I grip the hall mirror and tear it down over him. The sound of shattering glass rebounds between the walls of the narrow hall. Zetterberg gives off a shrill little scream but doesn’t move. He stays under the mirror, sobbing.
For a moment I think about fetching one of the sticks and giving him a proper working over, but I give it a miss – it’s important to know when they’ve had enough. A dead bloke doesn’t pay his debts, a badly injured one ends up in hospital. It’s a fine line. In the early days I crossed it a few times, but it’s been years since that happened. These days I know what I’m doing.
The mirror glass crunches under my shoes as I go back to the door. I stop for a moment and run my hand over the overcoats, pausing at an elegant camel hair model. The lock makes a subdued, dry click and then I’m back on the dimly lit landing.
The elevator is coming up, creaking as it goes, and I quickly go down the stairs. The white marble floor looks grey, almost like slate, in the gloom. I push the main door open and look at the black clouds. It’s stopped raining. I dig in my pockets for a cigar. A young man with a pushcart hurries past, the wheels thundering against the paving stones.
I keep my eyes on the dark skies while I’m rooting around for matches. Tomorrow there’ll be a return visit. With such a salubrious address and so many overcoats, there’s nothing to suggest that Zetterberg would be prepared to leave town because of two thousand one hundred kronor. I chuckle, get out my aniline pen, spit on it and write down the figures in my notebook, with my fifteen per cent. Four hundred and fifty kronor for less than an hour’s work. Not bad and very timely. Better paid than any other job this side of Midsummer.
I’m mulling over whether to celebrate a good day’s work at one of the unlicensed dives you can find in more or less every other courtyard in Klara, when I notice that Sonja still hasn’t found herself a punter.
She moves slowly towards me with a timid smile. As she draws closer I notice that she’s a touch bowlegged. I stop her with a gesture, to indicate that I’m heading off in the opposite direction. For some reason she gives me an anxious glance, but she nods, turns round, and then walks back up Kungsgatan.
I whistle Ernst Rolf’s ‘I’m Getting Better Day by Day’ and turn south to catch the number 3 tram back to Odenplan. We also have plenty of drinking dens with smuggled-in vodka back home in Sibirien. A tram tinkles by on Vasagatan and I look up.
I catch sight of the car right away.
The Mercedes is parked in the pool of light cast by the Carlton sign. The slim youth is smoothing out the creases in his plus fours and leaning against the coachwork. On his head is a big, drooping beret. He’s also wearing a sports jacket, a knitted jumper and white socks. Without any doubt at all the kid has both money and style. He reminds me of someone I used to know. I get the idea he’s been waiting for me. I slow down.
‘Cigarette?’ The boy speaks with a lisp. As he offers me a pack of Stamboul, I notice a gold ring on his little finger. I stop and take the pack out of his hand. With a hint of a smile, the boy sucks his bottom lip between his teeth. I fish out a cigarette, put it in my mouth and hand back the pack.
He offers me a light from a fully automatic gold lighter. I take his hands, hold them in mine and try to protect the flame from the gusting wind. Distractedly I caress the back of his soft, hairless hand. This boy has never done a day’s work in his life. The youth trembles slightly at my touch. The lighter makes a repeated scraping sound.
Finally, with our joint efforts, we manage to get the cigarette going. Before he withdraws his hand, he caresses my cheek from top to bottom. Despite my shaving this morning, his touch makes a swishing sound against my face, like someone sweeping a porch. I know I’ll remember how it feels for a long time.
Someone laughs from the hotel doors behind us. I hear the sound of high heels clattering against the street. The youth doesn’t seem to pay it any mind. For some it’s so easy.
‘Isn’t that car a few sizes too big for you?’ I take two drags, one after the other, and quickly look around.
‘Ah, you’re just jealous.’ He brushes the raindrops from the hood and flicks the water off his hand. He smiles broadly, showing me a wide gap between his front teeth.
‘Can I have a look?’
I lean forwards to examine the fascia panel, made of some light-coloured wood, with chrome gauges.
‘You can even take it for a spin if you like.’
