Down for the Count

by Martin Holmén

  I drop my wallet into my inside pocket and shove my fists into my trouser pockets. The taste of the youth has blended now with the dry smoke of the cigar, reduced to a hardly noticeable saltiness. I speed up in the same direction as the girl, leaving Långholmen’s correctional institution behind me. As I jog across the Bridge of Sighs, my footsteps thud hollowly as if I’m jumping around a boxing ring just before a bout.

  On the rocky outcrops of Långholmen, a great jumble of Söder residents are crowding together on that harsh November day. They are wearing black overcoats and raincoats. From up here you can see the entire length of the new-built bridge, stretching across the water. A small white-keeled steamboat, puffing along, passes under one of the two mighty spans and sounds its whistle.

  The bridge is black with people and umbrellas. In one of the middle lanes there’s a stationary tram carriage. I pull my jacket tighter around myself and put my hands into my armpits.

  ‘How damned cold can it get?’ I mutter to myself and gob on the rock, trying out a couple of half-hearted uppercuts just to work up a bit of body warmth.

  A sturdy, red-nosed old lady in a shawl keeps snuffling next to me. On the other side of the water, coal smoke has swathed Kungsholmen in a haze. It has the same yellowish colour as milk gone sour. Above the little wind-tormented wooden hovels on Kungsklippan, the tall chimney of the Separator, the turrets of City Hall and the church spires, the sky is suspended like a wet woollen blanket hung up to dry. The cargo boats, loaded with firewood, lie moored close together along the wooden jetties.

  A sudden gust of wind makes the black-dressed crowd from Söder huddle together like a group of penguins. A stoker with his hat worn at a jaunty angle, a pound of contraband in his hand, swears loudly about the fine gentlefolk down there on the bridge.

  ‘My brother actually helped build the bloody thing,’ he splutters, throwing out his arm.

  ‘Hot sausages, come and get your hot sausages!’ yells a hot dog man with a box hanging on his stomach.

  The people talk in dinning voices, as people tend to do when they have no secrets to guard. I close my eyes for a moment. It takes you a minute to reset your frequencies after eighteen months inside.

  Behind us, the bells of Högalid Church strike a half-peal. The old woman blows her nose between her thumb and her finger, flicking the snot off her hand. I set my pocket watch and wind it.

  ‘Eye-glasses for sale, cheap eye-glasses!’

  The gruff voice sounds familiar. I push back my hat with my finger and let my eyes wander over the crowd on the crest of the rocky slope. Almost at once I see a face that I recognise: old man Ström from my home haunts in Sibirien.

  The junk dealer from Roslagsgatan is a hefty bloke, a head taller than most others around him. His eyes are close-set, and he has a bushy blond beard shot through with long grey hairs, covered in a sprinkling of raindrops. He’s wearing work trousers of a heavy fabric, with a thick moss-green waistcoat under his jacket. Telescopes stick out of his jacket pockets like baguettes, and around his neck he has three binoculars. I make a gesture towards the brim of my hat.

  Ström’s face lights up when he sees me.

  ‘Kvisten,’ says Ström, shaking my hand. ‘It’s been a while. Where’s your coat?’

  ‘Left it at home.’

  ‘When were you released?’

  Ström ejects a substantial load of tobacco juice over the rocks, and sniffs.

  ‘Just now.’

  A murmur runs through the crowd when a cortège of black cars approaches the bridge from the Kungsholmen side.

  ‘Here come the bigwigs. We’ll have a drink on Roslagsgatan later, shall we? They’re having a November knees-up tonight in number 41. Borrow an eye-glass for a minute.’

  Ström hands me a small brass tube, we exchange nods and then he pushes his way into the press of people.

  I extend the telescope to its full length and hold it up to my eye. In the middle of the span, a choir of schoolboys starts wailing, led by a wildly gesturing conductor. Maybe he’s trying to keep warm? He’s wearing coat-tails, after all. The wind tosses fragments of the ‘King’s Song’ to those of us who are standing on the rock.

