Fifteen years ago there were about fifty permanent residents out here in the archipelago. There was a boat ferrying four youngsters to and from the village school. This year there are only seven of us left, and only one is under the age of sixty. That’s Jansson. As the youngest, he is dependent on the rest of us keeping going, and insisting on living out here on the remote islands. Otherwise there’ll be no job for him.
But that’s irrelevant to me. I don’t like Jansson. He’s one of the most difficult patients I’ve ever had. He belongs to a group of extremely recalcitrant hypochondriacs. On one occasion a few years ago, when I’d examined his throat and checked his blood pressure, he suddenly said he thought he had a brain tumour that was affecting his eyesight. I said I didn’t have time to listen to his imaginings. But he insisted. Something was happening inside his brain. I asked him why he thought that. Did he have headaches? Did he have dizzy spells? Any other symptoms? He didn’t give up until I’d dragged him into the boathouse, where it was darker, and shone my special torch into his pupils, and told him that everything seemed to be normal.
I’m convinced that Jansson is basically as sound as a bell. His father is ninety-seven and lives in a care home, but his mind is clear. Jansson and his father fell out in 1970, and then Jansson stopped helping his father to fish for eels and went to work at a sawmill in Småland instead. I’ve never understood why he chose a sawmill. Naturally, I can understand his failing to put up with his tyrannical father any longer. But a sawmill? I really have no idea. However, since that trouble in 1970, they’ve not spoken to each other. Jansson didn’t return from Småland until his father was so old that he’d been taken into a home.
Jansson has an older sister called Linnea who lives on the mainland. She was married and used to run a cafe in the summer — but then her husband died. He collapsed on the hill down to the Co-op, whereupon she closed the cafe and found Jesus. She acts as messenger between father and son.
Jansson’s mother died many years ago. I met her once. She was already on her way into the shadows of senility, and was convinced I was her father, who had died in the 1920s. It was a horrible experience.
I wouldn’t have reacted so strongly now, but I was different in those days.
I don’t really know anything more about Jansson, apart from the fact that his first name is Ture and he’s a postman. I don’t know him, and he doesn’t know me. But whenever he sails round the headland, I’m generally standing on the jetty, waiting for him. I stand there wondering why, but I know I’ll never get an answer.
It’s like waiting for God, or for Godot; but instead, it’s Jansson who comes.
I sit down at the kitchen table and open the logbook I’ve been keeping for the past twelve years. I have nothing to say, and there’s nobody who might one day be interested in anything I write. But I write even so. Every day, all the year round, just a few lines. About the weather, the number of birds in the trees outside my window, my health. Nothing else. If I want, I can look up a particular date ten years ago and establish that there was a blue tit or an oystercatcher on the jetty when I went down there to wait for Jansson.
I keep a diary of a life that has lost its way.
The morning had passed.
It was time to pull my fur hat down over my ears, venture out into the bitter cold, stand on the jetty and wait for the arrival of Jansson. He must be frozen stiff in his hydrocopter when the weather’s as cold as this. I sometimes think I can detect a whiff of strong drink when he clambers on to the jetty. I don’t blame him.
When I stood up from the kitchen table, the animals came to life. The cat was the first to the door, the dog a long way behind. I let them out, put on an old, moth-eaten fur coat that belonged to my grand father, wrapped a scarf round my neck and reached for the thick fur hat with earflaps that dated back to military service during the Second World War. Then I set off for the jetty. It really was extremely cold. There was still not a sound to be heard. No birds, not even Jansson’s hydrocopter.
I could just picture him. He always looked as if he were driving an old-fashioned tram in the days when the driver had to stand outside at the mercy of the elements. His winter clothes were almost beyond description. Coats, overcoats, the ragged remains of a fur coat, even an old dressing gown, layer upon layer, on days as cold as this. I would ask him why he didn’t buy one of those special winter overalls I’d seen in a shop on the mainland. He’d say he didn’t trust them. The real reason was that he was too mean. He wore a fur hat similar to mine. His face was covered by a balaclava that made him look like a bank robber, and he wore an old pair of motorcycle goggles.
I often asked him if it wasn’t the Post Office’s responsibility to equip him with warm winter clothing. He mumbled something incomprehensible. Jansson wanted as little to do with the Post Office as possible, despite the fact that they were his employers.
There was a seagull frozen into the ice next to the jetty. Its wings were folded, its stiff legs sticking up straight out of the ice. Its eyes were like two glittering crystals. I released it and laid it on a stone on the shore. As I did so, I heard the sound of the hydrocopter’s engine. I didn’t need to check my watch, Jansson was on time. His previous stop would have been at Vesselsö. An old lady by the name of Asta Karolina Åkerblom lives there. She is eighty-eight years of age, has severe pains in her arms, but stubbornly refuses to move away from the island on which she was born. Jansson tells me her eyesight is poor, but even so she still knits jumpers and socks for her many grandchildren scattered all over the country. I wondered what the jumpers looked like. Is it really possible to knit and follow various patterns if one is half blind?
The hydrocopter came into view as it rounded the headland reaching out towards Lindsholmen. It is a remarkable sight as the insect-like vessel approaches and you can make out the muffled-up man at the wheel. Jansson switched off the engine, the big propeller fell silent, and he glided in towards the jetty, pulling off his goggles and balaclava. His face was red and sweaty.
‘I’ve got toothache,’ he said as he hauled himself up on to the jetty with considerable difficulty.
‘What am I supposed to do about that?’
‘You’re a doctor, aren’t you?’
‘I’m not a dentist.’
‘The pain is down here to the left.’
Jansson opened his mouth wide, as if he’d just caught sight of something horrific behind my back. My own teeth are in relatively good shape. I don’t normally need to visit the dentist more than once a year.
‘I can’t do anything. You need to see a dentist.’
‘You could take a look at least.’
Jansson was not going to give up. I went into the boathouse and fetched a torch and a spatula.
‘Open your mouth!’
‘It is open.’
‘Open wider.’
‘I can’t.’
‘I can’t see a thing. Turn your face this way!’
I shone the torch into Jansson’s mouth, and poked his tongue out of the way. His teeth were yellow and covered in tartar. He had a lot of fillings. But his gums seemed healthy, and I couldn’t see any holes.
‘I can’t see anything wrong.’
‘But it hurts.’
‘You’ll have to go to a dentist. Take a painkiller!’
‘I’ve run out.’
I produced a pack of painkillers from my medicine chest. He put it in his pocket. As usual, it never occurred to him to ask what he owed me. Neither for the consultation nor the painkillers. He takes my generosity for granted. That’s probably why I dislike him. It’s not easy when your closest friend is somebody you dislike.