Gentlemen (Klas Ostergren) (FO8)

by Klas Ostergren

  Then Henry had gone over to the boat-building house to have a look at the Ark. It should have been there with its bare framework, its slender keel and the plankwork that they had only just begun putting on fifteen years earlier. But the Ark was gone. Henry found nothing but reeds on a rock. The incredible ice had crept up onto the shore and taken the entire boathouse with it. It had slowly hauled itself over Storm Island and shattered, smashed and crushed his grandfather’s boathouse.

  Henry couldn’t believe his eyes. The only thing left of the boathouse and the Ark was a pile of reeds and boards under big sheets of ice, black with oil.

  ________

  The month of April, in the election year of 1979, bore a great resemblance to a tragic Wagner opera. It was grey, unrelenting and gloomy. Everyone was waiting for the redemptive, liberating rays of light from above. But April was holding back, refusing redemption, die Erlösung. The month of April continued to be an endless melody of gloomy, grey tones.

  With flagging hope, we kept up our search for Leo. We had several arguments – Henry blamed himself for being too hard on his brother – about whether we should ring Kerstin, the daughter of the football-pool king, since Leo had mentioned that he was thinking of looking her up. They’d had some sort of thing going, after all. And that turned out to be a good lead.

  After a run-around among various telephone switchboards and busy car phones, Henry finally got hold of Kerstin. She was in a traffic jam on Strandvägen, and she could tell him that Leo had spent a couple of days at her flat several weeks earlier, but they’d had a falling out. She thought he was a bit too passive and self-destructive, the way he just lay in bed smoking all day long. Leo had ended up feeling angry, hurt and offended. She hadn’t heard a peep from him since. Now she too was worried, because she had assumed that he had come home to us to lick his wounds. We all agreed to keep our eyes and ears open.

  With equally flagging hope we read our four daily newspapers. In the press they were already starting to speculate about the local and national elections, barely six months away. It was in connection with this hot issue that I one day found an article, which covered an entire page, about the Griffel Corporation’s CEO, Wilhelm Sterner. It was in the conservative morning paper, which was reporting on the candidates for a possible right-wing government. Included, of course, were all the old, worn-out, furrowed faces, ravaged by interminable discussions and compromises. But there was also a photo gallery of powerful men who were totally unknown to the general public – influential men who worked behind the scenes, chaps who had trained with Wallenberg and learned the importance of those words of wisdom: non videre sed esse.

  Wilhelm Sterner, the CEO of the Griffel Corporation, was portrayed in a slightly ironic tone as ‘an irreproachable sixty-five-year-old gentleman’, a man who had taken a relatively long route before reaching, at last, the top of one of Sweden’s largest corporations. As a young lawyer in the forties, he had started off on the diplomatic path. He had moved from one appointment to another, showing himself to be an accomplished career diplomat. Finally he ended up as counsellor at the embassy in Vienna, Austria. For a while he was also stationed in Jakarta, Indonesia, but in the late fifties, he decided to leave his quite brilliant diplomatic career behind in favour of a position in the private sector.

  He soon emerged from Wallenberg’s shadow and reached dizzying heights within the Griffel Corporation. He was full of ideas and possessed great stamina and knowledge. The only time he ended up in hot water was in the early sixties, when he was accused by East German authorities of helping people flee over the Wall and through the Iron Curtain. The incident very nearly cost Sterner his entire future, and it was apparently considered extremely embarrassing for Swedish authorities as well as the stockholders of the Griffel Corporation. It was not customary among VIPs to meddle so blatantly in the diplomatic affairs of other countries. Sweden had experienced enough trouble with its assistance to refugees. Via various adroitly executed manoeuvres – presumably arranged by Sterner himself – the lid was put on the matter and the incident was relegated to a few columns of small print. It was hushed up, and everything was once again peace and joy. Sterner had saved his own neck.

  After that, Wilhelm Sterner had refrained from any more diplomatic escapades. He worked entirely behind the scenes, making a name for himself as a capable, hard-nosed negotiator who never underestimated an opponent. He was ‘an eternal bachelor with grey-templed charm’, but ‘the infrequent tabloid photos confirm that the magnate does enjoy female company’.

