by Håkan Nesser
I nodded and looked at the pattern of the bark. It hadn’t changed.
‘You don’t like talking about it?’
I didn’t answer. Ewa studied me with her good eye. Then she leaned forward in the chair and patted the grass in front of her.
‘Sit here for a moment, please.’
I hesitated at first, but then I did as she said. I floundered out of the chair and sat down on the ground between her knees. Leaned back carefully against the chair’s slats. Her thighs against my sides.
‘Close your eyes,’ she said.
I closed my eyes. She took hold of my shoulders and gave me a gentle, slow massage.
Slow and gentle. Strong and warm. I felt dizzy inside. For all the new discoveries and experiences this summer, a hundred years must have passed since graduation at Stava School.
‘Your shoulders are tense. Try to relax.’
I relaxed and became like putty in her hands. I got an erection of course, but I made sure that it couldn’t really be seen through my baggy swimming trunks. Then I gave into the pleasure of sitting between Ewa’s legs, enjoying her hands. I realized that I’d started to cry again, but that this time there weren’t any tears. Just a lovely, gentle buzz behind my eyes, and for a clear, flashing second I knew what it was like to be Henry.
My brother Henry.
Eventually Edmund woke, and eventually Henry returned from his trip to the pharmacy, but that didn’t matter. When Ewa let go of my shoulders and mussed my hair it felt as if we’d entered into a sworn brotherhood. Or had made some sort of secret pact. We hadn’t spoken much—not at all, really. We were just sitting in the grass together, but still it was something else, as Edmund might have said.
Something bloody else. I thought about it once or twice a day in the time leading up to the Incident, and every time I did, a strong, warm feeling filled me. Warm and strong just like her hands on my tense shoulders.
The feeling of slipping into a nice warm bath after a cold winter’s day, I know that’s what I thought then.
But it sort of radiated from within.
13
Henry left with Ewa that night. I think he rode the Puch while Ewa drove Killer; it must be harder to drive a moped than to drive a car when you only have one working eye. In any case, the parking area was empty when Edmund and I returned from a long bike ride around ten.
Then another couple of days passed. The weather volleyed between sun and rain. But it was generally quite warm. We tried to go fishing, but Möckeln had a reputation for being dead when it came to fish, and neither Edmund nor I were particularly amused by sitting around and staring at a float.
Even less amused, in fact, by the thought of having to reel in a poor dace or perch and stick a knife in it. Or whack it until it died. Or whatever you did to fish.
As luck would have it we never needed to come up with a solution to the problem because we didn’t get one to bite.
But Edmund did get strep throat. A mild case—according to his own diagnosis; he’d had strep throat a few times before—but he still was lethargic and feverish and preferred to sleep. Or read.
‘Read, sleep, drink,’ he said. ‘From these threads, my wellness is woven.’
‘An idiom from the heart of Lapland?’ I asked.
‘Not exactly,’ said Edmund. ‘My dad says that.’
‘Your real one?’
‘No, for Christ’s sake,’ said Edmund. ‘Not him. Only crap comes from him.’
Those days it was harder than usual to talk to Henry. When he wasn’t running errands in Killer, he mostly went around muttering and smoking. His writing didn’t seem to be moving forward either; he often just sat staring at the Facit, as if he were trying convince it to write the existential novel itself. Sometimes I heard him curse and tear a sheet of paper out of the roller. He was constantly grumbling and irate.
Because both my brother and Edmund were busy—Edmund with his strep throat, Henry with other things—I also kept to myself. I drew more than ten pages of Colonel Darkin and the Mysterious Heiress and was chuffed with the result. Since I had decided to censor all the half-naked female bodies, it was much easier to get on with the story. I guess that’s how it is, I thought, glumly. As in literature, so in life.
During those days, the meals were monotonous, too. Edmund had lost his appetite and when Henry ate, he didn’t care what he put in his mouth. You could just as well have set a plate of moss on the table for him. Because of this and the situation in general, we mostly ate potatoes with butter. We placed two jars of herring on the table at every meal, but none of us bothered to twist off the lid of either of them and take a whiff.
