Sail of Stone

2

It was two hundred and twenty yards to the sea, or two hundred fifty. They walked across a field where no one had trampled any paths. It can be us, he thought, we can make paths here.

The sky was high, space without end. The sun was sharp, even through sunglasses. The sea moved, but nothing more. The surface glittered like silver and gold.

Elsa shouted out toward the water and began to run along the edge of the beach, on the small stones, hundreds of thousands of them, which were mixed with the grains of sand, millions and millions of them.

Erik Winter turned to Angela, who was crouching and running sand through her fingers.

“If you can guess the number of grains of sand in your hand right now, a lovely prize awaits you,” he said.

She looked up, raising her other hand to shield her eyes from the sun.

“What kind of prize?” she asked.

“First say how many grains of sand you have in your hand.”

“How can you tell how many there are?”

“I know,” he answered.

“What kind of prize?” she repeated.

“How many!” he said.

“Forty thousand,” she answered.

“Wrong.”

“Wrong?”

“Wrong.”

“How the hell do you know?” She got up and looked at Elsa, who was fifty feet away, collecting stones. Angela couldn’t see how many she had. She moved closer to the man in her life before he had had time to answer her question with “intuition.”

“I want my prize. I want my prize!” she said.

“You didn’t answer correctly.”

“Prize, prize,” she shouted, falling into a clinch with Winter; she tried to put a reverse waist hold on him, and Elsa looked up and dropped a few stones, and Erik saw her and laughed at his four-year-old daughter and then at the other woman in his life, who was now trying to do a half nelson, not too bad, and he felt his feet starting to slide in his sandals and his sandals starting to slide in the sand and now he really started to lose his balance, and he slowly fell to the ground, as though he were pulled by a magnet. Angela fell on top of him. He kept laughing.

“Prize!” Angela shouted once more.

“Prize!” shouted Elsa, who had run up to the wrestlers.

“Okay, okay,” said Winter.

“If you know, admit that I guessed right,” said Angela, locking his arms. “Admit it!”

“You were very close,” he answered. “I admit it.”

“Give me my prize!”

She was straddling his stomach now. Elsa sat on his chest. It wasn’t hard to breathe. He raised his right arm and pointed inland.

“What?” she said. “What is it?”

He pointed, waving with his hand.

“The prize,” he said. He felt the sun in his eyes. His black sunglasses had fallen off. He could smell salt and sand and sea. He could see himself lying here for a long time. And often. Making those paths across the field.

From the house.

From the house that could stand over there in the pine grove.

She looked across the field. She looked at him. At the sea. Across the field again. At him.

“Really?” she said. “Do you really think so?”

“Yes,” he answered, “you’re right. Let’s buy the lot.”

Aneta Djanali was still producing her police ID when the woman closed the door that had just been opened. Aneta hadn’t had time to see her face, only a shadow and a pair of eyes that flashed in the disappearing daylight, which seemed to be the only light in there.

She rang the doorbell again. Beside her stood one of the local police officers. It was a woman, and she couldn’t have had very many months on the job behind her. A rookie. She looks like she came straight from high school. She doesn’t look afraid, but she doesn’t think this is fun.

She doesn’t think it’s exciting. That’s good.

“Go away,” they heard through the door. The voice was muffled even before it came through the double veneer or whatever it was between her and the long arm of the law.

“We have to talk for a minute,” Aneta said to the door. “About what happened.”

They could hear mumbling.

“I didn’t understand what you said,” said Aneta.

“Nothing happened,” she heard.

“We have received a report,” said Aneta.

Mumbling.

“Excuse me?” said Aneta.

“It wasn’t from here.”

Aneta heard a door opening behind her, and then closing immediately.

“It isn’t the first time,” she said. “It wasn’t the first.”

The officer beside her nodded.

“Mrs. Lindsten…,” said Aneta.

“Get out of here.”

It was time to make a decision. She could stand here and continue to make the situation worse for everyone.

She could more or less force Anette Lindsten to show her face. It could be a battered face. That could be why.

