The first term, my chief task was to sit still at my desk. I could already write and count. I was allowed to sit and cut out shapes in colored paper, but what the shapes were I can’t remember.
I have a feeling that the atmosphere was fairly good throughout my first year but that it chilled somewhat as time passed. Any disturbance to good order, any hitches or snags, made Miss R. lose her temper. We were not allowed to be restless or loud. We were not to whine. We were not to experience unexpected difficulties in learning something. Above all, we were not to do anything unexpected. Any little child who wet himself or herself in shame and fear could not hope for mercy.
As I said, being the son of a teacher saved me from blows. But I could feel the oppressive atmosphere generated by all those threats and reproaches. The head teacher was always in the background—hawk-nosed and dangerous. The very worst prospect was to be sent to a reform school, something which would be mentioned on special occasions. I never felt this as a threat to me personally, but the very idea caused a disagreeable sensation.
I could well imagine what a reformatory was like, the more so since I’d heard the name of one—Skrubba (“Scrub”), a name suggesting rasps and planes. I took it as self-evident that the inmates were subjected to daily torture. The world view that I had acquired allowed for the existence of special institutions where adults tortured children—perhaps to death—for having been noisy. A dreadful outlook. But so be it. If we were noisy, then . . .
When a boy from our school was taken to a reformatory and then returned after a year, I regarded him as someone who had risen from the dead.
A more realistic threat was evacuation. During the first years of the war, plans were made for the evacuation of all schoolchildren from the bigger cities. Mother wrote the name TRANSTRÖMER with marking ink on our sheets, and so on. The question was whether I would be evacuated with mother and her school class or with my own class from Katarina Norra, i.e. deported with Miss R. I suspected the latter.
I escaped evacuation. Life at school went on. I spent all my time in school longing for the day to come to an end so that I could throw myself into what really interested me: Africa, the underwater world, the Middle Ages, etc. The only thing that really caught my attention in school was the wall charts. I was a devotee of wall charts. My greatest happiness was to accompany Miss R. to the storeroom to fetch some worn cardboard chart. While doing so I would peep at the other ones hanging inside. I tried to make some at home, as best I could.
One important difference between my life and that of my classmates was that I could not produce any father. The majority of my peers came from working-class families for whom divorce was clearly very rare. I would never admit that there was anything peculiar about my domestic situation. Not even to myself. No, of course I had a father, even if I saw him only once a year (usually on Christmas Eve). And I kept track of him—at one point during the war, for example, he was on a torpedo boat and sent me an amusing letter. I would have liked to have shared this letter in class but the opportunity never came up.
I remember a moment of panic. I had been absent for a couple of days, and when I came back a classmate told me that the teacher —not Miss R. but a substitute—had said to the class that they must not tease me on account of the fact that I had no father. In other words, they felt sorry for me. I panicked: I was obviously abnormal. I tried to talk it all away, my face bright red.
I was acutely aware of the danger of being regarded as an outsider because at heart I suspected I was one. I was absorbed in interests that no normal boy had. I joined a drawing class, voluntarily, and sketched underwater scenes: fish, sea urchins, crabs, shells. Teacher remarked out loud that my drawings were very “special” and my panic returned. There was a kind of insensitive adult who always wanted to point me out as somehow odd. My classmates were much more tolerant. I was neither popular nor bullied.
Hasse, a big darkish boy who was five times stronger than I was, had a habit of wrestling with me every break during our first year at school. In the beginning I resisted violently, but that got me nowhere for he just threw me to the ground and triumphed over me. At last I thought up a way of disappointing him: total relaxation. When he approached me I pretended that my Real Self had flown away leaving only a corpse behind, a lifeless rag that he could press to the ground as he wished. He soon lost interest.
I wonder what this method of turning myself into a lifeless rag has meant for me later on in life. The art of being ridden roughshod over while yet maintaining one’s self-respect. Have I resorted to the trick too often? Sometimes it works, sometimes not.
