Slugger

by Martin Holmén

  ‘I read the newspaper. The whole thing played out in the open just four years ago.’

  I think, but can’t remember shit.

  ‘We will consider what Kvisten has said.’

  Ma puts down her cane, takes the pince-nez off the tip of her nose, picks up the little brown jar with the spoon and turns to Nix.

  ‘Make sure Kvist gets his hat and suit. Then take our guest for his visa and passport. He should want for nothing. And check the underside of the automobile just in case. If dynamite is on the cards.’

  I grin and blink at Nix. That shut the bastard up.

  Ma shovels a small amount of powder from the jar with the built-in teaspoon, presses her index finger with a red-painted nail to one nostril and sniffs.

  ‘Do you remember the burning of the Reichstag in Berlin three years ago, the very starting point for the establishment of the National Socialist regime? Though they accused die Roten, it immediately became apparent that it was the Brownshirts under the direction of Karl Ernst himself who started the fire. Soon Hitler, Goebbels and Goering were in place to watch the drama play out first hand. However, I must admit that this is hearsay and nothing I can guarantee to be true.’ She sniffs. ‘We are meeting for supper this evening at half past seven, so Kvist can tell us more then. Regular table, number 10, at the Grand.’

  She swings her cigarette holder out in front of her in time with the trilling of the piano.

  ‘Schumann, a living testimony of how circumstances can intervene and suddenly turn an accident into a blessing.’ She shuts her eyes. ‘Not like the Negro music that we have to play on the weekends when it happens to be in vogue. Is Kvist a music lover?’

  I take a puff.

  ‘I could hold a tune as a kid.’

  Ma sniffs and looks me over. I squirm under her gaze.

  ‘Supper at the Grand then.’ A stream of smoke drifts up to the ceiling when she stubs out her cigarette. ‘I read an interesting article in a science journal not long ago.’ She looks at me from under the brim of her hat. ‘Did Kvist know that sweat is acidic and bactericidal, but if uncouth people let it remain on their body too long, then it becomes favourable soil for bacteria and the carrier gets sick?’

  Ma closes her eyes and rocks gently back and forth. My cheeks flush and I begin to cough.

  ‘This damned water ban…’

  ‘I’m sure Kvist is advised about his stench often enough,’ says Nix with an expression like a screw taking delivery of a new inmate. He takes the Husqvarna from Svenne Crowbar and passes it to me.

  I check the safety and holster the shooter. I gesture goodbye but Ma is still sitting with her eyes closed and her red lips drawn in a wide smile, lost in a pleasing memory. I nod to Svenne Crowbar and follow Nix out.

  We emerge into the gloomy corridor. I take out a cigar and place it between my lips. The gangster stops at Room 1 and opens it with a grin.

  ‘Boy?’

  Inside lies a youth of around twenty, sleeping in his underpants and a flimsy undershirt. He is a beautiful example of a good, old-fashioned Swedish native: sharp, strong features, unruly mop of blond hair, broad shoulders. I can clearly see the bulge of his cock in his underpants. I yawn and drily smack my lips.

  ‘Maybe later.’

  I fix my gaze on Nix and hold it until he looks away first. He snorts air out through his nostrils and slams the door.

  Sometime, somewhere, it will just be him and me facing each other, alone with our rage.

  I look forward to that day.

  I walk over to the bulletproof Cadillac while I puff on my last Meteor.

  ‘We need to stop at a cigar kiosk.’

  ‘On the way to the petrol station.’

  I stand, shifting my weight from foot to foot, observing as Nix carefully checks the underside for dynamite, and quietly wondering to myself what the fuck I have got myself into.

  The attendant at the petrol station on Vallhallavägen mops the sweat from his forehead with his free hand and wipes it on his stained overalls. There is a hollow clunk in the tank as he shakes off the last drops of petrol. He bows slightly, Nix starts the car and we leave the station behind in a cloud of smoke. I purse my lips and stare at him.

  ‘The payment?’

  ‘Next time.’

  Artillerigatan’s fashionable shacks pass by at high speed and I place my hand on the dashboard. Nix lets go of the wheel to light a filter cigarette and has to grab hold of it again at the last second to turn left onto Östermalmsgatan. He only slows down when we catch sight of the guards outside the Army Headquarters.

