The Darkest Day

by Håkan Nesser

  Karl-Erik cleared his throat and leapt in. ‘There’s a paradigmatic shift underway where our secondary cultural heritage is concerned, as perhaps you’ve noticed?’

  ‘What?’ said Kristoffer.

  ‘Young people today have no idea who Hasse and Tage were. They’ve never heard of Gösta Knutsson, Lennart Hyland or Monica Zetterlund. I make an exception there for the students I taught myself, but taken overall there are a vanishingly small number of those. Yes, do please help yourselves to the dessert wine, it’s Málaga; in a few months’ time we’ll have a cellar-load of the stuff.’

  ‘Don’t mind if I do,’ said Leif Grundt. ‘Really nice meal. But some things live for ever, don’t they? Like Astrid Lindgren’s Emil, and the Co-op and all that. Here’s to you, my dear wife. Just imagine you being forty tomorrow. To my eyes, you don’t look a day over thirty-nine and a half.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Ebba, not looking at her husband. ‘As you’ve doubtless noticed, Leif’s been to Co-operative charm school this autumn.’

  ‘Hah hah, hrrm, well,’ said Karl-Erik. He gnashed his teeth for a moment and then went back to his paradigmal shift. ‘Fucking Åmål is another amusing little example. Do you know what one of my students said when that film came out? “Well I know what fucking is, but what the hell is Åmål?”’

  He chuckled with satisfaction and a muted merriment hovered momentarily over the assembled company in the living room. As if a mildly intoxicated angel of joy had accidentally got into the house, paused for a second and then realized his mistake before turning back. It was only Kristina who picked up Henrik’s comment when he muttered under his breath: ‘That story was all over the papers.’

  I like Henrik, she thought. Yes, he’s one person I really like.

  ‘So you’ve really got a cellar to go with the house?’ asked Leif. ‘Thinking of the wine, I mean?’

  ‘A sort of food cellar, in fact,’ Karl-Erik elaborated with pleasure. ‘Twelve to fifteen cubic metres, so we’ll always have space for the liquid refreshments.’

  ‘So shall I put the coffee on?’ asked Rosemarie.

  ‘Tea for me, Mummy,’ said Ebba. ‘I’ll come and help you.’

  Jakob Willnius came down the stairs.

  ‘Finally!’ exclaimed Kristina. ‘What on earth have you been up to?’

  ‘I’ve been getting our child to sleep, darling,’ said Jakob Willnius unassumingly, and finished his glass of Málaga, which he’d parked on the oak sideboard next to a fragment of the Berlin wall set in glass. He sat himself down on the sofa, between Kristina and Henrik.

  ‘It usually takes three minutes.’

  ‘Well this time it took forty-five. What are you chatting about? Have I missed anything important?’

  ‘Shouldn’t think so,’ said Kristina.

  ‘Yes, can’t imagine what,’ said Robert. ‘How soon can we go to bed without offending anybody?’

  The room went quiet. Unusually quiet, considering there were no fewer than nine notionally adult individuals in it.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Robert. ‘Think I had a bit too much wine. I apologize, Mum.’

  ‘Haven’t a clue what you’re talking about,’ Rosemarie said gaily. ‘Nothing to say sorry for, is there? Right, time for tea and coffee.’

  She went out to the kitchen, followed by her eldest and most well-behaved daughter.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Robert,’ ventured Kristina in a stage whisper. ‘What was the point of that?’

  Robert Hermansson shrugged, looking apologetic, and drained his glass of beer. Then for a moment he seemed on the verge of saying something, explaining a few things, but the opportunity slipped through his hands and it was another hour before he finally got to the point.

  ‘I assume you’re all waiting for some kind of explanation.’ He put down the glass from which he had drained the next-to-last drops of the noble Laphroaig that was meant to last six months. But it had, at any rate, been distributed in quite a fraternal way between the various gentlemen. Not counting Henrik and Kristoffer. Kristina was drinking a glass of red wine. Ebba was still on the green tea. Rosemarie was washing up, Kelvin was asleep. It was half past eleven. It’s time now, thought Kristina. All the preliminary skirmishing is out of the way.

  ‘Or some kind of apology,’ Robert added.

  A long second of silence followed.

  ‘No, really, we’re not waiting for anything, Robert,’ said Kristina. ‘Yes, of course you can have a bit of my wine, Henrik.’

