In the Name of Love (20 page)

‘Hi, Dan,’ she called cheerfully when he turned.

He waited for her to catch up. When she did she said, ‘You’ve probably forgotten who I am. I’m Karin, Sven Edfeldt’s wife. We met when you came to see Sven at the presbytery.’

He said he remembered her very well. As they walked on together she was pleasantly chatty, though after a while he noticed how discreetly she sounded out his state of health, using no more than ordinary chit-chat about the harshness of last winter and how had he coped with it? And now the wonderful length of these autumn evenings though sometimes one could also feel a sense of solitude in the approach of winter, the quiet of the falling night, couldn’t one? She asked half-jokingly whether in the summer the birds’ concert when the sun came up at two o’clock each morning disturbed his sleep?

‘People out from Stockholm often have to use earplugs,’ she said.

Her friendly eyes sought a response in his face.

‘Not me, Karin. I can’t even remember when last they woke me up.’

‘It’s rather a sign that one’s become an islander when one doesn’t notice, isn’t it?’

While they walked the dog continued to romp around them, a stick in her mouth, challenging Dan to snatch it. Each time he made an attempt she jumped nimbly out of reach and joyfully started again.

‘She’s a happy dog,’ he said.

‘We try not to spoil her but how does one resist?’

As she spoke the dog gave a quick challenging bark. Another dog answered quite close by. Satisfied, Kairos went on playing.

‘I expect that’s Cake,’ Karin Edfeldt said. ‘The Selavas’s dog. They’re old friends.’

‘You know the family?’

‘Oh yes. Josef comes to talk with Sven now and then. Sven says they’re a lesson in faith. They’ve suffered appallingly and yet remain convinced of God’s goodness and justice. I’m humbled talking to them.’

‘Do you think they’ll be able to stay on?’ The question came faster than he had intended.

She thought a moment before answering. ‘I was about to say I hope so but the situation is complicated, isn’t it?’

‘You mean because of Lena Sundman?’

She smiled sweetly at him. ‘You’ve become more… spirited than when we last met. That’s good.’

‘Point taken,’ he said and they both laughed.

‘But let’s pray things will work out,’ Karin said. ‘Lena was such a generous good-natured child when she was growing up.’

‘From the little I’ve heard she’s had a tough life since then. Look, I know it’s not done to expect you to talk about this kind of thing any more than one talks to doctors about their patients, but an old friend rang me from Stockholm recently and said he thinks she’s heading for a breakdown. He says she’s back in Herräng, living with her aunt and he’s worried.’

‘I’ve never met her aunt but don’t you think if Lena isn’t well she’s better off with a relative out here than alone in Stockholm?’

‘It’s not what my friend thinks,’ Dan was about to say. But was Anders an impartial judge?

Before turning back Karin surprised him by leaning in to kiss him on the cheek. ‘I’m glad to see you in such good form, Dan. Don’t forget, you’re always welcome to drop in at the presbytery. I know Sven would love a chance to talk with you again. Do you have our telephone number?’

‘Yes, at the house.’

‘If ever you feel low – it happens to all of us now and then, doesn’t it? Particularly in the small hours of the morning. If it does, don’t hesitate to ring. We don’t unplug our phone at night. As Sven says, if he’s done no other good in life, at least he’s kept an ear open ready to listen.’

The next morning, Friday, he told Josef about this encounter. It turned out that Josef already knew. He had driven over to see Sven Edfeldt the previous afternoon and he was there when Karin and the dog got home. He and Sven had a coffee together now and then, he said.

‘Solveig introduced us the very first Sunday we were here. After Mass Sven stood on the steps outside the church and we stopped to talk. Since others wanted to talk to him as well we started to move on but he took me by the arm and asked if I could come back for a coffee that afternoon. That was how it started. Typical Sven!’

‘You speak French with him?’

‘We speak a mixture. French, English, Swedish and a few Hebrew words when we get stuck on religious concepts. He knows Biblical Hebrew of course. And it’s close to Aramaic.’

‘Does he try to get you involved?’

‘In church affairs? Not at all. He’s curious about Chaldean Catholicism. That’s all. And he’s surprisingly knowledgeable. I must say, they do make their postulants study here in Sweden.’

‘I’ve thought several times of going over to see him myself but I’m not sure what I’d talk about.’

‘About how you respond to the awe and wonder the world evokes in us.’

