The Shadow Girls Read online

  She walked on between the rows of barracks and tents. Whenever she met someone’s eye she smiled. In an open area under a hastily erected iron roof she received some food, doled out by two heavyset and sweaty Spanish women who maintained a ceaseless conversation with each other. Tea-Bag sat down at a plastic table, wiped away a few breadcrumbs and started to eat. Every morning she was afraid that she would lose the will to eat. Sometimes it seemed as if the ability to feel hunger was what kept her alive.

  She ate slowly as a way to make the time go by. She thought about the watch that lay on the bottom of the sea. She wondered if it still worked or if it had stopped at that moment when she herself ought rightfully to have died alongside the others. She searched for the name of the Italian engineer whom she stole the watch from that lonely night when she had sold her body in order to get the money together for the trip. Cartini? Cavanini? She didn’t know if it was his first or last name. Not that it mattered.

  She got up from the table and walked over to the women who were still doling out portions from their huge pots while they continued their endless conversation. Tea-Bag put her dish with the other dirty dishes on a trolley and walked down to the fence to look out at the sea. There was a ship far out towards the horizon.

  ‘Tea-Bag,’ she heard someone say.

  She turned around. Fernando was looking at her with his red eyes.

  ‘There’s someone who wants to speak to you,’ he said.

  She was immediately on guard.

  ‘Who?’

  Fernando shrugged.

  ‘Someone who wants to talk to someone. Anyone. It might as well be you.’

  ‘No one wants to talk to me.’

  She was even more suspicious now, using her big smile as a way to keep Fernando at bay.

  ‘If you don’t want to talk to him I’ll find someone else.’

  ‘Why would he want to speak to me?’

  Tea-Bag sensed danger; she hoped an opening in the fence would suddenly appear so she could jump through. To ward off the threat she made her smile even wider.

  ‘A reporter. Someone who has taken it into his head to write a story on refugees.’

  ‘What kind of a story?’

  ‘I’m assuming he’s writing an article for the paper.’

  ‘And he’s going to write about me?’

  Fernando made a face.

  ‘I’ll ask someone else if you don’t want to do it.’

  He turned and started to walk away. Tea-Bag had the feeling she was about to make one of the most important decisions of her life.

  ‘I’ll talk to him, if he wants to talk to me.’

  ‘Just remember that it won’t be to your advantage if you criticise the camp.’

  Tea-Bag tried to understand what he was getting at. The Spanish guards always spoke a language where the most important message lay beneath the surface.

  ‘What would be to my advantage?’

  Fernando stopped and took out a piece of paper from his pocket.

  ‘I am pleased to say that the Spanish authorities treat us with the utmost compassion and humanity,’ he read aloud.

  ‘What is that, exactly?’

  ‘That’s what you should say. Everyone who works here has a copy of it. Someone in the Ministry of the Interior wrote it. That’s what you should say to the journalist. It could be to your advantage.’

  ‘My advantage? How?’

  ‘So you will continue to be treated with compassion.’

  ‘What exactly do you mean by “compassion”?’

  ‘To help you reach your goal.’

  ‘What goal?’

  ‘The goal you have set for yourself.’

  Tea-Bag had the feeling she was walking around in a circle.

  ‘Does that mean I can leave the camp?’

  ‘Actually it will mean the reverse. You can stay on.’

  ‘But that’s what would happen anyway.’

  ‘Don’t be too sure. You could be deported to your homeland. Wherever that really is.’

  ‘I don’t have a homeland.’

  ‘You will be deported to the country of last domicile.’

  ‘They won’t accept me.’

  ‘Of course not. You will be sent back whereupon we deport you again. You will find yourself in what we call the circular route.’

  ‘And what is that?’

  ‘A route in which you circulate.’

  ‘Around what?’

  ‘Around yourself.’

  Tea-Bag shook her head. She didn’t understand. There was nothing that could make her as frustrated as when she didn’t understand.

  ‘I’ve heard of a man who claimed to be from a central African republic,’ Fernando continued. ‘He has now lived in an Italian airport for twelve years. No one wants him. Since no one will pay his airfare it has turned out to be cheapest simply to let him remain at the airport.’

  Tea-Bag pointed to the note Fernando held in his hand.

  ‘That’s what you want me to say?’

  ‘Just this. Nothing else.’

  Fernando gave her the note.

  ‘He’s waiting in my office. He also has a photographer with him.’

  ‘Why?’

  Fernando sighed.

  ‘They always do.’

  *

  Two men were waiting outside Fernando’s office. One was short with red hair and a raincoat that flapped in the wind. He was carrying a camera. Next to him was a tall and thin man. Tea-Bag thought he looked like a palm tree. His back was slightly bent and he had bushy hair that stood out like palm fronds. Fernando pointed to Tea-Bag then left them alone. Tea-Bag smiled and the man who looked like a palm tree smiled back at her. He had bad teeth. The other man picked up his camera. His raincoat rustled.

  ‘My name is Per,’ said the palm-tree man. ‘We’re doing a series on refugees. We’re calling it “People without a face”. We want to tell your story.’

  Something about the way he spoke rubbed her up the wrong way. She sent him a blinding smile. She was furious.

