Free Sail of Stone by Åke Edwardson Page A

had stopped.
    She passed Sahlgrenska Hospital going up the hill. She drove into Toltorpsdalen, which sounded like it belonged in a fairy tale. She turned left at the church and crept over the damned speed bumps, fifty yards between each one. Workers in vehicles hated the speed bumps: bus drivers, taxi drivers, delivery people, police. She looked around. The people in the neighborhood hate the speed bumps sometimes; the more accelerations, the worse the air. Fair Toltorpsdalen already had the city’s worst air even before that; it was among the worst in north Europe.
    In Krokslätt everything sloped downward. She rolled without accelerating off of Krokslätt’s Parkgata and parked behind Sörgård School.
    It was idyllic. The city was of two minds here, on the boundary between the crude downtown of Mölndal and the abyss of the big city that began at Liseberg. It was quiet here, Fridkullagatan ran like a protective arm to the west and the north; here it was calm like the eye of a cyclone. A person who stayed here found peace.
    Anette Lindsten had not stayed here. Why she had left the protective pocket of Fredriksdal for the condemned Kortedala was a questionthat only love could answer. Anette had moved to the windswept district of seasons for the sake of love, a district where the authorities were now blowing up their own buildings, and when even love had been smashed to pieces, Anette had returned here, home again.
    Aneta stood outside the house, which was hidden behind a hedge that would be difficult to climb over or chop your way through. The house was wooden, like most houses here, built between the wars, expanded during the welfare period, well cared for in less fortunate times, these times. Aneta hesitated outside the iron gate, which had recently been scraped and would soon be painted again. Why don’t I leave these people alone? What answer do I want? I am tired of this shit, tired of women having to live long lives of fear, in exile in their own country, worse than that, living in protected places like refugees, hidden from state entities and their verdicts, and from the powers that be, which is me, us, the police. Them, she thought. I wouldn’t haul children out of a church on order. It has been done before and those pictures are not in the most beautiful albums of humankind’s time on earth. Now Anette is hiding here at home. Is that enough for her?
    She saw her hand ring the doorbell. All I want is to see that Anette is okay.
    Her hand rang again. She could hear a dog barking inside; maybe it had been audible before. The door was opened and within it she saw jaws opening, and not to smile. The dog growled. She knew a Rottweiler when she saw one. In most cases it was a matter of striking first.
    “ Quiet, Zack!”
    She could see the top of the man’s head as he bent toward the muscular monster down there. What did the people of Fredriksdal say about them when they were out for a walk?
    The man turned his face to her.
    She didn’t recognize him.
    “Yes?”
    He had opened the door halfway.
    “I would like to … have a word with Anette,” said Aneta. She felt caught off guard. She didn’t understand why.
    “She isn’t here,” said the man.
    The dog growled in agreement and turned and disappeared.
    “But she moved home,” said Aneta.
    “What? What do you mean? And who are you, by the way?”
    She finally showed her ID and said her name.
    “What do you want with her?” said the man, without looking at what she was holding in her hand.
    Aneta felt something horrible inside, a feeling of dizziness.
    She tried to see past the man into the hall, and she saw the dog waiting for her, or for some part of her. The monster was already licking its lips.
    She felt the feeling again: a lost foothold. She made her voice stronger than it was.
    “I would like to speak with her father.”
    “What?”
    The man looked truly surprised.
    “Sigge. Lindsten,” said Aneta. “I would like to speak with him.”
    She saw