Echoes From the Dead

19

On the day that Ernst Adolfsson was to be buried, Gerlof woke up in the cold, gray dawn feeling as if he’d been hurled onto the floor from a great height. The pain in his arms and knees was agonizing.

It was stress: Sjögren’s syndrome had come calling again — it was such a bloody nuisance. He was going to need a wheelchair to be able to get to the church at all.

The rheumatic condition Sjögren’s syndrome was a companion, not a friend — despite the fact that Gerlof had tried to welcome and disarm him many times, simply by relaxing and trying to be pleasant when he turned up. Sjögren had open access to his body, just help yourself, but it was no use. The syndrome was always equally merciless when it came, hurling itself at him and burrowing deep into his joints, tugging and pulling at his nerves, making his mouth dry and his eyes sore.

Gerlof allowed the pain to continue until it grew tired. He laughed in Sjögren’s face.

“I’m back in the pram,” he stated after breakfast.

“You’ll soon be back on your feet, Gerlof.”

Marie, his helper for the day, placed a small cushion behind his back for support and folded down the wheelchair’s footplates beneath his best shoes.

With Marie’s help, Gerlof had laboriously put on his only black suit, which was shiny and much cleaned. He had bought it for his wife’s funeral, then worn it to twenty or so since then: a long series of friends’ and relatives’ funerals in Marnäs church. Sooner or later he would be wearing the suit to his own funeral.

Over the suit he put on his gray overcoat, with a thick woolen scarf around his neck and a fedora pulled well down over his ears. The temperature had dropped to near freezing on this gloomy day in the middle of October.

“Ready?” said Boel when she came out of the office. “How long will you be away?”

Always the same old question.

“That depends on how inspired Pastor Högström is today,” replied Gerlof.

“We can warm up your lunch in the microwave,” said Boel, “if need be.”

“Thank you,” said Gerlof, who doubted if he would be particularly hungry after Ernst’s funeral.

He thought Boel should be happy now that Sjögren had forced him into a wheelchair and made it easy to keep an eye on him; she liked to be in control of things. But he would soon be back on his feet again, when the syndrome subsided. Once he could walk again, he would find the person who murdered Ernst.

Marie pulled on a pair of gloves and grabbed hold of the wheelchair’s handles.

Off they went. Into the elevator, slowly down, then out into the bright cold air, down the ramp, and onto the turning area for cars. The frosty gravel crunched beneath the wheels of the chair as they set off along the empty track to the church.

Gerlof gritted his teeth. He hated feeling so helpless in the wheelchair, but he tried to relax and let go of the responsibility.

“Are we late?” he asked.

It had taken far too long to get into his suit.

“Not much,” said Marie. “A bit, but that’s my fault... Good thing the church is nearby.”

“I don’t think we’ll get a detention,” said Gerlof, and Marie laughed politely.

He was pleased about that — not all the helpers at the Marnäs home realized it was the duty of the young to laugh at the wit of the old.

They rolled along toward the church, and Gerlof leaned forward slightly in an attempt to protect his face from the biting wind blowing in off Kalmar Sound. He could tell it was a strong, steady southwesterly, which would have made it possible to sail a ketch close-hauled straight up the Swedish coast, all the way up north to Stockholm — but he had no desire to be out at sea on a day like this. The wind would have been whipping the waves up over the gunwale, and the cold would have covered the thwarts with ice. After more than thirty years ashore, Gerlof still felt like a seaman, and no sailor wants to go to sea in the winter.

The bell started to toll as they passed the bus stop by the church and turned in along the track. The sound was desolate and long drawn out, echoing over the flat countryside, and it made Marie walk faster.

Gerlof was in no hurry to get to the funeral — he regarded it mostly as a ritual for other mourners. He himself had said his goodbyes to Ernst the week before, down at the quarry. The sense of loss he felt for his friend had mingled with his sorrow over Ella, and that would remain with him for as long as he lived. And at the same time he had an unpleasant feeling that Ernst wasn’t resting in peace; his old friend was waiting impatiently for Gerlof to put together all the pieces of the puzzle he’d left behind.

There were at least a dozen cars parked in the narrow space in front of the church. Gerlof looked for Julia’s red Ford, but couldn’t see it. But he noticed that Astrid Linder’s Volvo was there, and decided she’d given Julia a lift from Stenvik. If his daughter was at the funeral at all.

The whitewashed church rose up against the gray sky. For almost a thousand years Christians had stood in the same place. This was the third church, built in the nineteenth century when the medieval church became too small and in need of too many repairs.

They entered the churchyard and rolled quickly up the wide stone path, before Marie slowed and pulled the wheelchair backward over the low step and in through the open door of the church.

Gerlof took off his hat as soon as they entered the porch. It was dark and empty, but the body of the church inside was full of people dressed in black. There was a faint hum of conversation in the air; the service hadn’t started yet.

Many lowered heads turned discreetly to look at Gerlof as he was wheeled up the left aisle. He realized how feeble and wretched he must look to people, and of course they were right. He was feeble and wretched, but his mind was clear — that was the most important thing.