I straighten up and look at the boy. For a few seconds, his chestnut eyes stare right into mine. He’s exactly my taste in terms of age and build. Will I have to pay him something? He clearly has plenty of money, but what else does he want from me?
‘Okay.’
The car responds at once when I give it some juice, and we rumble off at a terrific speed. We travel in silence. For a moment I think he may have that sort of brooding nature you sometimes find among boys of his age with too little to do, but I change my mind when I look at him. His eyes are expressionless. His mouth is half open. I concentrate on the driving. Maybe the kid does this every night. When you have dough everything is obvious and easy. Maybe I just happened to cross his path this evening.
A few moments later we’re turning into my street. The familiar shop signs of Roslagsgatan swish by: Lind’s widow’s cigar shack, Nyström’s barber shop, Ström’s wholesalers, and Bruntell’s general store. A couple of boys aged about ten yell as loud as they can and run after the car for twenty metres or so.
I flinch a little when the youth puts his hand on my gloved knuckles on the gear stick. As if to shake it off, I change down and narrowly manage to overtake one of the grey-painted Epidemic Hospital ambulances. The youth inhales audibly and makes a slight whimpering sound. I’m reminded of why I am sitting here in the car.
Just you wait, my little boy, I think. Kvist will teach you a thing or two.
We draw closer to the brick monstrosity at the top of Roslagsgatan, where the number 6 tram turns round. Rickardsson, one of Ploman’s gangsters running the booze smuggling in Vasastan, gawks as we drive by. In my rear-view mirror I see him following us with his eyes.
‘You can stay there till the birds start nesting in your gob.’
‘What did you say?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Tell me!’
‘It was nothing.’
The boy shakes a cigarette out of the blue pack. The sudden flame of the lighter illuminates his face. He puts one arm across his stomach and rests the other against it, holding the cigarette in front of his face without actually smoking it. Suddenly I feel uneasy. I don’t know why.
We pass the rocky knoll with the Epidemic Hospital at the top. Lazily, the boy nods for me to keep going towards Bellevueparken. I slow down and turn into the long alley of bare lime trees that lead into the park. The gravel makes the car’s tyres change tone. We pass a pregnant woman wrapped in a shawl, waddling as she goes up the hill, both hands under her belly. We are close to the mansion of Paschen, the liquor smuggler, which was recently taken over by the workhouse committee. The rolling, leafy terrain of the park with its many large bushes offers several good hiding places, but this shouldn’t be anything to worry about, as no one moves around here after sunset. The workhouse inmates will most likely be staying indoors on a cold December night like this one.
The boy giggles. I stare at him again. I can’t make head nor tail of the kid. I continue towards the highest point of the park. To the south one can make out the silhouettes of the houses along the ridge of Brunkebergsåsen, as well as the dome of Vasa Church. To the north, through the bare trees, are the black waters of Brunnsviken, empty of sails. I turn off the road and park on a patch of grass.
As soon as I turn off the engine the boy is all over me. He gives me a couple of deep, intense kisses. He tastes of tobacco. Panting and out of step with one another, our wandering hands explore each other’s crotches. The boy is a real man, it seems.
We extract ourselves from the embrace and get out of the car. I slip, drop onto one k
nee in the drenched ground, and get up again. Hurriedly we squelch through the grass and meet in a clinch in front of the bonnet. The car’s headlamps are still on; he has the beam against his back.
I kneel, open-mouthed, as if to receive the Eucharist from August Gabrielsson, my old confirmation priest. My knees sink into the wet grass and the moisture quickly finds its way up my thighs. I get one of his trouser buttons open. He wears short underpants with an elasticated waist. I push my hat back onto my neck and, in a single movement, wrench his underpants and trousers to his ankles with trembling hands. The headlights of the car send a cascade of light between his legs.
He’s a well-hung boy. We both make panting sounds as my lips envelop him. This is not the average, crappy sort of conscript I usually get to meet. I smack my lips. With my other hand I unbutton my trousers. The icy December night caresses me. I stick out my tongue and swallow him deep into my throat a few times. My eyes fill with tears, the boy pants and groans. He likes that.
