Italian Shoes

  I paused at the back and looked in through the kitchen window.

  Harriet was still sitting at the kitchen table. It was a while before I realised that she was crying. I waited until she’d dried her eyes. Only then did I go in. The dog had to stay in the hall.

  ‘I need some sleep,’ said Harriet. ‘I’m tired out. I’ll tell you tomorrow why I’ve come.’

  She didn’t wait for me to respond, but stood up, said goodnight and eyed me briefly up and down. Then she closed the door. I went to the room where I keep my television set, but I didn’t switch it on. Meeting Harriet had tired me out. Naturally, I was afraid of all the accusations I knew would come. What could I say? Nothing.

  I fell asleep in the armchair.

  It was midnight when I was woken up by a stiff neck. I went to the kitchen and listened outside Harriet’s door. Not a sound. And no strip of light under the door. I cleared up in the kitchen, took a loaf and a baguette out of the freezer, let the dog and the cat in, and went to bed. But I couldn’t sleep. The door that had shut out everything I thought was in the past was banging; swinging back and forth. It was as if the time we had spent together was using the wind to force its way in.

  I put on my dressing gown and went back down to the kitchen. The animals were asleep. It was minus seven degrees outside. Harriet’s handbag was on the kitchen sofa. I put it on the table and opened it. It contained a hairbrush and comb, her purse and a pair of gloves, a bunch of keys, a mobile phone and two bottles of medicine. I read the labels; it was clear that they were painkillers and antidepressants. Prescribed by a Dr Arvidsson in Stockholm. I began to feel uneasy, and I continued searching through her handbag. Down at the very bottom was an address book. It was worn and well thumbed, full of telephone numbers. When I looked up the letter ‘W’, I saw to my surprise that my Stockholm telephone number from the middle of the 1960s was there.

  It had not even been crossed out.

  Had she kept the address book all those years? I was about to put it back when I noticed a piece of paper tucked into the cover. I unfolded it and read it.

  After doing so, I went to stand outside the front door. The dog sat by my side.

  I still didn’t know why Harriet had come to my island.

  But I had found in her handbag a letter informing her that she was seriously ill and did not have much longer to live.

  CHAPTER 5

  THE WIND CAME and went during the night.

  I slept badly and lay listening to the gale. Squalls coming from the north-west – I could feel the draught through the wall. That was what I would note down in my logbook the following day. But I wondered if I would record the fact that Harriet had come to visit me.

  She was lying on a camp bed directly underneath where I was. Inside my head, I kept going through the letter I’d found in her handbag, time and time again. She had stomach cancer, and it had spread. Cytotoxic drugs had only slowed things down a little, operations were out of the question. She had a hospital appointment with her consultant on 12 February.

  I still had enough of the medical practitioner in me to be able to read the writing on the wall. Harriet was going to die. The treatment she had received so far would not cure her, and might not even prolong her life. She was passing into the terminal and palliative phase, to use the medical terms.

  No cure, but no unnecessary suffering.

  As I lay there in the darkness, the same thought kept coming to me, over and over again: it was Harriet who was going to die, not me. Although it was I who had committed the cardinal sin of deserting her, she was the one afflicted. I don’t believe in God. Apart from a short period in the early stages of my training as a doctor, I have barely been affected by religious considerations. I have never had discussions with representatives of the other world. No inner voices urging me to kneel. But now I was lying awake and feeling grateful for not being the one under threat. I barely slept for many hours. I got up twice for a pee and to listen outside Harriet’s door. Both she and the ants seemed to be asleep.

  I got up at six o’clock.

  When I went down to the kitchen, I saw to my surprise that she had already had breakfast. Or at least, she had drunk coffee. She had warmed up the dregs from the previous evening. The dog and the cat were out – she must have let them out. I opened the front door. There had been a light snowfall during the night. Tracks made by the paws of a dog and a cat were visible. And footprints.

  Harriet had gone out.

