A summer with Kim Novak

by Håkan Nesser

  I wasn’t entirely unfamiliar with the ills of alcohol. My father’s cousin Holger was of that type and in fourth grade we’d had a teacher for half a semester who went by the name Finkel-Jesus. He drank steadily in the classroom throughout the day and was fired after he fell asleep in the staffroom and pissed himself.

  Rumour has it, in any case.

  Edmund shook his head.

  ‘We keep it in the family,’ he said. ‘It’s not officious.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ I said. ‘But I think the word is “official”.’

  ‘Who cares what it’s called,’ said Edmund. ‘Either way, she’s why we move so often. At least, I think so.’

  And then I felt sorry for Edmund Wester.

  And for his dad.

  And maybe I felt a bit sorry for Mrs. Wester, too.

  We went to see a Jerry Lewis film at the Saga that evening. The Westers treated us to that, too.

  ‘Holy shit,’ Edmund said while we walked home. ‘Everyone should be like Jerry Lewis. Then the world would be fab.’

  ‘If everyone was like Jerry Lewis,’ I said, ‘then the world would have gone to the dogs thousands of years ago.’

  ‘Clever,’ he said. ‘We do need Perry Mason types, too; you’re absolutely right.’

  ‘Paul Drake and Della,’ I said.

  ‘Paul Drake is too bloody good,’ said Edmund. ‘The way he walks into the courtroom in the middle of a cross-examination and winks at Perry. Christ, what a bloke!’

  ‘And he always wears a white blazer and black trousers,’ I said. ‘Or maybe it’s the other way around.’

  ‘Always,’ said Edmund.

  ‘Della is in love with him,’ I said.

  ‘Objection,’ said Edmund. ‘Della is in love with Perry.’

  ‘The hell she is,’ I said. ‘She’s in love with Paul Drake.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Edmund. ‘She’s in love with both of them. That’s not so odd.’

  ‘That’s why she can’t choose between them,’ I said. ‘Objection sustained.’

  We went around saying those lines for a while.

  ‘Objection overruled.’

  ‘Objection sustained.’

  ‘Cross-examine the witness.’

  ‘No further questions, your honour.’

  ‘Not guilty!’

  Edmund lived further up on Mossbanegatan and I lived down by the sports centre, so we went our separate ways at Karlesson’s shop. Karlesson’s was closed for the evening; its green windows were shut and the chewing-gum dispenser was chained to the bike rack and locked with a padlock.

  ‘Did you know you can use broken sausage forks in the gum dispenser?’ I asked Edmund.

  ‘What?’ said Edmund. ‘What do you mean?’

  I explained. You simply broke a centimetre off the end of the flat wooden spoons they give out with mash. Ice cream spoons worked too, actually, but they were harder to find. Then you pushed the wooden bit into the twenty-five-öre slot and gave it a turn. No problem. Clickety clickety click. Shake shake. Worked every time.

  ‘You’re kidding,’ said Edmund. ‘Are you up for it?’

  We dug around in the rubbish bin that was mounted to the wall and finally found a sticky ice-cream spoon. I measured and broke it off against my thumbnail. We waited for a gang of giggling girls to pass by, and then we did the deed.

  Four balls and one ring.

  We each took two balls and Edmund took the ring for his alcoholic mother.

  ‘Slick,’ said Edmund. ‘We should come here one night this summer and clean it out.’

  I nodded. I’d been harbouring that plan for a while.

  ‘You just have to find the spoons,’ I said. ‘But there’re always some on the ground near the hot-dog stands. Herman’s and Törner’s on the square.’

  ‘One of these nights, we’ll do it,’ said Edmund.

  ‘Sustained,’ I said. ‘One night this summer.’

  Then we said goodbye.

  I knew that my brother Henry was an unusual person, but I didn’t know just how unusual until he said something one evening; it must have also been during the final week of school.

  ‘Super-Berra is a cunt,’ he said.

  I had mentioned him. Or Ewa Kaludis, rather, and so I’d probably said something about her being with Berra.

  ‘Like I said, a right cunt.’

  It was just a statement; I was so surprised I didn’t know how to respond and then we started to talk about something else and then Henry left for a Maranatha meeting in Killer.

