In the Name of Love (16 page)

‘I think she wants, in a desperate sort of way, for him to be the kind of man he’s not and never will be. He’s not what she needs.’

‘What does she need, Anders?’

Himself an open and trusting man, Anders heard none of the sarcasm Dan had been unable to refrain from using.

‘Shelter,’ Anders said. ‘That’s what Madde thinks too. I mean psychologically of course. You understand what I’m saying, Dan? Somewhere she’ll feel safe enough to grow up.’

Instead of going back to work Dan decided to take an early walk. He sat for a long time on the patinaed bench below the church, looking over the calm water. When he came home Sune Isaksson was waiting on the bench in the garden.

‘You should have gone in,’ Dan told him. ‘The kitchen door isn’t locked.’

‘I like sitting in the evening sun. Like an old man musing. What am I saying? I
am
an old man musing.’

‘We’re middle-aged, Sune. Now is when we’re supposed to operate at peak level.’

‘Spare me. Two middle-aged bachelors and not a woman between us. Christ, how pitiful! What a waste of manpower!’

‘Did I tell you about the hospital psychologist who insisted on seeing me after my wife’s death? I think someone must have told her I was hanging around the mortuary all day, which I was. Connie’s body was still in cold storage there for over a week while the police were making their investigation and I kept driving out. The psychologist was a sweet kid. Blonde, her hair in a ponytail, just out of grad school. She talked to me about the cathexis object. What was going on was my unconscious attempt to incorporate the absence of the cathexis object in my ego so as to permit a fresh start.

‘The cathexis object being your dead wife?’

‘Even science has its language of love.’

‘Good Christ, I need a whisky.’

They walked into the house together, talking not too seriously about the money made by psychologists writing self-help books where science was leavened with entertaining stories they called case histories. Interweaving fact and fiction. Sune thought it was the coming thing. All these playful literary novels nowadays, he said, where the author appeared and disappeared like a djinni in the narrative. Dan told him he had gone through a few self-help books himself in the months after Connie’s death.

‘They didn’t help. A salesgirl in a bookshop recommended a medium she knew instead. For a while I seriously thought of going to see him. It’s almost comic the extent to which grief can diminish us.’

Sitting in the kitchen Sune asked him if he couldn’t think of some more work for Gabriel Rabban to do.

‘I don’t mean as charity,’ he said. ‘Charity’d do nothing but harm. I mean real work where he can see the contribution he’s making. He’s a good kid. All he needs is a chance.’

‘He didn’t seem overjoyed to be working here before.’

‘That’s just his way. Once you get to know him you’ll see. He’s actually a very open person.’

In the end Dan said he could ask Gabriel to clean up the garden now and then.

‘I mean it’d only be occasional work.’

‘That may be enough for the moment. It’ll give him a reason to be here. Go over and have a chat and see.’

‘What? And have him take out the hunting rifle again?’

‘Don’t worry. They’re settling down more every day.’

‘How long have they been there?’

‘On the farm? Two years or so. Before that they lived down in Malmö. Once they’d settled in here they knew they were going to need help with the heavier farm work so they went to France and came back with Gabriel. That was about the middle of last year.’

‘How did they manage to get that hunting rifle anyway? Don’t you have to do the training course and take an exam before they’ll let you buy one?’

‘It was in the house. Fritjof Backlund used to hunt. Everyone does out here. Every man, I mean.’

The following afternoon Dan walked over to the Bromskär farmhouse as Sune had suggested. The air was warm and filled with the heavy scents of summer flowers. Crossing a field near Kråknäset he saw the fox again, well, maybe not the same fox. It stood still as a bush, watching a feeding hare. Dan stopped. Somewhere far away to the south, maybe above the nature reserve at Linkudden Point, larks broke into song. As though it heard them, the hare looked up, saw the fox and bounded away. Dan continued, passing the garden of the man with the dog, the lawyer Johan Ek. Now, midweek, the house was closed up. The fruit trees had all been trimmed. For most of the three years Dan had lived here, the house had been empty. Its former owner, the last full-time lumberjack on the island, had died and distant heirs had taken time to put it on the market. The orchard had been left untended and by October each year thousands of apples lay rotting in the grass, too many even for the worms to eat. This slow disintegration had a beauty of its own, sepia, umber, russet colours leaking back into the earth. In spring their richness reappeared in cinquefoil and cupid’s dart, violets, bird’s foot, all of which grew in profusion in the neglected grass. From the beginning the beauty this offered had seemed to Dan to be sacred, a kind of cosmic harmony.