  I tried to see through the darkness. Dawn was still a distant prospect. Were any sounds to be heard? The wind came and went in squally gusts. All three sets of tracks led in the same direction: towards the back of the house. I didn’t need to look far. There is an old wooden bench in among the apple trees. My grandmother used to sit there. She would knit, straining her short-sighted eyes, or would simply sit with her hands clasped in her lap, listening to the sounds of the sea, which was never silent when not frozen over. But it wasn’t my grandmother’s ghostly figure sitting there now. Harriet had lit a candle that was standing on the ground, sheltered from the wind by a stone. The dog was lying at her feet. She looked the same as when I had first seen her the previous day: hat pulled over her ears, a scarf wrapped round her face. I sat down next to her on the bench. It was below freezing, but as the overnight wind had faded away, it didn’t feel particularly cold.

  ‘It’s beautiful here,’ she said.

  ‘It’s dark. You can’t see anything. And you can’t even hear the sea, as it’s frozen over.’

  ‘I had a dream that the anthill was growing and surrounding my bed.’

  ‘I can move your bed to the kitchen if you’d prefer that.’

  The dog stood up and wandered off. It was moving cautiously, as dogs do when they are deaf and hence afraid. I asked Harriet if she’d noticed that the dog was deaf. She hadn’t. The cat came flouncing up. She took a good look at us, then withdrew into the darkness. The thought I’d had many times before came to me yet again: nobody understands the way cats behave. Did I understand the way I behaved? Did Harriet understand the way she behaved?

  ‘You’re naturally wondering why I’ve come here,’ she said.

  The candle flickered without going out.

  ‘It is unexpected.’

  ‘Did you ever think you would see me again? Did you ever want to?’

  I didn’t answer. When a person has abandoned another without explaining why, there isn’t really anything to say. There is no abandonment that can be excused or explained. I had abandoned Harriet. So I said nothing. I merely sat there, watching the dancing candle flame, and waited.

  ‘I haven’t come here to put you in the dock. I’ve come to beg you to keep your promise.’

  I understood immediately what she meant.

  The forest pool.

  Where I went swimming as a child, the summer when I celebrated my tenth birthday, and my father and I paid a visit to the area in the north of Sweden where he was born. I’d promised her a visit to that forest pool when I returned from my year in America. We would go there and swim together in the dark water under the bright night sky. I’d thought of it as a beautiful ceremony – the black water, the light summer sky when it never gets dark, the great northern divers calling in the distance, the pool said by the locals to be bottomless. We would go swimming there, and after that, nothing would ever part us.

  ‘Perhaps you’ve forgotten the promise you made me?’

  ‘I remember very well what I said.’

  ‘I want you to take me there.’

  ‘It’s winter. The pool will be frozen.’

  I thought about the hole in the ice that I made every morning. Would I be able to chop away at a frozen forest pool in the far north of Sweden? Where the ice is as hard as granite?

  ‘I want to see the pool. Even if it is covered in snow and ice. So that I know it’s true.’

  ‘It is true. The pool exists.’

  ‘You never said what it’s called.’

  ‘It’s
too small to have a name. This country is full of small lakes without names. There’s hardly a single city street or country lane without a name, but lakes and pools without names are plentiful in the forests.’

  ‘I want you to keep your promise.’

  She stood up with difficulty. The candle fell over and went out with a fizzing noise. It was completely dark all around us. The light from the kitchen window didn’t reach this far. Even so, I could see that she had brought her walking aid with her. When I held out my hand to assist her, she waved it away.

  ‘I don’t want help. I want you to keep your promise.’

