The Shadow Girls (17 page)

Just north of Herrljunga the train suddenly came to a standstill. After thirty minutes Humlin finally asked the conductor what the problem was.

‘Why aren’t we moving?’

‘Temporary loss of power.’

‘Why aren’t we being given any information over the loudspeakers?’

‘I’m informing you now. Loss of power.’

‘How long will it take to restore?’

‘We’ll be on our way again shortly.’

Humlin tried to call Törnblom on his phone but naturally the
train had malfunctioned in an area where his mobile was out of range.

The conductor returned after an hour.

‘I thought you said we would be on our way shortly,’ Humlin grumbled.

‘We will. It won’t take long.’

‘How long?’

‘A few minutes.’

‘We’ve already been delayed an hour.’

‘The engineer thinks he’ll be able to make up ten minutes.’

‘Then we’ll still be fifty minutes delayed.’

‘These things happen. It won’t be much longer now.’

*

The train was delayed for three hours. Then the loudspeakers announced that all passengers would be transferred to buses. Humlin was close to breaking down at this point, partly from worry about Tea-Bag, partly by the fact that the meeting in Stensgården would have to be cancelled.

Once he had climbed onto the overfull bus he went to call Törnblom again. He looked through his briefcase and all his pockets, but to no avail. He must have left his phone on the train.

It was a quarter to eleven when the bus pulled up to the Central station in Gothenburg. Humlin looked around for Törnblom but, of course, no one was there to pick him up.

HUMLIN TOOK A
deep breath.

It was all over. The best thing he could do now was simply to get himself out of the project he had started with Leyla and her friends, a project that he had lost control of almost immediately.

Standing there in the slushy snow outside the train station he saw the entire situation with excruciating clarity. The whole idea had been misguided from the start. He had imagined that a literary adventure awaited him. But a chasm separated him from the people of Stensgården. He would never be able to bridge it, however well-meaning his intentions. The latter he wasn’t even entirely sure of, to be honest. He thought that Leyla’s desire to be a TV personality was actually not so different from his own ambitions. He wanted to be rich, famous, always mentioned in the papers and with a string of great international successes.

He stepped into a taxi and asked to be taken to the hotel he normally stayed in when he came for the annual book fair. But just as the cab was pulling up to the kerb outside the hotel he changed his mind and asked to be taken out to Stensgården. The driver turned around and looked at him.

‘But this was where you wanted to go, right?’

‘I’ve changed my mind.’

The driver did not speak Swedish fluently, but his Gothenburg accent was unmistakable.

‘Where in Stensgården?’

‘Pelle Törnblom’s boxing club.’

The cab pulled away from the kerb with great speed.

‘My brother belongs to that club,’ the driver said. ‘I live in Stensgården.’

Humlin sat back so his face would be cast in shadow. The driver was going way too fast on the empty city streets.

‘I’d be grateful if you kept the speed down,’ Humlin said. ‘I was planning to arrive at my destination alive.’

The taxi slowed down, but after the first light the driver resumed his previous speed. Humlin decided it was hopeless to get him to drive any slower.

‘My cousin is at the club tonight,’ the driver volunteered.

‘Is he a good boxer?’

‘My cousin is a she. She is meeting with an author tonight.’

Humlin tried to make himself even smaller.

‘That sounds interesting.’

‘Leyla is going to be very successful. This author is going to teach her what she should do to write a bestseller. Leyla has calculated that she can write four books per year. If they sell one hundred thousand copies per book she will be a millionaire within a few years. Then we will open an institute.’

‘Who is “we”?’

‘Leyla, me and my brother and her other cousins. Also, two uncles who are still in Iran. But they are on their way, probably with Turkish passports. We haven’t decided yet. Altogether we will be eleven part-owners.’

‘And what is this institute? Is it really so easy to emigrate to Sweden? Don’t they check the passports?’

‘The institute is for dieting. And yes, it is very hard to gain residence visas for Sweden. You have to know what to do, then it’s easy.’

‘And you know what to do?’

‘Everyone knows.’

