Gentlemen (Klas Ostergren) (FO8)

by Klas Ostergren

  ‘Oh right, that guy.’

  ‘He’s a chief accountant and chess fanatic, and apparently he has games going on in countries over at least half the globe. I think that’s all the man lives for. On the other hand, he’s the only bastard that Leo even pays much attention to, and now that he’s away I have to keep the show going. I’m a damned terrible chess player.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘I thought as much,’ muttered Henry. ‘Dammit all. Oh well, two are better than one. So let’s go in and decide on the next move.’

  We went into the sitting room. Next to the TV was a beautiful table made of jacaranda wood. We pulled up a couple of chairs and sat down at the table. Henry read out the brilliant move by Hagberg, the chess fanatic and citizen of Borås. Then we moved his black knight and found ourselves in a very grim situation.

  ‘God only knows what I had in mind before,’ said Henry with embarrassment. ‘By the way, Hagberg has no idea that I’ve been playing for Leo. If he knew, he’d probably die of scorn. He has only raised objections twice so far.’

  ‘This is hopeless,’ I said, discouraged.

  ‘Nothing is hopeless, my dear Klasa,’ said Henry. ‘Have you got a smoke?’

  We each lit a cigarette and stared ourselves blind at that damned black knight. But after a little fretting and grumbling we agreed that the rook was our only chance in this situation. Henry typed up the move – his childish handwriting had made the accountant suspicious – and then put the letter in the hall, where outgoing post went.

  After that we each went our own way, retreating to our separate sections of the flat. Henry went off to practise on the piano while I settled down in the library to read a cheap paperback of The Red Room, making liberal use of a red pen. I was determined to do a proper analysis of the task.

  That’s how the morning hours often passed, until we would meet in the hall before lunch. There Henry might pull out a drawer in the bureau, which inevitably contained a thick booklet of luncheon vouchers, the kind many Swedish companies provide their employees with.

  ‘Look but don’t ask any questions,’ he might say, handing me a booklet of luncheon vouchers. ‘One booklet a week, no questions asked and no alcohol.’

  ‘On my word of honour,’ I was allowed to swear.

  We often went down to Costa’s lunch place on Bellmansgatan. There the whole gang showed up at lunchtime: the Fence Queen and Greger and Birger from the Furniture Man, several gallery owners, the Cigar Seller and the Flask. The mood was excellent, as was the food, which the tourist guides would no doubt rate with a single star.

  _______

  In October I regained my identity, or so they claimed. The police investigation and the insurance company’s own reconnoitring had led to approximately the same propitious conclusions in the case of Klas Östergren, a.k.a. ‘the Burgled’. A lively agent from the insurance company rang me up to tell me that I would be receiving a partial payment of 10,000 kronor for the time being. I also heard from the police authorities, and I was able to collect new identity papers, a passport, an ID card and other documents to replace those that had disappeared from my home and no doubt ended up on the black market.

  A certain share of the insurance money went to back taxes and other pressing debts, but there was still a tidy sum left over. We organised a celebration. There were lobsters available at the indoor marketplace. Henry went off to see a shopkeeper he knew and came back with two real whoppers, alive and black as dung, aggressive and with furious antennae whipping back and forth in the little wooden box.

  Henry made a broth with vegetables, beer and spices and then boiled the lobsters, which instantly turned bright red. Around seven that evening we were ready. I had set an inviting table with elegant china and tall crystal glasses along with a couple of bottles of Ruffino Toscano Bianco, dry and cool.

  We ate the lobsters warm with a couple of pats of butter and toast. We ate in silent reverence, because warm lobster, perfectly prepared, is one of the best things this world has to offer. Afterwards we had coffee in the sitting room, each of us dozing in an armchair by the fire. The idea was that we would recharge and then go out on the town – we had been living a miserly and dreary existence for some time now – but the delicacies took their toll on our strength, and the Italian wine didn’t make us nearly as Italian as we had hoped.