  When Harriet and her green wheeled walker came to where the light illuminated the snow, it seemed to me that she was walking down a moonlit street. When we were together almost forty years ago, we’d somewhat childishly pretended that we were moon worshippers. Did she remember that? I watched her side-on as she worked her way through the snow-covered stones and rocks. I found it hard to believe that she was dying. A person approaching the ultimate border. A different world or a different kind of darkness would take over. She parked the walker at the foot of the three steps and held on hard to the rail as she struggled up to the front door. As she opened it, the cat scampered between her legs and into the house. She went to her room. I listened with my ear pressed against the closed door. I could hear the faint clinking noise from a bottle. Medicine from her bag. The cat miaowed and rubbed herself against my legs. I gave her something to eat, and sat down at the kitchen table.

  It was still dark outside.

  I tried to read the temperature on the thermometer attached to the outside of the window frame, but the glass containing the mercury column had misted over. The door opened, and Harriet came in. She had brushed her hair and changed into a new jumper. It was lavender blue. I was reminded of my mother and her lavender-scented tears. But Harriet wasn’t crying. She smiled as she sat down on the kitchen sofa.

  ‘I’d never have believed that you would become a person who lived with a dog and a cat and an anthill.’

  ‘Life seldom turns out the way you thought it would.’

  ‘I’m not going to ask you about how your life turned out. But I do want you to keep your promise.’

  ‘I don’t think I could even find my way back to the forest pool.’

  ‘I’m quite sure you could. Nobody had a sense of direction and distance anywhere near as good as yours.’

  I couldn’t challenge Harriet’s claim. I can always find my way through even the most complicated maze of streets. And I never get lost in the countryside.

  ‘I suppose I might be able to find it if I think hard enough. It’s just that I don’t understand why.’

  ‘Because it’s the most beautiful promise I’ve ever been given in my life.’

  ‘The most beautiful?’

  ‘The only genuinely beautiful one.’

  Those were her very words. The only genuinely beautiful promise. It was as if she’d started off a large orchestra playing inside my head, such was the power of her speech.

  ‘We’re always being made promises,’ she said. ‘You make them yourself and you listen to others giving theirs. Politicians are always going on about providing a better quality of life for people as they get older, and a health service in which nobody ever gets bedsores. Banks promise you high interest rates, some food promises to make you lose weight if you eat it, and body creams guarantee old age with fewer wrinkles. Life is quite simply a matter of cruising along in your own little boat through a constantly changing but never-ending stream of promises. And how many do we remember? We forget the ones we would like to remember, and we remember the ones we’d prefer to forget. Broken promises are like shadows dancing around in the twilight. The older I become, the more clearly I see them. The most beautiful promise I’ve ever been given in my life was the one you made to take me to that forest pool. I want to see it, and dream that I’m swimming in it, before it’s too late.’

  I would take her. The only thing I might be able to avoid was setting off in the middle of winter. But perhaps she didn’t dare wait until the spring, because of her illness?

  I thought that perhaps I should tell her I knew she was mortally ill. But I didn’t.

  ‘Do you understand what I mean when I talk about all the promises that accompany one’s journey through life?’

  ‘I’ve tried to avoid being taken in. One is so easily fooled.’

  She stretched out her hand and placed it over mine.

  ‘There was a time when I knew you. We walked along the streets of Stockholm. In my memory, it’s always spring when we’re out walking there. The person I had by my side then is not the same person that you are now. He could have become anything at all – apart from a solitary man on a little island on the edge of the open sea.’

  Her hand was still lying on top of mine. I didn’t touch it.

  ‘Do you recall any darkness?’ she asked.

  ‘No. It was always light.’

  ‘I don’t know what happened.’

  ‘Nor do I.’

  She squeezed my hand.

  ‘You don’t need to lie to me. Of course you know. You caused me endless pain. I don’t think I’ve got over it even now. Do you want to know what it felt like?’

  I didn’t answer. She took away her hand and leaned back on the sofa.

  ‘All I want is for you to keep your promise. You must leave this island for a few days. Then you can come back here, and I’ll never bother you again.’

  ‘It’s not possible,’ I said. ‘It’s too far. My car isn’t up to it.’

  ‘All I want is for you to show me how to get there.’

