Italian Shoes (21 page)

‘Is it really as bad as that?'

‘It's worse.'

‘I live on an island. There aren't any suburbs there, just little skerries and rocks. And there certainly aren't any screwed-up girls who come running at you wielding a samurai sword.'

‘We treat our children so badly that, in the end, they have no means of expression except through violence. That used to apply to boys only. Now we have incredibly tough girl gangs who don't think twice about inflicting harm on others. We really have reached rock bottom when girls are so desperate that they think their only choice is to behave like the very worst of the gangsters among their boyfriends.'

‘Sima called me a paedophile.'

‘She calls me a whore when the mood takes her. But the worst thing is what she calls herself.'

‘What does she say?'

‘That she's dead. Her heart can't cope. She writes strange poems, and then leaves them on my desk or in my pockets without saying a word. It could well be that ten years from now, she'll be dead. Either by her own hand or somebody else's. Or she'll have an accident, full of drugs or other shit. That's a highly probable end to
the wretched saga of her life. But I can't give up on her. I know she has an inner strength. If only she can overcome that feeling of uselessness that pursues her everywhere. I have no alternative but to succeed with her. She's riddled with decay and disillusionment: I have to revitalise her.'

She stood up.

‘I must get on to the police and nag them to put more effort into looking for Miranda. Why don't you take a walk to the barn, and then we can continue our conversation later?'

I left the room. Sima was peering out from behind the curtains, following my every move. Several kittens were clambering over the bales of hay in the barn. Horses and cows were in boxes and pens. I recognised vaguely the smell from my very earliest childhood when my grandparents used to keep animals on the island. I stroked the horses' muzzles, and caressed the cows. Agnes Klarström seemed to have her life under control. What would I have done if a surgeon had done the same to me? Would I have become a bitter wino and rapidly drunk myself to death on a park bench? Or would I have won through? I don't know.

Mats Karlsson came into the barn and started feeding the animals with hay. He worked slowly, as if he were being forced to do something he hated doing.

‘Agnes asked me to tell you to go back to the house,' he said suddenly. ‘I forgot to say.'

I went back inside. Sima was no longer at the window. There was a light breeze, and it had started snowing again.
I felt cold and tired. Agnes was standing in the hall, waiting for me.

‘Sima's run away,' she said.

‘But I saw her only a few minutes ago.'

‘That was then. She's disappeared now. In your car.'

I felt for the car key in my pocket. I knew I had locked the car. As you grow older, you find you have more and more keys in your pocket. Even if you live alone on a remote island in the archipelago.

‘I can see that you don't believe me,' she said. ‘But I saw the car leaving. And Sima's jacket is nowhere to be seen. She has a special getaway jacket she always wears when she does a runner. Maybe she believes it has the power to make her invulnerable, invisible. She's taken that sword with her as well. The stupid girl!'

‘But I have the car keys in my pocket.'

‘Sima used to have a boyfriend – his name was Filippo – a nice guy from Italy, who taught her all there is to know about opening locked cars and starting engines. He would always steal cars from outside swimming pools or buildings containing illegal casinos. He knew that the car owners would be preoccupied for quite a long time. Only hopeless amateurs steal cars from ordinary car parks.'

‘How do you know all this?'

‘Sima told me. She trusts me.'

‘But nevertheless she steals my car and vanishes.'

‘You could interpret that as a sign of trust. She expects us to understand what she's done.'

‘But I want my car back!'

‘Sima usually burns out engines. You took a risk in coming here. But you couldn't know that, of course.'

‘I met a man with a dog. He used expressions like “bloody kids”.'

‘So do I. What sort of a dog was it?'

‘I don't know. It was brown and shaggy.'

‘Then the man you met was Alexander Bruun. A former swindler who worked in a bank and cheated customers out of their money. He was arrested for fraud, but wasn't even sent to prison. Now he's living the life of Riley on all the money he embezzled and the police never found. He hates me, and he hates my girls.'

She rang the police from her office and explained what had happened. I grew increasingly worried as I listened to what sounded like a cosy chat with a police constable who didn't seem to think there was anything urgent about catching the runaway who was evidently intent on smashing up my already ailing car.

She hung up.

‘What are they going to do?' I asked.

‘Nothing.'

‘But they have to do something, surely?'

