“Was he hard work as an older brother, Ragnar?”
Gerlof didn’t speak for a few seconds.
“He had his moments. He had a long memory. If he felt someone had cheated him, he would never do business with that person again… He never forgot an injustice.”
“I don’t remember him,” said Tilda. “Dad hardly remembers him either. At any rate, he never talked about him.”
Silence once again.
“Ragnar froze to death in a winter storm,” Gerlof went on. “The body was found on the shore to the south of his cottage. Did your dad tell you that?”
“Oh yes, he was the one who found Grandfather. He was going out fishing, wasn’t he? That’s what Dad said.”
“He’d been checking his nets on the seabed that day,” said Gerlof, “and then when the wind got up he had gone ashore at Eel Point. He was the watchman, after all, and people had seen him out by the lighthouses. The boat must have broken up in the waves, because Ragnar walked home along the shore… and then the blizzard came. Ragnar died in the snow.”
“Nobody is dead until they are warm and dead,” said Tilda. “People have been found frozen stiff and with no pulse in snowdrifts, but they’ve come back to life when they’ve been brought into the warmth.”
“Who told you that?”
“Martin.”
“Martin? Who’s that?”
“My… boyfriend,” said Tilda.
She immediately regretted using that word. Martin would not have liked being described as her boyfriend.
“So you’ve got a boyfriend?”
“Yes… or whatever you want to call it.”
“I should think ‘boyfriend’ will do perfectly well. What’s his surname?”
“His name is Martin Ahlquist.”
“Nice,” said Gerlof. “Does he live here on the island, your Martin?”
My Martin, thought Tilda.
“He lives in Växjö. He’s a teacher.”
“But perhaps he’ll come and visit you sometimes.”
“I hope so. He has talked about it.”
“Nice.” Gerlof smiled. “You look as if you’re in love.”
“Do I?”
“Your face lights up when we talk about Martin; it’s lovely.”
He smiled encouragingly across the table, and Tilda smiled back.
Everything seemed so simple when she was sitting here with Gerlof talking about Martin, not complicated at all.
8
Livia fell asleep each night with Katrine’s red woolen sweater beside her in the bed, and Joakim lay with her nightgown under his pillow. It gave him a feeling of calmness.
Life at Eel Point went on, at half speed. The children had to be taken into Marnäs and picked up each weekday, and Joakim took care of that job. In between he was alone at the manor for seven hours, but there was no peace. The funeral director called him several times with different questions before the funeral, and he had to contact banks and various companies to get Katrine’s name removed from their records. Relatives got in touch, both Katrine’s and Joakim’s, and friends from Stockholm sent flowers. Several of them wanted to come to the funeral.
What Joakim really wanted was to unplug all the telephones and lock himself in at Eel Point. Shut down.
Of course, there was a huge amount of renovation to be done inside the house, and in the garden and to the outside
of the house-but all he really wanted to do was to lie in bed, breathe in the scent of Katrine’s clothes, and stare up at the white ceiling.
And then there was the police. If he had been able to find the strength, he would have spoken to them to find out who was responsible for internal investigations, if there was such a person-but he just couldn’t do it.
The only one who got in touch from that particular authority was the young local policewoman from Marnäs, Tilda Davidsson.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I really am very sorry.”
She didn’t ask how he was feeling, just kept on apologizing for the mix-up over the names. The wrong name was on the note she was reading from, she said-it was a misunderstanding.
A misunderstanding? Joakim had come home to console his wife, but had found her dead.
He listened to Davidsson in silence, answered in monosyllables and asked no follow-up questions. The conversation was a short one.
When it was over, he sat down at the family computer and wrote a letter to Ölands-Posten, giving a brief outline of what had happened after Katrine’s death. In conclusion he wrote:
For several hours I believed that my daughter had drowned and my wife was alive, when in fact the reverse was true. Is it too much to ask that the police should be able to distinguish between the living and the dead?
I don’t think it is; that’s what the relatives have to do, after all.
Joakim Westin, Eel Point
He hadn’t expected anyone in the police to accept responsibility after that either, and he wasn’t disappointed.
Two days later he met Åke Högström, the priest in Marnäs who was to bury his wife.
“How are you sleeping?” the priest asked over coffee after they had gone through the ceremony one last time.
“Fine,” Joakim replied.
He tried to remember what they had decided. They had called the cantor to choose which hymns were to be played, he remembered that, but he’d already forgotten what they’d decided on.
The parish priest from Marnäs was in his fifties, with a gentle smile, a little beard, a black jacket, and a gray polo-neck sweater. The walls in his study at the vicarage were covered with shelves full of books of all kinds, and on the desk stood a picture of the priest holding a gleaming perch up to the camera.
“The light from the lighthouse doesn’t disturb you?” he asked.
“The light?” said Joakim.
“The constant flashing at night, from the lighthouse tower out on Eel Point?”
Joakim shook his head.
“I suppose you get used to it,” said Högström. “It’s probably similar to having traffic noise just outside your window. You lived in the middle of Stockholm before you came here, didn’t you?”
“A little way out,” said Joakim.
It was only small talk, an attempt to lighten the heavy conversation, but for Joakim it was still a huge effort to find the words.
“So it’s hymn number 289 to begin with, hymn 256 after the prayers, and hymn 297 to finish off,” said Högström. “That was what we said, wasn’t it?”
“That’ll be fine.”
A dozen or so guests from Stockholm arrived the evening before the funeraclass="underline" Joakim’s mother, his uncle, two cousins, and some close friends of his and Katrine’s. They
moved cautiously around the house and talked mostly to one another. Livia and Gabriel were excited by all the visitors, but didn’t ask why everyone had come.
The funeral took place at eleven o’clock on a Thursday in the Marnäs church. The children weren’t there-Joakim had dropped them off as usual at eight o’clock, without saying anything. For them today was like any other, but Joakim had driven home, put on his black suit, and lay down on the double bed again.
The wall clock was ticking out in the corridor, and Joakim remembered that it was his wife who had wound it up. It shouldn’t be ticking now she was gone, but it was.
He had stared at the bedroom ceiling thinking about all that was left of Katrine in and around the house. Inside his head he could hear her calling to him.
An hour later Joakim was sitting on an uncomfortable wooden pew, his eyes fixed on a large mural. It showed a man of his own age nailed to a Roman instrument of torture. A cross.
The church in Marnäs was high and filled with echoes. The sound of quiet weeping hovered beneath the vaulted stone ceiling.
Joakim was sitting right at the front next to his mother, who was wearing a black veil and weeping with small, careful sniffles, her head bowed. He himself knew he wasn’t going to cry at all, just as he hadn’t shed a single tear at Ethel’s funeral last year. The tears always came later, late at night.