The forest was silent. I felt like a gnome making his way through the snow in some ancient fairy tale. We had only ever made love on her sofa bed. So that was where my daughter must have been created. When I left for America and Harriet had waited for me in vain at the airport, she would have known nothing about it. She only became aware of the situation later, and I had vanished by then.
I pumped up the water. Then I stood the buckets by the side of the pump and went into the abandoned house. The front door was rotten — it collapsed as I nudged it open with my foot.
I wandered round the rooms, which smelled of mould and rotten wood. It was like examining a shipwrecked liner. Bits of newspaper protruded from behind torn wallpaper. A page of Ljusnan from 12 March 1969: A car crash took place on... The rest of the article was missing. In this picture, Mrs Mattsson is displaying one of her most recent tapestries created with her customary loving care... The picture was torn, Mrs Mattsson’s face was still visible, and one of her hands, but no tapestry. In the bedroom was what was left of a double bed. It seemed to have been chopped to pieces with an axe. Somebody had vented his fury on the bed and made certain that it could never ever be slept in again.
I tried to conjure up images of the people who had lived in the house, and one day left it, never to return. But their faces were averted. Abandoned houses are like empty showcases in a museum. I left the building and tried to come to grips with the thought that I had acquired a daughter, out of the blue, who lived in the forest to the south of Hudiksvall. A daughter who must be thirty-seven years of age, and lived in a caravan. A woman who walked through the snow in a pink dressing gown and high-heeled shoes.
One thing was clear to me.
Harriet had not prepared her for this. She knew that she had a father, of course, but not that I was him. I was not the only one to be surprised. Harriet had astounded us both.
I picked up the buckets and started to make my way back. Why was my daughter living in a caravan in the depths of the forest? Who was she? When we shook hands, I hadn’t dared to look her in the eye. She was surrounded by a strong smell of perfume. Her hand was sweaty.
I put down the buckets to rest my arms.
‘Louise,’ I said aloud to myself. ‘I have a daughter called Louise.’
The words struck me dumb, made me a little afraid, but also exhilarated. Harriet had come to me over the ice in Jansson’s hydrocopter, bringing with her news about life, and not just the death that would soon claim her.
I picked up the buckets again and carried them to the caravan. I knocked on the door. Louise opened it. She was still wearing the high-heeled shoes, but she had replaced the pink dressing gown with trousers and a jumper. She had a very attractive figure. She made me feel embarrassed.
The caravan was cramped. Harriet had squeezed on to a bench-cum-bed behind a little table in front of the window. She was smiling. I smiled back at her. It was warm in the caravan. Louise was busy making coffee.
Louise had a lovely voice, just like her mother’s. If ice could sing, so could my daughter.
I looked round the caravan. Dried roses hanging from the ceiling, a shelf with documents and letters, an old-fashioned typewriter on a stool. A radio but no television set. I started worrying about the kind of life she led. It seemed reminiscent of my own.
And now you’ve turned up in my life, I thought. The most unexpected thing that has ever happened to me.
Louise produced a Thermos of coffee and some plastic mugs. I sat down on the bed next to Harriet. Louise remained standing, looking at me.
‘I’m pleased to note that I haven’t burst out crying,’ she said. ‘But I’m even more pleased to note that you haven’t gone overboard and insisted how happy you are about what you’ve just discovered.’
‘It hasn’t sunk in yet. But then again, I never get so excited that I lose control of myself.’
‘Maybe you think it’s not true?’
I thought about all those dust-covered bundles of legal documents containing statements made by young men swearing that they were not the father.
‘I’m quite sure it’s true.’
‘Do you feel sad because you didn’t know about me sooner? Because I’ve come into your life so late?’
‘I’m pretty immune to sadness,’ I said. ‘Just now I’m more surprised than anything else. Until an hour ago, I didn’t have any children. I didn’t think I ever would.’
‘What do you do for a living?’
I looked at Harriet. So she hadn’t told Louise anything at all about her father, not even that he was a doctor. That shocked me. What had she said about me? That her daughter had a father who was just a ship passing in the night?
‘I’m a doctor. Or was a doctor, rather.’
Louise looked quizzically at me, coffee mug in hand. I noticed that she had a ring on every one of her fingers, and her thumbs as well.
‘What sort of a doctor?’
‘I was a surgeon.’
She pulled a face. I thought about my father, and his reaction when I told him at the age of fifteen what I wanted to be.
‘Can you write prescriptions?’
‘Not any more. I’m retired.’
‘More’s the pity.’
Louise put down her mug of coffee and pulled a woolly hat over her head.
‘If you need a pee you go behind the caravan, then cover it up with snow afterwards. If you need to do something more substantial, you use the dry closet next to the woodshed.’
She went out, slightly unsteady on her high-heeled shoes. I turned to Harriet.
‘Why didn’t you tell me about her? It’s disgraceful!’
‘Don’t you talk to me about disgraceful behaviour! I didn’t know how you would react.’
‘It would have been easier if you’d prepared me for it.’
‘I didn’t dare. Maybe you’d have thrown me out of the car and left me by the roadside. How could I know if you really wanted a child?’
Harriet was right. She couldn’t have known how I would react. She had every reason to distrust me.
‘Why does she live like this? What does she do for a living?’
‘It’s her choice. I don’t know what she does.’
‘But you must have some idea?’
‘She writes letters.’
‘Surely she can’t make a living out of that?’
‘It seems to be possible.’
It occurred to me that the caravan walls were thin, and that my daughter might be standing out there with her ear pressed up against the cold plastic, or whatever it was. Perhaps she had inherited my tendency to eavesdrop?
I lowered my voice to a whisper.
‘Why does she look like she does? Why does she walk around in the snow wearing high heels?’
‘My daughter —’
‘Our daughter!’
‘Our daughter has always had a mind of her own. Even when she was five, I had the feeling that she knew exactly what she wanted to do with her life, and that I would never be able to make her out.’
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘She’s always chosen to live her life without worrying too much about what other people think. Her shoes, for example. They are very expensive. Ajello, made in Milan. Very few people dare to live the way she does.’
The door opened, and our daughter came back in.
‘I need to rest,’ said Harriet. ‘I’m tired.’
‘You’ve always been tired,’ said Louise.
‘I haven’t always been dying.’
For a brief moment, they were hissing at each other, like cats. Not exactly in a nasty way, but not exactly friendly either. In any case, neither of them seemed to be surprised by the other’s reaction. So Louise was aware of the fact that her mother was dying.