  ‘But I have a face.’

  Per looked puzzled.

  ‘We mean it in a symbolic way. “People without a face”. People like you who are trying to come to Europe without being welcome.’

  For the first time since she had been here, Tea-Bag suddenly felt an urge to defend the camp, the red-eyed guards, their dogs, the fat women who doled out the meals, the men who emptied the latrines. All this she wanted to defend, just as she wanted to defend the other refugees in the camp and those who never made it that far, who drowned or committed suicide in their despair.

  ‘I won’t speak to you,’ she said, ‘until you have apologised for saying that I have no face.’

  Then she turned to the man in the raincoat who was constantly moving about and snapping pictures of her.

  ‘I don’t want you to take any more pictures of me.’

  The photographer flinched as if she had slapped him and put his camera down. Tea-Bag wondered if she had made a mistake. Both of the men in front of her seemed friendly and their eyes were not red from exhaustion. Tea-Bag quickly decided to retreat.

  ‘You may speak to me,’ she said. ‘And you may take your pictures.’

  The photographer immediately started working again. Some children who were drifting around the camp stopped and looked at them. I’m speaking for them, Tea-Bag thought. Not only for me but for them.

  ‘So how are things here?’ the reporter asked.

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘What it sounds like. Life here in the camp.’

  ‘I am treated with compassion and humanity, I am happy to say.’

  ‘It must be terrible to be in the camp. How long have you been here?’

  ‘A few months. A thousand years.’

  ‘What is your name?’

  ‘Tea-Bag.’

  The man asking the questions had still not said anything that could provide a door for her, a door through which she could escape.

 
‘Excuse me?’

  ‘My name is Tea-Bag. Just as yours is Paul.’

  ‘Per. Where do you come from?’

  Careful now, she thought. I don’t know what he wants from me. He may have a door somewhere but he could also be someone who wants to send me back, someone who wants to reveal my secrets.

  ‘I almost drowned. Something hit me in the head. I have lost my memory.’

  ‘Have you been examined by a doctor?’

  Tea-Bag shook her head. Why was he asking all these questions? What did he want? She became suspicious again and tried to retreat.

  ‘I am treated with compassion and humanity by the Spanish authorities.’

  ‘How can you say that? You’re a prisoner here!’

  He has a door, Tea-Bag decided. He is simply trying to determine if I am worthy of it. She had to restrain herself so she would not throw herself into his arms and embrace him.

  ‘Where do you come from?’ Now she was the one asking the questions.

  ‘Sweden,’ he said.

  What kind of place was that? A town, a country, the sign on a door? She didn’t know. The names of so many cities and countries were constantly circulating around the camp like swarms of bees. But had she heard the name ‘Sweden’ before? Maybe, she couldn’t be sure.

  ‘Sweden?’

  ‘That’s in Scandinavia, in northern Europe. That’s where we come from. We are writing a series on people without faces, refugees who are desperately trying to enter Europe. We want to tell your story. We want to give you back your face.’

  ‘I already have a face. What is he taking pictures of if I have no face? Can you smile without teeth, without a mouth? I don’t need a face, I need a door.’

  ‘A door? You mean somewhere to go where you will be welcome? But that’s just why we came down here. We want you to find somewhere to go.’

  Tea-Bag strained to understand the words that reached her ears. Someone was trying to help her? This tall man who was still gently swaying must have access to a secret door that he was not showing her.

  ‘We want to tell your story,’ he said. ‘Your whole story. As much as you remember.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because we will print it in our newspaper.’

  ‘I want a door. I want to get out of here.’

  ‘That’s exactly what this is about.’

  *

  Afterwards Tea-Bag never understood what had made her trust him. But somehow she sensed that door was actually opening for her. Perhaps she had been able to follow her intuition because her feet were firmly planted on the ground, just as her father had taught her, the only thing he had been able to give her. Or perhaps it was because the man asking the questions had seemed genuinely interested in her answers. Or perhaps it was because he didn’t look tired. In any case she needed to make a decision and she decided to say yes.

  They went into Fernando’s office where the dirty teacup that had given her her name still sat on the desk. But she said nothing of that. She started by telling them about her village, somewhere in a land whose name she had forgotten, about her father whom she had not forgotten and who was one morning led away by soldiers, never to return. Her mother had been harassed, they belonged to the wrong kind of people, the kind of people who were not in power. Her mother had urged her to escape, which she had done. She skipped parts of her story and said nothing of the Italian engineer and how she had sold her body to him in order to get the money for passage on the ship. She kept as many secrets as she told. But she was still swept up by the emotion of her story and she saw that the man in front of her who had turned on his tape recorder was also moved by it. When she came to the part about the terrible night in the cargo-hold when the ship began to sink she started to cry.

  She had been speaking for four hours when she reached the end. Fernando had appeared in the doorway from time to time and she always weaved in words about ‘compassion and humanity’ when he appeared. The reporter seemed to accept this as a kind of secret code.

  Then it was over.

  The reporter who packed away his tape recorder had not in fact provided her with a way out of the camp. But she had still found her door. She had the name of a country far away where people actually wanted to see her face and were interested in hearing her story: Sweden. She decided that that was where she was headed, nowhere else. Sweden. There were people there who had sent out someone to watch out for her.