‘They haven't the resources available to start looking for Sima and your car. It will eventually run out of petrol. And so Sima will abandon it and take a train or a bus. Or steal another car. She once came back on a milk float. She always comes back eventually. Most people who run away don't have any specific destination in mind. Have you never run away?'

It seemed to me that the only honest answer to that
was that I'd been running away for the last twelve years. But I didn't say that. I didn't say anything at all.

We had dinner at six o'clock. Agnes, Aida, Mats Karlsson and me. Aida had laid places for the two girls who had run away.

We ate a tasteless fish au gratin. I ate far too quickly, as I was worried about my car. Aida seemed to be inspired by the fact that Sima had run away, and spoke non-stop. Karlsson listened attentively and kept encouraging her, while Agnes ate in silence.

When we'd finished eating, Aida and Mats cleared away and took care of the washing-up. Agnes and I went out to the barn.

I apologised to her. I explained as clearly as I could what had gone wrong that fateful day. I spoke slowly and at length, so as not to omit any details. But the fact was that I could have explained what had happened in just a few words. Something had taken place that should never have been possible. Just as an airline pilot has ultimate responsibility and has to ensure that a thorough test of his aeroplane has been done before he takes off, I had a responsibility to ensure that it was the correct arm that had been washed and exposed for amputation: and I had failed in that responsibility.

We each sat on our bale of hay. She looked hard at me all the time as I talked. When I finished, she stood up and fed the horses with carrots from a sack. Then she came to sit beside me on the bale of hay.

‘My God, but how I've cursed you!' she said. ‘You will never be able to understand just how much it means to
somebody who loves swimming to be forced to give it up. I used to imagine how I would track you down, and cut off your arm with a very blunt knife. I would wrap you up in barbed wire and dump you in the sea. There's a limit to how long you can keep hatred going. It can give you a sort of illusory strength, but the fact is that it's nothing more than an all-consuming parasite. The girls are all that matter now.'

She squeezed my hand.

‘Anyway, that's enough of that,' she said. ‘If we go on we'll only get sentimental. I don't want that. A person with only one arm can easily get emotional.'

We went back into the house. Very loud music was coming from Aida's room. Screeching guitars, thumping bass drums. The walls were vibrating. The mobile phone Agnes had in her pocket rang. She answered, listened, said a few words.

‘That was Sima,' she said. ‘She sends you her greetings.'

‘Sends me her greetings? Where is she?'

‘She didn't say. She just wanted Aida to phone her.'

‘I didn't hear you saying anything about her coming back here with my car.'

‘I was listening. She did all the talking.'

Agnes got to her feet and went upstairs. I could hear her shouting to make herself heard through the music. I had found Agnes Klarström, and she hadn't shouted at me. She hadn't drowned me in a torrent of accusations. She hadn't even raised her voice when she described how she wanted to kill me in her dreams.

I had a lot to think about. Within a few short weeks
three women had unexpectedly entered my life. Harriet, Louise and now Agnes. And perhaps I should add Sima, Miranda and Aida.

Agnes returned. We drank coffee. There was no sign of Mats Karlsson. The rock music continued thudding away.

The doorbell rang. When Agnes answered it, there were two policemen with a girl I assumed must be Miranda. The officers were holding her arms as if she were dangerous.

She had one of the most beautiful faces I had ever seen. A Mary Magdalene gripped by Roman soldiers.

Miranda said nothing, but I gathered from the conversation between Agnes and the police officers that she had been caught by a farmer in the act of trying to steal a calf. Agnes protested indignantly – why on earth would Miranda want to steal a cow? The conversation became more and more heated, the policemen seemed tired, nobody was listening to what the others said, and Miranda just stood there.

The police left, without it having become clear whether or not the alleged attempt to steal a calf had succeeded. Agnes asked Miranda a few questions in a stern voice. The girl with the beautiful face answered in such a low voice that I couldn't catch what she said.

She went upstairs, and the loud music stopped. Agnes sat down on the sofa and examined her fingernails.

‘Miranda is a girl I would have loved to have as my own daughter. Of all the girls who have been here, who've come and gone, I think she is the one who will do best
in life. As long as she discovers that horizon she has inside her.'