As he approached the farmhouse a dog barked and Nahrin Selavas came out of the barn to check who was there. As soon as she saw him, she made a sign, a short, urgent movement of her hand. He stopped uncertainly. She called something but he didn’t hear it above the dog’s warning barks. As he walked towards her she turned and hurried back into the barn. A slim elfin body that seemed defenceless as a child’s. He followed her.

Inside was so gloomy that he needed a moment to make out the single cow standing there. Then he saw Gabriel. Gabriel sat on a low three-legged stool, grunting with effort, pulling at something. The cow groaned in an almost human way. Nahrin gestured again to Dan but another half minute had to pass before he could see what was going on.

What Gabriel was pulling at was a single hoof that poked out of the pink slimy opening at the back of the cow. He tugged again but nothing happened. Badly out of breath by now, he let go and sat back on the stool. Nahrin indicated another stool placed behind the cow. She gestured to Dan to sit on it. ‘I try,’ she said. ‘For me too much.’

This wasn’t something Dan had bargained for. The hoof looked slippery. And should he pull it with all his strength or just enough to let the cow know he was trying to help? The poor creature trembled all along her swollen flanks. He looked at the sharp backbone sticking up.

‘You pull!’ Nahrin commanded. She made the gesture as though Dan might not otherwise have understood.

He sat and took hold of the ankle, or whatever the body part above a calf’s hoof was called, and pulled and nothing happened.

‘Pull!’ she exhorted. ‘Pull!’

He pulled and pulled with everything he had until his breath gave out. The calf remained stuck. He felt sweat drip down his sides, slide out of his hair and run along his cheeks. The cow seemed to know that he was there to help. Her eyes, when she turned her head to look at him, were gentle and clouded behind a milky blue sheath. Then she bore down once more, grunting violently. The effort sent new ripples along her sides. Dan pulled again while she heaved, he pulled until his arms cramped with acid and then he let go.

‘Is something wrong with her?’ he asked Gabriel.

Gabriel shook his head.

When they had rested for a few minutes Nahrin said they must pull at the same moment, and they did, their four arms close together, straining back. Suddenly the calf’s forelegs and white-patched head, wet and fresh, slithered softly out.

The cow bawled as though a huge force flowed up her throat. Her muscles clenched in another effort. ‘Again!’ Gabriel shouted. The calf was stuck now. Dung poured down and splashed Dan’s feet and trousers.

‘Again!’

The cow strained in a vast contraction. They both pulled for all they were worth. And now, at last, they were in rhythm with the cow, heaving and pulling, and the rest of the calf appeared, its torso and two more gangly legs.

Nahrin forced open the calf’s mouth, put her fingers in and plucked and shook off the clots of slime that were inside. Then she rubbed the wet body with a towel. The calf floundered onto the straw. There was no more bellowing, just peace and silence, and a warmth that seemed to fill the barn.

Nahrin said something to Gabriel and he stood and lifted the calf a little. The cow shook her head as though to clear it. She mooed softly and her tongue slipped out, searching. Gabriel lifted the calf all the way to its feet until it stood there on trembling legs while its mother licked it as though in welcome into the world.

Nahrin went before them, gesturing to Dan to follow her into the farmhouse. There he and Gabriel washed their hands and arms at the sink. By now the dung had dried into Dan’s trousers and boots. There was nothing to be done about it. A man maybe fifteen years older than Nahrin came out of the back room. Nahrin spoke to him eagerly. To Dan, in Swedish, she said, ‘I tell my husband you help, it go well. He have bad back. Since years. He drink arnica I give him. He must take care.’

Her husband came forward and courteously introduced himself. A tall man with parchment skin over sharp features.

‘Josef Selavas.’

His white hair was brushed back from his forehead.

‘He helped,’ Gabriel said in Swedish. His granduncle nodded and smiled at Dan. Deep furrows cut into his cheeks. With his narrow, striking face it was easy to imagine him as a younger man. He was a good deal taller than his wife, taller than Gabriel too, though leaner.

Nahrin reached out as if to clasp Dan’s hand in both of hers but contented herself with the gesture. In the subdued light her skin glowed golden-brown, her green eyes shone softly. It wasn’t just that he’d helped them in the stable, he knew that. It was his coming into the kitchen like this, like Gabriel, clothes dishevelled, trousers and boots caked with dung. As though he were one of them now. The little girl he had seen through the window the last time he was here came forward.

