‘You’re too cowardly to admit that what I say is true. You didn’t have the courage then to say that you wanted us to stop seeing each other. You ran away then, and you’re running away now. Can’t you bring yourself to tell the truth just once? Is there no truth in you at all?’
Before I had chance to say anything, Louise chipped in that a man who had abandoned Harriet in the way I had done could hardly be expected to react to an unexpected child with anything but indifference, perhaps fear, and at most with a bit of curiosity.
‘I can’t go along with that,’ I said. ‘I’ve apologised for what I did, and I couldn’t have known anything about a child because you never told me.’
‘How could I tell you when you’d run away?’
‘In the car on the way to the forest pool, you said you’d never tried to find me.’
‘Are you accusing a dying person of lying?’
‘I’m not accusing anybody.’
‘Tell it as it is!’ yelled Louise. ‘Answer her question!’
‘What question?’
‘Why you’re indifferent.’
‘I’m not indifferent. I’m pleased.’
‘I see no sign of pleasure in you.’
‘There’s not enough room in this caravan to dance on the table! If that’s what you’d like me to do.’
‘Don’t think for one moment I’m doing this for you,’ screeched Harriet. ‘I’m doing it for her sake.’
We yelled and shouted. The walls of the cramped caravan came close to collapsing. Deep down, of course, I knew that what they were saying was true. I had let Harriet down, and perhaps I hadn’t displayed enough ebullient happiness on meeting my daughter. Nevertheless, this was too much. I couldn’t take it. I don’t know how long we carried on with this pointless shouting and sparring. On several occasions I expected Louise to clench her boxer’s fists and give me a telling punch. I daren’t even begin to think about what level Harriet’s blood pressure reached. In the end I stood up, grabbed my bag and my jacket and shoes.
‘Go to hell, the pair of you!’ I yelled as I stormed out of the caravan.
Louise didn’t follow me out. Neither of them said a word. Everything was silent. I walked down to the car in my stockinged feet, got in and drove off. Not until I came to the main road did I stop, remove my soaking wet socks and put on my shoes over my bare feet.
I was still upset about the accusations. During the journey the exchanges came back to me in my head, over and over again. I sometimes changed what I had said, made my responses clearer, sharper. But what they had said was the same all the time.
I reached Stockholm in the middle of the night, having driven far too quickly; I slept in the car for a while until it became too cold, then continued as far as Södertälje. I hadn’t the strength to drive any further. I checked into a motel, and fell asleep the moment my head touched the pillow. At about one the next day I continued my journey south, having telephoned Jansson and left a message on his answering machine: could he collect me at half past five? I wasn’t sure how he felt about driving in the dark. I crossed my fingers and hoped he would check his messages and had some decent headlights on his hydrocopter.
Jansson was waiting when I arrived at the harbour. He told me he had been feeding the animals every day. I thanked him and said I was in a hurry to get home.
When we arrived, Jansson refused to accept any payment.
‘I can’t take a fare from my doctor.’
‘I’m not your doctor. We can settle up the next time you come.’
I remained standing on the jetty until he had disappeared behind the rocks and the lights had faded away. I suddenly noticed that my cat and my dog were sitting next to me on the jetty. I bent down to stroke them. The dog seemed to be thinner than he had been. I left my rucksack on the jetty, I was too tired to see to it.
There were three of us on this island, just as there had been three of us in the caravan. But nobody would be launching an attack on me here. It was a relief to enter my own kitchen again. I fed the animals, sat down at the kitchen table and closed my eyes.
I had difficulty in sleeping that night. I got out of bed again and again. It was full moon, the sky was clear. The moonlight oozed over the rocks and the white ice. I put on my boots and fur coat and went down to the jetty. The dog didn’t notice that I had gone out, and the cat opened an eye but didn’t stir from the sofa. It was cold outside. My suitcase had somehow burst open, shirts and socks had fallen out. For the second time, I left it to its fate.
It was while I was standing there on the jetty that I realised I had another journey to make. For twelve years I had succeeded in convincing myself that it wasn’t necessary, but the meeting with Louise and our long nocturnal conversation had changed all that. I was obliged to undertake this new journey. And I now wanted to do it.
Somewhere in Sweden there was a young woman who had lost an arm — the wrong arm amputated by me. She was twenty years old when it happened, so now she would be thirty-two. I could remember her name: Agnes Klarström. As I stood on the jetty, all the details came back to me — as if I had just reread her case notes. She came from one of the southern suburbs of Stockholm, Aspudden or Bagarmossen. It had all started as a pain in her shoulder. She was an outstanding swimmer and took part in competitions. For a long time she and her trainer assumed it was due to overexertion, but when it came to the point that she could no longer enter a pool without severe shoulder pains, she went to a doctor for a thorough examination. Then everything happened very quickly: a malignant bone tumour was confirmed, and amputation was the only possibility, despite the fact that it would be catastrophic for her swimming ambitions. Having been a swimming champion, she would be one-armed for the rest of her life.
I wasn’t even down for the operation — she was the patient of one of my colleagues. But his wife was involved in a serious car crash, and his operations list was farmed out somewhat haphazardly among the other orthopaedic surgeons. Agnes Klarström was assigned to me.
The operation took longer than an hour. I can still recall all the details, how the theatre nurses washed and prepared the wrong arm. It was my responsibility to check that the correct arm would be operated on, but I relied on my staff.
That was twelve years ago now. I had ruined Agnes Klarström’s life, and also my own. And what made matters even worse was that a subsequent examination of the arm with the tumour indicated that amputation had not been necessary.
It had never occurred to me that I would one day go to visit her. The only time I had ever spoken to her was immediately after the operation when she was still groggy.
It was two in the morning by now. I went back to the house and sat down at my kitchen table. I still hadn’t opened the door of my ant room. Perhaps I was afraid they would come teeming out if I did so.
I rang directory enquiries, but there was nobody in Stockholm of that name. I asked the operator, who said her name was Elin, to extend the search to the whole of Sweden.
There was one Agnes Klarström who could be the one I was looking for. She lived near Flen, some fifty miles west of Stockholm: the address suggested a farm in a village called Sångledsbyn. I made a note of the address and her telephone number.
The dog was asleep. The cat was outside in the moonlight. I stood up and went to the room in which a half-finished mat was still stretched over the frame of my grandmother’s loom. It had always been a significant image as far as I was concerned: this is what death always looks like when it rudely interrupts and terminates our lives. On a shelf where there had previously been reels of thread, I stored various papers I had been keeping for many years. A thin file containing documents, from my rather poor school-leaving report that my father was so proud of that he learned it off by heart, to the accursed copy of the notes of the amputation. The file was sparse because I have always had no difficulty in discarding papers that most people regard as important to keep. On top was the will that a ridiculously expensive lawyer had drawn up for me. Now I was forced to change it, because I had acquired a daughter. But that was not the reason I had come to the room with the loom that still smelled of my grandmother. I took out the operation notes from 9 March 1991. I spread the sheet of paper out on the table in front of me and read it from first to last.