"I Die, but the Memory Lives on" - читать интересную книгу автора (Mankell Henning)

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It is dawn, one morning early in June, in 2003. I am in a borrowed house right on the sea. In the grey light of dawn beyond the window, I glimpse a deer through the mist. When I move my arm only slightly, it bounds away out of sight. The sea laps almost noiselessly against the shore. The strong wind from the previous evening has slackened or shifted to another direction. It is so early that the vigilant terns have not yet started their screeching. I go down to the shore and think about the dream that has woken me.

The images are clear. They follow one another like glittering links in a carefully directed film. Not a skimped job. It is a plot in which I take part as well as observing it.

My dream, as I recall it:

I am walking along the edge of a coniferous forest. It is somewhere in southern Norrland, in the north of Sweden. The light is hazy, the sky is grey, as after a long spell of rain. Afternoon, early autumn. I can hear a bird flapping its wings somewhere, taking off from a branch and vanishing.

The dream changes at that moment. I recognise the scene, but I also have the impression that I have never been there before. There is a moment of hesitation: maybe I ought to steer clear of the path leading into the trees. But I follow it even so, walk down a path which might not be a path but only my imagination. The air among the trees is heavy with smells. The forest is soundless, not even the usual little rustlings can be heard.

It is a gentle sort of dream, nothing is threatening or dangerous. I walk peacefully through the soft, damp mossy woodland. The smells are acrid, lively. A cone falls from a tree.

Then suddenly I notice that the trees are not trees, but that they are human beings. They are partly carved out of the tree trunks, they are like half-finished wooden sculptures. An impression flutters past: a great many sculptors have lately been at work on these trees. But something has happened that something has made them run away as fast as they can go. They were trying to help these images or people out of the wood. The people trying to get out of the tree trunks have been abandoned, and now they are stuck in the trunks like dead, half-rotten remains. Broken branches are the arms, the needles their hair, the cones are maybe eyes or bones from their elbows. These are people who have themselves been running away. But they were caught and died attempting to escape.

In my dream, I wonder why I am not afraid.

I contemplate all these dead people, one by one. Slowly I make my way through this remarkable gallery of people who are half-finished sculptures carved out of trees in a northern Swedish forest.

But there is something odd about them. Their faces are black. And I know they have died of Aids.

I am still calm, I feel no fear.

Most of them are children, or teenagers; a few are very old. But all of them are dead. Their faces are not giving up their secrets. None of them speaks to me. I begin to retrace my steps. The bird I heard seems to come back to his perch again. The flapping of its wings fades. Then it is as if the sound tape of the dream has been cut. Cleanly. I stop and I have the feeling there is something behind me. Something I ought to see.

When I turn, I find myself looking into Aida's face.

And then I wake up.