Yes, this was the exact thought that came into Ante Valdemar Roos’s head, and he did nothing to detract from it. He didn’t laugh at it or dismiss it by blowing his nose on the self-important handkerchief of reason. As one usually did when that kind of thing intruded, he thought.

  When she finished her song, they both sat there in silence for a while, looking into the fire.

  ‘Thank you, Anna,’ he said at last. ‘That was the most beautiful thing I’ve heard for a very, very long time.’

  ‘It suits my voice,’ she said. ‘I’m an alto, a low alto even.’

  He nodded. ‘How about that coffee, then?’

  ‘And the peace pipe?’

  ‘And the peace pipe.’

  Passing through Rimmersdal on his way home, he saw they had taken the elk away. There was always a slim chance, of course, that it had recovered and got out of the ditch by itself, but he found that hard to believe.

  What an extraordinary day it had been. As he parked the car in its usual spot in the yard of Lily’s Bakery, he realized how hard he would find seeing Alice and the girls. He felt as if they didn’t really belong in his world at the moment – or he in theirs, was probably a better way of putting it – and he hoped the flat would be empty. If it was, he would lock himself in the bathroom, turn the light off, sink into some very hot water and think about life. That seemed the only even vaguely meaningful activity he could engage in for the next few hours.

  But the flat was not empty. Sitting in the kitchen were Alice and Signe – and an unfamiliar young man with long dark hair and a yellow shirt unbuttoned low at the neck.

  ‘Valdemar, this is Birger,’ said Alice. ‘Signe’s fiancé.’

  Valdemar didn’t think Birger Butt – that was his name, wasn’t it? – looked like a fiancé. More like someone trying not to let the mask slip after coming last in the Eurovision Song Contest. Or whatever they called it these days. Signe had put one hand high up on his thigh, presumably so he would realize he didn’t have to get up when Valdemar held out his hand. His trousers were as vividly red as his shirt was bright yellow.

  ‘Nice to meet you,’ said Valdemar.

  ‘Er, hi,’ said Birger Butt.

  ‘He’s staying to dinner,’ said Alice.

  He can have my place, thought Valdemar. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘So you two are engaged, eh?’

  ‘Valdemar,’ said Alice.

  ‘Come on Birger, let’s go to my room,’ said Signe.

  They left the kitchen.

  ‘Idiot,’ said Alice to Valdemar.

  ‘I thought fiancé meant you were engaged,’ said Valdemar.

  ‘I just don’t get you,’ said Alice. ‘Don’t you think he’s cute?’

  ‘No,’ said Valdemar. ‘But he and Signe might be well suited.’

  ‘What’s that meant to mean?’ demanded Alice.

  ‘It means they might be well suited,’ clarified Valdemar.

  ‘We’ll have to talk about this later,’ said Alice. ‘I need you to help me with the dinner now. I want us to make a good impression – his dad owns a successful business.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Valdemar. ‘What sort of business?’

  ‘I think they distribute supplies to hot-dog stalls,’ said Alice. ‘Gherkin mayonnaise and prawn salad and that sort of thing. They go all over the country.’

  ‘Interesting,’ said Valdemar.

  ‘And it’s great that she’s found someone at last.’

  ‘About time too,’ said Valdemar.

  18

  Thursday was pretty much like Wednesday. Admittedly when she went out to pee at half past seven it wasn’t raining, but the grass was soaking wet and a little while later the rain started again.

  And it went on all day, more or less. Valdemar arrived at his usual time, she helped him unload the bags from the car and they dashed into the kitchen with them. He had really stocked up on provisions: as well as three ICA carrier bags of food he’d also bought a saw, an axe, a sack of peat litter for the compost toilet, a pair of wellies, some thick socks and various other bits and pieces.

  A big tin of white paint, for example. Brushes and a roller and tray.

  ‘I thought we could paint the inside walls,’ he said. ‘Make it look a bit less drab.’

  ‘Let me do it,’ came her instant suggestion. ‘As a . . . well, as a thank-you gesture for letting me stay here.’

