‘Don’t come here and talk to me about taking responsibility,’ said Henry. ‘You are the last one who should be doing that. I’ll be damned if you can come here and talk about responsibility when you’re just living off us and all of society like some kind of parasite. You can’t even take responsibility for yourself.’
‘That has nothing to do with …’
‘Oh, yes, it does. And let me tell you,’ said Henry, sounding like an agitated school principal, ‘that if a person can’t take responsibility for himself, then he has no business going around babbling about taking responsibility for others!’
Surprisingly enough, Leo kept his composure. Henry was the one who seemed most upset, presumably because he was feeling attacked, and he had to defend himself at all costs. I tried to keep out of the argument as long as possible, because I could tell that it mostly concerned a personal dispute that had nothing at all to do with Stockholm’s environment.
‘OK, then,’ said Leo. ‘I’ll stay home if you go out. Then you can take responsibility for yourself and half the world.’
‘Listen here, my boy,’ said Henry. ‘I’ve taken responsibility for you, and that ought to be enough. I’ve written several hundred different kinds of documents on your behalf, confirming and guaranteeing that we’ll take care of things. Don’t you think that’s enough?’
‘You’re always hitting below the belt,’ said Leo. ‘You just use me so that later you can sit there with your arms crossed, acting smug. That’s how you’ve always been. You’re a damn Philistine, Henry. What do you think? Isn’t he a fucking reactionary?’ he said, turning to me.
‘Right at the moment, Henry, I think you’re definitely behaving like a typically absurd reactionary,’ I had to agree with Leo.
‘R-e-a-c-t-i-o-n-a-r-y’, the sinner spelled out as he ran one hand through his hair and stared down at the table. ‘Just because I don’t feel like going to every single demonstration? That’s ridiculous, fucking ridiculous!’
‘But that’s not all by a long shot. It’s not a question of going to every single demonstration – we’re just talking about one. You talk on and on about the fact that you’re a gentleman and that you can manage perfectly well even though you don’t have a proper job. That’s fine. You may be able to take care of yourself, but you should never pretend that the world outside your door is any sort of paradise.’
Leo had touched a sore spot and, as always when the discussion started heading in this direction, Henry flew into a rage and rushed off to his own room because he could no longer evade the question. He was backed into a corner by one big conspiracy aimed at him personally – an ungrateful, parasitic conspiracy that knew nothing about Life or the World.
Leo and I, at any rate, set off for Slussen. It was a successful demonstration, filled with music and festivitas, like a winter carnival. Hornsgatan hill was painted by a painter brigade over a hundred men strong as a blue city official, who tried to intervene as the lone long arm of the law against anarchy, was completely sprayed with blue paint. At that very moment, just by chance, I happened to glance up at our sitting-room window, and of course I caught sight of Henry Morgan’s nosy mug sticking out. He looked as if he were itching to join us. After that the procession headed past old Mullvaden and down to the Järnet district, which was then declared to be occupied.
Leo disappeared in the crowd and found a few old buddies. I also ran into a number of other acquaintances and didn’t get home until very late. By then Henry had calmed down, and we put the whole thing behind us. I had no wish to re-ignite that discussion. Henry would be a childlike conservative to his dying day.
________
‘Rise and shine, campers! Rise and shine, campers!’ was the first thing I heard on Sunday morning. ‘Rise and shine, campers! Rise and shine, campers!’
Henry the scout leader was walking around and waking us up at the early hour of seven thirty a.m. because he’d had another great idea – we would cultivate the outdoor life by going skiing. It was a magnificent day, the winter’s very best, with a blue sky, sunshine and glittering snow. Perfect for skiing.
There was actually an entire stockpile of old skis up in the attic, and after breakfast the recreation leader and his sleepy youths went up to try out the worn-out and much-oiled ski boots, the skis with their old-fashioned leather bindings and the heavy bamboo poles. We had no trouble putting together three complete sets of gear and finding some old ski wax that still did an excellent job.
