Down for the Count

by Martin Holmén

  ‘How could Petrus have spilled the beans on anyone? He didn’t even know how to write.’

  I reach out with my left hand and give Dixie a scratch; she yawns lazily, curled up on the passenger seat.

  Once I’m home I drive round the neighbourhood a few times to see if I run into a black Rolls-Royce with the number plate A1058. It’s not the sort of car you often see in Sibirien. There’s not a soul on the streets and no sign of a Rolls either.

  I park a short distance from the funeral parlour. The lights are still on in there. I hold the door open for Dixie but she doesn’t want to budge so I have to pick her up. I look around a few times before I bite the end off a Meteor and light it. I stand outside the funeral parlour smoking while Dixie whines, then I press down the door handle and step inside.

  The bell above the door tinkles, before giving way to a desolate silence. A wave of anxiety passes through my body. I hang Dixie’s lead over the back of one of the visitors’ chairs and slide my hand into my coat pocket, clasping my Husqvarna and flicking the safety catch.

  The door of the cool-room is shut. It’s dead silent in there. I put my cigar in my mouth and cock my pistol. My hand is trembling as I push the door open. For a moment I find myself staring down the barrel of Lundin’s muzzle-loader. He’s still wearing his messy leather apron and his white moustache is speckled red with blood. We both take a deep breath. Lundin lowers his gun.

  ‘Fine time to show up, now that the boar is already butchered and packaged.’

  ‘Did you get all of the bastard in?’

  I peer over Lundin’s shoulder. He points at the dripping axe, which is leaning up against the wall.

  ‘I did, after I crushed his sternum with the blunt side of the axe.’

  On the white tiles underfoot the blood is as bright as cinders on an engine-room floor, but the boarded-up coffin has been wiped down. It’s ready for cremation. Perched on top of the lid is a half-full bottle of aquavit. Lundin scores the label with his thumbnail, to indicate how much is left, and then he leaves it where it is.

  ‘I’ve done my part, you clean up. Throw a bucket of water over the pavement as well, to be on the safe side.’

  ‘Don’t you want to ask me anything else about what happened?’

  ‘Tomorrow. Blessed is the worker’s sleep.’

  ‘I owe you one.’

  ‘I don’t want you going back to prison.’

  ‘I’ll do what I can.’

  Lundin gives me a tired nod, then points with the gun barrel at a bucket on the floor: ‘I cut up some of the giblets for the dog.’

  I take a deep pull on my cigar.

  ‘When are they being cremated?’

  ‘Tomorrow at half past two. With Our Lord’s blessing no one will come and start rooting about before then.’

  SATURDAY 23 NOVEMBER

  I’m lying on my undamaged side, my body still heavy and stiff from sleep. The tip of my nose is cold; the coal in the ceramic burner has run out in the night. The frost crystals on the windowpanes slowly melt away in the greyish sunlight.

  The stitches in my side tighten as I reach for the pocket watch on the bedside table. I whimper in pain. Dixie answers with a yawn from the foot of the bed. It’s past ten. I smack my dry lips. There were a few too many nightcaps and cigars yesterday. It feels like someone raked out the fireplace and poured the ashes down my throat.

  Laboriously I roll onto my back. The wound thumps to life. As I’m winding up my pocket watch, I notice a couple of old splashes of blood that have stained the wallpaper. It’s not the first time I’ve bled in this bed. I close my eyes and remember that messy story I had with Doris Steiner, the film star. I wish Wallin had shut up about it when me and Elin visited him yesterday. The less I hear about it the better. Now and then I think about that bony woman, I even miss her, but usually my bad memory takes care of that problem.

  The bed is big enough for two, with proper bolsters and three real-down pillows. It’s been a long time since anyone kept me company in it, though.

  In Långholmen, Doughboy will already have been working for several hours. Most likely he’s hungry by now; it’ll be three-quarters of an hour before they start serving lunch. Time never passes so slowly when you’re inside as the last few days before your release.

