Shadow (29 page)

Jan-Erik didn’t have time to think. Not when he bent down and his hand gripped the handle of the shovel. Not when his legs began to run to catch up. Not even when he stood a few metres from the gate and looked at the motionless body on the gravel path. The only thing he felt was surprise. The light of the street-lamp fell on the hands holding the shovel, and he was amazed that they were his. They had obeyed instinct, an instinct as old as humankind – the readiness to kill in order to protect what is ours.

Somewhere inside him he had unknowingly carried that ability.

During all those years when he had fought for what little he’d been able to achieve.

A life in the shadow of the man so admired.

For that little bit he had shown himself capable of killing.

The hole was already dug. The ground had been broken by those who had gone before.

Thirty-one years later it had fallen to the next generation to transform the place into a family plot.

M
arianne Folkesson sat alone on the church pew with a hymnbook in her hands. She knew the hymn by heart, she had sung it at so many funerals. The magnificent tones of the organ resounded between the stone walls where there was nothing to muffle the sound. Nothing but herself, the pastor, the cantor and the funeral director. No Kristoffer Sandeblom, no one from the Ragnerfeldt family, no Torgny Wennberg.

Gerda Persson would go to her eternal rest as alone as she seemed to have lived her life.

She looked at the white casket, decorated with red roses as Jan-Erik Ragnerfeldt had suggested. It was not an extravagant flower arrangement, but as usual the florist had done a fine job. The blood-red colour framed by green gave dignity to the scene and alleviated her feeling of failure.

Just before the church bells began to toll and the doors
were closed, she had stood on the church steps and called Kristoffer Sandeblom. No one had answered. She wondered whether it was the letter from Gerda that had made him change his mind, if that was why he had decided not to attend. Her curiosity about what the letter had said, whether it contained the explanation of the will, had remained with her since she had posted it.

Disappointed that no one had shown up, she took her place at the front of the church and nodded to the young pastor. Sadly there was no reason to wait any longer.

The tones of the organ slowly died out. The pastor went up and stood next to the casket.

‘In the name of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.’

She heard the cantor moving about in the choir. The sound was amplified in all the emptiness and blunted her sorrow. In front of her the pastor unfolded the paper she had sent him. Some brief information about Gerda. She had written down the little she knew but hoped that he could still come up with a suitable eulogy. She had done what was expected and perhaps a little more besides, but still it didn’t feel adequate.

The pastor raised his eyes from the paper and began to speak.

‘We are gathered here today to say farewell to Gerda Anna Persson, who left us on the fourth of October, 2006. A long life has ended, and much has happened in the world during her lifetime. Ninety-two years have passed since 1914 when Gerda was born in Borgholm on the island of Öland. After six years in school, at the age of thirteen she went into service as a housemaid with a family in Kalmar. Four years later she moved to Stockholm, and here she would remain. For all
those years since then she worked as a housekeeper for various families in and around Stockholm. She remained longest with the renowned author Axel Ragnerfeldt and his family, where she worked until she retired in 1981.’

He lowered the paper and put it in between the pages of the Bible he held in his hand. Marianne fingered the rose she would place on Gerda’s casket and hoped that the pastor intended to say something more. That he would make an effort for Gerda’s sake. She was just about to give up hope when he looked out over the deserted pews and began to speak as if every seat in the church were full.

‘When we imagine Gerda’s life, it is easy to resort to platitudes. I must admit that I did so myself when I was faced with this task. According to the standards of our day, we find at first glance nothing enviable, nothing we would wish for ourselves or our children; on the contrary, Gerda’s life appears monotonous and quite arduous. But what do we actually know about a human life? About the things that happened every day. About sorrows and joys. About the dreams she had and those that were fulfilled. We know little about Gerda, except that she now belongs to those who in the end found the answer to the eternal mystery of life. Let us then ask the question: can she teach us anything here today, by reminding us of the transience of life?’

Marianne leaned back. He had understood and shared her desire to honour Gerda at the last opportunity that remained.

‘Nowadays people often talk about happiness. Books are written about it, courses are taught on it, and some of us even try to buy it. Feeling happy has become a right, and we chase after it, convinced that once we have found it we will also find the solution to all our problems. Not being happy has come to be equated with failure. But what is happiness, after all? Is it possible to be happy each waking minute, day after day, year in and year out? Is it actually something worth striving for? For how can we conceive of our happiness if we have never experienced any pain?
Sometimes I think that today we have trouble finding happiness because of our deep fear of suffering. Perhaps we have forgotten the lessons that can be learned from our own darkness. Is it not there that we must go sometimes in order eventually to distinguish the light from the stars? To understand how the happiness we so assiduously pursue actually feels? A life without sorrow is a symphony without bass notes. Is there anyone who can truthfully claim that he is always happy? I have never met such a person. On the other hand, I have met apparently happy people who said that they were content. I looked up the word in the
National Encyclopaedia
, and it describes the feeling of having obtained or achieved what can reasonably be desired. And when I read that, I thought that perhaps we have gone astray in our pursuit of happiness, that what we should actually be seeking is the ability to feel content. Something has made us believe that it is the rapture of the moment and the ecstatic rush of the senses that leads to happiness, but perhaps it is instead the courage to settle down and dare to be satisfied with what we have.’

He turned towards the casket.

‘How you felt, Gerda, we will never know. We know only that you lived your life and did the best you could with the circumstances that were given to you. I want to thank you for causing me to meditate on happiness as I wrote this eulogy.’

Marianne smiled. When their eyes met she nodded her sincere thanks. He smiled back and went to stand at the head of the casket, where he picked up a handful of earth.

‘From earth are you come, and to earth you shall return.’

