Down for the Count

by Martin Holmén

  I smile. ‘Good,’ I say. ‘Shadow-box for me, I want to see some combinations.’

  I reach down and scratch Dixie behind her ear while the kid starts firing off punches into the air. He’s got fast hands and he can put together basic combinations, but he hardly moves his feet. Most likely his trainer put him on a sack and forgot all about him. An elderly couple stop to watch. They’re joined by a couple of small lads on their lunch break. A couple of them start laughing, but the kid doesn’t seem to notice them.

  It’s something I never learned. A good sign.

  ‘That’s it!’ I holler. ‘Always at least three punches, block at the end of every series. No, no! Hands above your eyebrows, deflect with your elbows. A little quicker, good. Twist half a turn on your front foot and go for another combination. That’s it! Again! And again! Every time you turn the other bastard has to think again.’

  I slide forward on the stool and try to direct the lad with my cigar waving about in the air.

  ‘Where the hell are your feet, lad? Wide apart! Dance, you sod! That’s it! No, you’re crossing your legs! What’s the matter with you? That’s better, now roll your upper body. Now follow up with your jabs! Never give the other bastard a breather!’

  I smile and slap my hand against my thigh. Sparks and smoke whirl into the air. I feel a sensation almost like music in my chest. A good glass of rye now would hit the spot like a knife in the county constable. The old bloke who’s there with his missus leans over to tell her something. A heavily made-up woman with wavy dark hair and worn heels also stops to have a look. Her eyes are shiny, almost fevered.

  ‘Roll your whole shoulder into the uppercut! Legs, lad! Legs! One step forward for every jab now. Elbow pointing down at the ground every time you pull your arm back! That’s it! No, damn it! Forward with the left foot every time. Let your right foot drag behind. Like this!’

  I laugh, let go of Dixie and stand up to show him how to move forward. He looks quite giddy but he does as he’s told. A couple of National Socialists with fliers in their hands join the group. Under their coats they’re wearing brown shirts and black ties, both of them with leather belts across their chests. On their armbands, yellow swastikas stand out against a blue background. They’re drawn to people like lice.

  Soon others join the group as well, there must be ten or fifteen people standing there. A sigh of admiration runs through them when I show off and demonstrate to the boy how it’s done. My stitched-up wound is howling with pain but I ignore it. The lad imitates my moves as well as he can.

  I let him keep working after the round has finished. When at last I call out to the lad that he can have a breather, there’s scattered applause from the audience. I’m almost as out of breath as him, with all the yelling I’ve been doing. I offer him the stool and before I know it I’m massaging his neck with one hand. He’s soaked with sweat; he smells good.

  ‘Thanks, Kvisten.’

  He pants for air between the words.

  ‘Don’t give it a thought. You’re not so unlike yours truly when I was young.’

  ‘Quick?’

  ‘Penniless.’

  The lad gives me a crestfallen look. I laugh, ruffling his hair and adding: ‘And fairly quick too.’

  His crooked teeth flash a big smile. He says eagerly: ‘Maybe we could do it again some time? In case Kvisten needs his shoes polished again?’

  I give it a bit of thought while I get out a box of matches to relight my cigar. I rub my unshaven chin. It’s a tempting proposal, at least no less tempting than he is himself. Any old sod knows you can read a man’s situation in life by looking down. In the first years of my life I had to share a single pair of shoes with my twin brother. Damn it, Kvist, you’re coming up in the world.

  ‘I can take you on once a week or so, on certain conditions.’

  ‘Are you pulling my leg, Kvisten?’

  ‘You haven’t heard the conditions yet. Do you have a name?’

  ‘Hasse. Or Hans.’

  ‘Okay, Hasse. I need to hand in this package to the laundry on Observatoriegatan today. Can you do it under the name of Zetterberg, and take a receipt? I’ll pick it up myself tomorrow. How tall are you?’

  ‘One sixty-eight.’

  ‘Perfect. This afternoon you’re to go to Standards and try on a suit. Ask them to put it aside and pass on my best wishes.’

  ‘A suit?’

  ‘For my nephew. I think you’re about the same size. You’re a Söder lad, aren’t you?’