The recreation leader packed up a grey-green knapsack with sandwiches made of fried eggs, salami, cheese and cucumber, along with fruit and a thermos of hot chocolate, as well as some extra clothes. Reluctantly we put on some sportswear – Henry was looking good in his grandfather’s plus-fours and a ski cap with a visor and ear flaps – and when all three of us were once again on good terms, we took the bus out to Hellasgården.
Henry, of course, was a real pro on skis. He took off with the knapsack bobbing up and down on his back, and we soon couldn’t see a trace of him. Leo and I fell in behind, taking it much more slowly. Leo was a real whiner, and he kept complaining about his skis sliding backwards, the snot running into his mouth and the snow trickling down the back of his neck.
‘Damn it to hell, this fucking skiing!’ he swore so loudly that the snow melted and the jock types who came whizzing by on their modern felt-bottomed racing skis, had to turn around to catch a glimpse of the swearing monster on the cross-country trail. ‘What the hell are we doing out here?!’ he complained. ‘And now these fucking clothes are starting to chafe!’
We shuffled along at our own tempo and kept getting knocked off the trail by snorting bloodhounds wearing tight tracksuits. After half an hour – after we had made it across the ice into the woods and had ascended the worst of the slopes – Leo got a little less cranky and could no longer deny that it was an unusually splendid day. Henry had pointed out the green trail, which covered six miles, and about halfway along we found him waiting on a slope where he had spread out some lunch things. He had also picked up a young mother who was out on the trail with her son.
‘Welcome, Sixten and Nils!’ he shouted as we joined the camp and said hello to the woman and her son.
Henry had scraped the snow off a log, which made an excellent bench where we sat to stuff ourselves with the sandwiches, guzzle down the hot chocolate, peel oranges, catch our breath and bask in the sun. The woman was a lively teacher from Nacka, and her nine-year-old son thought it was just as much fun to slide around on the trail as Leo did. He kept wanting to go home, and not even Henry at his most cheerful, could get him to think of anything else. We tried our best to tell the boy that this was something he would look back on with joy later in life when he could no longer go out skiing, because there was never as much snow as when you were a kid. The boy didn’t think that made any sense, since he could see with his own eyes that we were grown-ups and that there was still snow, so there would undoubtedly still be snow when he was grown-up too. We were just trying to trick him, and he had no intention of being tricked. All he wanted was to go home, and when there was no more hot chocolate to offer him as a bribe, he turned surly. The young, lively, beautiful single mother decided it was time to head home. She thanked us for the lunch, got her son to give us a bow, and then they were gone.
‘Shame about such nice chicks,’ said Henry with a sigh.
‘Can’t you ever relax?’
‘If you hadn’t come and ruined things by making the boy think that skiing was boring, we could have gone home with her. She would have invited me to Sunday dinner, I could have read a story to the little beast, and the rest you can figure out for yourselves …’
‘We’ll just have to enjoy nature and asceticism instead,’ I said. ‘Henry, who’s so damn charming, can lead the way and pick up girls.’
‘Phooey,’ said Henry. ‘Somebody sounds a little jealous. Just because a guy has a little charm …’
‘It’s probably all because of those trousers you’re
wearing.’
________
Presumably only very old people in Sweden still know what it means to be cold, how it feels to wake up in the dead of night wearing stockings and socks, long underwear and pyjamas and a night cap, in a bed with two blankets and extra covers and a hot-water bottle and still be shivering with cold. I awoke in Göring’s old bed even though I was dead tired from the skiing expedition at Hellas, and it felt as if it were below freezing in the room. The window was completely covered with frost roses, and I imagined that I could see the vapour from my own breath when I blew on my hands. The tip of my nose was totally numb and my skin was stinging.
That night was probably one of the coldest post-war nights that Sweden have ever experienced. I got a good dose of what ‘cold’ really means. Even the sheets of newspaper in the bedroom felt stiff, almost frozen. I crumpled up a few pages from the sports section in the bottom of the wood stove and topped them off with pieces of masonite, which were easy to light and produced a nice glow that would ignite heavier and more recalcitrant materials.
