She left the woodpecker and walked past an old run-down vegetable garden that had clearly not been tended for many years. What do I know about her? Linda thought. And what am I doing here? She stopped and listened. At that particular moment, in the shade of the high trees, she was no longer worried about Anna. There was surely a reasonable explanation for why she was staying away. Linda turned and started walking back to the car.
The woodpecker had flown away. Everything changes, she thought. People and woodpeckers, my dreams and all that time I thought I had but that keeps slipping out of my fingers despite my best attempts to keep it dammed up. She pulled her invisible reins and came to a halt. Why was she walking away? Now that she had come this far in Anna’s car, the least she could do was say hello to Henrietta. Without betraying her anxieties, without making pressing inquiries about Anna’s whereabouts. She might just be in Lund, and I don’t have her number there. I’ll ask Henrietta for it.
She followed the path through the trees again and finally came to a half-timbered, whitewashed house covered in wild roses. A cat lay on the stone steps and studied her movements warily as Linda approached. A window was open and just as she bent down to stroke the cat, she heard noises from inside. Henrietta’s music, she thought.
Then she stood up and caught her breath.
What she had heard wasn’t music. It was the sound of a woman sobbing.
9
Somewhere inside the house a dog started to bark. Linda felt as though she had been caught in the act and quickly rang the doorbell. It took a while for Henrietta to open the door. When she did she was restraining an angry gray dog by the collar.
“She won’t bite,” Henrietta said. “Come in.”
Linda never felt completely at ease in the presence of strange dogs and so she hesitated slightly before crossing the threshold. As soon as she did so the dog relaxed, as if Linda had crossed over into a no-barking zone. Henrietta let go of the dog. Linda hadn’t remembered Henrietta so thin and frail. What was it Anna had said about her? That she wasn’t even fifty years old. It was true that her face looked young, but her body looked much older even than fifty. The dog, Pathos, sniffed Linda’s legs, then retreated to her basket and lay down.
Linda thought about the sobbing that she had heard through the window. There were no traces of tears on Henrietta’s face. Linda looked past her into the rest of the house, but there was no sign of anyone else. Henrietta caught her gaze.
“Are you looking for Anna?”
“No.”
Henrietta burst out laughing.
“Well, I’m stumped. First you call and then you drop by for a visit. What’s happened? Is Anna still missing?”
Linda was taken aback by Henrietta’s directness, but welcomed it.
“Yes.”
Henrietta shrugged, then directed Linda into the big room — the result of many walls being removed — that served as both living room and studio.
“My guess is that Anna must be in Lund. She holes up there from time to time. The theoretical component of her studies is apparently very demanding, and Anna is no theoretician. I don’t know who she takes after. Not me, not her father. Herself.”
“Do you have a phone number for her in Lund?”
“No, I’m not even sure she has a phone there. She rents a room in a house and doesn’t like to give out the address.”
“Isn’t that a bit odd?”
“Why? Anna is secretive by nature. If you don’t leave her alone she can get very angry. Didn’t you know that about her?”
“No. She doesn’t have a cell phone either?”
“She’s one of the few people who’s still holding out,” Henrietta said. “Even I have one. In fact, I don’t see the need for the old-fashioned kind anymore. But that’s neither here nor there. No, Anna doesn’t have a cell phone.”
Henrietta stopped as if she had suddenly thought of something. Linda looked around the room. Someone had been crying. It hadn’t occurred to her that it might have been Anna until Henrietta asked her if that was what she was doing, looking for her here. But it couldn’t have been Anna, she thought. Why would she be crying? She’s not a person who cries very much. Once when we were girls she fell off the jungle gym and hurt herself. She cried that time, but it’s the only time I remember. Even when we both fell in love with Tomas I was the one who cried; she was just angry.
Linda looked at Henrietta, who was standing in a beam of light in the middle of the polished wooden floor. She had an angular profile, just like Anna.
“I don’t get visitors very often,” she said suddenly, as if that was what had been foremost in her mind. “People avoid me just as I avoid them. I know they think I’m eccentric. That’s what comes of living alone out in the country with only a greyhound for company, composing music no one wants to listen to. It doesn’t help matters that I’m still legally married to the man who left me twenty-four years ago.”
Linda sensed a tone of bitterness and loneliness in Henrietta’s voice.
“What are you working on right now?”
“Please don’t feel you have to make polite conversation. Why did you drop by? Was it really that you’re still worried about Anna?”
“I borrowed her car. My grandfather used to live in these parts and I thought I would take a drive. I’m feeling a little bored these days.”
“Until you get to put on your uniform?”
“Yes.”
Henrietta brought out a coffeepot and cups and set them on the table.
“I don’t understand why an attractive girl like you would choose to become a police officer. Breaking up fights on the street, that’s what I imagine it to be. I know there must be other aspects to the job, but that’s what always comes to mind.”
She poured the coffee.
“But perhaps you’re going to sit behind a desk,” she added.
“No, I’ve been assigned to a patrol car and will probably be doing a lot of the work you would expect. Someone has to be prepared to jump into the fray.”
Henrietta leaned to the side with her hand tucked under her chin.
“And that’s what you’re going to dedicate your life to?”
Her comments put Linda on the defensive, as if she were in danger of being contaminated by Henrietta’s bitterness.
“I don’t know what looks have got to do with it. I’m almost thirty and on good days I’m generally happy with how I look, but I’ve never dreamed of being Miss Sweden. But more to the point, what would happen to our society if there were no police? My dad is a policeman and I’ve never had any reason to be ashamed of him.”
Henrietta shook her head.
“I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
Linda still felt angry. She felt a need to strike back, though she couldn’t really say why.
“I thought I heard the sound of someone crying in here when I walked up to your house.”
Henrietta smiled.
“It’s a recording I have. I’m working on a requiem and I mix my music with the sound of someone crying.”
“I don’t even know what a requiem is.”
“A funeral mass. That’s almost all I write these days.”
Henrietta got up and walked over to the grand piano by the window, which overlooked open fields and then the rolling hills leading down to the sea. Next to the piano there was a table with a tape recorder as well as a synthesizer and other electronic equipment. Henrietta turned on the tape player. A woman’s voice came on, wailing and sobbing. It was the one Linda had heard through the window. Her curiosity about this strange woman increased.