  ‘But I wouldn’t expect you to—’ he began, but she interrupted him.

  ‘Why not? I’m good at painting walls. I’ve done it before, at home at my mum’s, and then in the flat I lived in.’

  ‘Hm,’ he said, looking at her over the top of his glasses.

  ‘And I think you’re right, by the way,’ she said. ‘It’ll really brighten things up in here if it’s painted white.’

  ‘Humph,’ he said. ‘I don’t know that I should—’

  ‘Oh yes you should. I want to do something for you. Please?’

  He gave a shrug. ‘Well I’m not so goddamn keen on painting that I’ll beg to be allowed to do it. In fact, you might be able to get it done over the weekend, I suppose.’

  ‘You won’t be coming at the weekend?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’ve got a few other things to do.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘This and that. Like I said.’

  ‘Oh? Well, I can paint on Saturday and Sunday. If you’ll let me stay that long, that is?’

  ‘Suppose I’ll have to, then,’ he said.

  One corner of his mouth gave a humorous twitch as he said it, and she found herself thinking it was a shame he wasn’t her dad. It was a notion that came into her mind without warning, and she was obliged to chuckle herself.

  Then they stowed away the shopping in the fridge and cupboards, and had their morning coffee.

  ‘Mind if I ask you a question?’

  ‘No, ask away.’

  ‘It’s something I started wondering about yesterday evening after you’d gone. You needn’t answer if you don’t want to.’

  ‘That’s a right a person always has.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Only to answer if they want to.’

  She thought about this. ‘Yes, you’re right of course. Well, what I’m wondering is whether you drive out here to Lograna every day?’

  ‘Yes I do. In the week, that is.’

  ‘And your wife doesn’t know about it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What’s her name, by the way?’

  ‘Alice, her name’s Alice.’

  ‘But where does Alice think you go every morning, then?’

  He clasped his hands, propped his elbows on the table and rested his chin on his knuckles. He seemed to be searching for the right words. A few seconds went by and then he sighed, as if he just couldn’t be bothered to search any more.

  ‘To work, of course.’

  ‘To work?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you’ve stopped work.’

  ‘I haven’t told her that.’

  She looked at him in bewilderment. ‘You’ve lost me now.’

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I can understand that. But of course it wasn’t part of the plan for me to meet you and have to explain all sorts of things.’

  ‘No, I get that.’

  He took off his glasses and sighed again. ‘Life isn’t always a bundle of bloody laughs, you should know that.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Of course I know.’

  ‘Sometimes it feels pretty unbearable.’

  ‘Mhmm?’

  ‘Yes, that was the long and short of it. I couldn’t bear it any longer, so I stopped work and bought myself this place.’

  ‘Why couldn’t you bear it?’

  He pondered this. Clasped his hands behind the back of his neck for variety and looked up at the ceiling.

  ‘I don’t know. It just happened that way.’

  ‘Happened that way?’

  ‘Yes. I haven’t really got to the bottom of why.’

  ‘Mhmm.’

  ‘And I couldn’t care less, actually,’ he went on. ‘When you get as old as I am, you have to accept some things without digging around in them. The fact that you are who you are, for example.’

  She raised her eyebrows in surprise. Then she laughed.

  ‘You know what, Valdemar, I’m glad I met you. Awfully glad, because you’re so . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Refreshing, I suppose.’

  ‘Refreshing?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You must be out of your mind, Anna.’ But he was finding it hard not to laugh, too. ‘If you think I’m refreshing, I feel sorry for you. I’m about as refreshing as a rubbish tip. Now I’m going to lie down and do crosswords for a while. It’s too wet for a walk in the forest today, don’t you think?’

  She looked out of the window. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You’re right. But there was one more thing I wanted to ask . . . if it won’t make you cross?’

  ‘Cross? Why should I be cross? Well?’

  ‘You’ve got a mobile phone, haven’t you?’

  Valdemar patted the outside of his breast pocket. ‘Yes, it’s sleeping here today as well.’

