15

When evening came, the family was assembled in the intensive care ward. Dr. Alcorta had decided to move his Swedish patient there an hour ago. The umpteenth move, Winter thought.

It was a different room, with a window facing west. Winter found it hard to tear his eyes away from the mountain. He thought about the white house in Nueva Andalucia. His father was also looking out the window, possibly at the white mountain. The mountain was a stage and the sky was the backdrop. All the blueness was draining into the backdrop, turning black.

“What’s that smell coming from outside?” asked his father, turning his head to look at his family, who were sitting in a semicircle in front of the bed. “It struck me just now that I can smell something different in here.” He needed some help with a tube that had been placed in his nose and was pressing against his chin. Lotta stood up and adjusted it. “That’s not why,” he said when she sat down again. “It wasn’t the tube.”

“There’s a smell of sun and pine needles,” Lotta said. “Coniferous forest. Pine trees.”

“Pine needles? You think so.”

“Yes.”

“In that case it’s just like home,” he said, turning his head toward the window and the mountain again. Nobody spoke for a while. Suddenly his father coughed and it sounded as if he were clearing his throat. A spasm ran through his left arm. He looked as if he wanted to sit up. A nurse hurried over to the bed and shouted something in Spanish. Winter looked at a screen that was evidently showing his father’s heartbeat, and the white line leveled out with a metallic clang. Winter could see his mother and sister sit up and stare at him. People in white came rushing in and crowded around the bed.

When Winter finally had his conversation with Dr. Alcorta it was too late, and not much of a conversation. He still felt in shock. His mother had been calmer than he’d expected. She had been prepared, at least to some extent. His sister seemed to have frozen into herself, on one of the green chairs in the dayroom. “I should have stayed at home,” she had just said, but she wasn’t aware of what she was saying.

“It wasn’t possible to do anything this last time,” Alcorta had said.

“No. I understand.”

“I am sorry.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“What happens now?”

They were in the cafeteria. It smelled of oil and fish. A group of doctors and nurses was having dinner by one of the windows facing south. Winter was drinking strong coffee. His mother and sister hadn’t touched their cups.

“What do we do now?” Lotta repeated her question.

“The hospital has an arrangement with an undertaker in town,” said her mother. “In Marbella.”

“I haven’t thought about it at all,” Lotta said, “but you think Dad should be buried out here, do you?”

“That’s what he wanted. It’s a long time since he first mentioned it.”

“What do you think?”

She shrugged.

“It was what he wanted. And… what I want as well.”

She looked at her children.

“This is our home, after all.”

“Are you going to stay on out here?”

“I don’t know, Lotta. I mean, I have my… my friends out here, some of them. I don’t know.”

“Will the undertaker take care of everything?” Winter asked.

“Yes. As soon as Dr. Alcorta has confirmed the… cause of death and all that sort of thing. The undertaker will look after all that needs to be done with the authorities. The court. In Spain the formalities have to be approved by the court.”

Her children nodded.

“Let’s go back up to your father now,” she said.

Winter was walking along the Ricardo Soriano. It was evening again. He went into the cervecería Monte Carlo and ordered a glass of draft beer at the bar. The place was full of men watching a football match on a large screen. Real Madrid versus Valladolid. He drank his beer and felt comfortable among all the shouting. There were no women inside the bar. They were sitting at tables on the pavement outside, waiting for the match to end and the evening to begin.

He crossed the road and entered the maze of alleys in the Old Town. The Plaza de la Iglesia was teeming with people-men, women, and children. Everybody was shouting and applauding, and Winter saw a newly married couple emerge from the Nuestra Señora de la Encar nación. The church towered high above everybody and everything, shutting out the sky. The couple walked slowly past him over the cobbles. Two children clapped enthusiastically. The bride was pretty, radiant. Three young men in tails whistled, and the groom acknowledged his ex-cronies. Consider yourselves dismissed.

Two statues standing side by side both had heads missing. The couple walked past the statues, looked at each other, then disappeared, swallowed up by the crowd.

In Orange Tree Square many people were already sitting in the cafés under the orange trees, with carafes of sangria in front of them. Winter could hear people speaking Norwegian, Swedish, and German. A black man in a white suit with beads in his hair was playing “Lili Mar lene” on an accordion. Winter hurried past the cafés and continued westward to the Plaza Victoria. He sat down on a bench opposite a tapas bar.

His father was in a mortuary at a cemetery called Cementerio Virgen del Carmen. One of three in Marbella.

“The old cemetery doesn’t have a mortuary,” his mother had said the previous day, in a tone of voice more appropriate to a discussion of a holiday apartment. It was a defense mechanism, of course. He was glad that she was able to do that. “San Bernabé has a lovely location, but Virgen del Carmen is just as pretty. It’s in a pine wood to the north of town. Not very far from the other one, in fact.”

Winter had nodded. His mother wiped away a tear, but her voice was calm, determined.

“We never picked a spot, but we’ve actually been there and taken a look. Your father and I.”

“Good.”

“There’s a little chapel there as well.”

“Hmm.”

“That’s where the funeral will be. A Swedish clergyman, of course. The Protestants used to be allowed to conduct funerals in the old church in Marbella, but I don’t think the Catholic priests approved of that.”

“So it will be at the cemetery.”

“The day after tomorrow. I was informed half an hour ago.”

“That was… quick.”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

He stood up and retraced his steps eastward through alleys and little squares lined with restaurants. In one of the cobbled squares he noticed the Bar Altamirano, where all the outside tables were occupied by customers eating deep-fried fish and shellfish. As he passed, he thought he could see Alicia among a group of people at one of the tables, her hand half-raised in greeting.

He hurried into an alley at the other side of the square without looking around.

When he arrived back at his room, he saw her business card lying on the table.

He took a cold shower and drank a glass of whisky. Lotta phoned from the house in Nueva Andalucia.

“Mom doesn’t feel up to going into town tonight.”

“No. I can understand that. What about you?”

“To tell you the truth, I feel absolutely shattered.”

“I’ll drive out to you tomorrow morning.”

“Yes, I think that would be better.”

He sat in the dark in his boxer shorts, finished his whisky, and tried to establish if he could hear anything inside his head. Then he got dressed again and went back to the Plaza Altamirano.

The cemetery was at the Carretera a Ojen, a respectable distance away from the new commercial complex La Canada.

All that was left of his father was in the urn. That’s all that’s left of him, Winter thought.

The sun was directly overhead. They could almost touch the mountain peak. The cemetery was very close to the white mountain. A long way down below, the horizon formed a semicircle. The sea was dead calm.