  ‘No, we truly aren’t, Robert,’ Ebba insisted, but a little too late to sound convincing. ‘Let bygones be bygones, for God’s sake. The only thing we can learn from this is the art and importance of forgetting. And hope that others have mastered the art, too. Isn’t that right?’

  She looked round for support from the others, but all she got was a shrug from Jakob Willnius. She changed tack. ‘Dad, are you sure there aren’t going to be any birthday well-wishers dropping round tomorrow? Henrik, that’s enough now.’

  ‘Well I wouldn’t exactly say sure,’ muttered Karl-Erik. ‘Rosemarie’s laid in three extra gateaux and five kilos of coffee just in case. But anybody who does come will turn up in the morning. All you have to do is keep out of the way.’

  ‘How can you know they’ll come in the morning?’ wondered Kristina.

  ‘Because that was how I put it in the notice in the paper,’ Karl-Erik explained with a yawn. ‘No congratulations in person. Not at home after one o’clock.’

  ‘Genius,’ said Jakob, raising his glass with the very last drops of the precious whisky. ‘If you’ve developed a taste for this, I recommend Gibraltar, anyway. Since you’ll be in the neighbourhood. There’s no cheaper booze in all Europe.’

  ‘Is that so?’ said Karl-Erik in a neutral tone. ‘Well, we’ve got the twelve to fifteen cubic metres, as I say.’

  ‘So nobody’s sitting there waiting for an explanation, then?’ resumed Robert, looking round the room. ‘I’m sensing, like, some level of pressure.’

  Kristina, one hand on Henrik’s knee for support, got to her feet. ‘Robert, come outside with me for a minute, will you?’

  ‘Happy to,’ said Robert. ‘I need a fag.’

  They went out and another sort of angel silently crossed the room. Karl-Erik yawned again and Leif Grundt scratched the back of his neck. ‘I think the time has come,’ declared Jakob Willnius. ‘I’ll go up and get Kelvin ready. Tomorrow’s another day, after all.’

  ‘What sort of standard is the hotel these days, by the way?’ Ebba suddenly wanted to know. ‘I remember what it used to be like.’

  ‘You’ve never stayed at Kymlinge Hotel, have you?’ asked Rosemarie, who had just come back into the room. ‘Would anybody like a sandwich or some fruit?’

  ‘No to both, thank you, Mummy,’ said Ebba. ‘But you know the hotel didn’t have the best of reputations in my time.’

  ‘It looked respectable enough when we checked in,’ Jakob Willnius assured her. ‘No prostitutes or cockroaches, as far as I could see. Though you never know quite how things will develop in the wee small hours.’

  ‘Fruit?’ repeated Rosemarie, as if sensing control was slipping away from her. ‘A sandwich? Anyone?’

  ‘Can’t you hear they’re all stuffed, my dove?’ said her husband. ‘Anyway, if you don’t disapprove, it’s time for the lost generation to retire to bed now. But sit up as long as you like.’

  ‘Where have Robert and Kristina got to?’ asked Rosemarie.

  ‘They’re outside, talking morality and smoking,’ said Leif Grundt. ‘Listen Ebbabebba, shouldn’t we hit the hay as well? I’ve got to be up early tomorrow to sing for a fair lady I know.’

  ‘Does Kristina smoke?’ said Rosemarie. ‘I’d never have—’

  ‘No, she’s doing the morality bit,’ said Leif Grundt. ‘Goodnight then, mortals.’

  ‘No, Jakob. I really want to stay for a while. I want longer to talk to my family, surely there’s nothing so odd about that?’

  She
had hoped he might at least show some sign of opposition to this, but he didn’t. She realized he was relishing the chance of a tit-for-tat where Wednesday’s breakfast meeting with the American magnate was concerned, and that she was in fact playing into his hands. It annoyed her. It would be better if he had to forge his own weapons, she thought.

  ‘OK,’ was all he said. ‘I’ll take a taxi with Kelvin. Come when you’re ready.’

  ‘An hour, maybe,’ she said. ‘I’ll walk, it only takes ten minutes.’

  ‘Don’t underestimate those small-town dangers,’ he said.

  I never underestimate anything, thought Kristina. That’s the whole problem.