The War
It was the spring of 1940. I was a skinny nine-year-old stooped over the newspaper, intent on the war map where black arrows indicated the advance of the German tank divisions. Those arrows penetrated France and for us, Hitler’s enemies, they lived as parasites in our bodies. I really counted myself as one of Hitler’s enemies. My political engagement has never been so wholehearted!
To write of the political engagement of a nine-year-old no doubt invites derision, but this was hardly a question of politics in the proper sense of the word. It meant simply that I took part in the war. I hadn’t the slightest conception of matters such as social problems, classes, trade unions, the economy, the distribution of resources, the rival claims of socialism and capitalism. A “Communist” was someone who supported Russia. “Right wing” was a shady term since those at that end of the political spectrum often had German leanings. And were understood to be rich. Yet what did it really mean to be rich ? On a few occasions we were invited for a meal with a family who were described as rich. They lived in Äppelviken and the master of the house was a wholesale dealer. A large villa, servants in black and white. I noticed that the boy in the family—he was my age—had an incredibly big toy car, a fire engine, highly desirable. How did one get hold of such a thing? I had a momentary glimpse of the idea that the family belonged to a different social class, one in which people could afford unusually large toy cars. This is still an isolated and not very important memory.
Another memory: during a visit to a classmate’s home, I was surprised there was no toilet, only a dry closet out in the backyard, like the kind we had in the country. We would pee into a discarded saucepan which my friend’s mother would swill down the kitchen sink. It was picturesque detail. On the whole it didn’t occur to me that the family lacked this or that. And the villa in Äppelviken did not strike me as remarkable. I was far short of the capacity that many seem to have acquired, even in their early years, of grasping the class status and economic level of a given environment merely at a glance. Many children seemed able to do so, not I.
My “political” instincts were directed entirely at the war and Nazism. I believed one was either a Nazi or an anti-Nazi. I had no understanding of that lukewarm attitude, that opportunistic wait-and-see stance which was widespread in Sweden. I interpreted this either as support for the Allies or as covert Nazism. When I realized some person I liked was really “pro-German,” I immediately felt a terrible tightening over my breast. Everything was ruined. There could never be any kind of fellow feeling between us.
From those close to me I expected unequivocal support. One evening when we were on a visit to Uncle Elof and Aunt Agda, the news inspired my generally taciturn uncle to comment that “the English are successfully retreating . . .” He said this with slight regret mixed with an ironic undertone (on the whole irony was foreign to him) and I suddenly felt that terrible tightening. The Allied version of history was never questioned. I stared grimly up at the roof light for consolation. It had the shape of a British steel helmet: like a soup plate.
On Sundays we often had dinner in Enskede with my other uncle and aunt on Mother’s side; they provided a sort of surrogate family for Mother after the divorce. It was part of their ritual to turn on the BBC’s Swedish radio broadcast. I shall never forget the program’s opening flourish: first the victory signal and then the signature tune, which wa
s alleged to be Purcell’s Trumpet Voluntary but which in fact was a rather puffed-up arrangement of a harpsichord piece by Jeremiah Clarke. The announcer’s calm voice, with a shade of an accent, spoke directly to me from a world of friendly heroes who saw to it that it was business as usual even if bombs were raining down.
When we were on the suburban train on the way to Enskede I always wanted Mother—who hated attracting attention—to unfold the propaganda paper News from Great Britain, and thus silently make public our stance. She did nearly everything for me, including that.
I seldom met Father during the war. But one day he popped up and took me to a party with his journalist friends. The glasses were standing ready, there were voices and laughter, and the cigarette smoke was dense. I was led around, being introduced and answering questions. The atmosphere was relaxed and tolerant and I could do what I wanted. I withdrew by myself and sidled along the bookshelves of this strange house.
