Echoes From the Dead

Öland, September 1972

From the passenger seat of a blue Volvo, high up on the new bridge, Nils Kant leans forward toward the windshield and looks out across Kalmar Sound. It’s afternoon, and a mist hangs over the water; a thick bank of fog has been created in the sound, and is on its way in over the island.

“It’ll be a foggy night,” he says.

“Just what we were hoping for,” says Fritiof beside him.

“We?” says Nils. “Are there more of you?”

Fritiof nods. “You’ll get to meet them soon.”

Nils tries to relax and look out over the railings. He can almost see himself as a young man down there in the sound, swimming for his life toward the mainland, barely twenty years old.

How could he get so far in the cold water? He’s forty-six now, and couldn’t even swim a hundred yards.

The Öland Bridge is enormous, tons of steel and concrete erected above the water to form a structure that is almost as wide as a freeway and several kilometers long. Nils could never have imagined that his island would have such a link to the mainland.

“How old is the bridge?” he asks.

“Pretty new,” says Fritiof at the wheel.

He hasn’t said very much since he came to Nils in Jönköping the previous evening. He gave Nils dark clothes for the journey and a black knitted hat to pull down over his forehead, but he’s hardly said a word.

The cheerful, charming Fritiof Andersson who sought him out in Costa Rica more than ten years ago is gone; actually, he’s been gone since the man from Småland drowned in the sea north of Limón. Since that night Fritiof has mostly treated Nils like a parcel, moving him around from place to place and from country to country, renting small, cheap apartments or rooms in hostels in seedy parts of town for him, and only getting in touch by telephone once or twice a year.

The night before they left for Öland, Fritiof started on about the treasure again. Where was it? Where had Nils hidden it? In the house?

Nils shook his head. And in the end he told Fritiof:

“It’s buried on the alvar, just to the east of Stenvik. By the old memorial cairn. We’ll go and get it together.”

Fritiof nodded. “Good, that’s what we’ll do.”

Nils has waited a long time to make this final journey. Now he’s here.

“I’m going to stay at home from now on,” he says to Fritiof.

He closes his eyes as they drive across the new bridge. Back on Öland, at last.

“I’m going to stay at home,” he says again. “I’m going to stay with my mother and make sure nobody sees me.” He pauses, then asks, “She’s still well... Vera?”

“Yes indeed.”

Fritiof Andersson nods briefly, then the car speeds up as they drive out onto the great alvar, heading toward Borgholm.

A great deal has changed on Öland since he was young, Nils realizes. There are more shrubs and trees on the island, and the narrow gravel track to Borgholm has become a broad, asphalt highway, just as even and straight as the bridge. The railway which ran from north to south must have been shut down, because Nils can’t see any tracks out on the alvar any longer. The rows of windmills that towered above the shoreline to catch the wind from the sound are gone too; only a few remain.

It seems as if there are fewer people on the island — but yet there are plenty of new cottages down by the water. Nils nods toward them.

“Who lives in all those houses?” he asks.

“Summer residents,” replies Fritiof tersely. “They earn their money in Stockholm and buy cottages here on Öland. They drive across the bridge and lie in the sun on vacation, then they drive back fast to earn some more money. They don’t want to be here in the winter... it’s too cold and miserable.”

It sounds as if he sympathizes with them.

Nils says nothing. Fritiof seems to be quite right about these summer residents, because virtually every car he sees is driving in the opposite direction, traveling away from the island. The summer is over, it’s autumn.

The ruined castle is still there, at least, and it looks just as it always has, with its empty eye sockets on the hill above Borgholm.

Once they’ve driven past the castle, they’re almost down in the town, and the fog is beginning to fill the air. Fritiof slows down and pulls into a small parking lot just on the edge of the town, within sight of the ruined castle. He stops the car with no explanation.

“Okay” is all he says. “I told you we’d be having company.”

He opens the car door and waves.

Nils looks around. Someone is walking slowly along the road: a man who looks as if he were in his fifties. He’s wearing a gray woolen sweater, gabardine trousers, and shiny leather shoes that look expensive, and he nods to Fritiof.

“You’re late.”

The man is wearing a hat, pulled down low over his forehead. He isn’t carrying anything except a half-smoked cigarette. He takes one last drag and looks warily around before coming over to the car.

“Nils, I think you should get in the back now,” says Fritiof quietly. “It’ll be safer when we get to Stenvik.”

Then he gets out of the car. There’s a telephone kiosk at the far end of the parking lot, and Nils watches Fritiof walk quickly over to it. He pushes in some coins, dials a number, and speaks very briefly into the receiver.

