A summer with Kim Novak

by Håkan Nesser

  Edmund gave a quick, strained smile.

  ‘Yes, I looked him up,’ he said. ‘He was in a home outside Lycksele. Didn’t recognize me. I don’t think he remembered that he had a son—alcoholism and neglected diabetes. He died a few months after.’

  I nodded. Of course it would end up that way. It was typical, somehow. Edmund was reluctant to talk about it; he had neither the desire nor the energy. There was a more pressing matter to attend to before it was too late.

  A little over half an hour into our conversation, he grew too weak to continue. When we were done Edmund looked as peaceful as only the dead and severely ailing can. One of the last things he said was: ‘It was still a brilliant summer, Erik. In spite of the Incident, it was a brilliant summer. I’ll never forget it.’

  ‘Neither will I,’ I promised and patted him between two of the needles. ‘Not for as long as I live.’

  ‘Not for as long as I live,’ Edmund repeated matter-of-factly.

  And then he fell asleep. I stayed a while and watched him, and suddenly I was sure he was no longer in the hospital bed, but floating on his back in the lake at Gennesaret that balmy night after the pageantry of love in the window.

  And I wished dearly for him to stay there.

  I left with a sense of closure. Checked out of Hotel Zäta and headed south again. During the drive through the forests in Dalarna and Värmland, I decided to write down this entire story. Write it down and try to get it the right way around. If what I read somewhere is true, that every person has a book inside of them, then mine would be the story of the murder of Berra Albertsson.

  But it wasn’t mine alone.

  I started on it as soon as we broke up for the summer holidays, and at the end of June—the week after Midsummer—I took a research trip back to the landscape of my childhood. Ewa vacillated about whether or not she should join me, but in the end she decided to stay at home; Karla had gleefully announced that she was thinking of coming for a visit with her Frenchman.

  I hadn’t set foot in the town on the plain since we moved away in the early sixties, and when the beautiful jasmine-scented summer night came rolling into my car as I drove along Stenevägen, I felt myself sinking into the well of time.

  So much had changed and yet most of it was the same as ever. The exterior of the house on Idrottsgatan had been renovated, but the colours were the same and in our kitchen window facing the street were two pelargoniums, as before. I parked the car, walked out through the stretch of woodland and found the culvert in the ditch.

  No one had touched it for thirty-five years. I had to crouch to fit, but never mind; I lit a cigarette, a Lucky Strike I’d bought at the railway station kiosk in Hallsberg. I shut my eyes and sat inside, smiling and close to tears.

  What is a life? I thought. What the hell is a life?

  I thought about Benny and Benny’s mum; about Arse-Enok and Balthazar Lindblom and Edmund.

  About my mother and father.

  And Henry.

  About the day a thousand years ago that Ewa Kaludis came riding into Stava School on her red Puch. Kim Novak.

  And about my father’s words: It’s going to be a difficult summer. Let’s face it.

  My mother’s listless hair and dying eyes in the hospital. What is a life?

  The pattern of tiles in the loo. The tiny scars on Edmund’s feet, proof that he’d once been in possession of twelve toes.

  Ewa Kaludis. Her warm, strong hands on my shoulders and her naked body.

  She’s all I have left.

  All I have managed to keep, I thought, is Ewa’s beautiful body.

  It could have been worse.

  On the way out of town, I took Mossbanegatan south. Karlesson’s shop was where it always had been, but the gum dispenser was no longer there. However, it had been extended as a corner cafe; the whole thing was called Gullan’s Grill and I didn’t feel like stopping.

  The Kleva hill was as steep as before, even if it was less noticeable sitting in the car. I could still identify the place where Edmund had lain down and been sick after his valiant effort to conquer it in one go, and the way through the forest to Åsbro was the same down to every last bend. In the village itself they’d built a petrol station, but overall it was as I remembered it. I stopped outside Laxman’s. I went in and bought a Ramlösa and an evening paper. The heavy-set woman at the till was in her fifties and had blooms of sweat under her arms, and there was nothing to contradict the notion that this was Britt Laxman.

