by Asa Larsson
Standing up, he took an old photograph album from a bookshelf.
“Have a look at this,” he said.
He produced a newspaper cutting that had been hidden among the pages of the album. It was dated five years earlier.
Pensioners Robbed and Murdered, ran the headline. The article described how a ninety-six-year-old man and his wife aged eighty-two had been murdered in their home just outside Boden. Martinsson glanced through it and was disgusted to read that the woman had been found with a pillow tied over her face. She had been beaten up, choked and strangled, and “violated” after she died.
Violated, Martinsson thought. What do they mean by that?
As if he had read her thoughts, Pantzare said, “They shoved a broken bottle up her pussy.”
Martinsson carried on reading. The man had been alive at 6.00 that morning when the district nurse had come to give his wife her insulin injection. He had been badly beaten, punched and kicked, and died later in hospital. According to the article, the police had conducted a door-to-door, but without success. As far as anybody knew, the couple had not kept significant sums of money or other valuables in their home.
“He was one of us,” Pantzare said. “I knew him. And no bloody way was this a robbery, I’m absolutely certain of that. They were neo-Nazis or some other gang of right-wing extremists who had discovered that he had been a member of the resistance. Nobody’s safe even though it was so long ago. Youngsters impress old Nazis by doing things like that. They made the old man watch while they beat his wife to death. Why would a robber want to violate her? They wanted to torture him. They’re still looking for us. And if they find us . . .”
A shake of the head completed the sentence.
Of course he’s scared, Martinsson thought. It’s easier to risk your life when you’re young, healthy and immortal than when you’re shut up in a place like this and all you can do is wait.
“We simply had to do something,” Pantzare said, as if he were talking to himself. “The Germans were sending ship after ship to Luleå – lots of them never recorded in the port registers. Many of them left again with cargoes of iron ore, of course. And provisions and equipment and weapons and soldiers. The official line was that the soldiers were going on leave. The hell they were! I watched S.S. units marching on and off those ships. They took trains up to Norway, or were transported to the Eastern front. We often considered sabotage, but that would have meant declaring war on our own country. After all it was Swedish customs officials and police officers and troops guarding the ports and depots, and supervising the transports. If we’d been an occupied country, the whole situation would have been different. The Germans had far more problems in occupied Norway, with the local resistance movements and the inhospitable terrain, than in comparatively flat and so-called neutral Sweden.”
“So what can you tell us about Isak Krekula and his haulage company?” Fjällborg said.
“I don’t know. I mean, there were so many haulage contractors. But I do know that one of the haulage firm owners up here informed for the Germans. At least one, that is. We didn’t know who it was, but we were told that it was a haulier. That put the wind up us, because a large part of our work was building up and servicing Kari.”
“What was that?” Martinsson said.
“The Norwegian resistance movement, X.U., had an intelligence base on Swedish territory, not far from Torneträsk. It was called Kari. The radio station there was called Brunhild. Kari passed information from ten substations in northern Norway to London. It was powered by a wind turbine, but it was located in a hollow so you couldn’t see it unless you came to within 15 metres of it.”
“Are you saying that there was an intelligence base in Sweden?”
“There were several. Sepal bases on Swedish territory were run with the support of the British secret service and the American O.S.S., which eventually became the C.I.A. They specialized in intelligence, sabotage and recruitment, and training in weapons, mine-laying and explosives.”
“It was thanks to those services that the British were able to sink the Terpitz,” Fjällborg said to Martinsson.
“Both the radio stations and the wind turbines had to be maintained,” Pantzare said, “and they needed provisions and equipment. We needed hauliers, and it was always a dodgy business initiating a new one, especially as we knew there was a haulier who was a German informer. My God, once a new driver – a lad from Råneå – and I were on our way to Pältsa. We had a cargo of sub-machine-guns. We took a short cut via the Kilpisjärvi road, which the Germans controlled, and they stopped us at a roadblock. The driver suddenly started talking in German to the officer in charge. I thought he was informing on me: I didn’t even know he could speak German, and I was about to leap out of the lorry and run for my life. But the German officer just laughed and let us through, after we’d given him a few packets of cigarettes. The lad had simply told him a joke. I gave him a telling off afterwards. He could have told me that he spoke German, after all! Although of course there were quite a few who could in those days. It was the first foreign language in Swedish schools. It had the same sort of status that English has now. Anyway, everything went well on that occasion.”
