At the time I didn’t understand him, but it could be that I understand him better today, much later. Henry was so aggrieved about various things that he tried to pretend he didn’t care in the least. Life was a shrug of the shoulders, a click of the heels. But that was undoubtedly just a defiant reaction. In reality he was so indignant that he could hardly stand it, and you can only be truly indignant when you care deeply about something. To endure this heavy burden of moral responsibility, he had to pretend that he had no sense of responsibility at all. Every time someone demanded something from him, he would grow frightened and feel himself under fire. He promptly went on the defensive. He wanted to exist but not be seen.
I didn’t understand him at all as we sat in the dressing room, smoking cigarettes from his fancy case. He cleaned his fingernails with the little penknife from the burgundy leather case which he always carried with him. I didn’t understand him, and I was in a bit of a daze. Mostly I wanted to know what he thought of my debut.
‘You were good, Klasa,’ said Henry as he finished his manicure. ‘You were fucking great.’
‘Thanks,’ I said in a maudlin tone. ‘I could never have done it without you.’
‘You know what,’ said Henry, ‘I’m going to go over to see Karin for a while.’
‘Who’s Karin?’
‘The make-up artist. We’ve got some things we need to talk about. I’ll meet you down at the station at 2:15 a.m. That’s when the train leaves for home.’
Henry disappeared into the hubbub with Karin, and I said goodbye to the film crew, giving them my thanks. The stage manager said they would let me know if anything else came up for me. That sounded promising, and just as I was about to leave, I ran into the Star and got what felt like an electric shock. He was charged with unreality, unnatural power, imbued with what people call charisma, like a magnetist or an influential magnate who exists but isn’t seen. I had grown up with that star on TV, but he now seemed only half as tall as he ought to be. In spite of his modest height, his spiritual stature was fully on a par with Caesar’s, if we’re to believe the historians. I myself felt as if I were standing at the very pinnacle of my life. This was the sort of thing that my children would get sick of hearing about. Too bad I was too shy to ask for his autograph.
Söderhamn was no metropolis, except for the motorbike riders. There was a biting wind that cut right through me, and I was feeling rather downhearted. I tried to warm up by thinking about the pillaging the Russians had done – that was all that I knew about this coastal town in Norrland – and about all the fires they had set here in the eighteenth century. The place must have been as dazzlingly beautiful back then as it was grey and devoid of charm today. I went inside the central train station, sank down onto a bench, smoked a cigarette, and read the evening paper. I realised that I hated Söderhamn.
Henry arrived punctually, a few minutes before the train’s departure, and we were soon on our way home. Henry wasn’t feeling particularly upbeat either. Maybe it was the anticlimax that had brought both of us down. We’d been preparing for this part, charging ourselves up to high voltage, and now we’d been discharged and paid off. It felt like a New Year’s Day when you can’t really remember the clock striking twelve or any of your new resolutions.
Henry stared out the window, looking at the dreary, dimly lit landscape, not saying a word.
‘So what happened with Karin?’ I asked.
‘We talked. Just talked.’
‘Did you screw her?’
‘No, dammit,’ said Henry. ‘I’ve never screwed Karin.’
He didn’t sound especially thrilled about this, as if it were something that he would like to do but never had.
The conductor clipped our tickets, and I tried to sleep but without success. Henry was still silent and dejected, staring out at the insipid landscape. He didn’t say a word until Gävle.
‘I had such a strange feeling,’ he said in a low voice, almost to himself. ‘All those people, dressed in the clothes from the past. It was as if I had no distance from all that. It felt like a dream. I was part of that era, playing in a school band and going to those sorts of dances. It was almost eerie, like a dream.’
Eighteen miles or so south of Gävle Henry said, still as if to himself, ‘I have to see Maud again. I have to see Maud.’ And then, speaking straight out, in a loud, resounding voice, with a remote look in his eyes for God, Satan, me and the whole world, he said:
‘That’s what my horoscope meant! I have to go and see Maud.’
