Gentlemen (Klas Ostergren) (FO8)

by Klas Ostergren

  ‘Surely you can’t expect me to believe all that,’ I said to Henry after he told me about the treasure, as excited as a little Boy Scout.

  It was a raw and blustery autumn day, and we were having our afternoon coffee in the sitting room. Henry had really warmed to his tale of the treasure- hunting project, and he said that what he had told me was strictly confidential, not to go beyond these walls, for our eyes only, man to man, and whatever else you might say. I had been entrusted with a confidence, but I had also been given occasion to wonder once again whether Henry Morgan might actually be out of his mind. It sounded undeniably like some story in a lousy children’s book.

  ‘You can’t really expect me to believe you,’ I repeated.

  ‘I’ll let you see the map if you like,’ said Henry, annoyed. ‘Though I’m not thrilled about showing it to anyone.’

  Looking more than a little miffed, he went to his room and came back at once with the map. It was in fact an extremely detailed illustration of the entire area, showing the various cellars, both real and hypothetical, and the passageways linking them to form an entire underground network. Somewhere in this maze there was supposed to be an opening to the correct passageway, the king’s escape route with the enormous hidden treasure.

  In silence I carefully studied the map. Henry sucked contentedly on a cigarette, and I could sense that he was thinking: I told you so, you bastard.

  ‘Huh,’ I said. ‘So how far have you got?’

  ‘Up to here,’ said Henry, setting his stubby index finger in about the middle of the neighbourhood, under the pump in the courtyard. ‘The passageway branches off in two directions, one heading west and the other one east. We’re going to continue east, to start with. We must be getting close to the church.’

  ‘Well, well,’ I said. ‘But it does seem a bit childish.’

  ‘Childish,’ repeated Henry. ‘Of course it’s childish. It’s fucking childish, the whole thing! It’s just as childish as watching a football match. But just wait until you go down there, then you won’t have even a second of doubt. I guarantee it!’

  Henry turned out to be right. Naturally I insisted on inspecting the excavations at once, and Henry couldn’t very well refuse. We went down to the cellar through the door in the hallway that led to the Philatelist’s flat. It was the door that Henry had opened on my first night there, when we’d been to the Zum Franziskaner and drunk a good deal and then got thirsty and wanted more. He had taken a bottle of whisky from the Philatelist, who sat there boozing with his buddies practically every night.

  We went through the Philatelist’s storeroom and down the stairs to the cellar. If you moved quietly, no one in the whole building would notice a thing. It was very cunningly arranged.

  From a small cellar room – filled with tools, shovels, pickaxes and hoes, sledgehammers and crowbars, as well as a wheelbarrow – the first passageway angled straight down into the depths. Several lamps produced a faint light, and it was cold, raw and damp. The passageway wound its way towards the fork that my guide had mentioned.

  ‘So here it branches off,’ said Henry when we reached the spot. ‘Are you scared?’

  ‘Scared?’

  ‘That it might cave in. It could actually collapse. We had a little cave-in last year. But nobody got hurt. As luck would have it, no one was down here. If you look closely you can see that they’re very old posts. This really is an ancient passageway.’

  I studied a thick post that supported a crossbeam and scraped its surface with a stone. The wood was grey all the way through and starting to rot. It smelled of mould and earth, like a swamp.

  ‘I believe you,’ I admitted. ‘This is definitely a fucking ancient passageway. But I do have my doubts about the gold.’

  ‘Well, all right,’ said Henry with a sigh. ‘Of course you can have your doubts. Of course you might wonder what we’re really doing down here. But what purpose will that serve? It’s important to try. You have to believe in something.’

  ‘But nobody’s working today?’

  ‘I think this is Greger’s day. But he might have something going on. He works for the Fence Queen.’

  ‘The woman who owns the Furniture Man shop?’

  ‘Yes. Nice bird. She’s Greger’s and Birger’s boss, and she could find gold with a bowie knife. All she has to do is touch something, and estates, junk and rubbish all turn to gold. An enterprising girl!’

  ‘Do they believe in all this?’

