Bertil was standing in the yard talking out loud to himself, unaware that his neighbor was approaching. Gösta stopped but his hearing was too poor to make out more than scattered words. Bertil had changed recently, becoming withdrawn and taciturn, even if he had never been a vivacious joker. “Secretive” was a word that occurred to Gösta, as if his neighbor was unwilling to share. Had he also seen something during the night of the fire? Over the years they had always talked with each other, had discussions, supported each other, but now it seemed as if the line was broken. Bertil was increasingly unwilling to socialize, the joint coffee breaks in his kitchen had unexpectedly ceased. He became contrary and strange, and yet another bewildering matter was Bertil’s new evening habits. Before he always used to turn off the lights after the nine o’clock news, now the lamps might burn until midnight and even later. Sometimes he could be glimpsed passing like a shadow in one of the windows. Gösta had not wanted to ask what he was doing up so late, but it was strange that a creature of habit like Bertil started behaving in a completely new way. Was it perhaps some illness that was sneaking up?
And then these frequent trips with the car, even into Uppsala, which he previously despised visiting. Now he took off all the time and returned with bags and boxes with unknown contents. Once when Gösta openly showed his curiosity, Bertil said something to the effect that he was “in the process of inventing something.”
Bertil was tall, and he still looked imposing, standing there in his yard. Next to him, Gösta had always felt like a leprechaun at five foot five in stocking feet. His profile was like a Mohican, with an aquiline nose and sturdy forehead, his dark hair combed back. In his youth he was called “the Indian.” There was a time when women happily stopped by Efraimsson’s, on the pretext of buying eggs from Bertil’s mother or some other everyday errand, and if possible exchange a few words with the son. He mostly stayed in the workshop, however, and was unapproachable. In the congregation too he kept his distance from women, and gradually the courting ceased. He remained a bachelor.
Gösta coughed and Bertil turned around.
“You scared me,” he said. “It’s not often—”
“We’re still alive,” said Gösta, “but it’s starting to thin out.”
They shook hands, a custom they’d had since their youth. After that they stood silently a moment and observed the road and the few cars that passed.
“It’s strange,” said Bertil. “The blackbird that always stayed at the top of the spruce has fallen silent. This year I haven’t heard a single warble.”
“Either your hearing has gotten worse or else it’s dead,” said Gösta.
“My hearing is worse, I know that, but I hear other birds. And dead?” He snorted. “New generations come, they always have, but now it’s probably over.”
Gösta changed tack. “I had a visitor.”
“Who might that be?”
“Miss Gauffin.”
“It’s not possible.”
“Old as the hills.”
“That was strange. What did she want?”
“She’s going to write her memoirs, as she said.”
“And then you’ll be included?”
“Well, it’s probably more the school and such. She came of course as a brand-new teacher and stayed until retirement. There’s quite a bit to remember.”
They both looked toward the scene of the fire.
“I saw the one who set it, in any case one of them,” Gösta said quite unplanned, immediately bothered about what had popped out of him. Bertil stared at him, speechless.
“And you’re saying that now?!” he exclaimed at last. He seldom raised his voice, but now was such an occasion. “But you told the police that you were in bed asleep.”
“Yes, I misspoke.”
“Misspoke? That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”
Gösta turned away; he couldn’t bear his friend’s agitated expression. He knew himself that it was an extremely idiotic statement.
Bertil took hold of his shoulders, shook him, and forced him to raise his eyes. “You know who it was, don’t you?”
“Let go of me,” Gösta said. “We’ve never quarreled and there’s no reason to start now.”
“It was arson. People died.”
Gösta nodded mutely.
“It’s someone you know,” Bertil observed. “Someone from the village, isn’t it?”
“I don’t want to talk about it right now,” Gösta said, releasing himself and fleeing with big strides. He cursed his own indiscretion. Why in the world he’d blurted out something he’d kept quiet about for months, he didn’t understand. Was it perhaps, in some strange way, Miss Gauffin’s influence?
Bertil was shouting something after him, but he couldn’t make out what. He didn’t want to hear, didn’t want to look back. It was painful to be at odds with his friend, and he understood that the matter was not over and done with. Bertil was stubborn and would go at him again, try to get him to speak up.
“Maybe it’s the only right thing,” he muttered as he passed through his gate. It was a sentence he repeated numerous times, but the fear of having to come forward and testify was too great. He knew that he would lose everything. Now admittedly he had lost his honor and had to live with a burning sense of shame, but he could still live in the village and in his house. And what good would it do if he testified? It wasn’t a certainty that the arsonists would be convicted anyway. Clever lawyers would be sure to question his credibility and do everything to decimate his testimony, even more so if he came forward five months after the fire.
Five
Sammy Nilsson was puzzled. He thought he recognized the voice, but he just couldn’t place it in either time or space.
After the brief conversation, when he repeated the receptionist’s information that there was no Ann Lindell in the building, he took the elevator down to Regina Rosenberg to hear what she had to say. She reported what the man had said, that it was Ann Lindell he wanted to speak with, that she was the only one it was possible to talk with.
“He didn’t say anything about how or where he got to know her?”
Regina shook her head.
“Lindell is a former colleague, I understand.”
“She worked in the building. One of our best.”
“And now she’s sitting in meetings in Stockholm every single day.”
Sammy Nilsson laughed. Regina had learned quickly.
“No, on the contrary you might say.”
Regina waited for him to continue, but Sammy Nilsson thought it was a little embarrassing to tell what his former colleague worked with, and he was ashamed that he felt that way.
He missed Lindell. She was good, a little uneven perhaps, and he blamed that on unhappy love and wine, but she had added something, a kind of awareness of vulnerability. She never got thick-skinned; on the contrary, she was constantly surprised and upset about the abominations they had to deal with. She had shared this with Ottosson, onetime head of the unit and her protector. There were those who whispered that he was a dirty old man and for that reason looked the other way when her missteps became all too obvious. He wanted everyone to “get along” and for the atmosphere in the unit to be “convivial.” And the fact was that it often worked. During his regime personnel turnover was remarkably low.