  ‘Mariaberget.’

  ‘You lug all your stuff here and back every day?’

  ‘My opening hours are the same as the library’s. The caretaker lets me keep ’em locked up inside.’

  ‘So run like you’ve got the devil on your heels.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I want you to run every day. I liked the mornings best. The day you manage to keep up a good speed all the way here, you do a hundred press-ups facing down the steps.’

  ‘A hundred?’

  ‘And the day you manage that you give me a ring.’

  I rip out a page of the notebook with Lundin’s number written on it.

  ‘Eat everything you can lay your hands on in the meantime. Everything.’

  ‘Any old thing?’

  ‘You have to be in form by early March and ready for your first match in the summer. July.’

  I get a five-krona note out of my wallet: ‘And buy yourself a skipping rope. It helps hands and feet to get along.’

  Hasse takes the bill and makes a bow. I haul in Dixie, wink at the lad and turn away. The only spectator still there is the made-up woman with the glazed eyes. As I draw closer she stumbles on her narrow heels as she’s undoing the belt of her overcoat. A sigh slips out of her red-painted lips, and she pulls an irritable face. Under her coat she’s wearing a black velvet dress. A cloth rose is fixed in her décolletage. Her lips part in a greedy smile:

  ‘Does the gentleman like roses? Would you like a smell of it?’

  ‘Go to hell.’

  I brush past her, putting my newly polished boot on a flier proclaiming, ‘End the class war! March on with National Socialism!’

  ‘Piss off home to wifey then, old man,’ she hisses throatily at me, as I take Dixie and steer my steps back to Sibirien, whistling ‘Ole Faithful’ as I go. The morning has gone considerably better than I expected. Once we’ve got the dead boy and the man in black safely cremated, I can meet with Elin this afternoon.

  I peer over at Standards on the other side of the big crossroads where the small-time gangster Fridolf Five-Bob reputedly bled dry in the winter of ’29, but I see no sign of her.

  I turn around and see Hasse still standing there huffing and puffing by his stool, a couple of black smudges of boot polish on his forehead where he wiped off the sweat. I think about Doughboy. Four days left.

  Loneliness tightens across my chest like a badly tailored shirt.

  According to Bruntell the grocer, his two biggest debtors are the Lapp’s widow and Olsson on Roslagsgatan. There’s nothing to be had from the widow. She cleans at the jeweller’s without charging for it, then brings the dirt back home and strains it for flakes of gold. Olsson has admittedly been bed-bound for a while, he’s sick and frail but nonetheless my best chance. He lives a couple of blocks to the north, in the last house on Roslagsgatan. It’s a tatty building with the brickwork showing through where the pointing’s peeled off.

  I leave Dixie tied up around a drainpipe and push the door open. From the elementary school opposite, I can hear the shrill tones of the student orchestra in the middle of their Saturday rehearsal. The stairwell smells of damp and boiled turnips. Olsson lives one floor up. My stomach starts growling as I walk up the stairs. I take off my tie and put it in my pocket, then crack the joints of my fingers.

  Above Olsson’s nameplate another ten or so names have been glued to the door. I hear the mumbling of several voices inside. I take a deep breath and steel myself.

  �
�I’m doing this for you, little Ida…’

  My voice echoes desolately in the stairwell. I bang on the door. The sounds on the other side quickly stop. I wait a couple of seconds, then bang again. Someone coughs raspingly, then I hear dragging steps approaching.

  The door opens narrowly, just a small slit. I grab the door handle and tug it open.

  Olsson’s sickly greyish-yellow skin stretches over his skull like weathered sailcloth. A coughing fit passes through his rickety body, making him twitch like a broken jumping jack. He’s an emaciated bloke with white locks of hair around his ears. A lifetime of resentment and disappointment has twisted his wrinkled mouth into a permanent frown. One of the spent cogs of the machine; I heard he used to be a boiler-man at the wool factory in Söder before his sickness caused him to lose his job. The rings of soot under his eyes seem never to have disappeared.

  He rests his arm and forehead against the wall. With the other hand he’s holding up his trousers. He doesn’t have a belt or braces. If I nail a bloke in this condition, I’ll be risking a murder prosecution. I have to take things easy here.

