Gentlemen (Klas Ostergren) (FO8)

by Klas Ostergren

  Perhaps Autopsy would have been completed during that winter in early 1975 if the demiurge Stene Forman hadn’t stepped in and presented the idea about Verner Hansson and the mysterious disappearance of his father. The flat on Hornsgatan provided plenty of peace and quiet for Leo’s work, and Henry had even encouraged him to write by providing various inducements such as an answering machine and flexible hours for mealtimes. But Autopsy was never completed; it remains today only a fragment in a workbook, which Leo would soon abandon in favour of something entirely different.

  Stene Forman undoubtedly had a touch of charisma that did not leave Leo unaffected during that lunch at Salzers. Leo had not given any specific sort of answer; he remained basically sceptical and had a hard time imagining himself as a co-worker at Blixt. He would forever consider it a disgrace, and he wanted to remain unsullied.

  Nevertheless, he was impressed by the idea itself. Stene jabbered on about what a scoop they could produce together if everything worked out. There might be big journalism prizes for investigative reporting in the service of humanity, sky-high circulation figures, fat salaries and so on. But for the time being they had to keep the lid on it; this could be hot stuff and it was absolutely off the record, as they said in the White House. Leo was not a professional, and he’d have to learn that things that were discovered in this business could be off the record, and then it was important to keep your trap shut. Everything that Stene had told him would stay between the two of them. Leo couldn’t leak a word or that would be the end of the entire matter.

  In spite of his exhaustion, Stene was still a great producer and stage-setter of various events that were more or less scandalous. He could undeniably blow things up to impressive and grotesque proportions, all with that charming con-artist glint in his eye. It didn’t take long before the editor-in-chief received a phone call from Leo in which the poet expressed his willingness to give it a try. He would make contact with that old guy Hogarth, off the record, not for the sake of the money or the glory but for the sake of Verner Hansson. Maybe Verner would be OK again if he found out what had become of his father. Who knew? Maybe that was all he needed.

  So it was Leo Morgan in the guise of Jesus who picked up the phone one day in March 1975 and dialled the unlisted number that Stene Forman had provided for the old journalist Edvard Hogarth. Leo did it solely for Verner’s sake; the Prodigal Son had to be saved.

  But the voice that rattled off his telephone number, one digit after the other, in response – like a nervous thief in the process of memorising a code in a bank vault – sounded more as if the battle were already over. Edvard Hogarth was obviously a very old man, and – when Leo introduced himself and explained what he wanted – he seemed only moderately interested, if not totally uninterested, in meeting anyone for a chat.

  Leo made a real effort, trying to sound extremely polite on the phone. He said that Stene Forman spoke very highly of Mr Hogarth’s work over the years. Oh yes, Hogarth knew Stene Forman all right, and in particular his brilliant father. The old man thought the boy seemed quite promising, but he hadn’t kept up with their activities for a very long time. The name Blixt was no guarantee of any journalistic ethical revolt of tremendous proportions, but it offered an important counterweight to the monopoly.

  The old man was just on the verge of saying goodbye and hanging up when Leo mentioned something about the ‘Hansson case’, which was the real reason for his call.

  Then all hell broke loose. At first the old man was silent on the other end of the line. This is clearly a sore subject, Leo probably thought. Staying calm and collected, he said that he knew Verner Hansson, the son of the missing man, and for all these years he’d been interested in finding out what had really happened in 1944 when the man so ignominiously vanished from sight. Leo went on, laying out the text and displaying a rare eloquence until the old man interrupted him.

  Edvard Hogarth had evidently been sitting there, getting all worked up, because now he suddenly launched into a sulphurous speech about the fact that he’d been working on that ‘affair’ for over ten years, and that ‘you’ or ‘they’ were damn well not going to shut him up. This was ‘blackmail’, and it would be over his dead body that ‘you’ or ‘they’ would keep him quiet.

  Then the man slammed down the phone.

  ________

  ‘Death is a precious stone, a frogfish / a hardening, with a seductive promise of peace …’ That was a poetic note in Leo’s workbook from his Autopsy period. This story is filled with strange things, and the note about the frogfish is just one of them.

