Depths - By Henning Mankell & Laurie Thompson Page 0,49

if there was a greater distance than the one between two people in the same bed pretending to sleep. It was a distance he was not able to assess, using any of the measuring instruments at his disposal.

CHAPTER 76

It was almost three before he was sure that she was asleep.

She was breathing deeply, snoring slightly. He got out of bed, put on his dressing gown and left the room. He took a pair of white gloves out of a cupboard.

He poured himself a glass of cognac and went over to her escritoire. He listened to be sure she had not woken up, carefully turned the key and took out her diary. It seemed to him that the white gloves would lessen the gravity of his intrusion, not touching the pages with his hands.

She had made an entry every day since he left. She had not recorded her sudden unwillingness to accompany him to the quay. It just gave the time, the weather, and said: Lars has left.

He leafed through the pages, listening all the time for her padding footsteps. In the street outside a drunken man gave vent to his anger and cursed God.

Her notes were usually short, non-committal. I have had a letter from Lars. But nothing about the contents, nothing of her reaction to what he had written. Her life is like a slow sinking process, he thought. One day she will drag me down into the depths with her. One day she will no longer be the lid over the abyss on whose edge I am balancing.

When he came to 14 November he found something that broke the pattern. She had recorded the temperature, the wind direction, a light snowfall at about nine that soon passed over, but then something more, the first personal comments.

She described a dream she had had that night. It had woken her up and she had immediately got out of bed and written down what she could remember. She concluded with the words: Some nights the silence is cold and unresponsive, other nights it is soft and inviting. Tonight the silence has gone away.

After that the entries reverted to the previous pattern. Falling temperatures, gusts of wind, having a new water pipe installed in the kitchen.

During the night of 27 November she had another dream:

I wake up with a start. In the dark bedroom I think I can detect the presence of some person, but when I sit up there is nobody there, only the white glint of the moon on the door. I remain sitting up, and I know the dream is important. Suddenly I find myself standing in a street in an unknown town, I have no idea how I got there or where I am going. Nor do I recognise the town. The people all around me are speaking a foreign language I cannot understand. I start walking down the street, the traffic is lively, it's very hot and I have a thick black veil over my face. I come to a big open square where there is a cathedral. People are bustling back and forth over the square, they are all blind, but they are playing a violent game, bumping into one another, crashing into the cathedral walls or the fountain in the middle of the square and drawing blood. So as not to be in the way I go into the cathedral. It is cold and dark inside there. The floor is covered in newly fallen snow, individual flakes are still drifting down from the high-vaulted ceiling. It is a gigantic church, like a vast expanse of ice. A few people are sitting in the pews. I walk down the centre aisle and sit in a pew. I don't say any prayers, just sit there; I still don't know what town I'm in, but I'm not afraid. That surprises me because I'm always made anxious by unfamiliar things, I can never bring myself to travel alone but must always have a companion. I sit in the pew, it's still cold, snow is swirling around over the stone floor, then somebody sits down in front of me. I can tell it is a woman, but am unable to see what she looks like. She turns round, and I see that it is in fact me sitting there. She whispers something I can't understand. Who am I, if that really is me sitting in front of me? Then I wake up. I have some idea of what the dream