The neighbourhood was nicely situated between Mariakyrka church, with its magnificent collection of graves – where Lasse Lucidor ‘the Unfortunate’, Stagnelius and Evert Taube distinguished themselves as pilgrimage destinations – and the now redeveloped and respectable square, Mariatorget. The buildings were marked by a worn beauty, although they were merely counterparts to those at Puckeln in Söder, newly renovated eighteenth- century structures infested with potters, gallery owners and an endless number of troubadours, at least according to the guy by the name of Henry Morgan.
Small enterprises were flourishing once again. From the corner of Bellmansgatan it was possible to count no fewer than a dozen small businesses that might not be considered particularly solid, but there was life in them all the same. There was the Primal Café in the old apothecary shop, a haberdashery, a framing shop, a cigar seller, a second-hand bookshop, a stamp collectors’ shop, a greengrocer, along with a number of galleries and secondhand shops selling clothing and, of course, the Furniture Man.
The doorbell rang and the sound cut right through my breakfast. It was my fifth breakfast all alone. I hadn’t heard a peep from Henry since the night we came back from filming in Söderhamn. He had come home, taken a shower, made a phone call and then left. That was the meaning of his horoscope. He was going to be away for a few days.
Now I went out to open the door, and on the landing stood a delivery boy from Egon’s Laundry, holding a package of shirts and linens wrapped in brown paper.
‘Is that for here?’ I asked.
‘Morgan, ten shirts and four sheets, pillowcases and towels. That’s what it says on the note. A hundred and twelve riksdaler, please,’ said the delivery boy.
‘All right,’ I said with a sigh, and went to get the money.
‘Do you have anything for collection?’ asked the delivery boy.
‘Collection?’ I said. ‘Oh, I see. I don’t know. I’ll check.’
Then we exchanged dirty laundry for clean and said thanks and goodbye. I put Henry’s clean shirts on his bed, thinking it was rather pretentious of him to be sending out his laundry, but that was his business. Though I had to pay for it. All the same, it made me feel a little better because I took it as a sign that he was still alive.
Otherwise there wasn’t much to feel good about just then, except for the absolute decline and total collapse of the bourgeois coalition government, just as my crafty publisher, Franzén, had predicted six months earlier at the country club. The flat felt a bit empty and gloomy when Henry decided to take off, and I forced myself to start working properly and extremely systematically on my pastiche of The Red Room. At any rate, I turned out about a dozen pages that looked as if they might hold up.
I was attempting to get to know the others in the building, and had already succeeded quite well with the Cigar Seller. He was a very correct gentleman in late middle-age, always dressed in a suit with a bow-tie, and he was well- informed about current events and what went on in the neighbourhood. He served as my informant as long as my host was away.
The Cigar Seller also had a very interesting assistant helping out in his shop. She was a femme fatale, about thirty-five, who was at least as elegant as he. She wore a long dress, and her face was heavily plastered with pancake make-up, mascara and fiery red lipstick. As far as I knew, she had never spoken to a single customer, and no one was sure whether it was even permissible to speak to her. At any rate, she would listen to what was said in the shop and then dash i
nto the storeroom, quick as lightning, if something was wanted. She would purse her lips if you looked unhappy. No doubt her only real task was to stand there looking generally pretty. Perhaps she was also supposed to lead the customers’ thoughts to the substantial selection of porn magazines and erotica – everything from The Marquis to Love 1, and so on – which the Cigar Seller had for sale. So there were plenty of opportune reasons for boycotting the shop, provided you had no sense of curiosity or any interest in gossip. Unfortunately, I’ve never been that sort of person.
Naturally the Cigar Seller kept me informed of everything of importance going on in the neighbourhood.
‘I can certainly see,’ he said to me confidentially as he leaned across the counter, ‘that you’re a good sort of chap. And I don’t think Morgan would let just anybody live in his flat. He’s a proper gentleman. But these galleries here … They attract a lot of … well, you know, odd types of people, if you know what I mean.’