Some people only went to funerals to see who looked as though they might be the next one to end up in a coffin. You keep looking, thought Gerlof, this is as good as it gets.

He would be up and walking, soon.

A slender white hand appeared from one of the pews at the front and waved to him. It was Astrid Linder, wearing a black hat with a veil. There was an empty seat beside her in the fourth row, and she didn’t seem to notice that Gerlof was in a wheelchair.

Marie stopped, and with her help Gerlof heaved himself out of the chair and into the pew next to Astrid.

“You haven’t missed a thing,” Astrid whispered in his ear. “It’s been so boring.”

Gerlof merely nodded, after glancing at the seat on the other side of Astrid and noticing that Julia wasn’t there.

Marie moved to the back of the church and at the same time the conversation died beneath the vault of the nave as the cantor began to play the traditional funeral psalm. Gerlof had heard the melancholy hymn at more funerals than he cared to recall. He relaxed to the music and looked discreetly around.

The congregation filling the church was on the elderly side. Of a hundred or so people, only a few were under fifty.

Ernst’s murderer was there, hidden among the mourners — Gerlof was certain of it.

Beside Astrid sat her brother Carl, Marnäs’s last stationmaster, who had changed careers and become an ironmonger when the station closed in the mid-1960s. He was retired nowadays. It was Carl’s older colleague Axel Månsson who had waved off Nils Kant’s train that summer’s day just after the war, but Carl had been there too. He was an errand boy at the station at the time, and had told Gerlof how he saw Margit, the ticket clerk, telephone the police in Marnäs and tell them in a whisper that the wanted man, young Kant, had just bought a ticket to Borgholm. Carl had also seen District Superintendent Henriksson hurry over from Marnäs a few minutes later, lumbering across the platform with his big belly to catch up with the suspected double murderer.

Carl was perhaps the last living person on Öland who had seen the adult Nils Kant at close quarters, but when Gerlof once asked him what Kant looked like, Carl had just shaken his head — he had a bad memory for faces.

Further along the pew sat several more Marnäs pensioners: Bert Lindgren, the former chairman of the local community hall, who had been away at sea for several years in the fifties and sixties, traveling all over the world, and next to him Olof Håkansson the eel fisherman, then Karl Lundstedt, an army colonel who had moved to his summer home in Långvik when he retired.

It wasn’t unusual for pensioners to move to Marnäs, but at the same time Gerlof knew that what northern Öland needed wasn’t more old folk but young workers and more jobs.

The organ fell silent. Pastor Åke Högström, who had been in Marnäs for a decade, positioned himself in front of the white wooden coffin adorned with roses. He had a large brown leather-covered Bible in his hands, and his expression was serious as he looked at the congregation through his round spectacles.

“We are gathered here today to bid farewell to our friend Ernst Adolfsson...” The pastor paused, adjusted his spectacles, then began his funeral oration with an important question: “For who among men knows the thoughts of a man, except the man’s own spirit within him?”

Saint Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, chapter two, Gerlof noted.

“We human beings know so little about each other,” proclaimed the pastor, “and only God knows everything. He sees all our faults and shortcomings, and yet He still wants to grant us all eternal peace...”

From somewhere toward the back of the church came the sound of a hacking cough.

Gerlof closed his eyes and listened, his mind at peace, and only nodded off once. When the congregation sang hymn 113, the one about the rose, he joined in as best he could. Then came prayers led by the pastor, more quotations from the Bible and psalms, then the beautiful song “Where Roses Never Die.”

Although he had already said goodbye to Ernst down at his house by the quarry, Gerlof still felt a growing knot of dark sorrow in his breast when he saw six serious-faced men stand up during the final piece of organ music, ready to step forward and carry the coffin out. Among them were his friends Gösta Engström from Borgholm, and Bernard Kollberg, who for several decades had run the store in the village of Solby, south of Stenvik, and had often delivered things to Ernst. The remaining bearers came from among Ernst’s family in Småland.

Gerlof would have liked to get to his feet and shoulder Ernst’s coffin himself, but instead he had to stay in his seat until everybody else started to get up. Marie came along with the wheelchair.

“I think I can walk now,” he said to her, but of course he couldn’t.

Marie helped him back into the chair, but when he was settled Astrid leaned forward and tapped her on the shoulder.

“I’ll help Gerlof,” she said firmly, taking the handles.

Marie looked hesitantly at Astrid, who was several inches shorter than her and as thin as a rake, but Gerlof smiled encouragingly.

“We’ll be fine, Marie,” he assured her.

Marie nodded and Astrid pushed the wheelchair down the aisle with her brother Carl beside her.

“There’s John,” she said.

Gerlof turned and saw John Hagman leaving the church along with his son Anders.

Gerlof fastened his coat as the cold and the bitter wind hit them outside the church door, and he felt a flat object in his pocket. He remembered he’d brought Ernst’s wallet with him.

He took it out, feeling the worn leather with his fingertips, and asked Astrid:

“Have you seen my daughter today?”

“Not today,” said Astrid. “But wasn’t she going back to Gothenburg? Her car wasn’t on the ridge when I drove past.”

“I see,” said Gerlof.

