The Shadow Girls

9

Everything was going well until they reached Hallsberg. There Tea-Bag disappeared without leaving a trace. But before she left, she had continued to tell the story she had abruptly cut short in Humlin’s apartment. There was something so unbelievable about her narrative that Humlin started to think it was probably true. She had told him — in her broken but clear Swedish — how she had managed to reach Sweden from the internment camp in Spain. Humlin wondered if there could be anyone quite as alone as a young refugee on her way through a Europe that was as forbidden to those without legal access as if it had been fenced off with high walls and barbed wire.

As far as Södertälje she had sat motionless in her seat and had not even — this irritated him since he felt she should have shown more gratitude — reacted when he bought a ticket for her from the conductor. She had simply sunk down into her thick jacket and stared out of the window. Humlin tried to poke a hole in her silence by asking her a number of essentially meaningless questions but she had not answered, and after a while he wondered what he thought he was trying to achieve. They went through a series of tunnels in Södertälje and when they were back in daylight it was as if the darkness of the tunnels had inspired her. She removed her jacket and he couldn’t help but notice that she had a very beautiful body.

‘Do you want me to tell you about the monkey?’ she asked.

‘Please,’ he said. ‘But why don’t you finish the other story first. You were in the rowing boat that had started swaying from the wake of the barge. There were shirts hanging out to dry. You waved even though you didn’t see any people.’

‘I’d rather tell you about the monkey.’

‘You should always finish the stories you tell. Unfinished stories are like restless ghosts. They will continue to haunt you.’

She looked at him attentively.

‘I assure you I know what I’m talking about. Unfinished stories can become one’s enemies.’

Slowly, hesitantly, she started up her narrative again. At points she spoke with a certain amount of reluctance, as if she wanted to smash parts of her story because it caused her too much pain.

I continued to drift in that boat. Time was no longer of any importance. I think the boat trip lasted three days and three nights. I only rowed in to shore the few times I passed a small village and wanted to buy some food with the last of my money. In one of the villages there was a black man in the market that I had decided looked as if it sold the cheapest food. This was the shop I always looked for, the one with the dirty façade and the broken sign. He looked at me with serious eyes but when I smiled he smiled back. He said something to me that I did not understand. But when I answered him in my own language, the language that was already beginning to feel foreign to me, he jumped up from his rickety chair and answered me in the same language.

‘My daughter!’ he said. ‘You come from my country. What are you doing here, who are you, where are you going?’

I thought it was best to be careful in my answers. This man was one of my people, but he sat on a strange chair in a foreign land. Perhaps he would contact the police who would come down with their dogs and make sure I was thrown in jail. I did not know. But it was as if I had no more energy for subterfuge. I couldn’t run away or even give false answers. All of my lies felt meaningless, as if they were simply going to bounce back into my mouth and choke me. I decided to tell this man the truth.

‘I have escaped from a Spanish refugee camp.’

He frowned. I could see in his face all the lines and scars he had received from many dangers and sorrows.

‘How did you get here?’ he asked.

‘I walked.’

‘My God! You have walked from Spain?’

‘I have also drifted along the river in a boat.’

‘How long have you been travelling?’

When he asked me that question, I suddenly knew the answer. I thought I had lost all sense of time, but suddenly I could see the long line of white stones in my head. I counted them all.

‘Three months and four days,’ I said.

He shook his head in disbelief.

‘How have you managed? Where have you found food? Have you been alone? What is your name?’

‘Tea-Bag.’

The man was tall and strong, but his hair was already starting to turn white. He leaned forward and looked me in the eyes.

‘You have been alone for a long time but now you are my daughter. At least for a while. Soon Monsieur Le Patron will be back and then you can’t stay, since like the white man that he is he has explained to me he can only tolerate one black person at a time.’

I still did not trust him. Even though he looked me straight in the eyes, allowing me to see deeply into him, I never forgot that I was trespassing on forbidden territory.

‘What is your name?’ I asked him.

‘Zachary. But in our language my name is Luningi.’

My father’s name! Now I was the one who opened my eyes wide and hoped he could see through my eyes to the village where my father had lived until he was one day taken away.

‘My father’s name was Luningi.’

