Italian Shoes (26 page)

‘One of these days they'll be all over us,' said Jansson menacingly.

‘Who will?'

‘These gangsters. They're everywhere. What can you do to defend yourself? Jump into your boat and sail out to sea?'

‘What would they want to come here for? What is there around here worth stealing?'

‘The very thought makes me worry about my blood pressure.'

I fetched the monitor from the boathouse. Jansson lay down on the bench. I let him rest for five minutes then strapped up his arm.

‘It's excellent. 140 over 80.'

‘I think you're wrong.'

‘In that case I think you should find yourself another doctor.'

I returned to the boathouse and stayed there in the darkness until I heard him backing away from the jetty.

I spent the days before the oak trees started to turn green sorting out my boat at last. When I again managed to remove the heavy tarpaulin, which took considerable effort, I found a dead squirrel beneath the keelson. I was surprised, as I had never seen a squirrel out here on the island, and never heard it claimed that there were any.

The boat was in much worse condition than I had feared. After two days assessing what needed to be done I was ready to give up even before I'd started. Nevertheless, the following day I began scraping off all the old, flaky paint on the rest of the hull. I phoned Hans Lundman and asked him for advice. He promised to call on me one
of these days. It was slow going. I wasn't used to this kind of exertion, my only regular activities being a morning bath and writing up my logbook.

The same day that I again started scraping off the paint, I dug out the logbook I'd kept during my very first year out here on the island. I looked up today's date. To my astonishment I read: ‘Yesterday I drank myself silly.' That was all. I now remembered it happening, but very vaguely and certainly not why. The previous day I had recorded that I'd repaired a downpipe. The following day I had laid out my nets and caught seven flounders and three perch.

I put the logbook away. It was evening now. The apple tree was in blossom. I could picture Grandma sitting on the bench beside it, a shimmering figure that melted into the background, the tree trunk, the rocks, the thorn thicket.

The following day Jansson delivered letters from both Harriet and Louise. I had eventually brought myself to tell them about the girl who had come to my island, and her death. I read Harriet's first; as always, it was very short. She wrote that she was too tired to write a proper letter. I read it, and frowned. It was difficult to read her handwriting, much more so than before. The words seemed to be writhing in pain on the page. And to make matters worse, the content was bewildering. She wrote that she was better, but felt worse. She made no mention of Sima's death.

I put the letter to one side. The cat jumped up on to the table. I sometimes envy animals that don't have the
worry of disturbing mail. Was Harriet befuddled by painkillers when she wrote the letter? I was worried, picked up the telephone and rang her. If she was drifting into the very last phase of her life, I wanted to know about it. I let it ring for ages, but there was no answer. I tried her mobile number. Nothing. I left a message and asked her to return the call.

Then I opened the letter from Louise. It was about the remarkable cave system in Lascaux in the west of France, where in 1940 some boys stumbled upon cave paintings 17,000 years old. Some of the animals depicted on the rock walls were four metres high. Now, she wrote, ‘These ancient works of art are under threat of being ruined because some madmen have installed air conditioning in the passages because the American tourists cannot handle the temperature! But freezing temperatures are essential if these cave paintings are to survive. The rock walls have been attacked by a strain of mould that is difficult to deal with. If nothing is done, if the whole world fails to unite in defence of this, the most ancient art museum we possess will disappear.'

She intended to act. I assumed that she would write to every politician in Europe, and I felt proud. I had a daughter who was prepared to man the barricades.

The letter had been written in short bursts on several occasions. Both the handwriting and pen used varied. In between serious and agitated paragraphs, she had interposed notes about mundane happenings. She had sprained her foot while fetching water. Giaconelli had been ill. They had suspected pneumonia, but now he was on
the mend. She sympathised with the sorrow I felt at the death of Sima.

