The hotel owner who was always talking about more ships in bottles every time they met was the last person Gerlof wanted to meet right now, but he felt obliged to raise his hand in a tired greeting.
“Good afternoon, Gunnar,” he said in a weak voice which the wind almost drowned out, and took one step further along the road.
“Hi, Gerlof,” called Ljunger from inside the car. “Where are you going?”
It was a very stupid question that might have merited a very stupid answer, but Gerlof simply nodded toward the village and said:
“Down to Stenvik.”
“Are you going to visit someone?”
“Yes, maybe.” Gerlof swayed in the wind. “Astrid, perhaps.”
“Astrid Linder?” said Ljunger. “It didn’t look as if she was home when I drove past... I couldn’t see any lights in her windows.”
“Oh?”
If Astrid wasn’t home either, then nobody was home in Stenvik — and Gerlof would freeze to death down there in the wind from the sea. The police would find his cold, stiff body the next day, behind some juniper bush.
He thought about it and looked at Ljunger.
“Might you be going to Marnäs, Gunnar? Past the home?”
“Sure... I was going to do a bit of shopping at the ironmonger’s. I’ll give you a lift.”
“Would you?”
“Of course.” Ljunger leaned across and opened the passenger door. “Hop in.”
“That’s very kind of you.”
Gerlof clambered laboriously into the warmth of the car with his cane and his briefcase.
It was quiet and very warm in the car; the heating was turned up high. Ljunger was sitting there with his yellow padded jacket unbuttoned, and despite the fact that Gerlof was still frozen, he too unbuttoned his coat.
“Okay, let’s go,” said Ljunger. “Marnäs, here we come.”
He floored the accelerator and the car shot away with such power that Gerlof was pressed back into his seat.
“Any particular time you have to be back, Gerlof?” asked Ljunger.
Gerlof shook his head. “No, but I’d like—”
“Good, then we’ve got time to take a look at something.”
They had already reached the main road, and it was just as empty as it had been earlier. Ljunger pulled out onto it. But heading south, not north.
“I don’t think I can—” Gerlof began, but Ljunger interrupted him:
“How’s it going with the ships in bottles, then?”
“Fine,” replied Gerlof, although he hadn’t touched them for the last week — he hadn’t even thought about them. “You can come over and see me at the home sometime before Christmas, and we can have a look at them...”
Ljunger nodded. He drove along the main road for just a few hundred yards before he turned off again along a narrow, stony track with no signposts, running between a plowed field and an old stone wall. It led eastward, toward the sea.
“I was just thinking... Is it too late to have all the hulls completely in red?” asked Ljunger. “If it’s possible, that would look really nice.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem.” Gerlof nodded and took a deep breath. “Gunnar, where are we actually going?”
“Not far,” said Ljunger. “We’ll soon be there.”
He didn’t speak again after that, but merely slowed the car along the narrow track. All Gerlof could do was go along for the ride, staring at the windshield wipers monotonously swishing back and forth.
He looked down into the storage space between the seats. Gunnar’s cell phone was there; it was black with silver edges, and was much smaller than any Gerlof had seen before — it was only half the size of Julia’s.
“Where are we going, Gunnar?” he asked quietly.
Ljunger didn’t reply — it was as if he were no longer listening to Gerlof. He was looking only at the sodden gravel track ahead of the car, avoiding the potholes and bumps with a light touch on the wheel. He was smiling.
Gerlof’s forehead was greasy with sweat.
He ought to say something, make some casual, everyday remark. A polite question about how things were going in the hotel industry, perhaps. But he was tired and his head was completely empty of small talk at this moment.
In the end Gerlof could come up with only one question:
“Have you ever been to South America, Gunnar?”
Ljunger shook his head, still smiling.
“I haven’t, unfortunately,” he replied, then added, “The closest I’ve been is Costa Rica.”
Öland, September 1972
From the passenger seat of a blue Volvo, high up on the new bridge, Nils Kant leans forward toward the windshield and looks out across Kalmar Sound. It’s afternoon, and a mist hangs over the water; a thick bank of fog has been created in the sound, and is on its way in over the island.
“It’ll be a foggy night,” he says.
“Just what we were hoping for,” says Fritiof beside him.
“We?” says Nils. “Are there more of you?”
Fritiof nods. “You’ll get to meet them soon.”
Nils tries to relax and look out over the railings. He can almost see himself as a young man down there in the sound, swimming for his life toward the mainland, barely twenty years old.
How could he get so far in the cold water? He’s forty-six now, and couldn’t even swim a hundred yards.
The Öland Bridge is enormous, tons of steel and concrete erected above the water to form a structure that is almost as wide as a freeway and several kilometers long. Nils could never have imagined that his island would have such a link to the mainland.
“How old is the bridge?” he asks.
“Pretty new,” says Fritiof at the wheel.
He hasn’t said very much since he came to Nils in Jönköping the previous evening. He gave Nils dark clothes for the journey and a black knitted hat to pull down over his forehead, but he’s hardly said a word.
The cheerful, charming Fritiof Andersson who sought him out in Costa Rica more than ten years ago is gone; actually, he’s been gone since the man from Småland drowned in the sea north of Limón. Since that night Fritiof has mostly treated Nils like a parcel, moving him around from place to place and from country to country, renting small, cheap apartments or rooms in hostels in seedy parts of town for him, and only getting in touch by telephone once or twice a year.
The night before they left for Öland, Fritiof started on about the treasure again. Where was it? Where had Nils hidden it? In the house?
Nils shook his head. And in the end he told Fritiof:
“It’s buried on the alvar, just to the east of Stenvik. By the old memorial cairn. We’ll go and get it together.”
Fritiof nodded. “Good, that’s what we’ll do.”
Nils has waited a long time to make this final journey. Now he’s here.
“I’m going to stay at home from now on,” he says to Fritiof.
He closes his eyes as they drive across the new bridge. Back on Öland, at last.
“I’m going to stay at home,” he says again. “I’m going to stay with my mother and make sure nobody sees me.” He pauses, then asks, “She’s still well... Vera?”
“Yes indeed.”
Fritiof Andersson nods briefly, then the car speeds up as they drive out onto the great alvar, heading toward Borgholm.
A great deal has changed on Öland since he was young, Nils realizes. There are more shrubs and trees on the island, and the narrow gravel track to Borgholm has become a broad, asphalt highway, just as even and straight as the bridge. The railway which ran from north to south must have been shut down, because Nils can’t see any tracks out on the alvar any longer. The rows of windmills that towered above the shoreline to catch the wind from the sound are gone too; only a few remain.
It seems as if there are fewer people on the island — but yet there are plenty of new cottages down by the water. Nils nods toward them.