The Voices Beyond: (Oland Quartet Series 4) (23 page)

‘Are you scared?’ Jonas said quietly.

Gerlof shook his head. ‘I think there’s an explanation for most things that seem frightening. In the old days, people used to hear ghosts screaming out on the alvar at night, but it was just hungry fox cubs, sitting in their dens and calling for food.’

Jonas felt a bit better now. Gerlof had an answer for everything.

They walked back to the garden. Jonas checked the legs of his trousers to make sure he hadn’t picked up any ticks from the grass, but he couldn’t see any.

Gerlof sat down and closed his eyes, as if the conversation was over. But Jonas hadn’t finished. ‘I’ve seen someone standing by the cairn. Several times.’

Gerlof opened his eyes. ‘I believe you, Jonas. But that was a real person. A tourist, perhaps.’

‘But he was like you … really, really old. And he just disappeared.’

‘What did he look like?’

‘He had grey hair and a white beard. He was dressed in dark clothes. Just like the man in the wheelhouse.’

Gerlof peered up at him. ‘Are you all right, Jonas?’

The boy shook his head.

‘I know you have horrible memories,’ Gerlof said. ‘You’ve had a terrible experience. Something dreadful happened to me one summer, when I was fifteen years old. I saw a man have a heart attack and die right in front of me. But everything passes – that’s the only consolation. We get older, and happy memories push away the horrible ones.’

Jonas wondered when he would find those happy memories.

Gerlof’s grandsons and Jonas Kloss had cycled off to the sweet shop, and Gerlof had gone indoors to avoid the mosquitoes’ evening assembly.

He gathered up some empty glasses the boys had left on the coffee table, then flopped down in the armchair next to the telephone. He was very tired.

He was getting nowhere. Not with Peter Mayer’s death, at any rate.

And the elderly American? What could he do to track him down? He picked up his notebook, licked his finger and started to leaf through the pages. He read through what he had written during his lunch with the Swedish-Americans, and over coffee with the gravedigger’s daughter, paying close attention to every detail.

Speculation about Sven and Aron Fredh from Rödtorp. A question jotted down: ‘Whereabouts in the USA did Aron end up?’ But the line below was blank because, apart from the postcard before their departure, Sonja and her father had never heard from their relatives again.

‘I just hope they had a better life in the USA,’ Sonja had said. ‘The place they lived in at Rödtorp was just dreadful – little more than a grey shack …’

He thought for a little while, then called Sonja. She answered quickly, but sounded stressed.

‘You obviously haven’t left yet,’ Gerlof said.

‘No, the bus to the airport leaves in a couple of hours.’

He got straight down to business.

‘Sonja, I’ve been thinking about something you said when we came over for coffee … You said the Fredh family lived in a grey shack on the coast, at a place called Rödtorp.’

‘That’s right. Astrid Fredh had been given the tenancy of the croft by the Kloss family. It was deep in the forest, where the Ölandic Resort is now.’ Sonja paused, then added, ‘The Kloss family knocked it down, and I don’t suppose anyone remembers the name these days. All the old names are disappearing, one by one …’

‘You’re right,’ Gerlof agreed. ‘But why was the place called “Rödtorp”, which suggests it was red, if it was actually grey?’

Sonja responded with a dry laugh. ‘It had nothing to do with the colour of the paint. It was the way Sven used to talk when he was working in the mills that led people to come up with that name.’

‘And what did he talk about?’

‘How can I put it …? He was an agitator. He used to go on at length about the blessings of socialism. That was what Sven believed in … He had become a committed socialist during his military service in Kalmar during the First World War. When he came to Öland and became a farmhand and worked in the flour mills, he became even more passionate about his views. Some say he became a communist in the end.’

‘So he talked about politics in the mills and on the farms?’

‘Yes, I think he liked to spell out chapter and verse, so to speak. But there was a lot more politics in the air in the thirties than there is now; there were both communist and Nazi summer rallies here on the island. There was trouble from time to time; they used to tear down each other’s flags. And the Kloss brothers wouldn’t tolerate any political talk. Sven quarrelled with them, too.’

Gerlof remembered – the political disputes had been a good reason to stay at sea, where the talk was of wind and weather and cargo rates.

‘Thanks for your help, Sonja. Enjoy your holiday.’

