a brown skirt, boots that indicated she had big feet, a white blouse and a dark red coat. She didn’t look in the least like a girl with loose morals who was prepared to go to bed with just about anybody. Then again, what did that kind of girl look like?
She lived in a three-room apartment in a 1950s block. On a shelf I saw a photograph of her father in a conductor’s uniform. I sat down on the sofa, which was covered in cushions, embroidered with various quotations that I have long since forgotten.
Inger disappeared into the bathroom. I heard the toilet flush and wondered what to do. What awaited me was both terrifying and irresistible.