Italian Shoes (28 page)

‘You and I,' said Harriet. ‘You and I. And then, suddenly, it's all over.'

By seven o'clock it was dead calm and plus seventeen degrees.

Jansson and the Lundmans arrived together. The boats formed a friendly little convoy of two, both with flags fluttering from the stern. Louise stood waiting for them on the jetty, looking radiant. Her dress was almost provocatively short, but she had pretty legs and I recognised the red shoes she had on – she'd been wearing them when she stepped out of the caravan and I saw her for the first time. Jansson had squeezed himself into an old suit that was on the tight side, Romana was glittering in red and black and Hans was dressed all in white and sported a yachtsman's cap. Andrea was wearing a blue dress with a yellow hairband. We moored the boats, spent a few minutes on the little jetty chatting about the summer that had arrived at last, then proceeded up to the house. Jansson's eyes looked slightly glazed and he stumbled a couple of times, but nobody minded – least of all Harriet who heaved herself up off her chair without assistance and shook hands with everybody.

We had decided to tell the truth: Harriet was Louise's mother, I was her father, and once upon a time Harriet and I were almost married. Now Harriet was ill, but not so bad that we couldn't all sit out under the oak trees this evening and have dinner.

On reflection, it seemed to me that, at the beginning, our party was reminiscent of a little orchestra, with all the individual members tuning their instruments. We talked and talked, and gradually achieved the right sound. At the same time we ate, drank toasts, carried dishes back and forth, and sent our laughter echoing across the skerries. Harriet seemed in perfectly good health while this
was all happening. She spoke to Hans about emergency flares, about the price of groceries to Romana, and she asked Jansson to tell us about the strangest delivery he'd made during all his years as a postman. It was her party, she was the one who dominated, conducted and blended all the sounds to form a melodious chord. Andrea said nothing. Soon after the start she had clung tightly to Louise, who allowed herself to be held. We all got drunk, of course, Jansson first – but he never lost control. He helped Louise to carry plates and didn't drop a single one. As dusk fell, he was the one who lit the candles and the citronella spirals Louise had bought to keep the mosquitoes away. Andrea was giving the adults searching looks. Harriet, who was sitting opposite her, occasionally stretched out her hand and touched Andrea's fingertips. I felt very sad as I sat there, watching those fingers touching. One of them would soon die, the other would never really understand what it meant to live. Harriet noticed me watching them and raised her glass. We touched glasses and drank.

Then I gave a speech. It wasn't prepared at all, not consciously anyway. I talked about simplicity and extravagance. About perfection, which may not exist, but whose existence can be sensed when in the company of good friends on a lovely summer's evening. The Swedish summer was unpredictable, and never very long. But it could be stunningly beautiful, as it was this very evening.

‘You are my friends,' I said. ‘You are my friends and my family, and I have been an inhospitable prince on this little island of mine, and never welcomed any of you here.
I thank you for your patience, I shudder to think what you may have thought in the past. I hope this will not be the only time we meet like this.'

We drank. A gentle evening breeze blew through the crowns of the oak trees, and made the candle flames flutter.

Jansson tapped his glass and stood up. He was swaying slightly, but was able to stand upright. He said nothing. But then he started singing. In a staggeringly sonorous baritone voice he sang ‘Ave Maria' in a way that sent shivers down my spine. I think everybody around the table had a similar reaction. Hans and Romana looked just as astonished as I must have done. Nobody seemed to know that Jansson had such a powerful voice. I had tears in my eyes. Jansson stood there, with all his imagined aches and pains, in a suit that was too small for him, singing in a way that gave the impression that a god had come down to join us and celebrate this summer evening. Only he could explain why he had kept this voice of his a secret.

Even the birds fell silent and listened. Andrea was open-mouthed. These were powerful, magic moments. When he had finished and sat down, nobody said a word. In the end, Hans broke the silence and said the only thing it was possible to say.

‘Well, I'll be damned!'

