After the Fire

by Henning Mankell

I was beginning to suspect that the fire had destroyed something inside me. People can have load-bearing beams that give way too.

I felt as if I was walking through my house once more. The cumulative impressions left by several generations had been obliterated in just a few short hours. Invisible traces of movements, words, silences, sorrows, suffering and laughter had disappeared. Even things that are invisible can be reduced to soot and ashes.

‘We can never make sense of death,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t obey any laws or follow any rules. Death is an intractable anarchist.’

Trusting what a person says is always a risk. The truth is always provisional, while lies are often solid.

‘Monsieur has finished with Paris for now?’ ‘Possibly for ever. You can never tell, at my age.’ ‘Quite right. Growing older is like walking on thinner and thinner ice.’

‘She was so lonely.’ ‘We all are. We die alone. At least when we’re born we have company.’

‘I’ve been reading about the heart,’ he said. ‘It starts beating long before we’re born. I think a lot of people believe that doesn’t happen until the umbilical cord is cut.’ ‘It happens on the twenty-eighth day,’ I said. ‘That amazing muscle starts working on the twenty-eighth day, and after that it usually stops only once. Death is the end of a race, after all, but we don’t charge through and break a tape. If the heart were a bird with wings, you could well have flown to the moon and back several times before it decides that it’s time for those wings to rest.’