  Henry put on an old jazz record, but that didn’t make us any livelier either. I longed more than ever for an old rock album – it didn’t matter which one as long as it rocked and got me going again. But all my records had been stolen, and for Henry rock and pop had never existed. It might be something he would sit and sing along with in a pub, but that was all. I had now been living in his flat for a month, and I was starting to miss my music. Henry claimed that I was going through withdrawal. He was going to get me to listen to real music.

  He suggested that we write a song together. It would be about two gentlemen, a showy, peppy little tune with a refrain that stayed with you, a perfect hit.

  If the girls leave you flat

  And they don’t have a five or a ten

  Then forget about that

  We’ll dream ourselves fat, we are gentlemen

  That’s what Henry dictated, because he was no stranger to that type of handiwork. It’s what the average serious composer prefers to regard as a type of prostitution. But with his great art, which he regularly talked about, Henry was absolutely uncompromising. He wasn’t about to sell out.

  However, we didn’t get very far with ‘Gentlemen’ that evening. Nor did we behave like gentlemen. A cool saxophone brought all our impulses down to the ground, and we sank even deeper into our armchairs, if that were possible. It was raining outside, and neither of us had any further desire to lay waste to the town.

  ‘I don’t even feel like this is a celebration,’ I yawned.

  ‘Me too,’ said Henry drowsily in English, using incorrect grammar. ‘I think we ate a little too fast. Lobster has to be eaten slowly. And we should have invited some women over, then we would have pulled ourselves together.’

  ‘I’ve got nothing left in me,’ I said.

  ‘Me too,’ Henry repeated, still incorrectly. ‘Sometimes life is just so incomparably tedious.’

  It remained a mystery how two lively and talented boxers could fade so easily on an evening after a lobster dinner and a few bottles of dry Italian white wine. But at least it wasn’t work that had worn us out.

  Keeping a secret requires a certain technique, maybe even a certain talent. But what’s beyond all doubt is that Henry Morgan lacked both the talent and the technique. Some time in late October I was initiated into Henry’s Secret, which explained a great deal.

  He had no job; he was an artist, after all, exactly like Olle Montanus in The Red Room, and at times he could end up totally destitute. But he always managed to find a way out. That was how it had been ever since he’d returned home from the Continent. He had his small inheritance – an appanage which arrived once a month and was strictly controlled by an attorney’s office – and occasionally he would sell a few valuable but unreadable books from his library. Now and then he would take some odd job in the city or down at the harbour. Everything always worked out one way or other.

  But strangely enough, he was such a damned energetic and enterprising man, in the very prime of his life. He roared around in that flat clad in a pair of filthy overalls, and he didn’t seem the least bit like a sensitive pianist practising for the breakthrough of his career.

  Henry had plans to hire the Södra Theatre for a night to present his major work for solo piano: ‘Europa, Disintegrating Fragments’. He had been working on it for close to fifteen years, and he thought it was high time to make his debut in a serious fashion. I actually agreed with him, and the idea of hiring the Södra Theatre wasn’t a bad plan at all. The phenomenal Hungarian had rented the Dramaten Theatre a number of years earlier, and it was a big success. Why should Henry Morgan expect anything less? It would only cost four
or five thousand kronor, including staff, and there were always a few days available in the spring. Invitations had to be sent out – in some fancy, mincing typeface, as he said – to the entire Music Establishment, which meant critics and producers and arrangers. How could it possibly fail?

  The plan was rather ambitious, but beneath the clouds there was a world thirsting for culture. It took some snazzy efforts to get noticed at all in that field. I supported Henry 100 per cent. He had the whole piece scribbled out in an enormous notebook and all he needed, he claimed, was to practise a couple of hours each day to polish the subtler nuances. But it looked as if the actual amount of time he practised was at most fifteen minutes; then came a clutch of pop tunes, a coffee break, lunch, more coffee and endless dashing around the flat.

