The Whisperer - читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги автора Karin Fossum (Chapter 26) #26

Chapter 26

Liebe Mutti,

All I see through my window is the prison wall. It is eight metres high. On top there are great rolls of barbed wire, which remind me of nests that no bird wants to live in. And I can see the tower, of course, where the guards are on patrol 24/7. The top is made of glass and is a bit like a diamond cut with six surfaces. They walk slowly, their eagle eyes looking out over the enormous prison grounds. I often sit here watching them, while I try to imagine what they think as they trudge their set round, always in a circle, as though they were in a running wheel. I can also see a small patch of sky, it’s not very big, really too small to get any sense of the weather. I have to go out into the exercise yard to do that, but I’m out there every day, as a rule in the afternoons. But I’m not that bothered about the weather, as I’m neither a farmer nor a fisherman.

Yes, of course we are serving our sentences under the same sky, even though sometimes, as a child, I wondered if we actually lived in the same world. We now have something in common, something that unites us, which might be a good thing and lead to a better understanding. A new openness. But I don’t expect much, I’ve learned not to, I was worn out by everything that went on at home, that I escaped from. But it feels good to write to you, it’s new to me. When Helmut passes down the corridor with the post, I go out and call after him, as there might be something from you in the big pile. The others get letters, and now I’m no different from them.

There’s a small cafe in the prison that we call Plötzen which is open for a few hours in the evening. I don’t often go there, but every now and then I go down to get a cup of coffee, or something else I can take back to my cell. The cafe is run by a girl, and there aren’t many of them in the unit. Not that that particularly bothers me, but sometimes it does good to hear her voice, which is high and bright, like I remember your voice was. I realise that young Peter also has quite a high, girlish voice. Just like all the other inmates, he’s found a survival strategy, you have to. He’s the youngest here, and the thinnest, so the most vulnerable. He thinks before he speaks. Behaves like an angel, is quick to lower his eyes. No one lays a hand on him. There are not often fights, more verbal disagreements, which blow up out of nowhere, but then subside before they turn into violence. None of the men in my unit are violent. Most of them have something that gnaws at them, they have secrets, but then we all do. You too, Mutti. It’s a human right to have secrets. Something we carry deep inside, that we will carry to the grave, and that’s the way it should be, I think.

I don’t know what you must be thinking as you read this. Maybe you hope that one day I’ll come home, or come to visit you in prison, if I get out before you. But I will never move back to Kirkelina, you must understand that there is nothing for me to come back to. And as for us, well, the future will tell, but we won’t ever share that future. Is that what you sit there dreaming about, and now I’m crushing your dream?

It’s nearly dinner time here. The chef is good, a Chinese man, but he doesn’t beat the chef at the Dormero. As staff, we used to eat in the kitchen whenever we had the chance, we’d lean against the metal counters and worktops and help ourselves to the heavenly food. But those days are long gone. So much belongs to the past now. So, I’m going to go down to the canteen and find myself a place. Maybe you eat on your own in your cell. As I remember you, you would probably prefer that.

Greetings from your son,

Rikard Josef

Ragna folded the pages and held them to her chest, over her beating heart. She tried to feel her son’s pulse in the thin paper, to hear his breathing.

She had a very clear image of him sitting in his cell at a desk by the window. He was sitting there writing to her. But she could only see his back and neck, not his face, she could not get hold of it, had no idea of what his face looked like as a grown man. When she played in her imagination, she saw brief glimpses of her father, his straight nose, his thick, black brows. Or she saw Walther’s square jaw and high forehead. She was certain that Rikard had thick, beautiful hair and was not stuck with her wispy thin bird’s nest. He would be tall and broad, she reckoned, with muscles from all the hard training. Goodness, he must be so handsome. She sat for a long time with the two pages to her heart. They nourished her soul. The words penetrated in through her skin, passed her ribs, joined the bloodstream and flowed straight to her heart, she could live on this for a long time, a long time! But after a while, other thoughts started to jostle for attention, his words echoed in her head.

‘If we actually lived in the same world. It’s a human right to have secrets. You would probably prefer that.’

She suppressed these thoughts that were clamouring to be heard, put the letter in its envelope and stowed it in the desk drawer with the first letter. She wished she had a ribbon or a cord that she could tie round them, as the number grew and became a pile, because she knew that they would. Valuable letters should be held together by something, preferably a ribbon, if only she could get hold of one.

When she had her dinner a couple of hours later, she was reminded of the Chinese chef at Plötzensee Prison. She imagined that he was small and round, with smiling eyes and square hands.

There were a handful of pale meatballs on her plate, floating in a cream sauce, with boiled vegetables and mashed potatoes. There was a glass of water, too, and a small dish of lingonberry jam.

‘Who makes the food here?’ she asked.

The guard had to think, and then remembered that it was a woman called Gerd.

‘Do you like it?’ he asked.

‘It’s all right,’ she whispered, and looked up. ‘But the only thing that tastes of anything is the lingonberry jam.’

She gave a humorous smile — after the letter from Rikard, she could afford to.

‘Not everyone is happy,’ the guard told her.

He obviously remembered something and grinned.

‘We’ve had some people here who threw their trays against the wall,’ he told her. ‘And others who didn’t dare eat because they thought the food was poisoned. Or full of ground glass.’

He roared with laughter.

‘Believe me, they often had good reason to think that someone was after them.’

He winked at Ragna and went over to the door.

‘But I guess there’s no one after you, so you can just enjoy it.’

She heard the irony in his voice and flushed with anger. The door slammed shut and his steps retreated.

She stabbed a meatball with the fork and considered what he had said. Sooner or later she would leave this cell and have to eat with all the other inmates at big tables. She did not know if she could face that, as there would be a lot of noise: voices, and the clinking of glasses and cutlery. No one would hear her. Not that she would have anything to say. She would much rather be where she was and eat at the desk. This was how she wanted it to be.