‘I'll be coming to visit you shortly,' she concluded. ‘I want to see this island where you've been hiding yourself away all these years. I sometimes used to dream that I had a father who was just as frighteningly handsome as Caravaggio. That is not something anybody could accuse you of being. But still, you can no longer hide from me. I want to get to know you, I want my inheritance, I want you to explain to me all the things that I still don't understand.'

Not a word about Harriet. Didn't she care about her mother, who was busy dying?

I tried Harriet's numbers again, but still no answer. I called Louise's mobile, but no answer there either. I climbed the hill behind the house. It was a beautiful early-summer day. Not really warm yet, but the islands had begun to turn green. In the distance I could see one of the year's first sailing boats on its way to somewhere unknown from a home harbour that was also unknown. I suddenly felt an urge to drag myself away from this island. I had spent so much of my life wandering back and forth between the jetty and the house.

I just wanted to get away. When Harriet appeared out there on the ice with her walker, she shattered the curse that I'd allowed to imprison me here, as if in a cage. I realised that the twelve years I had lived on the island had been wasted, like a liquid that had drained out of a cracked container. There was no going back, no starting again.

I walked round the island. There was a pungent smell of sea and soil. Lively oystercatchers were scurrying about at the water's edge, pecking away with their red beaks. I felt as if I were walking round a prison yard a few days before I was due to emerge through the front gates and become a free man again. But would I do that? Where could I go to? What kind of a life would be in store for me?

I sat down under one of the oaks in the Quarrel. It dawned on me that I was in a hurry. There was no time to waste.

That evening I rowed out to Starrudden. The sea bottom was smooth there. I laid out a flounder net, but didn't have much hope of catching anything – maybe the odd flounder or a perch that would be appreciated by the cat. The net would be clogged up by the sticky algae that now proliferates in the Baltic.

Perhaps this sea stretching out before me on these beautiful evenings is in fact slowly deteriorating into a marsh?

Later that evening I did something I shall never be able to understand. I fetched a spade, and opened up my dog's grave. I dug up the whole cadaver. Maggots had already eaten away the mucous membranes around its mouth, eyes and ears, and opened up its stomach. There was a white clump of them clustered around its anus. I put down the spade, and fetched the cat that was fast asleep on the kitchen sofa. I carried her to the grave and set her
down next to the dead dog. She jumped high into the air, as if she'd been bitten by an adder, and ran away as far as the corner of the house, where she paused, wondering whether to continue her flight. I gathered a handful of the fat maggots and wondered whether I ought to eat them – or would the nausea be too much for me? Then I threw them back on to the dog's body, and filled in the grave as fast as I could.

It made no sense. Was I preparing the way for opening up a similar grave inside myself? In order to summon up enough courage to face in cold blood all the things I'd been burdened with for so long?

I spent ages scrubbing my hands under the kitchen taps. I felt sick at what I'd done.

At about eleven I phoned Harriet and Louise again. Still no answer.

Early the next morning I took in the net. There were two thin flounders and a dead perch. As I had feared, the net was clogged up with mud and algae. It took me over an hour to get it somewhere near clean and hang it up on the boathouse wall. I was glad that my grandfather hadn't lived to see the sea he loved being choked to death. Then I went back to scraping the boat. I was working half naked and tried to make peace with my cat, who was wary after the previous night's meeting with the dead dog. She wasn't interested in the flounders, but took the perch to a hollow in the rocks and chewed away.

At ten o'clock I went in and phoned again. Still no
answer. There wouldn't be any postal delivery today either. There was nothing I could do.

I boiled a couple of eggs for lunch and leafed through an old brochure advertising paints suitable for a wooden boat. The brochure was eight years old.

After the meal I lay down on the kitchen sofa for a rest. I was worn out and soon fell asleep.

It was almost one o'clock when I was woken up with a start. Through the open kitchen window I could hear the sound of an old compression-ignition engine. It sounded like Jansson's boat, but he wasn't due today. I got up, stuck my feet into my cut-down wellington boots and went outside. The noise was getting louder. I had no doubt now that it was Jansson's boat. It makes an uneven noise because the exhaust pipe sometimes dips down under the surface of the water. I went down to the jetty to wait. The prow eventually appeared from behind the rocks furthest away. I was surprised to note that he was only travelling at half-throttle, and the boat was moving very slowly.

