As I sat in the car with Harriet by my side, it occurred to me that there was nothing else in my life that I could recall in such vivid detail as the time at the pool with my father. Although it had happened fifty-five years ago, I could see the whole of my life summed up in that image: my father swimming alone and naked in the forest pool. Me, standing naked among the trees, watching him. Two people belonging together, but already quite different.
That’s the way life is: one person swims, another watches.
I started to reassess returning to the pool. It was now more than a matter of keeping a promise I’d made to Harriet. I would also have the pleasure of seeing again something I never thought I would.
We travelled through a winter wonderland.
Freezing fog hovered over the white fields. Smoke was rising from the chimneys. Small icicles were hanging down from the thousands of dishes pointing their metallic eyes towards distant satellites.
After a few hours, I stopped at a petrol station. I needed to top up the windscreen washer fluid, and we also had to eat. Harriet headed for the grill bar attached to the petrol station. I watched how cautiously she moved, one painful step at a time. By the time I got there, she had already sat down and started eating. The day’s special was smoked sausage. I ordered a fish fillet from the main menu. Harriet and I were just about the only diners. A lorry driver was sitting at a corner table, half asleep over a cup of coffee. I could read from the logo on his jacket that his job was to ‘Keep Sweden Going’.
What are we doing? I wondered. Harriet and I, on our journey northwards? Are we keeping our country going? Or are we peripheral, of no significance?
Harriet chewed away at her smoked sausage. I observed her wrinkled hands, and thought about how they had once upon a time caressed my body and filled me with a sense of well-being that I had hardly ever found again later in life.
The lorry driver stood up and left the cafe.
A girl with a heavily made-up face and a dirty apron served me my fish. Somewhere in the background I could hear the faint sound of a radio. I could gather that it was the news, but I had no idea what was being said. Earlier in my life I was the kind of person who was always eager to discover the latest news. I would read, listen and watch. The world demanded my presence. One day two little girls drowned in the Göta Canal, another day a president was assassinated. I always needed to know. During my years of increasing isolation on my grandparents’ island, that habit had gradually deserted me. I never read the newspapers, and watched the television news only every other day at most.
Harriet left most of the food on her plate untouched. I fetched her a cup of coffee. Snowflakes had begun to drift down outside the window. The cafe was still empty. Harriet took her walker and disappeared into the toilet. When she came back, her eyes were glazed. It worried me without my being able to explain why. I could hardly blame her for trying to deaden the pain. Nor could I very well take responsibility for her secret drinking.
It was as if Harriet had read my thoughts. She suddenly asked me what I was thinking about.
‘About Rome,’ I said evasively. I don’t know why. I once attended a conference for surgeons in Rome that had been exhausting and badly organised. I skipped the last two days and instead explored the Villa Borghese. I moved out of the big five-star hotel where the conference delegates were staying, and moved to Dinesens’ Guest House where Karen Blixen once used to be a regular guest. I flew from Rome convinced that I would never return.
‘Is that all?’
‘That’s all. I wasn’t thinking about anything else.’
But that wasn’t true. I had in fact returned to Rome two years later. The major catastrophe had taken place, and I rushed away from Stockholm in a frenzy in order to find peace and quiet. I remember dashing to Arlanda airport without a ticket. The next flights to southern Europe were to Madrid and Rome. I chose Rome because the travelling time was shorter.
I spent a week wandering round the streets, my mind full of the great injustice that had stricken me. I drank far too much, occasionally got into bad company, and was mugged on my last evening. I returned to Sweden severely beaten up, with my nose looking like a blood-soaked dumpling. A doctor at the Southern Hospital straightened it out and gave me some painkillers. After that, Rome was the last place on earth I ever wanted to visit again.
‘I’ve been to Rome,’ said Harriet. ‘My whole life has revolved around shoes. What I thought was just a coincidence when I was young, working in a shoe shop because my father had once worked as a foreman at Oscaria in Örebro, turned out to be something that would affect the whole of my life. All I’ve ever done, really, is wake up morning after morning and think about shoes. I once went to Rome and stayed there for a month as an apprentice to an old master craftsman who made shoes for the richest feet in the world. He devoted as much care to each pair as Stradivari did to his violins. He used to believe feet had personalities of their own. An opera singer — I can no longer remember her name — had spiteful feet that never took their shoes seriously or showed them any respect. On the other hand, a Hungarian businessman had feet that displayed tenderness towards their shoes. I learned something from that old man about both shoes and art. Selling shoes was never the same again after that.’
We set off again.
I had started to think about where we should spend the night. It wasn’t dark yet, but I preferred not to drive in bad light. My sight had deteriorated in recent years.
The winter landscape’s uniformity gave it a special kind of beauty. We were travelling through country where practically nothing happened. Though now as we passed over the brow of a hill we both noticed a dog sitting by the side of the road. I braked in case it suddenly darted out in front of the car. When we’d passed it, Harriet remarked that it had a collar. I could see in the rear-view mirror that it had started following the car. When I slowed again, it caught up with us.
‘It’s following us,’ I said.
‘I think it’s been abandoned.’
‘Why do you think that?’
‘Dogs that run after cars usually bark. But this one isn’t barking.’
She was right. I pulled up on the hard shoulder. The dog sat down, its tongue hanging out of its mouth. When I reached out, it didn’t move. I took hold of its collar, and saw that it had a disc with a telephone number. Harriet took out her mobile phone and dialled the number. She handed the phone to me. Nobody answered.
‘There’s nobody there.’
‘If we drive off, the dog may run after us until it drops dead.’
Harriet took the phone and called directory enquiries.
‘The owner is Sara Larsson, who lives at Högtunet Farm in Rödjebyn. Do we have a map?’
‘Not a sufficiently large-scale one.’
‘We can’t just leave the dog on the road.’
I got out and opened the back door. The dog immediately jumped in and curled up. A lonely dog, I thought. No different from a lonely person.
After five or six miles we came to a little village with a general store. I went in and asked about Högtunet Farm. The shop assistant was young and wearing a baseball cap back to front. He drew a map for me.
‘We’ve found a dog,’ I said.
‘Sara Larsson has a spaniel,’ said the shop assistant. ‘Perhaps it’s run away?’
I returned to the car, gave Harriet the hand-drawn map and drove back the way we’d come. All the time the dog lay curled up on the back seat. But I could see that it was alert. Harriet guided me into a side road hidden between banks of snow carved by the snowplough. It was disorientating entering this white corridor, all sense of direction lost. The road meandered along between fir trees heavily laden with snow. Though the road had been ploughed nothing had been through since last snowfall.