  After he’d gone, I wondered why he’d even say something like that, and then I remembered that he’d interviewed Bertil Albertsson once for Kurren, when he’d moved to town in early May.

  Super-Berra: a cunt?

  I wrote it on a piece of paper and stuck it in Colonel Darkin and the Golden Lamb. The statement was so remarkable that I wanted to preserve it somehow.

  Later in the summer I’d have reason to reflect on this moment. A big reason. But I didn’t know that then, and the scrap of paper must have disappeared somehow, because I never saw it again.

  5

  This year was our last real graduation ceremony of primary school.

  Some of the class would go on to eighth grade, as well; about half of us would transfer to KCJSS, the Kumla County Junior Secondary School, in the autumn. Those of us who hadn’t quit after sixth grade, that is. It was a milestone; among other things I would never again sit in the same classroom as Veikko and Sluggo and Gunborg and Balthazar Lindblom.

  It didn’t really matter, but I’d miss a few of them. Benny and Marie-Louise, for instance. Well, Benny I’d see in the culvert and around town, but I’d never again be able to sit and fantasize about Marie-Louise and her lovely dark locks and brown eyes. At least not at close range.

  But I’d get over it. I’d never really made any progress with Marie-Louise anyway. I was sure there would be new foxy chicks in the secondary school. And if you missed your chance with one, there’d be a thousand others to take her place. C’est la vie.

  But how would I live without Ewa Kaludis? This question suddenly—and unhappily—opened up like an abyss. It was as if her breast had stayed pressed against my shoulder since I told her that I was getting my period. Ewa visited our classroom on graduation day just as Brylle was opening the present that the girls had bought him: a large framed picture of a glum moose standing at the edge of a forest. Everyone knew that Brylle hunted moose for a week every autumn, and now he was standing there behind his desk staring at the picture, forcing a wide smile.

  ‘I just want to thank you all for the time we shared,’ said Ewa Kaludis. ‘It has been a pleasure to teach you. I hope you have a good summer break.’

  By light years, it was the most spiritual thing I’d heard in my fourteen-year-old life. Her hips swayed as she left the room and an ice-cold hand gripped my heart.

  Damn it, I thought. Is this how she’s going to leave me? Sitting at my desk, I was paralyzed by a sudden realization: This is what it’s like to lose something invaluable. This is how it must feel five seconds before you throw yourself in front of a train.

  As luck would have it, no train rolled through the classroom.

  ‘What’s with you?’ said Benny when we were basking in the sunshine on the playground. ‘You look bloody punch-drunk. Like Henry Cooper in the twelfth round.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘It’s just my stomach. When are you off?’

  ‘In two hours,’ said Benny. ‘I’ll get there tomorrow morning. It’s a long bloody way to Malmberget. I hope the thing with your mum gets better.’

  ‘I’m sure it will,’ I said.

  ‘I’m going down to Blidberg’s to buy a Bonanza shirt,’ Benny said. ‘And one of those red bloody ties—I’ve got to impress the cousins. See you in the autumn.’

  ‘Say hi to those Lapp-buggers and to the mosquitoes for me,’ I said.

  ‘You know I will,’ said Benny. ‘Write to me if it turns out to be a difficult summer.’


  My brother Henry had already installed himself at Gennesaret. As far as my father knew, Emmy Kaskel was with him, but of course I knew better. The idea was that Edmund and I would cycle the twenty-five kilometres there on Sunday and join them. Henry could’ve given us a lift, of course, but leaving our bikes behind was out of the question. There were plenty of interesting places to explore in the forests around Möckeln. Without our bikes, we’d be like cowboys without their trusty steeds; that’s what Edmund and I both thought.

  On the Saturday night my father and I visited the hospital again, me in my graduation outfit, Dad in a blazer, shirt and tie. He never wore a tie at work or around the house, but when he went to the hospital, he dressed up. Even though he rode the bus there more or less every day. I wondered why, but I never wanted to ask. I didn’t want to that day either.

  My mother lay in the same bed in the same room and seemed mostly unchanged. Her hair was newly washed and looked a bit better. Like a halo on her pillow.

  We’d brought a bag of fresh grapes and a bar of chocolate, but after an hour with her, as we were leaving, she foisted the chocolate on me.