Jansson was bombarded with questions. Where did he learn to sing like that? Why had he never sung before? But he didn't answer. Nor did he want to sing any more.

‘I've delivered my thank-you speech,' he said. ‘I sang. I only wish this evening would go on for ever.'

We carried on drinking and eating. Harriet had put
down her conductor's baton, and now conversations criss-crossed haphazardly. We were all drunk. Louise and Andrea sneaked down to the boathouse and the caravan. Hans got it into his head that he and Romana should dance. They hopped and bounced round the back of the house dancing what Jansson maintained was a polka, and reappeared round the other side doing what looked more like a hambo.

Harriet was enjoying herself. I think there were moments during the evening when she felt no pain, and forgot that she would soon die. I served more wine to everybody except Andrea. Jansson staggered off to have a pee behind the bushes, Hans and Romana began an arm-wrestling match, and I switched on my radio: music, something dreamy for the piano by Schumann, I thought. I sat down beside Harriet.

‘Things turned out for the best,' she said.

‘What do you mean?'

‘We would never have been able to live together. Before long I'd have tired of all your eavesdropping and searching through my private papers. It was as if I had you under my skin. You made me itch. But as I was in love with you, I ignored that. I thought it would pass. And it did. But only when you'd gone away.'

She raised her glass and looked me in the eye.

‘You've never been a good person,' she said. ‘You've always shrugged off your responsibilities. You'll never become a good person. But maybe a bit better than you are now. Don't lose Louise. Look after her and she'll look after you.'

‘You should have told me,' I said. ‘I had a daughter for all those years without knowing.'

‘Of course I should have told you. I could have found you if I'd really tried. But I was so angry. It was my way of getting revenge. Keeping your child for myself. I'm being punished for that now.'

‘How?'

‘I feel regret.'

Jansson staggered up to us and sat down on the other side of Harriet, oblivious to the fact that we were deep in conversation.

‘I think you're an extraordinary woman, no hesitation in coming aboard my hydrocopter and then venturing out on to the ice.'

‘It was an experience,' said Harriet. ‘But I wouldn't want to repeat that journey out to the island.'

I got up and walked up the hill. The sounds from the other side of the house reached me in the form of clinking crockery and sporadic shouts. I thought I could see Grandma sitting down there on the bench by the apple tree, and Grandfather on his way up the path from the boathouse.

It was an evening when the living and the dead could have a shared party. It was an evening for those who still had a long time to live, and for those like Harriet who were standing close to the invisible borderline, waiting for the ferry that would transport them over the river, for the final crossing.

I went down to the jetty. The caravan door was open. I walked over to it and peered in surreptitiously through
the window. Andrea was trying on Louise's clothes. She was tottering on high-heeled light blue shoes, and was wearing a strange dress covered in glistening sequins.

I sat down on the bench, and suddenly remembered that evening at the winter solstice. When I'd been in the kitchen thinking that nothing in my life would ever change. That was six months ago, and everything had changed. Now the summer solstice had begun to project us back towards darkness. I was listening to voices on my island that is normally so quiet. Romana's shrill laughter, and then Harriet's voice, as she raised herself above death and all that pain and shouted for more wine.

More wine! It sounded like a hunting call. Harriet had mobilised the last of her strength in order to fight the final battle. I went back to the house and uncorked the bottles we had left. When I came out, Jansson was embracing Romana in a swaying, semi-conscious dance. Hans had moved over to Harriet. He was holding her hand, or perhaps it was the other way round, and she was listening as he laboriously and unsuccessfully tried to explain to her how lighthouses in shipping channels made it safer for vessels to sail along them even at very high speeds. Louise and Andrea emerged from the shadows. Nobody apart from Harriet noticed pretty Andrea in Louise's imaginative creations. She was still wearing the light blue shoes. Louise saw me looking at Andrea's feet.

‘Giaconelli made them for me,' she whispered in my ear. ‘Now I'm giving them to that girl who has so much love inside her but nobody will ever have the courage to
accept it. An angel will wear light blue shoes created by a master.'