I came across a newly published book called The Martyrdom of Poland. Documentary. I settled on the floor and read it from cover to cover while the voices filled the air. That terrible book—which I have never seen again—contained what I feared, or perhaps what I hoped for. The Nazis were as inhuman as I had imagined—no, they were worse! I read fascinated and disturbed, and at the same time a feeling of triumph emerged: I’d been right! It was all in the book, detailed proof! Just wait! One day everything will be revealed; one day all of you who have doubted will have the truth thrown in your faces. Just wait! And that, in the event, is what happened.
Libraries
Medborgarhuset (The Citizens’ House) was built around 1940. A big four-square block in the middle of Söder, but also a bright and promising edifice, modern, “functional.” It was only five minutes from where we lived.
It contained, among other things, a public swimming pool and a branch of the city library. The children’s section was, by obvious natural necessity, my allotted sphere, and in the beginning had enough books for my consumption. The most important was Brehm’s Lives of the Animals.
I slipped into the library nearly every day. But this was not an entirely trouble-free process. It sometimes happened that I tried to borrow books that the library ladies did not consider suitable for my age. One was Knut Holmboe’s violent documentary The Desert Is Burning.
“Who is to have this book?”
“I am . . .”
“Oh no . . .”
“I . . .”
“You can tell your father he can come and borrow it himself.”
It was even worse when I tried to get into the adult section. I needed a book that was definitely not in the children’s section. I was stopped at the entrance.
“How old are you?”
“Eleven.”
“You can’t borrow books here. You can come back in a few years.”
“Yes, but the book I want is only in here.”
“What book?”
“The Animals of Scandinavia: A History of Their Migration.” And I added, “by Ekman,” in hollow tones, feeling the game was lost. It was. Out of the question. I blushed, I was furious. I would never forgive her!
In the meantime my uncle of few words—Uncle Elof—intervened. He gave me his card to the adult section and we maintained the fiction that I was collecting books for him. I could now get in where I wanted.
The adult section shared a wall with the pool. At the entrance one felt the fumes from within, the chlorine smell drifted through the ventilation system and the echoing voices could be heard as from a distance. Swimming pools and suchlike always have strange acoustics. The temple of health and the temple of books were neighbors—a good idea. I was a faithful visitor to the Medborgarhus branch of the city library for many years. I regarded it as clearly superior to the central library up on Sveavägen— where the atmosphere was heavier and the air was still, no fumes of chlorine, no echoing voices. The books themselves had a different smell there; it gave me headaches.
Once given free rein of the library I devoted my attention mostly to nonfiction. I left literature to its fate. Likewise the shelves marked Economics and Social Problems. History, though, was interesting. Medicine scared me.
But it was Geography that was my favorite corner. I was a special devotee of the Africa shelves, which were extensive. I can recall titles like Mount Elgon, A Market-Boy in Africa, Desert Sketches . . . I wonder if any of those books still fill the shelves.
Someone called Albert Schweitzer had written a book enticingly called Between Water and Primeval Forest. It consisted mostly of speculations about life. But Schweitzer himself stayed put in his mission and didn’t move; he wasn’t a proper explorer. Not like, for instance, Gösta Moberg, who covered endless miles (why?) in alluring, unknown regions, such as Niger or Chad, lands about which there was scant information in the library. Kenya and Tanganyika, however, were favored on account of their Swedish settlements. Tourists who sailed up the Nile to the Sudd area and then turned north again—they wrote books. But not those who ventured into the arid zones of the Sudan, nor those who made their way into Kordofan or Darfur. The Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique, which looked so big on the map, were also unknown and neglected areas on the Africa shelves, making them even more attractive.
I read a lot of books while in the library—I didn’t want to take home too many books of the same kind, or the same book several times in succession. I felt I would be criticized by the library staff and that was something to be avoided at all costs.
One summer—I don’t remember which one—I lived through an elaborate and persistent daydream about Africa. I was on the island of Runmarö, a long way from the library. I withdrew into a fantasy and was leading an expedition straight through central Africa. I trudged on through the woods of Runmarö and kept track of roughly how far I’d gone with a dotted line on a big map of Africa, a map of the whole continent that I had drawn. If I worked out, for instance, that in the course of a week I had walked 120 kilometers on Runmarö, I marked 120 kilometers on the map. Not very far.