I had no idea what he meant, and I cast a quick glance at the woman, who gave me an arch smile.
‘But you ought to go over to the Furniture Man. They’re good folks. You should definitely get to know them.’
‘I suppose I should,’ I said, not saying a word about the fact that I was afraid of finding my own old furniture and belongings as soon as I approached any shop selling second-hand goods.
A man called the Flask walked past and waved through the window. The Flask was also a good chap, according to the Cigar Seller. The Flask had taken early retirement because of a bad back, and he supplemented his pension by collecting empty bottles in the parks.
‘And you know …’ said the Cigar Seller, lowering his voice, ‘I think he has …’ and he licked his thumb and forefinger and rubbed them together as he winked at me.
‘From empty bottles?’ I said in surprise.
‘Oh yes! Oh yes!’ exclaimed the Cigar Seller. ‘He has a platform on his bike and he comes home after a day in the sunshine with bottles worth two hundred kronor! Tax-free. He’s someone who has money under his mattress, I can promise you that. But he’s not the sort you want to mess with – you’d be wise to stay out of his way.’
‘I believe you.’
‘Yes, watch yourself, my boy. A couple of junkies came in one day and started waving a pistol around, and that gal over there,’ he said, jabbing his thumb towards the pin-up girl who immediately gave him a smile, ‘she dived down behind the counter, scared out of her wits. But someone had to try to calm those lunatics down because I could tell that they wanted to get their hands on the day’s take. Then the Flask came through the door, just like this,’ he said as he walked through the door himself, trying to stick out his chest the way the Flask had done. ‘And he was all over them like lightning, let me tell you, tossing one guy after another out the door and telling them to go to hell, and I damn well think that they did! Ha, ha, ha!’
‘That’s quite a story,’ I said. ‘You must have seen quite a few things …’
‘You’d better believe it,’ said the Cigar Seller with satisfaction. ‘And then there’s Wolf-Larsson. Do you know him?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t know Wolf-Larsson either.’
‘Morgan is the one who dubbed him Wolf-Larsson. A real eccentric, you know. If you’re ever out at night in the pubs around here, I’ll be damned if you won’t run into Wolf-Larsson. He’s always out with his German shepherd, an incredibly splendid dog. He does, actually, look like a wolf …’
‘Morning, boys!’ said Henry Morgan as he stepped through the door.
‘Hello, hello!’ I said, and we shook hands. Henry winked, looking pleased and well-rested.
‘Hello, Dolly!’ Henry said to the woman behind the counter, and as usual she smiled back, chastely, a holy smile filled with piety.
Henry was there to turn in the bets. He had a regular betting system going on the football pool with Greger and Birger at the Furniture Man. It cost exactly twenty kronor.
‘That guy is a sly devil,’ said Henry as we went up in the lift. ‘Watch out for him. Whatever you say to the Cigar Seller, half the town will know about it within the hour. He’s leaky as a sieve. He’s got a direct line to TT, the Central Wire Service.’
‘I don’t have any secrets,’ I said.
‘No, but I do,’ said Henry. ‘Though she’s damn fine, that filly of his.’
Henry had been visiting Maud on Friggagatan and hadn’t had any breakfast. He was hungry and needed food. I didn’t intend to ask him any questions. We were supposed to respect each other’s personal privacy, that was the plan.
Henry’s breakfasts were noteworthy, to say the least. Health-food nuts, calorie counters and vegetarian followers of Are Waerland would have gasped and counted for hours, finally ending up with the very essence – in lengthy formulas – for a new suicide recipe if they were to use his ingredients. People like to picture bachelors of Henry’s age downing a cup of Nescafé made with lukewarm tap water while standing up and smoking a hasty cigarette. But that was definitely not the style of Henry le gourmand. He’d acquired the habit during his prolonged youth spent on the Continent. I don’t know whether his breakfasts should be pronounced Continental – and in that case, whether Danish, English, German or French – but they were in any case monumental.
