He carried on along the path, hearing crashing noises in the undergrowth. And now there was also a swishing, like the wind. It was the sound of cars driving past on the main road between Borgholm and the villages to the north.
Jonas listened and kept his eyes on the path so that he wouldn’t get lost.
All of a sudden, he heard a shout; it sounded like Uncle Kent.
He stopped.
Another shout, louder this time.
Then a screech, but not from a human being — he was sure it was car tyres on tarmac.
The sound ended abruptly, then there was silence for a few seconds. Then more shouting, a confusion of voices in the darkness, and car doors opening and closing.
Jonas stood motionless on the path, listening hard.
More cracking and creaking, and heavy breathing. Someone was coming towards him.
A shadow loomed out of the darkness.
‘JK? Are you there?’
Uncle Kent.
‘Yes, I just wanted to see if—’
But Kent interrupted him sharply: ‘You shouldn’t be here.’
Jonas didn’t know what to say.
Uncle Kent strode past him, puffing and panting.
‘Did... did you catch up with him?’ Jonas asked.
But Kent didn’t reply, he just walked across the field and took the path leading back to Marnäs.
Jonas had no option but to turn around and follow him. He still didn’t know what to say, but eventually he caught up with Kent among the birch trees and said, ‘So you didn’t catch him?’
‘No,’ Kent snapped. ‘He’s gone.’
He kept on walking.
At long last they emerged from the forest, jumped over the verge and were back on the road.
In the light of the streetlamps, Jonas noticed that Uncle Kent had acquired a twitch just below his left eye, as if a little muscle there were conducting an exercise session all by itself.
Kent stopped again, turning his full attention on Jonas. ‘Did you see anything back there?’
‘Like what?’
Uncle Kent took a deep breath and set off again. They continued in silence until they heard a shout: ‘Hello?’
It was Jonas’s father. He was waiting for them just past the church, with the car parked at the side of the road.
‘What happened?’ he said.
Kent went up to him, very close, and spoke so quietly that Jonas could barely hear him. ‘There was a car.’
‘A car?’
Uncle Kent nodded. ‘It was heading straight for Mayer.’
‘And?’
‘I don’t know,’ Kent said. ‘I don’t think things went too well.’ Niklas looked worried, but didn’t ask any more questions.
They all got in the car and let out a long breath in the silence. Niklas started the engine. ‘OK... Let’s go home.’
Once they were on the main road, Jonas noticed lights to the south. A short distance away, perhaps a hundred metres, several cars had stopped, and there were people standing around them. He saw flashing blue lights and people in high-visibility jackets moving about on the road.
Niklas indicated left, but Kent shook his head. ‘Not that way. Turn right and we’ll go via Långvik. The coast road is better tonight.’ Niklas turned right.
Jonas looked back. He realized that there must have been a serious accident, but now they wouldn’t be able to see what had happened. If anyone was hurt.
The flashing blue lights disappeared into the distance.
After a kilometre or so, Niklas turned off the main road and on to a narrower track leading to the coast.
Kent leaned back. ‘There you go,’ he said. ‘I expect we’ll find out what happened from the news... We’re not going to talk about this.’
‘As usual,’ Niklas said.
Jonas didn’t say anything; he just sat quietly in the back, looking out of the window. They were surrounded by darkness now.
But what did Uncle Kent mean? Were they not going to talk about it to the other members of the family? Or to the police?
Gerlof
Just as Gerlof was getting ready for bed that night, he heard about a fatal accident in northern Öland. It was on the local radio news at midnight:
‘And so to Öland. A twenty-four-year-old man was killed earlier this evening on the B136 just outside Marnäs. The initial police report suggests that he stepped out in front of a car heading south. The victim was taken by ambulance to Kalmar, where he was pronounced dead. The driver, a man in his fifties, is suffering from severe shock...’
The newsreader didn’t name the dead man, and Gerlof’s only reaction was the same as usuaclass="underline" the Department of Transport ought to lower the speed limit on that road. It was wide and straight all the way down to Borgholm, tempting many to drive far too fast. Perhaps he would write a letter to the paper. Suggest they turn it back into a dirt track.
He switched off the radio, then he turned off the light. Tomorrow he would be travelling on that very road, in order to attend a nostalgic lunch in Borgholm.
The next day, he found himself sitting at a long table with a group of men and women of his own age, people who had returned home, experience etched on their faces. They were swapping emigration stories, and Gerlof didn’t want to be left out:
‘My father had a cousin in Böda whose brother emigrated to America. One evening, when this cousin was just about to go to bed, the room was suddenly filled with the smell of death. Both he and his wife were aware of the same appalling stench. Eventually, they managed to get to sleep, but at dawn the cousin woke up and thought he saw his brother standing by the bedroom window — and he realized that his brother over in America was dead.’
He fell silent. A few people around the table laughed at the story, as if it were funny.
Nine men and two women had gathered for the Swedish-Americans’ lunch at the Borgholm Hotel and were enjoying fried halibut with tomato compote.
Gerlof had arrived after a short walk around the town which had once been his home port as the skipper of a cargo ship. These days, he didn’t recognize a single face on the streets, which were packed with tourists.
He had stopped down by the quayside for a little while, remembering the forest of masts that had once dominated the skyline. These days, the jetties were lined with countless modern plastic boats but the harbour itself looked run-down, with gaping holes in the brickwork and huge cracks in the quays themselves.
At least the historic hotel was well maintained, and Gerlof loved the light, airy restaurant. The food was excellent, and the floor was made of polished limestone, which one of his ancestors might have hewn out long ago. Beautiful.
However, he spent most of his time looking at his lunch companions. They spoke in a mixture of English and Swedish; they all seemed to understand both languages. A round of Swedish schnapps was ordered, and their stories quickly grew more bizarre.
‘The food here is good, but when I used to go fishing in Alaska we’d catch halibut weighing two hundred kilos...’
Ingemar Grandin had come all the way from San Pablo, California. One of the ladies was called Nordlof and came from New Haven, Connecticut. Others were from Minnesota, Wisconsin and Boston.
It turned out that only three of them had actually emigrated from Sweden. Their parents had taken them to America when they were only children; the rest had been born in the USA, but their parents were originally from Öland.
None of them looked as if they had driven Al Capone around the streets of Chicago, Gerlof thought, or hijacked a fishing boat.
They moved on to the local patisserie for coffee and cakes, and suddenly the stories took on a more sorrowful tone. Perhaps the schnapps was kicking in. They were no longer talking about how big the new country had been but how hard life had often been for the immigrants.