The Living and the Dead in Winsford (12 page)

I am trying to put into words my state of mind that day, and I’m doing that almost three weeks later. It might seem that by doing so I am trying to express a need to understand and justify what happened, but I’m afraid that might also be false. I’m writing in order to avoid going mad – the gradual eroding madness of solitude – and in order to outlive my dog. Nothing else.

We continued walking. A kilometre, maybe one-and-a-half. Without a word. Without a trace of any other people, it was quite remarkable. Just me, Martin and Castor, at reassuring distances away from one another. Each one of us evidently in a world of our own. Three living creatures on a beach, in late October. Castor had stopped chasing after sticks, but was in the lead. It struck me that there was nothing I craved. I wasn’t hungry, wasn’t thirsty.

And then we came to the bunker.

It was half-buried in the sand quite some way from the water’s edge, just below the steep slope up to the edge of the beech woods.

Martin stopped.

‘Just look at that, for Christ’s sake!’

It was the first time either of us had uttered a word since he instructed me to keep the dog under control. I looked at the bunker – there was nothing else he could have been referring to – and asked what he meant.

He burst out laughing, somewhat unexpectedly, and I thought that the wind and fresh air might in fact be having a positive effect on the vodka.

‘I’d like to take a look inside there,’ he said, his voice filled with all the boy-scout enthusiasm I have so valiantly coped with for thirty years. ‘It must be a left-over from World War Two, I reckon. But I remember . . .’

And as we trudged through the somewhat looser and more difficult to cope with sand – and as he began kicking away the heavier sand that had piled up against the rusty iron door at the back of the bunker – he went on about a novel by quite a well-known Swedish writer in which a concrete bunker just like this one played an important part. I was familiar with the author but hadn’t read the book, which Martin evidently had done. And thought highly of it, it seemed, because it was suddenly very important to take a look at the inside as well. He removed even more sand, now using both his hands and his feet, and as he panted heavily he tried to explain to me the precise role played by the bunker in the story. A crucial meeting between two rivals, it seemed, but I was only listening with half an ear at most, and thinking back now I can’t recall any details at all. But eventually he had removed so much sand that we were able to remove the bolt from its moorings, and by using all our combined strength managed to begin moving the heavy, awkward door. It squeaked and squealed on its rusty hinges, and opened no more than thirty or forty centimetres – but that was sufficient for us to squeeze in.

Castor thought it was sensible to stand ten metres away, and watch what we were up to with grave suspicion. If we wanted to force our way into a filthy old bunker, that was our business, not his.

It was dark inside, the only light came from the door we had just opened slightly and two small apertures facing the sea. They were located right under the roof, and the size of two small shoeboxes on end: I assumed they were intended for observation duties, and for shooting through.

So there was just one room, about five metres by five. Running along three of the walls was a bench almost a metre wide, also made of rough concrete. Wide enough to lie and sleep on, but also at a height suitable for standing on and keeping a look-out for any signs of enemy soldiers advancing from the sea. And shooting them dead.

The walls were covered in graffiti – names and dates and slogans of various kinds – and the smell of stuffiness and damp concrete was pervasive and stomach-turning. Traces of oil or petrol and cold soot also stuck in our nasal passages, and Martin pointed at the remains of a burnt-out fire more or less in the middle of the floor. These lumps of charred wood plus two tin drums with unknown contents and a few iron hooks in the ceiling were the only objects in the room.

Or at least that was what I had thought until two large rats emerged from underneath the bench, scampered over the floor just in front of our feet and disappeared in a dark corner. But then, perhaps rats don’t count as objects. I screamed and Martin swore.

‘Bloody hell!’

‘Huh, what on earth are we doing in here?’

That seemed to be a very good question indeed, totally justified, and I hurried back to the door. But Martin stayed behind. Climbed up onto the bench and looked out through one of the apertures. His head covered the whole of the opening, and it became even darker inside the room.

‘I’ll be damned if this isn’t almost exactly the same as in the book . . .’

