The Shadow Girls (35 page)

*

He stayed at the desk so long his mother finally came out to see what had happened to him. She had drunk a lot of wine and was clearly enjoying herself.

‘Why are you sitting here?’

‘I need to think.’

‘Well, no one back there misses you very much.’

That made him furious.

‘Everyone misses me. Not you. But everyone else. If the only reason you came out here was to tell me that, you can leave. I want to be left alone.’

‘Someone’s in a bad mood, I can tell.’

‘I’m just being honest with you, for once.’

‘So are you planning to stay here and sulk?’

‘I’m not sulking, I’m thinking. I’ve made an important decision. Go on, go back to them. I’ll be out shortly.’

His mother looked anxious and started whispering.

‘You haven’t told any of the girls out there what I do in order to try to secure your inheritance, have you?’

‘Not a word.’

The front doorbell rang.

‘Who could that be?’

Humlin got up.

‘I think I have an idea.’

‘Jesper, I don’t like you inviting people over without talking to me about it first.’

‘I haven’t invited anyone over, Mother. But Tea-Bag, Tanya and Leyla are about to meet some people who are much more able to help them than we can.’

Humlin went to open the door. The reporters had started arriving. One of them set off a flash in his mother’s face.

‘Reporters, Jesper? Why did you let them in?’

‘It’s the best thing we can do.’

‘What about the diplomatic immunity I was supposed to offer them? I thought the girls were refugees?’

‘You’ve had too much wine, Mother. You don’t understand what’s happening.’

‘I know enough not to let reporters into my home.’

Despite her resistance Humlin ushered the reporters into the dining room. Before he had a chance to say anything and explain the situation, Leyla got up and started screaming.

‘I can’t be in the papers! If my parents see this they’ll kill me!’

‘Calm down, I’ll explain. Just listen.’

But no one listened. Tea-Bag pummelled him with her fists.

‘Why are they here? Why did you let them in?’

‘I’ll explain.’

Tea-Bag kept punching him.

‘Why are they taking pictures of us? Every policeman who’s been trying to deport us will see those pictures. What do you think will happen to Leyla who hasn’t told her parents yet about Torsten? Why are you doing this to us?’

‘Because it’s the only way. People have to know about this, about everything you’ve told me.’

Tea-Bag wasn’t listening, she just kept hitting him. In sheer desperation he finally slapped her. A camera flash went off. Tea-Bag’s eyes were full of tears.

‘I think this is the right thing to do,’ Humlin said.

But Tea-Bag cried. Tanya threw a plate of spaghetti at one of the reporters, then pulled Tea-Bag with her out into the hallway. Humlin followed them and closed the door behind him.

‘You can’t just disappear. I’m doing this for you. Where are you going? How will I get hold of you?’

‘You won’t!’ Tea-Bag screamed. ‘The seminar is over. We’ve learned everything we needed to learn.’

Tanya swore at him in Russian, perhaps it was closer to a curse. Then they were gone. He heard their footsteps in the stairwell and then the front door downstairs slammed. Leyla and Torsten came out into the hallway. Leyla was crying.

‘Where are the reporters?’

‘They’re talking to your mother. We’re leaving.’

‘Where will you go? There are no trains to Gothenburg at this time of night.’

Leyla grabbed him by the arms and shook him. But she didn’t say anything.

Humlin felt paralysed. It’s not my fault, he thought. They’re
the ones who have misunderstood the situation. For once in my life I thought I was doing the right thing.

He sat down on a chair. One of the reporters came out into the hallway and smiled at him.

‘“Jesper Humlin: the poet whose eyes were opened.”’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘You’ve never displayed much of a social conscience in your poetry until now.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘Of course it’s true. But don’t worry. I won’t write about this. It’s a good enough story on its own: “Illegal immigrants on the run. A poet and his old mother try to help them find their way.”’

The reporter tilted an imaginary hat and left. The others also left shortly afterwards. Humlin got up. Shards of china and spaghetti lay scattered on the dining-room rug. His mother stood in the doorway and looked at him. He spread his arms wide.

