What a wasteland this world is.
What a misfortune that we live to be so old.
This thought constantly comes into my mind.
If only I had a woman, to soothe and comfort me.
Sometimes Anna follows me down the corridor in her quiet and careful way. Often, as she passes, she’ll put a hand on my shoulder and give it a squeeze.
‘Hi, Riktor, you all right?’ she’ll say, and hurry on without waiting for a reply. It’s only a friendly gesture in passing, a minute distraction. But so strong is the effect of her pleasant greeting, that I’ve known my eyes fill with tears. I am really, moved, and that doesn’t happen often. Anna does things like that and they cost her nothing at all. If only she knew, I think. Nelly Friis is not the only one who’s blind.
Chapter 9
One day at the beginning of April, I went out for a walk near Lake Mester. Lake Mester is a small lake, and that day its surface lay ice-bound and covered with snow in the bright, sparkling weather. All was white and smooth like a newly ironed sheet. After several days of mild conditions, and a tentative promise of spring, the cold had returned. And as I was walking I caught sight of a skier working his way across the fields. He came on quickly, his modern, red, skin-hugging ski-suit so visible in that overwhelming whiteness, as was the little waist pouch that gave a hop with each tug on the poles. I stood there watching him as he came down the slopes. My imagination had free rein, each of the skier’s strides seemed like a race against time. It’s a question of holding age at bay, he was saying to himself perhaps, I’m on the offensive against death and decay, always one step ahead and as fit as a fiddle.
I went on a few paces as he rapidly drew nearer. He was a middle-aged man, probably in his fifties, the age at which they often begin these desperate remedies. To put it simply: he was being hounded by the demon of fitness. His arms would thrust forwards in almost aggressive lunges, his body seemed robust and firm in that red ski-suit. I ambled off slowly, inhaling the sharp air, and keeping my eye on the red skier. There was a speed and fluidity and forcefulness about him, and so it took me some time to register where he was going. He was heading towards the water, towards the lake with its covering of snow and ice, the lake in April. Can you credit it, I thought to myself, and followed him with my eyes. Naturally I assumed he’d keep to the shore. But to my astonishment I saw him swish out on to the ice. This daring manoeuvre flabbergasted me. Still I reasoned that he’d hug the land; after all it’s a golden rule, whether you’re swimming or in a boat. Or travelling across frozen water. I was thoroughly mistaken, however. He set out across the ice with gusto, using his poles with impressive force and pushing with his skis as hard as he could. I took a few hasty steps. I was drawn towards him, tense, expectant and horrified all at once. After a couple of minutes I was down at the edge of the lake. I stood there with my hand shading my eyes, watching that hazardous passage over the ice.
He’d got a good way out.
I stared after the long legs in their red tights, and then I noticed something happen. All at once, his steady rhythm changed. He lost speed and seemed to stumble over his skis. At first I thought he might have hit a rough patch of ice, because he was working his arms very fast, and then their movement became frantic. He fell through the ice. As I watched from the shore, he fell through the thin ice on Lake Mester and started sinking. My pulse began to race with a mixture of fear and shock; my whole body felt hot, my cheeks and neck were burning. Now he was struggling in the water like a madman. Suddenly, he had the idea of using the spikes on his poles for purchase and dragging himself out like that, but this didn’t work because the ice kept breaking. Time and again flakes, large and small, broke off from the edge. I stood as if turned to stone on the shore and watched the frenzied struggle for life. Simultaneously, I reached for the mobile phone in my pocket, as if there were time enough for that to save him. I certainly wasn’t willing to sacrifice my life for some unknown idiot. So I stood there watching in horror, while he fought frantically in the icy water. I heard his screams clearly, and although he was a long way off, their harrowing sound pierced me to my very marrow. His cries wrung me, but I also found them strangely exciting. He should have known better than to cross an ice-covered lake in April, I thought. People generally get what they deserve, don’t they? The ice continued to crack beneath his hands. His shouts had lost something of their strength. Sometimes he left off for a few moments, it was clear he was beginning to get chilled, he was moving more slowly in the black water.
You skied as fast as you could over the fields, I mused, as I stood watching.
You were skiing for life.
But death was waiting a little way ahead.
And then, silence.
The dark pool gaped like the jaws of a predator. The man in the red suit had disappeared, swallowed up by the inky water. I stood on the lake shore panting, my cheeks still flaming hot, for his death throes had also played themselves out in me. I strove to calm my body, my respiration and heart, no one else had witnessed what I had seen. For an eternity I stood there staring. Then I turned and walked quickly homeward, glancing over my shoulder now and again, afraid that he might have risen from the depths again in his red ski-suit. As I walked I clutched the mobile phone in my pocket, I really should report it. But something held me back. An unwillingness to draw attention to myself, to admit that I’d stood there looking on ineffectually, and perhaps be criticised because I hadn’t done anything, hadn’t shouted a warning after him as he’d raced over the fields, I could at least have done that. When, forty minutes later, I reached my house at last, I was dizzy and faint. I attempted to digest this new self-awareness, that I was not a man of action. I tried to think clearly, but I was intoxicated by what I’d seen, the man who’d struggled and sunk, screaming with fear and agony. Then for a while I imagined his watery death and the pain he’d endured, the feeling of pressure behind his eyes, the fire in his lungs. That it had taken time. The thoughts that had raced through his mind, the dizzying feeling of loneliness in dying out there alone in the cold water. Eventually I collapsed into a chair. I sat there for a long while with my head in my hands. Perhaps he’d noticed me standing on the shore staring. What treachery it must have seemed to him that I hadn’t lifted a finger.
It was a long and restless night.
Accusations came from every corner of the room, recriminations from under the bed, threats from up near the ceiling, that I was a miserable and worthless person. That I lacked backbone and any notion of self-sacrifice. At the same time I was dazzled by it all, as if someone had selected me as sole witness to that awful event. I didn’t get to sleep until nearly daybreak, exhausted by everything that had happened, and when the light came through the window, I jumped out of bed.