Italian Shoes (11 page)

‘I've no intention of telling you about my experiences on the back seat of motor cars,' she said. ‘I didn't do it when I was going with you, and I don't do it now. There are always humiliating moments in the life of every woman. What most of us find worst is what happened when we were very young.'

‘When I was a doctor, I sometimes used to talk to my colleagues about how many people didn't seem to know who their real father was. A lot of young men lied their way out of it, and others accepted a responsibility that wasn't actually theirs. Even the mothers didn't always know who the father was.'

‘All I can remember about those distant and hopeless attempts at erotic adventure was that I always seemed to smell so peculiar. And the young man crawling over me smelled funny too. That's all I can remember. The excitement and confusion and the strange smells.'

Suddenly, we were confronted by an enormous monster of a combined log harvester trundling towards us. I slammed on the brakes, and skidded into a snowdrift. The driver of the monster jumped down and pushed while I reversed the car. After considerable difficulty, I managed to back out of the drift. I got out. The man was powerfully built and had chewing-tobacco stains round his mouth. In some strange way he seemed to be a
reproduction of the enormous machine he'd been driving, with all its prehensile claws and cranes.

‘Is yer lost?' he asked.

‘I'm looking for a forest pool.'

He squinted at me.

‘In t'woods?'

‘Yes, a forest pool.'

‘Dunnit 'ave a name?'

‘No, it doesn't have a name.'

‘But tha's efter it ollt' sem? Thez a helluva lotta lakes round 'ere. Tha can teck yer pick. Where d'yer reckon yours is?'

I could see that only an idiot would be out in the forest in winter looking for a forest pool without a name. So I explained the situation to him. I thought that would sound so unlikely that it had to be true.

‘I promised the lady sitting in my car that she would see it. She's very ill.'

I could see that he hesitated before deciding to believe me. Truth is often stranger than fiction, I reminded myself.

‘And that'll meck 'er well, willit? Seein that there lake?'

‘Perhaps.'

He nodded, and thought it over.

‘There's a lake at ender this muck road, mebbe that's 'er?'

‘As I recall it was circular in shape, not large, and the trees came right down to the edge of the water.'

‘Mm, cud be 'er then – dunno if not. Woods fuller lakes.'

He held out his hand, and introduced himself.

‘Harald Svanbeck. Yer don't often see folk on this muck road this time o'year. Scarce ever. But good luck. Is it yer mam in t'car?'

‘No, she's not my mother.'

‘Must be some bugger's mam, eh? Gotta be.'

He clambered back up into the cabin of his monstrous contraption, started the engine, and continued on his way. I got back into the car.

‘What language was he speaking, then?' Harriet asked.

‘The language of the forest. In these parts, every individual has his own dialect. They understand each other. But they each speak their own language. It's the best way for them. In these regions out on the edge of civilisation, it's easy to imagine that every man and every woman is a unique member of an individual race. An individual nation, an individual stock with its own unique history. If they are totally isolated, nobody will ever miss the language that dies with them. But there's always something that survives, of course.'

We continued along the logging track. The forest was very dense, the road began to climb gently upwards. Was this something I could recall from the time I was being driven by my father in the dove-blue old Chevrolet he looked after with such tender loving care? A road sloping gently upwards?
I had the distinct impression that we were on the right track. We passed a stack of newly felled logs. The forest had been raped by the enormous beast that Harald Svanbeck was in charge of. By now, all distances seemed to be endless. I glanced in the rear-view mirror and the forest appeared to be closing in behind us. I had the feeling that I was travelling backwards through time. I remembered walking through the trees the previous evening, the bridge, the forest from my past. Perhaps we were now on the way to a summer lake, with my father and myself waiting impatiently to get there?

We negotiated a series of sharp bends. The snow was piled up high on both sides of the road.

Which petered out.

And there it was, in front of me, with its covering of white. I pulled up and switched off the engine. We were there. There was nothing else to say. I had no doubts. This was the forest pool. I had returned after fifty-five years.

