Sail of Stone Read Free

Liked it.
    She liked the solitude.
    Sometimes she was afraid because she felt this way.
    You shouldn’t be alone. That’s what others thought. There’s something wrong when you’re alone. No one chooses solitude. Solitude is a punishment. A sentence.
    No. She wasn’t serving any sentence. She liked sitting here and deciding to do whatever she wanted whenever she wanted.
    She was sitting on a kitchen stool now, of her own free will; the kettle worked itself up to a climax. She was just about to get up to make tea when the telephone rang.
    “Yes?”
    “What are you doing?”
    The question was asked by Fredrik Halders, a colleague, an intensecolleague. Not as much anymore, but still really very intense compared to almost everyone else.
    Two years ago he had lost his ex-wife when she was hit and killed by a drunk driver.
    She’s not even still here as an ex, Halders had said for a while afterward, as though he were only half conscious.
    They had been working together when it happened, she and Fredrik, and they started seeing each other. She had gotten to know his children. Hannes and Magda. They had begun to accept her presence in their home, truly accept it.
    She liked Fredrik, his character. Their preliminary banter had developed into something else.
    She was also afraid of all this. Where would it lead? Did she want to know? Did she dare not to try to find out?
    She heard Fredrik’s voice on the phone:
    “What are you doing?”
    “Nothing. Just got in the door.”
    “You don’t feel like a movie tonight, do you?” Before she could answer he continued: “Larrinder’s daughter wants to earn some extra money babysitting. She called me herself. He asked me today and I told him to have her call.” Bo Larrinder was a relatively new colleague in the criminal investigation department. “And she called right away!”
    “A new world is opening for you, Fredrik.”
    “It is, isn’t it? And it leads to Svea.”
    The Svea cinema. A hundred yards away. She looked at her feet. They looked flattened, as though they had been pressed under an iron. She saw her teacup waiting on the kitchen counter. In her mind’s eye she saw her bed and a book. She saw herself falling asleep, probably soon.
    “Fredrik. I’m not up to it tonight. I’m exhausted.”
    “It’s the last chance,” he said.
    “Tonight? Is tonight the last showing?”
    “Yes.”
    “You’re lying.”
    “Yes.”
    “Tomorrow night. Bien. I’m already mentally preparing myself so it will work to go out tomorrow.”
    “Okay.”
    “It’s okay, right?”
    “Of course it’s okay. What the fu—What do you think? What were you doing this afternoon, by the way?”
    “Possible wife beater in Kortedala.”
    “They’re the worst. Did you get him?”
    “No.”
    “No report?”
    “Not from the wife. Not from the neighbor, either, it turned out. But it was the fifth time.”
    “How does she look?” Halders asked. “Is it really bad?”
    “You mean injuries? I haven’t met her. I tried.”
    “I guess you’ll have to go in, then.”
    “I thought about it as I was driving away. I went back and forth about it.”
    “Do you want company?”
    “Yes.”
    “Tomorrow?” said Halders.
    “No time tomorrow. I have those café burglaries in Högsbo.”
    “Say the word and I’m ready.”
    “Thanks, Fredrik.”
    “Now get some good rest and mentally prepare yourself for tomorrow, babe.”
    “ Bonsoir, Fredrik.”
    She hung up the phone with a smile. She made tea. She went into the living room and put on a CD. She sat on the sofa and felt her feet begin to recover their shape. She listened to Ali Farka Touré’s blown-apart desert blues and thought about a country south of Touré’s Mali deserts.
    She got up and changed the CD, to Burkina Faso’s own great musician Gabin Dabiré: his Kontômé from 1998. Her music. Her country. Not like the country she had been born in and lived in. But her country.
    Kontômé was the idol found in every Burkinian