He came down to the beach just after six, and the sun had still not risen.
But it was not far off. The rosy flush of dawn suffused half the sky to the east, birds described their extended ellipses inland over the meadows and the sea lay in expectation, absolutely calm and still.
Expectation? he thought. Was there any better state of being?
He decided to walk south. After a few hundred metres he stopped and took off his shoes. He left them there on the sand in the lee of an upturned wooden boat with peeling paint, abandoned a good way above the shoreline. His socks were stuffed inside, one in each shoe. He didn’t think anyone would bother helping themselves to such a tatty old pair of loafers but if they did get taken, it would be no problem going back into the boarding house barefoot.
He had a pair of sandals in reserve. He had bought them in Malmö when he went out to stock up on provisions before they crossed the Sound; she said they suited him but he was on no account to wear them with socks, and he hadn’t tried a proper walk in them yet.
The name of the boarding house was Paradise; they had spent four nights there now and last night was the first time he hadn’t been able to sleep. He didn’t know why; he had dropped off around midnight after doing a few crosswords, but had woken up again at three and found it impossible to get back to sleep. He got up quietly at quarter to five, took a long shower and then dressed and crept out. The boarding house was in the middle of the little town, a two-storey wooden house, painted pink and nestled amongst lilacs and fruit trees, but it only took five minutes to get down to the sea.
And Anna was asleep when he left. She lay there in her usual way, curled up with her hands between her knees and the pillow over her head. He paused in the doorway for a few seconds, watching her. It’s so strange, he thought, how fast she’s become the centre of my life. I almost can’t imagine us ever having been apart.
Her image was still before his eyes as he slowly moved south, along the never-ending beach. As far as he knew, it extended right down to the German border and probably further still. Yes, the world is boundless, he thought all at once. It really is. Our lives and our opportunities are boundless; it’s just a matter of discovering that and taking it in.
And every day is a gift.
Fourteen of them had passed. Two weeks and one night since that Sunday evening when life switched onto a completely new and unpremeditated track. Ante Valdemar Roos knew that this time with Anna – regardless of what lay ahead of them, regardless of whether it all ended in a major or a minor key – was the most momentous thing he had ever experienced. Maybe, he had begun to think, maybe this had been the point of it all. His birth, his development to adulthood, his passage through the vale of tears. So he could live for a while with this remarkable girl.
He had carried on writing his aphorisms in the black notebook, one a day. Sometimes they were quotations, sometimes he was able to put the words together for himself. Twice it was something Anna said. Yesterday’s source was once again the Romanian:
He still cherished the illusion that he walked there alone, that he was moving and not the world beneath his feet, that he could go in any direction at all, that the furrow he ploughed – his own, unique life – was only visible behind him, in the tracks left by his laborious steps. He had not yet understood that the same furrow ran as deeply and pitilessly ahead of him.
That’s how it was before, thought Ante Valdemar Roos. That was how I used to visualize my life. As deep incisions or inscriptions on a gravestone that was already standing. As if . . . as if that gravestone – and the interminably slow reading of its inscriptions – was the aim and purpose in itself.
He was not sure if that was precisely what Cǎrtǎrescu was driving at, but he didn’t care, he thought in a sudden burst of cheerfulness as he kicked a deflating red beach ball, sending it a good way out into the water. He didn’t care and it didn’t matter! Once upon a time he had played inside right for Future Stars boys’ football club and the clip was still there in his right foot. It’s the feeling and the road taken that make it worth the trouble, not the words and the potential solution of the equation.
Yesterday evening she had sung for him, just the two songs because the fatigue had come over her again. One was ‘Colours’, an old Donovan song – he thought it was amazing that she had picked up so much from the distant sixties – and the other she had composed herself, and it was about him. ‘Valdemar the Penguin’. He didn’t realize until afterwards that he had been crying as he listened.
And he had felt gratitude. A deep gratitude that they had not succumbed to panic and fear after that grotesque turn of events at Lograna – but gave themselves time to think and pack a few things in the car. Her guitar, for example. Most of her possessions, too, the idea being to expunge all trace of her from the house, but when they had been on the road for a few hours that night, she remembered she had left a plastic bag of dirty washing under the worktop in the kitchen.
So they would definitely be able to tell that a girl had been living there, too. Lograna had not just been Ante Valdemar Roos’s place in the world.
Assuming they got as far as finding Lograna. There was still nothing to indicate that they had, but it was bound to happen sooner or later. Sooner or later, he was under no illusion about that.
For the first couple of days he had anxiously listened to every radio news bulletin and skimmed through every newspaper he came across, but her calmness gradually rubbed off on him. And when they decided the wound on her head was starting to look better after all, and they wouldn’t have to go to a hospital, that was another turning point. It meant they had no need to stay in the country. They drove across the Øresund Bridge just over a week after they had left Lograna, the sunshine of an autumn morning accompanying them, and it gave them a deafening sense of freedom to leave Sweden behind. Valdemar thought so, anyway; a confined little world closed behind them, a vast space opened up ahead of them.