‘Jamala,’ Nahrin told him.

The girl made signs and Nahrin answered. For a moment their four hands fluttered like birds in the air between them.

‘She want to know who you are,’ Nahrin said, laughing. ‘She say you man come with dosh.’

‘Money,’ Gabriel corrected her automatically.

‘Money, dosh, cash, they use so many words I never know,’ Nahrin said. Her eyes looking at the little girl showed an intense sweetness of nature. ‘But you understand,’ she asked looking up to Dan. ‘No?’

Dan nodded. He was still fascinated by the rapid exchange of hand gestures between her and Jamala. And now Jamala looked at him too. She was small for her age. Her face, framed with dark curls, had the same light gold skin as her grandmother. Her eyes scrutinized Dan’s face with a sharp intelligence. He was a man who was not unimportant in her child’s mind. The man who came with the dosh.

Josef asked if he would take coffee.

‘Of course he take coffee!’ Nahrin said reproachfully. ‘No need to ask!’ She went and lifted out minuscule cups from a cupboard and filled them from the pot on the range. Jamala watched as her grandfather and Dan sipped the hot, dense liquid. With the hints of sculpted cheekbones emerging beneath her black curls and with the glowing green eyes of her grandmother, she was already a beauty. Gabriel swallowed his coffee in what must have been a scalding gulp and turned to his granduncle. They spoke in a language Dan did not recognize.

‘It is good calf,’ Nahrin broke in, laughing. ‘Did I not say it will be good calf?’ Her voice was full of passion and delight. ‘Did I not? Did I not?’

‘She did,’ Josef assured Dan, his eyes both mournful and amused. ‘She know. She say it will be good, it will be good.’

‘I did,’ she proclaimed, holding out her hands again, ‘I said it, I did!’

‘The cow we buy for milk,’ Josef explained. ‘For milk for child. Milk here not good.’ He shook his head. ‘Too thin. New cow milk rich. Good.’

So the calf was theirs. Presumably it would be months before they could sell it. But it was a first step on their own out here. No wonder Nahrin was so delighted. Gabriel too was excited though he did not show it as openly. Instead he walked up and down, stopped at the mirror above the sink to check his hair. His features did not have the grace of the others’ but in the weak glow of the naked bulb his dark eyes held a deep approval. His grandaunt watched with clear affection but also apprehension. Dan realized that the dangers of the past still lived somewhere inside all of them. This island was where Josef and Nahrin wanted to keep their grandchild from further harm. But was it possible? You only had to look at her cousin Gabriel to see the new restlessness that had invaded once they left their homeland. The Chaldean diaspora was already widespread and growing. The papers wrote of exiled communities in many countries. The language used was the dialect of the extended clan. In the mirror Gabriel regarded him.

‘Would you be interested in coming over one day to help in the garden?’ Dan asked.

‘He want!’ Nahrin said at once, clearly prepared for the question. Gabriel himself shrugged. Then Nahrin said that Sune Isaksson had told them Dan was a good man. She repeated it, nodding. ‘Yes. Good. Gabriel he too is good. He will work.’ It was as much an order as a statement. Still facing the mirror, Gabriel’s heavy-lipped mouth blew her a raspberry. Dan asked her if the paperwork for the farm would soon be settled. She shook her head. ‘There is much trouble now. But Solveig want us to have it. We work hard. Two year, two and a half year we work hard to save it. Josef and me, every day. And Gabriel too. That is why.’

As though Dan might doubt what she had said she went to a kitchen drawer and took out a photocopy of a handwritten document. She brought it to him, her finger pointing at a phrase in the middle.
I want the Selavas to have the farm, the Selavas and no one else.
Nahrin looked up and made a movement of her hand around them. Everything was spotless. The walls, the furniture, the floor. Above her head, resting on two hooks attached to the wall, was an old yoke, its wood smooth and compact with age. The surfaces shone clean. A house-proud woman. Even the air smelt zesty, a faintly mysterious tang as though of foreign spices. When Dan looked back at her he caught the sorrow in her eyes. Outwardly she no longer showed her suffering, it had worn smooth and pure as the stones on the island, but what went on inside? Josef said nothing more until Dan was leaving. Then he came forward, searching for a phrase in Swedish before he gave up and simply said
Tack
, adding in French, ‘You have been very kind to us.’ His accent was marked, but the words came easily to him. When Dan asked, Josef told him he once taught French to schoolchildren. ‘In another life.’ He smiled. ‘Can you believe that?’