There was no sign of any hens, but a wooden sign by the gate proclaimed EGGS FOR SALE.
Julia opened the gate and walked along a path made of rough limestone slabs. She passed a water pump painted green, and remembered what Gunnar Ljunger at the beach hotel had said about the city water supply.
The door of the house was closed, but there was a bell. When Julia had pressed it there was silence for a few moments, then a thudding noise. The door opened. An elderly man looked out, thin and wrinkled, with fine, silvery hair combed over his bald pate.
“Afternoon,” he said.
“Afternoon,” said Julia.
“Did you want some eggs?”
The old man appeared to be in the middle of his lunch, because he was still chewing.
Julia nodded. No problem, she could buy some eggs.
“Is your name Sven-Olof?” she asked, without the usual unpleasant feeling of tension she got whenever she met someone new.
Perhaps she was beginning to get used to meeting strangers here on Öland.
“It is indeed,” said the man, clambering into a pair of big black rubber boots standing just inside the door. “How many would you like?”
“Er... six should be fine.”
Sven-Olof Nilsson walked out of his home, and just before he closed the door a cat slunk silently out behind him like a coal-black shadow. It didn’t even bother looking at Julia.
“I’ll go and fetch them,” Sven-Olof told Julia.
“Fine,” she said, but as he set off toward the little henhouse, she followed him. When he opened the green door and stepped onto the earth floor she stayed on the other side of the threshold where there were no hens, just several trays of white eggs on a small table.
“I’ll just go and get some new-laid ones,” said Sven-Olof, opening a rickety unpainted door at the far end of the room and entering the coop.
The smell of the birds drifted toward Julia and she caught a glimpse of wooden shelves along the walls, but she couldn’t see much; the light in the room wasn’t switched on, and the room was almost pitch black.
“How many hens have you got?” she asked.
“Not so many these days,” said Sven-Olof. “Fifty or so... we’ll see how long I can keep them.”
A tentative clucking could be heard from inside the coop.
“I heard Lambert had died,” she said.
“What... Lambert? Yes, he died in ’87,” said Sven-Olof in the darkness.
She couldn’t understand why he didn’t put the light on, but perhaps the bulb had died.
“I met Lambert once,” said Julia, “many years ago.”
“Oh yes?” said Sven-Olof. “Well, well.”
He didn’t seem particularly interested in hearing a story about his late brother, but Julia had no choice but to continue:
“It was over in Stenvik, where I live.”
“Oh yes,” said Sven-Olof.
Julia took a step over the threshold toward him, into the darkness. The air felt dusty and stale. She could hear the hens moving nervously along the walls, but couldn’t see if they were free-range or in cages.
“My mother Ella phoned Lambert,” she said, “because we needed... we needed help looking for someone who had disappeared. He’d been gone for three days, there was no trace of him anywhere. That was when Ella started talking about Lambert... She said Lambert could find things. He was well known for it, Ella said.”
“Ella Davidsson?” said Sven-Olof.
“Yes. She phoned and Lambert came over from Långvik on an old moped the very next day.”
“Yes, he liked to help out,” said Sven-Olof, who by now was just a shadow in the coop. His quiet voice could barely be heard over the muted clucking of the hens. “Lambert found things. He would dream about them, then he would find them. He found water for people too, with a divining rod made of hazel. They often appreciated it.”
Julia nodded. “He had his own pillow with him when he came to us,” she said. “He wanted to sleep in Jens’s room, with Jens’s things around him. And we let him.”
“Yes, that’s what he did,” said Sven-Olof. “He saw things in dreams. People who’d drowned and things that had disappeared. And future events, things that were going to happen. Lambert dreamed about the day of his own death for several weeks. He said it would happen in bed in his own room, half-past two in the morning, and that his heart would stop and the ambulance wouldn’t get there in time. And that’s exactly what happened, on the very day he’d said. And the ambulance didn’t make it in time.”
“But did it always work?” said Julia. “Was he always right?”
“Not always,” replied Sven-Olof. “Sometimes he didn’t dream about anything. Or he didn’t remember his dream... That’s the way it is sometimes, I suppose. And he never got any names, everybody in his dreams was nameless.”
“But when he saw something?” said Julia. “Was he always right then?”
“Almost always. People trusted him.”
Julia took a couple of steps forward. She had to tell him.
“I hadn’t slept for three days by that night when your brother turned up on his moped,” she said quietly. “But I couldn’t sleep that night either. I lay awake listening to him getting into the little bed in Jens’s room. I could hear the springs squeaking when he moved. Then it went quiet, but I still couldn’t get to sleep... When he got up at seven the next morning, I was sitting in the kitchen waiting for him.”
The hens clucked uneasily around her, but there was no comment from Sven-Olof.
“Lambert had dreamed about my son,” she went on. “I could see it in his face when he came into the kitchen with his pillow under his arm. He looked at me, and when I asked him he said it was true, he’d dreamed about Jens. He looked so sad... I’m sure he was intending to tell me more, but I just couldn’t cope with hearing it. I struck him and screamed at him to get out. My father Gerlof went out with him to the gate where his moped was, and I stood there in the kitchen sobbing and listening to him drive away.” She paused and sighed. “That was the only time I met Lambert. Unfortunately.”
The henhouse fell silent. Even the hens had settled down.
“That boy...” said Sven-Olof in the darkness. “Was it that terrible tragedy...? The little boy who disappeared in Stenvik?”
“That was my son Jens,” said Julia, longing desperately for a glass of wine. “He’s still missing.”
Sven-Olof didn’t answer.
“I’d really like to know... Did Lambert ever talk about what he dreamed that night?”
“There’s five eggs here,” said a voice from the darkness. “I can’t find any more.”
Julia realized Sven-Olof had no intention of answering any questions.
She breathed out, a deep, heavy sigh.
“I have nothing,” she said to herself. “I have nothing.”
Her eyes had gradually begun to grow accustomed to the darkness, and she could see Sven-Olof standing motionless in the middle of the coop looking at her, clutching five eggs to his chest.
“Your brother must have said something, Sven-Olof,” she said. “At some point he must have said something to you about what he dreamed that night. Did he?”
Sven-Olof coughed. “He only spoke about the boy once.”
It was Julia’s turn to be silent now. She was holding her breath.
“He’d read an article in Ölands-Posten,” said Sven-Olof. “It must have been five years after it happened. We were reading it at breakfast. But there was nothing new in the paper.”
“There never has been,” said Julia, wearily. “There was never anything new to say, but they kept on writing anyway.”