A metal box, discolored with old rusty patches.
At least, Gerlof hoped it was rust.
“Here it is.”
Maja took out the case and handed it to him. He heard something rattling inside.
“Can I open it?” he asked.
“You can do whatever you like with it, Gerlof.”
The case had no lock, and he opened it very carefully.
The contents sparkled and shone.
Perhaps it was just twenty or so bits of glass in a case, just trinkets — but it was difficult not to see something different, something more precious. And there was a cross lying alongside them. Gerlof was no expert, but it looked like a crucifix made of pure gold.
Gerlof closed the lid, before he was tempted to pick up the stones and roll them between his fingers.
“Have you told anyone else about this?” he asked evenly.
“I told my husband before he died,” Maja replied.
“Do you think he might have told anyone else?”
“He didn’t talk about things like that to other people,” said Maja. “And if he had, he would definitely have told me. We didn’t have any secrets.”
Gerlof believed her. Helge hadn’t been particularly talkative. But somehow the rumor that the soldiers Nils killed had had some kind of war spoils from the Baltic with them had begun to spread in the north of Öland. Gerlof had heard them too — so had John and Anders Hagman.
“So you’ve had them hidden here the whole time?” he said.
Maja nodded. “I’ve never done anything with them, I mean, they weren’t mine.” She added, “But I did try to give them to Nils’s mother Vera once.”
“Oh? When was that?”
Maja sat down carefully on the chair beside him, and Gerlof noticed that she drew the chair forward so that their knees were just touching between the ornate legs of the table.
“It was a few years later, at the end of the sixties. Helge had heard that Vera Kant had started to sell all her land along the coast, that she was getting short of money. So I thought maybe she should have the stones back...”
“Did you go and see her?” asked Gerlof.
Maja nodded. “I got the bus to Stenvik and went into Vera’s garden... It was summer, so the outside door was ajar as I went up the steps. My legs were shaking. I was scared of Vera, like most people...” Maja stopped, then went on: “A gramophone or a radio was playing inside the house, I could hear music. And voices. She had visitors.”
“She had a housekeeper for several years, so it might have been—”
“No. It was two men,” Maja interrupted him. “I could hear two men’s voices from the kitchen. One was mumbling, and the other one was speaking much more loudly and firmly, almost like a captain...”
“Did you see either of these men?” said Gerlof.
“No, no,” said Maja quickly. “And I didn’t stand there eavesdropping either... I knocked on the door as soon as I got to the top of the steps. The voices stopped, and Vera came hurtling out onto the veranda, slamming the kitchen door behind her. It was a shock, coming back to the village and seeing her after so many years. She’d got so thin and twisted... like a dried-out rope. But she was still suspicious, she looked at me as if I were a thief or something. ‘What do you want?’ she wanted to know. No hello, no politeness. I lost it completely. I had the case in my pocket, but I didn’t even get it out. I started stammering something about Nils and the alvar... and that was probably stupid. It was stupid, because Vera screamed at me to go away. Then she went back into the kitchen. And I went back home... and she died a few years later, of course.”
Gerlof nodded. Vera had died on the very same staircase Julia had fallen down. He asked:
“Did you hear what they were talking about? The two men?”
Maja shook her head. “I only heard a few words before I knocked,” she said. “Something about longing. It was the one with the loud voice who said something about somebody longing: ‘And of course you’re both longing to see each other,’ or something like that.”
Gerlof thought about it.
“Perhaps they were relatives of Vera’s,” he suggested. “Relatives from Småland?”
“Perhaps,” said Maja.
There was silence. Gerlof had no more questions; he needed to think this over.
“Well...” he said, reaching his hand up to pat Maja gently on the shoulder, but she leaned forward slightly so that his fingers ended up touching her cheek.
They stayed there, almost of their own accord, trembling in a movement which slowly became a caress.
Maja closed her eyes.
Gerlof released his breath softly, then leaned away.
“Well...” he said again. “I can’t... not anymore.”
“Are you sure?” asked Maja, opening her eyes.
Gerlof nodded sadly. “Too much pain,” he said.
“Perhaps it’ll disappear come the spring,” said Maja. “That happens sometimes.”
“Maybe,” said Gerlof, getting to his feet as quickly as he could. “Thank you for talking to me, Maja. I won’t spread this any further. You know that.”
Maja stayed where she was, sitting at the table.
“It’s fine, Gerlof,” she said.
Gerlof realized he was still holding the case in his left hand, and put it back on the table. But Maja picked it up, took out the crucifix, and gave the case back to him.
“You take them,” she said. “I don’t want them any longer. It’s better if you have them.”
“If you’re sure.”
He nodded several times, like a clumsy farewell, and left Maja’s room with the case in his pocket. It was heavy and cold, and rattled faintly as he walked along the empty corridor.
Gerlof closed the door behind him once he was back in his own room. He didn’t usually lock it, but he did now.
The spoils of war, he thought. Soldiers are always looking for the spoils of war. From whom had the soldiers received or taken the precious stones? Had anyone else died for them, apart from the soldiers themselves?
And where should he put them? Gerlof looked around. He didn’t have a sewing box with a false bottom.
In the end he went over to the bookcase. On one of the shelves was a ship in a bottle representing the final journey of the brig Bluebird of Hull, as he thought it would have looked that stormy night on the coast of Bohuslän. Bluebird was on her way to the Bohuslän rocks, where she would go aground, and six men would drown.
Gerlof picked up the bottle and took out the cork. Then he opened the case and slowly, carefully, tipped the stones into the bottle. He shook the bottle to get them in the right place. There, now, if you didn’t look too closely it looked as if the stones were rocks the brig was about to run aground on.
That would have to do for the time being.
Gerlof put the ship back on the shelf and hid the empty case behind a row of books on a lower shelf.
For the rest of the evening, before he went to bed, he kept looking over at the bottle. After the twelfth or fifteenth time he began to understand why Maja had looked so relieved when she handed the old metal case over to him.
That night his only real nightmare from his time at sea came back to him.
He dreamed that he was standing by the gunwale of a ship sailing slowly across the Baltic, somewhere between the northern tip of Öland and the island of Oaxen. It was twilight, not a breath of wind, and Gerlof was standing gazing out across the shining water toward the horizon, with no land in sight anywhere...
... and then he looked down into the water and caught sight of an old mine from the Second World War.
It was floating just beneath the surface: a massive black ball of steel covered in algae and mussels, with its black spikes sticking out.
It was impossible to veer away. All Gerlof could do was to look on in horror as the hull of the ship and the mine slowly but remorselessly glided toward one another, closer and closer.