The fire got going nicely, and I squatted down to peer into the flames, thawing out my fingers and tossing in some pieces of old moulding and chunks of wood. I was now wide awake – a person sleeps so heavily when it’s cold – and I went over to the frost-covered window to see if anyone was awake in the building across the courtyard. But all the windows were dark, as if we were once again under black-out orders.
I was struck by some strange, nocturnal thoughts about the Morgan brothers, and I felt worried on their behalf. Something was wrong in that flat. Henry seemed more and more desperate in his attempts to make everything look good. He was no real master of disguise. He could take care of his own façade, but he had no control over Leo’s.
Everything in general seemed terribly cold and gloomy, as if our country were undergoing some sort of crisis and depression, as if everything were falling to pieces, and all of us poor citizens had been left to our own devices and our own ingenuity in order to survive. Initiative and willpower were required along with great discipline just to haul yourself out of bed in the middle of the night to make sure the fire was still burning. I have never believed in strong men, but if the fire wasn’t kept going, nothing else would survive either. The cold forces people towards the fire, and only someone who has sat up in the middle of the night, staring into the flames, understands anything about life.
You can chatter as much as you like along the boulevards and avenues of our civilisation, feeling enormously impressed by the architectonic achievements of humanity. Technology has long ago crossed the boundaries of comprehension, and everything that might be called impressive came about in the timespan between the construction of the Pyramid of Cheops around 2900 BC and the landing on the moon in AD 1969. This timespan consists of approximately five thousand years with regard to enraptured babbling about humanity’s marvels. But after the moon landing, everything moved to another level, to the incomprehensible. There was so much that I had no desire to understand; I would prefer to call it evil, plain and simple.
I was not struck by any sort of banal primitivism as I squatted there, warming myself in front of the woodstove in the middle of the night. Rather, I was struck by a very fundamental insight about the fragile state of human beings. You can learn something from many things, but waking up in the middle of the night in Göring’s old bed solely because of the cold taught me something major. I was probably shivering as much from terror as from the cold.
It was the time of the semla, the buns eaten during Lent, and the most intense semla frenzy was raging. Consumption per capita could reach several each day. Henry was sent out on a pilgrimage through unfamiliar parts of the city to legendary bakeries with world-famous marzipan, and even skinny Leo could sometimes be seen devouring them with a healthy appetite. All the while he would be constantly debating with his brother about such fundamental matters as whether Shrove Tuesday buns weren’t actually the most deceptive bakery goods ever invented, since the hollowed-out wheat roll was originally supposed to have been a hiding place for ungodly sweets. The fact that nowadays the cream, unashamedly, almost proudly, oozes out in all directions seemed just a measure of how thoroughly secularised society had become.
Well, all right, enough of all this culinary scholasticism. It was Shrove Tuesday. Henry came home late from his expedition. He was drunk, stinking of beer and complaining about his rheumatism. His fingers no longer allowed him to play the piano. It was so damn cold that he had to take to alcohol because his joints were literally shrieking, or so he claimed. I could just listen for myself, he said, and he let me press my ear to his shoulder. It was as silent as a tomb; I didn’t hear a peep. But that was probably because of my incipient ear infection.
At any rate, he had brought home a box of semla buns, and I thought it was a miracle that he’d managed to balance both himself and the box all the way home from Östermalm without destroying them. The whole city was full of people slipping and sliding and skidding around in the slushy snow, carrying bags or boxes of semla buns. Everyone looked equally determined and resolute. A semla bun should not be mistreated. A semla bun that has been squashed or tipped over, or mistreated in any other way, is a sorry sight. Even a little fingerprint on the powdered sugar can obliterate all pleasure. The semla bun must have an orthodox and unmolested freshness about it. Henry was fully aware of the ethics of semla buns, and he had skidded his way along with the box held firmly in some sort of gyroscopic suspension in his hands. He was prepared to take any sort of beating, as long as the semla buns made it home in one piece. It was like a narcotics delivery, sacrosanct and precious.