‘How do you do it?’

‘You should come here first. Either they let you in, or they deport you. If you are in, you’re in. But if you are deported you are also okay.’

‘How is that?’

‘You refuse to leave.’

‘And that works?’

‘It works very well. You can escape from the refugee camp, for example. Maybe you change names with someone. Or else you disappear. There are churches that harbour refugees.’

‘That sounds too good to be true,’ Humlin protested. ‘I feel like I read articles every day about people with desperate stories who fight their deportation. Some of them try to kill themselves and they are still deported.’

‘It is unfortunate that the Swedish authorities have not yet understood the way things work. We have tried to tell them how refugees think, but they don’t want to listen.’

Humlin was starting to feel like an enraged conservative. In his mind he saw a Sweden with completely porous borders over which people from all over the world cheerfully crossed at will.

‘I thought our government was supposed to set rules for immigration, not the other way around.’

‘You don’t think that is undemocratic? Refugees know so much more about their situation than any public servant. Like what it is like to travel through Europe in a locked container, for example.’

Humlin thought about this in silence, not only what the driver had told him about immigration, but also Leyla’s real motives for learning to write. He had the feeling there was more to the story.
Was her desire to write really motivated by superficial motives? Was there no deeper reason, a need to find a form of self-expression? Humlin simply couldn’t believe that all she wanted to do was make money and run a diet institute with her relatives.

The taxi slowed down in front of the boxing club. The windows and outside lights were dark.

‘They have probably gone home. It’s half past eleven.’

Humlin leaned forward to pay. He still didn’t know what had made him change his mind and ask to be driven out here, nor did he have a phone with him to order another taxi and get back. I never know why I do things, he thought despondently. It’s that damned foothold again, I’ve lost my foothold. The best thing I could do would be to go back to the hotel. But I’m determined to get out here.

‘Are you sure you want to be dropped off here?’ the taxi driver asked.

‘Yes, I’m sure.’

Humlin stepped out of the car and watched it drive off at breakneck speed in the snow. What the hell am I doing here, he thought angrily as he pulled at the locked door. Then he flinched and turned around. He saw someone come out of the shadows at him. I’m going to be robbed, he thought. Robbed, stabbed and left for dead in this slush. Then he realised it was Tanya. Her long hair was wet and she was shivering. But unlike last time she was not staring off at the horizon, she was looking into his eyes. And she smiled. It suddenly dawned on Humlin that she had been waiting for him all this time. When everyone else had given up on him and gone home, she had stayed there in the cold.

‘I’m so sorry I’m late,’ he said. ‘There was a problem with the
train. And Tea-Bag disappeared. Do you know where she lives?’

Tanya did not reply. I wonder if she even understands what I’m saying, he thought. But she must speak some Swedish. Does she just not want to talk about Tea-Bag?

‘It’s locked,’ he continued. ‘We can’t get in. Everyone has gone home, it appears. I can’t blame them since I’m so late.’

The next moment Humlin realised Tanya understood him very well. She took out a collection of skeleton keys and a small torch and went to work on Törnblom’s door. After a while she gave up, pulled out a small crowbar that had been hidden in her boot and forced it into the door. Before he had a chance to react, Humlin found himself pulled into the dark hallway while Tanya closed the broken door behind them.

‘This is breaking and entering!’ Humlin hissed.

Tanya did not answer. She was already on her way to the room where they had met before, the one with the boarded-up windows. The light from her torch danced over the walls with their old boxing posters. He followed her in. She found the light switch and turned it on.

‘Someone will see the light,’ he said.

‘Even in Sweden light cannot pass through boarded-up windows,’ she said.

She spoke slowly, searching for each word like a blind person trying to find their way down an unknown path. He thought her voice sounded something like a small clear bell, delicate and definite at the same time.

‘Nonetheless someone might have seen us,’ he said.

‘No one saw us.’

Humlin thought about the impressive collection of keys she had hauled out, not to mention the crowbar.

‘Do you do this a lot?’ he asked.

