‘If your memory returns, you can call us,’ he said. ‘But if it turns out to be a ribbon round a Christmas present, don’t bother.’
Lars Emanuelsson was standing outside, waiting for her. He was wearing a threadbare fur hat pulled down over his forehead. He was annoyed when he realised she had unmasked him.
‘Why are you following me?’
‘I’m not. I’m circulating, as I said. I just happened to see you going into police HQ, and I thought I’d wait to see what developed. Right now I’m wondering what your very brief visit entailed.’
‘That’s something you’ll never know. Now leave me alone, before I get really annoyed.’
She turned on her heel and walked away, but heard him say behind her: ‘Don’t forget that I can write.’
She turned back angrily.
‘Are you threatening me?’
‘Not at all.’
‘I’ve told you why I’m here. There’s absolutely no reason whatsoever to embroil me in what’s going on.’
‘The public reads what is written, whether it’s true or not.’
Now it was Lars Emanuelsson who turned on his heel and walked away. She looked on in disgust, and hoped she would never meet him again.
Birgitta Roslin returned to her car. She had only just settled down behind the wheel when the penny dropped, and she remembered where she had seen that red ribbon. It came out of the blue, without warning. Could she be mistaken? No, she could see everything in her mind’s eye, as clear as day.
She waited for two hours as the place she wanted to visit was closed. She killed time by wandering aimlessly around town, impatient because she couldn’t ascertain immediately what she thought she had discovered.
It was eleven o’clock when the Chinese restaurant opened. Birgitta Roslin went in and sat down in the same place as last time. She studied the lamps hanging over the tables. They were made of transparent material, thin plastic designed to give the impression of paper-covered lanterns. They were long and thin, cylinder-shaped. Four red ribbons hung down from the bottom.
After her visit to police HQ she knew that each of the ribbons was exactly seven and a half inches long. They were attached to the lampshade by a little hook that threaded in through a hole at the top of the ribbon.
The young woman who spoke bad Swedish came with the menu. She smiled when she recognised Birgitta Roslin. Roslin chose the buffet, despite the fact that she was not very hungry. The dishes laid out for her to choose from gave her the opportunity to scan the dining room. She soon found what she was looking for over a table for two in a corner at the back. The lamp hanging over the table was missing one of the red ribbons.
She stopped short and held her breath.
Somebody had been sitting there, she thought. At the back in the darkest corner. Then he had stood up, left the premises and made his way to Hesjövallen.
She looked around the restaurant. The young woman smiled. She could hear voices coming from the kitchen, speaking Chinese.
It struck her that neither she nor the police had the slightest idea what had happened. It was all much bigger, deeper and more mysterious than any of them could have imagined.
They knew absolutely nothing.
Part 2
The Railroad (1863)
LOUSHAN PASS
The westerly wind whines sharp,
wild geese cry in the sky the frosty morning’s moon.
Frosty the morning’s moon,
horses’ hooves clatter hard,
stifled the sound of the trumpet...
Mao Zedong, 1935
The Way to Canton
10
It was during the hottest part of the year, 1863. The second day of San’s and his two brothers’ long trek to the coast and the town of Canton. Early in the morning they came to a crossroads where three human heads were mounted on bamboo poles that had been driven into the ground. They couldn’t work out how long the heads had been there. Wu, the youngest of the brothers, thought at least a week because the eyes and parts of the cheeks had already been hacked to pieces by crows. Guo Si, the eldest, maintained the heads had been cut off only a couple of days before. He thought the contorted mouths still retained traces of horror at what was about to happen.
San said nothing. They had fled from a remote village in Guangxi Province. The severed heads were like a warning that their lives would continue to be in danger.
They left what San called Three Heads Crossroads. While Guo Si and Wu argued about whether the heads had belonged to executed bandits or peasants who had displeased a powerful landowner, San thought about the events that had driven them onto the road. Every step they took carried them further away from their former lives. Deep down, his brothers probably hoped that one day they would be able to return to Wei Hei, the village where they had grown up. He wasn’t at all sure what he hoped himself. Perhaps poor peasants such as themselves could never tear themselves away from the misery that tainted their lives. What lay in store for them in Canton, where they were headed? It was said that you could smuggle yourself aboard a ship and be carried eastward over the ocean to a country where there were rivers filled with glittering gold nuggets the size of hens’ eggs. Rumours had even reached as far as the remote village of Wei Hei, telling of a land populated by a strange white people, a land so rich that even simple people from China could work their way up out of squalor to unimaginable power and wealth.
San didn’t know what to think. Poor people always dreamed of a life with no landowner pestering them. He himself had thought along those lines since he was a small boy, having to stand at the roadside with his head bowed while some overlord passed by in his covered sedan chair. He had always wondered how it was possible for people to lead such different lives.
He had once asked his father about it and received a box on the ears in reply. One didn’t ask unnecessary questions. The gods in the trees and the streams and the mountains had created the world we humans lived in. In order for this mysterious universe to attain a divine balance, there must be rich and poor, peasants guiding their ploughs pulled by water buffalo and overlords who hardly ever set foot on the ground that had given birth to them as well.
He had never again asked his parents what they dreamed about as they knelt before their idols. They lived their lives in a state of unrelieved servitude. Were there people who worked harder and received so little in return for their labour? He had never found anybody he could ask, since everybody in the village was just as poor and just as afraid of the invisible landowner whose stewards, armed with whips, forced the peasants to carry out their daily tasks. He had watched people go from cradle to grave, constantly weighed down by the burden that was their daily grind. It was as if children’s backs became hunched even before they learned how to walk. The people in the village slept on mats that were rolled out every evening on the cold earth floors. They rested their heads on bundles of hard bamboo poles. Days followed the monotonous rhythm dictated by the seasons. They ploughed the soil behind their phlegmatic water buffalo, planted their rice. They hoped that the coming year, the coming harvest, would be sufficient to feed them. When the harvest failed, there was almost nothing to live on. When there was no rice left, they were forced to eat leaves.
Or to lie down and die. There was no alternative.
He was roused from his thoughts. Dusk had started to fall. He looked around for a suitable place where they could sleep. There was a clump of trees by the side of the road, next to some boulders that seemed to have been ripped out of the mountain range that loomed on the western horizon. They rolled out their mattresses filled with dried grass and divided up the rice they had left, which would have to last until they reached Canton. San glanced furtively at his brothers. Would they be able to make it? What would he do if one of them fell ill? He himself still felt strong. But he wouldn’t be able to carry one of his brothers unaided, if that became necessary.