  Like all CEOs in charge of giant corporations, Wilhelm Sterner also worked at least fifteen hours a day, but he presented a good example by foregoing private jets and other extravagant luxuries. He regularly played tennis with another well-known corporate executive, and he hadn’t missed a single Båstad tournament since the big ruckus in the sixties. He actively supported Swedish track and field sports, he had financed a golf course in the Stockholm area and he had won a bronze medal in shot-put in a district championship in 1935.

  In spite of the fact that he had now reached retirement age, he saw no reason to slow down. Wilhelm Sterner was actually in his prime. If the right-wing forces should win the election in the autumn, it was highly likely that he would be a candidate for some ministerial post, even though he was regarded as ‘conservatively apolitical’. The title of Minister of Industry seemed a natural. The job would be well suited to his impressive qualifications, his long experience in the business world and his extensive international contacts.

  No one feared as yet that Sterner might turn down the offer. It was taken for granted that he would ‘clean up’ his past, as was expected of a respectable minister, in order to avoid any opportunities for corruption which the post of Minister of Industry might afford. It was not uncommon for dignitaries who were associated in some way with high finance to use manipulation to win a politically sensitive post.

  In all likelihood, Wilhelm Sterner would accept an offer and wind up his activities with the Griffel Corporation and its fifteen subsidiaries – including Skandia Plaster, EKO Cement, Bogren Brothers Shipyard, Baltic Fisheries and Hammars Construction, as well the Zeverin Precision Tool Company AB, near the Sickla docks at Hammarby Harbour.

  Someone who was being considered as the next Minister of Industry had to be clean and inviolable.

  ________

  Quite unexpectedly, Henry showed proof of rather admirable strength in this situation. After a couple of days when I thought that he might be going straight to the dogs, he pulled himself together and confirmed his booking for that evening at the Södra Theatre in May. Now all he had to do was send over a programme and polish up his final version of ‘Europa, Disintegrating Fragments’. Suddenly it looked as if his breakthrough were just around the corner.

  In an eager, obstinate, hot-headed mood, he came into the library as I sat there, trying to work. For my part, I was in the midst of something that could ultimately be called the final stages of my modern pastiche of The Red Room. I knew exactly how the story should end, and all I needed to do was to pound out the decisive and, for Arvid Falk’s part, very disheartening last fifty pages. It could be done in a couple of days, once I got going properly. But I never seemed to get going. I just stared out of the windows at the uniform grey of Hornsgatan, looking at the slushy, nasty weather down there, which sapped me of all incentive. A strenuous, virtuous task meant little in a world that was nothing but evil and greyness. No one was expecting anything of me, no one would miss me if I didn’t get up in the morning, and no one expressed their profound concern for my welfare or any sort of success on my account. Apropos accounts, Franzén the publisher was the only one who was talking about ‘my account’. He’d been nagging about my manuscript for months now, and evidently he was starting to have doubts and feel that he might have been cheated. It had cost him 15,000 kronor.

  So Henry came dashing into the library, asking me whether he was disturbing me. That was a completely superfluous question, si
nce he was always disturbing me.

  ‘I wanted to ask you a favour, Klasa,’ he said with feigned humility. ‘Since you’re such a man of letters … It has to do with the programme. I’ve got hold of a cheap printer.’

  ‘What’s this about?’ I asked, annoyed.

  ‘Södra Theatre …’ said Henry, staring at me with his innocent blue eyes.

  ‘Yes, that much I know!’

  ‘I’d like to have something written … something lyrical and rather elegant.’

  ‘Something lyrical and elegant about what?’

  ‘About me, and about my music, of course,’ said Henry, sounding offended.

  ‘And you think that I could write something like that? But I don’t know anything about music!’

  ‘That doesn’t matter. It’s the feeling that’s important. It has to be a text that captures the music. You don’t have to say much about Henry Morgan or musical keys or that sort of thing. It’s better if you try to capture the spirit of the whole thing.’

