The Shadow Girls полностью

I think it took about four days to row to Sweden. I never turned around as I was rowing because I didn’t want to feel the disappointment of not seeing land. Therefore I never realised how close I was. Suddenly the boat hit something. It was stuck. When I turned around it almost scared me because I was so close to the bottom. I had hit a small sandbank and was so close I could wade to shore. It was evening. I wandered around on the beach. I saw lights in the distance but did not dare go closer since I didn’t know where I was. I lay down by a big rock and even though it was cold I slept until the sun came up.

The boat had disappeared in the night. It must have floated back out to sea. My oars were gone and I was so upset I started to cry. Then I started walking. I passed a house with a flagpole and the blue and yellow flag on top. That’s when I knew I was in Sweden. It was a childish thought, but I was sad that the oars were not with me and that we could not celebrate our success together.

When I was imprisoned in the brothel in Tallinn with Inez, Natalia and Tatyana the only thing we had with us was a book about all the flags of the world. We learned them all. You can ask me about Cameroon or Mexico. I can describe them all in detail. This is the story of how I came to Sweden.

Humlin waited to see if she would continue but she did not. While Tanya had told her story he had been watching her from the window. He wondered if he would ever have a phone conversation like this again.

‘Where was it you had landed?’

‘The island of Gotland.’

‘Incredible. What did you do then?’

‘I don’t have the energy to tell any more.’

‘What was it that had happened in Tallinn?’

‘You can’t use your imagination?’

‘It’s your story. I don’t want to put my own thoughts in it.’

‘I can’t say anything more.’

‘You must have been lured to Tallinn. There was no restaurant. You met some other girls who were in the same situation as yourself. One was Natalia, one was Tatyana. But who is Inez, and Tanya? And Irina?’

‘I’m not going to answer your questions. I’m getting cold.’

‘Why can’t you come back up?’

‘I don’t have time. I put a bag of food by the door.’

The connection was broken. Tanya waved at him. He watched her leave. You didn’t row from Estonia, he thought. You borrowed that story from Tea-Bag, in the same way that you borrow identities and phones. But on some level there was also some truth to what you told me.

Humlin opened the front door and saw that she had brought him a hamburger and a Coke. He went back to the Yüksel family kitchen table and ate. He thought about the story he had heard related from one stolen phone to another. He again felt that he was in the middle of a strange story, or rather, that he was jumping from story to story as if from ice floe to ice floe. None of them had a real beginning and an end. For the first time in a long time he felt that he was involved in something important.

He pulled the pad of paper towards him and continued making notes. But the stories had already begun to take on new life. He added details and saw many new stories about a kind of life he had know nothing about before he came to Stensgården.

I don’t even know what I’m doing, he thought. My main concerns are still that Viktor Leander will sell more copies than I will, that my shares are worthless, that my mother is going crazy, and that Andrea will leave me if I don’t agree to having a child. Perhaps I should be more concerned about these girls and what they have told me. But isn’t what they have told me also something that is as much about me?

Humlin heard Tanya’s soft knock on the door at exactly five o’clock. Leyla was with her.