  ‘Take it, Erik,’ she said. ‘You need to put some meat on your bones.’

  I didn’t want it, but I took it anyway.

  ‘I hope you have a good time at Gennesaret,’ said my mother.

  ‘You know I will,’ I said. ‘Take care.’

  ‘Send my regards to Henry and Emmy,’ she said.

  ‘I will,’ I said.

  On the bus home, my dad talked a lot about what we could and couldn’t do at Gennesaret. What we should try to bear in mind and what we absolutely mustn’t forget. The propane, among other things. He was trying to hide the note that he was holding in his hand. Presumably it was something my mother had written and had given to him during our visit while I was in the bathroom. I could tell by his tone that he didn’t really care about the advice he was giving. He trusted Henry and Emmy. He rambled on out of duty and empathy with Mum. I felt sorry for him.

  I think he trusted me, too, actually.

  ‘I might pop by some time,’ he said. ‘And you’ll come to town every now and then, won’t you?’

  I nodded, knowing that these were mostly just things you say to make yourself feel better.

  ‘But I’m working three more weeks. And I’ll want to visit her at the weekends.’

  It was strange that he said ‘her’ instead of ‘Ellen’ or ‘your mother’, as he usually did.

  ‘It is what it is,’ I said. ‘We’ll be fine.’

  I took out the chocolate bar—a Tarragona—the one that had been for my mother, but that she’d given back to me. I handed it to my dad.

  ‘Do you want some?’ I said.

  He shook his head.

  ‘You take it. I don’t fancy it.’

  I put it back in the inner pocket of my jacket. We sat in silence as we passed through Mosås, past the peat-moss bog where Henry had worked for a couple of summers before he went to sea; I tried to picture Ewa Kaludis’s face, but I couldn’t quite.

  ‘If you find the time, tar the boat,’ said my father when we turned toward town at the junction. ‘It couldn’t hurt.’

  ‘Sure,’ I said.

  ‘The jetty isn’t up to much, I suppose.’

  ‘We’ll fix that, too.’

  ‘If you have the time,’ said my father and tucked away the paper my mother had given him. ‘And then the rest is up to you.’

  ‘Only time will tell,’ I said.

  ‘Keep your chin up, and your feet on the ground,’ said my father.

  When we got off the bus at Mossbanegatan, I furtively tossed the Tarragona into the rubbish bin that hung on the bus stop post.

  I regretted it all the way home to Idrottsgatan, but I didn’t go back to get it.

  A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, I thought.

  It alternated between sunshine and clouds on the Sunday as Edmund and I left town. A gentle headwind. When we pedalled through Hallsberg it started to rain and so we went into Lampa’s bakery outside the station and each had a Pommac and a cinnamon bun. Edmund tossed a krona into the jukebox. While we sat and drank our Pommacs and stared out at the rain, we listened to ‘Cotton Fields’ three times in a row. There were no other tunes in the jukebox that were worth playing, Edmund said, and I took him at his word.

  And ‘Cotton Fields’ was a cracking song.

  I had warned Edmund about the Kleva hill, but that had only made him even more determined to perform a grand feat on this, the first day of our summer holiday.

  ‘I’ll do the whole thing in one go,’ he said. ‘I’ll put fifty öre on it.’

  ‘I’ll give you one krona,’ I said because I knew what was going to happen. ‘There’s no chance you’ll make it over Kleva without a racing bike.’

  Both Edmund and I had second-hand bicycles without any embellishments other than baskets and bells. No banana seats. No gears. No brakes on the handlebars. At least Edmund’s was a Crescent. Mine was a pale green Ferm, and it was nothing to write home about.

  ‘I’m going to give it a good go,’ declared Edmund as the hill came into view. ‘No further questions.’

  He made it almost halfway up. And then we had to sit on the roadside for fifteen minutes until Edmund’s legs would start to obey him again. A light froth had formed at the corners of his mouth. He lay on his back on the bank, legs shaking, his bike beside him.

  ‘Bloody bugger of a hill,’ he groaned. ‘When we lived in Sveg there was a real killer there, but this one was much worse, I tell you. I was a little bit sick over there, don’t sit in it.’