Then I understood why. Jansson was towing another craft, an old cow ferry tied to the stern of his boat. When I was a child I had watched ferries like this one taking cows to islands with summer pasture. I hadn't seen a single ferry like this during all the twelve years I'd lived on the island.

On the deck of the cow ferry was Louise's caravan. She was standing in the open door, exactly as I remembered seeing her the first time I met her. Then I noticed another person standing by the rail. It was Harriet, with her walker.

If it had been possible, I'd have jumped into the water and swum away. But there was no escape. Jansson slowed down and untied the tow rope, giving the ferry a push to ensure that it glided in towards the shallowest part of the inlet. I stood there as if paralysed, watching it beach itself. Jansson moored his boat at the jetty.

‘I never thought I'd have a use for this old ferry again. The last time I had it out was to take a couple of horses to Rökskär. But that must have been twenty-five years ago, if not more,' he said.

‘You could have phoned,' I said. ‘You could have warned me.'

Jansson looked surprised.

‘I thought you knew they were coming. Louise said you were expecting them. We'll be able to tow the caravan up with your tractor. It's a good job it's high tide, otherwise we'd have had to pull it through the water.'

This explained why nobody had answered my telephone calls. Louise helped Harriet ashore with her walker. I noticed that Harriet was even thinner and much weaker now than when I'd left them so abruptly in the caravan.

I clambered down on to the shore. Louise was holding Harriet by the arm.

‘It's pretty here,' said Louise. ‘I prefer the forest. But it's pretty.'

‘I suppose I ought to say “welcome”,' I said.

Harriet raised her head. Her face was covered in sweat.

‘I'll fall if I let go,' she said. ‘I'd like to lie down on the bed among the ants again.'

We helped her up to the house. I asked Jansson to see
if he could start my old tractor. Harriet lay down on the bed. She was breathing heavily and seemed to be in pain. Louise gave her a pill and fetched a glass of water. Harriet swallowed the pill with great difficulty. Then she looked at me.

‘I haven't got much longer to live,' she said. ‘Hold my hand.'

I took her warm hand.

‘I want to lie here and listen to the sea and have you two close to me. That's all. The old lady promises not to give you any unnecessary trouble. I shan't even scream when the pain becomes too much to bear. When that happens, I shall take my tablets or Louise will give me an injection.'

She closed her eyes. We stood watching her. She soon fell asleep. Louise walked round the table, contemplating the expanding anthill.

‘How many ants are there?' she whispered.

‘A million, perhaps more.'

‘How long have you had it?'

‘This is the eleventh year.'

We left the room.

‘You could have rung,' I said.

She stood in front of me and took a firm hold of my shoulders.

‘If I had you'd have said no. I didn't want that to happen. Now we are here. You owe it to my mum and me, especially to her. If she wants to lie listening to the sea instead of to hooting motor cars when she dies, that's what she's going to do. And so you can be grateful that
I won't need to harass you for the rest of your life complaining about what you did.'

She turned on her heel and went outside. Jansson had managed to start the tractor. Just as I had suspected all these years, he was pretty good at starting difficult engines.

We tied a few ropes to the caravan and managed to unload it from the cow ferry. Jansson was in charge of the tractor.

‘Where do you want it to stand?' he shouted.

‘Here,' said Louise, pointing to a patch of grass beyond the narrow strip of sand on the other side of the boathouse. ‘I want a beach of my own,' she went on. ‘I've always dreamed of that.'

Jansson displayed great skill with the tractor as he manoeuvred the caravan into position. We placed old fish boxes and driftwood where necessary until it was level and steady.

‘It'll be OK now,' said Jansson, sounding satisfied. ‘This is the only island out here with a caravan.'

‘Thank you. You're invited to coffee,' said Louise.