Josef’s voice was light but he leant gravely forward as he spoke. This was part of his congenial intensity, this compelling faith, together with the questing look, the dark brown shadows that ringed his eyes, the drama of his eastern accent. For Josef transcendental yearning was a fact of human life. In all cultures, all peoples, all times. To dismiss it in the name of evolution was to ignore the profound lesson evolution offered, that we are not masters of our universe. He enjoyed this kind of conversation, and spoke with what to Dan were arcane references to the various life–death–rebirth deities of Assyrian, Phoenician, Babylonian, Levantine traditions, references which might well for him be as commonplace as the gods of Norse mythology were for many a schoolchild on the island.

The next day was Saturday, the day Dan was to drive Lena into Stockholm and go to his first dinner party since before Connie died. The prospect made him restless. He was up at six and, after breakfast, went out to walk. Passing the cemetery gates he stopped and looked at the headstones standing like grey teeth in the lawn. There was still a gap where Connie’s should be.

He walked for longer than he had intended and didn’t stop until he saw Nahrin Selavas in the forest clearing beside Johan Ek’s apple orchard. Her eyes were downcast. He remained a moment among the trees, watching as she searched for something. Fifty-seven years of age, her movements were those of a far younger woman. Was this thanks to her diet, her knowledge of medicinal plants and herbs? Or simply genetic. Suddenly she raised her head in his direction. Her face was sensitized, alert as an animal’s. He began to walk towards her and she smiled.

Her basket was half-full of wild asparagus.

‘Take,’ she said. ‘I find more.’

When he protested she said, ‘You have no one to cook?’

‘No.’

‘Oh.’

There they stood, Nahrin with her still-dark hair, her green eyes that looked at him frankly, her basket stretched towards him.

‘Isn’t Jamala with you?’ he asked. She said no, that Jamala was studying with Josef. Learning to write figures, to add and subtract. To multiply.

‘Now,’ she said, indicating the reed-thin asparagus piled in the basket. ‘You no cook, you come to our house and I cook for you.’ Her eyes were still on him. ‘You come now?’

‘Now? No. I must go into Stockholm today.’

‘Then next week. I tell Gabriel, he tell you. You come.’

He thanked her and said he’d be delighted. As they parted she touched his arm and pointed to the sky. Over towards the east clouds had gathered. A dark compact mass.

‘Home quick,’ she said. ‘Storm. Thunder.’

‘Oh I’m used to that,’ Dan laughed. ‘I go out in all kinds of weather, I don’t mind getting wet.’

‘You are alone long time?’

‘Not long. Three years or so.’

‘In Iraq someone find wife for you. Three years too long. Yes, a good wife. Here no.’

‘Here we men have to do all our own work.’

‘And get divorced by wife anyways,’ she said and she smiled. Raising her hand, she pointed to the clouds again. The sky, white-blue everywhere else, was stained black as pitch out over the sea.

Dan made it home but by the time Lena arrived the storm had reached its full glory. It started with hailstones, millions of them laying a carpet five centimetres thick over the island. Then came the downpour. Their walk and picnic had to be abandoned. They decided to drive straight into Stockholm and have a late lunch instead.

It was close to half past two by the time they got there. Dan ordered a bottle of champagne in the restaurant to celebrate whatever number of hours and minutes it happened to be since they first met. Afterwards, coming out into the damp air, Lena’s face was bright and merry. The rain had stopped and they strolled up Biblioteksgatan past the cheerful windows of cafés and fashion shops and the big corner bookshop where they went in to look at books they didn’t intend to buy. And once again, as in Paris, he was delighted by her open curiosity, her liveliness.

As they walked on she said her aunt had given her money for a new coat, something warm for the winter. She tried on coats in the shops along Hamngatan, Sergels Torg, Drottninggatan, but found nothing she liked. Then she spied a brightly coloured coat, quite unlike anything they had been looking at before. The assistant already had it out of the window and around Lena’s shoulders by the time Dan had taken it in.

‘What do you think?’ Lena asked as she turned to show him, swirling the hem beneath the recessed spotlights. The coat, a thin blue-dyed leather with a fur collar, looked exotic. She swung again before the glass, examining herself over her shoulder.

‘It’s out of the ordinary, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, it is.’

She wore it as they walked around the city until the thunderstorm arrived, bouncing hail off the pavement all around them, and forcing them to run for shelter into a
konditori
at the corner of Biblioteksgatan. They ordered coffee and cinnamon buns as they looked out. The hail had changed to rain. Heavy drops whirled past the window each time a gust of wind came up and afterwards fell straight as ramrods again, hammering the surface of the street.