Nils also gets out of the car, and the expensively dressed man tosses his cigarette aside, grinds it out with his right foot, and merely looks at him without saying hello. He gets into the front seat.

Nils doesn’t get into the back seat right away. He walks along the road, enjoying being back and being able to move about freely on the island once again.

His island.

Suddenly a couple of cars drive past on the main road. Nils sees pale faces staring back at him from behind the windshields. He follows them with his eyes, until they disappear in the fog.

“Come on!” shouts Fritiof behind him in an irritated voice.

He’s back at the car.

Nils walks back reluctantly, opens the back door, and hears the man in the front seat asking quietly: “Did it go okay, Gunnar?”

Then he looks quickly around at Nils, nervous and guilty, as if he’s let the cat out of the bag.

The man who has called himself Fritiof all this time also turns around and smiles.

“It doesn’t matter, we might as well all introduce ourselves properly now,” he says. “I’m Gunnar, and this is Martin. And Nils Kant is with us in the back seat. But we all trust each other here, don’t we?”

Nils nods briefly and closes the door. “Of course.”

So Fritiof is called Gunnar. And Nils knows he’s met him somewhere, but he still can’t remember where.

“Let’s head for Stenvik, then,” says Gunnar, firmly.

The car pulls out onto the road again, past Borgholm and northward. The landscape is becoming more and more familiar to Nils, but the fog from the sound is growing thicker, smearing and then erasing the horizon.

The air is becoming grayer and grayer. Gunnar knew it was going to be foggy, he was counting on it, and that’s why Nils was allowed to come home on this particular day. What else has he worked out so carefully? Nils wonders.

North of Köpingsvik, Gunnar switches on the fog lights and increases his speed. Nils can see the yellow signs rushing by. The familiar names of Öland villages. But it’s the landscape that he can’t tear his eyes away from: the fields, the grass growing wild, the stone walls that start by the road and disappear off into the fog.

And the alvar, his very own alvar. The alvar extends in all directions; with its heavy, muted colors and its endless sky, it’s just as big and beautiful as he remembered.

Nils is home again.

No one in the car speaks, and after a quarter of an hour Nils sees the sign he’s been waiting for. STENVIK. Beneath it is a big arrow with the word CAMPSITE on it.

The road down to the village is tarmac now, and Stenvik has acquired a campsite. When did that happen?

The car drives past the turning for Stenvik before slowing down.

“We’ll take the northern entry road,” says Gunnar. “There’s less traffic there, and we won’t have to drive through the village.”

A few minutes later he turns the car onto the northern route into the village, beside a milk stand, empty and abandoned by the roadside. Last time Nils saw the milk stand, it was full of milk churns from the farms along the road; now it’s spotted with white lichen, and looks as if it’s about to fall to pieces.

The whole of Öland has changed in twenty-five years, but this northern road down into Stenvik is almost exactly as he remembers it: narrow and twisting, and still graveled. It’s completely deserted, with grass-filled ditches on both sides and the alvar beyond them.

Gunnar allows the Volvo to move slowly forward, and after a few hundred yards he stops completely. He turns to look at Nils, and beside him Martin turns around, too.

Gunnar is looking steadily at him, Nils notices. Martin’s gaze wavers.

“Okay,” says Gunnar seriously, “we’ve brought you to Stenvik. And now you’re going to dig up your treasure by the cairn. Right?”

“I want to see my mother first,” says Nils, gazing steadily at Gunnar.

“Vera isn’t going anywhere, Nils,” he says. “She can wait awhile longer. It’s best that way, because it’s better if it’s really dark before we go down to the village. Don’t you think so?”

“We’ll split the stones between us,” says Nils quickly.

“Of course. But we’ve got to get them up first.”

Nils looks at him for a few seconds longer, and then he looks out of the side window. The fog is dense now, and soon it will be twilight.

He nods. He’ll give Gunnar and Martin half of the gemstones, then they’ll be quits.

“We’ll need something to dig with,” he says quietly.

“Sure. There are shovels and a pick in the trunk,” says Gunnar. “We’ve thought of everything. Don’t worry.”

But Nils doesn’t relax. He’s on his own against two strange men now, just as the man from Småland was on his own on the Caribbean beach in the darkness. The difference is that the man from Småland trusted his new friends — Nils doesn’t.

Gunnar doesn’t park by the road; he brakes by a narrow opening in the stone wall and turns the wheel. The car leaves the village road.

Slowly they move out onto the flat, grassy plain of the alvar.

Nils turns his head, but all he can see through the back window is fog. The road leading down to his home village has completely disappeared.