Echoes From the Dead (24 page)

“Oh? We actually sell that in the other place, but I can get it for you.”

The mechanic got up; he was a little taller than Gerlof. This must be Robert Blomberg’s son.

“We’ll come with you and have a look at the cars,” said

Gerlof.

He nodded to Julia and they followed the young man through

a door to the sales area.

There was no smell of oil here, and the floor was spotless

and painted white. Rows of shining cars were parked in the showroom.

“Motor

oil?” the mechanic asked.

“That’ll be fine,” said Gerlof.

He saw an older man come out of a small office and position

himself in the doorway of the showroom. He was almost as tall and broadshouldered as the mechanic, and he had a wrinkled face with cheeks flushed red by broken blood vessels.

They had never spoken to one another, because Gerlof

had always conducted any business involving cars in Marnas, but he knew immediately that this was Robert Blomberg. Blomberg had come over from the mainland and opened his car workshop

and small showroom in the middle of the 1970s. John Hagman

had had some dealings with the old man, and had told Gerlof

about him.

The older Blomberg nodded to Gerlof without saying anything.

Gerlof nodded silently back. He’d heard that Blomberg had

had some problems with alcohol a while ago, and maybe he still did, but it was hardly a promising topic of conversation.

“There you go,” said the young mechanic, handing over a

plastic bottle of engine oil.

Robert Blomberg slowly withdrew from the doorway and

went back into the office. He was swaying slightly, Gerlof realized.

didn’t need any oil,” said Julia when they were back in the car.

“It’s always good to have some spare oil,” said Gerlof. “What did you think of the repair shop?”

“It looked like any other repair shop,” said Julia, pulling out onto Badhusgatan. “They didn’t seem to have that much to do.”

“Drive toward the harbor.” Gerlof pointed. “And the owners

.. . the Blombergs? What did you think of them?”

“They didn’t say much. Why?”

“Robert Blomberg was at sea for many years, or so I’ve

heard,” said Gerlof. “Sailing the seven seas, all the way down to South America.”

“Right,” said Julia.

It was quiet in the car for a few seconds. They were approaching the harbor hotel at the bottom of Badhusgatan. Gerlof looked at the harbor beside the hotel, and felt a quiet sorrow.

“No happy ending,” he said.

“What?” said Julia.

“Many stories have no happy ending.”

“The most important thing is that they have an ending, isn’t it?” said Julia. She looked at him. “Are you thinking about anyone in particular?”

“Yes … I suppose I’m thinking mostly about seafaring and

Oland. It could have turned out better. It ended too quickly.”

Borgholm harbor had just a few concrete quays, and they

were completely empty. Not one single fishing boat was in. A huge anchor, painted black, had been propped up on the asphalt beside the water, possibly as a reminder of livelier times.

“In the fifties the cargo boats would be lined up here,” said Gerlof, looking out the window at the gray water. “On a day like this in the autumn they would have been loading up or having maintenance work done, there would have been people all around them. The air would have been filled with the smells of tar and varnish. If it was sunny, the captains would have hoisted the sails to air them in the breeze. Ivorycolored sails all lined up against a blue sky, it was a beautiful sight…”

He fell silent.

“So when did the ships stop coming here?” asked Julia.

“Oh … in the sixties. But they didn’t stop coming hereit

was more that they stopped sailing from here. Most captains on the island needed to exchange their boats for more modern ships around that time, so they could compete with the shipping companies on the mainland, but the banks wouldn’t approve any loans.

They didn’t believe in seafaring on Oland anymore.” He stopped speaking, then added, “I couldn’t get a loan either, so I sold my last schooner, More… Then I went to evening classes to learn about office administration, to make the time pass in the winter.”

“I don’t remember you being at home in the winter,” said

Julia. “I don’t remember you being home at all.”

Gerlof looked away from the empty quays, at his daughter.

“Oh, but I was at home. For several months. I’d intended to

get a job as a captain on an oceangoing ship the following year, but then I got an office job for the local council, and there I stayed.