It was what it was, and we had plenty of potatoes in stock.
I’d just finished And Then There Were None and had turned to the wall to sleep, when I heard them walking across the lawn.
Henry and Ewa. I looked at my self-illuminating watch. Twelve thirty. Edmund was breathing heavily with his mouth open over in his bed. It was a blustery day and every now and then a tree branch swished against the window. I couldn’t help but think how safe and secure it felt lying in a warm bed. How free from danger.
Well, only for as long as you were lying in bed. The reality beyond the bed was another matter. Something else. The simple act of putting your feet on the cold floor and then going out into the world meant that you were exposing yourself to a plethora of risks and dangers. There were Henrys and Ewas and Edmunds. But also black eyes and swollen lips and fists that were as hard and merciless as stone. Decisions that had to be made and matters that had to be handled whether you wanted to or not. Dads who hit and Treblinkas and cancerous tumours that grew and grew.
Out in the world. Beyond the bed, on the floor. I rolled over and pulled the blanket around me more tightly. I could hear Henry and Ewa speaking softly down below. No music tonight, apparently. No rhythmic creaking of the bed or libertine whimpering. I knew this wasn’t that kind of night. This night was different.
I wondered what they were talking about. I thought about that trick detectives used in the movies where they place a glass against the wall so they can listen in on conversations in the adjoining room. If that really did work, it could work against the floor as well.
There was a half-full glass next to Edmund’s bed. Drinking plenty of liquids was part of his war against strep throat, so if I wanted to test it out, I could; if I really wanted to know what Ewa and Henry were talking about down there, I wouldn’t have to make too much of an effort. Open the window and toss out the apple juice. And then lie on the floor with the glass against the wooden boards and my ear against it. Easy as pie.
I couldn’t be bothered. Maybe I was too tired. Maybe I felt it wouldn’t be gentlemanly.
If nothing else, be a gentleman.
It wasn’t a bad rule to live by, we’d decided, Edmund and I. The gentility of standing in the flower bed and wanking to Ewa and Henry the other night was debatable, but surely even a gentleman was allowed a day off. Like the sun has its spots.
I was musing from the comfort of my own bed. The voices down below only reached me as a distant mumbling and when I finally drifted off, my dream silenced Henry’s grave voice. I only heard Ewa’s and she was speaking to me. She sat next to me in bed, or rather, behind me and to the side, and she was massaging my tense shoulders.
My shoulders and other things. I wouldn’t have minded if I’d never woken from that dream.
The next morning, there was a note on the kitchen table that read ‘Have a lot to take care of. Will be back before midnight. Meatballs and peaches in the larder. Henry.’
It wasn’t like my brother to leave a note about what he was up to, and I guessed Ewa Kaludis was behind it. Henry wasn’t usually away from Gennesaret for more than six or eight hours at a time and now he would be gone both day and night, apparently, but it still wasn’t like him leave a note like this. Not my brother.
I checked to see if there really were two tins on the shelf in the larder. There were. One
with Mother Elna’s moose meatballs in a creamy sauce. One with halved pears in thick syrup. It didn’t sound bad, even if I didn’t really see the point of the syrup. If Edmund’s lack of appetite held strong, I could—if nothing else—look forward to a decent tuck-in later in the day. Shame there wasn’t any cream for the peaches, but cycling or rowing all the way to Laxman’s for a splash of cream seemed excessive. Not worth worrying about with the clouds of unease that had been rolling in lately.
It was quite a listless day. To begin with, at least. Edmund was on the mend, he said, but only slightly. It would probably take another day or two to be rid of the sodding strep, he figured.
Sleep, read and drink, then. Absolutely no outings. Not to Laxman’s, not anywhere. There were no two ways about it, he had no desire to get out of bed. He was ‘convalescing’, as they liked to say in Västerbotten.
I placed two bottles of apple juice on the table, and wished him well and went outside and sat on one of the loungers with Darkin and a new Agatha Christie. The last one hadn’t been bad; the new one was called The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and Edmund said it was a super story.