  It was obvious she wasn’t going to give up.

  It was starting to get light. The night was over.

  ‘I married,’ she said out of the blue. ‘What about you?’

  ‘I divorced.’

  ‘So you got married as well? Who to?’

  ‘You don’t know them.’

  ‘Them?’

  ‘I was married twice. My first wife was called Birgit, and she was a nurse. After two years we had no more to say to each other. And she wanted to retrain as a mining engineer. What did I care for stones and gravel and mine shafts? My second wife was called Rose-Marie, and was an antiques dealer. You can’t imagine how often I left the operating theatre after a long day and accompanied her to some auction sale or other, and then had to ferry home an old cupboard from some peasant’s kitchen. I lost count of how many tables and chairs I had to soak in lye in an old bathtub in order to get rid of the paint. That lasted for four years.’

  ‘Have you any children?’

  I shook my head. Once upon a time, ages ago, I had imagined that when I grew old, I would have children to lighten the darkness of my old age. It was too late now – I’m a bit like my boat, out of the water and covered by a tarpaulin.

  I looked at Harriet.

  ‘Do you have any children?’

  She eyed me for a long time before answering.

  ‘I have a daughter.’

  It struck me that she could have been my child, had I not abandoned her.

  ‘She’s called Louise,’ said Harriet.

  ‘That’s a lovely name,’ I said.

  I stood up and made coffee. Morning was now in full swing. I waited until the water started to boil, counted to seventeen, and then let it brew. I took two cups from the cupboard, and sliced up the loaf of bread that had thawed by now. We were a couple of OAPs sitting down to coffee in the middle of January. We were one of the thousands of coffee mornings that take place every day in this country of ours. I wondered if any of the others were taking place in circumstances anything remotely like the one in my kitchen.

  After drinking her coffee, Harriet withdrew into her anthill room and closed the door.

  For the first time in many years I skipped my winter bath. I hesitated for some considerable time, and was about to get undressed and fetch the axe when I changed my mind. There would be no more winter b
aths for me until I had taken Harriet to the forest pool.

  Instead of my dressing gown I put on a jacket and walked down to the jetty. There had been an unexpected change of weather: a thaw had set in, and the snow stuck to my boots.

  I had a few hours to myself. The sun broke through the clouds, and melting snow and ice began dripping from the boathouse roof. I went inside, fetched one of my tins of tar and opened it. The smell calmed me down. I almost fell asleep in the pale sunlight.

  I thought back to the time when Harriet and I were together. I felt that nowadays I belonged to an epoch that no longer existed. I lived in a strangely barren landscape for those who were left over, who had lost their footing in their own time and were unable to live with the innovations of the new age. My mind wandered. When Harriet and I were together, everybody smoked. All the time, and everywhere. The whole of my youth was filled with ashtrays. I can still recall the chain-smoking doctors and professors who trained me to become a person with the right to wear a white coat. In those days, the postman who delivered mail to the skerries was Hjalmar Hedelius. In winter he would skate from island to island. His rucksack must have been incredibly heavy, and that was before the modern obsession with junk mail.

  My rambling thoughts were broken by the sound of an approaching hydrocopter.

  Jansson had already been to the widow Mrs Åkerblom, and was now heading for me at full speed, bringing all his aches and pains. The toothache that had been pestering him before Christmas had gone away. The last time he moored by my jetty, he had asked me to examine a few brown moles that had formed on the back of his left hand. I calmed him down by assuring him that they were normal developments as a man grew older. He would outlive all the rest of us on the islands. When we pensioners have gone, Jansson will still be chugging along in his old converted fishing boat, or rushing around in his hydrocopter. Unless he’s been made redundant, of course. Which will almost certainly be his fate.

  Jansson glided up to the jetty, switched off the engine and began wriggling out of all his coats and hats. He was red in the face, his hair was standing on end.

  ‘A Happy New Year to you,’ he said when he was standing on the jetty.