HE HAD ARRIVED HOME at quarter past one in the morning and had been there no more than fifty minutes, yet his phone had already rung at least five or six times. He certainly wasn’t about to answer it. He hated unknown numbers. In his opinion, if you weren’t willing to make your identity known, you didn’t deserve an answer.
So instead, he had a shower and a shave. He’d let his beard grow out while he was on vacation, so he had to give it a once-over with the trimmer before going at it with a razor. He kept the moustache. He’d had it as long as he could remember and was extremely proud of it. Despite the changing fashions over the years — everything from pencil moustaches to full beards — he had never altered a single whisker of his moustache, aside from trimming it twice a week.
It was probably just Kerstin calling. She was the only person he knew who blocked her number. She had started doing it a few years ago, claiming that it was because he never answered when she called, as if he were more likely to answer these days. If only she would stop calling, period, and let him come home in peace and quiet.
He tried to shake off thoughts of Kerstin; he pulled on his pyjamas and walked over to the fireplace, where he crumpled some old newspaper and a few wood chips into a ball and arranged three logs above it. As always, one match did the job.
He didn’t feel tired in the least, and was looking forward to reading Helsingborgs Dagblad, which was due to arrive in his hallway soon. It was probably what he’d missed most during his trip: sitting in front of the fire while everyone else was asleep, reading the morning paper. Kerstin had never approved of the habit — in fact, she was always annoyed that she had to read an “old” paper once she finally dragged herself out of bed.
She had probably tried to call his cell phone, too. There was no way for her to know he’d gotten rid of it. He had planned to keep it turned off throughout the pilgrimage, and to his surprise it hadn’t bothered him to go without it in the least. Quite the contrary; it had been an absolute joy to be unreachable. One day, when he was looking out over one of the deepest valleys of the Pyrenees, he just did it — he threw it in. For the rest of his pilgrimage, he enjoyed silence as his only companion.
Other pilgrims had tried to reach out and talk to him but he hadn’t responded. He didn’t care what people thought. He wasn’t going to break his silence, which felt more and more important each day. And after a while they appeared — his very own thoughts, fragile and newly hatched. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been able to think through his own ideas without being interrupted by his boss, or Kerstin, or...
More ringing. But this time it wasn’t the phone; it was his front door. Who could it be at this time of night? The phone was easy to ignore — you could even pull out the plug — but a doorbell was different. He walked to the door and opened it. A man he had never seen before was standing outside under an umbrella.