  Yet more murmuring erupts when the cortège of cars stops by a royal rain shelter made of a deep-blue fabric with three crowns. The car doors open. People charge forward with umbrellas.

  First comes Prince Carl, closely followed by Princess Sibylla in a grey fur coat. A gasp runs through the spectators when she momentarily loses her balance and has to support herself on the Prince’s arm. She quickly recovers her poise and waves off a fat bloke who was rushing to help her.

  ‘There he comes, the beanpole!’ the snuffling woman yells in a high-pitched voice. King Gustaf V gets out of a black Cadillac. He’s tall and thin, and the man holding his umbrella has to stretch as high as he can to clear his regal top hat.

  I’ve never seen him before, and yet through the telescope he’s suddenly right up close. I can make out the small, silly white moustache, the deep furrows around his mouth and the gleam of his oval spectacles. He’s wearing an overcoat with a substantial fur collar and a pair of heavy-duty galoshes.

  A light fog rising from the water starts enveloping the festivities in a grey wash. I take the tube away from my eye for a moment to scratch the flea bites on my throat.

  The festively dressed men on the bridge remove their top hats and bow as the King takes to his royal seat under the rain cover. The boys finish their song and are rewarded with applause.

  A formally attired corpulent bloke goes up to the microphone set up on the little podium, and gives it a tap. He holds his cylindrical hat under his arm. A young conscript in a light-blue uniform and long white leather gloves puts his full lips to a trumpet’s mouthpiece. His chest heaves and there’s a danger his uniform will split when he gives it all for King and country.

  ‘That’s it, my lad, keep your back straight.’

  I lick my lips. The fat man at the microphone starts talking once the fanfare has stopped, but it’s impossible to hear a thing from down here on the rocks.

  The King points at the speaker and says something, causing everyone on the dais to smile from ear to ear. The King also bares his teeth in a broad smile. Someone walks up to the fat man and presses his hat onto his head. He turns around and throws out his arms. I’ll be damned if I know what’s going on. For a few seconds there is confusion on the podium. Four blokes in black poplin overcoats, flanking the guests of honour, step forward briskly and encircle the King, like tithe cottages around a manor house. I study two of them through the telescope. The bloke on the left is a wiry, sinuous man with a hooked nose, and thin, bloodless lips. The bloke next to him is older: a tall, broad type with a white bushy moustache. He has a flat boxer’s nose and a pale thick scar running through one of his eyebrows.

  ‘Some villains have to break stone in Långholmen’s quarry, others guard royalty. That’s how the world works.’

  I retract the telescope with a snapping sound and put it in my jacket pocket. I get out my remaining cigar and shield the frail flame of the match with my jacket collar as I’m lighting it.

  In the meantime things have cooled down on the podium. The King stands up to speak, and the fat man stops talking. Immediately another man traipses forward to raise the microphone by a foot or so. A mumble runs through the crowd, perched up here on the rock.

  The lanky figure totters forward with one hand on the brim of his hat. For a moment it looks as if the gusting winds are going to knock him down, but he leans into the wind and overcomes the problem.

  I draw deeply on my cigar. The King gets out a little slip of paper and holds it up. He says a few words into the microphone, and people break into such enthusiastic applause that it can be heard all the way to where we’re standing. Someone calls out for four cheers.

  The Söder crowd on the rock do not at first realise what’s in the offing and they only fall in with the last few cheers.

  I turn around and ca
tch sight of the little girl from the prison doors. She is standing swept up in a woman’s long skirts and apron, a few metres away on the rock. The girl waves at me and I wave back. She forms her lips into a ring, like a pale rose. Her whistle can be clearly heard despite the gusting wind. I nod in appreciation and smile at her; she smiles back and disappears under the woman’s skirts again. She really does look like my Ida.

  The cortège of motor cars moves off down Långholmsgatan on the Söder side. A couple of coppers in uniform, sabres dangling by their sides, remove the barriers. From both sides, people spill onto the bridge like dark storm waves.

  I fling my arms out and slap myself a couple of times to try to work up some warmth, and, in the process, almost hit someone standing close behind me.

  ‘Watch what you’re doing!’

