“Are you lost?”
The child stared up at him, with those hiccups that often follow weeping. Håkan looked around. The workers had not seen him—or had ignored him.
“Do you live in the big house?”
Håkan thought the child nodded. Either way, the castle with its adjacent buildings was the only house around. Perhaps he could leave the girl (without knowing why, he had decided that it was a girl) with one of the workers and be on his way. He dismounted and very gently picked up the child and sat her on the saddle. To keep her distracted, he gave her a stuffed fox paw, which she found endlessly fascinating. Slowly, he walked the horse toward the house. As he got closer, the laborers dropped whatever they were doing and stared at him, the horse, and the child. Håkan, in turn, noticed that they were Indians. They wore only white clothes, which were, in every case, spotless, even if they were all working with shovels, pruning shears, and hoes, and handling those dark berries. He locked eyes with a young woman. He stopped the horse and then nodded toward the child and the house. The woman nodded yes. With a gesture, Håkan conveyed that he was going to pick up the girl and hand her over to the woman. She recoiled and looked down. Håkan turned to the rest of the workers, who also dropped their heads and avoided all contact. The little girl played with her fox paw. He would leave her in some safe spot, close to the house, from which she would surely be seen, and turn around without having to engage with any of its occupants.
As he reached the front garden, full of vibrant, strange flowers and hedges pruned into straight walls, a lady in a lavender dress came running out of the house, screaming in a language Håkan did not recognize. She rushed toward the girl, picked her up, gently scolded her, wiped her face clean with a handkerchief she produced from her sleeve, and covered her with kisses. Noticing the fox paw, she asked the girl something. She pointed at Håkan.
“Oh dear. Pardon me,” she said with a thick foreign accent. “The excitement. You found her, yes?”
Håkan nodded.
“Thank you, sir. She always does this. You don’t look and poof, she’s gone. All the time. Terrible when the night comes. Ay, ay, ay, ay!” she said, pinching the girl’s cheek and kissing her again.
Håkan looked down and raised his hand to indicate he was leaving.
“No, no, no, no,” she remonstrated. “We must thank you. Please.”
“No, thank you.”
“But you look so tired.”
“No, thank you.”
“Yes, sir. Food and drink.”
Just then, a stately man, impeccably dressed in tails and with a perfectly groomed white beard that looked very much like the surrounding garden, walked out the door, down the steps, and toward them. Håkan found it strange that they were probably the same age. Before he was halfway there, the lady had explained to him, in her language, pointing at the girl, the fields, and Håkan, everything that had happened. The man arrived with an outstretched hand.
“Many thanks, sir, for finding my adventurous daughter and bringing her back to safety.”
He noticed the fox paw, took it from his daughter’s hand, examined it while she whined, and then gave it back to her.
“You made this?”
“Yes.”
“Do you like wine?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, sir, you’re about to find out.”
“Edith, please make sure the gentleman gets a glass of claret,” the man told the lady as he started to turn back to the house.
“Yes, Captain.”
“And some meat,” he added, briskly walking away.
“Thank you. I’m leaving,” said Håkan. “I must go.”
The captain stopped, paused, as if suddenly remembering something, and then turned around.
“Where are you from?” he asked.
Håkan hesitated. Did people know that the Hawk was Swedish? Even if they did, he was unable to lie. He knew nothing about other countries.
“Sweden.”
“Ha!” The captain, excited, tapped himself on the forehead and walked back to Håkan. “Jo men visst! Självklart!” he exclaimed, holding Håkan warmly by the shoulders. “Ert å lät så utomordentligt svenskt, förstår ni: I must gå. Ingen här, i Amerika, kan uttala gå just på det viset. Kapten Altenbaum. En ära.”
“Håkan.” He paused. “Söderström.”
“Får jag visa herr Söderström runt på godset? Och jag skulle bli väldigt glad om jag fick bjuda på ett glas vin.”
Captain Altenbaum was from Finland but, like most wealthy men in that country, had been raised in Swedish. He gave Edith some instructions and told one of the Indians to feed Håkan’s horse. Before it was taken away, Håkan took the bundle with his belongings from the saddle.
“You can leave your things. They’ll be safe.”
Håkan looked down and clutched his rolled-up lion coat that contained his few possessions. The captain nodded and led him toward a building a few hundred paces away from the main house.
The grounds around the castle were like nothing he had ever seen. The triumph of man over nature was complete. Every plant had been forced into some artificial shape; every animal had been domesticated; every body of water had been contained and redirected. And all around, Indians in white made sure that each blade of grass stayed in place. Captain Altenbaum pointed out every detail. He spoke in Swedish and used many words Håkan did not know. Having heard Swedish only in his head since he had lost Linus—being its only speaker and modeling it after his own thoughts—Håkan found it almost impossible to reconcile those words with the captain’s voice and to believe that they could mean anything to anyone other than himself. An additional surprise was that he, Håkan, did not feel more confident or safer speaking in his native tongue. He discovered, now, that his shyness, his vacillation, his preference for silence had nothing to do with language. He was the same in Swedish. This quiet, hesitant being was simply who he was or had become.
As they moved away from the main house, the greenery regained some of its wildness, and the place gradually started looking like an ordinary working farm. Still, there were few animals (probably just enough to support the household), and most activities had to do with the long rows of tormented shrubs.
“My vines,” the captain said, sweeping the fields with his upturned palm. “But more about that later. First you. Tell me, please, Mr. Söderström, what are you doing so far away from home? Gold?”
Håkan shook his head. A long pause. He had never told his story in Swedish.
“I was going to New York. I got on the wrong boat. I lost my brother. Since then.” Håkan finished the sentence by gesturing toward the world around them. “I’ve been. I’ve been.”
During the ensuing silence, as he considered Håkan’s few words and the restrained despair that leaked through the silence between them, the captain’s brow darkened, affected by his visitor’s plight.
“I must leave,” Håkan said at last.
“But you just got here.”
“No. This country. I must go away.”
“Well, Mr. Söderström, I may just be able to help. But not if you refuse my claret again.”
They went into the most unassuming building on the premises. The structure was revealed to be the entrance to a long staircase. With each step down, the temperature and the light decreased. At the end of the stairwell, a corridor led them to a vast, dim cellar—the biggest indoor space Håkan had ever seen. It was full of barrels lying horizontally on wooden cradles in neat rows that faded into the dark. The walls were covered with labeled bottles. They sat at a table in a corner. Captain Altenbaum uncorked one of the barrels and, with an oversized pipette, drew some of the black content, which he poured into two stemmed glasses.