Snow lay over the cemetery like a thick layer of whipped cream. Hans Peter prepared some coffee and made some sandwiches with ham and sliced tomatoes sprinkled with salt and black pepper. Sat at the kitchen table, flipped through the newspaper,
Today there was quite a bit about a woman who was going to be executed in Texas. She was called Karla Faye Tucker and she was condemned to death. She was just as old as his sister would have been. Karla Faye Tucker had thick hair and beautiful calm eyes. The article stated that she had been saved and converted. Even the Pope had asked for clemency, but that probably wouldn’t happen. Probably she’d be tied to the stretcher in the death chamber at one in the morning, right when he was sitting behind the reception desk. An executioner would search for the vein in her arm and then, once he found it, inject the deadly liquid.
You only have one life, and you do with it what you will, he thought. Karla Faye Tucker didn’t understand that until it was too late.
He still felt down. This happened a few times a year, not a real depression. He imagined that a real depression would be heavier, deeper, more difficult. No, it was a certain kind of weariness. Weary of the rhythm of the days, the standardization of everything.
Maybe a long walk would help him get into a better mood. He put on his lined winter boots and his parka, which he once received as a birthday present from Liv. It was still around even though the birthday had been a long time ago. It wasn’t all that warm, but it kept out the wind, and if you put on a sweater underneath it, you didn’t freeze at all. He usually sprayed waterproofing on it each time he washed it, and he imagined that it helped.
Right when he was about to leave, the phone rang.
It was his mother. He said that he was about to go, anything important, could he call back?
“It’s your father’s birthday today, Hans Peter.”
“Oh hell. Of course!”
“You hadn’t forgotten it?”
“There’s been so much going on at work. Yes, I totally forgot.”
“You don’t have all that many relatives to forget.”
That burned him.
“I know! I just forgot! It was unforgivable.”
“He went out early to look for the mail.”
“Stop it now, Mamma.”
“Are you coming by for a visit this weekend? We can have a birthday dinner then. If you have time, that is.”
“Yes, yes, yes, of course. I’ll come.”
He walked between the bus stops on Sandviksvagen and turned to the left at the gold kiosk. The snow made it difficult to get by in certain places. The cars crept along. The snowplows were out in force, pushing away the snow and sanding the street. He saw a young mail carrier fly past on his heavily burdened bicycle and remembered when he himself had worked delivering mail. Nice that job was over. He was too old for that kind of thing now.
He would soon be too old for everything.
He passed by the hill toward the General Bathhouse, which today looked nothing at all like a bathhouse. The snow covered the sand and the piers and lay over the ice so thickly that you could not even see the edge of the beach. It was still snowing, but not too much; it didn’t have the small white flakes that whirled into your eyes and gave you a headache. At least, they didn’t make his headache worse. He pulled his cap further down and followed the beach path toward Riddersvik.
It would be nice to live here, in one of the row houses with their fantastic views of the lake. But of course, they cost an arm and a leg. And he was a single man. Sometimes he thought about finding an apartment in the middle of Stockholm instead, but he liked nature; he was not really a city person. This was a combination which suited him fine.
A few years ago, a boardwalk was built along the side of the hill and out over the water like a balcony. It made a short cut to Riddersvik and Tempeludden. He felt closer to nature out here, close to the large willows. When the lake froze, large groups of long-distance skaters came gliding all the way from Enkoping or places even farther away. He wondered whether the ice was strong enough to hold, but didn’t see any human tracks, just light paw prints from smaller animals. The bushes had frozen; drowned in snow and ice, they looked like large coral chunks. He leaned out above the edge and observed them. He should have brought his little camera. Why did he never think of taking photos in the middle of winter?
He heard a sound and saw a woman coming with a large black dog, walking over the bridge path. The dog was strong and she had great difficulty holding on to it. Its shaggy nose was speckled with snow, and the sight was so funny, he couldn’t help smiling.
Then she stopped, pushed some hair back under her hat. Her face was red and she didn’t wear make-up; her jacket was bright yellow.
“Nice dog,” he said, but he didn’t know whether he should dare pet it.
“Yeah,” she said. “It’s my daughter’s.”
“You going out with him, or is he going out with you?”
“You could wonder which,” she laughed.
She pulled the leash and said something which sounded like Freya.
“Is she named Freya? Like the radio program?”
“No, her name is Feja. And usually she’s not so stubborn. Just with me… my daughter and her husband are teaching it to be a rescue dog.”
“Rescuing what, then?”
“Well…,” she said evasively, “people who’ve gone missing or gotten trapped in a fallen house. Things like that.”
“Sounds interesting.”
“But she’s still fairly young, three years old.”
“Is she a Schnauzer?”
“Yeah, a Great Schnauzer. She’s in heat now; that’s why she has difficulty listening. But we have to go now. Come, Feya!”
He stood there and watched them disappear over the hill.
For the umpteenth time, he thought he should have had a dog.
If only he had one. Then the two hounds would sniff each other for a while, in the butt, as dogs do; and then he would have continued his walk, just as he was doing now. Up on the right was Ridderviks garden and beneath the hill were all the garden plots; he would have let Bella run loose precisely here. She would have rushed up and down the hill like crazy and rolled around in the snow. Maybe he would have had a stick to throw for her.
He trudged up the hill where the unusual pavilion stood with its pillars like a temple from a story in
He found her a bit down the hill. She was half lying behind a large tree trunk, and afterwards he thought that if he had had a dog with him, the dog would have sniffed her out at once. As it was, he nearly overlooked her.
She lay against the trunk of the tree and snow was falling over her. She had brushed it away as long as she could, but now her arms were down on the ground and her head hung to the side.
His first thought was that she was dead. He stooped close to her and gently touched her chin. It was cold, but she was breathing. Then he placed her on the ground and lifted her legs, thinking this is what you do with people who have fainted.
A second later, she made a noise and opened her eyes. Her face was as white as the snow around her.
“Oh, you’re alive, thank God!” he cried, and fell on his knees next to her. She smacked her lips, made some swallowing sounds.
“You must have fainted. I found you sitting here by the tree trunk.”
“I was running…,” she said roughly, and then he saw that she was wearing jogging shoes and some kind of jogging suit.
“What happened? You must have fallen.”