  By quarter past twelve the parental hosts, the lost generation, were settled in bed. Or at any rate, they were barricaded behind a closed bedroom door. Ebba Hermansson Grundt and Co-op manager Leif Grundt had also retired for the night. To the former’s girlhood bedroom, behind another closed door.

  Jakob and Kelvin Willnius had departed in a taxi for the Kymlinge Hotel in Drottninggatan.

  On the ground floor in the Hermanssons’ detached house at 4 Allvädersgatan, that left siblings Robert and Kristina, and brothers Henrik and Kristoffer. Kristina checked the time.

  ‘Another half hour,’ she announced. ‘Otherwise I’ll get a good bollocking from my big sister.’

  ‘Nah,’ said Henrik.

  ‘Yes she will,’ said Kristoffer, ‘but it’s the sort of thing you have to learn to take.’

  ‘The wine rack in the kitchen looked a bit overloaded,’ said Robert. ‘I suggest we open another bottle.’

  He left the room without waiting for their answer, returning ten seconds later with a Valpolicella.

  ‘Tell me about Uppsala,’ asked Kristina, leaning a little closer to Henrik.

  It seemed an eminently harmless prompt, but to her surprise she saw the boy bite his lower lip, and for a moment, tears seemed to be welling in his eyes. Presumably neither his brother nor Robert noticed this state of affairs, but for her part, she was quite sure.

  Her nephew was borne down by sorrow.

  8

  Kristoffer found his brother’s mobile where he had hidden it. Under the pillow on his bed. Hah!

  Why the hell am I thinking ‘Hah!’, he then wondered.

  He felt a slight throb in his temples. It was just gone half past twelve; he had downed two glasses of wine, thought the others hadn’t noticed, but now realized he was probably a bit drunk. That was no doubt why he was thinking something as nerdy as ‘Hah!’ on finding Henrik’s phone.

  The others were still down there. Kristina, Henrik and Robert. Kristina was great. She was his godmother; if his mother somehow died – lost her life, as you might say – it would be Kristina who stepped up in her place. Wow, he thought (more nerdspeak), imagine having Kristina as your mum!

  Then a glowing red thought flamed up his brain. You couldn’t go around thinking your parents ought to die. If God existed, that would be a black mark engraved permanently and forever against you in His records.

  But Kristoffer didn’t believe God was there. And, after all, they were sisters, his mother and Kristina; they had loads of genes and amino acids and stuff that were exactly the same, so there was no harm in just wishing they had more in common on the outside, too.

  Robert had the same genes as well, of course. He looked a little bit like Kristina, too, come to think of it, but there was no denying he was a saddo. A real bloody loser. Wanking on TV!

  Not that they’d talked about it much in the course of the evening. It was kind of a no go. A big juicy scandal that they all had to tiptoe round. Kristoffer hadn’t seen the programme itself, of course; they didn’t watch things like that in the Grundt household in Stockrosvägen in Sundsvall. But he had read about it in one of the papers, they’d talked about it at school – and thank goodness, yes, thank goodness, that from the word go he had obeyed his mother’s orders and kept quiet about his uncle being a contestant on Fucking Island. Sometimes she was right in spite of everything, you had to give her credit for that.

  The mobile was on. No password was required. Brilliant, thought Kristoffer. I’ve got a bit of Dutch courage now, and who would have imagined things turning out so conveniently in this skunk burrow? I’ll fire off something naughty and irresistible to Linda. Yes, dammit, I will!

  He formulated it in his head first. It took scarcely a moment, coming as easily and elegantly as running water.

  Hi Linda. Feeling horny for you. Shall we give each other Christmas presents? Birger’s burger stand, 9 on Thurs evening.

  It sounded good. Irresistibly good. And then:

  Don’t reply for God’s sake, this is my brother’s phone. Just come. Kristoffer.

  He smiled to himself. Was it going too far to say he felt horny? Heck no, that was the kind of thing chicks like Linda fell for. You had to stop being timid. He’d been far too timid all his life, that was his problem. If he carried on like that, he’d never find out how . . . how it felt to touch a woman there.

  He pressed a key and the display lit up. New message, it said.

