I spent a long time searching for my watch, but without success. I even pulled out a few tent pegs to see if it might somehow have ended up under the groundsheet, but it was nowhere to be seen. My watch had disappeared, and that was that.
For two days nothing much happened. The wind rose and fell, at times almost reaching gale force. Louise and I spent most of our time in the caravan. I resumed my habit of taking a dip in the cold water in the mornings. I tried to persuade Louise to come with me, but she refused. When I had finished, she washed herself at the water pump. I could hear her puffing and blowing, cursing the icy water.
I wondered why we were behaving so oddly: two adults who couldn’t bring themselves to discuss the new generation that was on its way. What was it that made both of us so ill equipped for something that would be a normal conversation for normal people?
We did, however, talk about the matter of rebuilding the house. As long as the police investigation was ongoing and the prosecutor was considering his options, I wouldn’t receive a payout from the insurance company, but we couldn’t stay in the caravan when the winter came.
At around lunchtime on the second day I called my insurance company. It took a while to get through to someone who was able to access my details. He introduced himself as Jonas Andersson. I searched my memory, but I had no recollection of ever having met him. He spoke much too quickly and seemed keen to end the conversation as soon as possible. He hadn’t heard about the fire because I hadn’t yet submitted a claim. Nor had he read anything about the suspicion that the fire had been started deliberately. Perhaps I was speaking to a young man who belonged to the generation that had given up reading altogether — not just newspapers, but books as well?
The brief conversation with Jonas Andersson was an ordeal. I didn’t mention that the police investigation might well result in charges against me. He could find that out for himself. Most importantly, he was able to confirm that my premium had been paid on time.
My insurance was valid. The company would pay the full amount necessary to rebuild the house, although of course it would never be as solid a piece of workmanship as the house that had been built in the nineteenth century. There would be no oak beams in the walls, nor would the porch boast the same ornate carpentry as my old house.
I wondered if the insurance also covered charred apple trees, but I didn’t ask. Jonas Andersson probably wasn’t interested in that kind of thing.
I was sitting in the caravan while I made the call; Louise stood by the door, listening. Andersson’s voice was quite loud, so she probably heard everything he had to say. At the end of the conversation he said that he or someone else would come out to inspect the site of the fire. He used a strange expression: the site of the fire would be visually assessed. This would happen within a few days.
He didn’t ask where I was living at the moment, nor did he comment on the fact that all my possessions had gone up in flames. I assumed his main responsibility was to ensure that the company didn’t pay out unnecessarily.
‘The insurance is valid,’ I said when we had ended the call. ‘Unless of course I’m charged and convicted of arson.’
‘What happens then?’
‘I’ll end up in prison. And the insurance company won’t pay for a new house.’
The weather had gradually improved. After the blustery winds came clear skies and unexpected warmth. Once a day I went up the hill to look for the windsurfer, but the sea was empty. No boats, no black sails.
When the migration of the birds is over, the archipelago is quiet. The sound of the waves and the sighing of the wind, nothing more.
One evening I came across Louise looking very disheartened. She was sitting on the bench by the boathouse with her head in her hands. I had just come down the hill when I saw her. I watched her for a few moments but didn’t make my presence known. More and more we seemed to spend our time secretly watching one another. We were afraid. My fear stemmed from the fact that I felt as if I knew less and less about my pregnant daughter. And perhaps in me she saw what old age does to a person.
It was ten o’clock in the morning on the first Tuesday in November when I heard the sound of an engine. The wind was coming from the south and the archipelago was quiet, so I heard the boat from a long way off. It wasn’t Jansson. I didn’t recognise the engine at all. I had never seen the boat that rounded the headland; it was a white plastic vessel with a powerful inboard motor, and it had the unusual name Drabant II. I wondered what kind of an idiot had given the boat a horse’s name.
For once both Louise and I went down to the jetty to meet our visitor.
It was a representative from the insurance company, but not Jonas Andersson. The man introduced himself as Torsten Myllgren. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-five years old. I had always imagined that assessors would be experienced individuals who had checked out and dealt with many different types of insurance claim. Torsten Myllgren appeared to be an overgrown teenager.
The person driving the boat was considerably older; with a limp and sweaty handshake. He introduced himself in a high-pitched voice as Hasse, if I heard him correctly. When I asked Louise, it transpired that she wasn’t too sure of his name either.
We went up to the site of the fire. I was expecting Myllgren to inform me that he knew the police were investigating the possibility of arson, but he said nothing. He was wearing orange overalls, and I was pleased to see sturdy green Swedish wellingtons on his feet. I almost asked him where he had bought them. He was carrying a large notepad, and started jotting things down as soon as we reached the blackened ruins.
Hasse lit a large cigar, standing in a spot that was sheltered from the wind by the caravan. I wondered if he was employed by the insurance company to ferry their representatives around the archipelago. The cigar smoke drifted up to Louise and me as we watched Myllgren stomping around. From time to time he stopped and took pictures with his phone. He also used a small Dictaphone to make verbal notes.
‘What’s he looking for?’ Louise said. ‘I mean, he can’t tell what the house used to be like.’
‘I don’t know. You’ll have to ask him.’
‘I’m glad I don’t wake up next to a man like that every morning.’
I was taken aback by her comment, but at the same time I realised she had given me an opportunity to ask the most important question of all.
‘Which man do you want to wake up next to?’
‘You’ll find out when you meet him.’
Asking any more questions would be pointless.
We carried on watching Myllgren.
‘What’s he searching for?’ Louise said.
‘The truth. If it exists.’
Louise took my arm. She nodded in the direction of the hill and my grandfather’s bench. We had only just sat down when she started talking.
‘You remember I was in Amsterdam when we spoke on the phone a few weeks before the house burned down?’
‘Yes, I remember. It sounded as if you were in a cafe.’
‘What do you think I was doing in Amsterdam?’
‘I don’t even want to hazard a guess.’
‘I’ll tell you. I go there several times a year. As you know, the Rijksmuseum — the national gallery of the Netherlands, where a number of Rembrandt’s paintings are preserved — is there. I never tire of looking at his work. No one could fail to be moved by these masterpieces. If such people do exist, then they must be completely immune to art. However, I wasn’t actually there to see the pictures; I was there to help other people visit the gallery. There is a small group, mostly from Holland but also from other countries, who have set up an agreement with the Rijksmuseum. We collect money, we organise cars and ambulances. Our aim is very simple: we offer terminally ill individuals whose life expectancy is very short and who long to see Rembrandt’s paintings just once more the opportunity to make a final visit. Once every four months the gallery opens just for these people, who arrive on stretchers or in wheelchairs. They are lying down or half-sitting, often in severe pain because they have all temporarily eschewed any form of analgesic in order to have a clear head when they face Rembrandt. Most of them want to see his self-portraits, mainly the ones in which he is an old man. This meeting, face to face, makes the transition between life and death less painful. Perhaps you thought I was in Amsterdam because drugs are regarded differently in Holland, that I went there to smoke weed? That wasn’t the case. Now you know something about me that you didn’t know before.’