I dressed and walked up the hill with my binoculars.
I hadn’t been imagining things.
The woman was still there. Her hands were resting on the handles of the walker. She had a handbag over one arm, and had wrapped a scarf round her fur hat, which was pulled down over her forehead. I had difficulty in making out her face through the binoculars. Where had she come from? Who was she?
I tried to think. Unless she was lost, it must be me she’d come to visit. There is nobody else here but me.
I hoped she had lost her way. I didn’t want any visitors.
She was still standing there motionless, her hands on the walker’s handles. I began to feel increasingly uncomfortable. There was something familiar about that woman out there on the ice.
How had she managed to make her way over here, through a snowstorm, pushing a Zimmer frame? It was three nautical miles to the mainland. It seemed incredible that she could have walked that far without freezing to death.
I stood watching her through the binoculars for over ten minutes. Just as I was about to put them away, she slowly turned her head and looked in my direction.
It was one of those moments in life when time doesn’t merely stand still, it ceases to exist.
The binoculars brought her closer towards me, and I saw that it was Harriet.
Although it was in spring almost forty years ago that I last saw her, I knew it was her. Harriet Hörnfeldt, whom I had loved more than any other woman.
I had been a doctor for a few years, to my waiter father’s endless surprise and my mother’s almost fanatical pride. I had managed to break out of poverty. I was living in Stockholm then, the spring of 1966 was outstandingly beautiful and the city seemed to be bubbling over with life. Something was happening, my generation had burst through the floodgates, torn open the doors of society and demanded change. Harriet and I used to walk through Stockholm as dusk fell.
Harriet was a few years older than I was, and had never had any ambition to continue her studies. She worked as an assistant in a shoe shop. She said she loved me, and I said I loved her, and every time I went home with her to her little bedsit in Hornsgatan, we made love on a sofa bed that constantly threatened to fall to pieces.
Our love was like a raging fire, it would be fair to say. And yet I let her down. I had been given a scholarship by the Karolinska Institute to do postgraduate work in the USA. On 23 May I would be leaving for Arkansas, and would be away for a year. Or at least, that’s what I told Harriet. In fact, the flight was due to leave for New York via Amsterdam on the 22nd.
I didn’t even say goodbye to her. I simply disappeared.
During my year in the USA I made no attempt to contact her. I knew nothing about her life, nor did I want to know. I sometimes woke up out of dreams in which she committed suicide. I had a guilty conscience, but always managed to silence it.
She gradually faded away from my consciousness.
I returned to Sweden and started work at a hospital in the north, in Luleå. Other women entered my life. Sometimes, especially when I was on my own and had drunk too much, I would wonder what had become of her. Then I would call directory enquiries and ask about Harriet Kristina Hörnfeldt. But I always hung up before the operator had tracked her down. I didn’t dare to meet Harriet again. I didn’t dare to discover what had happened.
Now she was standing out there on the ice, with a wheeled walker.
It was exactly thirty-seven years since I had vanished without explanation. I was sixty-six years old. Which meant she must be sixty-nine, going on seventy. I wanted to run into the house and slam the door shut behind me. And then, when I eventually stepped outside again, she would have gone. She would no longer exist. Whatever it was she wanted, she would have been a mirage. I would have simply not seen her standing out there on the ice.
Minutes passed.
My heart was racing. The bacon rind hanging in the tree outside the window was still deserted. The birds had not yet returned after the storm.
When I raised my binoculars again, I saw that she was lying on her back, her arms outstretched. I dropped the binoculars and rushed down to the ice, falling over several times in the deep snow, to where she lay. I checked that her heart was beating, and when I leaned over close to her face, I could just about feel her breathing.
I wouldn’t have the strength to carry her to the house. I fetched the wheelbarrow from behind the boathouse. I was drenched in sweat by the time I had eased her into the barrow. She hadn’t been as heavy as that in the days when we were close. Or was it me who no longer had the strength? Harriet lay doubled up in the wheelbarrow, a grotesque figure who had not yet opened her eyes.
When I came to the shore, the wheelbarrow became stuck. I briefly considered pulling her up to the house with the aid of a rope, but I rejected the idea — too undignified. I fetched a spade from the boathouse and cleared the snow from the path. Sweat was dripping off me. All the time I kept checking on Harriet. She was still unconscious. I felt her pulse again. It was fast. I shovelled away for all I was worth.
I eventually succeeded in getting her to the house. The cat was sitting on the bench under the window, and had been watching the whole process. I placed some planks over the steps up to the door, opened it, then ran with the barrow as fast as I could. At the third attempt, I managed to get Harriet and the wheelbarrow into the hall. The dog was lying under the kitchen table, watching. I chased him out, closed the door and lifted Harriet on to the kitchen sofa. I was so sweaty and out of breath that I was forced to sit down and rest before beginning to examine her.
I took her blood pressure. It was low, but not worryingly so. I removed her shoes and felt her feet. They were cold, but not frozen. Nor did her lips suggest that she was dehydrated. Her pulse fell slowly until it was 66 beats per minute.
I was just going to place a cushion under her head when she opened her eyes.
‘Your breath smells something awful,’ she said.
Those were her first words after all those years. I had found her on the ice, struggled like crazy to get her into my house, and the first thing she said was that I had bad breath. My immediate impulse was to throw her out again. I hadn’t invited her, I didn’t know what she wanted, but I could feel my guilt rising to the surface. Had she come to call me to account?
I didn’t know. But what other reason could there be?
I realised that I was afraid. It was as if I’d been caught in a trap.
Chapter 4
Harriet looked slowly round the room.
‘Where am I?’
‘In my kitchen. I saw you out there on the ice. You’d fallen over. I brought you in here. How are you?’
‘I’m fine. But I’m tired.’
‘Would you like some water?’
She nodded. I fetched a glass. She shook her head when I made to help, and sat up of her own accord. I observed her face and decided that she hadn’t really changed all that much. She had grown older, but not different.
‘I must have fainted.’
‘Are you in pain? Do you often faint?’
‘It happens.’
‘What does your doctor say about that?’
‘The doctor doesn’t say anything, because I haven’t asked him.’
‘Your blood pressure’s normal.’
‘I’ve never had problems with my blood pressure.’
She watched a crow clinging on to the bacon rind outside the window. Then she looked at me, her eyes clear and bright.