Three times she saw the earth scattered and she knew they had done the best they could.

The key to Gerda’s flat was still in the Jiffy bag. She had stuffed it in her handbag, intending to take Kristoffer there after the memorial service. Now she hesitated on the church steps and again dialled his number. After the first ring the
connection was picked up by his voicemail and she left a message asking him to please get in touch. The flat had to be emptied so she decided to begin the work without him there to watch. If she found anything she thought he might want, she would set it aside for the time being.

At the bottom of the escalator in the underground station she went into the kiosk to buy something to eat. It was late afternoon and she knew herself well enough to realise that soon she would be hungry. The billboards for the evening papers reminded her of the Ragnerfeldt family, and once again she felt angry about the empty church. That Gerda’s passing was so unimportant to them that other things had taken precedence. Not even Jan-Erik, who had shown such interest, had taken the time to show up.

She bought a sandwich and some fruit and tore her eyes away from the lurid headlines.

When she reached Gerda’s flat, she hung up her coat in the hall, sighing when she saw what a huge amount of work remained. Decisions had to be made about Gerda’s belongings, what was valuable and what should be thrown away. She decided to start with the wardrobes in the bedroom. Anything that was clean and in good condition would be given to charity, and the rest consigned to the dustbin.

The first wardrobe was full of clothes; she inspected the garments one by one and sorted them. A black rubbish bag was quickly filled, and only a coat went into the charity carton. The next wardrobe had shelves full of handkerchiefs and ironed sheets. Stacked in neat rows, they soon joined the lone overcoat in the charity box.

It was when she cleaned off the top shelf that she found them. Right at the back lay a stack of black notebooks. Even before she looked inside she knew what she had found. The first diary entry was dated 4 August 1956. She climbed down from the chair. She cursed the fact that she hadn’t discovered them before the funeral; it might have made her search for relatives much easier.

Standing in that bedroom with all Gerda’s life secrets in her hands, Marianne asked herself whether she had the right to read them. What would she herself have wanted if she’d written diaries and someone found them after her death? Pensively she put the stack of books on the nightstand and went back to the wardrobes. The black notebooks drew her like a magnet as she absentmindedly took a dress from its hanger. The person who would inherit Gerda’s estate had not even shown up at the funeral, so could he possibly be interested in reading them? If Gerda absolutely had not wanted them to be read, she should have thrown them away. If they were intended for someone in particular, she should have left a note as she did with the letter to Kristoffer Sandeblom. Right now only Marianne was interested in Gerda Persson and how her life had turned out. Once again the question went through her mind: what would she herself have wanted? The answer came instantly. The day she died nothing would bother her any longer. Those who were left behind should do as they thought best.

With her mind made up, she laid aside the dress and took the diaries with her to the kitchen, where she sat down at Gerda’s table and began to read.

A
little strip of moonlight seeped in between the drawn curtains in Axel’s room. They had laid him on his back, and he could follow its path across the ceiling with his eyes.

What will your eye want to look at, when you know that it’s the last thing you will see? The question was posed in his first novel, written at a safe distance from the moment that now awaited him.

With the door closed it had silently slipped into the room. Gratefully he had sensed the presence of what he had so long yearned for. The one who had finally come to free him from his prison. All afternoon he had sat like this, elatedly looked forward to what he thought would now happen.

Then the day had turned into evening and darkness slowly fell. But his anxiety grew stronger, keeping pace with the darkness descending over the room. As he waited, dread crept in and gave life to an intense premonition. A tremendous fear struck him. The grace he had imagined he would be allowed to enjoy had been transformed into a threat of dissolution. A warning of chaos and putrefaction.

When the nurses came in and lifted him over onto the bed, he wanted to scream for them to stay and not leave him alone with the thing lurking in the corners, the one thing he couldn’t see. Unsuspecting, they laid him under the covers and forced him to listen to their heedless conversation. He watched them go, leaving him in lonely desperation.

He didn’t want to die. He was no longer ready. For five years he had called on death, and when it finally sought him out he realised that he was not prepared. Eye to eye with the inevitable it was not death he saw, but himself.

It became harder and harder to breathe, his chest was being pressed down by an enormous weight. His body struggled furiously to maintain the life it did not want to relinquish. Far off he could see the red alarm button. The inaccessible connection to those who could come to his rescue.

His chest felt heavier and heavier, and there was a foul smell in the room. All he could see were shapes, but he no longer knew what it was he was seeing.

He wanted to call for Alice, ask her to come and save him. But she just sat over there at the desk with her back turned, not paying him any attention. He heard the sound of her typewriter; he wanted to go over and put his nose on the back of her neck and inhale her scent.

He was falling, faster and faster, but his useless arms refused to protect him. He needed the consolation of meaning, a real purpose to the life he had lived and the death he was about to face. He wanted to be able to leave his life with accomplishment, and not as an escape. Pushed from his hiding place he was falling helplessly through whispering voices. All the events he had silently ignored came rushing past.

He was freezing and begged for someone to warm him.

Only now did he understand that death was unavoidable. That all roads led away from what his senses had known. His mind raced through his life, grasping for memories that might alleviate his terror.

His name was known all over the world. He had shaken hands with kings and presidents. He had assumed his place in history.

To what benefit? All that awaited was annihilation.

He was admired by millions of strangers, but not a single one could offer any solace.

What was it that he had always searched for?

And when his chest sank and his heart stopped, one last question echoed.

To what purpose did I need all those honours?

Through the canopy of branches overhead a sunbeam found its way and blinded him. He was lying on the little patch of grass underneath the apple tree. He heard the sound of steady blows from his father’s hammer and his mother pottering about in the garden.

He was back at Bliss.

The happiest moments of his life.