After the Fire Read online

  When I looked back I was horrified. I had always been able to see the roof and the upstairs windows of my house above the trees, but now there was only a gaping hole. I was so shaken by the discovery that I almost ran aground on Kogrundet, which lies just beyond the headland, managing to veer away only at the last minute.

  I switched off the engine when I reached open water. The sea was empty, not a sound, no boats, hardly even any birds. A lone sea duck was skimming along just above the surface of the water, heading for the outer skerries.

  I shivered. It came from deep inside. The boat drifted with the invisible wind. I lay down and stared up at the sky, where the clouds had begun to gather. There would be rain tonight.

  The water lapped gently against the thin plastic skin that formed the outer shell of my boat. I tried to decide what to do.

  The mobile Jansson had given me rang; it could only be him.

  ‘Is there something wrong with your engine?’ he asked.

  He can see me, I thought, turning my head. But the sea was still empty. There was no sign of Jansson’s boat.

  ‘Why would there be something wrong with my engine?’

  I shouldn’t have snapped at him; Jansson always means well. I sometimes thought that the enormous amount of mail he had read before delivering it over all those years was a kind of declaration of love to the dwindling population of the islands. I think he felt it was part of his duty as a seafaring postman to read every postcard sent or received by the summer visitors. He had to keep himself informed about what these people who turned up for the summer thought about life and death and the permanent residents of the archipelago.

  ‘Where are you?’ I said.

  ‘At home.’

  He was lying. If he was at home on Stångskär, there was no way he could see me slowly drifting along. That disappointed me. When I came to live on the island I decided never to let other people’s behaviour get me down. The fact that Jansson wasn’t always completely truthful didn’t usually bother me – but when I had just lost my home in a devastating fire?

  I suspected he was perched on a rock somewhere, clutching his binoculars.

  I told him I had switched off the engine because I needed to think through my situation, and now I was going to head for the mainland to do my shopping.

  ‘I’m starting her up now,’ I said. ‘If you listen you’ll hear that she’s running perfectly.’

  I ended the call before he could say anything else. The engine started and I sped away, heading for land.

  —

  My car is old but reliable. It’s parked down by the harbour on the mainland, outside a house that belongs to a strange woman whose name is Rut Oslovski. No one calls her Rut, as far as I know. Everyone says Oslovski. She allows me to park there, and in return I check her blood pressure from time to time. I keep a stethoscope and a blood-pressure monitor in the glove box. Oslovski’s blood pressure is too high, in spite of the fact that she has been taking metoprolol for the past few years. She’s not even forty, so I think it’s important to keep her blood pressure under control.

  Oslovski’s left eye is made of glass. No one seems to know how she lost her eye. No one knows very much about Oslovski, to be honest. According to Jansson, she suddenly turned up here twenty years ago after being granted asylum. At the time her Swedish pronunciation was terrible. She later claimed to have come from Poland and become a Swedish citizen, but Jansson, who can be very suspicious, pointed out that no one had ever seen her passport or any proof that she really was a Swedish citizen.

  Unexpectedly, Oslovski turned out to be a skilled mechanic. Nor was she afraid of taking on hard physical work in the late autumn or early spring, repairing jetties when the melting ice had damaged the structure, leaving them crooked and unsafe.

  She was strong, broad-shouldered, not beautiful but friendly. She kept herself to herself for the most part.

  The handymen in the area kept a close eye on her, but no one could say that she took work away from them by charging too little.

  When she first arrived, Oslovski lived in a small cottage in the pine forest, a few kilometres from the sea. After a while she bought the little house down by the harbour, which used to belong to a retired pilot.

  Jansson had spoken to his colleague who delivered the post in the harbour area; Oslovski never received any letters, nor did she subscribe to any newspapers or magazines. Did she even have a mailbox out on the street?

  Sometimes she disappeared for several months and then one day she would be back. As if nothing had happened. She moved around like a cat in the night.

