Gentlemen (Klas Ostergren) (FO8)

by Klas Ostergren

  In the preface it said that no one was predicting that war would come, but Verner paid no attention to that. In his morbid imagination he had already decided that war was definitely on its way. If War Comes was absolutely essential reading, in other words. Verner read aloud from the war catechism and demonstrated various alarm signals. He whistled the emergency siren with repeated short blasts, a thirty-second pause followed by another long, continuous signal. He whistled the air-raid siren’s suggestive low tone with its rising and falling pitch, and he whistled the ‘all clear’.

  The lecture continued with the section on the spirit of resistance and vigilance. Under the heading ‘Vigilance’, there was a picture of a scumbag wearing a hat and trench coat and looking typically sly and crafty. He was listening to the conversation of a couple of military types; he may have been from Russia. Leo could think of at least five men he knew from the neighbourhood who might be spies. There were also a lot of paragraphs containing appeals to keep quiet about things that might be secret, to be extremely vigilant during times of unrest, and to alert the police as soon as possible if any suspicions should arise regarding espionage or sabotage. We’ll keep that in mind, thought the two bookworms. They wouldn’t fail to report even their own fathers – if they’d had fathers that is.

  After these important appeals came a couple of horrid sections on seeking shelter during an attack, protecting yourself from radioactivity, and protecting yourself against biological warfare and nerve gas. The pictures showed various types of shelters, men wearing hoods and turned-up collars that were supposed to protect them against radioactivity, and men wearing gas masks with their heads covered, making them look like draped badgers.

  The last section of If War Comes dealt with the resistance movement, and that was where Verner envisioned a place for himself when war came. ‘Active participation in the resistance movement requires courage and nerves of steel’, it said. Verner was positive that he possessed both courage and nerves of steel. Above all, he was extremely meticulous with his gear. Just like a real officer, Verner enumerated what should be included in the pack: a blanket or sleeping bag, underwear, socks, bed linen, towels, wash things, toilet paper, handkerchiefs, a woollen sweater, shoes, a plate, a cup, cutlery, a sheath knife, a pocket torch and matches, as well as food for at least two days.

  Leo had actually managed to put together most of these things, and Greta had also packed enough food for at least a week. Verner sounded pleased. Although he was a real pro, of course, and on top of everything else, he had stuffed in a pair of rubber boots, a change of clothes, a thermos, some writing paper, a battery-operated radio and a plastic tarpaulin in case of a downpour. Verner was convinced that he was acting like a true hero, and he got along well with the other, middle-aged heroes who were also taking this whole thing about the war deadly seriously. It was just such a boor of a hero that Henry ended up running into, a man who forced the young lover to go all the way out to Hässelby even though he had planned to get off at Odenplan and wanted no part in the whole operation.

  Henry also met up with Leo and Verner. He ran into the two distinguished soldiers at the underground station just as he was about to catch the first train back to the city, where he would finally see Maud again. Verner and Leo thought that Henry was a quitter. They reminded him that every message urging surrender was false.

  ________

  Every message urging surrender was false, but there wasn’t much resistance offered on that sunny Sunday. The boys were back home by evening, and they felt a bit disappointed, or at least Verner did. It hadn’t really gone the way he had imagined. He had hoped for some cannons, smoke, bombs and grenades, exactly the way it would be in military service. But they hadn’t even seen any cannon smoke. People had played football and grilled sausages, exactly as if it were a sports day at school.

  Leo had quite a different perspective. He never imagined himself being as brave as Verner, who planned to join the resistance movement. That required courage and nerves of steel, neither of which Leo possessed.

  On the night after the evacuation exercise, he came down with a fever. He felt dizzy and lay in bed moaning for a long time. Greta put cold, wet washcloths on his ankles and wrists – she had decided that this would help, just as it had helped the backward boys on Storm Island. Leo raved, keeping her awake until morning. Henry stayed away, just as he always did when he was needed. Greta cursed the war and Henry and the whole world for everything that she was forced to endure.