The white cloth was spread out to welcome us. I suddenly had the feeling that Harriet had been destined to winkle me out of my island. She was a herald angel, even if she had gone there of her own accord. Or had I summoned her? Had I been waiting all those years for her to come back?

I didn't know. But we had arrived.

I TOLD HER
that this was it, we had arrived. She gazed hard and long at all the whiteness.

‘So there is water underneath all this snow, is there?'

‘Black water. Everything's asleep. All the tiny creatures that live in the water are asleep. But this is the pool we've been looking for.'

We got out of the car. I lifted out the walker. It sunk down into the snow. I fetched the spade from the boot.

‘Stay in the car where it's warm,' I said. ‘I'll start the engine. Then I'll dig out a path for you. Where do you want to go to? As far as the water's edge?'

‘I want to go to the very middle of the lake.'

‘It isn't a lake. It's a pool.'

I started the engine, helped Harriet back into the car, and started digging. There was a foot or more of frozen snow underneath the powdery surface layer. Digging through it all was far from easy. I could have dropped dead at any moment from the strain.

The very thought scared me stiff. I started digging more slowly, tried to listen to my heart. When I had my latest check-up, my blood pressure readings were on the high side. All my other metabolic figures were OK; but a heart attack can strike for no obvious reason. It can
swoop down on you from out of the blue, as if an unknown suicide bomber had burst into one of your cardiac chambers.

It's not unusual for men of my age to dig themselves to death. They die a sudden and almost embarrassing death, clutching a spade in their stiff fingers.

It took a long time for me to dig my way out to the middle of the frozen pool. I was soaked in sweat, and my arms and back ached by the time I finally got there. The exhaust fumes formed a thick cloud behind the car. But out there, on the ice-covered pool, I couldn't even hear the engine. There was complete silence. No birds, no movement at all in the mute trees.

I wished I could have watched myself from a distance. Hidden among the surrounding trees, an observer scrutinising himself.

As I walked back to the car, it occurred to me that things might now be drawing to a close.

I would drop Harriet off wherever she wanted us to say farewell. I still knew no more than the basic fact that she lived somewhere in Stockholm. After that, I could return to my island. A fascinating thought struck me: I would send Jansson a picture postcard. I'd never have believed that I would write to him. But I needed him now. I'd buy a card with a picture depicting the endless forests, preferably one in which the trees were weighed down with snow. I would draw a cross in the middle of the trees, and write: ‘That's where I am just now. I'll be back home soon. Don't forget to feed my pets.'

Harriet had already got out of the car. She was standing
behind her walker. We walked side by side along the path I'd dug. I had the feeling we were part of a procession heading for an altar.

I wondered what she was thinking. She was looking round, searching for any sign of life in among the trees. But there was silence everywhere, apart from the faint hum from the car's engine ticking over.

‘I've always been scared of walking on ice,' she said without warning.

‘But you still had the courage to go to my island?'

‘Being scared doesn't mean that I haven't the courage to do things that frighten me.'

‘This pool isn't frozen all the way down,' I said. ‘But very nearly. The ice is over three feet thick. It could bear the weight of an elephant, if necessary.'

She burst out laughing.

‘Now that would be a sight for sore eyes! An elephant standing out here on the ice, in order to calm me down! A holy elephant sent to save people who are frightened of thin ice!'

We came to the middle.

‘I think I can see it in my mind's eye,' she said. ‘When the ice has gone.'

‘It looks its best when it's raining,' I said. ‘I wonder if there's anything to beat a gentle shower of rain in the Swedish summer. Other countries have majestic buildings or vertiginous mountain peaks and deep ravines. We have our summer rain.'

‘And the silence.'

We didn't speak for a while. I tried to grasp the
implications of our coming here. A promise had been fulfilled, many years too late. That was all, really. Our journey was now at an end. All that remained was the epilogue, a long journey south on frozen roads.

‘Have you been here since you abandoned me? Have you been here with somebody else?'

