Free The Listener by Tove Jansson

call tomorrow, not today.
    That night I hear the snowploughs. The morning is overcast and very cold. I don’t call. After all, what would I say? It starts snowing again, the room is filled with a pleasant twilight, the snowdrifts grow all around and smother all sounds except the scraping of the ploughs down on the street. I fall back to sleep. So goes the long spring, here, in our country.

The Silent Room
    A FTERWARDS, THEY WENT UP TO THE FLAT . The police had been there, but he himself was still in the hospital. He lived on the third floor, and his name plate was like his neighbours’, perfectly ordinary. He had a Christmas wreath on the door – green lingonberry sprigs in plastic. There was no post on the hall rug. They came into a large living room with southern sun and wall-to-wall carpet, modern wallpaper, but inherited furniture. It was all very tidy, the bathroom as well. He had a refrigerator and a washing machine in the kitchen, and the cupboards smelled clean.
    “Can you figure it out?” she said. “I just can’t understand why he did it. And as old as he is! They almost never do it at that age.” She was large and level-headed and was wearing an attractive suit she had made herself. Her brother shrugged his shoulders and walked over to the window. The view was pleasant, a corner of the park and, further off, an open school playground. The room was very quiet. It has the same silence I have at home, hethought. Untouched, somehow. He went to the cupboard and took out the dressing gown and put it into the valise they’d brought with them.
    “Slippers,” his sister read from the list. “Toiletries and pyjamas. Oh yes, they’ve put him in a private room and they said he wanted his glasses …”
    At the back of the cupboard was a large box. It was full of unopened cartons and rolls of leather and strange tools.
    “What are you doing?” she said. “What’s all that?”
    “I think it’s bookbinding tools,” he said. Everything was new, the price tags were still on. He looked for the slippers under the sofa, but the only thing there were some flat boxes and a yellow wooden chest. Parts for model ships – a caravel, the
Cutty Sark
. He pulled out the chest.
    “What are you doing?” she asked again. “Can’t you find the slippers?”
    He undid the hasp. It was a complete set of carpenter’s tools. “They’re brand new,” he said. “He’s never used them.”
    “So it seems,” she said. “But I ought to get some groceries before they close. And I don’t think we ought to search through his things any more than we have to.” She went to get the toiletries and found his glasses in the drawer of his night table. Everything was neat and orderly, linens and underwear in even, carefully folded piles. She went back to the living room. Her brother had opened the desk drawer. “And what are you searching for now?” she said.
    “I’m not searching,” he said. “I’m just looking.” He wanted to say, I’m looking for him, I’m trying to understand. But they had never talked to each other that way.
    Some envelopes. One of them said “Receipts”, another “Fire Insurance”. Forms. Directions for use.
    “There’s not much to see in here,” she said quietly. She put the last items into the valise and closed it. “I think that’s everything. Now I need to get going and take care of dinner.”
    “Off you go,” he said. “I can take the bag to the hospital. We’re not headed the same way, anyhow.”
    She looked at him and he explained. “I’m a little tired. I think I’ll sit here for a while and look at a book.”
    “You’re always tired,” his sister said. “You should see a doctor. You’re not exactly getting any younger. Goodbye then, and don’t forget to leave the keys with the caretaker.”
    Now the room grew as quiet as before, a soft, quilted, absolute silence. Maybe it was due to all the rugs and draperies and overstuffed furniture, and of course the books. Why does