He said it to her, too, in exactly those words. She laughed and put her hand on his arm.
‘When someone closes a door, God opens a window,’ she said.
‘What do you mean by that?’ he asked.
‘It’s what my mother used to say,’ she replied. ‘To my father, when I was younger. I liked it a lot. I used to lie in bed in the evening after they’d had a row and think about it.’
‘I like it too,’ he admitted. ‘When someone closes a door, God opens a window. Do you miss your mum?’
‘A bit.’
‘How’s your head feeling?’
Those first few days he had asked too often.
‘Does it hurt? Do you want to lie down on the back seat for a while? Shall I help you change the bandage?’
Far too often, but it was hardly surprising he was worried. She had been lying unconscious on the grass when he found her and it had taken him several minutes to bring her round. The whole left side of her head was covered in sticky blood, and he cleaned her up with wet towels to reveal a gash almost ten centimetres long. Above her left ear, a swelling and a crude crescent shape that extended right across to her temple, just below the hairline; the rusty iron bar with which she had been attacked lay a few metres to one side, just under the apple tree.
The swelling persisted for several days, but she had soon got the hang of doing her hair slightly differently so nothing really showed. They were lucky: at the first hotel, that second night, they had managed to pass themselves off as Mr Eriksson and daughter. She’d had a blinding headache when they were at the reception desk signing in, but the injury and the bandage were hidden by her thick, dark-brown hair.
They stayed in Halmstad for three days. She stayed in bed most of the time, and he looked after her as if he really were a good father with a poorly daughter. He made sure she drank plenty and ate the occasional little something. He bought painkillers at the chemist’s, along with plasters, compresses and vitamins. He sat at her bedside and watched over her.
Asked her if she needed anything. Asked if she was in pain.
Way too often. On the morning of the fourth day, she got up, had a shower, told him to stop fussing and asked if it was about time they moved on.
For a moment he felt he barely recognized her. It was as if he didn’t really know who it was, standing there at the narrow door of the en suite bathroom, wrapped in the hotel’s white bath towels – one round her body and one round her head – and addressing him almost as if she were Signe or Wilma. The way they sounded when he had once again and for obscure reasons failed to live up to their expectations.
But then she saw that she had upset him, took three steps across the room and gave him a big hug.
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to snap at you. But don’t you agree it’s time we got out of here?’
It had scared him, that moment, and it wasn’t easy to put behind him. It lingered in one corner of his mind like an evil omen or sense of foreboding.
He drove on to Karlskrona, though he wasn’t sure why. Perhaps because it would take a bit longer. In the car, on the road, was where they belonged, at least for these few days. As if motion itself was the only conceivable board on which the game could play out. But they only spent a single night in Blekinge province, where she slept for thirteen hours solid, and then they went on to Hotel Baltzar in Malmö.
Her headache came and went. She was sick a few times. He bought a variety of painkillers. Treo, Ipren, Alvedon. She said she found Treo worked best and when they drove across the Sound they had twelve tubes of it in stock.
But the swelling gradually went down and the gash began to look better. By the time they got to Malmö on the Saturday, they decided not to bother with any more plasters or compresses; they took a long walk in the Pildamm Park and it wore her out, of course, but afterwards she promised to follow him to the end of the world, as long as he had enough money for petrol and a few provisions for the journey.
He had withdrawn 500,000 in Halmstad; at the bank they asked what on earth he needed so much cash for, and he told them he was buying a boat. Eccentric seller, but he just had to go with the flow.
He knew he’d got that out of some book, the boat-buying story, and it made him grateful that he was an avid reader. He wouldn’t have come up with it by himself.
But they definitely had the money for petrol and provisions. In Malmö he exchanged some of the Swedish notes for thirty thousand euros and twenty thousand Danish kronor, and that didn’t seem to present any problems.
There was no need to bring up a boat or anything else.
He stopped and looked at his watch.
Half past six. The sun had come up properly now, but the beach was still deserted. He hadn’t met another soul, so perhaps the Danes were a people who preferred a bit more time in bed in the morning.
They did have a certain reputation, after all, thought Ante Valdemar Roos, yawning and turning his steps back towards the main part of town. Or perhaps they had more important things to do, he corrected himself a few moments later. Work and so on. No time for wandering along beautiful beaches at sunrise, even if they were right outside your door?
They hadn’t stolen his shoes and socks, at any event.
‘I had such a strange dream.’
He nodded. She had described her dreams to him a few times before. Usually while they were having breakfast; it had almost become a habit of theirs.
‘It seemed totally real, it was hard to believe it was just a dream when I woke up.’
He thought that if life consisted of just one day, he would be very happy for it to start like this. First an hour’s walk along an empty sandy beach. Then breakfast in a seaside boarding house garden and a dream from this singular young woman’s lips.