  I take the cigar out of my mouth and turn around. Ström is standing there, smiling at me. A couple of eye-glasses poorer, and a couple of kronor richer. I give him back the telescope. He gestures at the moss-covered rocks, which look slippery in the rain. Ström leads the way and I try to keep my balance behind him.

  ‘Does our good friend Lundin know you’re coming home? He had to bury some poor bastard and couldn’t make it today.’

  ‘I don’t know. Either way I have keys to the undertaker’s so I can pick up Dixie.’

  ‘Dixie?’

  ‘That film star’s mutt.’

  ‘The miniature schnauzer?’

  ‘I inherited her.’

  ‘You know Wallin, from round our way?’

  ‘The asylum nurse.’

  ‘He had one just like it last year. There was something wrong with its eye. It jumped out if one of the gang boys kicked it hard enough up its arse.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Just hung there, dangling on the end of the optical nerve. You can be sure those lads spent night and day running after that poor dog.’

  ‘Well, at least there’s nothing wrong with Dixie’s eyes.’

  ‘People said Wallin used to take that dog out with a soup spoon in his pocket, so he could put its eye back in if he had to.’

  ‘I’ll be damned if I believe that. His hand was probably trembling too bad for one thing. What with the schnapps.’

  ‘An unfaithful friend. Unlike the bloody dog.’

  Ström slows down; I put my cigar in my mouth and stretch out my arms to keep my balance.

  ‘We can take the number 4 across the bridge and all the way to Odengatan,’ Ström continues.

  ‘I just have to swing by Lindkvist’s betting shop first.’

  ‘Are you putting your prison pay on a match?’

  ‘I might even have to go a few rounds myself to get my hands on some dosh.’

  Ström checks the lie of the land, blows his nose with one hand while pointing at a fissure in the rock with the other. He inserts the tip of his shoe into it and springs across to a little foothold half a metre away. I jump and land heavily behind him.

  ‘And then? What do you do on your first day of freedom?’

  ‘The barber. Try to get my damned con’s hairstyle into order.’

  ‘Nyström’s place?’

  I nod.

  ‘And then I’ll drop off my lousy clothes at Beda’s laundry.’

  Ström stops on a ledge in front of me. We have another few metres to go before we hit a gravel path running through the gloom cast by the mighty bridge span overhead. The freshly painted white pillars reflect in the waters of Riddarfjärden.

  Ström sniffs: ‘Sailor-Beda?’

  ‘She hasn’t gone west, has she?’

  Ström wipes his nose with the back of his hand.

  ‘You missed her by a couple of months.’

  My heart skips a beat. A feeling of loss sends a tremor through my body.

  ‘Cancer? She had a growth on her eye.’

  ‘It was Petrus, her full-grown idiot of a son.’

  ‘What the hell are you saying?’

  ‘While she was in bed he sneaked up and beat her to death with a stone from her own mangle. A damned bloodbath, I’ve heard. Can you imagine?’

  Ström sloshes his tobacco juice around in his mouth. His lips make a sound rather like when a bricklayer slaps a good dollop of mortar on a brick.

  I shake my head: ‘No.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Ström claws at his beard again.

  ‘I can’t see that. Like hell he did.’

  Anger starts pulsating through my limbs. I clench my fists so hard that the dry cigar between my fingers is pulverised.

  Ström turns his back on me, adding over his shoulder: ‘Petrus was quite a simpleton, wasn’t he?’

  The vein in my forehead throbs. A flash cuts through my skull. I draw my foot back and gather steam; then, as hard as I can, give Ström a broadside in the arse. The old jumble dealer is flung over the drop and slides down the rock. His body tears a dark brown wound in the green moss, the broken strap of one of his eye-glasses trailing his body a couple of metres below, as he rolls a few more turns onto the gravel path and ends up on his belly. He writhes about and starts whining.

  A white motorboat thumps along under the bridge. For a moment, my heart beats in perfect time with the pulsing of the motor. A gull cackles harshly. I keep my eyes on it as it dives towards the surface of the water: ‘Like hell.’