  She walked them to the front gates of the camp.

  ‘Is your name just Tea-Bag?’ he asked. ‘Nothing else? What about a surname?’

  ‘I don’t have one yet.’

  He looked at her curiously but smiled. The photographer asked one of the guards to take a picture of the three of them.

  *

  It was one of the last days of the twentieth century.

  It started raining again in the afternoon. That evening Tea-Bag sat on her bed and pressed her feet against the cold floor for a long time. Sweden, she thought. That’s where I’m going. That’s where I have to go. That’s my goal.

  2

  JESPER HUMLIN, ONE of the most successful writers of his generation, was worried about losing his tan. This fear easily surpassed his other anxieties, such as the fate of the impenetrable collections of poetry he published every year on the sixth of October, which happened to coincide with his mother’s birthday. This morning, a few months after his latest book had come out, he was looking at his face in the mirror and noted to his satisfaction that his tan had an unparalleled evenness of tone. A few days earlier he had returned to a chilly Sweden from a month-long sojourn on the South Seas, first in the Solomon Islands and then on Rarotonga.

  Since he liked to travel in comfort and stay in the most expensive hotels he would not have been able to undertake this trip if he had not received the Nylander grant of 80,000 kronor. It was a newly established grant, the donor a shirt manufacturer from Borås who had long nourished the dream of becoming a poet. He had been bitterly disappointed to see his dreams of poetry disappear in a lifelong battle with arrogant shirt designers, suspicious labour unions and unhelpful tax authorities. His time had been spent on button-down collars, colours and fabric swatches. In an attempt to come to terms with his own disappointment he had established the fund that would go to ‘Swedish writers in need of peace and quiet for completion of their work’. The first grant had gone to Jesper Humlin.

  *

  The phone rang.

  ‘I want a child.’

  ‘Right now?’

  ‘I’m thirty-one years old. We either have a child or it’s over.’

  It was Andrea. She was a nurse anaesthetist and never knocked on doors. Humlin had met her at a poetry reading he had done a couple of years earlier when he had just sworn off the bachelor lifestyle and decided to settle down with one woman. With her slim face and dark hair he had immediately been attracted to Andrea. He had also fallen for her enthusiastic response to his poems. When she was angry at him, which was a fairly common occurrence, she liked to accuse him of having picked her in order to have constant access to someone in the medical profession, since due to his hypochondria he was always convinced that he was suffering from a fatal illness.

  This time she was furious. Humlin wanted children, many children. But not right away and possibly not with Andrea. Naturally this was not something he was prepared to discuss with her, at least not by phone.

  ‘Of course we’ll have children,’ he said. ‘Many children.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You’re always changing your mind about everything. Except, apparently, about waiting to have children. But I’m thirty-one.’

  ‘That’s no age at all.’

  ‘For me it is.’

  ‘Maybe we could talk about this a little later? I have an important meeting coming up.’

  ‘What kind of meeting?’

  ‘With my publisher.’

  ‘If you think your meeting is more important
than this conversation then I want to break up with you right now. There are other men.’

  Humlin felt a pang of jealousy arise in him and escalate to painful proportions.

  ‘What other men?’

  ‘Men. Any men.’

  ‘You mean you are prepared to leave me for some man, any man out there?’

  ‘I don’t want to wait any longer.’

  Humlin sensed that the conversation was spiralling out of his control.

  ‘You know, it’s not good for me to have these kinds of discussions so early in the morning.’

  ‘And you know I can’t talk about these things at night. I need my sleep because I have a job that starts early in the morning.’

  The silence travelled back and forth between them.

  ‘What did you do in the South Pacific anyway?’

  ‘I rested.’

  ‘You don’t seem to do anything else. Were you unfaithful again?’

  ‘I haven’t been unfaithful. Why would you think that?’

  ‘Why not? You’ve done it before.’

  ‘You think I have. That’s not the same thing. I went to rest.’

  ‘To rest from what exactly?’

  ‘I happen to write books, as you well know.’

  ‘One book a year. With about forty poems. What’s that – less than one poem a week?’

  ‘I also write a wine-tasting column.’

  ‘Once a month, yes. In a trade paper for tailors that no one else reads. Now, I could have really used a trip to the South Pacific to rest.’

  ‘I invited you to come with me.’

  ‘Since you knew I couldn’t get away. But I’m about to take some time off. There’s something I want to get started on.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘I’m going to write my book.’

  ‘About what exactly?’

  ‘About us.’

  Humlin felt an unpleasant pain in his stomach. Of all the things he had to worry about, the thought that Andrea might prove the more talented writer seemed to him to be the worst. Every time she brought this up he felt as if his very existence was threatened. He sometimes lay awake at night and imagined the sensational reviews of her new book, how the critics embraced her as a new talent and wrote him off as a has-been. For this reason he always devoted an extraordinary amount of time to her whenever her authorial ambitions kicked in. He cooked her dinners, talked about the inordinate amount of suffering and hard work it took to complete a book and had, up until now, always been able to talk her out of her plans.