Sail of Stone

2

It was two hundred and twenty yards to the sea, or two hundred fifty. They walked across a field where no one had trampled any paths. It can be us, he thought, we can make paths here.

The sky was high, space without end. The sun was sharp, even through sunglasses. The sea moved, but nothing more. The surface glittered like silver and gold.

Elsa shouted out toward the water and began to run along the edge of the beach, on the small stones, hundreds of thousands of them, which were mixed with the grains of sand, millions and millions of them.

Erik Winter turned to Angela, who was crouching and running sand through her fingers.

“If you can guess the number of grains of sand in your hand right now, a lovely prize awaits you,” he said.

She looked up, raising her other hand to shield her eyes from the sun.

“What kind of prize?” she asked.

“First say how many grains of sand you have in your hand.”

“How can you tell how many there are?”

“I know,” he answered.

“What kind of prize?” she repeated.

“How many!” he said.

“Forty thousand,” she answered.

“Wrong.”

“Wrong?”

“Wrong.”

“How the hell do you know?” She got up and looked at Elsa, who was fifty feet away, collecting stones. Angela couldn’t see how many she had. She moved closer to the man in her life before he had had time to answer her question with “intuition.”

“I want my prize. I want my prize!” she said.

“You didn’t answer correctly.”

“Prize, prize,” she shouted, falling into a clinch with Winter; she tried to put a reverse waist hold on him, and Elsa looked up and dropped a few stones, and Erik saw her and laughed at his four-year-old daughter and then at the other woman in his life, who was now trying to do a half nelson, not too bad, and he felt his feet starting to slide in his sandals and his sandals starting to slide in the sand and now he really started to lose his balance, and he slowly fell to the ground, as though he were pulled by a magnet. Angela fell on top of him. He kept laughing.

“Prize!” Angela shouted once more.

“Prize!” shouted Elsa, who had run up to the wrestlers.

“Okay, okay,” said Winter.

“If you know, admit that I guessed right,” said Angela, locking his arms. “Admit it!”

“You were very close,” he answered. “I admit it.”

“Give me my prize!”

She was straddling his stomach now. Elsa sat on his chest. It wasn’t hard to breathe. He raised his right arm and pointed inland.

“What?” she said. “What is it?”

He pointed, waving with his hand.

“The prize,” he said. He felt the sun in his eyes. His black sunglasses had fallen off. He could smell salt and sand and sea. He could see himself lying here for a long time. And often. Making those paths across the field.

From the house.

From the house that could stand over there in the pine grove.

She looked across the field. She looked at him. At the sea. Across the field again. At him.

“Really?” she said. “Do you really think so?”

“Yes,” he answered, “you’re right. Let’s buy the lot.”

Aneta Djanali was still producing her police ID when the woman closed the door that had just been opened. Aneta hadn’t had time to see her face, only a shadow and a pair of eyes that flashed in the disappearing daylight, which seemed to be the only light in there.

She rang the doorbell again. Beside her stood one of the local police officers. It was a woman, and she couldn’t have had very many months on the job behind her. A rookie. She looks like she came straight from high school. She doesn’t look afraid, but she doesn’t think this is fun.

She doesn’t think it’s exciting. That’s good.

“Go away,” they heard through the door. The voice was muffled even before it came through the double veneer or whatever it was between her and the long arm of the law.

“We have to talk for a minute,” Aneta said to the door. “About what happened.”

They could hear mumbling.

“I didn’t understand what you said,” said Aneta.

“Nothing happened,” she heard.

“We have received a report,” said Aneta.

Mumbling.

“Excuse me?” said Aneta.

“It wasn’t from here.”

Aneta heard a door opening behind her, and then closing immediately.

“It isn’t the first time,” she said. “It wasn’t the first.”

The officer beside her nodded.

“Mrs. Lindsten…,” said Aneta.

“Get out of here.”

It was time to make a decision. She could stand here and continue to make the situation worse for everyone.

She could more or less force Anette Lindsten to show her face. It could be a battered face. That could be why.

To force herself on Anette now, to force her way in, could be more or less irreparable.

It could be the only right thing to do. It could be settled here and now. The future could be settled here and now.

Aneta made her decision, put away the badge that she still held in her hand, signaled to the girl in uniform, and left.

Neither of the two policewomen saw anything in the elevator down. They could read the walls if they wanted to, a thousand scribbled messages in black and red.

Outside, the wind had started to blow again. Aneta could hear the streetcars down at Citytorget. The massive apartment buildings marched along, in their particular way. The buildings covered the entire area; sometimes they also covered the sky. The buildings on Fastlagsgatan seemed to stretch from horizon to horizon.

Some were being torn down now; there was a crater just over the hill. Buildings that had been built forty years ago were torn down and the sky became visible again, at least for a while. Today it was blue, terribly blue. A September sky that seemed to have been collecting color all summer and was ready now. Finished. Here I am, at last. I am the Nordic sky.

It was warm, a ripening warmth, as though it had accumulated.

Indian summer, she thought. It’s called brittsommar in Swedish, but I still don’t know why. How many times have I meant to find out? This time I’m going to; as soon as I get home I’ll check. Must have something to do with the calendar. Is there a Britta Day in September?

And as though by chance she caught sight of the street sign on the street they’d swung into earlier: Brittsommar Street. Good God. They’d parked on All Saints Street. You could quickly wander through all the seasons of the year here. Season Street itself ran to the south. All time was gathered, placed in a ring north of Kortedala Torg: Advent Park, Boxing Day Street, Christmas Eve Street, April Street, June Street.

She didn’t see a September Street. She saw Twilight Street. She saw Dawn Street, Morning Street.