  Stene Forman had tossed out a hook, and Leo Morgan had taken the bait. He, in turn, had tossed out a hook, and Edvard Hogarth had taken the bait. Staying with these purely marine metaphors: it was probably more a question of a net than a fishing line. Leo wasn’t merely fastened to a hook; he had already been caught in a huge net with incalculable offshoots throughout all of society, and he didn’t even know it. That’s what makes the note about the frogfish so strange.

  A frogfish is called Antennarius commersoni in Latin and is said to have ‘a protuberance on its face which functions as bait for small fish, enabling this ungainly, slow-swimming fish to hunt actively while still remaining well-nourished’. The frogfish – as anyone can tell from its name alone – is a tremendously ugly fish, perhaps the ugliest fish in Swedish waters. It lies on rocks and lake bottoms with its antennae – like an extension of the human nose – attracting the small fish and luring them right into its repulsive mouth. If you watch this Antennarius commersoni – as Leo the scientist had done – you will see our entire Western civilisation of bribery and persuasion by any means possible illustrated in a single image. The Hogarth Affair certainly shared some similarities with the frogfish method of fishing. One small fry after another took the bait, only to be swallowed up by poisonous jaws a moment later. ‘Commersoni’ stands for the fish tanks of commerce, trade, business and capital. Of course this is not an entirely misleading impression. It did in fact have to do with money and business.

  But Leo Morgan was not the one suffering from gluttony for gold – he had always dissociated himself from anything having to do with money. That was the one thing he never collected as a kid. His whole conscious attitude towards life was based on the stoicism of dissociation. It was this philosophy of dissociation that also meant dissociating himself from everything that Henry signified. Leo had never harboured any dreams of glory or riches, while Henry was toiling by the sweat of his brow in a damp, stinking, unhealthy earthen tunnel beneath Söder, with a hypothetical gold treasure as the carrot. Leo never passed up an opportunity to taunt Henry about his childish dream, and that’s why things turned out the way they did.

  Leo was out after the truth, at all costs. Puzzles existed to be solved, fog to be dispersed, rituals to be broken. Mystery was to be banished forever as a frill of oppression. A truth could be found hidden behind every stage-set, and Leo had evidently run into one of them. He had devoted his entire life to tearing down stage-sets, and now he seemed to have mobilised the full power of his spirit to tear down the stage-set concealing the old journalist Edvard Hogarth.

  Leo became obsessed. He brooded for a long time and then wrote a letter. He wrote a very beautiful letter in which he explained who he was, why he had sought out the old man, and why he valued the truth so highly. After all, the concept of truth is one of the absolute cornerstones of our philosophical tradition, and it was easy for Leo to compose a lengthy, substantial and – for a layman like Edvard Hogarth – instructive letter about truth.

  ________

  The no. 12 tram glided through the sleet, crossing Äppelviken, Smedslätten and Ålsten, before letting off a rather gaunt figure at Höglandstorget. This solitary man drew his scarf tighter around his neck as he looked for some street signs to take his bearings, since there was no one around to provide directions.

  It was Leo Morgan. His ploy had worked – the letter had been well received. Edvard Hogarth had thawed
out, and finally he gave in and invited the letter-writer to a meeting out here in Bromma.

  The silent, secluded street was just about how Leo had pictured it, with well-kept gardens, villas from the turn of the century and magnificent gates. But Mr Edvard Hogarth’s front gate was worn-looking and decrepit, with the paint flaking off and a letterbox that undoubtedly leaked in a downpour. The gate was also creaky and sluggish when opened and Leo assumed that it wasn’t used very often. The gravel path leading up to the house had not been raked in a good long time. Autumn leaves were piled up under the snow that was now starting to melt away, no longer hiding a virtually abandoned front garden with shrubby cinquefoil, Abbotswood roses, lilacs and a couple of apple trees – all of them overgrown and neglected. The house was a good size, a brick house with a black roof. It looked deserted, except for a little lamp that was shining in a window on the upper floor. It looked like one of those lamps that shine year-round to ward off burglars.