  WEDNESDAY 20 NOVEMBER

  I’m still in a bad mood when half an hour later I walk into the Toad, the betting shop in Klara. The place smells of horse harnesses and tack-boxes. Along one of the long walls, two drivers with swaddled legs peruse the large blackboard, on which the odds are written in chalk. One nudges the other with his elbow when I come in. They peer over at me. I don’t know if they recognise me or if I just look like an old lag.

  Behind the wooden counter at the far end of the room sits an old man with white wisps of hair around his ears. He’s wearing black armbands over a white shirt, and half-frame spectacles. He plasters a smile across his face. I tip my hat at him. His name is Lindkvist; he seems to have aged more than the years that have gone by since I last saw him.

  The cashier is busy with a posh-looking bloke in a topcoat and gaiters. The receipt makes a thwacking sound as he skewers it on a five-inch nail that’s been hammered up from beneath the desk. The customer makes a farewell gesture and walks out. One of the drivers leans forward and whispers something into the ear of the other. The lid of the counter slams. The old man quickly limps up to me and offers me his hand. I engulf it in my own, with a good shake.

  ‘Kvisten!’ beams Lindkvist. ‘I thought you’d take me up on my proposal, but I never thought it would take you years to make your decision!’

  He aims a punch with his right hand and taps me gently on the shoulder. I let him get on with it.

  ‘His Majesty’s pleasure.’

  ‘Oh, is that it? But now you’re out? And in need of funds?’

  ‘Mm…’

  ‘In fine shape, it seems to me?’

  ‘It’s the pitch-black solitary confinement cells in Långholmen. They pour the rye porridge into a hog trough leading into the cell. You have to fight the rats for it. Does wonders for your figure.’

  ‘Fancy that. When will you be ready for a fight?’

  ‘I want to get a haircut and a couple of drams, so… tonight?’

  The old man laughs. The drivers have finished their discussion. One of them comes up to the counter.

  ‘Still undefeated?’

  Lindkvist smiles ingratiatingly.

  ‘He’s never even taken a count. He was already hard to beat as a child.’

  ‘Three matches with a week between each? The first with two opponents?’

  ‘A hundred per match. Half up front.’

  I claw at my throat.

  ‘I have to pitch you against decent younger blokes, or no one will bet against you.’

  ‘They probably won’t remember.’

  ‘They’ll remember all right. We’re putting on a match a week until Chri
stmas. Advent matches. The legendary Harry Kvist makes a magnificent comeback.’

  Lindkvist slaps his hands together in the air and looks up as if he’s seeing the words written on a banner right in front of him.

  ‘No gloves. Keep fighting until one man hits the floor.’

  A memory flashes across my mind: a Christmas gala at Cirkus in 1922. I don’t remember the name of my opponent. I was at the peak of my career and I utterly destroyed him before he was knocked out, and had to be carried out feet first. A year later my life had gone to pieces and I was standing, hat in hand, begging for soup from the Salvation Army.

  I pick up my notebook and flick through it until I find a blank page. I spit on my aniline pen and write down the dates.

  ‘Until the other bloke is on the floor.’

  ‘Is that something we could influence?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘Once I tried a rigged bout, and look how it ended.’

  I hold up my left hand. Where the last finger should be there’s a stub with a red-streaked knot of skin. Räpan, the old smuggler king on Söder, removed it with a pair of pliers and a mallet when I broke an agreement some ten years ago.

  Old man Lindkvist sucks in air between his lips.

  ‘How do I get hold of you?’

  ‘I live above Lundin’s, the undertaker in Sibirien. You can telephone me there.’

  I write down the number, Vasastan 4160, on a page in my notebook, tear it out and hand it to him. The old man folds the slip of paper and tucks into one of the breast pockets of his shirt. He produces a cigar from the other.

  I accept the cigar and bite off the end. Lindkvist offers me a light and I puff it to life. I look around the shop.

  ‘You used to have an assistant. A red-haired lad?’

  ‘I had to get rid of him. He couldn’t be trusted.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you need a new one, do you? I know someone who might suit.’