  That night was presumably also a turning point for Leo Morgan. The war had never been a serious threat until this unbearable night when, in the hallucinations of delirium, it appeared with all its loathsome evil. Suddenly the war had become a reality.

  He went looking for the little booklet If War Comes – it was next to the phone books in the hallway – and read it in secret when he returned from school and was home alone. In the booklet war was something that might happen at any moment; it was not merely something that involved the heroic kings of five hundred years ago. On the first Monday of every month the sirens on the roofs were tested, and he realised that the war would no doubt begin on the first Monday of some month, because no one in the whole city took the sirens seriously. What a terrifying realisation! Leo felt so inexorably alone with his unfathomable fear.

  Eventually he memorised all of If War Comes, and he undoubtedly knew it better even than Verner. Some of the pictures, in all their simplicity, had a particular hold on him. Among them was the picture of the mother helping her children dress as the siren sounds. The mother is putting shoes on one child as the other child, fully dressed, waits next to the luggage. They are on their way down to the air-raid shelter. Leo had no idea where he was supposed to go when war came; he didn’t know where the air-raid shelter was, or even if one existed. This dilemma taught him the most profound brand of terror.

  Fear and terror established themselves very quickly in Leo Morgan’s early poetry. The Swedish teacher with the penchant for the Old Testament had created a relationship of trust between himself and Leo the prodigy. Leo was constantly giving him samples of new poems. The teacher told his favourite pupil about things that the boy didn’t know – certain points in poems that only an experienced interpreter would notice. When he was allowed to see the poem ‘Excursion’, he realised at once what Leo was actually talking about: that beneath the ethereal membrane of Nature Romanticism lay a nearly panic-stricken terror about the defenceless fragility of human beings. People had arranged things so badly for themselves that they had to dig bunkers and deep caves in the mountains in order to have even a small chance of surviving. Human beings were their own worst enemy.

  The teacher – an infinitely grey man who spread a sweetish scent of sweat all around him – eventually came up with an idea. By now he had seen so many excellent poems that he thought Leo ought to send them to a publisher. He should put together a proper manuscript. The teacher himself would give him a letter of recommendation, vouching for Leo’s familiarity with both biology and botany, as well as his knowledge of great literature, from the Edda to Ekelöf. His claim that Leo was particularly well-versed in classic literature was a complete lie. The remarkable thing about his poetic vein was that it never had to make its way across foreign regions to attain strength and auspicious heights. Leo Morgan wrote in accordance with his own mind; he didn’t need mentors. He would never become an epigone. That was something he had decided long before he learned how that word was actually pronounced. But to steal a phrase or two from the old masters was a different story. That was something every writer had to do.

  THE SECRET AGENT

  (Henry Morgan, 1963–64)

  Here begins an adventure, as we might have good reason to promise. It’s going to be a real adventure, a terrible and beautiful dream that would last for five long years and would not be lacking in elements of the most singular kind.

  Henry Morgan was on his way to Paris, but to reach Paris he had to travel by way of Copenhagen, and from
Copenhagen it was not at all certain that he would ever make it to Paris. In reality, Henry was on his way to Paris for what seemed an eternity.

  People would latch onto this strange boy who was in the process of becoming a man, this twenty-year-old youth in the odd clothing, an anachronistic gentleman, all alone in the wide world. People would try to hold on to him, use him for everything imaginable; yet to their everlasting disappointment, they would see him disappear and flee, always on his way to Paris.

  Henry the goliard, the student of the Art of Life, always had a clear vision of Paris before him. He was fleeing for his life, escaping something vague that resembled a judgement, a destiny. During his long flight, he started to compose something that, fifteen years later, was like nothing else, a suite of music written by a wild man whom no academy or school had ever managed to discipline properly. He would call his magnum opus ‘Europa, Disintegrating Fragments’. And I assume that it was the greatest realisation he would ever have when, with sudden and merciless insight, he envisioned the entire work in his mind’s eye. Perhaps it was also the dream of this work that kept him on his feet during those long years in exile that were by turns perilous and extremely dreary. He was both a Gesualdo and a Chopin, as someone once said – possibly he said it himself.

