“We were sitting at the kitchen table and I was reading the paper first,” said Sven-Olof. “Then Lambert read it. And when I saw that he was reading about the boy, I asked him what he thought. And then Lambert lowered the paper and said the boy was dead.”
Julia closed her eyes. She nodded silently.
“In the sound?” she asked.
“No. Lambert said it had happened out on the alvar. He’d been killed on the alvar.”
“Killed,” said Julia, feeling an icy chill sweep across her skin.
“A man had done it, Lambert said. The very day the boy disappeared, a man who was full of hatred had killed him on the alvar. Then he had placed the boy in a grave beside a stone wall.”
A hen flapped nervously somewhere by the wall.
“Lambert didn’t say any more,” said Sven-Olof, when Julia didn’t speak. “Not about the boy, or the man.”
No names, thought Julia. Everybody was nameless in Lambert’s dreams.
Sven-Olof was moving again. He came out of the coop with the five eggs in his arms, looking anxiously at Julia as if he were afraid she might hit him as well.
Julia breathed out.
“So now I know,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Do you need a box?” asked Sven-Olof.
Julia knew.
She could try and convince herself that Lambert had been wrong, or that his brother had just made it up, but there was no point. She knew.
On the way home from Långvik she stopped on the coast road above the deserted shore, watching the water turn to foam as the waves scurried in down below, and she wept for over ten minutes.
She knew, and the certainty was terrible. It was as if only a few days had passed since Jens’s disappearance, as if all her internal wounds were still bleeding. Now she was starting to let him into her heart as a dead person, little by little. It had to happen slowly, otherwise the grief would drown her.
Jens was dead.
She knew it. But still she wanted to see her son again, see his body. If that wasn’t possible, then she at least wanted to know what had happened to him. That was why she was here.
Her tears dried in the wind. After a while Julia got back on her bike and cycled slowly on her way.
By the quarry she met Astrid, out walking the dog; she invited Julia back for dinner and didn’t comment on Julia’s eyes, puffy with weeping.
Astrid served cutlets, boiled potatoes, and red wine. Julia ate a little and drank a good deal more, more than she should have done. But after three glasses of wine the idea that Jens had been dead for a long time was not quite so intrusive, it was merely a dull ache in her breast. And there had never been any hope, after all, not after the first days had passed with no sign of life. No hope...
“So you went to Långvik today?”
Julia’s brooding thoughts were interrupted, and she nodded.
“Yes. And yesterday I was in Marnäs,” she said quickly, to get away from the thought of Långvik and Lambert Nilsson’s accurate dreams.
“Did anything happen up there?” asked Astrid, tipping the last of the wine into Julia’s glass.
“Not much,” said Julia. “I went to the churchyard and saw Nils Kant’s grave. Gerlof thought I ought to see it.”
“Nils’s grave,” repeated Astrid, lifting her wineglass.
“One thing I was wondering,” said Julia. “You might not be able to tell me, but those German soldiers Nils Kant killed on the alvar... Did many of them come to Öland?”
“Not that I know of,” said Astrid. “There were maybe a hundred or so who managed to make it to Sweden alive from the war in the Baltic countries, but most of them came ashore along the coast of Småland. They wanted desperately to go home, of course, or to travel on to England. But Sweden was afraid of Stalin, and sent them back to the Soviet Union. It was a cowardly thing to do. But you must have read about all this?”
“Yes, a little bit... but it was a long time ago,” said Julia.
She had a vague memory from her school days of reading about war refugees from Russia, but at the time she hadn’t been particularly interested in Swedish history, or the history of Öland.
“What else did you do in Marnäs?” said Astrid.
“Well... I had lunch with the policeman there,” said Julia. “Lennart Henriksson.”
“He’s a nice man,” said Astrid. “Very stylish.”
Julia nodded.
“Did you talk to Lennart about Nils Kant?” asked Astrid.
Julia shook her head, then thought about it and added:
“Well, I did mention that I’d been to see Kant’s grave. But we didn’t talk about it any more.”
“It’s probably best not to mention him to Lennart again,” said Astrid. “It upsets him a bit.”
“Upsets him?” said Julia. “But why?”
“It’s an old story,” said Astrid, taking a gulp of her wine. “Lennart is Kurt Henriksson’s son.”
She looked at Julia with a serious expression, as if this should make everything clear.
But Julia just shook her head uncomprehendingly.
“Who?” she said.
“The police constable in Marnäs,” explained Astrid. “Or the district superintendent, as he was called in those days.”
“And what did he do?”
“He was the one who was supposed to arrest Nils Kant for shooting the Germans,” said Astrid.
Öland, May 1945
Nils Kant is sawing the end off his shotgun.
He is standing out in the heat of the woodshed where the birch logs are stacked right up to the roof, his back bent. The pile of wood looks as if it might topple over onto him at any moment. His Husqvarna is lying on the chopping block in front of him, and he has almost sawn right through the barrel. His booted left foot is resting on the butt of the gun and he is working the hacksaw with both hands. Slowly but with determination he saws through the barrel, occasionally waving away the flies that buzz around the shed, constantly trying to land on his sweaty face.
Outside everything is as silent as the grave. His mother Vera is in the kitchen, sorting out his rucksack. A tense air of waiting fills the warm spring air.
Nils keeps on sawing, and at last the blade bites through the final millimeter of steel and the barrel falls onto the stone floor of the woodshed with a brief metallic clang.
He picks it up, shoves it in a little hole near the bottom of the woodpile, and sets the saw on the chopping block. He takes two cartridges out of his pocket and loads the gun.
Then he goes out of the shed and places the shotgun in the shadow by the door.
He’s ready.
It’s four days since the shooting out on the alvar, and now everybody in Stenvik knows what’s happened. GERMAN SOLDIERS FOUND DEAD — EXECUTED WITH SHOTGUN was splashed across the front page of yesterday’s newspaper, Ölands-Posten. The headline was just as big as when the forest near the shore outside Borgholm was bombed three years earlier.
The headlines are a lie — Nils didn’t execute anyone. He was caught up in a gun battle with two soldiers, and he was the one who won in the end.
But perhaps not everyone will see it that way. For once, Nils went down into the village in the evening, walking along the road past the mill, and he was met by the silent gaze of the millers. He didn’t say anything, but he knows they are talking about him behind his back. There’s gossip. And stories about what happened out on the alvar are spreading like rippling circles on the water.
He goes into the house.
His mother Vera is sitting there silent and motionless at the kitchen table with her back to him, looking out through the window over the alvar. He can see that her narrow shoulders are tense with anxiety and sorrow beneath her gray blouse.
Nils’s own fears are equally wordless.