Before the Frost (8 page)

She left the woodpecker and walked past an old run-down vegetable garden that had clearly not been tended for many years.
What do I know about her?
Linda thought.
And what am I doing here?
She stopped and listened. At that particular moment, in the shade of the high trees, she was no longer worried about Anna. There was surely a reasonable explanation for why she was staying away. Linda turned and started walking back to the car.

The woodpecker had flown away.
Everything changes,
she thought.
People and woodpeckers, my dreams and all that time I thought I had but that keeps slipping out of my fingers despite my best attempts to keep it dammed up.
She pulled her invisible reins and came to a halt. Why was she walking away? Now that she had come this far in Anna's car, the least she could do was say hello to Henrietta. Without betraying her anxieties, without making pressing inquiries about Anna's whereabouts.
She might just be in Lund, and I don't have her number there. I'll ask Henrietta for it.

She followed the path through the trees again and finally came to a half-timbered, whitewashed house covered in wild roses. A cat lay on the stone steps and studied her movements warily as Linda approached. A window was open and just as she bent down to stroke the cat, she heard noises from inside.
Henrietta's music,
she thought.

Then she stood up and caught her breath.

What she had heard wasn't music. It was the sound of a woman sobbing.

9

Somewhere inside the house a dog started to bark. Linda felt as though she had been caught in the act and quickly rang the doorbell. It took a while for Henrietta to open the door. When she did she was restraining an angry gray dog by the collar.

“She won't bite,” Henrietta said. “Come in.”

Linda never felt completely at ease in the presence of strange dogs and so she hesitated slightly before crossing the threshold. As soon as she did so the dog relaxed, as if Linda had crossed over into a no-barking zone. Henrietta let go of the dog. Linda hadn't remembered Henrietta so thin and frail. What was it Anna had said about her? That she wasn't even fifty years old. It was true that her face looked young, but her body looked much older even than fifty. The dog, Pathos, sniffed Linda's legs, then retreated to her basket and lay down.

Linda thought about the sobbing that she had heard through the window. There were no traces of tears on Henrietta's face. Linda looked past her into the rest of the house, but there was no sign of anyone else. Henrietta caught her gaze.

“Are you looking for Anna?”

“No.”

Henrietta burst out laughing.

“Well, I'm stumped. First you call and then you drop by for a visit. What's happened? Is Anna still missing?”

Linda was taken aback by Henrietta's directness, but welcomed it.

“Yes.”

Henrietta shrugged, then directed Linda into the big room—the result of many walls being removed—that served as both living room and studio.

“My guess is that Anna must be in Lund. She holes up there from time to time. The theoretical component of her studies is apparently very demanding, and Anna is no theoretician. I don't know who she takes after. Not me, not her father. Herself.”

“Do you have a phone number for her in Lund?”

“No, I'm not even sure she has a phone there. She rents a room in a house and doesn't like to give out the address.”

“Isn't that a bit odd?”

“Why? Anna is secretive by nature. If you don't leave her alone she can get very angry. Didn't you know that about her?”

“No. She doesn't have a cell phone either?”

“She's one of the few people who's still holding out,” Henrietta said. “Even I have one. In fact, I don't see the need for the old-fashioned kind anymore. But that's neither here nor there. No, Anna doesn't have a cell phone.”

Henrietta stopped as if she had suddenly thought of something. Linda looked around the room. Someone had been crying. It hadn't occurred to her that it might have been Anna until Henrietta asked her if that was what she was doing, looking for her here.
But it couldn't have been Anna,
she thought.
Why would she be crying? She's not a person who cries very much. Once when we were girls she fell off the jungle gym and hurt herself. She cried that time, but it's the only time I remember. Even when we both fell in love with Tomas I was the one who cried; she was just angry.

Linda looked at Henrietta, who was standing in a beam of light in the middle of the polished wooden floor. She had an angular profile, just like Anna.

“I don't get visitors very often,” she said suddenly, as if that was what had been foremost in her mind. “People avoid me just as I avoid them. I know they think I'm eccentric. That's what comes of living alone out in the country with only a greyhound for company, composing music no one wants to listen to. It doesn't help matters that I'm still legally married to the man who left me twenty-four years ago.”

Linda sensed a tone of bitterness and loneliness in Henrietta's voice.

“What are you working on right now?”

“Please don't feel you have to make polite conversation. Why
did you drop by? Was it really that you're still worried about Anna?”

“I borrowed her car. My grandfather used to live in these parts and I thought I would take a drive. I'm feeling a little bored these days.”

“Until you get to put on your uniform?”

“Yes.”

Henrietta brought out a coffeepot and cups and set them on the table.

“I don't understand why an attractive girl like you would choose to become a police officer. Breaking up fights on the street, that's what I imagine it to be. I know there must be other aspects to the job, but that's what always comes to mind.”

She poured the coffee.

“But perhaps you're going to sit behind a desk,” she added.

“No, I've been assigned to a patrol car and will probably be doing a lot of the work you would expect. Someone has to be prepared to jump into the fray.”

Henrietta leaned to the side with her hand tucked under her chin.

“And that's what you're going to dedicate your life to?”

Her comments put Linda on the defensive, as if she were in danger of being contaminated by Henrietta's bitterness.

“I don't know what looks have got to do with it. I'm almost thirty and on good days I'm generally happy with how I look, but I've never dreamed of being Miss Sweden. But more to the point, what would happen to our society if there were no police? My dad is a policeman and I've never had any reason to be ashamed of him.”

Henrietta shook her head.