  I glance at the looming grey building and scoff.

  ‘Why the hell have they chosen an inscription in Italian on the façade?’

  ‘Latin.’

  ‘That doesn’t explain it.’

  ‘Exercitus sine duce, corpus est sine spiritu.’

  Ma seems to have done a better job with this son than with that other boozer.

  ‘They’re busy in there at the moment, I bet. Maps and the like.’

  ‘An army without a leader is like a body without a mind.’

  ‘I’ve never been one for maps. Don’t trust them. They’re wrong too often.’

  ‘They’re the ones that are wrong?’ Nix snorts and clenches his left fist in the air. ‘Stupidity and the desire for revenge are not a combination that has ever won any wars. On the other hand: organisation, leadership, the ability to adapt and plan according to the situations of allies and enemies.’

  ‘Heard plenty about that place.’

  I ignore his grumbling and point with my cigar at an establishment farther away. Nix strokes his moustache and changes to a higher gear, and the tyres vibrate more rapidly against the road.

  The restaurant is closed for summer. Someone has drawn a swastika in the thick layer of dust on the shop window.

  ‘You used to receive training in an organisation such as ours. The youngsters can run errands, do the simpler pick-ups and deliveries, and when it’s time to join the nightwatch you get a confirmation suit tailored to conceal a shoulder holster. The best, in terms of intelligence, loyalty and toughness, rise above the others.’

  ‘Quite.’

  Nix is very roused all of a sudden.

  ‘How the fuck can a grown man have a brain like a walnut? He might be the elder but he has always been a little backwards.’

  The bastard is acting tough again. One more word and I have half a mind to throw him out of the moving car. I run my tongue along the inside of my mouth. It feels like sandpaper against dehydrated wood.

  ‘The goat that bleats the loudest is milked the least,’ he concludes.

  We turn right onto Strandvägen. The sun is pouring its golden beams over the rich men’s apartments in the luxury buildings. From our left the lake winds blow against the side window, and along the quay the boats’ masts flutter in the blue sky. Dockers stagger under a load of bricks due for shipment. A fiery mask has been painted onto their sweaty faces, making them look like redskins. The gangplank bends under their weight and concentrated silence. On the quay the bricks are piled in high squares by muscular blokes with battered hands for a couple of kronor and a sandwich in the evening. I have been one of them myself.

  ‘Once we had hundreds of men ready and armed, various cops and several judges on our payroll, but now we have to run around the city hiring all sorts of new people.’

  ‘That’s a good place for a stop. In the evening.’

  I gesture to The Widow, a white-washed steamboat that serves as an illicit drinking den. Nix doesn’t seem to hear me. He speeds up even more.

  Reflections fly from all the gold around the entrance to the Royal Dramatic Theatre as we pass Berzelii Park. The spot near the grey mass of the statue in the middle of the park, hidden among the dark shadows of the trees, used to be frequented by promiscuous youths schooled in the twenty arts, ready to sell their arse for a fiver. A couple are there still, despite the vice squad’s efforts. They share it with a few of the city’
s youngest hussies, fourteen-year-old girls that nobody wants due to their age and lack of experience. I see one of them kneeling in her much-too-high heels. Her painted lips quiver like a death twitch when she tries to smile in that conspiratorial way that is the secret greeting of whores.

  God knows where all the rest have gone.

  Just before Norrmalmstorg a house cat, with a red collar and a belly full of kittens near enough touching the ground, runs across the street. Nix turns hard on the wheel. I hold myself in my seat.

  ‘Watch out!’

  The cigar that was fixed in my mouth tumbles onto my lap. There is a bump as Nix hits the cat with the front wheel. A barely perceptible shock moves through the body of the vehicle.

  ‘Bullseye.’

  Nix’s voice is barely a whisper. I pick up my Meteor, dust the ash off my trousers and glare at him.

  A smile spreads across his chiselled profile. His gaze lingers in the rear-view mirror for half a second, he clicks into a lower gear, the motor changes its note and we slow down.