‘I have my name after an uncle who dreamed of a mountain. He set out to find it and never returned. We think he found the mountain and decided to stay because it was so beautiful. Perhaps he is still there deep inside it. What do you and I know, what does anyone really know? Where is it you are going, my daughter?’

‘To Sweden.’

Luningi frowned again.

‘Is that a city? I have heard the name before.’

‘It is a country, to the north.’

‘Why are you going there?’

‘Someone is waiting for me there.’

Luningi looked at me for a long time with his wide eyes. The silence around him was heavy with thought. There was a sharp smell in the shop from the cheese counter that I found calming. The smell of the cheese and the man’s white hair were real. I had hardly spoken to a person for three months. My tongue had started to feel swollen and stiff, as if it was suffering from being used so little.

‘Who is waiting for you?’

‘The country. The people who live there know who I am.’

Luningi nodded slowly.

‘It is good to have a goal. You should hold on to it. People who have lost sight of their goal often begin to live in a careless manner. I had a goal once. It was to travel to Europe and work for ten years. Nothing else, only that. I wanted to live as cheaply as possible, save my money and then return home in order to fulfil my dream.’

‘What was that?’

‘To build a mortuary.’

I had never heard that word before. ‘Mortuary’. Was that a cheese shop? Brightly coloured cloth for dresses? Or was it a restaurant with food so spicy that one started to sweat after the first bite? I didn’t know.

‘Perhaps you don’t know what that is,’ he said. ‘Or perhaps you don’t want to know. Are you afraid of death?’

‘Everyone is afraid of death.’

‘Not me. A mortuary is a place where the dead rest before their burial. It is a room full of ice where the sun never reaches in. The dead have time to cool after their battle with death, before they are placed in the earth.’

‘Why do you want to build a mortuary?’

‘When I was young I travelled around our country with my father. He was helping people look for water. He was not a shaman, he did not look for it with a wooden stick. He simply saw the water in his mind. But what I saw were big cities where there were so many people crowded together they almost stuck to one another, and villages where the sense of desolation was so strong it made people silent. I saw that we were slowly losing our ability to die a slow and thoughtful death. An African who loses the ability to die with dignity is a lost man. He loses the ability to live, just like the people in this country. I want to build a mortuary where dignity is intact. In my mortuary the dead will be able to rest in the cool air before they bow one last time to the earth and disappear.’

‘I think I understand.’

‘No, you don’t. One day perhaps you will, if you are not eaten alive by the country that is waiting for you. Countries can be like hungry animals with a thousand mouths. They eat us up when their need is great and they spit us out when they are done. I sell some cheese in this shop every day, but I am never able to save any money. The only thing I fear is that when I feel my death approaching I will not have enough money or strength to return to the place where I was born. One can live a rootless existence but one cannot die without knowing where one should plant one’s last and most valuable roots.’

Luningi walked to the door and squinted in the light out into the street. There were church bells pealing in the distance.

‘Now it is best that you leave. Monsiuer Le Patron will soon be back.’

Luningi put some cheese in a plastic bag for me. I saw that his back was bent as if under a great weight. His left leg dragged slightly behind him when he walked.

‘Cheese will fill you up,’ he said.

Then he handed me some wrinkled banknotes from his pocket but I would not take them.

‘They are for your mortuary,’ I said.

‘Other people will build it. It is too late for me.’

‘But what about your trip home?’

‘It is not as important as your trip to the north.’

We stood there silently in the dim light of the shop. Luningi stretched out his hand and stroked my cheek.

‘You are very beautiful, my daughter,’ he said. ‘When I remove my hand I can no longer protect you. Many men will desire you, perhaps hurt you, because you are so beautiful. The only one who can protect you is you.’

‘I am not afraid.’

Luningi pulled back his hand and looked at me with sudden disapproval.

‘Why do you say you are not afraid when that was the first thing I saw in you? I have also been on the run. I know what it is like not to be welcome anywhere, always to be hunted, surrounded by people who want to catch you. Don’t stand there and say you are not afraid. I am too tired to listen to lies.’

‘I am afraid.’

‘Yes, you are afraid. Go. I will try to see in my dreams if you reach the goal you have set for yourself. To arrive. To become visible. But don’t forget that you live in a world where thousands of unwelcome refugees are streaming across the globe. The ones who have already made it to the other side will do all in their power to make sure that you do not make it. Now you should go.’

