In Memoriam Henning Mankell
De Zweedse schrijver Henning Mankell is op 67-jarige leeftijd overleden. Zijn Duitse uitgever Hander Verlag heeft dit maandag in München bekendgemaakt. Henning Mankell werd geboren in Stockholm op 3 februari 1948. Zie ook alle tags voor Henning Mankell op dit blog.
Uit: Faceless Killers (Vertaald door Steven T. Marray)
“A bird, he thinks. A night bird calling. Suddenly he is afraid. Out of nowhere fear appears and seizes him. It sounds like somebody shouting. In despair, trying to be heard. A voice that knows it has to penetrate thick stone walls to catch the attention of the neighbours.
I’m imagining things, he thinks. There’s nobody shouting. Who would it be? He shuts the window so hard that it makes a flowerpot jump, and Hanna wakes up.
“What are you doing?” she says, and he can hear that she’s annoyed.
As he replies, he feels sure. The terror is real.
“The mare isn’t whinnying,” he says, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “And the Lövgrens’ kitchen window is wide open. And someone is shouting.”
She sits up in bed.
“What did you say?”
He doesn’t want to answer, but now he’s sure that it wasn’t a bird that he heard.
“It’s Johannes or Maria,” he says. “One of them is calling for help.”
She gets out of bed and goes over to the window. Big and wide, she stands there in her white nightgown and looks out into the dark.
“The kitchen window isn’t open,” she whispers. “It’s smashed.”
He goes over to her, and now he’s so cold that he’s shaking.
“There’s someone shouting for help,” she says, and her voice quavers.
“What should we do?”
“Go over there,” she replies. “Hurry up!”
“But what if it’s dangerous?”
“Aren’t we going to help our best friends?”
He dresses quickly, takes the torch from the kitchen cupboard next to the corks and coffee cans. Outside, the clay is frozen under his feet. When he turns around he catches a glimpse of Hanna in the window. At the fence he stops. Everything is quiet. Now he can see that the kitchen window is broken. Cautiously he climbs over the low fence and approaches the white house. But no voice calls to him.
I am just imagining things, he thinks. I’m an old man who can’t figure out what’s really happening anymore. Maybe I did dream about the bulls last night. The bulls that I would dream were charging towards me when I was a boy, making me realise that someday I would die. »
Henning Mankell (3 februari 1948 – 5 oktober 2015)