  A tense silence inside the car. I cough, open my mouth to speak, close it again. The seat creaks as I lean forward. Nix lets go of the wheel and makes a helpless gesture with his hand, but seems at a loss for words. Part of me wants to beat him into oblivion.

  He looks over at me. His eyes sparkle darkly with mischief. I take a deep puff on my Meteor that tears at my windpipe and stare out through the side window. The car lurches into a right turn and the plant beds on Birger Jarlsgatan rush past. Tension migrates from my abdomen to my head, my hangover headache flickers in my forehead and we turn left.

  The door of Herzog’s the tailor has its window intact, but the shop front is still boarded up with rough planks. The words ‘JEW DEVILS’ bleed in red dripping letters on the boards. The paint can is still in the gutter.

  Nix finds a parking spot outside the tailor’s and turns off the engine. He lights a new cigarette with the old.

  ‘Kvist must understand…’ He chucks ashes into the street through the side window. ‘That fat fucking cat was in no state to be running around in city traffic. It didn’t know any better, so just followed its impulse. So the fucker got run over.’

  A bubbling, childish giggle spills from his mouth. The sound is at odds with his appearance and distorts his sharp facial features. I nod dumbly, press the door handle and jump out into the street. The harsh bang of the car door cuts off the giggling. On the mudguard and the underside of the running board, I see viscous drops of blood.

  I hasten towards Herzog’s, away from the maniac in the Cadillac. I open the door to the tailor’s with one hand and pinch the bridge of my nose with the other. The clapper hits the bell with a hollow, half-hearted tinkle.

  I am struck by the emptiness. The work table is free of tools, only one of the machines is in place on the short side of the premises and the wardrobes gape open with no rolls of fabric inside. Even the smell of the steam-pressed wool has been expelled by the fan.

  On a decapitated wooden mannequin in the middle of the workshop hangs my suit, grey with chalked lines. The unease I felt in the car intensifies further, as does my pounding hangover, and I feel like turning around and forgetting the whole thing, mausgrau or not. I pluck the cigar from my lips.

  The door at the back of the room creaks and the skinny little tailor creeps in wearing felt slippers. Just like on Sunday, he is wearing a visor on his head and a red measuring tape tied in a loop around his neck, but now the look in his eyes is of an old pauper who wants nothing more than to leave his earthly existence behind. The apprentice is nowhere to be seen.

  He nods at me with a wearied expression.

  Some weeks must be tougher than others.

  ‘The suit will be ready first thing tomorrow.’

  ‘There was talk of additional measurements?’

  ‘How silly of me.’ He gestures towards the mannequin. ‘Of course.’

  His tongue twists angularly around the words. I puff greedily on my cigar. The thick smoke billows out as if from a chimney. There is nowhere to tap off the ash.

  I take off my jacket, look for somewhere to put my shoulder holster and rags but the tailor relieves me of my clothes, folds them expertly and excuses himself before disappearing into the back.

  I carefully lift the jacket and waistcoat off the mannequin. They are hanging together with tacking thread. First one arm, then the other, then the same again. I do a few shoulder rolls, then I try out a couple of uppercuts and a straight blow. Cigar ash drifts to the floor. The jacket fabric follows my movement and fits close around my muscles without diminishing the motion. I undress and stand there in my elasticated underwear, socks and suspenders.

  It’s cold in the shadow of the boarded-up window, despite the persistent heat outside. I shiver. I contemplate the dead vacancy of the tailor’s shop. There are traces of life on the walls: screws, nail holes, colour variations on the wallpaper where notices and promotional posters for various suits and mannequins once were. Another deep puff on my Meteor dissolves it all into smoke.

  The back door creaks, shuffling steps reveal Herzog and I turn around. He has the trousers over his arm. Under his bushy eyebrows his brown eyes are as exhausted as a starving dog. He moistens his lips.

  ‘Gejn forojs, please, Mr Kvist.’

  I carefully pull on the trousers. Herzog watches me in silence, kneels down and digs out a box of pins from his pocket. With steady, spindly fingers he begins to pin them up. Words run through my head though there isn’t much to say.

  Finally I break the silence.

  ‘So, closing up?’