‘From the first moment I saw it,’ he told Lena, ‘there has never been a time when Stockholm wasn’t the most beautiful city I could imagine.’

Looking out at the soupy dusk, the heavy rain, she calmly said, ‘You must be mad.’

The flat they went to that evening was on Floragatan. The curtains were rich and heavy, the oak floors lustrous as though soaked in beeswax. There were already about forty people there and others kept coming in. Their hostess looked frayed. Dan introduced Lena and himself as friends of Anders.

‘And you’re the ones from?’

‘Norrtälje,’ he told her, simplifying it a little. Although she must have known how many were coming, he had the feeling she was already overwhelmed. The room was fairly crowded and people had to raise their voices to make themselves heard. The only face he recognized, apart from Anders’s and Lennart Widström’s, was Johan Ek. Anders looked at home here as he always had everywhere. His easy elegance, his warm smile made him seem a man you’d like to know and have as a friend. And then, as Dan thought this, Anders looked over and saw them. He excused himself from the group he was in and came straight across, his arms already reaching out.

‘Dan, Lena!’ The pleasure in his voice was unmistakable. As he clasped Dan’s elbow with one hand he leant in to hold Lena with the other and he kissed her cheek. Dan caught sight of them, all three, in the heavy mirror above the chimneypiece. His dusted-off jacket and trousers, his clean but unironed shirt and tie looked dull beside Anders’s tailored suit and Lena’s low-cut dress, her stunning smile. Anders took them with him and introduced them to a couple on their own. The couple spoke English and seemed glad to have Dan to talk to. Anders told him that the woman, a biologist from Oxford, was in town as a Wenner-Gren Distinguished Lecturer.

‘She’s not going to tell you she’s famous so I’m doing it for her.’

When he left, taking Lena with him, Dan stayed contentedly where he was. The woman downplayed the remark about being famous with a laugh.

‘If somebody has to go around saying one is, then clearly one isn’t.’

Her husband said they’d met Anders two evenings before at a cocktail party given by the Wenner-Gren Foundation. Learning that they didn’t know Stockholm, he had invited them to come along tonight and meet what he called ‘ordinary Swedes’. It sounded so typically Anders Dan could almost hear him say it. The couple were impressed not only by his hospitality but also by his unaffected friendliness. Dan was glad to find that he had been seated with them at dinner.

Later in the evening, when the tables broke up, he went to look for Lena. She stood in another smaller room listening to Anders talk to Johan Ek. Ek shook his head at something though he smiled, and Anders went on, his hands gesturing. Lena interjected a question. Ek shook his head again, in an equally friendly way. Their bodies were close and their talk intimate. Dan decided not to interrupt them. Later, when he saw Ek leave, he made his way back. Lena was still there, talking with Anders. She agreed it was time to go. Anders came with them to the hall to say goodbye.

Down on the street they discovered that rain was falling again. Lena worried about her new coat getting wet. Dan suggested she shelter in the entrance hall while he ran for the car but she said that even crossing the broad pavement would mean getting soaked and she wasn’t sure the leather would survive.

‘Couldn’t we borrow an umbrella upstairs?’ she said. ‘Anders could ask what’s her name?’

‘Sure. Let’s go and see.’

They took the lift back up. As they reached the flat others were also leaving and the door was open.

‘Where do you find all these people?’ their hostess’s voice complained.

‘Rather gorgeous the tart, though,’ a man’s voice said.

‘Tart?’ Anders demanded.

‘And that coat!’ the hostess said.

‘Tart?’ Anders’s voice repeated harshly.

‘Mind you, at his age she must cost him to run,’ the man laughed.

Dan turned to stop Lena but it was too late, she stood just behind him. He rushed in, grabbed an umbrella from several in the hall stand and rushed out, slamming the door before anyone had time to say any more. As he slid open the lift gate again he heard the anger in Anders’s muffled voice as he barked, ‘What a bloody moron you are! She’s worth twenty of your kind. And I’m proud to say she happens to be a friend of mine.’ Whether he was addressing the man who had spoken or their hostess was impossible to make out. Maybe both. Either way, he rose half a dozen notches in Dan’s estimation. Lena must have heard the entire exchange but her expression betrayed nothing of what she felt. She had long since learnt to steel herself against such careless cruelty. He reached for her hand. She squeezed his fingers in acknowledgement and held on.