‘No such thought ever occurred to me.'

‘Why did you abandon me?'

The question came like a blow to the solar plexus. I could see that she was upset again. She was holding on tightly to the handle of her walker.

‘The pain you caused me sent me to hell and back,' she said. ‘I was forced to make such an effort to forget you, but I never succeeded in doing it. Now that I'm standing here at long last, on the lid of your forest pool, I regret having tracked you down. What good did I think it would do? I don't know any more. I'm going to die soon. Why do I spend time opening up old wounds? Why am I here?'

We probably stood there for a minute, no longer. Silent, avoiding each other's gaze. Then she turned her walker round and started retracing her steps.

There was something lying in the snow that I hadn't noticed when I was digging out the path for Harriet. It was black. I screwed up my eyes, but couldn't make out what it was. A dead animal? A stone? Harriet hadn't noticed that I'd stopped. I stepped out into the snow at the side of the path, and approached the dark object.

I ought to have understood the danger. My experience and knowledge of the ice and its unpredictability ought to have warned me. Far too late I realised that the dark
patch was in fact the ice itself. I knew that for whatever reason, a small patch of ice could be very thin despite the fact that the ice all around it was very thick. I almost managed to stop and take a step backwards. But it was too late, the ice gave way and I fell through it. The water reached up to my chin. I ought to have been used to the sudden shock of entering ice-cold water, thanks to all my winter dips. But this was different. I wasn't prepared, I hadn't created the hole in the ice myself. I screamed. It wasn't until I screamed again that Harriet turned round and saw me in the water. The cold had already begun to paralyse me, I had a burning sensation in my chest, I was desperately gulping down ice-cold air into my lungs and searching frantically for firm ground under my feet. I grasped at the edges of the hole, but my fingers were already far too stiff.

I continued to scream, convinced I was face to face with death.

I knew that she was the last person capable of helping me out. She could barely stand on her own two feet.

But she astonished me as much as she astonished herself. She came towards me with her walker, as fast as she was able. She tipped the walker over, then lay down on the ice and pushed it towards the edge of the hole so that I was able to grab hold of one of the wheels. How I managed to pull myself up I shall never know. She must have pulled at me and tried to shuffle backwards through the snow. When I scrambled out, I staggered as best I could towards the car. I could hear her calling behind me, but I had no idea of what she was saying: what I did
know was that if I stopped and fell over in the snow, I would never have the strength to stand up again. I couldn't have been in the water for more than two minutes, but that had almost been enough to kill me. I have no memory of how I got from the hole in the ice to the car. I said nothing, probably closed my eyes so that I couldn't see how far there was still to go to the car. When I eventually pressed my face against the boot, I had only one thought in my head: to strip off all the soaking wet clothes I had on, and roll the blanket on the back seat round my body. I have no recollection of how that was achieved. There was a strong smell of exhaust fumes around me as I wriggled out of the last piece of clothing and somehow managed to open the back door. I wrapped the blanket round me, and after that I lost consciousness.

When I woke up, she was embracing me and was as naked as I was.

Deep down in my consciousness, the cold had been transformed into a sensation of burning. When I opened my eyes, the first thing I saw was Harriet's hair and the back of her neck. My memory slowly returned.

I was alive. And Harriet had undressed and was hugging me under the blanket to keep me warm.

She noticed that I had come round.

‘Are you cold? You could have died.'

‘The ice simply opened up underneath me.'

‘I thought it was an animal. I've never heard a scream like that before.'

‘How long was I unconscious?'

‘An hour.'

‘So long?'

I closed my eyes. My body was scorching hot.

‘I didn't want to see the lake only for you to die,' she said.

It was over now. Two old people, naked on the back seat of an old car. We had spoken about such things earlier, of young people in the backs of cars. Making love then perhaps denying it. But we two, with a combined age of 135, simply clung on to each other, one because he had survived, the other because she hadn't been left all alone in the depths of the forest.