There was a distinct tone of excitement in his voice, and I was overwhelmed by disgust. My field of vision seemed to shrink, and before I knew what was happening I had backed out through the door, summoned up reserves of strength I didn’t know I possessed and closed it behind me, then lifted the heavy bolt into place.

Castor was still sitting at exactly the same spot. I hadn’t been inside the bunker for more than a minute. I could hear Martin shouting something from inside.

My field of vision regained its normal dimensions, but my disgust remained.

‘Come on, Castor,’ I said, and we started walking back along the beach, retracing our steps. I assumed that Martin was shouting again, but the strong wind effectively drowned out all sounds.

I checked that I had my car keys in my jacket pocket. And thought about that sticky substance on Magdalena Svensson’s stomach.

TWO

13

For the first hundred kilometres or so I was unable to get the rats out of my mind.

Not the rats in the bunker, but those fat creatures the Swedish author E writes about in one of his novels. It’s only an episode, but Martin wrote his thesis on that very author and I know that he was always fascinated by the story about a man who secretly breeds a veritable army of large rats in his cellar. When they have become sufficiently fat and bloodthirsty – I don’t remember the details, but I seem to recall there were a dozen or more of them – he starves them for several days, then sets up a sort of trap based on his wife needing to go down into the cellar (as he was ill in bed): she slips on the ice on the steps and slides down into the darkness where the rats are lurking, through a door that automatically opens up and then closes behind her.

And those rats are a bit on the hungry side . . .

Readers assume that everything went according to plan, because one day the wife suddenly disappears out of the story. It is an episode I find it hard to imagine a female author writing.

As I drove southwards – heading for Szczecin and Berlin – I wondered if right now Martin was remembering that episode in E’s novel.

And if he himself might be on his way to disappearing out of the story.

But before we got as far as the car and the journey along the E65, Castor and I had to tackle a strenuous walk along the beach, into a headwind, and I can’t simply jump over it.
That remarkable walk
; and no matter what we thought about and what we felt during that crucial part of our lives, we didn’t turn back. We didn’t even stop to think things over, not once. Neither I nor Castor,
we didn’t look back
. I could blame that on the fact that after a very short time it would have been too late anyway. What would I have said to Martin?

But nevertheless – and once again – it was as if my perceptions and sensations were in the control of somebody else. As if I were seeing and experiencing the world for the first time. Words seem inadequate when I try to describe it as I look back on the situation, more inadequate than ever; but it was the sand, it was the sea, it was my footsteps – yes, every single one of them – it was the wind in my face, the cries of solitary seagulls, my breathing, and the fact that my dog glued himself to my side – yes, he really did. These external and internal factors seemed to be unprecedentedly clear and sharp, and at the same time they seemed to be in harmony, to be significant and very much relevant: all these qualities were increasing in strength all the time, and I felt myself growing hotter and hotter, as if in the late stages of a fever attack.

But we kept on walking. It was an hour before we found ourselves back at the little lay-by. We hadn’t met a single person on the way this time either, and there was no vehicle apart from our dark blue Audi parked outside the boarded-up cafe. There may have been a hint of rain in the air, but when we clambered back into the car Castor and I felt comfortably uplifted and refreshed. Once I had checked that Martin’s mobile, passport and wallet really were in the outside pocket of his briefcase – and after I had spent some time studying the map – we were able to set off and concentrate exclusively on the future.

We reached Berlin at six o’clock in the evening. On the way there I had telephoned and cancelled the hotel rooms Martin had already booked: I explained that we had fallen ill, and we were excused penalty charges. Instead, Castor and I booked into the Albrechtshof in Mitte for six nights. I felt that we needed time to make plans and take precautions without feeling under undue pressure, and that is in fact how we spent the next few days.