He hung up and went into the bedroom, where the gravedigger’s postcard album lay on the bookshelf. He sat down and found the black-and-white postcard from Aron Fredh. Read the brief message once more, then gazed at the picture on the front. The white ship, SS
Kastelholm
, at the quayside in Gothenburg. Sweden’s gateway to America.

His eyesight was better than his hearing, and he took a closer look at the picture. Not so much at the ship, but at the quayside and the surroundings. The background was blurred and unfamiliar; a grey morning mist hovered over the water, and the only other vessel in the harbour was a steamship on its way out to sea, with deciduous trees and stone buildings beyond. No derricks, which was a little strange, since his own recollection of Gothenburg in the thirties was of an entire forest of derricks …

Suddenly, he recognized the port with a strange sense of déjà vu, because all at once what had seemed so unfamiliar was very well-known; he had been there many times.

He picked up the phone again.

‘John, have you finished your evening rounds at the campsite?’

‘Yes. Anders has gone off to do some work on the gig; I thought I might give him a hand.’

‘I’ll come with you if you can pick me up,’ Gerlof said.

‘Of course.’

Gerlof rang off, then made another call. To the National Maritime Museum.

John arrived fifteen minutes later, but Gerlof couldn’t wait; he had something to tell his friend before they set off, and drew him on to the veranda.

‘I’ve found something out, John.’

‘Oh, yes?’

‘Sven Fredh, Aron’s stepfather, was a communist.’

John blinked, his expression vacant. The word ‘communist’ was no longer so loaded these days.

‘Don’t you understand?’ Gerlof went on. ‘Sven was a revolutionary; he was hardly likely to travel to America. Communists weren’t exactly popular there. Immigrants from Europe weren’t really welcome anyway after the Wall Street Crash, least of all troublemakers and “Bolsheviks”.’

‘No, but he could have kept quiet about his views when they got to immigration control in New York.’

‘They never got to New York,’ Gerlof said. He held out the postcard from Aron. ‘This isn’t Gothenburg docks. That’s Stockholm in the background.’

‘Stockholm?’

Gerlof nodded.

‘It’s not easy to recognize the ship’s surroundings, but this evening I suddenly realized it was Skeppsbron in Stockholm. And what was the destination of ships sailing from Skeppsbron in the thirties? Was it America?’

‘No,’ John said. ‘It was Finland. We used to go there sometimes before the war, and we saw them loading.’

‘Exactly, but there were also ships that went further … SS
Kastelholm
, for example.’

‘She went to America. It says so on the postcard.’

Gerlof shook his head.

‘The
Kastelholm
was owned by the Swedish-American Line, but they also had European routes. I rang the Maritime Museum in Stockholm just before you arrived, and one of the curators looked up the
Kastelholm
on their computer database. She sailed the Baltic in the early thirties … all the way to Leningrad.’

John was listening, but looked puzzled.

‘Aron and Sven didn’t go to America,’ Gerlof continued. ‘They went in the opposite direction, to the country that no longer exists … the Soviet Union.’

John stared at him. He was beginning to understand.

‘So the new country wasn’t in the west … but in the east?’

‘Yes. For some Swedes that was the case … for those who dreamed of the revolution and a classless society.’

‘But what happened to them out there?’

‘I don’t know. Those were troubled times in the Soviet Union, and Stalin became increasingly paranoid, so anything could have happened … What do you think became of Aron?’

John didn’t say anything, so Gerlof went on. ‘He certainly didn’t end up working for Al Capone, at any rate.’

I am not saying that life is good I would rather say that it is bad but I am not saying that either. I need only three tools: a set square, a pair of scissors and a knife so that I can measure and cut what can be measured and what can be cut.

The rest the night can measure And the creatures that emerge at that time of the day.

Lennart Sjögren

Aron’s boots leak; they are always wet. He is standing in the soft mud outside the row of grey huts that seem to cower beneath the fir trees. He is staring at Sven, who has finally told him the truth.

‘So we’re not in America?’

‘No.’

‘Then where
are
we?’ asks Aron, afraid of the answer.

‘We’re in a different country,’ Sven explains. ‘The ship brought us across the Baltic, to a city called Leningrad, and we have travelled north from the coast.’

Aron is aware of that; there is no sea here. Only forest. But there is a great deal he doesn’t understand.

