He tied the trash bag and sent it sliding down the chute on the landing. The resulting thud below was muted, which meant that they would soon be coming to empty the big bin down in the cellar.

It was sunny outside.

He went back in, put on his jacket, and emerged into the sunshine, which was less bright than it had seemed through the window. The sun was hidden behind the high-rise buildings-it didn’t have the strength to rise above them at this time of year.

It was different out in the fields. There were no buildings there for the sun to hide behind. The neighboring farms were so far away that they seemed to be just a minor blot on the landscape. He could have been standing in the middle of an ocean. There was no end to it. The plain was as boundless as the ocean, and he was standing in the middle of it next to the island he lived on. It was a desert island that he longed to escape from, but no ships passed by to take him away. He could swim, but not that far. He wasn’t big enough. When he grew up.

He walked around the high-rise building and saw the sun: He could look straight at it without going blind; it was like a low-voltage bulb up there in the heavens.

A streetcar clattered past down below. He raised a hand in greeting. Perhaps the driver was somebody he knew who would recognize him.

The streetcar stopped a bit farther on, and people got off carrying bags of Christmas presents. Packages wrapped in fun, colorful paper. They had to be Christmas presents.

He shook his head.

The old man had shaken the iron in his face. Shaken, shaken. He could detect the smell of singed hair, and something more. Singed flesh.

Great stuff, these irons, the old man had said. Look out! he’d said, and the iron had only just missed him.

The cow started sizzling. Another sizzling cow.

Once the burn heals nobody will be able to claim that she’s not ours. The old man had held up the iron again. Should we brand you as well while we’re at it, my boy? To make sure you don’t wander off and can’t remember where you live. That’s the way they used to do things. Right? He’d backed off and felt a rake underneath his right foot. Come here, I said! Out there the sea swelled. He rushed out into the water.

Winter drove. Ringmar kept an eye on the road signs. The flatlands were black and enveloped by a damp breeze. A tractor in a rectangular field was doing God only knows what.

“Maybe they’re sowing,” said Ringmar, pointing. “Spring seems to have arrived before winter this highly peculiar season.”

It was a different world. That was why Winter had wanted to pay a brief visit. He could see the horizon the way you could normally only see it from a ship.

I should get out of town more often. You walk up and down the city streets and the years go by. It’s not far away, and it’s something completely out of the ordinary.

“It’s not easy to hide out here,” said Ringmar.

“There are houses,” said Winter.

“Everybody knows everything about everybody else,” said Ringmar.

“If only we did.”

“You should turn off here,” said Ringmar.

The side road wasn’t visible until they came to it. There was a signpost, but it was as insubstantial as the breeze, which was blowing from all directions. They couldn’t see a road that might lead to a house.

“Where is this farm, then?” said Ringmar.

They kept going. The landscape curved away, and they saw the house.

A dog barked as they drove into the farmyard.

A man was clambering out of some kind of vehicle.

They got out of their car.

“Good afternoon,” said Ringmar, and introduced himself and Winter. The man was over sixty and dressed in waterproof clothing and solid-looking boots. Winter could feel the rain now, like soft gravel. The man said “Smedsberg” and dried his hands on a rag that had been draped over the hood of what could have been a power mower but was presumably something else. Winter looked up at the farmhouse, which was two stories high. He didn’t see any sign of a Swedish Kenyan peering out of a window.

“We’re looking for somebody,” said Ringmar.

Among other things, Winter thought.

“Is it some’ to do with Gustav?” said the man, with a strong local accent.

“Didn’t he tell you?” asked Ringmar.

“Told me what?”

Two cats were sitting beside the iron wood-burning stove. The farmer opened a hatch and inserted two logs. A modern electric range stood next to it. There was an unmistakable smell of old-fashioned heating that Winter had no personal experience of but recognized immediately. He could see from Bertil’s expression that he remembered this kind of thing.

There were rag carpets on the floor. Winter and Ringmar had not been asked to take off their shoes. The farmer, Georg Smedsberg, had exchanged his boots for some kind of slippers that appeared to be homemade.

There were samplers on two of the walls: East West, Home’s Best. God is the truth and the light. This earth is the creation of our Lord God. Honor thy father and thy mother.

Is there a Mrs. Smedsberg? Winter wondered.

They told the old man about what had happened to his son.

“You’d a thought he’d a said something,” said Smedsberg, putting a coffeepot that seemed to be a wartime model onto the stove. “But nothin’ happened to ’im, eh? He’s alright, ain’t he?”

“He wasn’t injured,” said Winter, taking a mouthful of the asphalt-black coffee that also seemed to be from another world. It would banish every bacterium in his body, good and bad.

“Good coffee,” said Ringmar.

“It’s how I like it,” said Smedsberg.

To ask for milk would have been a mistake. Winter sipped at the hot liquid. Anybody wanting to create a surrealistic scene could have introduced an espresso machine into this kitchen.

“I don’t suppose you’ve had any visitors recently? Friends of Gustav’s?” he asked.

“When might that’ve bin?”

“In the last couple of days.”

“No.”

“Before that, then?”

“Nobody’s bin ’round here since Gustav was home last.”

Smedsberg scratched at his chin, which was shaven and shiny and didn’t fit in with his clothes and general appearance. They hadn’t announced their visit in advance. Perhaps he knew about it all the same. Out here everybody knows about everything, as Bertil had said. An unfamiliar car from Gothenburg. A Mercedes. A conversation with his son. Or smoke signals. Maybe the boy had called and told him what was going on. Even tillers of God’s good earth could tell lies.

“When was that?” Ringmar asked.

“Let’s see, it’s nearly Christmas. It would’a been potato time.”

“Potato time?” Ringmar wondered.

“When we took in the taters. Late. Beginning of October.”

More than two months ago, Winter thought. Ah well. How often did Winter see his mother? There were direct flights from Gothenburg to Malaga almost every hour for all the retirees and golfers and all those who were a combination of the two, which was most of them.

There was a framed photograph on a desk on the other side of the kitchen table. A middle-aged lady with permed hair smiled timidly in black and white. Smedsberg saw that Winter was looking at it.

“That’s my wife,” he said. “Gustav’s mom. She left us.”

“Left you?”

“I’m a widower,” said the man, standing up. He walked to the iron stove and put in some more birch wood. There was a sizzling sound as the dry wood reached the flames. Winter noticed that smell again.

“Has Gustav ever brought a friend home with him from Gothenburg?” asked Ringmar.

“When would that be?”

“Whenever. Since he started studying at Chalmers.”

“Yes,” said Smedsberg, remaining by the stove and warming his misshapen and discolored hands on the hotplates. “When ’e came around to give us a hand with t’ potatoes ’e brought a friend with ’im.” Smedsberg seemed to be smiling, or he might have been grimacing from the heat that he must be feeling in his palms. “A black one.” He removed his hands and blew into them. “As black as the soil out there.”