Pantzare fell silent. A hunted look flitted across his face.
“Were there occasions when things didn’t go so well?” Martinsson asked.
Pantzare reached for the photograph album and opened it at a particular page.
He pointed at a photograph that looked as if it had been taken in the 1940s. It was a full-length picture of a young man. He was leaning against a pine tree. It was summer. Sunlight was reflected in his curly blond hair. He was casually dressed in a shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and loose-fitting trousers with the cuffs turned up untidily. He gripped his upper arm with one hand, while the other held a pipe.
“Axel Viebke,” Pantzare said. “He was a member of the resistance group.”
Sighing deeply, he continued.
“Three Danish prisoners of war escaped from a German cargo ship moored in Luleå harbour. They ended up with us. Axel’s uncle owned a hut used at haymaking time to the east of Sävast. It was standing empty. He put them up there. They all died when the hut burned down. The newspapers called it an accident.”
“What do you think really happened?” Fjällborg said.
“I think they were executed. The Germans discovered they were there, and killed them. We never found out who had leaked the information.”
Pantzare grimaced.
Martinsson took the photograph album and turned a page.
There was a picture of Viebke and Pantzare standing on each side of a pretty woman in a flowered dress. She was very young. A nicely trimmed lock of hair hung down over one eye.
“Here you are again,” Martinsson said. “Who’s the girl?”
“Oh, just a bit of skirt,” Pantzare said, without looking at the photograph. “He had a weakness for the girls, did our Axel. He was always with a different one.”
Martinsson turned back to the photograph of Viebke by the pine tree. That page had been opened often; the edge was well-thumbed and darker than the others. The photographer’s shadow was visible.
He’s a charmer, she thought. He’s really posing. Lolling back against the pine trunk, pipe in hand.
“Were you the photographer?” she said.
“Yes,” Pantzare said, his voice sounding hoarse.
She looked round the room. Pantzare had no pictures of children hanging on the walls. There were no wedding photos among the framed ones on the bookshelf.
You did more than just like him, she thought, looking hard at Pantzare.
“He would have approved of you telling us about this,” she said. “That you continued to be brave.”
Pantzare nodded and his eyes glazed over.
“I don’t know all that much,” he said. “About the haulier in question, that is. The British said there was someone reporting to the Germans, and that we should watch our step. They w
ere particularly concerned about the intelligence stations, of course. They called him the Fox. And there’s no doubt that Isak Krekula was on good terms with the Germans. He made lots of shipments for them, and it has always been the money that counted as far as he was concerned.”
“Pull yourself together!” Tore Krekula said.
He was standing in Hjalmar Krekula’s bedroom looking at his brother, who was in bed with the covers over his head.
“I know you’re awake. You’re not ill! That’s enough now!”
Tore opened the blinds with such force that it sounded as if the cords were going to snap. He wanted them to snap. It was snowing.
When Hjalmar had failed to turn up for work, his brother had taken the spare key and gone to his house. Not that a key was necessary. Nobody in the village locked their doors at night.
Hjalmar did not respond. Lay under the covers like a corpse. Tore was tempted to rip them off, but something held him back. He did not dare. The person lying there was unpredictable. It was as if a voice under the covers were saying: Give me an excuse, give me an excuse.
This was not the old Hjalmar who could be kicked around however you liked.
Tore felt helpless. This was an emotion he found difficult to handle. He was not used to people not doing as they were told. First that police bitch. Now Hjalmar.
And what could Tore threaten his brother with? He had always threatened Hjalmar.
