Gentlemen (Klas Ostergren) (FO8)
Page 55
‘Bric-à-brac,’ she said time after time, nodding knowingly at a clock here or an Art Nouveau vase there. ‘Bric-à-brac.’
She was undeniably familiar with the art field, and she found something strange behind a door that had never been displayed. It was an extremely old wooden cane with a chain attached, and on the end of the chain was a sphere with sharp spikes. It was actually the family namesake, a morning star, a type of chivalric mace. I couldn’t understand how Henry had been able to resist bragging about the point.
Maud now went from room to room, opening the drapes and curtains and letting the sunlight come in through the windows. The light glittered in the glass display case containing East Indian porcelain; the light made the dark wood of the furniture gleam; the light shimmered over the polished parquet floors. And reluctantly I had to admit that this was better. The flat was more beautiful in the light.
We ended up in the library, which stank terribly of sweat, tobacco and coffee. Maud walked past the desk, which was weighed down by the burden of my magnum opus, and she pulled aside the heavy, smoke-permeated burgundy velvet curtains. Light sliced through the room and ricocheted off the many thousands of valuable volumes. And Maud opened a window to air out the stale smell. A light summer breeze drifted through the room, a gust of wind swept over the desk, catching at the well over six hundred pages and riffling through them.
‘Is that a new book?’ asked Maud, glancing at the stack of papers.
‘I don’t know what it is,’ I said. ‘Maybe you could call it a work in progress.’
‘I’ve actually read all your books,’ said Maud.
‘You’re kidding!’
‘Henry talked so much about you, so of course I was curious. I liked them, all of them. But the last one was the best. It seemed more fully developed … And this one … What’s it about?’
‘I can’t tell you,’ I said. ‘Not yet.’
Maud looked down at the stack of pages and boldly started leafing through them, without asking for permission. I let her have her way; she would find out for herself what it was about. She only needed to glance at a few lines here and there to realise what I had written.
‘You’re actually in it too,’ I said. ‘Here and there.’
Maud smiled, and I don’t know whether it was out of some sort of conceited pride at becoming a literary heroine or whether it was from a feeling of uncertainty or fear. She asked me for a cigarette, and I handed her my last pack of unfiltered Camels.
‘Would you like something to drink?’ I asked. ‘A gimlet, perhaps? Yesterday I found a bottle of Gilbey’s under the billiard table.’
‘Nothing for me, thanks,’ she said. Philip Marlowe was not her type. ‘There’s so much that you couldn’t possibly know about,’ she went on. ‘There’s so much that you’ll never be able to find out.’
‘There’s so much that I don’t want to find out.’ I said.
She was standing with her back to me – she had left the stack of papers on the desk – and she was looking out of the window. She was smoking quickly and efficiently, and only when she stubbed out half the cigarette did I hear that she was crying. She stubbed out the cigarette in the gaping satyr’s overflowing mouth, took a handkerchief out of her handbag and blew her nose. Then she took out a little mirror and touched up her eye make-up. I didn’t know what to do. I hated her, and it’s hard to comfort someone you hate. I suppose there wasn’t any consolation I could offer her anyway.
‘I think I’ll have a drink, at any rate,’ I said and went out to the billiard room to get that carelessly hidden bottle of gin. I continued on to the kitchen, got out a glass, Rose’s Lime Juice and a couple of ice cubes. It was supposed to be fifty-fifty. I noticed that my hand was shaking as I poured. It turned out more like sixty-forty, in Gilbey’s favour.
Maud had followed me and now stood leaning against the door jamb, biting her lip.
‘I … don’t even have … a photo, any kind of picture to remind me of … Henry,’ she managed to sob.
‘I’ll give you one,’ I said, taking a gulp of my gimlet. It was excellent. ‘I have one on the wall in my room.’
Maud stared at me with her tear-filled eyes, and I understood damn well why Henry Morgan and Wilhelm Sterner would do anything for her. She was so appallingly beautiful that it hurt inside me just to look at her. I felt scared and shaky.
I started walking down the corridor towards my room. Maud followed, like a child in need of company. She smelled of patchouli oil, and I was weak in the knees. Half of my gimlet splashed out onto the walls.
