THE EDITOR 
THE EDITOR You come to Gamla Stan to pick up a visiting writer and take him on a journey. When you both reach your Volvo, he says, “This is a dream car.” You have difficulty getting started because other cars are in the way. As you back up, you have to turn against the flow of traffic. Nothing is easy any more. Repair work is being done on the highway and traffic is stalled. “This will take some time,” you say, and put on jazz based on folk music. “Music like this goes back to the roots of things.” The writer answers that the countryside is familiar. He recognizes all the roadside plants and points out the common valerian that was used at one time for nervous disorders.
At Sigtuna you are surprised at there being no restriction on parking. “You may stay as long as you need,” a villager tells you. The curator, having been informed of the importance of the visiting writer, has kept open the museum. Here are gathered relics from the past. A woman’s comb, a piece of jewelry, a bone needle, cloth woven with great care but now tattered. The writer wants you to examine the remnants of domestic life, but you hurry past to descend into the basement where, you say, there is a display from Linnaeus, he who organized the plant kingdom and created both understanding and order. To your surprise, there is a display of bicycles.
When you ask the old man and the young woman who guard these treasures, they deny any knowledge of Linnaeus. The young girl leads you to the door and informs you that the uncle of Olaf Palme excavated here and that the gravel walk is the outline of an early church. It was built at a time of great faith when people turned away from paganism. Everywhere about the yard, although they cannot be seen, are graves.
You lead the writer past the ruins, which are the reason for coming, and are confused by an old wall. He points back to the crumbling structure of a church. Passing a gravestone, you exclaim, “Only twenty-one when she died.” The ruins are so dangerous that the doors are barred. This, though you don’t know it, is the climax of the trip. You and the writer both seek a way inside, but every entrance is closed with iron rods. When you turn away in despair, the writer draws your attention to a small tree growing high in the crumbling stone. He says, “There is life even in death.” A woman who has been watering flowers gets on her bicycle and rides away. You lead the writer to a new church, buy two candles for yourself, one for him.
After coffee and pastry at Aunt Brown’s Restaurant, you complain of a headache. You know, from past times, the location of an apothecary. Here, you buy the strongest analgesic possible and swallow it without water. The writer suggests you return to your apartment, but you reply that the journey is not yet complete. At the car, the writer takes your photograph. Behind you is the lake and, just over your right shoulder, a single sailboat with a broken mast.
On the road to the castle at Drottingham, which is a copy of Versailles but much smaller, the trip grows increasingly difficult. The roads are congested. At Drottingham the garden is closed. When you were there with your first wife, whom you loved, you strolled together among the carefully organized hedges. You walk around the outside of the Court Theatre and see, for the first time, actors in the windows putting on makeup, getting ready for their public performance. When you see this, you turn away abruptly, as if it were a tragedy.
THE WRITER I’m a writer staying at the Lord Nelson in Gamla Stan, the old town where Stockholm began. Here, every building is weighted down with history. Because I’m exhausted from studying cathedrals filled with the dead, I sit slumped on a couch. I am waiting for an editor who has promised he will show me everything I need to know. As I wait for the editor to arrive, I think of Lund and the gates at Kulturen. Here, there were rune stones. One, inscribed in red, says, “Ka-ulfr and Autir raised this stone in memory of their brother.” I entered the grounds, followed the path to Bosebo church. A poetry reading was being held here. The timbers of the wall behind the altar were painted with Moses holding up the tablets. There was a simple rendition of John the Baptist with the cross. I chose the last pew on the right. On the altar was a figure clad in yellow and blue, an anchor held aloft in her right hand. The poetry dropped from the lips of the readers and clattered to the floor like bits of hacked spruce. As I left I saw two poor boxes dedicated to the support of orphans, the sick, the infirm and those living alone. I emptied my pockets into one of the boxes.
When the editor arrives, I am relieved. I follow him to the canal. A lonely man in a dark suit and dark hat is fishing with a long cane. Beneath the bridge, although it cannot been seen from the street, there is a museum of the old city. Here, the editor says, there are relics of the past from when the city was younger but no kinder. Workers have unearthed an old wall and the stone to which those who had committed unforgivable sins were brought. In this place they were beheaded, burned, broken on a wheel. I make a note to visit this place.
The trip to Sigtuna has a sense of déjà vu. If it were not for the roadside signs in Swedish, I tell the editor, I’d be certain I was in Manitoba, returning to see my family. The ditches are filled with the purple spikes of digitalis, tansy and nettle. Sigtuna is the way towns in Sweden used to be, the editor says. Sunlit, tranquil, the old-fashioned buildings lived in by parents and children. We have come to see the ruins of a church. To reach it, we must cross through a graveyard where the rose bushes are brutally pruned in preparation for winter.
I had expected the ruins to be little more than scattered remnants, a few stones covered with grass. Instead, the walls still stand, the stonemason’s marks still clear. High up, there are narrow windows. The editor explains that these were for defence against brigands, but no attack ever came. Destruction was the result of neglect and unfaithfulness.
Later, as we stand before a wrought iron globe into which we’ve set our candles, a guide leading tourists from America declares, “It has no religious significance but people feel they have to do something.”
The editor leads me to numerous restaurants. After studying what they have to offer, he rejects them all, decides on Aunt Brown’s. A girl with blond braids and an old-fashioned dress with a bow at the back brings coffee and pastry. Seeing the bow, I remember my brother and I, made frantic by the sharp scent of hot gingersnaps, teasing my mother by pulling her apron loose as she baked.
A cat emerges from thick purple flowers at shoulder height, steps daintily onto the table.
THE WAITRESS “I would have told them they couldn’t have the cat on the table, but I didn’t dare. The foreigner in the raincoat fed it the entire pot of cream. I thought he was going to rub its coat off. Other than that, they hardly said two words to each other. That young couple’s still out there under the apple tree. They can’t keep their hands off each other. I thought maybe their behaviour had offended the other two. Proper businessmen. Probably up to some deal. Maybe import, export. Plenty of money anyway. Twenty-five hundred crowns for that raincoat. What have they got to look so glum about? Not like me with the rent to pay and never knowing if there’ll be enough. Anyway, when I went out, they were gone and they’d left a handsome tip.”
THE COOK The cook, who was worrying about there being enough ham for the evening salads, hadn’t noticed the two men or the passionate young couple, but he did take a moment to look out the window. Everyone had gone. The courtyard was empty. A few yellow leaves were scattered over the tables.