He made an impatient tour of the house. Piles of dirty dishes. Empty crisp and biscuit packets. The kitchen smelled of stale slops. Big empty plastic bottles. Clothes on the floor. Underpants, yellow at the front, brown at the back.
He went back to the bedroom. Still no sign of movement.
“For fuck’s sake,” he said. “For fuck’s sake, what a mess this place is. What a pigsty. And you. You disgust me. Like a bloody big beached whale, rotting away. Ugh!”
Turning on his heel, he marched out.
Hjalmar heard the door bang closed behind him.
I can’t go on, he thought. There’s no way out.
There was an opened packet of cheese nibbles next to the bed. He took a few handfuls.
He heard a voice inside his head. His old schoolmaster, Fernström: “It’s up to you to decide what you’re going to do next.”
No, Fernström never understood.
He did not want to think about all that. But it made no difference what he wanted. Thoughts came flooding in like water through an open sluicegate.
Hjalmar Krekula is thirteen years old. On the radio Kennedy is debating with Nixon in the run-up to the presidential elections. Kennedy is a playboy; nobody thinks he is going to win. Hjalmar is not interested in politics. He is sitting in the classroom with his elbows on the varnished lid of his desk. His head is resting on his hands, his palms against his cheekbones. He and Herr Fernström are the only ones there. Once all the other children have gone home and the smell of wet wool and stables has disappeared along with them, the smell of school takes over. The smell of dusty books, the sour smell of the rag used to clean the blackboard. The smell of soft soap from the floor, and the peculiar smell of the old building.
Hjalmar Krekula can sense Herr Fernström occasionally looking up as he sits at his desk, correcting exercise books. Hjalmar avoids meeting his gaze. Instead, his eyes trace the wood grain of his desk lid. It resembles a woman lying down. To the right is an imaginary creature, or perhaps a ptarmigan: the mark where a twig branched off is an eye.
The headmaster, Herr Bergvall, enters the room. Herr Fernström closes the exercise book he has been marking and pushes it to one side.
Bergvall greets him.
“Well,” he says, “I’ve spoken to the doctors in Kiruna, and with Elis Sevä’s mother. His wound needed six stitches. His nose wasn’t broken, but he has concussion.”
He says nothing for a while, waiting for Hjalmar Krekula to react. Hjalmar does what he always does: says nothing, fixes his eyes on something else, on the wall chart featuring a map of Palestine, on the harmonium, on the pupils’ drawings pinned up on the wall. Tore had taken young Sevä’s bicycle. Sevä had told Tore to give him the bloody thing back. Tore had said, “Come on, I’m only borrowing it.” A fight had ensued. One of Tore’s mates had gone to fetch Hjalmar. Sevä had been furious, hitting out left, right and centre.
Herr Fernström looks at the headmaster and with a barely noticeable shake of the head indicates that there is no point in waiting for an answer from Hjalmar Krekula.
The headmaster’s face becomes somewhat flushed and he starts breathing heavily, provoked by Hjalmar’s silence. He says that this is bad, very bad. Assault and battery, that is what it is – hitting a schoolmate with a spanner: for God’s sake, there are laws against that, and those laws apply in school as well.
“He started it,” Hjalmar says, as usual.
The headmaster’s voice goes up a tone, and he says he thinks Krekula is lying to save his own skin. Says his friends might back up Krekula’s story to save their own skins.
“Herr Fernström tells me that Krekula is a talented mathematician,” the headmaster says.
Hjalmar Krekula says nothing, looks out of the window.
Now the headmaster loses his patience.
“Whatever good that will do him,” he says, “when he is failing virtually every other subject. Especially conduct and attitude.”
He repeats the last sentence.
“Especially conduct and attitude.”
Hjalmar Krekula turns to face the headmaster. Gives him a disdainful look.
The headmaster immediately starts to worry that he might have his windows smashed at home.
“Krekula must try to keep his impulses under control,” he says in a conciliatory tone.