  ________

  The silence of the Quakers was absolute, massive, like the echo left behind by a monumental whispering. Their breathing rippled as rhythmically as the sea. A dozen people were lost in their own breath, meditating in an ocean of silence and stillness.

  Henry realised that he too had to meditate, although he didn’t fully understand what that entailed. He couldn’t help noticing how the features of Tove’s face seemed to be erased as she closed her eyes and became lost in this strange cogitation. He couldn’t help looking at Fredrik and Dine, who shared the same last name and similar clothing, who could be either spouses or twins. But he was having a hard time concentrating. The light, the warm sun of early summer that came flooding through the windows, was changing little dust motes into indolent fireflies that were not dancing but floating through the cold, sacred room on the top floor of the building facing Ørsted Park.

  But soon calm descended on him. His own breathing filled him with peace, and he could meditate in the sense that he was able to put his thoughts in order; they began following a sensible chronology, a searching and straightforward order. The silence became a piece of innocent, white stationery.

  Henry Morgan had now been in Copenhagen for a couple of weeks. Everything had gone well for him. He had hitchhiked down to Helsingborg and left Sweden as a deserter and someone who had previously been reported to the police for assault and battery by a man with the initials W.S. But he wasn’t feeling guilty; he felt justified because he had acted without hesitation, in accordance with his own inner voice. He was psychic and believed in his visions.

  He arrived in Copenhagen and didn’t know where to go. He wanted to find Bill from the Bear Quartet; they were supposed to be playing at the Montmartre jazz club. With only a thousand kronor, he wouldn’t be able to last long on his own. But Bill disappointed him; the Bear Quartet’s gig at the Montmartre had been cancelled. Yet Henry was blessed with what is often called luck, though it mostly has to do with seizing the opportunities that are offered to all mortals, although few take advantage of them.

  Henry had heard a great deal about Copenhagen, of course. The Jazz Baron had talked about the city, about the jazz clubs, about the pubs, about the Nyhavn district and about Tivoli. Bill had told him about Montmartre and Louisiana, and he’d read aloud from Angels Blow Hard by Sture Dahl-ström.

  Henry took lodgings in a small hotel near Østerport and found his way to the Montmartre, the Scandinavian Mecca for jazz fanatics. He heard Dexter Gordon play bebop the way few dared to play after Parker. There Henry ended up sitting next to Tove. It was crowded and smoky and noisy, and everyone was sitting close together. No one could help noticing him: a young, vigorous Swede wearing a tweed jacket and tie, holding two bottles of beer in one hand.

  Henry took a cigarette out of the case with the initials W.S. engraved on the lid.

  ‘You seem very well-to-do,’ said the girl sitting next to him. ‘Wouldn’t you like to offer me a cigarette?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Henry magnanimously. ‘Although you’re mistaken if you think I’m rich.’

  The girl gave him a big smile, revealing wine-stained teeth. She was the girl named Tove, and later that night she stated with great certainty that they needed Henry – they needed him. ‘We need you,’ she said. ‘You’re the right person,’ she said over and over in various contexts. ‘I’ve never been wrong before. You’re the right man for us.’

  Hearing that you’re exactly the right man in the right place is not a bad thing when you’re actually a deserter.

  Tove talked to Henry about Dexter Gordon. She had listened closely to the great saxophonist, and she knew a lot about music. She was a couple of years older than Henry, and she told him that she lived with several others in a big flat near Ørsted Park. Tove was a Quaker. Henry had only vague notions about what Quakers were, but when Tove started talking about Fox with his hat and the silent meetings, he remembered that Mr Lans had spoken warmly about Quakers, about the saint who performed miracles with the wounded in the Great War, and so on. To Henry’s ears, everything to do with Quakers sounded very positive, and he liked Tove at once. He tried to sense whether he felt anything more for her but came to the realisation that he probably ought to leave those kinds of emotions alone for a while.