She showed me to a room behind the kitchen, where I could sleep. She left me to it as she had a lot to do in the office. I lay down on the bed and pictured my car in my mind's eye. Smoke was coming from the engine. Next to Sima in the passenger seat was the newly sharpened sword. What would my grandparents have said if they'd still been alive and I'd tried to tell them about all this? They would never have believed me, never have understood. What would my browbeaten and kicked-around waiter of a father have said? My weeping mother? I switched off the light and lay there in the darkness, surrounded by whispering voices telling me that the twelve years I had spent on my island had robbed me of contact with the world I lived in.

I must have fallen asleep. I was woken up by the feel of something cold against my neck. The bedside lamp was switched on. I opened my eyes and saw Sima standing over me, with the sword pressed against my neck. I don't know how long I held my breath until she removed the sword.

‘I liked your car,' she said. ‘It's old and it doesn't go very fast, but I liked it.'

I sat up. She placed the sword on the window ledge.

‘The car's standing outside,' she said. ‘It's not damaged.'

‘I don't like people taking my car without permission.'

She sat down on the floor, her back against the radiator.

‘Tell me about your island,' she said.

‘Why should I? How do you know I live on an island?'

‘I know lots of things.'

‘It's a long way out to sea, and just now it's surrounded by ice. In the autumn, storms can be so bad that they throw boats up on to land if you don't moor them properly.'

‘Do you really live there all alone?'

‘I have a cat and a dog.'

‘Don't you feel scared of all that empty space?'

‘Rocks and juniper bushes don't often run at you with a sword. It's people who do that.'

She sat there for a moment without saying anything, then got to her feet and picked up the sword.

‘I might come and visit you one of these days,' she said.

‘I very much doubt that.'

She smiled.

‘So do I. But I'm often wrong.'

I tried to go back to sleep. I gave up at about five o'clock. I got dressed and wrote a note to Agnes, saying that I'd gone home. I slid it under the locked door of her office.

The house was asleep when I drove off.

There was a smell of burning from the engine, and when I stopped for petrol at an all-night filling station, I also topped up the oil. I arrived at the harbour shortly before dawn.

I walked out on to the pier. A fresh wind was getting up. Despite the vast stretch of ice, the wind brought with
it the salty smell of the open sea. A few lamps illuminated the harbour, where a few abandoned fishing boats were gnawing at the car tyres.

I waited for it to get light before starting off for home over the ice. I had no idea how I was going to adjust my life in order to cope with everything that had happened.

Standing alone out there on the pier, in the bitterly cold wind, I started to cry. Every single door inside me was swinging back and forth in the wind, which seemed to be getting stronger all the time.

IT WAS THE
beginning of April before the thaw came. This was the longest the sea had been frozen during all the years I had lived here. I could still walk over the channels to the mainland at the end of March.

Jansson came by in his hydrocopter every third day, and reported on the condition of the ice. He thought he could recall a winter in the 1960s when the ice had remained for as long as this in the outer archipelago.

The white-painted landscape was dazzling when I climbed up the hill behind the house and gazed towards the horizon. Sometimes I hung Grandfather's ice prods round my neck, collected an old ski pole and went for wintry walks around the skerries and rocks where the old herring-fishing grounds used to be: my grandfather and his father before him used to land catches that nobody nowadays could even dream of. I walked around the skerries where nothing grows and remembered how I used to row out to them as a child. You could find all kinds of remarkable flotsam and jetsam hidden in the crevices. I once discovered a doll's head, and on another occasion a watertight box containing several 78 rpm gramophone records. My grandfather asked somebody
who knew about such things, and heard that they were German songs from the war that had ended when I was a little boy. I didn't know where the records were now. On another rocky islet I had found a large waterproof logbook that some raving or desperate sea captain had thrown into the sea. It had been from a cargo ship taking timber from the sawmills of northern Sweden to Ireland, where it was used for housebuilding. The vessel had weighed 3,000 tons and was called
Flanagan
. Nobody could say how or why the logbook had ended up in the water. Grandfather had spoken to a retired schoolteacher who used to spend his summers on Lönö, in what used to be the cottage of a former pilot, Grundström. He had translated the text, but there was nothing unusual noted in the logbook on the day it had been thrown into the sea. I can still remember the date: 9 May 1947. The last entry had been a note about ‘greasing the anchor gear as soon as possible'. Then nothing more. The logbook was incomplete, but had been thrown into the sea. It had been on its way from Kubikenborg with a cargo of timber for Belfast. The weather was fine, the sea almost dead calm, and a note made that morning said there was a south-easterly breeze blowing at one metre per second.