The Fire Witness

34

Flora hands over the cash to a man in a gray coat. His umbrella drips water on her face as he gives her the key and tells her that, as usual, she should drop it in the antique dealer’s mail slot when she’s finished. Flora thanks him and hurries down the sidewalk. The seams in her old coat are beginning to rip open. She is forty, but her face is childlike. It radiates loneliness.

The first block on Upplandsgatan after Odenplan in Stockholm is filled with antique and curiosity shops. Crystal chandeliers and display cases, old toys made of painted tin, porcelain dolls, medals, and mantel clocks clutter the shop windows.

Next to the barred windows of Carlén Antiques there’s a narrow door. Flora tapes a piece of white cardboard onto the door’s thick glass window. On it she’s written “Spiritualist Evening.”

A steep staircase leads to the basement. There are two rooms here: a small pantry and a larger meeting room. The pipes in the walls roar whenever anyone in the upper floors flushes the toilet or turns on the faucets. Flora has hired the larger room for seven séances. Four to six people usually attend, which barely covers the rent. She’s written letters to a number of newspapers to inform them of her ability to contact the dead, but nobody has replied. She’s put an advertisement in the New Age magazine Fenomen for this evening’s séance.

She only has a few minutes before the participants will arrive, but she knows what to do. She quickly pushes the excess furniture to one side and takes twelve chairs and puts them in a circle around a table. In the center of the table she places the porcelain figurines of a man and a woman wearing clothes from the nineteenth century. She believes that they will help evoke a feeling of the past. As soon as the séance is over, she’ll return them to their place in an oak cabinet because she’s not fond of them. She arranges twelve tea lights around the figurines after pressing a little strontium salt into one of the candles with the end of a match and covering the hole.

Then she goes to the cabinet and sets an ancient alarm clock to ring. She first tried this trick four weeks ago. The bell is gone, so the only thing that can be heard is a chattering sound inside the cabinet. Before she can wind up the clock, however, she hears the door upstairs open. The first guests have arrived. She hears people shake their umbrellas and start walking down the stairs.

Flora catches a glimpse of herself in the square mirror. She stops, takes a deep breath, and presses her hand along the front of the gray dress she bought at the Salvation Army store. She smiles at her reflection. She appears calm. She lights some incense and smiles kindly as Dina and Asker Sibelius enter the room. They hang up their coats, talking quietly to each other.

The outer door opens again, and more people come down the stairs. This time, it’s an elderly couple that she hasn’t met before. The participants of Flora’s séances tend to be old people near the end of their lives. They can’t accept the fact that many of their loved ones are gone and that death is final.

Flora greets the new couple in her usual, quiet manner and starts to turn away. Then she stops and studies the man as if she’s seen something particular about him, and she makes as if to shake off that feeling as she motions for them to take a seat. The door opens again. A few more guests have arrived.

At ten past seven, Flora realizes that no one else is coming. There are nine people seated around the table. It’s the highest number yet, but not enough to pay back the money she’s taken from Ewa. Her legs are shaking as she pulls out a chair and sits down. The conversation stops and everyone looks at her.