Italian Shoes by Henning Mankell Read Free Book Online Page A

was over.
    â€˜I married,’ she said out of the blue. ‘What about you?’
    â€˜I divorced.’
    â€˜So you got married as well? Who to?’
    â€˜You don’t know them.’
    â€˜Them?’
    â€˜I was married twice. My first wife was called Birgit, and she was a nurse. After two years we had no more to say to each other. And she wanted to retrain as a mining engineer. What did I care for stones and gravel and mine shafts? My second wife was called Rose-Marie, and was an antiques dealer. You can’t imagine how often I left the operating theatre after a long day and accompanied her to some auction sale or other, and then had to ferry home an old cupboard from some peasant’s kitchen. I lost count of how many tables and chairs I had to soak in lye in an old bathtub in order to get rid of the paint. That lasted for four years.’
    â€˜Have you any children?’
    I shook my head. Once upon a time, ages ago, I had imagined that when I grew old, I would have children to lighten the darkness of my old age. It was too late now – I’m a bit like my boat, out of the water and covered by a tarpaulin.
    I looked at Harriet.
    â€˜Do you have any children?’
    She eyed me for a long time before answering.
    â€˜I have a daughter.’
    It struck me that she could have been my child, had I not abandoned her.
    â€˜She’s called Louise,’ said Harriet.
    â€˜That’s a lovely name,’ I said.
    I stood up and made coffee. Morning was now in full swing. I waited until the water started to boil, counted to seventeen, and then let it brew. I took two cups from the cupboard, and sliced up the loaf of bread that had thawed by now. We were a couple of OAPs sitting down to coffee in the middle of January. We were one of the thousands of coffee mornings that take place every day in this country of ours. I wondered if any of the others were taking place in circumstances anything remotely like the one in my kitchen.
    After drinking her coffee, Harriet withdrew into her anthill room and closed the door.
    For the first time in many years I skipped my winter bath. I hesitated for some considerable time, and was about to get undressed and fetch the axe when I changed my mind. There would be no more winter baths for me until I had taken Harriet to the forest pool.
    Instead of my dressing gown I put on a jacket and walked down to the jetty. There had been an unexpected change of weather: a thaw had set in, and the snow stuck to my boots.
    I had a few hours to myself. The sun broke through the clouds, and melting snow and ice began dripping fromthe boathouse roof. I went inside, fetched one of my tins of tar and opened it. The smell calmed me down. I almost fell asleep in the pale sunlight.
    I thought back to the time when Harriet and I were together. I felt that nowadays I belonged to an epoch that no longer existed. I lived in a strangely barren landscape for those who were left over, who had lost their footing in their own time and were unable to live with the innovations of the new age. My mind wandered. When Harriet and I were together, everybody smoked. All the time, and everywhere. The whole of my youth was filled with ashtrays. I can still recall the chain-smoking doctors and professors who trained me to become a person with the right to wear a white coat. In those days, the postman who delivered mail to the skerries was Hjalmar Hedelius. In winter he would skate from island to island. His rucksack must have been incredibly heavy, and that was before the modern obsession with junk mail.
    My rambling thoughts were broken by the sound of an approaching hydrocopter.
    Jansson had already been to the widow Mrs Åkerblom, and was now heading for me at full speed, bringing all his aches and pains. The toothache that had been pestering him before Christmas had gone away. The last time he moored by my jetty, he had asked me to examine a few brown moles that had formed on the back of