  I raise my head and meet Dixie’s jet-black gaze. Her head is resting on her front paws, her tail wagging with rhythmic lashes, like a two-stroke engine between the cast-iron bars of the bed frame. I throw the bolster to one side and swing my legs over the edge with a groan. My skin comes up in goosebumps. Usually Lundin keeps the boiler warm, but there must have been a cold snap. With some effort Dixie gets up on all fours and yawns excitedly.

  The little hatches of the square-shaped ceramic burner make a screeching sound when I open them, squatting down naked to load its innards with newspaper, wood and a thick layer of coal briquettes. I strike a match. The fire sucks oxygen from the chimney stack. Before long, it’s burning so fiercely that the hatches are vibrating.

  Ignoring Dixie, who’s whining at the edge of the bed, I go into the dressing room. I put on a pair of elasticated underpants, clip my sock garters to my shins and decide on a pair of grey wool trousers that sit a little lower around the waist than the others. With a grimace I put on my vest. Again I think of Doughboy and the suit I’ve promised him. Time is starting to run out. I could do with a bit of money coming in.

  Dixie is still standing on the bed, hesitating like a child on the edge of a jetty. I pick her up and put her on the floor. Christ knows what’s ailing her; three years ago when I took her in there was nothing wrong with her hips or her eyesight; maybe she’s getting old. I read somewhere that for every year, seven years go by for a dog. It’s beyond my understanding how this could ever be true.

  I walk over to the big desk and with some effort open the large drawer, where I have a bottle of Kron, from which I fill the schnapps glass on the desk. In the ashtray with the hula-hula-dancing figurine in the middle, I find a half-smoked Meteor.

  While I let the acrid, heavy smoke fill my mouth, I peer into the drawer. I pick up Beda’s letter and open the folded paper with my thumb.

  ‘You can’t get away from a promise,’ I remind myself. ‘It’s always honour and glory all the bloody way, but when you think about it, those are the only things the poor have.’

  I close my eyes and massage the top of my nose with my thumb and forefinger. That old girl always had a fire in her belly. I remember the way she used to bawl at me whenever I let a curse or two slip out. I can almost see Petrus sweeping the floor tiles with that broom of his as he constantly did; then, even though I don’t want to think of it, the same Petrus strapped down in an isolation cell with a large red bib of blood on his chest and his throat cut open like the stomach of a gutted fish.

  The room-temperature schnapps swills through my innards. I shiver and refill my glass. I just can’t understand why anyone would want to kill off two such harmless figures as Beda and Petrus. On the other hand I’ve been in this game for long enough to know there isn’t always any rhyme or reason to all the blasted things people do to each other.

  I remember my first line-crossing ceremony. I wasn’t much more than a child, working the coffee route from South America under a Norwegian flag. We passed the equator at night. I was standing by the gunwale when they sneaked up on me: the trade wind was caressing my face, the moon sprinkling its silver over the ocean dunes, when a pair of strong hands grabbed my arms and threw me down on the deck.

  The drunken men put on quite a show; they were wearing dresses made of jute sacks and sailcloth. They forced me to drink a reviving tincture of castor oil and pig shit, cropped my hair and anointed me with a mixture of tar, eggs and chicken droppings. I was baptised in the name of Neptune; then, one by one, they came forward and gobbed in my face. Finally I had to go to the windward side of the ship and piss into the wind. The men cheered and raised their glasses.

  On the way back across the pond, some oth
er poor sod had the same treatment, and this time I was one of the men taking part in the ritual. It was the way of things. If I was to go around asking myself why one bloke harms another every time it happened, I’d go raving mad. Sometimes there are no reasons. It’s just how it is. It’s hard to resist the call of violence.

  For a brief second I see the man in black, his ice-cold eyes; I hear his last hoarse words and then I see the light in his eyes going out when I stab his chest for the fifth time. I pick up the glass on the table and drain it again.

  I’ll give Petrus and Beda another three days. After that it’s time for me to take care of Doughboy and let go of everything that’s happened. That’s what I’ll tell Elin after the cremation this afternoon too. Three days and not a minute longer. She’s not likely to be pleased about that.

  ‘There’ll be a hell of a racket,’ I mutter to Dixie, who’s hungrily spinning around my legs.

  In the kitchen larder I don’t have much more than a dry bit of bread, a couple of eggs and half a bucket of cooked human mess.