To force herself on Anette now, to force her way in, could be more or less irreparable.

It could be the only right thing to do. It could be settled here and now. The future could be settled here and now.

Aneta made her decision, put away the badge that she still held in her hand, signaled to the girl in uniform, and left.

Neither of the two policewomen saw anything in the elevator down. They could read the walls if they wanted to, a thousand scribbled messages in black and red.

Outside, the wind had started to blow again. Aneta could hear the streetcars down at Citytorget. The massive apartment buildings marched along, in their particular way. The buildings covered the entire area; sometimes they also covered the sky. The buildings on Fastlagsgatan seemed to stretch from horizon to horizon.

Some were being torn down now; there was a crater just over the hill. Buildings that had been built forty years ago were torn down and the sky became visible again, at least for a while. Today it was blue, terribly blue. A September sky that seemed to have been collecting color all summer and was ready now. Finished. Here I am, at last. I am the Nordic sky.

It was warm, a ripening warmth, as though it had accumulated.

Indian summer, she thought. It’s called brittsommar in Swedish, but I still don’t know why. How many times have I meant to find out? This time I’m going to; as soon as I get home I’ll check. Must have something to do with the calendar. Is there a Britta Day in September?

And as though by chance she caught sight of the street sign on the street they’d swung into earlier: Brittsommar Street. Good God. They’d parked on All Saints Street. You could quickly wander through all the seasons of the year here. Season Street itself ran to the south. All time was gathered, placed in a ring north of Kortedala Torg: Advent Park, Boxing Day Street, Christmas Eve Street, April Street, June Street.

She didn’t see a September Street. She saw Twilight Street. She saw Dawn Street, Morning Street.

One could be battered by all the hours of the day and all the seasons of the year here, she thought as she steered away, toward a different civilization to the south. It was like crossing a border.

Arabic-speaking children were playing on Citytorget. Women with covered heads came out of Ovrell’s grocery. On the corner was a video-game store that also sold vegetables. Across from it was a flower shop. The sun cast shadows that divided the square into a black part and a white part.

“Have you met Anette Lindsten?” she asked the police officer in the seat next to her.

The girl shook her head.

“Who’s seen her?”

“Do you mean out of our colleagues?” the officer asked.

Aneta nodded.

“Do you mean met her?”

Aneta nodded again.

“No one, as far as I know.”

“No one?”

“She hasn’t let anyone in.”

“But someone has called five times and reported that she’s been assaulted?”

“Yes.”

“Anyone who identified themselves?”

“Uh, a few times. A neighbor.” The girl turned toward her. “The woman we spoke to.”

“I know.”

Aneta drove past the factories in Gamlestaden. The inner city came nearer. The first houses in Bagaregården became visible. They were built for a different civilization. Beautiful buildings, for just one family, or two, and you could walk around the building and enjoy the fact that you lived there and had the money necessary for it to be Saturday all week long. She wondered suddenly if there was a Saturday Street in the area they had left behind them. Maybe not, maybe the city planners stopped at Tuesday, or at Monday, Monday Street. That’s where that line was drawn. Monday all week.

“This can’t continue,” said Aneta.

“What are you thinking about?”

“What am I thinking about? I’m thinking that it could be time for a crime scene investigation.”

“Can we do that?”

“Don’t you know the Police Act?” Aneta asked, quickly turning her head toward her young colleague, who looked like she’d been caught out, like she’d flunked a test.

“It falls under public prosecution,” said Aneta in a milder voice. “If I suspect that someone has been assaulted I can go in and investigate the situation.”

“Are you going to do it, then?”

“Go into the Lindstens’ home? It might be time for that.”

“She says that she lives alone now.”

“But the man comes to visit?”

The officer shrugged her shoulders.

“She hasn’t said anything about it herself,” she said.

“But the neighbors?”

“One of them says that she’s seen him.”

“And no children?” asked Aneta. “They don’t have any children?”

“No.”