‘What is wrong with your leg?’

‘I only have enough energy to give to one leg. Go.’

He pushed me to the door, caressed my face a last time with his fingers, then forced me out onto the street. I tried to remember the feel of that push for the remainder of my journey, to try to capture the strength he had tried to give me along with the cheese and the money. In my thoughts I spoke to him every day. I could always ask him for advice. Every time he answered me it was as if the energy it required made his hair grow more and more white.

When I was tired the images of Luningi and my father were joined together into a new face that I had never seen before but that still seemed familiar to me. In my dreams, often as I was just falling asleep, I saw the two of them, Luningi and my father, deep in conversation in a secret language I had never heard. From time to time they would turn to me and smile. They were discussing how best to help me, what advice to give, which prayers to say and which gods would best protect my venture. Sometimes I was angry at their inadequacy. Neither one of them was a very powerful protector. I was always running into bad luck and the only one who helped me out was me.

Many weeks after I had met Luningi I crossed the border into Germany during a terrible storm. It was a time when heavy rain fell regularly from the sky. It gave me constant colds and fevers and forced me to hide out under bridges and in abandoned houses. One time I was in a service station by one of the big motorways where there was always traffic regardless of the time of day. I was looking for food in a rubbish bin when a truck driver who was urinating against the wall suddenly spotted me. He was dirty and smelled like the rubbish bin. His big stomach hung over his belt. He asked me if I wanted to hitch a ride in his truck and although I knew what situation it could lead to I said yes. But not before I had checked that he was headed north.

I don’t know why but I still remember the name of the town where he was headed. Kassel. I thought it sounded like the name of an insect, perhaps one of the bugs that used to crawl on me when I was a child playing in front of our hut. A kassel, a little creature with thousands of tiny legs, a bug that never bit me but crawled all over my skin just as I was now crawling across that part of the Earth’s skin called Europe.

I climbed up into the cab and he steered out onto the road. I knew I should be on my guard but the warmth made me drowsy and I fell asleep. When I woke up the truck had stopped and he was on top of me, an enormous weight that I was sure would crush me. I ripped at his throat with my nails and somehow managed to get away. The last I heard of him was his panting giving way to a roar of curses. Then the engine started, the strong headlights came on and I saw him drive off.

Even after this I courted other pissing truck drivers. My smile worked on all of them, and every time I had to scratch my way out of their grip with my nails. All except once, when the driver let me out at a rest stop because he was no longer going my way. He invited me to breakfast and we ate together. He didn’t ask me any questions, just finished his coffee, shook my hand and returned to his truck.

At last I stood by the sea. It was cold, the wind stung my face, but I was not going to give up. I was determined to keep going. I sneaked aboard a ferry and hid under some seats in a cafeteria. The ferry swayed and rolled out at sea. I threw up several times but knew — because I had looked at a map — that I was almost there. The white stones in my head were now so many I could almost not count them. But time was like something I shed every morning. I simply left it behind and forced myself to look forwards.

At dawn I crept out of the cafeteria and looked for a toilet. I washed my face and looked at the person in the mirror. I only partially recognised the person I saw there. I had lost weight and had a strange rash on my face. But the biggest difference from the person I had been before were all the furrows that had been carved into my forehead. There I saw all the roads, rivers and rubbish bins that marked the miles of my journey. It was as if the map had been silently imprinted on to my face. I would never be allowed to forget.

When I left the bathroom and walked out on deck I suddenly saw a person I recognised. He was curled up under an awning in a lifeboat and he was shaking with cold. He was one of the young men who had built the ladder in the camp, one of the men who had left an hour before I was allowed to. He flinched when he saw me. I smiled but he did not recognise me. Fear shone out of his eyes. I walked over to him. The wind was bitingly cold.

‘Don’t you know who I am?’

He shook his head.

‘I was the one who climbed the fence after you had left.’

‘What fence?’

His voice was hoarse and faint, his face covered with dirty stubble. When I reached for his hand he pushed me away.

‘Where are the others?’ I asked.

‘What others?’

‘The ones you left with.’

‘I am alone. I have been alone the whole time.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘Home.’

‘Where is your home?’