On the wall of my room, between the copperplate engravings with themes from Shakespearean tragedies, I had pinned up a number of personal photos of family members and various friends. There was also that picture of Henry, Leo and myself, taken down on Hornsgatan one evening a few months earlier. We were hanging onto each other like the Three Musketeers up to new tricks – three gentlemen, brimming with an appetite for life. It must have been a good day, an exceptional day.
I took down the photo, dropping all the pins on the floor, and handed it to Maud.
‘Here you are,’ I said. ‘Keep it as a souvenir.’
Maud sat down on Göring’s old bed to study the picture. She seemed pleased, or at least something that closely resembled a smile brightened her face, and I thanked God I wasn’t a painter. If I were, I would presumably have devoted the rest of my life to capturing that face.
‘He’ll be in the cinema soon, by the way,’ I said. ‘He was in a film, you know.’
‘Yes, so he was,’ said Maud, and she smiled again. ‘In a film.’ She didn’t sound the least bit ironic. Nor was this the proper time for irony or sarcasm.
Feeling confused, I happened to think of the fact that I still hadn’t found out why this bed with the walnut knobs was called Göring’s old bed. That was one story that Henry had neglected to tell me.
‘It’s strange,’ I said, ‘but that bed you’re sitting on is called Göring’s old bed, and I still don’t know why.’
Maud lifted her eyes from the photo of the Three Musketeers and gave me an uncomprehending look.
‘Göring was a Nazi and an idiot, and he was committed to Långbro Hospital, just like Leo,’ I said, taking a sip of my drink. ‘The world is a very strange place.’
‘The day is ours, the bloody dog is dead’, it said on one of the copperplate engravings from Richard III. It sounded beautiful but naïve. Evil always outlived its own tyrants.
‘I have no idea why this bed is called Göring’s old bed, nor do I have any idea what your last name is,’ I said. ‘Nomen nescio …’
‘Nomina sunt odiosa,’ said Maud.
‘How learned we can be,’ I said, and laughed. I could hear that I sounded crazy. As I mentioned, this was no time for irony.
Suddenly Maud stretched out on the bed and straightened her dress. I was very surprised, sat down in the bay window and lit my very last unfiltered Camel, crumpling up the crackling pack and tossing it into the wastepaper basket with the British hunting motif.
‘It’ll soon be Midsummer …’ said Maud, apropos of nothing. ‘Could I stay here a while?’
I almost fell out of the bay window, and desperately held on tight.
‘If you want to,’ I said. ‘Although this probably isn’t a very good hiding place.’
‘That doesn’t matter,’ said Maud. ‘I’ll tell you everything I know, even if it means death.’
‘Is that man prepared to do anything at all just in order to become a minister in some corrupt government?’
Maud nodded.
‘It’s more than just that,’ she said. ‘I’ve started to hate him … He has taken my whole life.’
I didn’t say a word as I smoked my cigarette and slid away from the bay window.
‘It’s probably all over for me now,’ said Maud, without sounding at all pathetic. ‘Take off that shirt. It’s his, from the beginning. I recognise it. You’re the one who matters right now. You’re so young
. You at least have to get out of this with your life in one piece. Give me a drag of your cigarette. You didn’t know what you were getting mixed up in, did you?’
‘No,’ I said, sitting down next to Maud on the edge of the bed, surprised at my own boldness. ‘I had no idea what I was getting mixed up in.’
‘What’s this?’ she said, brushing a finger over my cheek where the tics were worst.
‘An occupational injury,’ I said.
First published in Great Britain in 2008
by Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1T
First published in the United States in 2007
by MacAdam Cage, 155 Sansome Street, Suite 550, San Francisco, CA 9410
Originally published in Sweden as Gentlemen by Bonnier (ScanBook AB, Falun) in 1980
1
Copyright © Klas Östergren, 1980 English translation copyright © Tiina Nunnally, 2007
The moral rights of the author and translator have been asserted
The publisher acknowledges subsidy from the Scottish Arts Council towards the production of this book
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available on
request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 84767 480 7
Typeset by Palimpsest Book Production Ltd,Grangemouth, Stirlingshire
Printed and bound by in Great Britain by Mackay of Chtham Ltd, Chatham
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