‘I know what you’re thinking. You don’t have to say it. But I meant well.’

She didn’t answer. He bent down and started picking at the smashed porcelain pieces among the spaghetti.

*

It was two o’clock in the morning by the time they were finished cleaning and washing up. They sat down in the living room and had a glass of wine each. Neither of them spoke. Humlin got up to leave and his mother followed him out. He was about to open the door when she grabbed his arm.

‘Will they be all right?’

‘I don’t know.’

He opened the door, but she didn’t let go.

‘What kind of animal was it she had, you know, that girl Tea-Bag?’

‘She doesn’t have any animals.’

‘That’s strange. I’m quite sure I saw something peeking out from behind her back.’

‘What did it look like?’

‘A big squirrel.’

Humlin reached out and stroked his mother’s cheek.

‘It’s just your imagination,’ he said. ‘That’s all.’

Humlin walked home through the city. From time to time he stopped and turned around, but there was no one to be seen in the shadows.

*

Two days later he went back to the church in the Valley of the Dogs. Tea-Bag had not been seen there. On his way home in the taxi he changed his mind and asked the driver to take him to the Central station. Then he went to the spot where he had arranged to meet Tea-Bag before. But she didn’t turn up, nor did Tanya. The next day he went back to the train station, this time at the precise hour that he had been supposed to meet Tea-Bag on the day they travelled to Gothenburg together and she had jumped off in Hallsberg. But again no one came.

That evening he was to have had dinner with Viktor Leander, but he called and made the excuse that he was coming down with a cold. He could tell that Leander didn’t believe him, but he didn’t care.

The following day he was back at the Central station, at the same time, the same place. Suddenly he spotted Tanya. She was watching him through the window of the florists. He felt as if
her gaze had drawn him to her, rather than that he had found her of his own accord. Tea-Bag came around the corner shortly thereafter. She went and stood next to Tanya. Humlin started walking over to them. When he was so close that he could see their faces clearly he noted that even Tea-Bag looked pale. Her thick coat was zipped up to her neck as usual.

‘I’m alone,’ he told them. ‘There’s no one with me. It was wrong of me to call those reporters. All I can say is that I thought I was doing the right thing. But I was wrong.’

They sat down on a bench together.

‘What happens now?’

Tanya shrugged. Tea-Bag pushed her chin down into her coat.

‘Where are you staying? At the church?’

Tanya shrugged again. She was looking around the whole time. She was the one keeping an eye out, not Tea-Bag. Humlin suddenly started worrying that he was losing his hold on them. Tanya and Tea-Bag were just going to disappear if he didn’t do something to make them stay, not that he knew exactly why he wanted to hold onto them.

‘When should we have the next seminar?’

Tea-Bag sat up straight.

‘That’s over now,’ she said. ‘I came to this country to tell my story and now I’ve done that. No one listened.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘Who listened?’

Her smile was gone. She looked at him as if from far away. Humlin thought about what she had told him about the river that flowed down the mountain, the river with its cool, clear water. She seemed to be looking at him as if from the very cliffs where that river had its source.

‘
I
listened to you.’

‘You didn’t hear my voice. You only heard your own. You didn’t see me. You saw a person who was born through your own words.’

‘That’s not true.’

Tea-Bag shrugged.

‘True or not, what does it even really matter?’

‘What’s going to happen now?’

‘We travel around. You see us disappear into the crowd and then we’re gone. Nothing else. Stockholm is as good a city for invisible people as any other. I don’t exist, just as Tanya doesn’t exist. We are shadows that have to keep to the edge of the light. From time to time we put a hand or a foot or even a bit of our face into the sun, but then we quickly pull back again. We’re trying to achieve the right to exist in this country. How we will win this right, I don’t know. But as long as we keep ourselves hidden, as long as we’re nothing but shadows and you only see a hand or a foot, we are slowly getting there. One day we can perhaps emerge fully into the light and not have to keep to the edges. But Leyla is already there. She has found the way out of this shadow-world.’

They’re slipping out of my hands, he thought again.