“I didn't mean to hurt your feelings.”

Linda still felt angry. She felt a need to strike back, though she couldn't really say why.

“I thought I heard the sound of someone crying in here when I walked up to your house.”

Henrietta smiled.

“It's a recording I have. I'm working on a requiem and I mix my music with the sound of someone crying.”

“I don't even know what a requiem is.”

“A funeral mass. That's almost all I write these days.”

Henrietta got up and walked over to the grand piano by the window, which overlooked open fields and then the rolling hills leading down to the sea. Next to the piano there was a table with a tape recorder as well as a synthesizer and other electronic equipment. Henrietta turned on the tape player. A woman's voice came on, wailing and sobbing. It was the one Linda had heard through the window. Her curiosity about this strange woman increased.

“Where did you get it?”

“This is from an American film. I often record the sound of crying from films I see, or from programs on the radio. I have a collection of forty-four crying voices so far, everything from a baby to a very old woman I recorded secretly at a rest home. Would you like to donate a sample to the archive sometime?”

“No, thanks.”

Henrietta sat down at the piano and played a few haunting chords. Linda went and stood next to her, while Henrietta continued to play. The room was filled with a powerful surge of music which then faded into silence. Henrietta gestured for Linda to sit next to her on the piano bench.

“Tell me again why you came here. Seriously. I've never even felt you really liked me.”

“When I was little I was afraid of you.”

“Of me? No one is afraid of me!”

That's where you're wrong,
Linda thought.
Anna was afraid of you too—sometimes she had nightmares about you.

“It was an impulse, nothing more. I wonder where Anna is, but I'm not as worried as I was last night. You're probably right that she's in Lund.”

Linda broke off.

“What is it you aren't saying? Should I be worried about her too?”

“Anna thought she saw her father on a street in Malmö a couple of days ago. I shouldn't be telling you this. You should hear it from her.”

“Is that all?”

“That's not enough?”

Henrietta touched the keys as if sketching out a few more bars of music.

“Anna is always catching glimpses of her father. She's told me stories like this since she was a little girl.”

Linda raised her eyebrows. Anna had never mentioned one of these sightings before, and Linda was sure she would have. When they were younger they told each other everything. Anna was one of the few people who Linda had told about standing on the edge of the overpass in Malmö. What Henrietta said didn't fit this picture.

“Anna is never going to relinquish her hope,” Henrietta continued. “The hope that Erik will one day come back. Even that he is still alive.”

“Why did he leave?”

“He left because he was disappointed.”

“By what?”

“By life. He had such marvelous ambitions when he was younger. He seduced me with those dreams, if you must know. I had never met a man who had the kind of wonderful visions that Erik had. He was going to make a difference in the world, in our generation. He knew without a doubt that he had been put on this earth in order to do something on a grand scale. We met when he was sixteen and I was fifteen. Even as young as I was, I knew I had never met anyone like him; he radiated dreams and life force. At that time he was still looking for his niche—was it art, sports, politics, or another arena in which he was going to leave his mark? He had decided to give himself until the age of twenty to figure it out. I can't remember any self-doubt in him until then. But when he turned twenty he started to worry. There was a restlessness in him. Until then he had had all the time in the world. When I started making demands on him to help support the family after Anna was born, he would get impatient and scream at me. He had never done that before. That was when he started making his sandals; he was good with his hands. He called them ‘sandals of indolence' as a kind of protest, I think, for the fact that they were taking up his valuable time. It was probably then that he started planning his disappearance or, should I say, escape. He wasn't running away from me or Anna, he was running away from himself, from his disappointment in life. I wonder if he
managed it—I've never been able to ask him, of course. One day he was just gone. It took me by surprise. It was only in hindsight that I realized how carefully he must have planned it. I can forgive him the fact that he sold my car. What I'll never understand or accept is that he left Anna. They were so close. I know he loved her. I was never as important to him, or at least not after the first couple of years while I was still a part of his dreams. How could he leave her—how can a person's disappointment in life, stemming as it did from an unattainable dream, conceivably weigh more heavily than the most important person in his life? I think that must be a contributing factor to his death, at least to the fact that he never returned.”

“I didn't think anyone knew what happened to him.”

“He must be dead. He's been missing for twenty-four years. Where could he possibly be?”

“Anna's convinced she saw him.”

“She sees him on every street corner. I've tried to talk her out of it and make her face the truth. No one knows what happened. But he has to be dead by now.”

Henrietta paused. The greyhound sighed.

“What do you think happened?” Linda asked.

“I think he gave up—when he realized the dream was nothing more than that. And that the Anna he left behind was real. At that point it was too late. He would always have been plagued by his conscience.”

Henrietta closed the lid over the piano keys with a thud and stood up.

“More coffee?”

“No, thanks. I have to get going.”

Henrietta seemed anxious and Linda watched her closely. She grabbed Linda's arm and started to hum a melody that Linda recognized. Her voice alternated between high, shrill tones and softer, cleaner ones.

“Do you know that song?” she asked when she was finished.

“I recognize it, but I don't know what it is.”

“
Buona Sera
.”

“Is it Spanish?”

“Italian. It means ‘good night.' It was popular in the fifties. So
many people today borrow or steal or vandalize old music. They make pop songs out of Bach. I do the reverse. I take songs like
Buona Sera
and turn them into classical music.”

“How do you do that?”

“I break down the structure, change the rhythm, replace the guitar sound with a massive flood of violins. I turn a banal song about three minutes long into a symphony. When it's ready I'll play it for you. Then people will finally understand what I've been trying to do all these years.”