  It was this endless dashing around and the loud slamming of doors that made me both dubious and curious. Henry was always going around – during work hours, that is – in his filthy overalls, claiming that he could whistle better when he wore them.

  ‘A pair of overalls with suspenders and button-fly instils harmony,’ he said. ‘Try it yourself and you’ll see!’

  No sooner said than done. I jumped into his warm overalls, which, granted, were a bit too big, but I had to admit they were extremely comfortable. Of course I had done work wearing overalls before, but I’d never imagined that you would automatically start to whistle just by putting overalls on – but now it seemed quite natural. And they do make you whistle well, no matter what aria you attempt.

  ‘Damn,’ I said, ‘I think I’ll buy myself a pair.’

  ‘Of course you should,’ said Henry, putting them back on. ‘You can get them over at Albert’s Menswear. Quite cheap. They also give you the feeling that you’re doing something useful. You become a little more of a cultural worker wearing overalls!’

  We were in total agreement about the matter, but the question remained: why did his clothing end up getting so damned filthy, even downright muddy, whenever he went out for a while in the middle of the day? As far as I knew, there was no sandbox down on the street.

  Henry was fully aware of how puzzled I was, and it was now, at the end of October, after I’d been living with him for about a month, that he thought I had passed muster, so to speak. I could be initiated into Henry’s Secret. In his opinion I had proven myself to be trustworthy, loyal and highly reliable. It was high time for me to be admitted to the circle of the chosen few, the initiated. On top of all that, I knew how to work, how to put my back into it; that was something he had undoubtedly noticed.

  _______

  It was an amazing story, to say the least. Henry had spent a large part of his youth in Europe, on the Continent. He had deserted from his military service and gone into exile. His adventurous exile lasted all of five years, or so he claimed, and didn’t come to an end until the rebellious spring of ’68. At that time he was in Paris, in the very thick of events, as always, when he received a letter from home, from his mother Greta back in Sweden. It brought news of a death. In the midst of the revolutions, old Grandfather Morgonstjärna had plodded up the long staircase over on Hornsgatan – the newfangled lift never penetrated his consciousness – and then collapsed on the landing with a ruptured heart.

  Henry was of course summoned home from his proud exile – the military authorities had forgotten all about him long ago – to attend the burial at the family grave in Skog Cemetery. Old Morgonstjärna was deeply mourned, and the remaining members of the WWW Club were all present, contributing a magnificent wreath. The burial took place in the utmost silence, according to the wishes of the deceased.

  There was also a last will and testament. The surviving members of the family received their allotted shares, and it was with the greatest curiosity that Henry received his. It consisted of two envelopes. One was purely a financial matter, consisting of a monthly allowance of fifteen hundred kronor ‘so that my grandson Henry Morgan might cultivate his music without regard for market conditions or insipid, modern-day circumstance …’ as the old man expressed it. The money was to be paid out by an attorney’s office, and it was linked to the cost-of-living index and so slyly calculated that the heir would never be able either to squander his inheritance or to live a life of luxury.

  The second envelope was even more surprising, if that were possible. It was labelled ‘The Crew’ in pen, and ‘For Henry Morgan’ in pencil. Perhaps the old man was uncertain right up to the very end who should be entrusted with the very special contents of that envelope.

  Henry found a bundle of yellowed papers, one of them particularly fragile; it was faded, much-handled and soiled. It was an old map. He read through the story about how one night the old dandy – who was a devoted gambler and had won many things, not just the fine Chippendale furniture from Ernst Rolf – was playing poker with several gentlemen from the WWW (Well-travelled, Well-read, Well-heeled) Club. They were ‘university-educated men and scholars’. One of these gentlemen was evidently a historian, and he had done research on the neighbourhood of Rosendal Större, where Morgonstjärna lived. The historian had made some astonishing discoveries. He had reconstructed the mysterious old Bellman passageways, and via a number of other historians he had found a map to hidden treasure.