  A number of new summer houses had been built along Sjölyckevägen, but when I entered the forest I recalled every twist and dip of the winding gravel path. The Levis’ house looked boarded up, but it had been like that then, too. I remembered the incantation as I drove past. Cancer-Treblinka-Love-Fuck-Death. I thought of Edmund’s real dad who sat at the edge of his bed and cried for himself and for his abused boy, and then the memories began to flood in, and I didn’t know I’d arrived at the parking area until I was standing on it.

  The clearing seemed to have shrunk. Weeds and brushwood had encroached on its edges; maybe this was temporary but it seemed to be disused. I climbed out of the car and took in the start of both paths: the left down to the Lundins’ was nearly overgrown; the right to Gennesaret looked trodden on and used. After a moment’s hesitation I followed it down to the lake.

  Gennesaret was where it had been, too. The same warped little hovel, but repainted and with a new roof. A garden shed out on the lawn and white garden furniture instead of our old rickety brown set. An outdoor grill and a TV antenna.

  Nineties versus sixties. Forty-nine instead of fourteen.

  Both the door and the kitchen window were open, so I knew that people were home. I didn’t want to have to explain my errand, so I stayed on the path. Looked at everything through a lens thirty-five years thick; both the privy and the tumbledown shed were still there, and—above all—the floating dock. I was startled by my residual pride and before the tears started to fall, I turned on my heels and went back up the path to the parking spot.

  I took the spade out of the boot of the car, walked straight across the road, measured between the trees and easily found the small, soft, moss-covered hollow.

  I drove the spade into the earth and dug out a few shovels’ worth. By the third shovel, I had hit the shaft. I wedged the blade under and soon I was standing there with the sledgehammer in my hands.

  It was lighter than I remembered, but less ravaged by time than anything else I had seen that day. It was exactly as I remembered it. I gingerly brushed the shaft and the head clean. When the earth was gone, it could just as well have been lying with the rest of the tools in the shed all this time. Or it could even have been manufactured as recently as a few years ago.

  If it weren’t for a brownish-black, dried-up blotch on one end of the sledgehammer’s head. It’s incredible how some things endure. Sink their teeth in and endure.

  I shunted the mounds of earth back into the hole and covered them with moss. Stuffed the sledgehammer in my black plastic bag. Tossed it into the footwell of the car on the passenger’s side and drove away.

  Two hours later I watched the bag sink to the bottom of a dark and muddy lake in the woods of Skara. The sun had started to set and the midges buzzed around my head, but I stood there a long while and tried to discern where the sledgehammer had broken through the water’s surface. When there was no trace of it left, I shrugged and started the journey back to Göteborg.

  A few days later Ewa and I lay awake one night after making love. We had the window propped wide open; it was one of those rare summer nights that only comes two or three times a year in Sweden. Music and laughter were spilling in from some sort of garden party at the neighbours’.

  ‘That book you’re writing?’ Ewa asked and cautiously ran her hand over my stomach. ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘Well enough,’ I answered. ‘It’s coming along.’

  She was silent for a while.

  ‘I’ve always wondered som
ething.’

  ‘Oh?’ I said. ‘What?’

  ‘Who actually killed Berra? You or Edmund? It had to be one of you.’

  I turned around and buried my face between her breasts.

  ‘Truer words were never spoken,’ I said. ‘It had to have been one of us.’

  And then I told her who.

  ‘What?’ said Ewa. ‘I can’t hear what you’re saying. Look at me.’

  I breathed her scent in deeply and then that cloud unfurled inside me. It’s remarkable how some clouds linger.

  About the author

  © Caroline Andersson

  Håkan Nesser is one of Sweden’s most famous crime writers. He made his name with his popular series featuring Inspector Van Veeteren, authored the highly-acclaimed series focusing on Inspector Gunnar Barbarotti and is also known for a number of exciting stand-alone novels, including A Summer with Kim Novak. His award-winning books have been made into TV series and films and enjoy great international success.

  About the translator

  Saskia Vogel’s translations include All Monsters Must Die: An Excursion to North Korea by Magnus Bärtås and Fredrik Ekman, Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner? by Katrine Marçal, and works of fiction by Rut Hillarp and Lina Wolff, among others.

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