  When as a child I was given anything at all to eat, I often got potatoes so old that they went black when you boiled them; so I wouldn’t say I’m a fussy eater, but I decide against the contents of the bucket and opt for the eggs instead.

  I get the wood-burning stove going, crack two eggs into the frying pan and put a copper saucepan of water on the other ring. I open a bottle of Carnegie and pour half of it into a bowl for Dixie. She drinks greedily with a splashing sound, while I sip carefully from the bottle.

  When Dixie has slaked her thirst, I put down a soup plate of brownish slop. She doesn’t sniff it, just dives in. I drop a couple of coffee beans into my grandmother’s beaten-up grinder; then I watch the bitch wolfing down the human remains.

  ‘That’s what happens to you if you ask Kvisten for a dance with weapons drawn.’

  My chuckle is joyless. I pour the ground coffee into the saucepan of boiling water and take it off the ring to let it brew. Dixie looks up with a shamefaced expression, her whiskers caked with brownish-red stickiness. She whines for more, and when she cocks her head like that I’m not man enough to deny her.

  While I’m eating, I plan my day. There’s a lot that needs doing before I meet Elin. First of all I have to get my boots shined, then I have to hand in Wallin’s uniform for a clean, and lastly I have to pitch in with the funeral arrangements. I remember that Beda recommended a chemical dry-clean in a place on Observatoriegatan for bloodstains. The most important thing is that I’m not recognised, so I’ll have to use a false name.

  I mop up the egg yolk with the dry crust of bread and wash it down with the porter. If I have time, I’ll use it to call in a couple of debts for Bruntell with the Kodak, as payment for my portrait in front of the tobacco shop, which will be sent to America. Debt collection is a nasty job, but this time there’s a good reason for it.

  I tear off a mouthful of hard bread with my molars. An icy pain radiates downward through my jaw. I go rigid, throw away the bread; it clatters against the draining board. Still stiff with terror, I finger my lower line of teeth.

  One time when I was young, I spent weeks with a throbbing toothache before we put in at Casablanca Harbour. There, with another unfortunate, I went to the local dentist, an Arab in a full-length dress. A pedal-driven drill and a pair of pliers were his only instruments. He got us to inhale a treacherous smoke he called kiff, and before I knew it I was completely dizzy and couldn’t tell port from starboard. Maybe I pointed to the wrong place and that was why he pulled out a healthy tooth, then sent me back to the skiff. From the corrupted tooth the infection spread through half my jaw, and I lay in a fever all the way to Hamburg, where a smith at the shipyard pulled the bad tooth from my gob. Ever since then I’ve dreaded dentists more than anything, apart from heights. But I’ve managed pretty well, all in all. They say a glass of schnapps helps keeps your chompers in good order.

  Dixie has cleaned off her plate and lies stretched out on the rag rug with a swollen belly, as if she’s about to have puppies. Maybe she’s just tipsy? I ask myself if I should get rid of the bits in the bucket, but I decide to keep them and give her few more helpings later on. She seems to like the giblets and I have to save every copper I can. I’ll have to live with the smell of the goo in the kitchen.

  Once I’m dressed I call for Dixie, who limps over. I put her on the leash and take the package with Wallin’s uniform under my arm. I thread the leash around my wrist and remove the empty bottle I put on the door handle last night as a safety measure before going to bed. I no longer have faith in Dixie’s sense of hearing.

  Only after stepping out of the door do I button up my coat and fold up the collar. Dixie’s decrepit legs shiver. There’s no trace on the pavement of last night’s antics. I walk down Roslagsgatan and turn up on Frejgatan to see if the Rolls is parked there. Dixie limps along behind me like a consumptive kid.

  ‘You’re the gentl’man people call Kvisten, ain’t you?’

  The shoeshine boy looks up at me, his mouth full of wonky teeth. He’s an agile youth with a strong jaw and inky black fingers. A pair of blue eyes glitter under the peak of his cap, and the cold has brought his cheeks out in a flush. I haven’t taken my eyes off him since he started polishing. I take the cigar out of my mouth and wet my lips: ‘Correct.’

