He continued to stare at Elin's face as if he were trying to remember something. Anders couldn't understand his reaction. OK, Elin looked ghastly, but Simon's behaviour was downright rude, and not like him at all. If you bumped into a person whose face was scarred from severe burns, for example, you didn't stand there gawping at them like that.
Simon seemed to realise this himself; he let go of Elin's hand, smoothed away his stunned expression and asked, 'So, are you…'
Elin didn't stop to listen to the question, but excused herself and went back up to the house. Simon watched her go. Then he turned to Anders. 'Is she a friend of yours?'
'Yes. Or…it's a long story.'
Simon nodded and waited for Anders to continue. When he didn't oblige, Simon contemplated the boat instead and said, 'This doesn't look too good.'
'No, but I think she'll float.'
'And what about the engine?'
'Don't know. I haven't tried it.'
'You're welcome to borrow my boat if you need it, you know that.'
'I want something of my own. But thanks.'
Simon clasped his hands together and walked around the boat, saying 'Hmm' to himself at regular intervals. He stopped beside Anders and rubbed his hands over his cheeks. It was obvious he had something to say. He cleared his throat, but it wouldn't come out. He tried again, and this time things went better.
'There was something I wanted to ask you.'
'Ask away.'
Simon took a deep breath. 'If Anna-Greta and I were to…if we were to get married. What would you think about that?'
Simon looked deeply worried. Something burst out of Anders' chest and for a fraction of a second he didn't know what it was, he was so unused to the feeling, but it was a laugh. 'You're going to get married'? Now?'
'Well, we're thinking about it, yes.'
'What about all that business of not knowing another person?'
'I think we'd better regard that as…somewhat exaggerated.'
Anders looked up at Anna-Greta's house as if he expected to see her standing up there, anxiously eavesdropping. He didn't get it. 'Why are you asking me about this? What do you want?'
Simon scratched his head and looked embarrassed. 'Well, I want to, of course, but I mean it's also a question of…I mean, I'd inherit everything, if she were to die before me. Which doesn't seem particularly likely, but…'
Anders placed his hand on Simon's shoulder. 'I'm sure we can get something in writing. Something that says I can keep the Shack. If it comes to that. I'm not bothered about anything else.'
'That's OK with you? Are you sure?'
'Simon, it's more than OK. It's the first piece of good news I've heard in a long, long time, and…' Anders took a step forward and gave Simon a hug. 'Congratulations. It's about time, to say the least.'
When Simon had gone, Anders stood with his hands in his pockets for a long time, staring at the boat without thinking about the boat. For once his internal organs felt warm and easy to carry. He wanted to hang on to that feeling.
When he went up to the timber store after a while, he discovered that he could take the feeling with him. It stayed with him while he cut a piece of treated wood, lingered as he drilled holes in it and fixed it to the stern.
He hadn't asked Simon if they were planning a proper wedding in the church at Naten, or if they were planning to have it at home, or just a civil ceremony. They probably hadn't thought about it themselves either, since nothing was decided yet.
He just couldn't picture it, how it had happened or what had led to it. But it was fun to think about it. The feeling remained with him.
It was only when he had nailed a plank between two trees, hauled the engine on to it and connected a pressure tank that the usual gloom began to take over once again. The engine wasn't co-operating. He pumped up the petrol, pulled out the choke and yanked at the starter until his arm started to go numb. Nothing.
He lifted off the cover and saw that he'd flooded the engine, the petrol had run out of the carburettor and gathered in a puddle underneath the fuel filter. He did all the things he could think of, checked all the connections and cleaned the spark plug. It was starting to get dark by the time he put the cover back on and yanked at the starter until he was sweaty, with no success.
He resisted a powerful urge to lift the engine off the plank, carry it down to the jetty and throw it in the sea. Instead he took the cover off once again, sprayed the whole engine with WD-40 with an air of resignation, put the cover back on and left it.
Major and minor questions
As Simon approached Anna-Greta's house with the evening drawing in, he saw that she had lit candles in the kitchen. His stomach contracted, and he suddenly felt nervous. He felt he was on her wavelength to a certain extent, having put his best pullover on under his jacket, but he perceived a ceremonial air that he wasn't quite sure he could rise to.
When he looked back at his life it seemed to him that he had lived it without making any actual decisions. Things had turned out the way they had turned out, and he had just gone along with it all. His alliance with Spiritus was perhaps an exception, but that had been dictated by necessity. He couldn't have done anything else.
Or
Perhaps it was just that he had never been faced with such a clear question before, such a definite choice as this proposal. He had probably made decisions and choices, but it had happened quietly, so to speak. No bells and whistles, no candles, no sinking feeling in his stomach.
The business of children, for example. He and Anna-Greta had been unable to have children, and presumably he was the weak link. They had never consciously tried to have children. If their love had resulted in a child they would no doubt have accepted it with joy, but when it didn't happen, they left the matter alone. They didn't have any tests and they never discussed adoption.
That expression contained the essence of an attitude to life that was embraced by many people on Domaro, and that Simon also shared. A kind of fatalism. The meeting in the mission house had shown him where the roots of this fatalism lay. Things happened, and that was just the way it all turned out. Or they didn't happen, and things just didn't turn out. Nothing to be done about it.
But now he was on his way to the prettily illuminated house to answer a question that wasn't just going to turn out one way or the other by itself. It was Yes or No that mattered here, and his best pullover was chafing slightly at the neck. He wished he had brought a present, a flower, or something to hold in his hands at least.
With his customary combination of city behaviour and village behaviour he knocked on the door first and then opened it. He hung his jacket in the hallway, ran a finger inside the neckline of his pullover and went into the kitchen.
He stopped by the stove. The ceremonial air he had sensed was definitely there. The candelabra had been brought out, there was a clean white cloth on the table, and a bottle of wine was waiting. Anna- Greta was wearing her blue dress with the high neck and the Chinese embroidery. Simon hadn't seen it for ten years, at least, which was why he stopped dead.
There she was, the woman he…
the woman he…
the woman.