  While I’m waiting for Olsson’s cough to settle down, I peer into the one-room flat. The dirty walls are completely bare, and there’s no furniture. Most likely he sold it all, or pawned it. It’s a trial by fire, getting ill in this country.

  There’s a stink of humanity and tobacco smoke. The broken window at the back of the room has been plugged with newspaper and glue, and there’s not a lot of light coming in, even in the middle of the day. The entire floor is covered in old newspapers and filthy pillows. This is where they all sleep, men, women and children. Pale faces stand out in the gloom.

  There are plenty of these kinds of lodgings in the tenements of Sibirien. They’re all similarly short of hope and oxygen. I’ve seen my fair share of them, either when tracking down missing persons or just collecting unpaid rent. But if Olsson has people dossing on his floor, he ought to be making a bob or two, surely?

  ‘Kvisten,’ Olsson wheezes once he’s recovered. ‘It’s been a while. What can I do for you?’

  His Scanian burr is more or less intact, even after all these years in the city. His eyes are filling with tears. Another rattle passes through his ramshackle body.

  ‘I’m here on a job.’

  For half a second, Olsson’s bronchial tubes stop whistling. He looks down at his torn socks. There’s a slight tremble in his hand as he points into the room: ‘Who’s it about this time?’

  ‘You, Olsson. Bruntell wants his bread.’

  Olsson’s lower jaw drops and judders up and down twice. He snuffles. His limbs start shaking as if there’s an earthquake in the offing, and his eyes tear up. I clench my jaw. He tries a smile, but his trembling lips only manage to pull his mouth out of shape.

  ‘Sad to hear it.’

  ‘You heard about Johnsson, on the corner? What happened to him when he got difficult with me?’

  ‘Certainly I have, yeah.’

  Tears fill the furrows on Olsson’s face and drip onto his dirty linen shirt. He snuffles again.

  ‘I wouldn’t want to take it as far as that this time.’

  ‘But… I don’t have that much money. If I could have a bit of an extension…’

  ‘You’ve had months of extension. Bruntell’s fed up with it.’

  ‘Couldn’t you be a bit nice about it, Kvisten? Think about—’

  ‘Think about Johnsson.’

  Olsson keeps shaking. He rubs his hands together, but soon has to catch his trousers when they start slipping down. He’s not wearing underpants; his grey pubic hairs stick out from beneath the waistline. Disgusted, I take a pull at my cigar and glance down the stairs.

  ‘But what has Kvisten got in mind for me? Can’t you show a bit of mercy? I’m sick and—’

  ‘Stand up straight, for God’s sake!’

  ‘But what will you do to me, Kvist?’

  ‘Straighten up! At least show me you’re half a man, will you!’

  ‘I don’t have that much money. I know what Kvisten likes. If you let me… we could go somewhere…’

  Olsson puts his emaciated right hand on my arm and caresses me with shivering, convulsive movements. I stare at him, nauseated, then take his hand and throw it aside.

  On the floor inside the flat, people are lying immobile under their blankets, grey bundles resting like stones on a barren shore.

  ‘Get your mitts off, will you!’

  ‘So tell me, then! Tell me what you’re going to do, Kvisten!’

  For the first time his eyes, red from crying, look into mine; his head leans to one side, and then I see a sort of glint in his gaze, like when a whippersnapper comes up with an idea for some foolery.

  Before I know it he’s put the fingers of his right hand into the door frame, while with his left he grabs the door handle. This is not looking good. I freeze for a second, then leap forward: ‘Wait!’

  He doesn’t listen to me. He clenches his jaw, and then slams the door as hard as he can. There’s a crunching sound followed by a high-pitched yell which two or three other voices echo in fear. The door slowly glides open again, revealing Olsson kneeling on the floor of the hall, rocking to and fro with the bleeding knot of his right hand inserted into his left armpit. His trousers have slid halfway down his thighs. He whimpers, looking up at me with his red-rimmed eyes. I take half a step back, stumble and almost fall.

  ‘Is it good enough for you, Kvisten? If I pay Bruntell what little money I have?’

  Olsson sobs. I stare at him.