  ‘Are you finished yet?’

  ‘For the most part,’ he said. ‘Well? Will you do it?’

  ‘Of course I’ll do it,’ I said. ‘But I’ll need to listen to the whole piece through a couple of times.’

  ‘Whenever you like,’ Henry offered magnanimously and bowed.

  ‘How about right now? I’m stuck anyway.’

  Henry pensively rubbed his swollen hands – we had been over to the Europa the night before, and he had gone a couple of rounds with Gringo and was still feeling a bit tender. He played a few bars in the air.

  ‘All right, I’m sure it will be fine!’

  We were just on our way to the piano room for a concert of ‘Europa, Disintegrating Fragments’ when we heard a few shrill rings from the telephone. It was Kerstin. She was sitting in Picko’s delivery van number 17 and ringing from Kungsholmstorg. There was a howling and shrieking in the receiver, and the fact that the daughter of the football-pool king was so agitated didn’t make things any better. She had received several calls from Leo over the past twenty-four hours. His speech was slurred, and he sounded completely out of it. He absolutely refused to say where he was or what he was doing. She couldn’t get a sensible word out of him, and then he had just slammed down the phone.

  Kerstin was naturally very worried, and Henry tried to reassure her. He said that Leo was sometimes like that, he went through phases but he usually snapped out of it. In any case, Henry urged Kerstin to try tracing the call the next time Leo rang. We’d had it with coddling him.

  ‘He’s been playing this game long enough,’ said Henry.

  ‘So this is some kind of game?’

  ‘It’s the most dangerous game of all,’ said Henry.

  There was no private concert that day. Henry lost all inspiration after that conversation with Kerstin. He excused himself by saying that his hands were still too tender; it wouldn’t have sounded very good, anyway. We would just have to wait until some later time.

  But there never was any ‘later time’. The next day it was my turn to stay in bed. I refused to get up to eat breakfast just to read a depressing morning paper and then sit at a desk that was becoming more and more of a witness to some sort of defeat. The Red Room was starting to seem more and more like a failure, and Arvid Falk’s tragic end was becoming reflected in my own destruction. I was stuck. I knew exactly what I wanted to write, but I couldn’t put the shit into writing; something inside me was resisting, and of course I decided to blame the weather. It was possible to dump all sorts of blame on the weather during those days. The weather was affecting everyone, and there wasn’t a soul who wouldn’t understand that a writer was especially susceptible to the low pressure and that damn sirocco which had found its way to our latitudes, or that it was completely natural for any sensitive fellow to feel like coughing himself to death in the Lido or escaping from the world across the mountains and into the clouds, like a Hans Castorp, the most melancholy character in any novel ever.

  ________

  My dream of a liberating death in the Lido ended when Henry came in and sat down on the edge of Göring’s old bed to wake me up. Kerstin had called, and she knew where Leo was. He had rung her in the middle of the night, and she had put down the receiver and dashed over to use her neighbour’s phone to trace the call. It turned out to be from a summer house out in the Värmdö area.

  ‘Hell if I know where that is,’ said Henry. ‘Löknäs is what it’s supposedly called. Not far from a military training ground. But wasn’t that where he hid out with some pals over Christmas?’

  ‘I assume so,’ I said.

  ‘I suppose we’ll have to go out there and take a look, anyway,’ said Henry. ‘Could you go tonight?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Kerstin offered to drive.’

  ‘That’s nice. Just as long as there isn’t any trouble, or else I’ll completely fall apart!’

  ‘No chance of that,’ said Henry firmly. ‘Leo’s not the type.’

  That day was like so many other of those thoroughly grey days. The only bright piece of news was that the bureau drawer in the hallway was suddenly full of booklets of luncheon vouchers again. Naturally I didn’t ask where they had come from – I had been ordered not to ask – but I had my suspicions. I had my suspicions about a lot of things at this point, but we tiptoed around each other like cats on hot bricks, perpetually trying not to let on.