John Hagman, who had been my first mate, bought his own boat when I came ashore, and he had that for a couple more years. It was one of Borgholm’s very last ships. It was called Farewell, appropriately enough.”

Julia had allowed the car to roll slowly forward, away from

the quays and toward the imposing wooden houses that lay to

the north of the harbor, behind neat wooden fences. The house nearest to the harbor was the biggest, wide and painted white and almost as big as the harbor hotel.

Gerlof raised his hand.

“You can stop here,” he said.

Julia pulled in at the side of the road in front of the houses, and Gerlof leaned slowly forward and opened his briefcase.

“The Oland boat owners were too stubborn,” he said, taking

out a brown envelope and the slim volume he had brought

with him from his desk. “We could have got together enough capital between us to buy new, bigger ships. But that wasn’t for us.

Strength lies in working alone, I suppose we thought. We didn’t dare to make a big investment.”

He handed the book over to his daughter. Malm FreightForty

Years was the title, and on the cover was a blackandwhite aerial picture of a big motorized ship plowing through an endless ocean in the sunshine.

“Malm Freight was the exception,” said Gerlof. “Martin Malm

was a captain who had the courage to invest in bigger ships. He built up a small fleet of cargo ships that sailed all over the world.

He made money, and bought more ships with his profits. Martin became one of the richest men on Oland by the end of the sixties.”

“Did

he?” said Julia. “Great.”

“But nobody knows where he got the capital from to start

up,” said Gerlof. “He didn’t have any more money than any other skipper, as far as I know.” He pointed at the book. “Malm Freight published this memoir last spring. Turn it over, I want to show you something.”

On the back was a short text explaining that this was an anniversary publication about one of Oland’s most successful shipping companies. Beneath the text was a logo, consisting of the words malm freight with a silhouette of three seagulls hovering above them.

“Look at the seagulls,” said Gerlof.

“Right,” said Julia. “A drawing of three seagulls. And?”

“Compare it with this envelope,” said Gerlof, passing her the brown envelope. It had a Swedish stamp with a blurred postmark, and was addressed to him at the Marnas Home, Marnas, in shaky handwriting in black ink. “Somebody has torn off the righthand corner, just there. But there’s still a little bit of the right seagull’s wing … can you see it?”

Julia looked, then nodded slowly. “What is this envelope?”

“The sandal arrived in it,” said Gerlof. “The boy’s sandal.”

“But you threw that envelope away. That’s what you told

Lennart.”

“A white lie. I thought it was enough that he was taking the sandal.” Gerlof quickly went on: “But the important thing is that this envelope came from Malm Freight. So it was Martin Malm who sentjens’s sandal. I’m sure of it. And I think he’s phoned me too.”

“Phoned you?” said Julia. “You didn’t tell me that.”

“He might have phoned.” Gerlof looked out at the big houses.

“There wasn’t much to say about it, just that somebody has called me this autumn on a few evenings. It started after I got the sandal.

But the person who called never said a word.”

Julia lowered the envelope and looked at him. “Are we going

to see him now?”

“I hope so.” Gerlof pointed at the big white wooden house.

“He lives there.”

He opened the car door and got out. Julia stayed where she

was for a few seconds, motionless at the wheel, then she got out of the car as well.

“Are you sure he’s at home?”

“Martin Malm is always at home,” said Gerlof.

A cold wind from the sound was blowing around them, and

Gerlof glanced back over his shoulder at the water. Once again he wondered about Nils Kanthow he’d somehow got across this sound, almost fifty years earlier.

SMALAND, MAY 1945

Nils Kant is sitting in agrove of trees on the mainland, looking out across the water to Oland, which is a narrow strip of limestone along the horizon. His expression is full of sorrow, and the sighing of the wind is melancholy in the tops of the pine trees above him.

The island on the opposite side of the sound is illuminated by the morning sun; the trees are bright green, the long beaches shimmer like silver.