  He pointed and I lay down at a safe distance. I clasped my hands behind my neck and squinted at the sky as I watched the billowing clouds roll by. Edmund was still breathing heavily and seemed to have trouble speaking, so we lay like this for a few minutes and sort of just were.

  Were on the edge of the road halfway up the Kleva hill. One Sunday in June 1962.

  This would have been impossible to do with Benny; it would’ve been impossible to simply lie still. We would’ve surely been smoking and swearing, but with Edmund I didn’t have to say a word and it didn’t feel strange at all.

  Not this time—when he was about to faint from lactic acidosis—and not the next times either. Talking was optional; it was that simple. I couldn’t put my finger on why. Was it because his mother was an alcoholic or because he’d lived in Norrland for so long? It didn’t matter. The point was that it could be this way; Edmund’s silence was a good thing and I decided to tell him this when I knew him better.

  In a few days or so.

  Henry had picked up at least sixteen tins of Ulla-Bella’s meatballs in brown gravy for a song at Laxman’s—the supermarket in Åsbro, a village that lay a few kilometres away from Gennesaret—and on the first night we ate two of them along with potatoes in their jackets and lingonberries that Henry had brought with him from town. We had a choice of milk or apple juice.

  It tasted fine. Edmund and I did the washing up while Henry sat outside on one of the sun loungers with his coffee and cigarettes. Occasionally he jotted down a few lines in the writing pad on his lap while nodding to himself.

  Later in the evening he clattered on the Facit’s keys at the desk in his room. I could tell that the book was being born. The one about life. The real deal.

  And I could see that this was how it was going to be.

  Ulla-Bella’s meatballs with potatoes and lingonberries.

  Henry and the existential novel.

  Edmund and I doing the washing up.

  ‘We’re living the good life,’ said Edmund when we were almost finished. He sounded moved, and I agreed with him.

  ‘It could be worse,’ I said.

  But of course Henry had more ideas about how things should be. From the start, it was clear that he’d take the bedroom on the ground floor and that Edmund and I would sleep on the top floor. This wasn’t something we needed to discuss. Neither was the fact t
hat the three of us would have a free run of the kitchen and the main room.

  ‘Except,’ said Henry.

  ‘Except what?’ I said.

  ‘Except if I pull a bird one night. Then you’ll have to stay away from the ground floor.’

  ‘That’s a given,’ I said.

  ‘A gentleman’s agreement,’ said Edmund.

  ‘You cook every other day, and so do I. Just dinner, and no baby portions. Same goes for the washing up. Okay?’

  ‘Okay,’ we said.

  ‘We shop at Laxman’s. I’ll go in Killer, but if you like you can cycle or take the boat.’

  We nodded. No problem.

  ‘The bog,’ Henry then said.

  ‘The bog,’ we said and sighed.

  ‘The less we shit, the better,’ said Henry. ‘And no one gets to piss in it, it’s bloody bad manners. If we look after it, we can get away with emptying it every other week. You know how it works, Erik … dig a hole, take it out, empty it. I know, there are better jobs. Okay?’

  We nodded again.

  ‘That’s all,’ said Henry. ‘Let’s not make life unnecessarily complicated. It should be like a butterfly on a summer’s day.’

  That last bit sounded good. I mulled it over.

  Life should be like a butterfly on a summer’s day.

  One month was left until the Incident.

  ‘So, about your toes,’ I said when we went to bed that first night. ‘What’s the story?’

  Our beds were arranged in the only way possible. Each along our own wall, with the slanted ceiling so close you couldn’t sit up. About a metre apart, and a chest of drawers with our clothes inside and masses of comics and books on top. Edmund had sent five shoeboxes of magazines and one bag of books with Henry.

  ‘My toes?’ said Edmund.

  ‘I heard people talking,’ I said.

  ‘Oh?’ said Edmund and giggled. ‘You can barely see anything any more.’ He thrust his left foot out and wiggled his toes. ‘How many do you see?’

  ‘I count five,’ I said. ‘Pretty ugly.’

  ‘Correct,’ said Edmund. ‘But when I had six, they were even uglier, so they took one away.’

  ‘Who?’ I said.

  ‘The doctors, of course,’ said Edmund. ‘If you look at the index toe or whatever it’s called, you can see a small scar. That’s where the extra one was.’