  I moored the boat and went up to my car. There was no sign of Oslovski. The car started right away; I dread the day when it gives up and decides it’s time for the scrapyard.

  It usually takes me twenty minutes to drive into town, but on this particular day the trip was much faster. I slowed down only when I realised I was putting myself in danger. I was beginning to suspect that the fire had destroyed something inside me. People can have load-bearing beams that give way too.

  I parked on the main street, which is in fact the only street in town. It lies right at the end of an inlet poisoned by heavy metals from the industries that were here in the past. I can still recall the stench of a tannery from my childhood.

  The bank is a white building right next to the toxic inlet.

  I went up to the counter and explained that I had no bank cards and no ID; everything had been lost in the fire. The clerk recognised me but didn’t seem to be quite sure what to do. A person without any form of ID always constitutes some kind of threat nowadays.

  ‘I know my account number,’ I said, reeling off the numbers as he entered them into his computer.

  ‘There should be about a hundred thousand kronor in there,’ I said. ‘Give or take a hundred.’

  The clerk peered at the screen, as if he couldn’t believe the information that had appeared.

  ‘Ninety-nine thousand and nine kronor,’ he said.

  ‘I need to withdraw ten thousand. As you can see, I’m wearing my pyjama jacket instead of a shirt. I’ve lost everything.’

  I deliberately raised my voice when I explained what had happened. The whole place fell silent. Behind the counter there were two women in addition to the clerk who was helping me, and three customers were waiting their turn. Everyone was staring at me. I made a ridiculous bow, as if I were acknowledging silent applause.

  The clerk counted out my money, then helped me to order a new card.

  I went over to a cafe on the other side of the street. I had picked up a free pen and a couple of withdrawal forms in the bank, and I sat down and made a list of what I needed to buy.

  It was a very long list. When I had filled both the slips and my serviette, I gave up.

  I wondered how I was going to bear the pain and sorrow. I was too old to start again. The future had nothing to say. I could neither hear nor see any way out.

  I screwed up the slips and the serviette, finished my tea and left. Then I went to the only clothes shop in town and bought shirts and underwear, sweaters and socks, trousers and a jacket, paying no heed to either quality or price. I put my bags in the car, then headed for the shoe shop to buy wellington boots. The only pair I could find had been made in Italy. That annoyed me. The assistant was a young girl in a headscarf whose Swedish was very poor. I tried to be pleasant, even though I was cross because they didn’t have ordinary Tretorn wellingtons.

  ‘Don’t you have any Swedish wellingtons? Tretorn?’ I asked.

  ‘We have these,’ she replied. ‘No others.’

  ‘It’s ridiculous not to sell classic Swedish wellingtons in a Swedish shoe shop!’

  I was still doing my best to be civil, but she must have seen through my tone of voice. I could see that she was scared, which annoyed me even more. I had asked a perfectly simple question that wasn’t supposed to be rude or threatening.

  ‘Have you any idea what I’m talking about?’ I asked.

 
‘We have no other boots,’ she said.

  ‘In that case I’ll leave it. Unfortunately.’

  I walked out. I couldn’t help slamming the door behind me.

  There were no wellingtons in the ironmonger’s either, just work boots with steel toecaps. I bought a cheap watch, then made my way to a shop down by the harbour to stock up on food. There was an LPG stove in the caravan, plus a few pans. I didn’t buy anything I wanted, but I didn’t buy anything I didn’t want either. I filled my black plastic basket with indifference.

  As I was passing the chemist’s I remembered that my medical supplies had been destroyed in the fire, so I went inside. As a doctor I am still entitled to purchase prescription-only drugs.

  Before I went back to the car I also bought a pay-as-you-go mobile phone.

  I suddenly realised I had no electricity on the island.

  I drove back towards the harbour. I still had about half of the money I had taken out. I parked the car in the usual place; the door to Oslovski’s house was shut, and a rotting crow lay on the gravel path. Perhaps Oslovski was off on one of her mysterious trips?