  ‘They’re behind it 100 per cent. Birger and Greger and I do most of the work. Wolf-Larsson and the Flask mostly sit around and drink down here. But something always gets done.’

  ‘But don’t they want to see some sort of results? It beats me how you can get them to keep believing in this stuff.’

  ‘Faith can turn mountains into rubble. But I’m not the one who’s making them dig. They’ve got faith in this, and I damn well do too. Besides, sometimes we have a party. At my invitation. We’re going to have one in November, by God; I forgot about that. I’ve got to rustle up some cash to pay for the party.’

  _______

  It’s difficult to say precisely what it was, but there was something that made me believe Henry. He always sounded so damned convincing as soon as he started talking about a project; his enthusiasm was infectious, like an extremely virulent disease. It was obvious that in Mr Morgan the business world had missed out on a salesman who could have had a brilliant future.

  Consequently, I did exactly as he said – I went down to Albert’s Menswear and bought a sturdy pair of overalls. Henry was right about the fact that wearing overalls made you a good whistler. There is something tranquil and harmonious about the pose that you automatically assume in a pair of overalls: your hands stuck deep in the pockets, snuff and cigarettes in other convenient pockets, while there’s plenty of room for tools and books and anything else you may want to have with you.

  It didn’t take long before I was fully assimilated into the ‘crew’. I was introduced to the Philatelist – a ratty little gentleman with bifocals, very knowledgeable in his field – and the whole crowd from the Furniture Man. The Fence Queen was also a veritable authority in her profession. She merely had to cast a swift glance at any object to estimate its market value down to the last öre, and she always got the price she asked. She moved about among all the junk, wearing a dress, her hair in a French roll, with an air of almost spiritual dignity.

  Greger was rather stupid and lacking in independence. He tried to copy Birger, who in this company was considered quite elegant – as far as it went. He looked like the toy-maker Gepetto in my childhood book about Pinocchio, although a bit younger. He too always told the truth.

  Birger was a real charmer. He kept up with fashion and he often went down to Albert’s Menswear to buy himself a new outfit as the spirit moved him. He was always freshly shaven, with his hair oiled and his clothes newly pressed. Birger was a well-mannered connoisseur and a fair poet, a third-rate rhyme-master. He rarely had time for customers.

  Wolf-Larsson and the Flask were also part of the project. Neither of them was particularly talkative; they simply went about their work without uttering a word. God only knows what they would have spent their time on otherwise. They were both retired.

  The autumn had really begun to take hold by the time I started working down in the passageway. My days seemed to take on a more structured routine. After an early breakfast, the morning was devoted to Art in the library with The Red Room. After much hesitation my pastiche had finally taken off; the analysis was shaping up, and I thought that certain unmistakable flashes of genius were emanating from my typewriter. Thanks to Licentiate Borg in Strindberg’s novel – his coarse and cynical penchant for speaking his mind, that is – I had found a natural catalyst. Borg already had an intense relationship with Arvid Falk, after all, and he could stand off to one side and comment on events in a natural way. Borg was absolutely invaluable, but I was still having a hard time accepting the idea that the story would work
without Olle Montanus, so I was sticking with the idea that his previously unknown son from the country village, a boy named Kalle Montanus, aged eighteen, had to be lying asleep on a kitchen bench in the neighbourhood taken over by squatters. It was unthinkable to write a Stockholm story without including the rebels, the so-called counter-citizens. Arvid was just going to have to tear himself away from his dreary schoolmistress and abandon himself to uninhibited bohemianism, maybe in the company of a gypsy girl from Mullvaden. That sounded brilliant.

  Well, one page gave birth to another, the book had finally started to flow, and my publisher, Torsten Franzén, sounded very pleased, although a bit stressed. After a couple of hours of diligent work in the library during those clear, lofty autumn mornings, it would be time for lunch. We would go to Costa’s lunch bar on Bellmansgatan, making use of Henry’s inexhaustible supply of luncheon vouchers. Having promised never to ask where the vouchers came from, I still don’t know, even today.

  After lunch there would be several hours of toil down in the passageway. We often worked alone; it could easily get a bit crowded down there. We hacked our way forward through mud and sand and dirt by turns. The work could quickly become a bit monotonous and boring, but you could always dream about what you were going to do with the money.