The long night passed slowly in a sort of dream, and I no longer recall clearly what happened or what was said. But on one occasion when I went for a pee, Jansson was sitting on the front steps, sobbing in Romana's arms. Hans was dancing a waltz with Andrea, Harriet and Louise were whispering confidentially to each other, and the sun was climbing unobtrusively out of the sea.

The band that made its way along the path to the jetty at four in the morning was anything but steady on its feet. Harriet was supported by her walker and assisted by Hans. We stood on the jetty and said our goodbyes, untied the mooring ropes and watched the boats leave.

Just before Andrea was about to clamber down into the boat with the light blue shoes in her hand, she came up to me and hugged me with her thin, mosquito-bitten arms.

Long after the boats had vanished round the headland I could still feel that embrace, like a warm film round my body.

‘I'll go back to the house with Harriet,' said Louise. ‘She needs a really good wash. It'll be easier if we're on our own. If you're tired you can have a lie-down in the caravan.'

‘I'll start collecting the plates and things.'

‘We can do that tomorrow.'

I watched her helping Harriet back to the house. Harriet was exhausted now. She could barely hold herself upright, despite leaning on the walker and her daughter.

My family, I thought. The family I didn't get until it was too late.

I fell asleep on the bench, and didn't wake up until Louise tapped me on the shoulder.

‘She's asleep now. We ought to get some sleep as well.'

The sun was already high over the horizon. I had a headache, and my mouth was dry.

‘Do you think she enjoyed it?' I asked.

‘I hope so.'

‘Did she say anything?'

‘She was almost unconscious when I put her to bed.'

We walked up to the house. The cat, who had disappeared for most of the night, was lying on the kitchen sofa. Louise took hold of my hand.

‘I wonder who you are,' she said. ‘One day I'll understand, perhaps, But it was a good party. And I like your friends.'

She unrolled the mattress on the kitchen floor. I went up to my room and lay on the bed, taking off nothing but my shoes.

In my dreams I heard the cries and shrieks of sea gulls and terns. They came closer and closer, then suddenly dived down towards my face.

When I woke up I realised that the noises were coming from downstairs. It was Harriet, screaming in pain again.

The party was over.

A WEEK LATER
the cat vanished. Louise and I searched every nook and cranny among the rocks, but found nothing. As usual I thought about my dog. He would have found the cat immediately. But he was dead, and I realised that the cat was probably dead now as well. I lived on an island of dead animals, with a dying person who was struggling through her final painful days together with an ever growing anthill that was slowly threatening to take over the entire room.

The cat was never seen again. The heat of high summer formed an oppressive blanket over my island. I used my outboard motor to get the boat to the mainland, and bought an electric fan for Harriet's room. The windows were left open all night. Mosquitoes danced on the old mosquito windows my grandfather had made long ago. There was even a date, written in carpenter's pencil, on one of the frames: 1936. I began to think that despite the poor start, this July heatwave would turn the summer into the hottest I'd experienced here.

Louise went swimming every evening. Things had gone so far now that we were always within earshot of Harriet's room. One of us needed to be on hand at all times. Her agonising pains were coming increasingly often. Every third
day Louise phoned the home health service for advice. The second week in July, they wanted to send a doctor to examine her. I was on the porch changing a light bulb when Louise talked to them. To my surprise, I heard her say that a visit wouldn't be necessary as her father was a doctor.

I made regular trips to the mainland in order to collect new supplies of Harriet's medication from the chemist's. One day Louise asked me to buy some picture postcards It didn't matter what of. I bought the entire stock of cards from one shop, and postage stamps to go with them. When Harriet was asleep, Louise would sit down and write to all her friends in the forest. Occasionally she would also work away at a letter I gathered was going to be very long. She didn't say who it was to. She never left her papers on the kitchen table, but always took them with her to the caravan.

I warned her that Jansson would certainly read every single card she gave him for posting.