At first I’d thought of starting the expedition on the east coast, more or less where Stanley had begun. But that would have left too great a distance to traverse before I could reach the most interesting parts. I changed my mind and imagined that I traveled as far as Albert Nyansa by car. And this was where the expedition proper started, on foot. I would then have at least a reasonable chance of putting most of the Ituri Forest behind me before summer ended.
It was a nineteenth-century expedition, with bearers, etc. I was half aware, though, that this was now an obsolete way of traveling. Africa had changed. There was war in British Somaliland; it was in the news. Tanks were in action. Indeed, it was the first area where the Allies could claim an advance—I took due note of this, of course—and Abyssinia was the first country to be liberated from the Axis powers.
When my Africa dream returned several years later, it became modernized and was now almost realistic. I was thinking of becoming an entomologist and collecting insects in Africa, discovering new species instead of new deserts.
Grammar School
Only a couple of my classmates from primary school progressed to secondary school (realskola). And no one apart from myself applied to Södra Latin Grammar School.
There was an entrance exam I had to pass. My sole memory of this is spelling the word särskilt (especially) wrong: I gave it two ls. From then on the word had a disturbing effect on me which persisted far into the 1960s.
I have a distinct memory of my first day at Södra Latin in the autumn of 1942. It is as follows: I find myself surrounded by a number of unfamiliar eleven-year-old boys. I have butterflies in my stomach; I’m uncertain and alone. But some of the others seem to know each other well—these are the pupils from Maria Preparatory. I look and look for a face from Katarina Norra. My mood consists of equal parts gloomy unease and hopeful expectation.
Our names are called out and we are divided into three classes. I am assigned to Class 15B and
told to follow Dr. Mohlin, who is to be our teacher. He’s one of the oldest teachers; his subject is German. He is small, with a sort of catlike authority, and moves swiftly and quietly; he has bristly, reluctantly greying hair, and a bald wedge above each temple. From someone nearby who seems to know him, I catch an assessment of him: Målle—as he is called —is “strict but fair.” Ominous.
From the first moment it was clear that grammar school was something quite different from primary school. Södra Latin was thoroughly masculine, the school was as single-sexed as a monastery or barracks. It was not until several years later that a couple of women were smuggled onto the staff.
Each morning we all assembled in the school hall, sang hymns, and listened to a sermon delivered by one of the religious studies teachers. Then we marched off to our respective classrooms. The collective atmosphere of Södra Latin was immortalized by Ingmar Bergman in his film Hets.* (It was shot in the school and those of us who were pupils appeared as extras in several scenes of the film.)
We were all supplied with a school manual that included, among other items, “Directives as to order and discipline, in accordance with the school’s statutes”:
The pupils shall attend instruction at the determined times, neatly and decently attired and in possession of the necessary textbooks. They shall observe good order and proper conduct and shall follow the instruction with due attention. The pupils shall likewise attend morning devotions and there deport themselves quietly and attentively. . . .
Pupils shall give due respect and obedience to the staff of the institution and shall accept with compliance their commands, corrections, and chastisements. . . .
Södra Latin occupied the highest site on Söder, and its playground formed a plateau above most of the district’s rooftops. The bricks of the school building could be seen from far away. The route to this castle of sighs was one I generally completed at a half-run. I hurried along by the long piles of wood—a sign of the crisis years—in front of “Björns Trädgård,” made my way up Götgatan—past Hansson and Bruce’s bookshop —swung to the left into Höbergsgatan where, every winter morning, a horse stood chewing straw from a nosebag. It was a brewery horse, a big steaming Ardenne. For a moment I found myself in its reeking shadow. I still have a vivid memory of this patient beast, its smell in the cold and damp. A smell that was at once suffocating and comforting.
The Great Enigma: New Collected Poems Page 15