  Then it would be time for dinner, and we took turns cooking. Henry was a real wizard with food, and he had at his disposal a considerable library of cookbooks – everything from exotic Balinese delicacies to simple fare for Swedish treasure hunters.

  After dinner we were generally rather tired, the physical and mental labour having taken its toll. We would play some billiards, watch TV, read a good book, or converse. Henry took his stories from the Continent while I – who wasn’t nearly as worldly or experienced as Mr Morgan – was given advice about how The Red Room of today ought to be furnished.

  We had undeniably made a success of things – we had arranged our life precisely the way life should be arranged. It was a question of a balance between body and soul. Without doubt, the only thing lacking was women.

  Artists are sensitive souls, eternal gypsies. Henry Morgan was no exception. With one stroke his grand piano could be out of tune; not only that, it could be totally unplayable. It was the worst grand piano in the whole damn world, and how was he supposed to be able to reach the top echelons with that swine of an instrument? Even a deaf person would vomit at the mere sight of it, in the opinion of the sensitive musician.

  This scene was played out at regular intervals, and then Henry would head down to the cellar to dig his way out of the worst of his rage. He could be gone for almost an hour and then come back even more annoyed, if that were possible. There might be a boulder in the way that had to be pried loose, and for that he’d need reinforcements.

  ‘Don’t bury yourself down there right now,’ I said on one of these occasions, trying to sound light-hearted. ‘Let’s pop over to the Europa and box for a while. I’m sure that’ll help.’

  ‘Good idea,’ said Henry with a sigh. ‘This day is cursed, I could see that in my horoscope. Nothing but non-stop obstacles.’

  The depressed-but-always-psychic Morgan had seen very clearly that this day would offer adversity, but taking the offensive is always the best method of defence. We would be defiant, and so we decided to top off the day (a Friday), and the whole week, by going into town for a little dancing. It seemed a great idea.

  We were determined to be in good spirits. We packed up our sports gear and walked down Hornstull and Långholmsgatan over to the Europa Athletic Club. It was a Friday afternoon, and the boys were taking it rather easy – all except Gringo.

  ‘Hi, girls!’ bellowed Henry, as usual.

  Everyone except Gringo, the uncrowned king, said hello, and Willis came out of his office to have a little chat about Ali vs Spinks. He never got tired of talking about that match, and of course he had his own theories about Ali’s strategy. He would make comparisons with Joe Louis, who had also had to abdicate in 1949, undefeated, because that was the only thing Ali could do in the current situation.

  Gringo, on the other hand, was in a fighting mood that day. He was a real ‘Hotspur’ just then, sparring with Juan, who had a fight in a couple of days and needed a good workout.

  ‘Easy! Easy!’ shouted Willis. ‘Take it easy, Gringo! Juan’s got a match on Monday; he’s got to look pretty. Save your ammunition!’

  Gringo was at least two stone heavier than the little Yugoslav, who looked like a Spaniard. Hotspur had a terrifying right hook which he wasn’t really supposed to use when he was sparring. It was a lethal weapon that had knocked out at least twenty-five boxers in the past.

  The scene was set for revenge that day. Henry had really taught Gringo a lesson a while back, but he’d had so much going on – as he always said to Willis – that he hadn’t had time to do much training lately.

  Gringo wanted Henry to get in the ring, and Henry couldn’t very well refuse. He muttered something about being out of shape while the featherweight guys crowded round one corner of the boxing ring. Sure enough, Henry was headed for an eye-popping beating. Gringo had worked himself up and instantly went on the offensive. Henry, countering very mechanically, barely managed to avoid being beaten.

  Afterwards – Henry said he’d had enough after two rounds – I thought the man would be absolutely furious after a whole day of constant adversity. But my fears turned out to be groundless. Henry was in excellent spirits, in spite of the fact that his whole body must have been bruised and aching after being worked over by Gringo’s insane right hook.

  ‘Thanks, Gringo,’ said Henry, sticking out his red fist. ‘You pounded the devil and all hell right out of me.’