“We’ll have to look him up.” That bastard, she thought.

“That bastard…,” she mumbled.

“What did you say?”

“The man,” said Aneta, and she could feel that she was smiling when she turned toward the young officer again.

It was evening when Aneta opened the door to the house and smelled the familiar odor in the stairwell. Her house, or her apartment building, to be exact, or even more exactly: the building she lived in. But it felt like her own house. She enjoyed living in this old patrician house on Sveagatan. It was centrally located. She could walk to almost anything. She could choose not to walk. And change her mind again.

The elevator lugged itself up. She liked that too. She liked opening the door and picking up the mail from the wooden floor. She liked dropping her coat where she stood, kicking off her shoes, seeing the big old shell that she’d always kept on a bureau, seeing the African mask that hung over it, walking in her socks to the kitchen, heating the water in the kettle, making tea, or sometimes having a beer, sometimes a glass of wine. Liked it.

She liked the solitude.

Sometimes she was afraid because she felt this way.

You shouldn’t be alone. That’s what others thought. There’s something wrong when you’re alone. No one chooses solitude. Solitude is a punishment. A sentence.

No. She wasn’t serving any sentence. She liked sitting here and deciding to do whatever she wanted whenever she wanted.

She was sitting on a kitchen stool now, of her own free will; the kettle worked itself up to a climax. She was just about to get up to make tea when the telephone rang.

“Yes?”

“What are you doing?”

The question was asked by Fredrik Halders, a colleague, an intense colleague. Not as much anymore, but still really very intense compared to almost everyone else.

Two years ago he had lost his ex-wife when she was hit and killed by a drunk driver.

She’s not even still here as an ex, Halders had said for a while afterward, as though he were only half conscious.

They had been working together when it happened, she and Fredrik, and they started seeing each other. She had gotten to know his children. Hannes and Magda. They had begun to accept her presence in their home, truly accept it.

She liked Fredrik, his character. Their preliminary banter had developed into something else.

She was also afraid of all this. Where would it lead? Did she want to know? Did she dare not to try to find out?

She heard Fredrik’s voice on the phone:

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing. Just got in the door.”

“You don’t feel like a movie tonight, do you?” Before she could answer he continued: “Larrinder’s daughter wants to earn some extra money babysitting. She called me herself. He asked me today and I told him to have her call.” Bo Larrinder was a relatively new colleague in the criminal investigation department. “And she called right away!”

“A new world is opening for you, Fredrik.”

“It is, isn’t it? And it leads to Svea.”

The Svea cinema. A hundred yards away. She looked at her feet. They looked flattened, as though they had been pressed under an iron. She saw her teacup waiting on the kitchen counter. In her mind’s eye she saw her bed and a book. She saw herself falling asleep, probably soon.

“Fredrik. I’m not up to it tonight. I’m exhausted.”

“It’s the last chance,” he said.

“Tonight? Is tonight the last showing?”

“Yes.”

“You’re lying.”

“Yes.”

“Tomorrow night. Bien. I’m already mentally preparing myself so it will work to go out tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

“It’s okay, right?”

“Of course it’s okay. What the fu-What do you think? What were you doing this afternoon, by the way?”

“Possible wife beater in Kortedala.”

“They’re the worst. Did you get him?”

“No.”

“No report?”

“Not from the wife. Not from the neighbor, either, it turned out. But it was the fifth time.”

“How does she look?” Halders asked. “Is it really bad?”

“You mean injuries? I haven’t met her. I tried.”

“I guess you’ll have to go in, then.”

“I thought about it as I was driving away. I went back and forth about it.”

“Do you want company?”

“Yes.”

“Tomorrow?” said Halders.

“No time tomorrow. I have those café burglaries in Högsbo.”

“Say the word and I’m ready.”

“Thanks, Fredrik.”

“Now get some good rest and mentally prepare yourself for tomorrow, babe.”

“Bonsoir, Fredrik.”

