‘But why should she want to come and visit me?’
‘You live on an island. Russia is on the other side of the sea.’
‘But when she gets to the island I live on, she tries to take her own life. I don’t get it.’
‘You can never tell by looking at a person just how badly damaged he or she is inside.’
‘She told me a few things.’
‘So perhaps you have some idea.’
At about three o’clock, a nurse came to say that Sima’s condition had stabilised. If we wanted to go home, we could. She would phone us if there was any change. As we had nowhere to go to we stayed there for the rest of the day and all night. Agnes curled up on a narrow sofa and dozed. I spent most of the time on a chair leafing through well-thumbed magazines in which people I’d never heard of, pictured in dazzlingly bright colours, trumpeted to the world how important they were. We occasionally went to get something to eat, but we were never away for long.
Shortly after five in the morning, a nurse came to the waiting room to inform us that there had been a sudden change. Serious internal bleeding had occurred, and surgeons were about to operate in an attempt to stabilise her condition.
We had taken things too much for granted. Sima was suddenly drifting away from us again.
At twenty past six the doctor came to see us. He seemed to be very tired, sat down on a chair and stared at his hands. They hadn’t been able to stop the bleeding. Sima was dead. She had never come round. If we needed support, the hospital offered a counselling service.
We went in together to see her. All the tubes had been removed, and the machines switched off. The yellow pallor that makes the newly dead look like a waxwork had already taken a grip of her face. I don’t know how many dead people I have seen in my life. I have watched people die, I have performed post-mortem examinations, I have held human brains in my hands. Nevertheless, it was me who burst into tears; Agnes was in so much pain that she was incapable of reaction. She grasped my arm; I could feel that she was strong — and I wished that she would never let go.
I wanted to stay there, but Agnes asked me to go back home. She would stay with Sima, I had done all that I could, she was grateful, but she wanted to be on her own. She accompanied me to my taxi. It was a beautiful morning, still chilly. Yellow coltsfoot were in bloom on the verge leading up to A&E.
A coltsfoot moment, I thought. Just now, this morning, when Sima was lying dead inside there. Just for a brief moment she had sparkled like a ruby. Now it was as if she had never existed.
The only thing about death that scares me is its utter indifference.
‘The sword,’ I said. ‘And she had a case as well. What do you want me to do with that?’
‘I’ll be in touch,’ said Agnes. ‘I can’t say when. But I know where to find you.’
I watched her go back into the hospital. A one-armed sorrowful angel, who had just lost one of her wicked but remarkable children.
I got into the taxi and said where I wanted to go to. The driver eyed me suspiciously. I realised that I made a dodgy impression, to say the least. Dishevelled clothes, cut-down wellington boots, unshaven and hollow-eyed.
‘We usually ask for payment in advance for long journeys like this,’ the driver said. ‘We’ve had some bad experiences.’
I felt in my pockets and realised that I didn’t even have my wallet with me. I turned to the driver.
‘My daughter has just died. I want to go home. You’ll be paid. Please drive slowly and carefully.’
I started to weep. He said nothing more until we pulled up at the quayside. It was ten o’clock. There was a slight breeze that hardly disturbed the water in the harbour. I asked the taxi driver to stop outside the red wooden building that housed the coastguard. Hans Lundman had seen the taxi approaching and had come out of the door. He could see from my face that the outcome had not been good.
‘She died,’ I said. ‘Internal bleeding. It was unexpected. We thought she was going to make it. I need to borrow a thousand kronor from you to pay for the taxi.’
‘I’ll put it on my credit card,’ said Lundman, and headed for the taxi.
He’d finished his shift several hours previously. I realised that he had stayed on in the hope of being there when I got back to the quayside. Hans Lundman lived on one of the islands in the southern archipelago.
‘I’ll take you home,’ he said.
‘I don’t have any money at home,’ I said. ‘I’ll have to ask Jansson to take some out of the bank for me.’
‘Who cares about money at a time like this?’ he said.
I always feel at ease when I’m at sea. Hans Lundman’s boat was an old converted fishing vessel that progressed at a stately pace. His work occasionally forced him to hurry, but he never rushed otherwise.
We berthed at the jetty. It was sunny, and warm. Spring had sprung. But I felt devoid of any such feelings.
‘There’s a boat out there at the Sighs,’ I said. ‘Moored there. It’s stolen.’
He understood.
‘We’ll discover it tomorrow,’ he said. ‘It just so happens that I’ll be passing there on patrol tomorrow. Nobody knows who stole it.’
We shook hands.
‘She shouldn’t have died,’ I said.
‘No,’ said Lundman. ‘She really shouldn’t.’
I remained on the jetty and watched him reverse out of the inlet. He raised his hand in farewell, then was gone.
I sat down on the bench. It was much later when I returned to my house, where the front door was standing wide open.
Chapter 3
The oaks were unusually late this year.
I recorded in my logbook that the big oak tree between the boathouse and what used to be my grandparents’ henhouse didn’t start turning green until 25 May. The cluster of oaks around the inlet on the north side of the island — the inlet that for some incomprehensible reason had always been known as the Quarrel — started to come into leaf a few days earlier.
They say that the oaks on these islands were planted by the state at the beginning of the nineteenth century, so that there would be ample timber to make the warships being built in nearby Karlskrona. I remember lightning striking one of the trees when I was a child, and my grandfather sawing down what remained of the trunk. It had been planted in 1802. Grandfather told me that was in the days of Napoleon. I had no idea who Napoleon was at the time, but I realised that it was a very long time ago. Those annual rings had dogged me throughout my life. Beethoven was alive when that oak was still a sapling. The tree was in its prime when my father was born.
As so often out here in the archipelago, summer came gradually, but you could never be certain that it was here to stay. My feeling of loneliness usually decreased as it grew warmer. But that was not the case this year. I just sat there with my anthill, a sharp sword and Sima’s half-empty suitcase.
I often spoke to Agnes on the telephone during this period. She told me that the funeral had taken place in Mogata church. Apart from Agnes and the two girls who lived with her — the ones I had met: Miranda and Aida — the only other person to attend was a very old man who claimed to be a distant relative of Sima’s. He had arrived by taxi, and seemed so frail that Agnes was afraid he would drop dead at any moment. She had not managed to establish just how he was related to Sima. Perhaps he had mistaken her for somebody else? When she showed him a photograph of Sima, he hadn’t been at all sure that he recognised her.
But so what? Agnes had said. The church ought to have been full of people bidding farewell to this young person who had never had an opportunity to discover herself, or explore the world.