So Julia must have left this morning. She could have come to the funeral, he thought, and she should at least have called to say goodbye to him. But that’s the way Julia was. Especially after Jens disappeared. He’d managed to keep her on Öland longer than she’d intended, and even if they hadn’t made a great deal of progress, Gerlof still thought the visit had been good for her. He’d call her in Gothenburg soon.

“Isn’t that Ernst’s money?” asked Astrid.

Gerlof nodded. “I’m going to give it to his family from Småland,” he said.

They could have everything that was in it as well, except for the receipt from Ramneby Wood Museum, which Gerlof had hidden in his desk.

“You’re an honest man, Gerlof,” said Astrid.

“A place for everything, and everything in its place,” he said. “I don’t like loose ends.”

They were among the graves now, moving slowly among all the familiar gravestones. Ernst had carved many of the most beautiful ones before he retired — Ella’s broad headstone, among others. It was clean and attractive, and there was plenty of room for Gerlof’s name and dates beneath those of his wife.

Ernst’s newly dug grave was in a row of Stenvik residents who had been buried in the churchyard. The congregation had gathered around it in a semicircle, and Astrid pushed Gerlof firmly in among the mourners. He saw the deep hole in the ground opening up in front of his wheelchair. The grave was black and cold and impossible to get out of if you fell into it. He had no desire to end up down there himself, despite the fact that Sjögren was tearing at his joints in the cold air.

The pallbearers had paused by the grave, and now they began to lower the coffin carefully into the ground. Out here Gerlof could see several familiar faces: Bengt Nyberg, the editor of the local newspaper, was standing on the opposite side of the grave, without a camera in his hand for once, and Gerlof tried to remember how long he’d been living and working in Marnäs. Fifteen or twenty years. He’d come from the mainland, like so many others.

Beside him stood Örjan Granfors, the farmer who’d had some cows taken away from him once in the eighties, from his farm northeast of Marnäs. He’d been convincted of cruelty to animals, Gerlof recalled.

Standing close together, next to Granfors, were Linda and Gunnar Ljunger, the hotel owners from Långvik. They were talking quietly to each other, presumably about new building going on down in the holiday village. And next to them stood Lennart Henriksson, the policeman. He was wearing a black suit today, not his uniform.

Gerlof looked down into the grave again. What did Ernst want him to do? How should he move forward with this?

Ernst had kept returning to the subject of Nils Kant and little Jens several times during his visits to Gerlof earlier that autumn, as he was going over and over both mysteries, convinced they were linked by something nobody else could see.

As the years had gone by, Gerlof had come to terms with the fact that Jens had disappeared without a trace, in the same way that he had come to terms with Ella’s death, as far as possible.

But Ernst had come to the home in Marnäs to talk to Gerlof at the beginning of September. He’d brought with him a slim book with a soft cover.

“Have you seen this, Gerlof?” he’d asked.

Gerlof had shaken his head and leaned forward.

It was the book celebrating the anniversary of the Malm Freight company. Gerlof had seen in Ölands-Posten that it had been published a month or so earlier, but he hadn’t read it.

“You know Martin Malm, don’t you?” Ernst had asked. “This is an old photo of him from the end of the fifties, at the Kant family’s sawmill in Småland.”

“I don’t know Martin particularly well,” Gerlof had replied, taking the book from Ernst with some surprise. “We met mostly in various ports, when we were skippers.”

“And after that, when you came ashore?”

“Very rarely. Three or four times, maybe. The odd dinner for old sea captains.”

“Dinner?” said Ernst.

“In Borgholm.”

“Do you know where Martin got the money from for his first oceangoing ship?” asked Ernst.

“Yes... no. I don’t think I do,” said Gerlof. “From the family?”

“Not his own,” said Ernst. “It came from the Kant family.”

“Does it say that in the book?” said Gerlof.

“No, but that’s what I’ve heard,” said Ernst. “And look at this picture. August Kant is standing there with his arm around Martin. Would you do that?”

“No,” Gerlof had said.

But it was true: August Kant, the dour company boss, had his hand resting amicably on the shoulder of the equally sour-faced sea captain Martin Malm. Strange.

Ernst didn’t want to say any more, but there was no doubt that he knew things he didn’t want to talk about. He’d seen something, or heard something, which had given him new ideas. He’d gone to Ramneby Wood Museum to look for something, without telling Gerlof. And a few weeks after that, he’d arranged to meet someone at the quarry, presumably for some kind of discussion that Gerlof wasn’t to be told about either.

“Would you like to go and say goodbye, Gerlof?”

Astrid’s question in the churchyard jerked him back from a sea of thoughts. He shook his head briefly.

“I’ve already done that,” he said.

The last roses were tossed down onto the lid of Ernst’s coffin, and the funeral was over. Everyone began moving toward the community center next to the church for a short gathering.

“It’ll be nice to have a cup of coffee,” said Astrid.

She moved backward, pulling the wheelchair, and set off toward the center.

Despite the fact that Sjögren was biting the back of his neck, Gerlof stretched sideways to look across the churchyard in the direction of an old gravestone by the west wall.

Nils Kant’s grave.

Who was actually lying in there?