Alice had not forgotten the depression diagnosis overnight. But she had revised the treatment programme.
‘I think it would be a mistake to start on any pills just like that,’ she declared once Valdemar had sunk onto his chair at the breakfast table and taken refuge behind the morning paper. ‘I’ll make you an appointment with Faringer instead.’
‘It won’t be necessary,’ said Valdemar.
‘It will be necessary,’ said Alice.
‘It’ll pass of its own accord,’ said Valdemar.
‘There’s no way of judging that for yourself,’ said Alice.
‘What’s necessary and what’s there no way of judging?’ asked Wilma. ‘Who’s Faringer?’
Valdemar squinted over the top of his paper. Wilma both looked and sounded full of bounce, considering it was a Monday morning. They didn’t usually get a single word out of her at this time of day.
‘Don’t you worry about that, darling,’ said Alice. ‘Did you see if Signe was up?’
‘How am I supposed to know?’ said Wilma. ‘She’s not in her room, anyway.’
‘What do you mean, she’s not in her room?’ said Alice, squeezing a generous squirt of cod roe from its tube into her boiled egg.
‘That she slept at Birger Butt’s, for example,’ said Wilma.
‘Don’t call him that,’ said Alice. ‘What’s he actually called? He must have a proper name?’
‘Not that I know of,’ said Wilma. ‘Everybody calls him that. Or Birger the Bum.’
‘Dear me,’ said Alice. ‘How can they . . . I mean, why?’
‘He won a competition a while back to find the cutest arse in town. Though I’m sure he bribed the girls on the judging panel. You can ask Signe when she gets home if you’re interested.’
‘Wilma, please,’ said Alice. ‘That’s enough. Aren’t there more important things to talk about?’
‘Yes, the money on my bus pass has run out,’ said Wilma. ‘And I need five hundred for those trainers. I’ve got to nip in and buy them on my lunch break today.’
Ante Valdemar Roos raised the newspaper and concluded that Dr Faringer had somehow dropped off the day’s agenda.
Fifteen minutes later he was alone in the flat. He dutifully made himself some sandwiches – as Alice had bought a new kind of health-food loaf that she was very keen to hear his opinion on – packed them up and put them with the empty thermos and a banana in his brown leather bag, the one he had been using ever since 2002, when he got it as a present from his stepdaughters. He re-taped his glasses, and would of course have to get round to taking them to an optician for repair, but it could wait a few days. He asked himself if he ought to write down all the things on his shopping list for Rimmersdal or could rely on his memory, and decided on the latter. If he forgot anything essential he could always drop in some other day this week – it was sure not to be a wasted move in his game of chess.
He wondered what her name was, his cashier. Maybe he ought just to ask her straight out, but it was hard to know how she would take it. It would probably be more sensible to wait a few Mondays.
He got away almost ten minutes earlier than usual, experiencing even as he crossed the courtyard to his car a sensation of being filled – in both body and soul, it truly wasn’t easy to separate them on a morning like this – with lightness and elation, and he tried to remember those words . . . a tunnel into the immortal fire within . . . well yes, that wasn’t a bad description of the situation. Deep inside him, in a room that had lain shut and barred for so many years, a door was gradually being opened . . . on reluctant, rusty hinges, certainly, but with dogged and irrepressible effort: a door which had also been lying there unexploited all this time, through all these days and wasted years . . .
With these remarkable thoughts he sank into his seat behind the steering wheel and reminded himself that whatever else he might forget on his Rimmersdal shopping list, he must be sure to get that black notebook. He couldn’t really explain to himself why it had to be black, but it was vital that it should be, nonetheless. Certain thoughts and certain phrases simply will not let themselves be randomly framed and captured, he thought, and they were precisely the kind of words he intended to catch and pin down. Words thrown up by his immortal fire, nothing more and nothing less, to land between soft black covers, that was most definitely how it was.
How it would be, anyway.
Life never gets any better than this. That was the first thing he would write down, that would be the nub of it all. Perhaps he could add that you had to stop, because if you didn’t stop and slow the pace, as it were, you would never notice that moment when it was at its very best.
He gave himself a serious smile in the rear-view mirror, started the car and backed out from his parking space. He wound the side window as far down as it would go and drove out onto Regementsvägen; late summer still hung in the air, his thin hair was slightly ruffled by the warm wind and for some reason the name Lucy Jordan came into his head. Who the merry hell was Lucy Jordan?