That first evening, only an hour after we had checked into the hotel, something took place that, looking back, I have interpreted as a sign. We had gone out for a little walk, and suddenly found ourselves outside a police station. I must have suffered some kind of shock as I found myself standing there outside the entrance, unable to move. I just stood there with Castor by my side, feeling that the imposing buildings were leaning over us and threatening to collapse on top of us. The noises of the city were magnified in my ears to form a bewildering cacophony, but after a few seconds they died away and instead I heard a voice inside my head intoning:
It’s not yet too late. He’s still alive. You can go in through that green door and put everything to rights
.

And without a second thought I walked up the three steps and opened the door, with Castor at my heels. We came into some sort of reception area, and were immediately confronted by a stern woman in a uniform who informed me that it was not allowed to take a dog with me into the police station. For some reason I couldn’t understand she was holding a stethoscope in her hand. Surely police officers don’t normally use stethoscopes?

I hesitated for a second, then apologized and left together with Castor.

We continued our walk, and a quarter of an hour later were back in our hotel room. I enjoyed a night’s dreamless sleep, and when I woke up early the next morning I felt like an overture.

Or perhaps that’s just a peculiar thought I had. It’s presumably not possible to feel like an overture.

The Albrechtshof was just over a kilometre from the Tiergarten, and we spent several hours roaming around this attractive park, making necessary decisions. The weather was mild and pleasant all the time – not much in the way of sunshine, but no rain. It was the first time I had been in Berlin for many years, and what I remembered now was my very first visit to that troubled city. It was in May 1973, six months before Gunsan died; and in charge of us was our much admired form master and Swedish teacher, known affectionately as the Beanpole. The whole class was there, with not a single pupil missing: twenty-eight fifteen- or sixteen-year-olds, plus the Beanpole and a couple of parents. It was three weeks before we left our secondary school and some of us proceeded to sixth-form college, and we scurried around like scalded cats, visiting various museums, cafes and monuments, stared in bewilderment and horror at the Wall and passed through Checkpoint Charlie, scribbled our names on walls at the Zoo railway station, shopped at KaDeWe and tried to speak German even among ourselves.

And we visited Tiergarten, then as now. Fifteen years old then, fifty-five now. It seemed to me that the park was more or less unchanged. I decided that life was short, and said as much to Castor at regular intervals. Life is short, a dog’s life even shorter. We sat on a park bench and ate a curry wurst. What shall we do with the time we have left? I asked my dog. Eat more German sausages was his suggestion – I could see that just by looking at him, and it seemed to me that I was now seeing the world as it really was. For the first time. I burst out laughing: it soon passed, but that was a moment when the sun came out from behind a cloud and I started laughing, there on a bench in Tiergarten.

The first decision I made was not to go back to Sweden. Going back to a familiar environment, making up some kind of story about Martin having disappeared, directing my sorrowful steps back to the Monkeyhouse . . . No, that felt like an utter impossibility, and I didn’t spend many minutes thinking about it.

The second decision was just as straightforward: we would not continue to Morocco. I had never set foot in that country, there was nobody and nothing awaiting us there, and I had no illusions about the prospects of a solitary woman with a dog being able to establish a foothold there.

So what was the alternative? The alternative was to find a suitable place in Europe in which to spend the winter. A suitable country. It was distinctly possible of course that I might have a nervous breakdown, I was the first to acknowledge that. Everything could very easily go to hell, but while waiting for that day and that moment to arrive I couldn’t simply sit on a park bench in Tiergarten and eat sausages. Sorry, Castor.

And so there were a number of practical details to be attended to. It was vital that I didn’t leave behind any traces that could be followed up. I mustn’t allow use of my credit card and mobile telephone to betray routes and stopping places. In case somebody came looking for us – the police, or a husband who had somehow managed to find a way out of the bunker.

During the days spent in Berlin I became increasingly unsure of how I judged the latter possibility. I had no clear idea of how long a person can survive without food and water, but I assumed his worst enemy would be the cold. I recalled having read that some people had survived for more than a fortnight without water, perhaps as long as a month, but they had been isolated in temperate conditions. What was the temperature in the bunker? Hardly more than seven or eight degrees, I estimated, and of course it would get much colder at night.