  There were multitudes of myths about the Bellman passageways. Everyone who lived in the Rosendal Större district knew someone else whose brother had been down in the passageways trying to uncover their mysteries. But if you asked where this brother, this eyewitness, was today, you would be met with a look of horror, a sigh and utter silence, or with slippery evasions. It was said that in the forties an adventurer had gone searching through the passageways, through the old, now-razed building on Bellmansgatan. Enticed by his pernicious hunger for knowledge he went further and further underground until he was finally swallowed up by the earth. After a week his supporters above ground started getting worried, so they sent down a doctor and a nurse, who both met the same fate. In more recent times, after the so- called Bellman building had fallen into disrepair, the cellars were used as a sanctuary for devil worshippers whose bloody rituals spread horror through all of Söder. A number of vagabonds and other drifters had also lived there until the building was finally torn down in the mid seventies.

  But the historian-member of the WWW Club had a different theory about the Bellman passageways. According to him, the story went like this: King Adolf Fredrik ordered an escape route to be constructed for himself and his family from the Royal Palace. He anticipated a siege against Stockholm, though it was unclear who the enemy would be, and he had ordered an underground passageway to be dug beneath all of Gamla Stan. This escape route was to be linked to a passageway under Södra Malmen, though how this would be done was never actually established; the historian assumed that the construction of the Stockholm underground railway made any investigation virtually impossible.

  But – and this was where the Rosendal Större neighbourhood came into the picture – the passageway would by necessity lead to the area around Mariakyrka and the present-day Mariatorget. Located there, in addition to a warehouse with a stable under constant guard, were a full assortment of horses, wagons and other military and civilian equipment. This was the district where old Mr Morgonstjärna lived and where Henry Morgan and I now resided.

  The gambler-historian had bet a good deal of money, and in the end even his secret map became part of the poker game that night. And then he lost it all, and quite rightly so. He had apparently been researching the matter as a hobby, more or less, but no one found any reason to doubt his claims. Upon closer examination, the whole thing sounded like some sort of childish dream, but the fact that the scholar and poker-game loser committed suicide after very honourably relinquishing his map and notes, seemed to acknowledge a certain underlying truth. He had been planning to make a big killing on the whole thing.

  The point was that at a certain underground spot along this now presumably filled-in escape route, there was supposedly a grotto where the king had deposited
a large number of valuables. He would never have been able to flee the royal palace with more than his personal regalia, and so he had stored, in advance, a number of chests filled with gold and riches.

  After Morgonstjärna the gambler had acquired this valuable treasure map, he began, slowly but surely, to develop a treasure-hunting crew in the building. Down in the cellar were a number of unused rooms, and one in particular actually revealed a walled-up doorway in the foundation that could be dated back to the seventeenth century. Tapping on the doorway had revealed a hollow space behind it. Late one night in October 1961, Mr Morgonstjärna started knocking down the wall, and to his great satisfaction he found a passageway leading straight down into the depths. A parallel to the Berlin Wall might easily be drawn – during periods of unrest, people often concern themselves with walls of various types.

  But back then, in 1961, Mr Morgonstjärna was already an old, worn-out man. He needed help, and he actually managed to rope a number of underlings into the project. They set up a form of limited partnership, and by taking a vow of absolute silence they could buy a part of the presumed find, the gold treasure that was hundreds of years old. The capital they invested was their own labour.

  Seven years later, that is, when Henry’s paternal grandfather departed this life and left behind his strange testament, the ‘crew’ had grown to include half a dozen people. In addition to the old man and dandy himself, there was the Philatelist, Greger and Birger from the Furniture Man, the Flask and Wolf-Larsson. By then they had dug their way approximately five and a half yards due south, seven and a half yards due east, where the passageway turned 180 degrees, and continued due west. No gold had been found, but nobody doubted that they were on the right track, because there had been no lack of auspicious signs.

  _______