But she sank back into the anonymous well of oblivion; as he turned onto the Rocksta road he noted that the sun had just climbed over the forest edge up on Kymlinge ridge, setting the newly replaced copper roof on the Johannes church aglow. Birds went sailing across the recently harvested cornfields and the skirts of a young girl pedalling her bike along the edge of the road billowed out.
Never better than this.
There wasn’t just one sort of black notebook at ICA in Rimmersdal, there were two. One in A4 format, one in A5, both the same make, with the same soft covers, and after some hesitation he chose the smaller variety. Modesty is a virtue. As soon as he entered the store he could see the cashier was there; he saw her, but she didn’t see him, because she was sitting with her back to him, dealing with a customer.
After twenty minutes of sauntering round the shelves he was done; the shop was almost empty, with only a couple of stooped, elderly women moving in a slow and stately fashion like two sorrowful celestial bodies between the almond cakes, the special-offer coffee and the herring fillets. Ordinary people were at work, of course, thought Valdemar; these were the hours of the day when the unusual people made the most of it.
I’m an unusual person, thought Ante Valdemar Roos. An interesting person, that’s doubtless precisely the thought now going through her head as she catches sight of me.
‘Good morning,’ she said with a smile.
‘Good morning,’ he said back. ‘Yes, it really is a good morning.’
She gave a laugh and started passing his groceries in front of the scanner. Valdemar unloaded his basket in a slow and stately manner, making an effort not to go too fast, trying to match his pace to hers. As if they were in effect work colleagues, he thought. As if they were at the same conveyor belt, carrying out the same manual operation they had carried out day after day for many years. Hardly surprising if people develop a certain rapport in such conditions. Nine out of ten romances start at a place of work, so he had read in the paper fairly recently.
‘Is that all?’
‘Yes, thank you, that’s great.’
She smiled again as he handed over his money. He gave her a friendly nod and took his change. His hand happened to brush hers, which felt warm and gentle. He started packing his groceries in one of the two paper bags; she seemed to hesitate for a second, but then came round from her seat to help him pack the other. There were no other customers queuing, after all.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘That’s very kind of you.’
‘I need to stretch my back a bit,’ she said, and he could hear her accent quite clearly. ‘I sit here all day, it’s not good for me.’
‘I know that feeling,’ he said. ‘Fresh air and movement are what the body needs.’
He stretched a little as he said it and she laughed again. ‘You’re so right,’ she said. ‘Air and movement . . .’
Once his bags were full he nodded to her again. ‘It’s a lovely day out there.’
She sighed and gave a little shrug. ‘I know. I went out for a long walk yesterday afternoon. It’s such a nice time of year. I love autumn best of all.’
‘You’re quite right there,’ said Valdemar. ‘I’d be happy to have autumn all year round.’
One of the old women had finished rotating round the shelves and had reached the checkout; the cashier went back to her seat and gave Valdemar a final smile.
‘Have a nice day.’
He left the shop, Anita Lindblom singing in his chest as he went. Her dark, sensual voice wasn’t unlike the cashier’s, in fact. It was remarkable the way things came together sometimes.
No, thought Ante Valdemar Roos, it’s not the coming together that’s so striking, it’s all to do with the observer. You have to have all your senses wide open and discover all the correspondences surrounding us and bombarding us every single minute. That’s how the land lies.
He loaded his bags of shopping into the boot, took out his notebook and wrote down that last thought.
Rimmersdal, the morning of Monday 8 September:
To observe the correspondences presenting themselves to us every single minute, that is what it means to live.
Perhaps not exactly the right words, not quite as apt as he had hoped, but it was captured in the moment and that counted for a lot.
He put the notebook back in the bag, started the car and continued his journey to Lograna.
As soon as he got out of the car he had a premonition.
Or perhaps he didn’t, perhaps it was just something he liked to imagine in retrospect. But when he got to the cottage, put his hand up to feel for the key in the gutter and discovered it wasn’t there, it was a sign that allowed for no misinterpretation.
Something had happened.
He cautiously pushed down the door handle. The door was open. Had he forgotten to lock up on Friday?
It didn’t seem possible. He was convinced he had tested the door several times before reaching up to put the key on the far left-hand side, under the eaves; this had already established itself as a ritual in the few days he had spent at the croft. But naturally it was impossible to remember whether he had actually done it on Friday as usual; it wasn’t that easy to distinguish one day from another, when it was exactly the same action, with exactly the same familiar movements on each occasion – but it seemed highly unlikely that he would have neglected such a crucial part of his routine. Particularly on a Friday, when he knew the house would be unguarded over the weekend.
