He was too big, what might that mean? In bed, or what? Did he hit her?
“He was big?”
Astrid made a face, where distaste was mixed with anxiety.
“Was he violent?”
“He was hot-tempered, if I may say so.”
Ann couldn’t keep from laughing.
“Yes, we said that before, when we wanted to joke about it a little.”
The old woman smiled. Ann felt as if she’d gained a confidant, who could subtly shift perspective with a change in facial expression or by using words that sometimes concealed, sometimes pointed ahead.
“I’m turning eighty. There won’t be anything remarkable, but there’ll be a little coffee anyway. Next Saturday if that’s good. At noon perhaps.”
“I’ll be happy to come,” said Ann. This was the first birthday party she’d been invited to in the village.
“If the boy is here, he’s welcome too.”
Ann’s first thought was Edvard, but then she understood that it was Erik she meant.
* * *
She took the main road back. After the “long curve” she saw her cottage, and when she turned around her workplace was visible behind the groves of young birch trees. Straight across the newly sown fields, the shoots like a light green sea, the red-painted outbuildings at Hamra farm shone, and over the roof tiles of the cream-white farmhouse a flock of birds, perhaps starlings, was flying. It was an idyllic rural scene, a sunny Saturday afternoon in May. Her world these days. When she met Edvard she could not fathom that he wanted to live in the country. In her youth she had longed intensely to get away from Ödeshög, which was still a fairly large community, and moved as soon as she got the chance. She wanted to be in a city, the bigger the better. During her time at the police academy it was Stockholm, then service in Uppsala, and then at last a real backwater with a closed store, a burned-down school, a community center, and a decaying wooden bulletin board up by the “big crossing.”
A steady stream of cars passed, probably on their way home from an auction or an estate sale she’d seen advertised, but Ann stood there, as if her thoughts had slowed her down and the growing melancholy made the machinery stop completely. It wasn’t Edvard, she was so used to that wrestling that she’d learned it wasn’t worth being paralyzed for his sake. Instead it was a sense of aversion and irritation that had slipped up on her, like the one that haunted her during her years as a detective. When something didn’t fall into place. It was obviously the fire, it was no more complicated than that, the fire that remained a wound in the village and insisted on a solution. And now the call to the department, where someone had been looking for her, but that riddle was easier to solve. The simplest of course would be for her to call and get this resolved, but did she want to be dragged into something, where “someone may die”? Did she really want that? “No” was the obvious answer. But I can always pass it on to Sammy, she thought, and headed for Gösta’s house. In the bucket there was no more than a kilo of herring left.
* * *
As usual he was working on something. “I’m puttering around a little,” he always said, even if it concerned fine carpentry. Like this time. He was standing at his workbench sawing thin rods of an unknown type of wood, and looked up when he noticed her shadow in the doorway. She stepped in and to the side.
“These will be inlays for shutters,” he explained without being asked. “It struck me that it would look nice on the little cabin,” he added, completing his work without letting himself be disturbed.
“Intarsia?”
“Intarsia, we can call it that,” he confirmed with a smile, and Ann felt a bit pleased at knowing the right word.
She observed the fine-toothed saw that he held in his hand, as if it were an extraordinary object. Then a shadow passed by; this time it was a memory.
“It was actually in school that I got interested in woodworking. One of the old teachers, Edlund, did carpentry in his spare time. In the shed he had a workbench and a cabinet with tools. Some he’d inherited from his father, vises, a jointer plane and other planes, worn-out iron that could still chisel out the finest details, and with wooden handles worn smooth. I got to hang out there, he noticed that I thought it was exciting. That was where I became a carpenter.”
School again, thought Ann. “What did he make?”
“All kinds of things,” Gösta said in a tone that Ann perceived as reluctant. “You had to have met him to understand what an artist he really was.”
In order to be a native you had to have met Edlund was her conclusion.
“What about Mattsson? Is he an artist too in his own way?”
“Waldemar?”
“Exactly.”
“Why don’t you ask him?”
“He seems to be important in the village.”
Gösta did not reply. He set aside the saw and started cleaning the bench with a minimal brush, which had been around for a few years.
“What did your father do?” Ann asked, making use of her old slugger tactic, to unexpectedly change the subject in order to create a vague feeling of uncertainty.
“He was a country mail carrier, not here, but over toward Österby. He didn’t want to deliver mail to neighbors and people he knew. Over the years a mail carrier learns quite a bit about the customers, especially here in the country. A person should think about that.”
Gösta continued talking about the conditions of the country mail carrier, while he made his way out of the workshop, forcing Ann to follow. Ann was convinced that out there he would surely find new threads to spin further on.
He’s skillful, she thought, listening with half an ear, while she wondered about his discomfort when there was talk of Waldemar Mattsson.
“It’ll go fast now,” said Gösta, pointing toward the apple trees, whose rose-white petals created an insubstantial veil on the ground.
“I’m thinking about the village,” said Ann. “And…”
“Don’t do that,” he interrupted. “Live here, work and live here, but don’t think! And stop asking everyone about everything.”
“You mean the fire?”
“This village is doomed to go under, it has gone under!”
She did not say anything, waiting for a continuation that didn’t come, before he returned to the workshop, bolted the door, and closed the padlock.
“They won’t leave anything alone these days. Edlund never closed his door and didn’t lose a single tool. Now they steal everything! Bicycles, copper gutters, lawnmowers, mailboxes, and even the flowers on the grave.”
“Your wife’s grave?”
He nodded. “Ice begonias. I had planted white and red ones. They’re simple, but she liked begonias. And then they stand up well against rain.”
He was truly skillful, if the talk about the grave was an evasive maneuver. How could she bring up Mattsson again?
“Who stole them?”
He gave her an angry look in response.
“Would you like some fresh herring?”
She held out the bucket.
“I’ll bring the bucket back later,” he said while he viewed the contents. “Thanks,” he added, but did not look the least bit grateful.