  At any rate, we had a fortifying lunch down at Costa’s on St Paulsgatan with a Greek salad and souvlaki, those deliciously spiced kebabs, with first-class beef, onions and paprika. The Flask and Wolf-Larsson had turned up again, looking relatively fresh. They had spent a long time behind drawn curtains in the company of a real stockpile of bottles, but now that period was over. Now they were on the wagon for a while and were going to work in Greger’s Grotto, the Shelter, and collect empty bottles and plod their way through the approaching springtime like two proper gentlemen. They both wanted to know what had been going on lately, and Henry gave them a rough summary. True to form, he promised them each a ticket to the Södra Theatre when the time came. The lads thanked him in advance and wished him luck, in which order no one was quite sure.

  Kerstin showed up as promised to collect us after she’d finished work. She was still driving Picko’s delivery van number 17, and she was all wound up. She angrily and ruthlessly chomped on a small piece of chewing gum as she hissed terse, rapid-fire remarks out of the corner of her mouth, just like some sort of American gangster.

  ‘Can you find it, Henry?’ she asked.

  ‘I hope so,’ he said, taking from the inner pocket of his trench coat a map that he had drawn. ‘This is how it looks, approximately.’

  ‘Oh, that’s really a big help,’ said Kerstin.

  ‘You’re sure in a hell of a mood today!’

  ‘It’s all been so fucking difficult today. Everything’s so screwed up.’

  ‘I want you at least to know that you’ll get a reward for this,’ said Henry.

  Kerstin muttered something inaudible and turned on the radio. It was one of those formidable and terribly uninteresting DJs from Värmland, and he was warning listeners about the slick conditions and hydroplaning on large sections of the main roads. It had rained hard in the morning and the temperature was going to drop to below freezing in the evening. Then followed a long tune from Elton John’s latest LP, a tough, moving, very magical tune.

  ‘Turn it up a bit,’ said Henry.

  Kerstin turned up the radio so loud that the entire vehicle was filled with that sunny Elton John tune, and it went on almost all the way from Danvikstull along the new motorway and out to Gustavsberg. We hardly said a word the whole time. I don’t know who deserved the blame or the credit for that – Leo Morgan or Elton John.

  Henry carefully guided the driver up towards northern Värmdö, along a number of slushy side-roads until none of us knew where we were. Henry’s map was looking more and more like a scientific chart of the way an earthworm moves d
uring twenty-four hours of rain, and it was no longer of any particular use to us. He had to get out of the van and ask some locals how to find the road to Löknäs and the military training ground.

  Gradually it grew dark, and by then we had wound our way through all sorts of little villages and cultivated fields until we slipped onto a forest road heading east, which seemed to be the right one because it was completely empty and deserted. Deep in the woods there was still snow, and the road was covered with black ice so that Kerstin had to drive very cautiously, making use of everything she knew about driving in lousy terrain.

  ‘Pat Moss,’ said Henry. ‘All I’m saying is Pat Moss, the racing-car driver.’

  ‘Shut up!’ snapped Kerstin, turning off the radio. She needed to concentrate.

  Henry rolled down the side window, but it instantly got horribly cold, and he could tell that the temperature really was dropping below freezing. Not a single person was out on the road.

  ‘It seems desolate as hell,’ I said, shivering.

  ‘There must be some old summer cabin that they’ve taken over,’ said Henry.

  ‘What do you mean by they?’

  ‘You don’t think my brother is sitting out here all alone, drinking, do you?’ said Henry, though he didn’t sound very convincing. Or maybe he knew a lot more than the rest of us.

  ‘It sounded like he was alone,’ said Kerstin. ‘But he did sound fucking out of it, actually.’

  ‘Leo gets really stupid when he’s drinking.’

  ‘Then why does he do it? It can’t be much fun to sit out here in the wild, drinking.’

  ‘Kerstin, my dear,’ Henry began, ‘you may be a fantastic driver, but you’re not especially smart.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Kerstin, sounding surly as she slammed on the brakes in the middle of a slushy curve.

  ‘Nothing. I apologise,’ said Henry. ‘But what the hell do you think?! Do you think Leo is acting this way because it’s entertaining?!’