Unguarded? As if anyone would bother about a cottage that had lain untouched for decades.
Of course I locked the bloody door, he muttered, and stepped into the kitchen. Of course I did.
The key was in the middle of the kitchen table. Threaded on its shoelace with the little block of wood bearing the name Lograna in curlicued, old-fashioned lettering.
In the middle of the table? Could he really have just left it there and forgotten to lock up?
He set his bags down on the floor and went into the living room.
One window was open, and a rucksack was propped against the chimney breast. On the bed there were a few items of clothing and a guitar.
Someone had been here.
Someone still was here. What the devil? thought Ante Valdemar Roos. What . . . what’s the meaning of this? He suddenly felt dizzy and leant his hand against the chimney breast.
It was warm. Someone had lit a fire.
He looked around him. On the table were a paperback book, lying open, face down, a notepad and two pens.
An empty coffee cup.
Who? thought Valdemar. Why?
The questions bubbled up inside him and the dizziness still hadn’t entirely gone. He pulled out a chair and sat down. He rested his head in his hands, shut his eyes and tried to concentrate. Somebody was here in the house. Somebody had got into his Lograna, taken it over, and now . . . well, what? thought Ante Valdemar Roos. What on earth does this mean? What shall I do?
Who?
And, above all, where? Where is he now?
Something akin to fear took hold of him. He got to his feet, went to the kitchen, came back to the other room again, looked out of the window.
Where was the intruder right now?
Whoever he was, he wasn’t in the house. Evidently he had popped out for some reason. The open book, the coffee cup, the notepad . . . every indication was that he would soon be back. Or . . .
Or had he simply fled into the forest when he saw Valdemar’s car?
He went to and fro between the living room and kitchen for a good while, trying to decide what he thought. Was he the one who had scared away the uninvited guest – whoever he was – or had he just left the house temporarily to return any minute now?
There’s nothing to do but wait and see, thought Ante Valdemar Roos. Either he would come back soon or he would decide to keep away.
He returned to the kitchen and started to unpack his purchases from the ICA in Rimmersdal. Once he had finished he went outside and looked around. No sign of the trespasser – he filled a bucket with fresh water at the pump, went back indoors and put some coffee on.
Nothing to do but wait and see, he repeated silently to himself. He noted that the slight sense of unease, or fear, was receding. With every passing minute it seemed clearer that he himself had scared the visitor away – and presumably he had nothing to fear from such a visitor.
However he twisted and turned this line of argument, he couldn’t find anything wrong with it. Nothing to fear.
What did seem a little strange, however, was that he felt no anger. He wasn’t nursing any immediate grudge against whoever had illicitly gained access to his Lograna. Surely he should at least have been feeling rather indignant? Furious, in fact?
But that wasn’t the case.
And out of some kind of respect for this stranger he decided not to start rooting through his possessions – hunting for something that might offer a pointer to his identity. The paperback on the table was called The Mournful Knight, written by someone called Barin. The notepad was closed, and he didn’t open it.
Instead he took his sandwiches and a cup of coffee and went out to sit in his chair by the wall of the outbuilding. He turned his face to the sun and felt a pleasant drowsiness come creeping over him.
What happens, happens, he thought. Haste is a concept the good Lord didn’t see fit to create.
The day passed.
In view of the uninvited guest, Valdemar decided to cancel all walks in the forest. He stayed in either the house or the yard and garden all morning; the weather was agreeably warm, probably around twenty degrees – he made a mental note to buy a thermometer as soon as he could – with alternating sun and cloud, and only a light wind to be heard in the treetops. He occupied himself by doing crosswords, lighting the fire in the kitchen range, tidying up the plot; he spent a while in the outbuilding looking for a lawnmower or at least a scythe but found neither and wondered whether he ought to go to a hardware store one day soon and equip himself with the most basic garden tools. A rake, a spade, an axe, a saw.
And a scythe, as he’d already said – there was an attractively primitive power in both the word and the object. Not to mention the snath to go with it. But perhaps scythes and their handles weren’t available any more. It was the same with some species of animal, there simply wasn’t room for them all; when the mobile phones arrived, the scythes disappeared. It was a shame, but hardly unreasonable.
