One evening at the beginning of August, we sat down on the bench under the apple tree. We were wearing warm jackets, and Louise had one of my old woolly hats on her head.
‘What are we going to do when she dies?’ I wondered. ‘You must have thought about it. Do you know if she has any specific wishes?’
‘She wants to be cremated. She sent me a brochure from an undertaker’s some months ago. I may still have it, or I might have thrown it away. She had marked the cheapest coffin and an urn on special offer.’
‘Does she have any sepulchral rights?’
Louise frowned. ‘What does that mean?’
‘Is there a family grave? Where are her parents buried? There’s usually a link to a particular town or village. In the old days, they used to talk about sepulchral rights.’
‘Her relatives are spread all over the country. I’ve never heard her mention visiting her parents’ grave. She’s never expressed any specific wish regarding her own grave. Although she did say quite firmly that she didn’t want a headstone. I think she would prefer to have her ashes cast into the wind. You can actually do that nowadays.’
‘You need permission,’ I said. ‘Jansson has told me about old fishermen who wanted their ashes scattered over the ancient herring grounds.’
We sat without speaking, thinking about what to do. I had bought a plot in a cemetery: there was probably no reason why Harriet shouldn’t lie by my side.
Louise put her hand on my arm.
‘We don’t really need to ask permission, in fact,’ she said. ‘Harriet could be one of those people in this country who don’t exist.’
‘Everybody has a personal identity number,’ I said. ‘We’re not allowed to disappear when it suits us.’
‘There are always ways of getting round things,’ Louise said. ‘She will die here, in your house. We’ll burn her just like they cremate dead people in India. Then we’ll scatter her ashes over the water. I’ll terminate the contract on her flat in Stockholm and empty it. I won’t supply a forwarding address. She’ll no longer collect her pension. I’ll tell the home health-care people that she’s died. That’s all they want to know. Somebody might start to wonder, I expect, but I shall say that I haven’t had any contact with my mother for several months. And she left here after a short visit.’
‘Did she?’
‘Who do you think is going to ask Jansson or Hans Lundman about where she’s gone to?’
‘But that’s just it. Where has she gone to? Who took her to the mainland?’
‘You did. A week ago. Nobody knows she’s still here.’
It began to dawn on me that Louise was serious. We would take care of the funeral ourselves. Nothing more was said. I got very little sleep that night. But I eventually began to think it might just be possible.
Two days later, when Louise and I were having dinner, she suddenly put down her spoon.
‘The fire,’ she said. ‘Now I know how we can light it without giving anybody cause to wonder what’s happening.’
I listened to her suggestion. It seemed repulsive at first, but then I began to see that it was a beautiful idea.
The moon vanished. Darkness enveloped the archipelago. The last sailing boats of summer headed back to their home ports. The navy conducted manoeuvres in the southern archipelago. We occasionally heard the rumble of distant gunfire. Harriet was now sleeping more or less round the clock. We took it in turns to stay with her. While I was a medical student, I had sometimes earned some extra pocket money by doing night duty. I could still remember the first time I watched a person die. It happened without any movement, in complete silence. The big leap was so tiny. In a split second the living person joined the dead.
I recall thinking: This person who is now dead is someone who has in reality never existed. Death wipes out everything that has lived. Death leaves no trace, apart from the things I’ve always found so difficult to cope with. Love, emotions. I ran away from Harriet because she came too close to me. And now she will soon be gone.
Louise was often upset during those last days. I experienced an increasing fear that I myself was approaching the end. I was afraid of the humiliations in store for me, and hoped I would be granted a gentle death, one which spared me from having to lie in bed for a long time before I reached the final shore.
Harriet died at dawn, shortly after six o’clock, on 22 August. She had endured a restless night — the painkillers didn’t seem to help. I was making coffee when Louise came into the kitchen. She stood beside me and waited until I had counted up to seventeen.
‘Mum’s dead.’
We went to the room where Harriet lay. I felt for a pulse, and used my stethoscope to search for any sign of heart activity. She really was in fact dead. We sat down on her bed. Louise was crying quietly, almost silently. All I felt was a worryingly selfish feeling of relief that it wasn’t me lying there dead.
We sat there without speaking for about ten minutes, I listened again for any heart activity — nothing. Then I draped one of Grandma’s embroidered towels over Harriet’s face.
We drank coffee, which was still hot. At seven o’clock I telephoned the coastguard. Hans Lundman answered.
‘How’s your daughter?’
‘She’s fine.’
‘And Harriet?’
‘She’s left.’
‘Andrea is staggering around on those beautiful light blue shoes. Pass that message on to Louise.’
‘I’ll do that. I’m ringing to say that I’m intending to have a big bonfire today, to get rid of lots of rubbish. Just in case anybody contacts you to report a fire on the island.’
‘The drought’s over for this year.’
‘But somebody might think that my house is on fire.’
‘Thank you for letting us know.’
I went outside down to the boathouse and collected the tarpaulin I’d prepared as a shroud. There wasn’t a breath of wind. It was overcast. I had soaked it in tar. I spread it out on the ground. Louise had dressed Harriet in the pretty dress she’d worn at the midsummer party. She’d combed her hair and made up her face. She was still crying, just as quietly as before. We stood for a while, embracing each other.
‘I shall miss her,’ said Louise. ‘I’ve been so angry with her for so many years. But now I realise that she has opened up a gap inside me. It will remain open, and blow sorrow over me for the rest of my life.’
I checked Harriet’s heartbeat one last time. Her skin had already started to assume the yellow colour that follows death.
We waited another hour. Then we carried her outside and rolled her up in the tarpaulin. I had already prepared the bonfire that would transform her body to ashes, and placed at the ready a drum of petrol.
We lifted her up into my old boat, and balanced it on top of the pyre. I soaked the body and the worn-out hull with petrol.
‘We’d better make ourselves scarce,’ I said. ‘The petrol will flare up. If you stand too near, you could catch fire.’
We stepped back. I looked at Louise. She wasn’t crying any more. She gave me the nod. I lit a ball of cotton waste soaked in tar, and threw it on to the boat.
The fire flared up with a roar. There was a crackling and sizzling from the tar-soaked tarpaulin. Louise took hold of my hand. So my old boat had come in useful after all. It was the vehicle in which I sent Harriet into another world, in which neither she nor I believed, but which we no doubt hoped for, deep down.
While the fire was burning away, I went to fetch an old metal saw from the boathouse. I started to cut Harriet’s walker. It soon became obvious that the saw wasn’t up to the job. I put the walker in the dinghy, together with a couple of herring-net sinkers and chains. I rowed out towards Norrudden, and heaved the walker with its chains and sinkers overboard. Nobody ever fished or anchored there. So nothing would ever hook it and reel it back to the surface.