Sven-Arne started to long for the sound of her footsteps on the stairs. Misfortune turned to joy.
After only a week, they embarked on an intimate relationship. He decided that they should celebrate the removal of his stitches and on the way back he bought delicacies, beer, and a bottle of Old Monk. He had imagined that it would be difficult to get Jyoti to indulge, but she ate with a wonderful appetite. They became somewhat intoxicated, she spoke about Chennai and described the life of a single, childless woman. He lied as usual about his life, now without hesitation. The friction he felt in the early days when he narrated his fictitious tale had evaporated.
He looked at her from across the table, wanted her, and when she got up to clear the table he made some clumsy advances. To his great surprise she did not reject them.
They undressed in the dark, lying close to each other all night, and when she left early in the morning Sven-Arne was possessed with happiness, a feeling from a very long time ago.
She returned the next evening and thereby confirmed their budding relationship. He knew it was not easy for her. The rumour that she was associating with ‘the Englishman’ and spending the nights there would soon spread. He could only imagine how it would affect her life, but when he asked her, he only received an embarrassed reply.
Their bliss lasted only half a year. Then Jyoti wanted them to get married. She gave him an ultimatum. The rumour of their relationship had reached Chennai. He had to explain he could not get married, but was obliged to lie as usual. He could not give her the real reason. He was already formally married, but above all he lacked an identity. He would never be able to register for anything in India, definitely not a marriage. His invented alias was all too transparent, he was convinced the Indian authorities wanted documents to prove who he was, perhaps a birth certificate.
She went without a word, gave up her post at the garden and left. To Chennai, Sven-Arne supposed, where else would she go?
He asked himself if he would have married, if he were free? He did not think so.
He wanted love, but no longer believed himself capable of receiving it, and definitely not giving it. This insight came to him one day in the alley outside his home. He sat, as he often did in the early evening, on a stool leaning against the wall. There he could follow life on the street, catch his breath after work, and exchange a few words with his neighbours. A cat, or rather, a kitten, rubbed against his legs and unexpectedly jumped into his lap.
The emaciated body immediately started to purr. It stretched its paws, showed its puny claws, found a comfortable position, and purred loudly. A feeling of well-being arose in Sven-Arne, perhaps it was even love, that such a vulnerable creature found a haven in his skinny lap. He was also slightly ashamed. Would the street’s ‘Englishman’ play a host to a miserable, bony kitten?
But it was as if he grew a little more human with his temporary visitor, because he cherished no illusions that it would ever return. To be a cat in Bangalore was to be jilted, cast aside. Passers-by did not ridicule him, quite the opposite. They paused, stroked the cat, and smiled. And Sven-Arne felt he got a drop or two, he felt they were patting him.
It struck him that he loved the cat and that animals were perhaps the only thing he was capable of loving. Mute creatures who came and went as they pleased, who exchanged warmth, stole a few minutes of rest and security, perhaps a morsel of food, and showed a form of trust in return.
While he slowly ran his hand along the cat’s back he thought of Elsa, how much he had taken for granted, and how little he had given in return.
He had not loved. He had simply not been capable. He had loved the cause, the task, the movement. There was his source, the tenacity, after the initial passion had died away, which is necessary in order to have a long life together.
He realised this in a narrow alley in India, miles and years from Uppsala, with a flea-bitten cat in his lap. At that point it was too late. Nothing could be made undone. He mumbled something. A woman passing on the pavement stopped questioningly but Sven-Arne waved her on. At the same time he hoped that she, in some unconscious way, could accept his tardy apology, make it universal, and in this way reconcile him with Elsa. At that moment he wished for nothing else.
‘Is it my fault?’ he asked of the cracked mirror, well aware of how the answer would sound, raised as he was on Ante’s doctrines.
All of a sudden he perceived the smell of cut grass. He stared down at his body but realised his unconscious was playing a trick on him. He was back in his grandmother’s cottage, back in Rosberg’s fields. Lightning, so strong in his calmness, made his way across the meadow with the harvester as a laughable burden. Rosberg smiled at him. The cap that he always wore from the spring planting to harvest had that jaunty proletarian style that Sven-Arne had never seen after, that reminded him of the figures in Ante’s photographs from the 1930s.
TEN
‘Maybe it’s a Blackfoot Indian,’ Bosse Marksson said.
‘What are you talking about? Is it a black foot?’
‘Well, I don’t know about black, but it’s a bit charred.’
Ann Lindell tried to picture her colleague from the Östhammar police who was on the other end of the line. She had a vague recollection of having met him, his name sounded so familiar. But she could not conjure up a face to match the gravely voice.
‘Do you have a cold?’
‘No, I always sound like this. It’s hereditary.’
‘Okay, and you found this foot in a boot that was bobbing around in the sea.’
‘Three mistakes in one sentence; you need someone from Crimes for that. First, we weren’t the ones who found it, that was Örjan Bäck; second, it was a sandal; third, it was washed up on the beach.’
‘Who is Örjan Bäck?’
‘An old friend from school who lives out there. Right now he’s home on furlough.’
‘A sailor?’
‘Right you are, this time.’
‘Was he out taking a walk on the beach, or-’
‘Örjan doesn’t walk, he rushes. Yes, he was on his way to check on his dad’s boat. The old man is starting to fail. And he has a prosthesis.’
‘I get it. And then he called you?’
‘Yes, we’re old friends, as I said. He has my mobile phone number.’
Bosse Marksson snuffled. I’ll bet he’s got a cold after all, Lindell thought.
‘And what then?’
She was getting tired, mining her co-worker for information. Bosse Marksson was not one to rush anything, that much was clear.
‘I went out there.’
‘Of course you did. But can’t you just tell me what has been done so far, if you have secured any-’
‘Hold your horses, partner. Why don’t you come out here so we can chat. I’ve heard that you’re crazy about murders and island life. I’ll send some info by email.’
Lindell was taken aback. Was ‘island life’ a reference to her relationship with Edvard on Gräsö Island? Did all of Roslagen know about this?
‘I’ll be there at ten a.m. tomorrow,’ Lindell said, in a much meeker voice than she had intended. ‘Will that work?’
‘Bring your boots,’ Bosse Marksson said, ending the conversation.
Lindell turned on her computer, but did not log on. She thought about the foot by the sea. Had forgotten to ask if it had belonged to a man or a woman. She guessed the latter. Who wore sandals in November? Perhaps it was a slipper.
Her visit with Berglund and his melancholy had slowed her down, as if he had transferred some of his sadness to her.
She opened the telephone book and immediately found Elsa Persson. She dialled the number but no one answered, and she hung up with a tired gesture. Perhaps Elsa was at the school. Berglund had said she was a teacher.