— One doesn’t see beautiful things in the mountains, Ashley says. One becomes them.
Imogen smiles. She draws a little from her cigarette.
— It was a wonderful speech. And I’m glad to have dug it out of you. But I wonder if it’s another joke of yours. Do you really mean all this, or is it only what you think I wish to hear?
— You give me too much credit. I’m not so good a liar.
— I bet you’re a very good liar, Imogen says. But I also think you’re afraid to be serious, because somehow you are so very serious.
Ashley does not answer. He is looking at something beyond Imogen’s shoulder. He closes his cigarette case and puts it back in his pocket, leaning across the table until he is very close to her.
— That couple across from us, he whispers. They’ve been watching us.
Imogen turns around discreetly. A few tables away, a man with a Van Dyke beard is reclined deep into his chair. He wears a white dinner jacket and his bow tie hangs unknotted around his neck. The woman beside him is laughing, her hand draped over the man’s lapel. The man’s eyes meet Imogen’s and he raises his glass in a salute. He rises and comes to their table, towing the woman in hand.
— I wonder, he addresses them, if you could settle a wager for my companion and me. We couldn’t help but notice such a lovely pair of young people.
The man’s voice is hoarse, his accent difficult to place.
— With pleasure, Ashley says.
The man fans his arm toward the giggling woman.
— My companion swears you are blood relations.
— Siblings, the woman adds, or at least first cousins. One can see it about the eyes.
The man shakes his head.
— But I say that you are lovers.
Ashley turns in awkward embarrassment, looking at Imogen, but she only laughs and takes a drink. Ashley puffs from his cigarette.
— You’re both correct, he says. This is in fact my first cousin. And this very evening we’ve become engaged to be married.
The man raises his glass again in a salute. His drink is milky green and it swishes over the rim.
— I knew as much. I wish you joy.
The couple slinks back to their seats.
— What sort of people are these? Ashley wonders.
— Drunk people, Imogen says. I thought he was rather charming.
Imogen excuses herself to the powder room and Ashley lights another cigarette to pass the time. There is no band to watch here, nor any kind of entertainment. He glances back at the drunk couple. The woman is kissing the man’s wrist and tugging at his bow tie. Ashley looks down at his wristwatch, flipping back the metal cover that protects the crystal. He had bought it yesterday and the salesman had said the hands were luminous, but in the half-lit room it is hard to tell.
Suddenly Imogen returns with a radiant smile, leaning toward him with her hands on her chair.
— I had a revelation in the washroom.
— Really?
— We’ll go to the Alps. Switzerland, perhaps, because they’re neutral. We’ll hole up in a chalet in one of those steep valleys that hasn’t any roads and is reachable only on foot. Surely there are such places?
Ashley feels a flush of warmth. He worries it will show on his face and he takes a drag of his cigarette.
— Certainly.
Imogen beams. — No one shall ever find us.
— That was the revelation?
— One of them.
— What was the other?
— I’ve lost my latchkey. I shan’t be able to get inside my own house.
— Lost it?
Imogen pulls out her chair and sits down.
— Really, she remarks, it isn’t so shocking as that. The wonder is that I didn’t lose it sooner.
— Isn’t anyone home?
She shakes her head. — That’s the punch line. They all went down to Sussex today, even the housekeeper. She shan’t return till morning.
They search among Imogen’s possessions. Ashley scans the patterned carpet around the table, nearly bending to all fours. A few of the waitstaff assist in the search, circling the table without enthusiasm. They do not find the key.
— I might have lost it in the park, Imogen says.
Ashley laughs.
— You don’t mean — we’d never find it there now.
— We might.
A GATHERING
An airport security guard taps my shoulder to wake me. I sit up in my sleeping bag. It’s 5:21 a.m. and the check-in line has snaked around my encampment.
I sleep through my whole flight and on the bus from Skavsta Airport into Stockholm central station. On the train to Uppsala I take out my printouts to review, but I spend the short ride looking out the window, wishing I could see more of Sweden.
The Uppsala Landsarkivet is in a tall brick building, a twenty-minute walk from the train station between the university’s botanical gardens and hospital. The young woman at the reception looks up my appointment, addressing me in fluent English.
— Campbell, she says. Here it is. I’ll bring the material into the reading room. Put your bag in the lockers and take anything you need in the clear carrier bags.
— Can I bring a camera?
— Yes, but please no flash.
A few minutes later the woman brings three volumes to my table along with a pair of cotton archival gloves. The books are all leather-bound, a few hundred pages per volume. The spines read Församlingsbok—LEKSANDS Församling. I start with these registers, a kind of census recorded by the parish. The sisters would have been in Sweden during the winter of 1916–17, so I’ve ordered two volumes, 1910–1916 and 1917–1931. The sloped handwriting is sharp and fairly clear, but the books are still almost impossible to decipher. The names are entered in numbered horizontal rows, but there are eighteen vertical columns whose categories are all printed in tiny Swedish. In some cases a whole block of the names is crossed out and I can’t figure out why. Finally I get the young woman to help me.
— What does this word torp mean?
— It’s like a farm. The records are listed by area. So these people are all living in the same farm, you see? Here is the person’s job, the birth date, the birth parish, the place they moved from—
The woman helps me for a few minutes, but another patron has a question and she moves on. I decide to ignore the columns. Unless I find the right family it makes no difference what they mean. I look through through the end of the 1910–1916 book and the beginning of the 1917 book. Nothing, unless the sisters’ names and dates were entered completely wrong. There are several women with the name Charlotta or Eleanora — Gunborg Eleanora, Aldy Erika Charlotta, Anna Eleanora — but all these seem to be middle names, and in any case they are listed among households filled with completely unfamiliar names. There’s no Imogen anywhere.
I go to the bathroom and splash water on my face, looking at myself in the mirror. It could still turn out all right. Maybe they weren’t around when the parish was surveyed in 1917. Or maybe they just didn’t show up to be counted. I go back into the reading room and start the other book, the ledger of birth records. Födelse-och Dopbok för Leksands församling. The entries run from 1906 to 1920. They’re largely chronological and easier to follow than the parish registers. I scan down the names with my gloved finger.