  ‘I wonder if I could borrow it and call my mum? I’ll just ring quickly and then she’ll ring me back. It’ll cost you hardly anything.’

  Valdemar nodded and handed her his phone. ‘You can sit here in the kitchen and ring. The signal can be a bit patchy, mind. I’m going to have a little lie-down in there, like I said.’

  He went into the living room and shut the door after him.

  ‘Ania, is anything the matter?’

  ‘Can you call me on this number?’

  She ended the call and waited. It took almost five minutes for the phone to ring.

  Why? thought Anna. Why can’t she ever call me straight away? There’s always something more important.

  ‘Ania, is anything the matter?’

  The same opening gambit, word for word.

  ‘Yes,’ said Anna. ‘You could say that.’

  ‘I’m still at Mum’s in Warsaw, you know. It costs a lot to ring you.’

  ‘I know. I just wanted to tell you I’m not at the Elvafors centre any more.’

  ‘You’re not? Oh God, Anna, why not?’

  ‘So they didn’t call and tell you?’

  ‘No. But why are you—?

  ‘I ran away. It was such a shithole, but you needn’t worry about me. I’m fine.’

  ‘So where are you now?’

  It took her a few moments to bring the name to mind. ‘I’m at a place called Lograna.’

  ‘Lograna? What’s that.’

  ‘It’s a house in the middle of the forest. I’m staying here for a while, then we’ll have to see. How long will you be in Poland?’

  Anna’s mother sighed and Anna heard someone switch on a TV set in the background. Her mother told someone called Mariusz to turn the volume down.

  ‘I don’t know how long I shall have to stay, Anna. Mum’s not at all well. She’s in hospital, and I don’t know if she’ll pull through this time.’

  Anna felt a hot prickling in her throat and at the backs of her eyes. ‘And Marek?’

  ‘He’s at Majka and Tomek’s. He’s fine. But he might be coming down here too, I’m not sure.’

  ‘Right,’ said Anna.

  ‘But this . . . Lograna?’ said her mother. ‘Where is it? And who are you staying with?’

  ‘I’m just fine,’ said Anna. ‘You don’t need to worry. I only rang to let you know I’d left Elvafors.’

  ‘Anna, you haven’t . . . please tell me you haven’t started . . .?’

  ‘No,’ said Anna. ‘I haven’t started again. Bye then, Mum.’

  ‘Bye,’ said her mother. ‘Look after yourself, Anna.’

  She quickly rang off before tears got the better of her.

  Fuck, she thought. Why does it always have to be like this?

  He set off for home at five o’clock as usual, promising to bring sandpaper and a roll of masking tape the next day.

  They hadn’t talked a great deal that afternoon. It had rained almost non-stop and they’d kept the fire well fed with wood. Spent the time reading and doing crosswords, and she’d sung him another song. Are you going to Scarborough Fair?

  ‘You sing so beautifully it makes me feel as though I’m in Heaven, Anna,’ he’d said.

  ‘Maybe this is what Heaven looks like,’ she’d quipped with a laugh.

  ‘Why not?’ he’d agreed. He’d looked around the modest room and given a laugh of his own. ‘Anna and Valdemar in the heavenly kingdom of Lograna.’

  She’d felt a bit bereft after he had gone. Heaven? she thought. Well, maybe they were right. Maybe it was as simple as that.

  ‘Never better than this,’ he had said as well. It was just before he got into the car and drove away. ‘But you’re too young to know it.’

  She hadn’t understood what he meant – or perhaps she had. In any case, it was such a melancholy piece of knowledge that she hadn’t really wanted to accept it.

  Just as he had said. She was too young. She thought that she ought to be feeling happy. She would be allowed to stay here for at least three more days. Paint walls and make herself a bit useful; she liked painting and if she happened to want to stay on, he presumably wouldn’t deny her that, either. For a few more days, anyway. A week, give or take. So what was wrong? Where had this sudden gloom come from?