He heard how silly the question sounded, but it was too late to take it back. Tanya sat down on the chair she had used last time. She removed her jacket and the backpack he only now saw she was carrying. She pulled her wet hair out of her face and placed a notebook and pen in front of her. She’s ready to start, Humlin thought. What do I do now?

Then it occurred to him that these events could be used as the start of a narrative. He quickly made some notes in his head.
Darkness, taxi, boxing club, Tanya, break-in, empty room with boarded-up windows. Start of story about contemporary Swedish life.
He removed his overcoat and sat down on the chair that he had used before. She was watching his every move.

‘You drew a picture of a heart last time,’ he said. ‘Whose heart was it?’

Instead of answering, she picked up her backpack and emptied the contents on the table. In the resulting jumble he could see everything from icons to pine cones, old cinema ticket stubs, a baby’s dummy, a tin opener, a piece of cut crystal and two brown envelopes. Tanya pushed the envelopes towards him. When he picked up the first she gestured to him in an irritated manner to take the other. He opened up the second envelope and saw that it contained a letter from the immigration authorities.
Application for asylum and permanent residence in Sweden denied as of this 12th of August, 1997.

The letter was addressed to someone named Inez Liepa and the reasons given for the denial of her application were that she had given false information about her name and nationality, as well as the reason for her application for asylum. In the margin someone had doodled in a number of hearts from which drops
of blood seeped down the page. Humlin assumed the latter had not been added by the immigration authorities.

Humlin picked up the first envelope. It was from the local police authorities in Västerås. This letter was also addressed to Inez Liepa, a Russian national, and it stated that she was to be deported from Sweden on the 14th of January 1998. Humlin put down the letter. She was still watching him very carefully. Do none of these people ever use their real names, he thought. First there’s Tea-Bag/Florence, now Inez/Tanya. He found it impossible to hide his disapproval.

‘We have laws and regulations in this country,’ he said, ‘in case you hadn’t noticed. How do you expect to be granted permanent residence if all the information you use has been falsified? Why can’t you simply tell them the truth?’

‘What truth?’

‘Your real name, for a start. Is it Inez or Tanya?’

‘Natalia.’

‘Natalia? Now you have a third name?’

‘I only have one real name. Natalia.’

‘And are you from Russia, Natalia?’

‘I was born in Smolensk.’

‘Liepa sounds Estonian. With a name like that people assume you come from a place like Riga.’

‘But Riga is in Lithuania, not Estonia.’

‘That was what I meant. Lithuania.’

‘There are so many countries in this world. It is easy to make mistakes.’

He looked at her searchingly but couldn’t tell if she was being ironic. He grew more irritated.

‘Can’t you just answer my question? What is your real name
and what is your nationality? I would also like to know where Tea-Bag lives. I’m worried about her.’

She didn’t say anything. He looked at the objects that were still lying on the table.

‘You can of course also tell me why you decided to come to Sweden,’ he said. ‘In particular I’m rather curious to know how you have managed to dodge the police for so long. But most of all I want to know why you came. What made you leave your home? That is what you are here to write about. It is your story. I promise to listen, but I want to hear the truth. Nothing less. I am tired of this never knowing who you really are.’

Humlin waited. Inez/Tanya/Natalia was silent. Well, we have the whole night, he thought. She has to say something sooner or later.

But he was wrong. She had still said nothing after half an hour. The silence was finally broken by the sound of the front door being thrown open by a barking police dog. The dog was quickly followed by three armed officers.

‘Hands in the air where we can see them!’

Humlin felt like he was in a bad dream. But the fear was real.

‘I can explain,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing illegal going on here, I promise.’

Tanya was frozen in her chair. Her gaze was once more fixed on some point far away. But Humlin was sure she was following everything that went on in the room.

‘Please call Pelle Törnblom who owns this building.’

‘His alarm system indicated that the front door had been opened and the door does show signs of force.’

‘I can explain. My name is Jesper Humlin and I am an author. I take it none of you officers is a fan of poetry but you may have
heard my name. My name appears in the papers with some regularity.’