I keep working methodically. My jaw muscles are starting to get numb, I’m out of practice, but then I feel a familiar vibration against the top of my mouth. I pick up the tempo. Hard and wet and fast, that’s how this should be done.
Our loud whimpering blends with the sound of two rats fighting in the nearby bushes, and the youth fills my mouth to overflowing. I resist my first impulse to swallow, spitting into my hand instead and rubbing it into my skin. I stand up, grab him by the scruff of his neck and get him to bend forwards over the bonnet.
‘Now it’s Kvisten’s turn.’
Slowly but confidently I work my way into the boy. It’s warm and cosy, like stepping into the boiler room after a stint of freezing watch duty on deck. He yowls with pain, sobs and slithers, but it’s nothing to be concerned about. Soon enough it gets easier, and his protestations turns to lusty moans. I pick up speed. Young men of this type usually manage to come twice on the trot.
‘That’s right, my boy.’
I hammer him against the black bodywork. He keeps out of the way of the headlights. The radiator badge breaks off with a hollow snap. Our shadows hurtle back and forth across the grass. From Albano, a locomotive makes a shrill whistle. Deep inside I feel a lurking coughing fit.
A drop of his come hangs persistently from the corner of my mouth. I lick it up and press both my hands into the small of his back to make him arch properly, so I can get my whole length into him. The moon peers out from behind the clouds, and the light collides with the beam of the headlights. The boy’s arse is a milky white colour, and for a moment I have the idea that I’m assaulting a Greek statue.
Back home in the wardrobe I have a Husqvarna pistol, which I kept after my conscription years. The few times I’ve fired it, it’s had quite a kick. When I come at last, the recoil of my ejaculation reverberates in the same way. The youth heaves against me another three or four or five times before also coming himself. Out of breath, I lie with my nose against his neck for a few seconds, then glide out of him without meaning to. I stand up and back away a little.
‘Oh damn,’ I mumble, breathing hard.
The days when I could run ten kilometres in forty-five minutes are definitely over. The boy pulls up his trousers and turns towards me. I stand there coughing, my hands on my knees and my trousers down to my ankles. The youth puts his hand on my shoulder and titters a little. I look up. What a stupid little dandy. Some people get everything served on a silver platter and sail through life without a care in the world, while others have to slave for every inch of happiness.
The vein in my forehead starts pounding. My mouth waters. Maybe it’s because of his damned lisping. He must be retarded. By his age, he should have learned to talk properly. But that damned arrogant grin of his is the worst of all.
Again he sucks his bottom lip in between his teeth in that seductive way, while grinning idiotically. I stare for a moment at his fur-lined lace-up boots. They’re polished, proper, and expensive. I inhale deeply and blow it out of my nose at the same time as I plant a quick left-handed upper-cut on the tip of his chin. It puts his lights out. At least it wipes that grin off his face.
My footwork is not the best because of the trousers, which means that some of the power of the punch is lost, but he’s still out cold by the time he hits the ground. I lean forwards, coughing, with my hands on my knees again. The boy lies on his back with his arms stretched out at right angles from his body. The headlights form a half-circle of light around him. The scene feels very familiar. The teeth of his lower jaw stick out of the wound below his lip.
‘That won’t exactly help your damned lisp.’
My back clicks as I straighten up. I take off my hat and mop the sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand, before pulling up my trousers. The boy makes a pitiful gargling sound from somewhere at the back of his throat. I get out a cigar from my pocket to get rid of the aftertaste in my mouth and rummage for matchsticks, but can’t find any.
I walk over to the kid and take his gold lighter from his trouser pocket, then get the cigar going and watch him struggling with his breathing for a while. I hold up the lighter, angling it so I can read the name engraved diagonally across it. Leonard. I put it in my pocket and then check my watch. It’s half past eight.
I’ve knocked lots of people unconscious, I’ve harmed people so they don’t function properly afterwards, and I’ve put them in month-long comas, but I’ve never beaten anyone to death. Not as far as I know, anyway.
Before I set off on the short walk home I roll the boy onto his side, so the blood can run out of him.