A pair of work gloves was a must, at any rate; they would definitely come in handy. At the same time he was aware that much of this was actually unnecessary. It was the enduring cultivator in him insisting on these things, but such orations did not go unchallenged. Not at all. The grass was welcome to grow as it wanted, thought Valdemar, and the currant bushes and trees as well, but he realized that the woodpile, which thus far looked relatively inexhaustible, could not last forever. There was something rather attractive about the idea of chopping wood, too, positioning the length of log on the block and then splitting it with a well-aimed blow.
Straightening his back when the work was done, squinting up at the sky to assess the weather, and lighting his pipe.
There was that pipe image again. Ante Valdemar Roos made a preliminary decision that the first work tools he had to acquire were a pipe and a packet of tobacco. Maybe as early as tomorrow, at ICA in Rimmersdal.
Did they sell pipes in ICA shops? He was not at all sure, but he could always go in to enquire. There would be no harm in that.
Around noon he ate his lunch. Macaroni and sausage. And once he’d washed up he decided to take a nap in bed. He moved the guitar and items of clothing first, and it was only then he realized the intruder must be a woman. A thin sweater tossed down on top of a pair of panties, and some socks that definitely wouldn’t fit a pair of male feet.
A woman? He lay down on his back, clasped his hands behind his neck and tried to examine this new and unexpected factor in the equation.
All morning he had been assuming the uninvited guest was a man. In Ante Valdemar Roos’s world, women didn’t lurk about the forest or force their way into remote cottages, that was the fact of the matter. It was a phenomenon with exclusively masculine overtones, the sort of trick pulled by fugitives and homeless poets and other castaways of the male persuasion, but not women. Perhaps it was prejudice on his part, but he couldn’t shake off his spontaneous surprise. A woman?
Who was she?
What was her background and motivation?
How old might she be?
Although the answers to these questions – or at least some hints leading in the right direction – were no doubt to be found in the bulging, dark blue rucksack, or in the notepad still lying on the table, he stopped himself from looking. Respect, he thought. You always had to show respect to other people, even in circumstances like these.
You don’t go rummaging in someone else’s rucksack even if that someone is a trespasser.
Possibly that someone had a good and respectable reason for their actions, you never knew, and in that case Valdemar could find himself in a corner feeling very shamefaced.
I’m a gentleman, he thought. And a gentleman doesn’t take liberties that go beyond the bounds of decency. That’s that.
Satisfied with these simple deliberations and conclusions, he fell asleep.
He woke up to find it was half past two. He had been asleep for over an hour. The window was still open and he could hear the cooing of a wood pigeon outside. The intruder woman hadn’t been in the house while he was asleep. If she had been, she would naturally have seen that he was asleep, gathered up her things and made off. There was nothing to indicate she was anything other than a very timid creature, and keen to avoid any contact with him in all circumstances. She had now been keeping out of the way for nearly six hours; he assumed she was somewhere out in the forest, probably quite close to the house, so she could keep an eye on what he was doing. Keeping her distance as a precaution, thought Valdemar, sitting up. So she could make a run for it and get safely away if he decided to go out and look for her.
But he didn’t intend looking for her. He was sticking to his gentlemanly decision not to disturb her in any way, and as he made his afternoon coffee, he found he could perceive her presence.
Exactly that. Perceive it. There was a difference between taking in reality via one’s usual senses – sight and smell, hearing, taste and feeling – and merely perceiving it. It was like a sixth sense, an extra organ being connected, a sort of cautious tentacle reaching out into its surroundings and registering even the smallest and most timid tremor.
A presence, for example.
As he drank his coffee he took out his notebook and tried to encapsulate that very feeling in words. But try as he might, the right formulation eluded him. He was also starting to find it hard not to take a look at the other pad of paper – her notebook – but he resisted the temptation and kept the impulse in check.
What he eventually wrote was:
Lograna, the afternoon of 8th September:
I have a visitor. A woman with a guitar, but I still cannot tell what it means or where it might lead in due course. Little can the pawn know the intentions of the grand master.
He didn’t entirely understand that last bit himself. But he let it stand; it had occurred to him spontaneously and perhaps one day he would fathom what it meant. It could happen that words preceded meaning – he had read that somewhere, he couldn’t remember where, but perhaps it was his Romanian author again.
Before he got into the car for the drive back to Kymlinge he considered whether to leave some kind of message for her, but it was hard to find the right tone for that, too, so he left it.
He locked the door and hid the key in its usual place up in the gutter.
To be on the safe side he left the window catch unhooked and dangling, so it would no doubt be possible to get back in that way if one needed to.