Ewa Bergman opened the door to her apartment.
“Matti Svensson from the Norrtelje News,” the man introduced himself.
He was too early. She was still wearing her bathrobe and it made her feel uncomfortable. But then again, Svensson wasn’t exactly ready for a fashion show, either. In fact, he looked like shit: thin, sunken brown eyes, and greasy, grayish brown hair with dandruff. He was wearing a creased Loden coat, dark grey pants, and worn, unpolished, brown shoes. He wasn’t quite dressed for the season—spring was in the air, the weather was warm, and people were walking around in shorts.
“Come on in.”
She regretted the invite immediately.
He took off his shoes and headed straight for the kitchen, where he sat down without asking. She had made some coffee and baked some rolls. The aroma filled the two-room apartment, penetrating even through the closed door to Astrid’s empty room.
“Tell me what you know,” he said. “When did she disappear?”
“Last fall, in early September. When I went to pick her up from school, she wasn’t there. Someone had already picked her up. They didn’t know who.”
“How terrible.”
“You have no idea! At first, I thought that this can’t be happening to me. To us. We’re just ordinary people. Astrid is only eight years old.”
Svensson pulled out a notebook and turned on a micro tape recorder without asking.
Ewa Bergman nodded and drew her bathrobe more tightly around her body, adjusting the belt at the same time. The worry about her daughter had made her lose several pounds. She was slender and curvy, almost like she had been before her daughter was born, when she and Bill Bergman had been in love, and he had sworn into her chestnut-colored hair that he would never abandon his family. What happened, she wondered.
Svensson could have raised his eyes and studied her carefully. He could have taken note of her appearance, writing in his newspaper article about her pale complexion, the black rings under her eyes, and the sadness in her face. But he didn’t look up. She wouldn’t have allowed him to describe her like that. Nor to mention how her voice cracked as she offered a plate with fingers with chipped nail polish.
“Here. Have a roll.”
“And you haven’t heard anything at all from her?”
“No. Well yes, I received a postcard. But since then, we’ve heard nothing. I haven’t, at any rate.”
“A postcard? Could you show me?”
“It’s this one. Addressed to me. Just lists a telephone number. We don’t know whether it was Astrid who sent it.”
“Do you recognize the phone number?”
“Yes, that was my daughter’s first ever cell phone number. I’ll never forget that.” The tears welled up in her eyes and she turned her face away.
Svensson read the number 073-786-4427 in silence.
“Just like with the DC-3,” he said, and looked her straight in the eye. “You know, the plane that the Soviets shot down in 1952 over the Baltic Sea. The one that had an American intelligence officer onboard. One of the relatives of the crew, a woman I’ve interviewed, showed me a postcard from Moscow in the 1980s with exactly the same sort of cryptic message. I think the postcard she received listed her old address in some small town somewhere in the middle of Sweden. She believed that it had been sent by her husband. If that were true, he would still have been alive in 1982, although his plane had been shot down thirty years earlier. It does sound incredible.”
“My daughter’s alive,” Ewa Bergman said, pointing at her chest. “I’m sure. I can feel it right here inside.”
“If I’m not mistaken,” Svensson said, clearing his throat, “that’s exactly what that woman said when I interviewed her. She told me that deep down inside she knew he was alive, and that I should never stop searching for the truth. She said this, more or less, as if she knew that the remains of her husband would not be found on board the plane if it should ever be salvaged. The plane was indeed found in 2004, about a year after she died. Strange.”
“And? Did they find her husband’s remains?” Ewa asked.
“No,” Matti Svensson answered and cleared his throat again, “they didn’t. When they finally brought the wreck to the surface some six months later, all four members of the crew were missing, as was the American Intel officer who was on board. No one knows what happened to them.”
“So she was right. More coffee?”
“Yes, please.”
On the street outside, in Söder, Stockholm’s southern district, a bus drove by so that the panes of glass in the apartment windows rattled slightly.
Ewa Bergman’s thoughts started wandering. She rested her elbows on the kitchen table and daydreamed away. “I know that Astrid is alive somewhere. I’m not giving up. She knows I’m coming to get her one day.”
She looked at Matti Svensson, ready to place her daughter’s fate into his hands.. “Are you going to write about Astrid? About how she disappeared? You will be the first with the news. You can leave out my husband’s name. Bill doesn’t want the story to end up in the newspapers. He’s got nothing to do with any of this. We’re divorced. I’ve got custody.”
Ewa Bergman had a lump in her throat. It distorted her voice, making it sound sharp and forced.
“You can relax, Ewa. It’s going to be all right.” Matti Svensson was taking notes. “We’re going to find her. Yes, we are. Now, please tell me the whole story. You should know that both the tape recorder and I are good listeners.”