And that was essentially how I spent the day before the Incident.
Sitting in the sun lounger with Colonel Darkin and Agatha Christie. Edmund came out a few times, but when it was sunny he thought it was too hot and when clouds covered the sun he froze. He complained that he was having a hard time with books as well, because he kept forgetting the pages he read before he fell asleep and had to start again when he woke. I suggested he try Journey to the Centre of the Earth once more—you could make sense of that one backward and upside-down—but he said he wasn’t in the mood for Jules Verne. He needed something like Patrick Quentin and Ellery Queen, and you could definitely read crime novels more than once.
Except certain ones, of course.
I prepared the moose meatballs in the middle of the afternoon. I ate nine; Edmund ate one. We split the peaches between us more evenly, four–two. All in all, I was satisfied with my meal.
Even though I had to prepare it and do the washing up.
Just as I had finished with the latter, we received our first caller of the afternoon. Gladys Lundin walked across the property clearing her throat and coughing, asking if we had any schnapps to spare.
Normal people, like Benny’s mum and Mrs. Lundmark two floors up on Idrottsgatan, would sometimes knock and ask for a cup of sugar or flour for pancakes or rhubarb pie, but the Lundins were not normal people. Far from it. As far as I knew, Gladys was the matriarch of the tribe; she was at least seventy and probably weighed more than a bit over a hundred kilos. She propelled herself forward with two sturdy oak canes and always had a lit cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth. None of this prevented her from coming over and begging for schnapps when the need struck.
I explained that we didn’t have any alcohol in the house at the moment, and so she asked for a kilo of potatoes instead.
I could hardly deny her that, because we had half a crate. With the canes and the cigarettes, the carrying became complicated, but in the end I hung a bowl on a cord around her neck. She hobbled away without saying thank you and I wondered if she was going to sit down and make schnapps with the potatoes as soon as she got home. I only had a vague idea of the process, but with some luck she might distil a glass by the evening.
From that day forward, I thought it was strange that they showed up so soon after each other, Gladys Lundin and the next visitor, but whichever way I looked at it, I couldn’t find a logical connection.
But never mind; after getting rid of Gladys I hadn’t been in the chair for more than twenty minutes before I heard another cough behind me. Much stronger and much more ominous.
I rose to my feet and then I was eyeball-to-eyeball with Bertil Albertsson. Super-Berra. The man who had such a strong arm that if a ball he threw hit a goalkeeper, the impact would be fatal. The man who had hung his striped blazer nonchalantly on one finger and handed it to Atle Eriksson before he started the battle royal against red-faced Mulle in Lackaparken.
The man whose fiancée was called Ewa Kaludis.
I dropped Colonel Darkin in the grass but I didn’t think to pick it up. Tried to swallow; it wasn’t easy and I wondered if Edmund had given me his strep throat. Berra stood before me with the same wide stance that he’d employed at Lackaparken. He wore a white, short-sleeved shirt and his tanned, hairy arms rippled with muscles and veins. His rough-hewn face was inscrutable; he had one eyebrow raised a few centimetres, and he looked at me as if I was something he happened to have stepped on in the gutter.
‘Hi,’ I said.
He didn’t reply. His eyebrow stayed just below his hairline, but his jaw was moving slightly. Grinding. I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I tried to stare back. No use.
‘Where’s your brother?’ he said in the end. Without moving his lips.
‘Who?’ I asked.
I don’t know how I came up with such a daft question, but I think I was trying to buy some time. Time to faint, or time for some merciful god or goddess to come to my rescue. To arrive at Gennesaret and carry me away to a desert island in the South Seas for all eternity.
No god appeared and I didn’t faint.
‘Your brother,’ Berra Albertsson repeated. ‘Henry. I have a few things to say to him.’
‘Oh, him,’ I said.
‘How many brothers do you have?’ asked Berra.
‘Just one,’ I said.
‘And where is he, then?’
‘He’s not in,’ I said.
‘When will he be back?’