  I put my bags in the boat, then went to the chandlery. They had wellington boots, and they were made in Sweden. Or at least they were Tretorn anyway, but they didn’t have my size. I ordered a pair and was informed that it would be at least two weeks before they arrived.

  The owner of the shop is called Nordin. He’s always been there. He spoke as if he had mourning crêpe in his voice when we talked about the fire. Nordin has a lot of children. He has been married three or four times. His present wife is called Margareta, but they have no children.

  Jansson claims that Nordin does magic tricks for his children, but I have no idea whether that is true or not.

  I felt chilled to the bone when I emerged onto the quayside. I went over to the boat, took a shirt out of one of the plastic bags, then went into the cafe above the chandlery. I ordered coffee and a Mazarin. When I picked the pastry up it disintegrated into a pile of dry crumbs.

  I sat down at a table with a view over the harbour, unpacked my mobile phone and used the charging point on the cafe wall.

  A man who will soon be seventy years old has nowhere to live because his house has burned down. He has no worldly possessions left apart from a boathouse, a caravan, a thirteen-foot open boat and an old car. The question is: what does he do now? Does this man have a future? Does he have any real reason to go on living?

  I stopped dead right there. My daughter Louise – why hadn’t I thought of her first of all? I was ashamed of myself.

  Whether it was my crumbling Mazarin or what I had just been thinking I couldn’t say, but the tears began to flow. I wiped my eyes with my napkin. The scene was the very epitome of loneliness and isolation. An old man sitting in a deserted cafe on an autumn day, the only customer in a harbour establishment to which the yachts and cruisers will not return until next summer.

  I realised I had to call Louise. I would have preferred to wait, but she would never forgive me if I didn’t tell her what had happened right away. My daughter is a volatile individual who lacks the tolerance and patience I believe I possess. She reminds me of her mother Harriet, who made her way across the ice using her wheeled walker some years ago, then died in my house the following summer.

  My train of thought was interrupted as the door of the cafe opened and an unfamiliar woman of about forty came in. She was wearing exactly the kind of green wellingtons I had been searching for, plus a warm jacket and a scarf wound around her neck and head. When she took it off I saw that she had short hair and was very attractive. She went over to the counter and contemplated the unfortunate Mazarins.

  Suddenly she turned and smiled at me. I nodded, wondering if I had met her before and forgotten. Veronika, who ran the cafe, emerged from the kitchen, and the woman ordered coffee and a Danish pastry. She came over to my table. I didn’t know who she was.

  ‘May I join you?’

  She pulled out the chair without waiting for a response. A ray of pale autumn sunshine lit up her face as she sat down. She reached for the yellow curtain and pulled it across, shutting out the sun.

  She smiled again. She had nice teeth. I smiled back but was careful to show only a little of my upper teeth; they still look reasonably good. My daughter Louise inherited her mother’s genes as far as her teeth are concerned, and unfortunately they are not as good as mine. Sometimes when Louise has been visiting and has got really drunk, she has quite unexpectedly attacked me because her teeth are not as white as mine.

  ‘My name is Lisa Modin,’ the woman said. ‘And you must be the man who watched his house burn down last night. My sympathies, of course. It must have been a terrible experience. After all, a house and a home is like an outer skin for a human being.’

  She spoke with a slight accent that could have been from Sörmland, but I wasn’t sure. And I was even less sure about why she had come to sit at my table. She took off her warm jacket and hung it over the back of the chair next to her.

  I still didn’t know what she wanted, but it didn’t matter. In a moment of madness the very fact that she had sat down at my table made me start to love her.

  An old man doesn’t have much time at his disposal, I thought. This sudden love is all we can hope for.

  ‘I’m a journalist. I write for the local paper. The editor asked me to go over and talk to you, take a look at the site of the fire. But when I went into the chandlery to ask how I could get to your island, they said you were probably in the grocery shop. Which you weren’t – but you were here.’

  ‘How did you know it was me?’