Henry donned a greasy apron and at a furious pace, keeping time with the radio’s pop tunes, his bartender arms began flailing around the kitchen like drumsticks as he set the table with whatever his meagre pantry had to offer. First a couple of glasses of murky but nourishing guava juice to take the worst edge off his appetite. Then a couple of slices of home-baked French bread, toasted so that the salted butter would run properly, the Emmenthaler cheese would melt and the Wilkin & Sons gooseberry conserve would dissolve. Then a glass of carrot juice, half a packet of bacon and a fried egg with German cinnamon ketchup, washed down with plenty of orange juice. On top of all that he shovelled in a bowl of kefir with whipped sour cream and muesli, ending with a cup of chicory coffee crystals dissolved in hot, full-fat milk. The coffee had the strength that many vulgar marketing types would call ‘abortive’, and after a quick visit to the bathroom, he was back at the table to read the two morning papers, not for the sake of obtaining a balanced viewpoint but for the sheer pleasure of it.
I could probably put away only a quarter of all that food, but we did share the same passion for the daily papers. Henry and I both read at least four daily papers as well as a number of weeklies down at the Cigar Seller’s shop. This assiduous reading of the papers – and the chicory coffee, which he bought at an indoor marketplace – was something that Henry had picked up during his days in Paris. That was when he was the young Henri le boulevardier, running around the cafés and constantly in search of new discoveries. In some ways he was still the same as ever, and I never stopped being surprised at his persistent indignation and flood of emotion as soon as he started reading a daily paper. Henry was easily moved, and he would be quite beside himself if there was anything depressing in the paper. It wasn’t even a matter of the inevitable end of the world or the cold statement from the Institute for Futurology that humanity had at most a total of twenty-five years at its disposal before the final catastrophe. It might just be an article about a simple cat killer or a new influenza from the Far East. Henry would feel instantly blue and call on Zeus and Spinks to calm himself down, or he would take his temperature using a strange strip with liquid crystals. He would press the strip to his forehead and read the results in the mirror.
While reading the news and grumbling and complaining, he’d start wringing his hands in the deepest anguish at all the cruelty and evil in the world, then, as suddenly, the crisis would be over. It ran right off him like water off a duck’s back. For the eternally starry-eyed Henry, the prime minister was still Tage Erlander and the king was Gustav VI Adolf. Ola Ullsten was just some little fussbudget, and Carl XVI Gustaf was and would remain Tjabo, the crown prince. Moreover, he was extremely delighted with the crown prince
’s bird, Silvia, a damn fine pin-up girl, a real Nussika, as Astrid Lindgren’s character Karlsson-on-the-Roof would have said. Henry’s entire world view was harebrained and chaotic, and crumbling away.
One morning we read about a horrible accident on the roof of one of the skyscrapers in New York. A crowd of people was standing on the roof, waiting to be transported to Kennedy Airport. As the helicopter was about to land, a gust of wind seized hold of the aircraft, making the blades swing down towards the waiting crowd on the roof. Some people were sliced right down the middle, others were cut in half and some were quite simply decapitated. It was said that a head landed on the pavement several blocks away, making people faint. An Orthodox Jew had a vision, went mad and began tearing out his beard, while an enterprising businessman made the biggest coup of the year by immediately selling old binoculars to all the rubbernecks who wanted a look at the head.
All this proved to be too much for Henry.
‘Can’t you just picture it?!’ he shouted, pacing back and forth in the kitchen. ‘A head comes plummeting down to the pavement right at your feet! A decapitated head. What an expression on the face. I can damn well guarantee you that it clobbered Leo before it landed. I can damn well guarantee it because he’s always attracting all sorts of misfortune. You don’t know him, but I do.’
Henry’s face was turning bright red with excitement, and nothing short of a cold shower could calm him down. But then it all seemed to vanish into thin air.
‘Apropos Leo,’ he said quite calmly, ‘We have to decide on the weekly move. He’s playing chess by post with a fellow called Hagberg in Borås.’
Gentlemen (Klas Ostergren) (FO8) Page 6