Lundin feeds the meter on the wall with a couple of gas tokens before he lights the ring and then puts the water on for coffee. Almost every day for the past ten years we’ve had breakfast in his kitchen behind the undertaker’s reception. The room is almost identical to my own, directly above us.
I sit at the table while Lundin waltzes about at the hob. Through the window I see an accordion player on Ingemarsgatan, churning out one heartrending tuppenny opera after another. The undertaker and I sing ‘Lioness Bride’ so heartily that the window panes are practically rattling. We have both taken swigs from the bottle to prepare the way for the tot in the coffee afterwards.
The sun reflects off the accordion, making a sun cat whizz across the kitchen’s yellow floral wallpaper, finding the shining surfaces of the copper saucepans.
‘A roaring sound as our Lord sighed, then the lion tore the stranger’s bride.’
The reflections shoot off Lundin’s gold fillings as he opens his mouth wide at the end of the verse, then slink round a washing-up basin of marinated herring, hound across a selection of white-enamelled tins, and momentarily lose themselves above a shelf that holds a soap dish and other paraphernalia. Finally, the accordion player leans back with the instrument splayed across his belly, sending the reflections up to the ceiling, by the drying slats for laundry.
‘Bread we’re having, as well. Sausage and cheese. And a saffron bun each, in honour of St Lucia. Or what do you say, brother?’
The drying slats are bare. Like me, Lundin takes his laundry to Sailor-Beda opposite. I don’t know how many black suits he has. When not wearing his cylindrical top hat, he brushes his grey tendrils over his bald pate. His sunken cheeks are always well shaven. His bushy moustache usually seems slightly skew-whiff, because he wipes it with the back of his hand from left to right. People around here say he brings bad luck, because he smells like the dead. I don’t know. Not like when they’re decomposing, anyway: Lundin gives off a sweetish, but not foetid, smell, like fallen fruit. He’s going on seventy years old, with a sparrow chest, and a terrible, hacking cough that’s even worse than mine. Maybe he’s on his way to the other side. On several occasions I’ve thought his time might be up. He suffers from dizzy spells, and sometimes he collapses in a disfiguring fit. For his own part, he claims to be up with the cockerel every day, doing his morning gymnastics from the radio program with Colonel Owl.
‘And then another s
coop for the top of your head, and another just because.’
He throws a couple more heaped spoons of coffee into the saucepan from a bag of ready ground. We both like it strong, with sugar cubes and a tot of something alcoholic. The accordion player changes to ‘The King of the Thieves’. I tip the kitchen chair, sitting there in my trousers, braces and a singlet. I always go downstairs in my socks. Lundin catches his breath. The coffee boils and he takes it off the ring to let it brew for a while.
He puts bread on the table, also the saffron buns from the bakery on Ingemarsgatan. He’s in an unusually good mood, most likely because we’ve agreed that the rent will be paid today. I’d asked for a deferment until St Lucy’s Day. The Zetterberg job came along in the nick of time. I open the window and toss a fifty-öre coin to the accordion player, who catches it expertly between two notes.
The cobwebs in the window disperse the weary daylight across the table. At one end of the windowsill lies a dry wasp. Lundin puts the food on the table and sits down opposite. The accordion player finishes his song, and Lundin pours coffee and a tot of schnapps into our cups, then slides over the sweet wheat bread he has baked himself.
‘The bread of knowledge he eats, the water of wisdom he drinks.’
Lundin inserts a sugar cube between his teeth and takes his coffee cup. I follow suit, and we enjoy a few bracing gulps. There’s a soreness in my throat from my adventure last night in Bellevueparken. I pull out a drawer at the short end of the table and clatter with the cutlery. Lundin gets out his accounts book and slaps it on the table. He finds the page marked ‘K’ and slowly moves his snuff-brown finger down the lines.
‘Let’s see now…’
‘It should be the same as last month.’
‘It’s the rent with two weeks of respite, plus…’ He picks up a pencil and a little penknife to sharpen it.
‘It should be about the same as last month.’ I get my wallet out from the back pocket of my trousers and put it on the table. Lundin scrawls his squiggles in the book.
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