Free Before the Frost by Henning Mankell Page B

planning his disappearance or, should I say, escape. He wasn’t running away from me or Anna, he was running away from himself, from his disappointment in life. I wonder if he
managed it—I’ve never been able to ask him, of course. One day he was just gone. It took me by surprise. It was only in hindsight that I realized how carefully he must have planned it. I can forgive him the fact that he sold my car. What I’ll never understand or accept is that he left Anna. They were so close. I know he loved her. I was never as important to him, or at least not after the first couple of years while I was still a part of his dreams. How could he leave her—how can a person’s disappointment in life, stemming as it did from an unattainable dream, conceivably weigh more heavily than the most important person in his life? I think that must be a contributing factor to his death, at least to the fact that he never returned.”
    â€œI didn’t think anyone knew what happened to him.”
    â€œHe must be dead. He’s been missing for twenty-four years. Where could he possibly be?”
    â€œAnna’s convinced she saw him.”
    â€œShe sees him on every street corner. I’ve tried to talk her out of it and make her face the truth. No one knows what happened. But he has to be dead by now.”
    Henrietta paused. The greyhound sighed.
    â€œWhat do you think happened?” Linda asked.
    â€œI think he gave up—when he realized the dream was nothing more than that. And that the Anna he left behind was real. At that point it was too late. He would always have been plagued by his conscience.”
    Henrietta closed the lid over the piano keys with a thud and stood up.
    â€œMore coffee?”
    â€œNo, thanks. I have to get going.”
    Henrietta seemed anxious and Linda watched her closely. She grabbed Linda’s arm and started to hum a melody that Linda recognized. Her voice alternated between high, shrill tones and softer, cleaner ones.
    â€œDo you know that song?” she asked when she was finished.
    â€œI recognize it, but I don’t know what it is.”
    â€œ Buona Sera .”
    â€œIs it Spanish?”
    â€œItalian. It means ‘good night.’ It was popular in the fifties. So
many people today borrow or steal or vandalize old music. They make pop songs out of Bach. I do the reverse. I take songs like Buona Sera and turn them into classical music.”
    â€œHow do you do that?”
    â€œI break down the structure, change the rhythm, replace the guitar sound with a massive flood of violins. I turn a banal song about three minutes long into a symphony. When it’s ready I’ll play it for you. Then people will finally understand what I’ve been trying to do all these years.”
    Henrietta followed her out.
    â€œCome back sometime.”
    Linda promised to do so, and then drove away. She saw storm clouds heaped up in the distance, out over the sea in the direction of Bornholm. Linda pulled over after a while and got out of the car. She had a sudden desire to smoke. She had quit smoking three years earlier but the desire still hit her from time to time, even if it was getting more rare.
    There are some things mothers don’t know about their daughters, she thought. Henrietta doesn’t know that Anna and I told each other everything during those years. If she had, she would never have told me about Anna always seeing her father on the street. There are a lot of things I’m not sure of, but I know Anna would have told me that.
    There was only one possible explanation. Henrietta had not been telling her the truth about Anna and her missing father.

10
    She pulled back the curtains a little after five o’clock in the morning and looked at the thermometer. It was nine degrees Celsius, the sky clear with little or no wind. What a wonderful day for an expedition, she thought. She had prepared everything the night before and it