‘So Hibinogorsk isn’t in America?’

Sven shakes his head. ‘It’s in northern Russia, by a mountain called Hibina.’

Aron is still staring at him, and Sven goes on. ‘Russia is part of a union, just like America, but this one is known as the Soviet Union.’

Aron has heard of Russia, and he vaguely remembers the word ‘Soviet’ from some lesson at school, but it means nothing to him.

‘But you said …’

‘I said we were going to the new country. That’s where we are now: in the east, where the sun rises. The sun and the wealth that comes with abundance.’

Aron says nothing, but he is thinking about the fact that he had nothing but a piece of black bread for breakfast. One small piece. He looks around the mining town, at the grey huts and the muddy streets.

‘America is not the Promised Land,’ Sven says. ‘It is the kingdom of evil. The poor and the blacks are hunted down like dogs in America. They are captured and hanged from trees so that the rich white folk can use them for target practice, just for fun. Do you really want to go there?’

Aron doesn’t reply.

‘No, you don’t. I can see it in your face. You want to stay here, where everyone works side by side.’

‘I want to go home,’ Aron says eventually. ‘Back to Rödtorp. I wrote and told Mum we were coming home.’

‘She doesn’t know that.’

‘She does.’

‘She knows nothing,’ Sven says, shuffling unsteadily to one side. ‘I never posted the letters.’

Aron can’t believe his ears.

‘In any case, we can’t leave the Soviet Union at the moment,’ Sven says quietly. ‘We can’t afford it. We
will
leave this country and go home … but not yet.’

Aron has been listening to the same thing for the past three years. The same empty promises. As far as he is concerned, his stepfather, the proud Swedish worker, has begun to shrink.

The Soviet Union? Aron tries to find out more about this country. He has started to understand the language now, the Russian language that he thought was American, and he can hold a conversation of sorts with the workers in the camp.

He is also allowed to go to school for a few hours each day. Aron is studying with a Russian teacher, herr Kopelev. He listens and repeats the words, and learns the language much faster than Sven. He can swear in Russian, and he can reel off such high-flown phrases as ‘Comrades, a groaning table awaits you after the world revolution!’ and ‘Do not allow your possessions to consume you, Comrade – private property is the root of all evil!’

But what everyone talks about is food. Including Aron – he dreams of Swedish food. Plaice, salted and fried. Eel, smoked and oily or boiled and firm. Potatoes, grated potatoes. Pork. Minced salt pork. Grated potatoes and minced pork turned into Öland dumplings, steaming hot.

Everyone talks about food, all the time. Rumours spread in Russian, and one morning down in the ditch he passes them on to Sven.

‘People are starving. Dying on the streets.’

Sven stops digging and looks at him. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘That’s what I’ve heard. There’s no food.’

‘Where? Where are these people starving?’

‘In the south. In Kraine,’ Aron says, wiping his nose with his glove.

‘Ukraine,’ Sven corrects him.

‘That’s it … Ukraine. There are farms there, so that’s where the food ought to be, but there’s none left. The soldiers have taken all the produce.’

‘It’s not soldiers who take the food,’ Sven says, driving his spade into the mud. ‘It’s the wealthy farmers who hide it, then eat at night.’

‘But all the cows are dead,’ Aron insists, ‘so they’ve started slaughtering their children. They’ll eat anything down there.’

‘Don’t listen to that kind of nonsense.’ Sven leans closer. ‘I’ll tell you a story about Stalin.’

‘Who?’

‘The leader. The captain who steers this whole ship, Josef Stalin.’ Sven looks up at the pale sky, then back at Aron. ‘Twenty years ago, he was the one who led the struggle against the old guard, the Tsar and his followers. On one occasion, he was arrested by the Tsar’s police and sentenced to a beating. He was to run the gauntlet between two rows of police officers, standing ready with their barbed whips. Do you know what Stalin did then?’

Aron shakes his head.

‘Before he moved forward to accept his punishment, he picked a blade of grass and placed it between his teeth. Then he began to walk. Stalin didn’t run between the whips – he
walked
. He took his time, as if he were strolling through a meadow. And when he reached the end, with his back covered in blood, he opened his mouth and showed the last police officer the blade of grass. There wasn’t a tooth-mark on it. So, although Stalin was beaten that day, he still won. Do you understand?’