  The visitor walked up the gravel path to the door. He rang the bell, which emitted a toneless snarl deep inside the house. He waited a long time but heard nothing. He rang the bell again and waited.

  Edvard Hogarth surprised his guest by appearing from around the corner. He explained that the front door was locked; he never used it because it was so damned cumbersome. Leo walked down the stairs and shook hands. Hogarth had grey hair and a furrowed face, alert eyes and a beak of a nose. Stooping slightly, he led Leo inside the house through a kitchen door. He kept his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his cardigan, which was the same beige as his trousers. A silk scarf around his neck made him look quite elegant, almost a bit coquettish. In some vague way he resembled a resident of the Höstsol home for ageing actors. Vanity was waging an equal battle with the wisdom of age.

  The guest hung up his coat in the hall, and Edvard Hogarth showed him around the unbelievably cold house. Heating oil was so expensive, and enormous crises were going to develop down there in the Arab countries – that was something that old Hogarth had realised long ago, so he had become accustomed to being cautious and frugal when it came to heat. The oil crisis two years earlier – so mendaciously presented by our mass media, according to Hogarth – was not a real ‘crisis’ but more of a warning to be taken very seriously.

  The ground floor consisted of one large room with genuine leather furniture and excellent art on the walls. Leo recognised a number of the artists as highly sought-after by collectors. Hogarth explained that in the past he had been good friends with many painters, and he bought their work before they got expensive. His favourite was a desolate seascape by Kylberg. On the mantel of the big open fireplace stood a photo in a gold frame showing a beautiful young blonde wearing a typical suit from the forties with broad shoulders. She was his wife. She had died an untimely death in 1958, and he had lived all alone ever since. The only person he saw anymore was the housekeeper, who came every Wednesday to tidy up and look after things.

  His study on the second floor was exactly like the type of room Leo and Henry had seen in museums when they were kids – the studies of great men, where great ideas were formulated and important decisions were made. The parquet floor was covered with an enormous Persian rug and the walls were lined with shelves of Hogarth’s newspaper-clipping files and scrapbooks, as well as a library containing everything from the obligatory standard works to unusual literary volumes in the major languages of the world. He had read a good deal, that old man. It was amazing that he got by without wearing glasses.

  Hogarth sank into a chair behind the massive desk, cautiously tapped out one of his seven pipes, and began filling it again. He smoked a special blend of cola-tobacco that produced a very thick and extraordinary smell, quite sweet and pleasant. The blue smoke whirled around the Strindberg lamp, and for a long time he didn’t say a word.

  Leo wasn’t sure how he should start things off. He lacked the professional journalist’s casual approach that could get the subject to open up. He had been offered a seat in an easy chair, as if visiting a doctor or a boss who absolutely had to have people below him so that he could look down on them when he spoke to them.

  Edvard Hogarth nodded towards a cabinet in the centre of the bookcase. A whisky would taste good on such a cold and overcast day. Leo obeyed, poured two shots and handed the old man a glass. Hogarth took a swallow, smoked his pipe for a while and scrutinised his guest from head to toe. Leo lit a cigarette, but he didn’t feel terribly ill at ease.

  Leo had grown so big, said Hogarth. Leo had become a real man. He puffed on his pipe and smiled. Leo wondered what he could mean. Why this personal tone of voice all of a sudden?

  Hogarth laughed and then he explained that when Leo had sent the letter, he’d suddenly realised that Leo was old Morgonstjärna’s grandson and the Jazz Baron’s son. Old Morgonstjärna had been one of Edvard Hogarth’s best friends. Hogarth had even been a member of the WWW Club. He had played cards and billiards with Leo’s paternal grandfather right up until the end, when Morgonstjärna passed away in the spring of ’68.

  Leo still didn’t understand, and perhaps he tried to recall all those grey-headed gentlemen who used to visit his grandfather, smelling of cigars and pipes and whisky, but he never really could tell them apart. They’d all looked the same. Hogarth chuckled and said that it must have been fate that had brought them together on this day. He apologised a bit for being so unfriendly the first time they spoke, but he had been forced to protect himself.