  ‘The man in the chandlery described you as best he could. It wasn’t difficult to work out, particularly as there was no one in the grocery shop, and there’s no one else in here.’

  She took a notepad out of her bag. The music from the radio in the kitchen suddenly seemed to irritate her; she got up, went over to the counter and asked Veronika to turn it down. After a moment the radio fell silent.

  Lisa Modin was smiling as she came back to the table.

  ‘I’ll take you over,’ I said. ‘If you can cope with a small open boat.’

  ‘And you’ll bring me back?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Are you still living on the island? I mean, your house burned down.’

  ‘I have a caravan.’

  ‘On an island? I thought it was really small. Is there a road?’

  ‘It’s a long story.’

  She was holding a pen but hadn’t yet opened her notepad.

  ‘The news about the fire is one thing,’ she said. ‘My editor is dealing with that; he’ll speak to the police and the fire service. He wants me to write a more in-depth article about what losing your home like that means to a family.’

  ‘I’m on my own.’

  ‘Don’t you even have pets?’

  ‘They’re dead.’

  ‘Did they burn to death?’

  She seemed horrified at the thought.

  ‘Dead and buried.’

  ‘And you don’t have a wife?’

  ‘She’s dead too. Cremated. But I do have a daughter.’

  ‘What does she have to say about all this?’

  ‘Nothing so far. She doesn’t know yet.’

  She gave me a searching look, then she put down her pen and drank her coffee. I noticed that she was wearing a ring with an amber stone on her right hand. No ring on her left hand.

  ‘It’s too late today,’ she said. ‘But how about tomorrow? If you have time?’

  ‘I’ve got all the time in the world.’

  ‘Surely not, if everything you owned has gone up in smoke?’

  I didn’t reply because of course she was right.

  ‘I’ll pick you up tomorrow,’ I said instead. ‘What time?’

  ‘Ten o’clock? Is that too early?’

  ‘It’s fine.’

  She pointed to the window. ‘Down there?’

  ‘I’ll be by the p
etrol pumps. Wear something warm. And we might have rain tomorrow.’

  She finished her coffee and stood up.

  ‘I’ll be there at ten,’ she said and left the cafe.

  I heard the sound of a car starting. I wondered if she knew my name.

  I travelled home across the dark sea. The boat was full of plastic bags. I thought about Lisa Modin and the movements of her hands as she wound her scarf around her head and neck. I felt a sense of excitement and anticipation as I contemplated the following day.

  I rounded Höga Tryholmen expecting to see the coastguard’s boat moored at my jetty, but it wasn’t there. I pushed my boat into the boathouse and carried all my bags to the caravan. I had switched on the small fridge and the heater before I left and the place felt nice and warm. I checked the LPG gauge; there was plenty of fuel in the cylinder.

  I unpacked my new clothes and glanced at where they had been made. The three shirts were all manufactured in China. I moved on to the underclothes and socks: also China. The jacket was made in Hong Kong, so from now on I would be going around entirely dressed in clothes from China. Until my new wellingtons arrived, nothing that I was wearing to keep out the cold would be from anywhere other than faraway China.

  I hung up the shirts, wondering why it seemed important. Was I just looking for something to complain about? As if the last thing that remains for a man who is growing old is the ability to complain?

  I put on a shirt, a sweater and the jacket. The remains of the fire had now stopped smoking; however, the acrid stench of the seawater-sodden oak timbers was still unpleasant. It made me feel sick if I got too close. I walked slowly around the ruins of my house to see if there might be something salvageable after all, apart from the buckle from one of Giaconelli’s shoes. I didn’t find anything. The feeling that I was contemplating a war zone returned.

  I stopped when I reached the plastic sheet. I frowned. Something had changed. I stood there for several minutes before I gave up. I had noticed something, but I couldn’t say what it was.

  I glanced at my new watch. I feel helpless if I don’t know what time of the day or night it is. Perhaps it’s because my father was such a poor timekeeper; on at least one occasion he was sacked from the restaurant where he was working for turning up late three days in a row.