His island. And Nils will return to it. Not now, but as soon as he canthat’s for certain. He knows he has done things for which no one will forgive him for a very long time, and Oland is dangerous for him right now. And yet none of this is really his fault.

Things have simply happened, there was nothing he could do

about them.

The fat district superintendent crept up on him on the train and tried to capture him, but Nils was too quick for him.

“Selfdefense,” he whispers toward the island that is his home.

“I shot him, but it was selfdefense …”

He stops and clears his throat noisily to get rid of the tears.

Twenty hours have passed since Nils jumped off the train out on the alvar. He escaped by making his way quickly south on the island, staying far out on the alvar where he feels at home, avoiding all roads and villages.

A few miles south of Borgholm, where the sound is at its narrowest, he went down to the water through the forest. There he found a halfrotten driedout tar barrel with the top part cut away, and he placed his few possessions inside it. Nils waited in the forest until darkness fell, then he undressed and pushed the barrel out into the cold water. He wrapped his arms and upper body around it, clinging on tightly, then began to kick his way across the sound, toward the black strip that was the mainland.

It must have taken a couple of hours to get across, but there were no boats in the vicinity when he passed the channel, and nobody appeared to have spotted him. When he finally reached Smaland, naked and with frozen legs, he barely had the strength to lift his possessions out of the barrel and crawl in beneath the trees, where he immediately fell into a deep sleep.

Now he’s wideawake, but it’s still early in the morning. Nils stands up; his legs are still aching after the swim, but it’s time for them to get to work again. He isn’t far from Kalmar, he realizes, and he needs to get away from the town. There are bound to be lots of policemen patrolling the streets.

His clothes are dry and he puts on a shirt, sweater, socks, and boots, and slips his wallet into his pocket. He must definitely hang on to the money his mother gave him; without it he’s lost, and won’t be able to stay in hiding.

He no longer has the Husqvarna shotgunit’s at the bottom

of the sound. When he was about halfway between the island and the mainland, he took it out of the barrel, held it by the sawnoff barrels, and dropped it into the water with a feeble splash. And it was gone.

There were no cartridges left in the gun anyway, but Nils will miss its reassuring weight.

He thinks about his rucksack, shot to pieces, and misses that too. He has to carry everything in the pockets of his trousers now, and in a little bundle made from a handkerchief, so he can’t take much with him.

He starts to walk northward in the morning sun. He knows

where he’s heading, but it’s a long way, and it takes most of the day. He keeps to the coast, avoiding all villages. He crosses the roads through the forest as quickly as possible; he feels safe among the trees. Twice he sees deer in the forest, so quiet that they surprise him. He can hear people approaching when they’re several hundred yards away, and can easily avoid them.

Nils knows perfectly well where Ramneby is; he’s been there

several times while he was growing up, and his last visit was the previous summer. He doesn’t need to go into the village or around it, because the sawmill his Uncle August owns and runs lies to the south of the community.

He can hear the sound of whining saws from far away as he approaches, and soon he can smell the familiar aroma of newly sawn timber mixing with the seaweed from the waters of the Baltic.

Nils creeps cautiously out of the forest in the shelter of a big barn filled with planks of wood. He’s visited the place a few times, but isn’t sure how to get to the office. And he couldn’t show himself in the open anyway. A few hundred yards to the south of the sawmill is Uncle August’s wooden house, but Nils daren’t go there either. There are children there, chauffeurs, servantspeople who might tell the police if they see him. He is forced to wait by the barn, concealed by a dense lilac bush whose heavily scented flowers attract countless insects.

Nils’s watch stopped when he was swimming across the sound,

but he’s sure that at least half an hour passes before the first people come into view. Three workers from the mill pass the barn laughing, without even glancing in his direction.

He waits.

A few minutes later another person comes plodding along.

It’s a boy, maybe thirteen or fourteen years old, but almost as tall as Nils. He has a thick cap pulled down over his forehead, and his hands are thrust deep into the pockets of his oilstained trousers.

“Hey!” calls Nils from behind the bush.

He calls out quietly, and the boy doesn’t react. He keeps on walking.