  New message to Henrik, in other words. Hmm, thought Kristoffer. Should he? Why not? Read now? All he had to do was press YES. Henrik would never find out. And he’d never find out Kristoffer had texted Linda, because he’d delete it straight away. It would only take a couple of seconds to read Henrik’s message. Maybe it was from that Jenny? Maybe it was something risqué? He wondered if Henrik had screwed her. Of course he had; that was probably the only thing those students in halls of residence got up to in Uppsala. Went to student clubs and parties and screwed around. Did a couple of hours’ study on a Sunday afternoon so they could keep up. Kristoffer hoped he’d be there before long, too. If only you could skip four or five years, then . . . no, not the skipping-over idea again. Enough of all that, he resolved; it was Linda Granberg who mattered. Here and now. Or Birger’s burger stand on Thursday, at any rate. He looked at the display. It said 00.46. Read now? He pressed YES.

  Henrik, my prince. Missing you so badly. My arms around your body. Penetrating you in my dreams. J

  He read the short message three times. What in hell’s name, he thought. Penetrating you? What did that mean? Was it . . . was it just that she wanted to penetrate his dreams? No, couldn’t be, it didn’t say that. J must stand for Jenny. But what the heck did she mean when she said . . . ? Was this some utterly crucial variety of intercourse that had passed him by? Bloody hell, a woman couldn’t penetrate a man, could she? Kristoffer hadn’t seen many porn films in his fourteen years, but he wasn’t exactly a virgin on that score. He was pretty well acquainted with what the female sexual organ looked like, in all its aspects and phases, but whatever else you could use it for, he didn’t think you could penetrate anything with it. Just the reverse.

  And what part of Henrik could anybody pen—?

  Christ, he thought. It looks as though . . . I mean, this seems like . . .

  For a second his mind went as blank as a new layer of water on an ice hockey rink. Then he realized what he had to do to be sure. Quick as a flash, almost before he had asked himself the question. He looked at the sender’s number, memorized it and clicked his way to the address book. Started going through it from A. Henrik clearly did the same as him: used first names, didn’t bother with surnames. He jumped straight to J and there, there he found it. He stared at the illuminated little display and couldn’t believe his eyes.

  Jens, it said.

  Jens. The number tallied.

  Well I’ll be . . . thought Kristoffer Grundt.

  There was no Jenny.

  There was only a Jens. Henrik wasn’t with some pretty female medical student from Karlskoga. He was with a guy. One whose name was Jens and who couldn’t wait to stick his cock up Henrik’s arse!

  A host of contradictory impulses and thoughts started bombarding Kristoffer’s mildly intoxicated brain, but once the storm had passed, he could scarcely contain his laughter.

  His big brother w
as gay.

  Super-Henrik did it with boys.

  Or at the very least with one called Jens.

  What . . . what a huge bloody advantage that gave him! That was exactly how it felt. It was the first word that popped into his head. Advantage! It wasn’t an attractive thought, he knew that, but finally – for the first time ever – it was as if . . . as if he had some kind of a hold over that superman who was his brother. Thank you, o thank you, o great creator of the mobile phone, thought Kristoffer Grundt. This changes things, I’d say. Christ Almighty!

  He wrote his text message to Linda, clicked it on its way and deleted it. Returned the phone to neutral and shoved it back under Henrik’s pillow.

  Jens! He switched off the Smögen lamp on his side of the chest of drawers but left Henrik’s on. He turned to face the wall, contemplated one of the slightly paler green vertical stripes from close quarters and thought that this was going to age his mother and father ten years.

  And for once, just for once, it wasn’t him who was the problem.

  Rosemarie Wunderlich Hermansson lay on her side with her knees drawn up and watched the red minutes of the clock radio. 01.12. Karl-Erik was flat on his back behind her, taking the same calm, faintly hissing breaths she had listened to for forty years. If I put a pillow over his mouth, she thought, would they stop? Was it that simple?

  Presumably not. You can murder children and frail maidens that way, but not real men. He would wake up and start to defend himself. Besides, it was his birthday, and he would never forgive her if she tried to kill him on his sixty-fifth birthday.

  She pushed the thought away. 01.13. Better to die herself, then. Though he would doubtless never forgive her for that, either. If she took her own life on the big day. Things were as they were. She had to get through the next twenty-four hours. Ebba’s and Karl-Erik’s big day. It should have been like a crest in the road, yet it felt more like a . . . what was it? . . . a sinkhole? Yes, it really did. But where was all this gloom coming from? Why was she prey to these morbid fantasies suddenly? Day after day, night after night. Was it just Robert’s confounded TV programme or was Robert a catalyst for something else? She used not to think like this.