‘I don’t know. Late.’
‘Late?’
‘Tonight. Twelve. Or even later. He left a note.’
‘Tonight.’
‘Yes.’
‘Hmm.’ He lowered his eyebrow. Coughed twice and spat on the lawn. The gob landed twenty centimetres from my left foot. Five centimetres from Colonel Darkin.
‘Tell him,’ he said. ‘Tell him that I’ll be back at one tonight. There are some things I want to discuss with him.’
‘He might not be here then either,’ I said. ‘He might be even later.’
‘Then I’ll wait.’
And with that he left. I stayed still and watched him. When he’d disappeared behind the lilac bushes, I lowered my gaze and looked at the gob of spit that lay glittering in the grass.
It’s never going to go away, I thought. That damned gob is going to be on Gennesaret’s lawn one hundred years from now. It is what it is.
‘Who were you talking to?’ Edmund stuck his head out of the window. ‘I was sleeping and then I heard voices. Who was here?’
Edmund went as pale as a corpse when I told him about my conversation with Berra Albertsson.
He took off his glasses and put them back on again ten times and he gnashed his teeth, but mostly he looked frightened. Dogged and focused in spite of the fever, but also confused. This must have been what it was like when he was waiting for his real dad to come and whack him with the belt. He barely said a word while I recounted what Berra had said and what I’d said. Clasped and unclasped his hands and then tried to swallow, but that was all. He had no idea what we should do.
Not one.
‘The storm,’ he finally said. ‘I told you. We’ve been waiting for the storm and now it’s here.’
‘Goddammit,’ I said, because I didn’t know what to say and I felt that I needed to buck myself up with a few swear words. ‘Damn it all to hell.’
‘Exactly,’ said Edmund.
The rain started to fall around eight p.m. and I kept Edmund company by going to bed a little after nine. It was a proper storm. Bright streaks of lightning and thunder claps too close for comfort. It seemed like it would never end.
‘Some storms go round and round,’ Edmund commented. ‘In Ånger once the thunder and lightning went on for over twelve bloody hours non-stop. It can make you feel quite small, actually.’
‘How’s the strep?’ I
asked, because I didn’t want to talk about the storm. It was bad enough as it was.
‘A bit better, I’m sure,’ Edmund stated after a few test swallows. ‘I’ll probably have recovered by tomorrow.’
But ten minutes later he was sleeping like a log. I turned off the light and lay awake listening to the rain on the roof and the rumbling. The lightning kept striking fifteen or thirty seconds before the rumbling began, so perhaps it was as Edmund had said.
The storm was hanging around and circling us.
And it did make you feel rather small.
Then I must have fallen asleep, because soon after twelve I woke. The rain had stopped but there was a lively wind.
I heard Henry turn on the tape deck downstairs and I think he was talking to someone.
Edmund’s bed was empty.
II
14
It was Lasse Crook-mouth who found the body, and it was Lasse Crook-mouth who landed on the front page of Kurren two days in a row. His parents had a cottage in Sjölycke where Crook-mouth also spent most of the summer. It was a well-known fact that he dreamed of becoming a competitive cyclist. Like Harry Snell. Or Ove Adamsson. His face ruled out any chance of him becoming a film star or a trumpet player, but nothing was keeping him from being a speed-demon on wheels.
He had been in the town’s junior league for a few seasons and was expected to move up to the seniors in a year or so. A rising star, as they say in sports. Crook-mouth had all the prerequisites—everyone who knew anything about cycling agreed—and his face was not an obstacle.
Given his ambition, Crook-mouth took advantage of the summer days for training, and in the wee hours of the morning he would take his racing bike out of the shed in Sjölycke and hit the road for a fifty- to sixty-kilometre ride. Or eighty or a hundred if he was on top form—and this was one of those days. Riding the uneven gravel roads wasn’t a usual part of his routine because there was a clear risk of skidding and flat tyres.
But that morning he did. Just for variety’s sake, I suppose, there was still the odd race track on gravel at this time. In the dawning sixties.