I then warmed up a litre of milk, and we each ate two of the delicate semla buns, which had just the right substantial amount of grainy marzipan and real, heavy cream. Afterwards Henry fell asleep in the sitting room in front of the fireplace, while Leo and I went to our respective rooms to work.
Dusk arrived, and I was sitting and shivering at my desk in the library, huffing hot air on my hands so that I could type at all. I had tried wearing gloves with the fingertips cut off, but they were too awkward and clumsy. The typewriter was so cold that I had needed an engine warmer to get it started that morning. I’d been having trouble with it all day long, and now in the evening, as the cold paralysed nearly all of Sweden, it was definitely time to stop. My ability to formulate my thoughts had reached absolute freezing point.
Henry couldn’t do any more that evening either. When he’d sobered up after his catnap, he had tried to play the piano, but he claimed that he needed a blowtorch to thaw out the strings inside. The instrument was so frozen that it sounded like a spinet.
We ran into each other out in the kitchen and made some broth to warm ourselves up. A children’s programme was being broadcast on the radio. Kids up to the age of thirteen could phone in to request a song and then answer a question. They could win an LP, and they cheated shamelessly. Henry never missed a single broadcast of that programme, he was the only person I knew who could sing all the words to the theme song. Henry would actually participate in the programme by clearly answering out loud each question about how many ‘b’s there were in the word ‘abborre’ or what was Sweden’s highest mountain, and so on. If he couldn’t come up with an answer off the cuff, he would feel put out and embarrassed. Then he would unfailingly defend himself by saying that he had been dyslexic all his life, just like the king. This time the programme was more entertaining than usual, since the radio announcer was talking to a twelve-year-old girl from Värmland whose only hobby was wrestling. She was upset, this girl, because she always had to spar with younger boys, and that didn’t seem right to her. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone laugh as hard as Henry while he listened to that wrestling girl from Värmland. He mimicked every word she said, and it seemed as if he missed having kids of his own – he undoubtedly would have been a perfect fool of a father.
‘We have to go out and get some wood,’ he said after we finished off the br
oth and the radio programme had ended with its incomprehensible theme song. ‘We have to go out and get wood, or else we’ll never make it through the night.’
‘All right,’ I said. ‘I’m getting nowhere with my writing anyway.’
‘It’s no good trying to shut out the rest of the world,’ said Henry bitterly. Without coming right out and saying it, he acknowledged that Leo was right. It no longer did any good to shut out the world, yet that was exactly what we had tried to do. We had our dreams about our great work that just needed a little fine-tuning, and we had tried to isolate ourselves, to close ourselves in during that bitterly cold winter in order to achieve the perfect creative concentration. But it wasn’t working. There was always something that slipped in; right now it was the damn cold. It could only be kept at bay with fire and we had no more wood, and so we were forced to go out.
We bundled up in old, cast-off sheepskin coats and Christmas-tree-seller hats made of lamb’s wool, and then we went down to Hornsgatan in search of the closest skip. There was one over on Tavastgatan that was full to the brim because they had torn down a couple of ramshackle buildings. We found some good, nail-free boards, a couple of splintery joists, and some other smaller pieces that looked as if they would burn nicely. Henry also found an old deep-frozen top hat, which he insisting on putting on over his lambswool cap.
We lugged and dragged the wood home to Hornsgatan and loaded most of it into the lift. The creaky old lift hauled itself up, one floor after another, as we held our breath. But when we reached the sixth floor we gave a shriek of fright. As soon as we were level with our landing we saw a rigid, lifeless face staring into the lift. The light reflected off the pale face like a spotlight in a horror film.
A young woman was lying right in front of the lift door. We opened the door as best we could, stepped out onto the landing and tried to shake some life into her. To no avail. We turned her over and concluded that the unconscious girl must be in her twenties. She seemed to have an enemy here in the world, because one of her eyes was completely swollen shut from a black eye, and blood had trickled out of her nose.
Gentlemen (Klas Ostergren) (FO8) Page 46