She hung up the phone with a smile. She made tea. She went into the living room and put on a CD. She sat on the sofa and felt her feet begin to recover their shape. She listened to Ali Farka Touré’s blown-apart desert blues and thought about a country south of Touré’s Mali deserts.

She got up and changed the CD, to Burkina Faso’s own great musician Gabin Dabiré: his Kontômé from 1998. Her music. Her country. Not like the country she had been born in and lived in. But her country.

Kontômé was the idol found in every Burkinian home. She had hers in the hall, above the bureau. The icon represented the spirits of the ancestors, who were the guiding light for the family and for the entire society.

The light, she thought. Kontômé lights the path. We thank Kontômé for what we are and what we have, now and in the future. And Kontômé helps us when fate unfolds on that path.

Yes. She believed in it. It was in her blood. That was as it should be.

Aneta Djanali had been born at Östra Hospital in Gothenburg to parents from Upper Volta. The country’s name had changed to Burkina Faso in 1984, but it was still the same impoverished country, filled with wind, like the music she listened to, steppes that became deserts, water that didn’t exist.

It was a vulnerable country.

Dry Volta. Impoverished Volta. Sick Volta. Violent Volta. Dangerous Volta.

Her parents came to Sweden in the sixties, a few years after the country’s independence, fleeing persecution.

Her father had been in prison for a short time. He could just as easily have been executed. Just as easily. Sometimes it was only a question of luck.

The former French colony inherited terror and murderers from the Frenchmen who had murdered there since the end of the nineteenth century. Now the Frenchmen were gone, but their language remained. The people were African but out of their mouths came words in French, the official language.

She had learned French as a child, in Gothenburg. She was the only child in the Djanali family. When she wasn’t little anymore, when she had been with the police for a long time, her parents chose to return to their hometown, Ouagadougou, the capital.

For Aneta, it was an obvious choice to stay in the country she was born in, and she understood why Mother and Father wanted to return to the country they were born in, before it was too late.

It was almost too late. Her mother had come back with two months to spare. She had been buried in the hard, burned red earth at the northern fringes of the city. During the funeral, Aneta had watched the desert press in from all directions, millions of square miles in size. She had thought about how there were sixteen million people living in this desolate country, and how that wasn’t so many more than in desolate Sweden. Here they were black, incredibly black. Their clothes were white, incredibly white.

Her father mulled for a long time over whether the journey back had caused the death, at least indirectly.

She kept him company in the capital as long as he wished. She walked with big eyes through streets that she could have lived on her entire life, instead of returning to them as a stranger. Ouagadougou had as many citizens as Gothenburg.

She looked like everyone else here. She could communicate in French with the people-at least with those who had gone to school-and she could speak a little Moré with others, which she did sometimes.

She could keep walking, without attracting attention, all the way out to the city limits and to the desert, which assailed the city with its wind, the harmattan. She could feel it when she sat in her father’s house.

She heard the wind, the Swedish wind. It sounded rounder and softer, and colder. But it wasn’t cold out. It was brittsommar.

Right. She got up and went to the bookshelf along the far wall and got out the Swedish Academy dictionary. She looked up the word:

A period of beautiful and warm weather in the fall-named after Saint Birgitta’s Day on October 7.

She didn’t know much about the holy, but she suspected this was true for most Swedes, white or black. October seventh. That was a while from now. Did that mean it would get warmer?

She smiled and put back the thick volume. She went to the bathroom and undressed and ran a hot bath. She slowly lowered herself into the water. It was very quiet in the apartment. She heard the telephone ring out there, and she heard the machine pick up. She didn’t hear a voice, only a pleasant murmur. She closed her eyes and felt her body float in the hot water. She thought of a hot wind, and of the luxury of running a bath. She didn’t want to think about that, but now she did. She thought away the water, the luxury.

She saw a face for a few seconds, a woman. A door that opened and closed. A dusky light. Eyes that shone and disappeared. The eyes were afraid.

She kept her eyes closed and saw water, as though she were swimming underwater and was carried along by the current, the wind of the sea.