  ‘You’re exactly the right person,’ Tove went on, and Henry began to feel more and more as if that were true. But for the time being he didn’t care about what being the right person might mean. He had already proclaimed himself an impossible subject for conversion to anything. But Tove was not interested in proselytising.

  The music whipped into a frenzy. Henry drank a good many strong Danish beers and smoked far too many cigarettes. By the time it was well past midnight, he had forgotten all his good intentions and decided that he was head over heels in love with Tove. By this time he had learned a tremendous amount about the Quakers’ contributions to world history and he was talking a mile a minute. He was in his element.

  Tove had become even more convinced, if that were possible, that Henry Morgan was a true find. And in the small hours of the morning, when he confessed that he had actually deserted from the Swedish army, the only thing she could do was burst into tears of joy. Henry the deserter received a kiss on the lips.

  They strolled home, arm in arm, through that early summer morning in Copenhagen. They laughed at the incredible story of his escape from the military, and Tove said that she was deeply impressed by his courage and his cunning. Henry was also quite taken by the solemn joy of the moment. He had made a find, and she had made a find, and everyone was content. That was exactly the way things should be in Copenhagen.

  As she had said, Tove lived in a large flat in an old dilapidated building near Ørsted Park. She shushed Henry as they went inside and tiptoed down a long hallway to her room. She lived very spartanly: a bed, a chest of drawers and a bookcase. That was all she owned. That was all she needed.

  He got no further with his meditative ruminations about his life on that day in the sunny, sacred room in the Quakers’ building. He had now been Tove’s accepted lover for the past couple of weeks; he was the right man for her. He was the right one for all of them. So said Fredrik and Dine with the same last name, and so said the entire Quaker family.

  ________

  Why Henry Morgan should be exactly the right person was not something he fully understood. But he had a hunch that something big was in the works. The Quakers in that house didn’t just sit around meditating. They were very active. Some were teachers or social workers, while others had completely conventional types of jobs, and yet they were Quakers.

  In early June Fredrik and Dine went out to the country, to a summer place at their disposal in Jutlan
d, right outside of Esbjerg. A week later Henry and Tove joined them. Henry thought it sounded promising. He could stay out there on the farm for free, all summer long if he liked. They also had plans for what he would be doing a little later in the autumn, but that was on ice for the time being.

  The farm in Jutland was very beautiful. It had a big, white brick house right on the coast. There were a hundred sheep, half a dozen cows and a few pigs. Fredrik, the Quaker father with the Rasputin beard, was a very practical man with a head for agriculture. The farm brought in a good income, and it was here that they were planning to settle permanently because Fredrik, being the prophet that he was, could already tell that the tremendous boom of prosperity that had swept over Europe would one day ebb away into a crisis.

  Henry was happy and grateful that they had taken him in even though the police were after him. He laboured and toiled day in and day out on the farm to show them his gratitude. His gratitude was evidently so deep and so great that over time all the work he did would, in principle, settle his debt. Before long he had repaired the fences, re-plastered the barn, laid a new floor, mucked out after the livestock and fixed so many things that the Quakers actually told him to take it easy.

  Henry took them at their word and tried to unwind. He took long walks out on the heath or along the coast, staring out at the sea. He swam and sunbathed but his body could find no real sense of peace until he started composing on a harmonium that stood in one of the rooms in the house. He decided he would write something sacred, something meditative and calm into which the others could sink, using it for their meetings. The harmonium was very old and cracked. The pumping motion made the phrases issue like breaths from a respirator. Henry wasn’t really accustomed to sitting and pumping like that, but perseverance pays off.