  ‘In exile I will miss the customers. The people in the city. The city as it was.’ The tailor mumbles something in his guttural native tongue, lets a double sigh escape his lips and continues with clipped consonants.

  ‘Young Baroness Heening and her exquisite feel for quality. Schließen, ja? Cheerful mood despite the burden of her rank, but decisive concerning clothing. The housemaid always had fresh breakfast bread as a gift. Broyt.’

  Herzog switches to the other trouser leg.

  ‘Even though it was often long after twelve. Hold out your arms, please.’

  He puts a couple of pins between his lips, pulls gently at the fabric and continues speaking through the corner of his mouth.

  ‘One must assume that the Baroness had late habits.’

  I take the cigar out of my mouth.

  ‘The dynasty has its privileges.’

  ‘Dr Henck and the coats with fur collars.’ He whispers something in his own language and then speaks more loudly: ‘Treat themselves to a new one every winter, der Hochstapler, in the same design as the previous one, regardless of changes in fashion and the weather. The last day of November for the past twenty years.’

  Herzog gets up with a certain amount of effort and looks me up and down.

  ‘Two sons, one administrator at the university and one do-nothing at the dance palace. I got the impression that the doctor preferred the… shlefer… how do you say… layabout, yes?’

  I smack my lips and try to muster a little saliva in my bone-dry gob. Herzog signals to me to turn around and I obey.

  ‘The gentleman is a little uneven around the shoulders.’

  ‘Right-handed, walk with the left first.’

  ‘You will be my last customer in this country.’

  ‘An honour.’

  Herzog clucks and gestures for me to take off my new suit and put on the old one. The Jew moistens his lips again.

  ‘It was not long ago that I was known as the best tailor in the city, Baruch HaShem, but in one day everything changed.’

  A lump wedges in my throat. Herzog sheds a glittering tear that sits in the wrinkles under his eye before he wipes it away with the knuckle of his forefinger. I try to relax the knot in my stomach with a couple of drags. The hangover is making my hand tremble.

  ‘The clients don’t come any more,’ Herzog continues. ‘Not even the ones who left a deposit. Ratevet. Afraid.�
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  ‘The Führer’s fault.’

  ‘Zol men oysnitsn zayne kishkes oyftsuhengen dem vesh.’ The tailor swallows. ‘May his guts be used as a washing line.’

  The skinny man shakes his head and the tape measure round his neck glints. An image from last autumn flashes through my shattered mind: a good friend, innocent as a maid, his throat cut from ear to ear. I take a few steps towards the door but turn around. I swallow hard.

  ‘Where are you going?’ I wheeze.

  ‘Relatives in Warsaw.’

  ‘I’ve never been there.’

  ‘Edit… Edyta, and Sara,’ mumbles the tailor. ‘And little Eli.’

  ‘Guaranteed to be better there.’

  ‘Baruch HaShem,’ repeats Herzog. ‘If He wishes it.’

  ‘The people in this city are nervous sheep.’ I raise my voice into a roar. ‘Always so fucking quick to point the finger at someone else to avoid staring into the dirty depths of their own selves. The truth is that they are the ones who need us.’

  ‘Us?’

  ‘If we weren’t here they’d find others. And still more in their place.’

  The tailor raises his eyebrows, looks down at his felt slippers for a moment and then looks up again.

  ‘Mr Kvist can have his suit for free. Tomorrow. Morgen, ja?’

  I swallow. Just in time for Hasse’s match. Sometimes people’s kindness hits harder than a right hook. I mumble a thank you but don’t know if he hears.

  I look out at the street and see Nix standing in the sun, smoking. Two young ladies are walking arm in arm along the pavement. One has round copper plates in her ears and the other has some sort of comb stuck in the back of her hair. Nix’s wolf-whistle cuts through the window in the shop door to where I am standing with my hand on the handle. His teeth flash under his moustache as he grins and the girls hurry up the steps. I am shaking anxiously but I pull the handle.

  ‘Make sure you brand the inner pocket,’ I say over my shoulder. ‘It will be a pleasure to see the lapel with your name every time I hang up my jacket.’

  I open the door and take a couple of steps out into the street. It is as hot as a blast furnace. With a few strides I am next to Nix and the car. He drops his butt into the gutter.