  It turned out that Edvard Hogarth had followed Leo’s literary career from a distance, and while he may not have entirely shared the poet’s reckless fury, he could fully admire the purely lyrical and philosophical sides of his work. It was important to read literature, even for journalists. It was useful from an artistic sense.

  But he also liked Leo’s letter. He had received many letters over the years, and he could undoubtedly donate a good many of them to the Royal Library. Leo’s letter could stand comparison with correspondence he had received from ministers, professors and literati who did nothing but compose profound letters to their colleagues.

  Leo had decided on truth as the object of his investigations and discourses, and that was quite in order, according to Hogarth. The person who does not brood over the concept of truth is heading in a dangerous direction. He too had studied philosophy in his youth. He had met Axel Hägerström many times, a man who was as caustic as he was lethal, but that was another story. Truth was not a question of language or sliding scales of values; nor was the truth something absolute for all ages. Truth was the shuttle, so to speak, that moved between law and practice, that wove together those human actions that we call moral. In the long run, the only thing that we as civilised people could call ourselves was ‘humanists’.

  Edvard Hogarth sat there in his desk chair, holding forth, speaking only long enough between each puff to ensure that his pipe would not go out. Now and then he took a sip of his whisky, and the alcohol seemed to give him a bit of energy and fervour. He never went out anymore; each day had to be devoted to his work – he placed the palm of his thin hand on top of a manuscript basket that seemed all the thicker by comparison – and the days were just getting shorter and shorter. He didn’t have the strength to do much anymore. But not much more was needed. His project was a work on a grand scale, and he needed only a couple more months to finish it. Then the bomb would go off.

  It was going to be his legacy. Like all journalists, he had run into cases and affairs which, for various obscure or obvious reasons, were to be kept under wraps for an unspecified length of time, sometimes permanently. Someone high up in some administrative office had felt threatened and put a lid on it. They had rung up an editor-in-chief or a publisher and, by virtue of their official position, had threatened reprisals. And so the presses were stopped. But anyone who goes digging for the truth collects piles of memories and material which some day may land in the spotlight and suddenly change the public image of the heroes of the past and the rulers of the present. Th
at was precisely what Hogarth was intending to do. He had a collection of a dozen different affairs that had been put under wraps by people in high places. The ‘Hansson case’ – referring to Verner’s father – was one of these affairs. There were also other, more well-known stories regarding Haijby, Enbom and Wennerström, which Hogarth could elucidate as no one had ever done before. But a person could not be timid; nor could he be thinking about his future career if he planned to drag old ghosts into the light. Edvard Hogarth was old, at the end of his life. But he wanted to go out with a real bang, and that was why he had written this sensational testament: Fifty Years of Political Scandals in a Sweden Governed by Law.

  Hogarth’s indefatigable obstinacy had made him get to the bottom of all these affairs – which now filled an entire manuscript basket all the way to the top – and bore witness to such a large measure of courage and self-sacrifice that it bordered on insanity. The fact that it might be fatal was something he had already sensed.

  They had now been sitting there for several hours, talking about everything from Grandfather Morgonstjärna, the Jazz Baron, Henry’s piano playing, and the press situation to vague philosophical ideas about right and wrong. The sound of the telephone ringing jolted them back to the present. Hogarth was noticeably disturbed by the sound. He grimaced and excused himself to go into the next room. He answered the phone by reciting his number, and Leo noticed how Hogarth pretended to be much older, more senile and more scatterbrained than he was.

  Without really thinking, Leo picked up a sheaf of the typewritten A4 pages from the manuscript basket and started skimming through the text. He read sentences such as: ‘… the official Swedish attitude was politically neutral, but extremely loyal from an economic point of view’, and ‘… which in the thirties made the German war industry one of the mightiest in the world’, and ‘Zeverin’s Precision Tool Company AB, at the time one of the Griffel Corporation’s most profitable subsidiaries, had exactly the supplementary resources that the Third Reich needed to acquire …’ and so on.