  Gringo was satisfied and elated after his legitimate revenge and allowed himself a handshake and a smile.

  After a couple of hours at the Europa, we headed home by way of the state off-licence. We bought ourselves a couple of bottles of wine, a grilled chicken and some big potatoes to bake in the oven.

  It was already dark and gloomy by the time we reached home. The huge flat could seem gloomy enough in the daytime, but at twilight it was as desolate, silent and oppressive as a medieval castle. It was essential to go round and turn on a countless number of small lamps to shatter that depressing, disheartening chiaroscuro.

  ‘Night exists in this flat as a perpetual possibility,’ Henry had said. ‘It’s just a matter of drawing the curtains and pretending, that’s all we need do …’

  He sounded a bit uneasy or out-of-sorts.

  _______

  The evening was shaping up nicely. After dinner we started sprucing ourselves up for a night filled with festivitas.

  ‘We need to shave,’ said Henry, ‘and make a decent job of it. That’s very important …’

  So we shaved, and did it properly. Henry always turned these ordinary procedures into acts of finesse and sophistication. He was forever talking about the Art of Cooking, the Art of Cleaning and the Art of Shaving. It was pure drama to watch Henry shave with soap, shaving brush, straight razor and strop.

  Then it was time to put on our ‘confirmation’ suits. Henry chose a dark flannel outfit while I took out my old magical black suit. I borrowed a noose from Henry’s collection, and in the end I looked quite presentable.

  Henry had decided that we should go down to Baldakinen. He said it was a respectable joint. I had no idea how to conduct myself, but he assured me that was no problem.

  ‘The girls in the Pillar Hall are smart and experienced. They know exactly what to do. You don’t have a thing to worry about,’ said Morgan.

  We took the underground downtown, strolled along Vasagatan to Norra Bantorget, and arrived at Baldakinen right on time. I had nothing to worry about, according to Henry, so I wasn’t worried. We were in top form, and my legs started moving as soon as I heard the stamping on the dance floor.

  We got a decent table in the midst of the sea of people, and we each ordered a whisky.

  ‘We’ve definitely
earned this, Klasa,’ said Henry as he lit a cigarette with a somewhat exaggerated flourish of refinement. ‘We can look back on a week of work well done.’

  ‘I’ve churned out a lot,’ I said. ‘At least twenty-five pages.’

  ‘Things are going well for me too,’ he said. ‘It was lucky that you moved in with me, don’t you think? It’s worked out perfectly.’

  ‘I agree,’ I said. ‘I’ve never lived as splendidly as I do now.’

  ‘Watch out, my boy,’ Henry said suddenly, giving me a kick under the table. ‘Pretty soon it’s going to be ladies’ choice. You’re going to be asked to dance by a black-haired woman in her forties wearing a blue Charleston dress.’

  ‘You’re out of your mind!’

  ‘Don’t turn around,’ said Henry. ‘Do not turn around! She’s got her eye on you, her little lamb, her quarry. Soon she’ll have her claws in you. I guarantee it! Bet you fifty kronor!’

  ‘Done!’ I said. ‘Fifty kronor!’

  We clinked our whisky glasses and surveyed the room.

  ‘Oh yes, by God, have a look. You’re all set. She’s already turned down a fat accountant. She’s just sitting there, waiting. I wonder what I should do. I’m too old to pin my hopes on the ladies’ choice.’

  By now my curiosity was being sorely tested, and I was forced to pretend that my neck was hurting and turn to get a look at that woman in the blue Charleston dress. It was true that she had her dark eyes fixed on me, and she looked quite stylish. She gave me a smile and at the same time Henry kicked me under the table.

  ‘Fifty kronor!’ he muttered with satisfaction.

  The dance band was pounding out its steady, comforting ‘dunka-dunk’ beat, and people were jumping around on the dance floor in transports of joy. I was feeling a little nervous because I hadn’t danced in a very long time. Henry had his radar turned up high and was homing in on practically every woman in the place. It was rather slim pickings, and the more attractive- looking girls had already been claimed by enterprising salesmen wearing checked jackets with enormous knots in their ties tucked under their chins like big bread rolls.