But as the man in the first village climbs into his car and slams the door shut, just as he is reaching down to pull out the choke, the woman in the third village opens her kitchen cupboard and finds that she has no sugar. The child, who has finished buttoning his shirt and has tied his shoes, kneels on a couch and sees the stream winding between the alders, pictures the black rowboat pulled up into the tall grass of the bank. The man who will lose his child has finished shaving and is just now closing his portable mirror. Coffee cups, cinnamon bread, cream, and flies each have a place on the table. Only the sugar is missing. And so the mother tells her child to run over to the Larssons’ to borrow a little. As the child opens the door, the man calls after him, urging him to hurry, because the boat lies waiting for them on the bank of the creek, and today they will row much, much further than they ever have before. Running through the yard, the child can think of nothing else but the stream and the boat and the fish that jump from the water. And no one whispers to the child that he has only eight minutes to live and that the boat will lie where it is today and for many days to come.
It isn’t far to the Larssons’. It’s only across the road. And just as the child is crossing that road, the small blue car is speeding through the second village. It’s a tiny village, with humble red houses and newly awakened people who sit in their kitchens with raised coffee cups. They look out over their hedges and see the car rush past, a large cloud of dust rising behind it. The car moves fast, and from behind the steering wheel the man catches glimpses of apple trees and newly tarred telephone poles slipping past like gray shadows. Summer breathes through their open windows, and as they rush out of the second village their car hugs the road, riding safely, surely, in the middle. They are alone on this road — so far. It’s a peaceful thing, to drive completely alone on a broad road. And as they move out onto the open plain, that feeling of peace settles deeper. The man is strong and contented, and with his right elbow he can feel the woman’s body. He’s not a bad man. He’s in a hurry to get to the sea. He wouldn’t hurt even the simplest creature, and yet, still, he will soon kill a child. As they rush on towards the third village, the woman again shuts her eyes, pretending those eyes will not open again until they can look on the sea. In time with the car’s gentle swaying, she dreams about the calm, lapping tide, the peaceful, mirrored surface of the water.
Because life is constructed in such a merciless fashion, even one minute before a cheerful man kills a child he can still feel entirely at ease, and only one minute before a woman screams out in horror she can close her eyes and dream of the sea, and during the last minute of that child’s life his parents can sit in a kitchen waiting for sugar, talking casually about the child’s white teeth and the rowing trip they have planned, and that child himself can close a gate and begin to cross a road, holding in his right hand a few cubes of sugar wrapped up in white paper, and for the whole of that minute he can see nothing but a clear stream with big fish and a wide-bottomed boat with silent oars.
Afterward everything is too late. Afterward there is a blue car stopped sideways in the road, and a screaming woman takes her hand from her mouth, and it’s red with blood. Afterward a man opens a car door and tries to stand on his legs, even though he has a pit of horror within him. Afterward a few sugar cubes are strewn meaninglessly about in the blood and gravel, and a child lies motionless on its stomach, its face pressed heavily against the road. Afterward two pale people, who have not yet had their coffee, come running through a gate to see a sight in the road they will never forget. Because it’s not true that time heals all wounds. Time does not heal the wounds of a dead child, and it heals very poorly the pain of a mother who forgot to buy sugar and who sent her child across the road to borrow some. And it heals just as poorly the anguish of a once cheerful man who has killed a child.
Because the man who has killed a child does not go to the sea. The man who has killed a child drives home slowly, in silence. And beside him sits a mute woman with a bandaged hand. And as they drive back through the villages, they do not see even one friendly face — all shadows, everywhere, are very dark. And when they part, it is in the deepest silence. And the man who has killed a child knows that this silence is his enemy, and that he will need years of his life to conquer it by crying out that it wasn’t his fault. But he also knows that this is a lie. And in the fitful dreams of his nights he will try instead to gain back just a single minute of his life, to somehow make that single minute different.
But life is so merciless to the man who has killed a child that everything afterward is too late.
In Grandmother’s House
It was quiet in Grandmother’s house. The little boy slipped from room to room. He was searching for the quiet. It had to be somewhere. Perhaps it sat rocking in a chair somewhere, reading from a big book. The boy pushed open door after door, and he listened. They were heavy doors. Their thresholds were high and shod with gold. The boy himself was small and very anxious. His heart ticked in his breast like a clock going much too fast. Now he found himself standing on the very last threshold, where he had to shut his eyes. For who could say what quietness looked like? He turned his ear towards the room to see if this was where it lived.
And then he heard so much. He heard a big boat rolling over the sea as a storm howled and raged. And he heard a little girl who could not be seen, because she was buried under flowers. And she was crying because she was dead. He could even hear grandfather’s boots wandering back and forth over the wide creaking floorboards. But the quiet itself he did not hear. So he opened his eyes and entered the last room.
The room was small. Just a tiny bedroom really. But in the middle, on the bright floor, was a big square patch of sunlight. The boy stepped into the square and stood there for a long time, listening. It was so quiet in Grandmother’s house. Nothing stirred but his own restless heart. The boat in the picture was still again and the dead girl on the bureau had finished crying. On the stool in the corner, between the tiled stove and the high window, stood Grandfather’s black boots. And they remained silent. Grandfather himself was on the sun now. And when the sun shined, Grandfather was glad and looked down on him with happy eyes. But whenever the clouds came Grandfather was sorrowful, and he would shut himself up in his house. “When it rains,” thought the boy, “it must be hard to be dead.”
It was now late in the afternoon, and the sun-square was shrinking and shrinking. But the boy did not notice this. Instead, he closed his eyes again, whereupon an odd thing happened. The brightness grew stronger and stronger, until he himself was filled with light. Suddenly he heard a voice whisper: “Now you should do it. Now. Now!” A clock struck. Backwards he crept out of the small radiant strip. When he opened his eyes he was standing there with one of Grandfather’s heavy boots in his arms. He put it down carefully on the floor. And the whole world remained silent.
For a thousand years the boots had stood together side by side. They were as old as the earth and the sun and a path in the forest. But now, when they were suddenly separated, an inaudible sound arose, a lament, which seemed to shake the whole room. Trembling in every limb, the boy stepped up onto the stool and quickly fulfilled his longest-held dream. With both legs he stepped down into the boot, sinking and sinking into the leg, until he finally touched bottom.