‘I was asleep, and I woke up because the room was full of a searing light. I ran straight outside.’
‘I spoke to Bengt Alexandersson on the phone. He said the cause of the fire is still unclear.’
‘Did he say anything else?’
‘No. Just that the cause of the fire is unclear.’
I immediately felt that she wasn’t telling the truth. Alexandersson must have said something else. Did she know that I was suspected of having set fire to my own house?
I turned away and slowly walked back to the boathouse and the bench. I no longer had the desire to invite her into the caravan for a cup of coffee. She followed me and sat down beside me with her notepad and pen in her hand.
‘How do you survive?’ she asked.
‘You get out of the house as fast as you can.’
‘That’s not what I meant. How do you survive when you’ve lost everything you own?’
‘We really need very little in order to live.’
‘But what about all the memories? The family heirlooms? The photograph albums? The floors you have always walked on, the wallpaper you have seen every day, the doors you have opened and closed?’
‘The most important memories are preserved in my mind. I can’t weep over the fact that everything is gone. I have to decide what to do. I have no intention of allowing the fire to steal my life.’
‘Are you going to rebuild the house?’
‘I don’t know yet.’
‘But you were fully insured, of course?’
‘Yes.’
‘Including the contents?’
‘I don’t know.’
She jotted a few things down. I noticed that she used shorthand. She was still wearing her gloves. I ought to ask her what Alexandersson had really said.
She suddenly pulled a face and bent her head. I could see that she was in pain.
‘I’m wondering if I’ve slipped a disc,’ she said. ‘But maybe it’s just a stiff neck?’
I got to my feet.
‘I run a kind of doctor’s surgery from this bench,’ I said. ‘Would you like me to check?’
She looked as if she thought I was joking.
‘I could examine you,’ I said quietly. ‘It will only take a couple of minutes.’
She hesitated, but then she took off her scarf and unbuttoned her jacket. I felt her neck, gently pressing the vertebrae. Then I asked her to move her head and neck according to my instructions. I suspected it could well be a slipped disc, but she would need an X-ray to confirm my diagnosis.
Her body was warm. I wanted to rest my face against her skin. I asked her to carry out a few unnecessary movements just so that I could leave my hands where they were.
She put her scarf back on and promised to go for an X-ray. I suggested that we go into the caravan for a cup of coffee while we continued our conversation. First of all she took a couple of photographs of me sitting on the bench with the sea in the background, then she wanted me to go and stand right at the end of the jetty looking out to sea. I did as she said.
The caravan was very cramped with two people inside it at the same time. I sliced the brioche and set it out on a plate and served coffee in mismatched cups, which were all I had. I sat at the table on a stool, while Lisa sat on the bed with a cushion behind her back. She asked me about the history of the house and the island, how long I had lived there and how I saw my future.
The last question was the most difficult to answer. I simply said that I hadn’t yet made any decisions. The fire was still burning inside me.
‘That’s a beautiful way of putting it,’ she said. ‘Beautiful and terrifying.’
When she didn’t appear to have any further questions, I asked her how she had ended up working for the local newspaper. She told me she had split up with her husband and left Strängnäs, where she had been working for another local paper. She had moved here a year ago for the job, and I had a feeling that she wasn’t particularly happy.
She had no children. I didn’t ask, she just told me.
‘What will you be doing in ten years?’ I wondered.
‘Hopefully something I can’t even imagine today. What about you?’
‘I’ll give the same answer as you.’
‘But you’ll still be here? In a new house?’
I didn’t reply. We sat in silence as the alder branches tapped against the roof of the caravan.
‘I’ve never been out in the archipelago before,’ she said. ‘Strangely enough. Now I can see how beautiful it is.’
‘It has a particular beauty just before the winter. There’s nothing lovelier, although some people see it as desolate and frightening.’
‘I heard about one of the outer skerries where poor fishermen and their families used to live long ago. Apparently you can still see something of the foundations of their houses, and no one can understand how anyone could survive out there. I’d like to see that. But if I’ve understood correctly, no one is allowed to go ashore?’
‘That’s only during the birds’ breeding season. You can go there at this time of year.’
‘Have you been there?’
‘Many times. I can show you if you like.’
She immediately accepted my invitation.
‘Next Wednesday?’ she suggested. ‘If you have time? I realise you have a lot to think about at the moment.’
‘I’ve got all the time in the world.’
We carried on talking about the fire. She asked me to describe my former house, room by room. I told her about the rough oak timbers in the walls, how the trees had been felled in the northern reaches of the archipelago and dragged across the ice by horses. My grandfather had told me that one of the wagonloads had gone down near a small insignificant shallow that was known as Kejsaren, for some reason. Even if the ice was thick, treacherous cracks could appear in the vicinity of shallows or close to long shorelines. The horse, which according to my grandfather was called Rommel, had gone straight through the ice along with the driver, who was only twenty years old. No one had been around, no one had heard the screams. It wasn’t until late at night that the search had begun, by flickering torchlight. The following day the crack had sealed itself, and neither horse nor driver were found until the spring came and the ice loosened its grip.
I felt as if I was walking through my house once more. The cumulative impressions left by several generations had been obliterated in just a few short hours. Invisible traces of movements, words, silences, sorrows, suffering and laughter had disappeared. Even things that are invisible can be reduced to soot and ashes.
As we walked down to the boathouse I was already looking forward to Lisa’s return. Right now that was more important to me than the blackened ruins of my house.
I dropped her off in the harbour by the petrol pumps. We shook hands. I waited until she got into her car and drove off.
Back on the island I discovered that Jansson had been to collect his phone. He had placed a bag of freshly baked crisprolls in the metal box.
Jansson is a man of many talents. On one occasion he revealed that he was interested in how people had executed one another over the centuries. It turned out that he knew everything about strange, barbaric methods of execution. I listened in astonishment and with growing revulsion to the catalogue of human brutality until he abruptly stopped, as if he had realised that he had said too much.
But the most remarkable thing about Jansson is his clear, sonorous tenor voice. On Harriet’s last birthday he surprised us all by suddenly getting up from the table in the midsummer twilight and singing Schubert’s ‘Ave Maria’, the sound echoing across the water. We were all deeply moved and equally taken aback. No one knew he had such a powerful voice. However, when he was subsequently asked to join the church choir, he said no. No one has heard him sing since that birthday party, when Harriet sat with a garland of flowers in her hair just a few weeks before she died.