  On Sveavägen, the number 14 tram rattles past with three carriages. I’m sitting on a smooth-worn, three-legged stool just below the broad steep steps of the City Library. The youth is kneeling on an old newspaper in front of me.

  Next to him he has a carpenter’s box of brushes, rags and shoe creams. The smell of the coffee roasters a few blocks away hangs heavy in the air. A few metres to one side of us, a ragamuffin with a cap on his head and frayed trouser legs is minding the pump by the horses’ drinking trough.

  ‘My customers often say we ’aven’t had a decent boxer since Kvisten and H.P.’

  ‘H.P. never did so well against the Yanks.’

  ‘Sanctions against Italy still in place,’ yells a newspaper delivery man, waving an issue of Svenska Dagbladet.

  An old Volvo, coughing like an old man with a weak chest, pulls out into the traffic. On the other side of the street, rays of sunlight are flashing from a gilded cow’s head above the butcher’s shop.

  ‘It was a pity, what happened, sir, your havin’ to give it up an’ all. Point your foot up would you, please.’

  I chuckle and do as I’m told. The lad has spirit, you have to give him that.

  ‘Yesterday’s news.’

  The kid takes a rag in both hands, stretches it and starts quickly rubbing the top of my boot. The sock garters strain around my shins as I tense my muscle. He’s got a handy pair of thumbs for his size.

  ‘I used to box as well. At Linnea. But it got too pricey. Other foot now.’

  ‘Skint, are you?’

  ‘This jacket’s borrowed.’

  ‘There are cheaper clubs.’

  ‘Not cheap enough. We’ll be done here in a minute.’

  Further down the street, a driver manoeuvres his piebald horse towards the drinking trough. The lad who’s been leaning against the trough throws himself on the pump at once so the horse can drink. It raises its head again, champing at the bit, its muzzle dripping with water. A five-öre piece flies glittering through the air; the lad catches it adeptly in his cap and bows.

  ‘Ten girls chosen for the Saint Lucy’s Day parade!’ roars the newspaper man.

  Dixie tugs at her lead when a fat rat scurries past in the gutter below, its tail dragging behind. I take a deep pull on my cigar and look at the boy: ‘What are you trying to say?’

  His cheeks turn even redder. He concentrates on his work although we’re pretty well done.

  ‘I have a girl, you know… but I could do with some help.’

  ‘Spit it out.’

  The lad straightens his back and puts his dirty hands on his thighs. His eyes dart about.

  ‘I was thinkin’ maybe you c
ould have a look at me. Give me a couple of pointers?’

  ‘Here and now?’

  ‘If sir gets the shoeshine for free?’

  With a chuckle I put the Meteor back in my mouth. I pull Dixie back and make her sit next to me, then take another deep puff: ‘Put ’em up then, boy! Let’s see what you’re about.’

  The lad jumps to his feet and throws his cap on the steps. His head drops down between his shoulders; his hands shield his face. He’s got dark armbands of shoe polish and dirt at the end of his blue shirtsleeves. He’s carrying too little weight for his height, but so was I when I started. His build reminds me of Doughboy.

  ‘Lightweight class?’

  ‘That’s right, sir.’

  ‘Damn it, lad, call me Kvisten. And try to make it up to welterweight if you can find enough to eat. Feet further apart!’

  The lad is not slow to take orders; he’s not wholly dim-witted, this one.

  His black hands shimmer in front of him. I remember when I first decided to take up boxing: a smitten first machinist had invited me to come to the ring at Lorensberg to see Jack Johnson, must have been just before the war. I’d already been prize-fighting in various ports, although I hadn’t been schooled at all; I’d smacked around mess waiters and other ship’s boys until they were black and blue.

  We had the cheapest seats. The sweat was pouring off Johnson’s black shaven skull; the crowd was booing him. ‘Send that nigger home in a cage!’ they bawled. Johnson’s gold teeth flashed like tracers in the dark as he smilingly demolished his opponent, while the first machinist’s hand caressed the small of my back under my jumper. In that moment I understood I wasn’t much other than an unusually pale Negro, and that there was one world inside the ring and another outside it.