  ‘It should be good enough, yes.’

  I turn around and rush down the stairs so quickly that the back of my coat flaps in the tailwind. When I reach the ground floor I stop, push my hat back, wipe the sweat off my brow with my sleeve and sink down on the first step. Upstairs I can hear Olsson whining like a little boy who’s been slapped.

  With a shaking hand I light a phosphorus match and put a fresh cigar in my mouth. It’s a hell of a job, this.

  Father and mother are following their son to the grave in a rusty Oldsmobile. I can see them in the rear-view mirror as we slowly approach Norra cemetery. The mother, a middle-aged woman with a sharply cut profile under her veil, stares fixedly out of the side window. The father squeezes the steering wheel with his sausage-like fingers. Now and then he comes too close, and I have to pick up speed. Not that it concerns me. The quicker we dump the cadaver in the oven, the better.

  ‘The pall-bearers know they’re dealing with a very corpulent boy.’

  Lundin slurs his words, sitting next to me and massaging his skinny legs. He’s wedged his pocket-flask between his thighs.

  Once more I peer into the rear-view mirror, while accepting Lundin’s proffered flask with my left hand. I have a sip and then another to calm my heart, although schnapps has no effect on a day like this.

  ‘My brother, I told you loud and clear, stay out of trouble until you’ve worked off what you owe; then the first thing you do, you take a bloke and turn him into blood sausage.’

  ‘I didn’t have much choice.’

  I keep my eyes on our escort in the rear-view mirror as we go round a bend in the road. At the back is a lorry that seems to be loaded with furniture. A matt-black Ford has also joined the cortège. Instinctively I pick up speed slightly.

  Lundin clears his throat: ‘I’m dying one day at a time.’

  ‘We all are.’

  ‘It’s gaining on me from the feet up. It takes me forty-five minutes to get out of bed in the mornings. Not to mention the pain in my hands.’

  ‘You want me to bring you a cup of java in bed? I could dress up like a maid on Saint Lucy’s Day.’

  ‘Forty-five minutes! And dying for a piss the whole time.’

  ‘White slip, candles in my hatband.’

  Lundin laughs, making a wheezing sound.

  ‘That would be a sight.’

  ‘I’d rather call Welfare and get you into a home.’

  ‘Forget about th
at, you hear me?’

  We turn off into the churchyard. I keep my eyes on our escort. In the back, I can hear the white coffin sliding across the floor. I don’t even want to think about what would happen if the boarded-up lid was removed. The lorry carries on without turning off, but the Ford stays on our tail. My knuckles turn white around the steering wheel; the red scar tissue stands out even more. I breathe deeply.

  Lundin raises his voice: ‘Are you listening?’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said, we’ll go to the bank on Monday, on Tuesday afternoon I have to go to the doctor’s about my blasted hand, and on Wednesday you become a till rat.’

  ‘And a boxing trainer, if all goes to plan.’

  ‘What was that last bit?’

  I catch a glimpse of the dome of the North Chapel through an alley of bare elms. I take a last look in the rear-view mirror before I peer across at Lundin, who’s twisting the ends of his moustache.

  I reach for the hip-flask between his thighs: ‘We have company.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The coppers in that damned Ford.’

  The chapel smells of lilies and cut spruce sprays. The dead boy’s parents sit in the first row, straight-backed and dignified. In a monotonous voice the priest tries to explain why God had to have their son killed.

  Not a lot of people have taken the time to be there, although possibly more than usual on a Saturday – after all, they are burying a boy who’d hardly turned fourteen.

  I sit with Lundin and the other pall-bearers in the back pew. Lundin holds his personal brown leather-bound Book of Psalms in his gnarled hands. We wait patiently for the next hymn. The people in the Ford haven’t come in, and I didn’t dare look too closely at them when we carried the coffin up the front steps of the chapel. Still, I can feel their presence more strongly than God the Father’s, that’s for sure. I shake my head, counting the seconds till the coffin is lowered through the floor and burned to cinders in the cremation oven below.

  When I close my eyes I see Doughboy standing on his own, waiting outside the prison gates on Wednesday. I shudder involuntarily and the pew creaks.