  She hadn’t tired of the heavenly kingdom of Lograna, that wasn’t what was putting her in low spirits – though she knew the euphoria of the first few days couldn’t last for ever. Euphoria, she liked that word. Because if the word existed, so must the feeling. She remembered that poem by Gunnar Ekelöf they’d read in upper secondary; it was a shame that Swedish lessons hadn’t been devoted just to poetry, then she wouldn’t have disliked them as much as she had.

  But this was a different feeling. A sort of mournfulness, yes, and she realized it was her conversation with her mother that was lingering inside her and making her sad. And this above all: when life got fragile, her mother had always been the most important lifeline, and if she noticed that the line was stretched too thin, that it couldn’t really take her weight, well, that was when the darkness and the abyss suddenly loomed dangerously close.

  Young girl, dumb girl, try to be a brave girl, she tried telling herself. She sat with her pen and pad for a while, writing and crossing out one stupid line after another. It just wasn’t working, the words on the paper looked banal and meaningless as soon as she looked back at them, and she gave up after twenty minutes. She went out and stood under the little overhanging roof of the front door; she smoked a full pipe, making herself feel dizzy and slightly queasy. The rain was persistent and surrounded her with a thin but hostile wall, and she was very aware that if she had had access to a drug stronger than tobacco, she would have taken it without a moment’s hesitation.

  That’s the thing, she thought once she had lit a fresh fire and curled up under the blanket. It’s not enough to be strong ninety-nine times, you have to hang on through the hundredth, too.

  Although it was only seven o’clock, she fell asleep, and when she woke up two hours later the room was dark and the fire had gone out. She was really cold; without putting the light on, she grabbed her thicker top off the back of the chair and put it on, and it was then, glancing out of the window, that she saw a man standing out on the road, looking at the house.

  19

  Valdemar woke up with a tangible feeling of anxiety in his chest.

  Almost like shortness of breath. He clenched his fists and took several deep breaths before turning his head to look at the clock. Quarter past five. He wondered if he had been having a dream, and if that could be the source of the trouble.

  Hard to say; no dream images presented themselves, and he pinched his nostril and confirmed that he really was awake. Then he lay there thinking for a few minutes, and as it became clear that sleep had no intention of returning, he got up and went to the bathroom.

  Fifteen minutes later he was sitting fully dressed at the breakfast table, feeling poised for flight. That was a strong phrase, but even once he had given it some conscious thought, he realized it was the right one. Poised for flight? God almighty.

  But that was how things stood; with every passing day in the past few weeks – ever since he struck lucky with his pools coupon and became the owner of Lograna – the company of Alice and their daughters had grown harder to bear. It was like a growing itch, he thought, albeit accompanied by a powerful and well-founded sense of shame; but the prospect of having to get through the whole morning in the company of his nearest and dearest suddenly seemed almost intolerable.

  He thought about something his father had once said. It’s not the weeks and years that are hard, my boy, it’s the minutes and hours.

  And the anxiety he had woken up with was still there. In some strange way it all seemed to be getting mixed up with other images of his father. Later images, above all from that final period, when Eugen Roos was so dejected that he couldn’t bring himself to talk any more. Valdemar recalled those months very well. His father would spend virtually the whole day sitting by the kitchen window, staring out at the dismal rows of factory buildings on the other side of the railway tracks and not seeming to take any interest in anything going on around him.

  Like his wife and son trying to talk to him.

  Like visitors arriving. Like spring being on the way in the birches outside. Like the lilacs coming into bloom.

  As if he was drowning in his own inner darkness.

  And now here was his son, sitting staring out of a different kitchen window forty-seven years later – no railway and no factory buildings, a red-brick roof and some pollarded limes instead – as he asked himself whether he really had to wait two painful hours before he could set off for the place where everything even remotely essential to his life now happened.

  By the time it was twenty to seven and the risk of Alice starting to get up and make her presence felt had become imminent, he made up his mind. He fetched a piece of paper from the study and scribbled a note to say he had lots on at work and had therefore left a bit earlier than usual.