And he adds that Krekula will have one-to-one tuition with the deputy head for two weeks. Get away from the classroom for a while. Have an opportunity to think things over.
Then the headmaster leaves.
Herr Fernström sighs. Hjalmar has the impression that the sigh is a reaction to the headmaster rather than to himself.
“Why do you get involved in fighting?” Herr Fernström says. “You’re not a fool. And you’re really gifted when it comes to maths. You ought to continue your education, Hjalmar. You have the chance to catch up in your other subjects. Then you could go on to high school.”
“Huh,” Hjalmar says.
“What do you mean, huh?”
“My father would never allow it. We have to work in the haulage business, me and Tore.”
“I’ll have a word with your father. It’s up to you to decide what you’re going to do next. Do you see that? If you stop fighting and . . .”
“I couldn’t give a toss,” Hjalmar says vehemently. “I’ve no desire to continue at school anyway. It’s better to get a job and earn some money. Can I go now?”
Herr Fernström sighs again. And this time the sigh is definitely aimed at Hjalmar Krekula.
“Yes, you can go,” he says. “Go away.”
But Fernström really does have a word with the old man. One day when Hjalmar comes home, Isak Krekula is bubbling over with rage. Kerttu continues making pancakes with a grim expression on her face while Isak lays down the law in the kitchen.
“I want you to be quite clear that I sent that schoolmaster of yours packing with a flea in his ear,” he bellows at Hjalmar. “I’ll be damned if a son of mine is going to become an anaemic calculating machine, and I made sure he understood that. Maths, eh? Who the devil do you think you are? Too posh to work in the transport business, is that it? Not good enough for your lordship? I’ll have you know that it’s the haulage business that has put food on your table for your entire life.”
He gasps for breath, as if his fury is well on the way to choking him, as if it were a pillow over his mouth.
“If it doesn’t suit you to help to take responsibility for your family, then you’re not welcome to stay here, is that clear? Work away at your maths if you like, but in that ca
se you’ll have to look elsewhere for a place to live.”
Hjalmar wants to tell his father that he has no intention of going to high school. This is all something thought up by Herr Fernström. But he does not say a word. His fear of his father gets in the way of what he wants to say. But there is something else as well. A flash of insight.
The insight is that he really is good at maths. Even talented. Just as the headmaster said. He is a talented mathematician. Fernström told the headmaster, and Fernström drove all the way to Piilijärvi to tell his dad.
And when Isak Krekula yells, “Well, how’s it going to be?” Hjalmar does not reply. Isak gives him a box on the ear, two in fact, making his head spin and throb. Hjalmar has the feeling that he can become “an anaemic calculating machine”. And that is something way beyond the reach of the rest of the family, something that makes Isak froth at the mouth with rage.
Then Hjalmar goes to the lake to sit on the shore. Has to turn the cheek that has been smacked away from the autumn sun, to prevent it hurting even more.
He watches two ravens playing tag with a twig. One of them performs wild acrobatics with the twig in its beak, the other chases close behind it. They loop the loop, spin round on their own axes, dive down towards the water, then shoot back up again.
The one with the stick flies straight into the crown of a tree; it seems certain that it will collide with the trunk or a heavy branch and break its neck, but the next second it emerges on the other side – it has found its way through the network of branches like a black throwing knife. It sails out over the lake and gives a reckless “korrrp” – and drops the twig, of course. Both ravens circle above the water before they decide they cannot be bothered and fly off above the tops of the pine trees.
I land on the jetty next to Hjalmar. He’s thirteen years old, and his cheek is flaming red. Tears are streaming down his face, although he’s trying hard not to cry. And then comes the anger. It hits him with such force that he starts trembling. He hates Isak, who bawled and yelled so violently that spit was flying in all directions. He hates Kerttu, who simply turned her back on it all, as usual. He hates Herr Fernström – why the hell did he have to go and have a word with his father? Hjalmar didn’t ask him to. He has never even thought about going to high school. He’s had something taken away from him that he didn’t have in the first place. So why is he crying?
