Sail of Stone

“It’s okay, right?”

“Of course it’s okay. What the fu-What do you think? What were you doing this afternoon, by the way?”

“Possible wife beater in Kortedala.”

“They’re the worst. Did you get him?”

“No.”

“No report?”

“Not from the wife. Not from the neighbor, either, it turned out. But it was the fifth time.”

“How does she look?” Halders asked. “Is it really bad?”

“You mean injuries? I haven’t met her. I tried.”

“I guess you’ll have to go in, then.”

“I thought about it as I was driving away. I went back and forth about it.”

“Do you want company?”

“Yes.”

“Tomorrow?” said Halders.

“No time tomorrow. I have those cafe burglaries in Hogsbo.”

“Say the word and I’m ready.”

“Thanks, Fredrik.”

“Now get some good rest and mentally prepare yourself for tomorrow, babe.”

“Bonsoir, Fredrik.”

She hung up the phone with a smile. She made tea. She went into the living room and put on a CD. She sat on the sofa and felt her feet begin to recover their shape. She listened to Ali Farka Toure’s blown-apart desert blues and thought about a country south of Toure’s Mali deserts.

She got up and changed the CD, to Burkina Faso’s own great musician Gabin Dabire: his Kontome from 1998. Her music. Her country. Not like the country she had been born in and lived in. But her country.

Kontome was the idol found in every Burkinian home. She had hers in the hall, above the bureau. The icon represented the spirits of the ancestors, who were the guiding light for the family and for the entire society.

The light, she thought. Kontome lights the path. We thank Kontome for what we are and what we have, now and in the future. And Kontome helps us when fate unfolds on that path.

Yes. She believed in it. It was in her blood. That was as it should be.

Aneta Djanali had been born at Ostra Hospital in Gothenburg to parents from Upper Volta. The country’s name had changed to Burkina Faso in 1984, but it was still the same impoverished country, filled with wind, like the music she listened to, steppes that became deserts, water that didn’t exist.

It was a vulnerable country.

Dry Volta. Impoverished Volta. Sick Volta. Violent Volta. Dangerous Volta.

Her parents came to Sweden in the sixties, a few years after the country’s independence, fleeing persecution.

Her father had been in prison for a short time. He could just as easily have been executed. Just as easily. Sometimes it was only a question of luck.

The former French colony inherited terror and murderers from the Frenchmen who had murdered there since the end of the nineteenth century. Now the Frenchmen were gone, but their language remained. The people were African but out of their mouths came words in French, the official language.

She had learned French as a child, in Gothenburg. She was the only child in the Djanali family. When she wasn’t little anymore, when she had been with the police for a long time, her parents chose to return to their hometown, Ouagadougou, the capital.

For Aneta, it was an obvious choice to stay in the country she was born in, and she understood why Mother and Father wanted to return to the country they were born in, before it was too late.

It was almost too late. Her mother had come back with two months to spare. She had been buried in the hard, burned red earth at the northern fringes of the city. During the funeral, Aneta had watched the desert press in from all directions, millions of square miles in size. She had thought about how there were sixteen million people living in this desolate country, and how that wasn’t so many more than in desolate Sweden. Here they were black, incredibly black. Their clothes were white, incredibly white.

Her father mulled for a long time over whether the journey back had caused the death, at least indirectly.

She kept him company in the capital as long as he wished. She walked with big eyes through streets that she could have lived on her entire life, instead of returning to them as a stranger. Ouagadougou had as many citizens as Gothenburg.

She looked like everyone else here. She could communicate in French with the people-at least with those who had gone to school-and she could speak a little More with others, which she did sometimes.

She could keep walking, without attracting attention, all the way out to the city limits and to the desert, which assailed the city with its wind, the harmattan. She could feel it when she sat in her father’s house.

She heard the wind, the Swedish wind. It sounded rounder and softer, and colder. But it wasn’t cold out. It was brittsommar.

Right. She got up and went to the bookshelf along the far wall and got out the Swedish Academy dictionary. She looked up the word:

A period of beautiful and warm weather in the fall-named after Saint Birgitta’s Day on October 7.

She didn’t know much about the holy, but she suspected this was true for most Swedes, white or black. October seventh. That was a while from now. Did that mean it would get warmer?

She smiled and put back the thick volume. She went to the bathroom and undressed and ran a hot bath. She slowly lowered herself into the water. It was very quiet in the apartment. She heard the telephone ring out there, and she heard the machine pick up. She didn’t hear a voice, only a pleasant murmur. She closed her eyes and felt her body float in the hot water. She thought of a hot wind, and of the luxury of running a bath. She didn’t want to think about that, but now she did. She thought away the water, the luxury.

She saw a face for a few seconds, a woman. A door that opened and closed. A dusky light. Eyes that shone and disappeared. The eyes were afraid.

She kept her eyes closed and saw water, as though she were swimming underwater and was carried along by the current, the wind of the sea.

3

Winter biked west on Vasagatan, for the thousandth time or more. He needed to oil the chain. He needed to put air in the front tire.

Along the boulevard, the cafes were open. He had read somewhere that this street had more cafes than any other in Sweden. And likely northern Europe. That particular expression was often used in comparisons. He had thought about that sometimes, as he did now. Where did the boundary of northern Europe run? Through Munster? Antwerp? Warsaw? He smiled at the thought. Maybe through Gothenburg.

But there were a lot of places. Thousands of people were sitting in the outdoor seating areas.

Winter tromped across Heden. He thought of the sea and the sky, suspended like a sail over the bay where he might live his life. A new life, a different one. Yes. Maybe it was time. A new era in his life.

They had talked about it in the car while Elsa slept in the backseat. The sun had been on its way elsewhere. Angela had driven with one hand behind his neck for a little while.

“Isn’t it dangerous to drive like that?” he had asked.

“Don’t ask me. You’re the policeman.”

“Are we doing the right thing?” he asked.

She understood what he meant.

“We haven’t done anything yet,” she had answered.