He mumbled something I didn’t understand. I tried to take his hand again to calm him but again he resisted, then he got up and wove down the deck. I started following him but then I hesitated and stopped. He wanted to be alone. He walked as if he were drunk, wobbling and tripping as he made his way along the deck. I saw him hide behind a chimney.

It was full daylight now, the sea was grey and spiked with foamy waves. Far away I saw the dark contours of land. Suddenly I knew what I should do. I pulled away the fluttering awning and climbed into the lifeboat where the young man had been. I had seen madness in his eyes. Fear had eaten him up inside, as if it were an invisible parasite that had bored a hole through his skin. I curled up inside the damp boat and tried to stay warm. I called out for my father but he didn’t answer. My mother was an uneasy spirit who was somewhere far away. I called out to her too but she also did not hear me. I had reached the end of my strength, I could not have felt more alone. I knew it was only a short time before the madness would shine from my eyes. But I had not yet reached the land where I knew I would be welcome. Again I was in a boat drifting towards an unknown shore.

How long it took me to travel through Denmark I do not know. But one day I was on a beach with rotting seaweed looking out over the water and I saw Sweden on the other side. I used a bike for long stretches of the trip. I stole bikes at night when I wandered around in residential areas like a stray dog. I had learned how to cycle from my mother’s cousin Baba. He had lived in a city and had learned many things. He had an old bike with him when he first came back to the village and he taught me to ride it.

At last I was standing in front of the final border I needed to cross. Standing there on the beach was also my first encounter with snow. It had started to snow and it was as if a blanket was slowly spreading across the beach. At first I thought there was something wrong with my eyes and then I realised frozen water was falling on me, like white flowers from an icy garden among the clouds. I stood there motionless and saw how my jacket became white. .’

At this point the narrative was once again torn from Humlin’s hands. Tea-Bag had been telling him her story with an undertone of urgency but had sometimes fallen silent, deep in thought. When she reached the part about standing on the Danish beach she leaned back and shut her eyes as if the telling had finally sapped her strength. Humlin had also shut his eyes for a moment and when he opened them again as they reached Hallsberg station, she was gone.

The train was already leaving the station when he started seriously wondering where she had gone. Since he had dozed off for a while he had at first assumed she had gone to the toilet but when he looked at the signs he saw that they were unoccupied. This was also true in the next carriage. He walked through the entire train, checking the toilets and waiting for the person to come out if they were occupied. But Tea-Bag was gone. When he had been waiting for her at the Central station and became convinced she wasn’t going to show he had been overcome by a feeling of despondence. Now that she had disappeared from the train he only felt concern for her well-being. It was as if he had started reading a book — for the second time — and had become gripped by the narrative only to have some invisible force rip the book out of his hands. He didn’t understand why she had left. She had not shown any signs that something was amiss. But they must have been there, he thought. I just couldn’t see them.

Just north of Herrljunga the train suddenly came to a standstill. After thirty minutes Humlin finally asked the conductor what the problem was.

‘Why aren’t we moving?’

‘Temporary loss of power.’

‘Why aren’t we being given any information over the loudspeakers?’

‘I’m informing you now. Loss of power.’

‘How long will it take to restore?’

‘We’ll be on our way again shortly.’

Humlin tried to call Törnblom on his phone but naturally the train had malfunctioned in an area where his mobile was out of range.

The conductor returned after an hour.

‘I thought you said we would be on our way shortly,’ Humlin grumbled.

‘We will. It won’t take long.’

‘How long?’

‘A few minutes.’

‘We’ve already been delayed an hour.’

‘The engineer thinks he’ll be able to make up ten minutes.’

‘Then we’ll still be fifty minutes delayed.’

‘These things happen. It won’t be much longer now.’

The train was delayed for three hours. Then the loudspeakers announced that all passengers would be transferred to buses. Humlin was close to breaking down at this point, partly from worry about Tea-Bag, partly by the fact that the meeting in Stensgården would have to be cancelled.

Once he had climbed onto the overfull bus he went to call Törnblom again. He looked through his briefcase and all his pockets, but to no avail. He must have left his phone on the train.

It was a quarter to eleven when the bus pulled up to the Central station in Gothenburg. Humlin looked around for Törnblom but, of course, no one was there to pick him up.