He tried to keep them with his questions.

‘What about the photograph of that child, Tanya? Is that your daughter?’

She looked at him with surprise.

‘I don’t have a daughter.’

‘Then it must be you, am I right? But that can’t be. The picture was taken only a few years ago.’

‘It’s not my daughter. It isn’t me either.’

‘Then who is the girl in the picture?’

‘Irina.’

‘Who is that?’

‘Natalia’s daughter. I got the picture after we had arrived in Estonia. She had four pictures of her daughter – she had left her with her grandmother back in Smolensk. She gave each of us a picture. Late one night, when the last of the arseholes had left our beds, she gave us each a picture to keep, like an icon. We had to survive for the sake of the child, and make our way back to Smolensk. We all shared the responsibility for Natalia’s daughter. One day I will return and take on responsibility for Irina. That is, if Natalia or one of the others hasn’t done so already. But I don’t think they have.’

Humlin thought about what she had said for a long time. Then he turned to Tea-Bag.

‘I’m thinking about the first time we met. That evening when there was a fight in the audience. Do you remember what you asked me then? Why I didn’t write about people like you. I’m going to do that now, you know.’

Tea-Bag shook her head.

‘You won’t. You’ll forget us as soon as we’re gone.’

‘So little faith? That hurts.’

Tea-Bag looked him deep in the eyes and said:

‘I don’t hurt anyone. Now you will hear the end of my story.’

*

Do you remember how I stood there on the beach, south of Gibraltar? It felt as if it were the holy city of refugees, a palace built from wet sand from which an invisible bridge led to paradise. Many who came there saw that there was water between them and their goal and they despaired. I remember the excitement and fear I felt as if we were waiting for the boat that was to carry us across. Every
grain of sand was a watchful soldier. But I also remember a strangely joyous atmosphere; people were humming melodies under their breath and moving in slow, measured victory dances. It was as if we had already arrived. The bridge lay before us and the very last part of our trip was a single jump into a weightless vacuum.

I don’t know what made me survive when the boat was smashed against the rocks and desperate people down in the hold were clawing and tearing their way out. But I know that the bridge we all thought we saw as we stood on the beach in the northernmost part of Africa, that continent we were fleeing and already mourning, that bridge will one day be built. It will be built, if only because the mountains of corpses pressed together on the bottom of the ocean will one day rise above the sea like a new country and a bridge of skulls and bones will form the bridge that no one, no guards, dogs, drunk sailors, or smugglers will be able to topple. Only then will this cruel insanity come to a stop, these anxious flocks of people who are driven on in desperation only to end up living their lives in the underworld, becoming the cavemen of modern times.

I survived, I was not consumed by the sea and the betrayal, cowardice and greed. I met a man who held a palm frond in his hand and said that there were people in this land who wanted to hear my story and who would let me stay. But I have never met these people. I have given everyone my smile but what do I get in return? I thought he would be here to greet me, but no one greeted me. And perhaps I will be obliterated. But I think I am stronger than the grey light that wants to render me invisible. I continue to exist even though I am not allowed to exist, I am seen although I live in the shadow-world.

*

Tea-Bag stretched out her arms. She smiled. But then her smile died away, and the two of them were suddenly in a hurry to leave.

Humlin watched them scurry out past the exit doors. He stood up and stretched so that he could keep them in view for as long as possible. Then they were gone, lost in the landscape of illegal existence. He sat back down on the bench and looked around. He asked himself how many of the people he saw did not really exist, how many were living on borrowed time with borrowed identities? After a while he got up and threw a last look up at the roof.

Next to the pigeons on the rafters he thought he saw a little brown-green monkey.

Maybe, Humlin thought, maybe it has a mobile phone in its hand. And maybe it is dreaming about that cool, clear river with its source far away in Tea-Bag’s mountains.

This is a novel. But Tea-Bag is real. Just like Tanya and Leyla. What their actual names are doesn’t matter. What matters is their story.

Many people have helped me along the way. Many impressions, feelings and unfinished stories have been woven into these pages.