‘What was it about?’ he asked.
She drank some tea and started spreading jam on another slice of bread. Good, he thought, she’s getting her appetite back.
‘I think it was actually about death. And how we needn’t be scared of it.’
‘Oh?’ he said. ‘No, of course we needn’t.’
‘You were in it. My little brother and my mum were, too, but I had the main part. I was death.’
‘You were death?’ he exclaimed, involuntarily dismayed. ‘Now I truly don’t think—’
‘Oh yes,’ she assured him. ‘I was death, and the one everyone had to come back to sooner or later. I knew that, and it meant there was no hurry about anything. You and Mum and Marek were in a boat, out on a river—’
‘Marek, your little brother?’
‘Yes. You were all in that boat and it was being carried towards a waterfall and you’d all, like, lost control of everything. But none of you realized, because the current wasn’t especially strong to start with, you just thought it was an exciting adventure. And I was waiting for you further on, where the current got stronger, where I knew it would dawn on you that this was serious and you really were in danger.’
‘Did we know each other?’ he asked. ‘Me and your mum and your brother?’
‘Oh yes, and I was looking forward to being reunited with you all, because I’d been dead for a long time and the last time I’d seen you was at my funeral and you’d all been so sad and forsaken, somehow.’
‘Forsaken?’
‘Yes, that’s how it feels when the dead leave the living behind.’
‘How do you know?’
‘It came home to me in the dream and it’s something you just kind of know, anyway.’ She nodded as if to confirm this to herself before she went on. ‘The whole dream basically revolved round me just sitting and waiting for you all to come to me in the rapids. I knew you’d all be terrified at first, but then when it was over and you were with me at last, everything would be fine again.’
‘Me and your mum and your little brother?’
‘Yes.’
‘What happened then? Did we go down the waterfall?’
‘No, the strange thing was that you didn’t. I don’t know what happened, in fact. I mean, you didn’t have oars or anything, but somehow the boat was able to find its own current and come ashore instead. I sat there waiting and felt a bit disappointed, really, but it wasn’t too bad. I knew you’d all be coming another day. And then he came instead.’
‘He? Who do you mean?’
‘Him.’
‘Steffo?’
‘Yes. And I absolutely didn’t want to see him. He came speeding through the water on his scooter and just before he reached me, you were suddenly there after all, Valdemar. Maybe Marek and Mum were too, I don’t know, but you blew on him and then he was gone.’
‘I blew on him?’
‘Yes, kind of breathed on him. And that was all it took. You leant down from Heaven, I think – I could see your upside-down head, at any rate – and then you breathed on Steffo and suddenly he didn’t exist any more. I kissed you and then I woke up.’
‘My God, Anna. You’re making me . . .’
‘Making you what?’
‘Embarrassed.’
‘You feel embarrassed because I kissed you in a dream?’
‘Well yes, I do.’
‘All right then, I’ll try to control myself better next time.’
She laughed. He laughed. It felt to him like the happiest morning of his life.
Never better than this.
That afternoon they sat in deckchairs on the beach. The sun was coming from the right direction now.
‘You still can’t remember?’ he asked.
She shook her head. ‘No.’
‘Are you getting any closer?’
‘No. I rushed out, grabbed up the knife from the draining board as I went. I heard him coming after me. I caught my foot on that root in the grass and tripped over. Then . . . well, then it’s a blank.’
‘Good,’ he said. ‘It’s probably just as well you don’t remember any more.’
‘I don’t know. Maybe, but I would like to remember.’ She paused and racked her brains. ‘But I must have killed him, however you look at it. Just as he hit me with that iron bar. That must be what happened, mustn’t it?’
‘There’s no way of being sure. Anna?’
‘Yes?’
‘Whatever happened, you don’t need to feel guilty about it.’
‘I know that’s what you think. I think the same, but we can’t control our consciences.’
He looked at her in silence for a while. Two joggers, a man and a woman in red and black tracksuits, ran past them further down the beach.
‘Is it hurting? Shall we go back so you can have a proper rest?’
She pulled a sudden face, hard for him to interpret. ‘How long are we going to stay here, Valdemar?’
‘When do you want us to move on?’
‘I don’t know. Tomorrow perhaps. Or the day after.’
‘Well let’s say we’ll make our minds up tomorrow.’
She nodded and put her hand on his for a moment.
‘There’s something up with my arm, Valdemar.’
‘What? Your arm?’
‘Yes, my right arm. It feels heavy and weird.’
‘Have you . . . I mean, how long has it felt like that?’
‘I noticed it yesterday evening when I was playing the guitar. My fingers felt so thick and clumsy.’
‘Do you think it’s anything serious? Do you think it could have anything to do with . . .?’
‘No, I’m sure it’ll pass if I just rest up. Look, what’s that over there? Swans?’
He peered towards the sun.
‘Herons, I think they’re herons.’
‘They look like some kind of mirage.’
‘Yes, almost.’