The Hurricane Party

by Klas Ostergren

  Hanck wound his way between piles of rubbish containing things that no one would want to examine. Occasionally he might be asked, as a corpse was pulled from such a heap, whether he could help with identification.

  In the midst of these dubious haunts there were a number of serious-minded shopkeepers, including Hanck’s retailer. The shop was just opening. A heavy roll-down metal shutter went up with a shrill screech.

  The display window was crowded with objects made from extinct types of wood and metal that gleamed like gold. Instruments and tools from hundreds of years ago, machines from before the electronic era – collectors’ items for an elite group of devotees, things that would be used by even fewer people.

  There were telescopes, microscopes, navigational instruments, clocks and pendulums, scales, mechanical drawing sets, retorts and tongs, slide rules and a collection of machines and apparatuses which in the past had served human knowledge by specifying measurements and units in every conceivable context.

  When the corrugated iron shutter reached the top, the shop’s sign was also revealed. There it said in Swedish, in gold letters on a black background: ‘Scientific instruments bought and sold.’ The old-fashioned umlauts over the ö and ä bore witness to the fact that the shop had been at that site for several generations.

  The owner came out with a broom to sweep off the pavement in front of the entrance. The clinking of broken glass could be heard from the gutter. He stopped this dreary housekeeping as soon as he caught sight of Hanck approaching. A smile lit up his face and he said, ‘I love what I’m seeing . . .’ Presumably that was true.

  Hanck stepped inside the shop, where the only open floor space was limited to a narrow passageway between shelves and tables cluttered with objects of largely the same type as those displayed in the front window. The shop could instil a certain hesitation in customers, since most of the items were not marked with a price. The rule in the world of commerce is the lower the price the bigger the sign, and the higher the price the smaller the sign. Here not even the most minimal of price tags, such as those usually attached to valuable jewellery, were visible. The purpose of the goods for sale in this shop had once been to dispatch all relativism by providing precise readings in grams and degrees. Yet the price that they commanded today was highly relative; it was a subject open to discussion.

  For new customers the owner himself instilled the same hesitation. He was soft-spoken and unobtrusive, but according to rumour he had shot two thieves in the back.

  ‘The wizard is here!’ he now whispered towards the back of the shop where he lived with his wife and daughter. The entrance was through a narrow passage between a binnacle from one of the last full-riggers – depicted in a painting that hung on the opposite wall – and a grandfather clock whose face was decorated with a gloomy vanitas motif consisting of a skull, a burnt-out candle and an empty hourglass. But there was life in the clockworks, and its chiming was merry. Right now the clock was striking ten.

  ‘Coffee?’

  Hanck nodded gratefully. He hadn’t yet had any. He’d used up his rations at home.

  ‘Coffee!’ the owner whispered, or rather hissed, towards the back of the shop.

  He looked at Hanck holding the two cases. His fingers fidgeted impatiently, almost greedily. ‘People have been asking . . .’ he said. ‘What should I tell them? “He says that soon there won’t be any more . . .” “The wizard works at his own pace . . .” Is that true? That soon there won’t be any more?’

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ said Hanck.

  ‘Fuck.’

  ‘I still don’t have any paper.’

  ‘It’s on the way.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  Hanck didn’t receive an answer, just a sly smile. They’d had this conversation many times before. It usually ended with the shopkeeper invoking some unnamed contact, saying, ‘They’ve found a forest out there.’ For someone who dealt in scientific instruments, he was quite slipshod with regard to documentation and proof. He never specified who ‘they’ were, or where ‘out there’ might be. He used them as collective terms for almost everything.

  Now the itch in the shopkeeper’s hands became unbearable. ‘Let me have . . . Let me have . . .’ He practically clawed at the air, reaching for Hanck’s cases as if they were full of drugs.

  As usual, there was nowhere to set them down. The shopkeeper picked up a wind-up gramophone, which he placed on top of a polished hardwood box containing a sextant. A corner of a felt-covered table was now clear.

  Hanck carefully unwrapped the crackling cellophane from one of the cases, which he set on the table so he could open it. From the inside of the case rose the smell of sewing-machine oil. The shopkeeper studied the contents as if looking at the newly discovered relics of a saint.

  ‘A Facit . . .’ It sounded like a prayer in Latin.

  ‘A 1962 model,’ said Hanck. ‘Mint condition.’

  The shopkeeper stroked his fingertips over the keys. ‘What a masterpiece . . .’ He sighed and took a step back so as not to be too overwhelmed. He shook his head, as if confronting something incomprehensible. After he had looked his fill, he solemnly went over to a bureau, pulled out a drawer and took out a sheet of white paper. It was part of the procedure to sacrifice a sheet.

  He put the paper in the machine, rolled it up on the platen and with an outstretched finger pressed down a key. With a solid clack a letter appeared on the paper. The shopkeeper rolled out the page and grabbed the loupe hanging from a chain round his neck. He aimed a lamp at the impression on the paper and examined – or rather, ‘lorgnetted’, as he said – the result. ‘Perfect! As usual, it’s perfect! World-class!’

  After the other typewriter had undergone the same inspection, an examination that was more a matter of pleasure than scientific critique, and both machines were safely back in their cases, it was time for coffee.

  Hanck followed the shopkeeper into his inner sanctum. ‘I’m bringing the wizard in,’ he hissed into the dark. The words were directed at his wife, a woman who preferred to remain secluded in the back with their red-haired daughter.

  Against a backdrop of dark oak and oriental tapestries, his wife and daughter looked like two pale Renaissance women, garbed in clothing reminiscent of old folk-costumes – skirts of rough wool, white blouses made of linen and laced bodices of madonna-blue marocain.

  ‘Hancken,’ said the wife. ‘How nice to see you.’

  ‘Gerlinde,’ said Hanck. He kissed her hand. The daughter, Saussyr, received the same proof of his affection.

  After delivering his kisses, Hanck usually amused himself by speculating on how long it would take before he heard the trickling sound of running water from the next room where both women would be washing off the spot where he had pressed the back of their hands to his lips.

  The shopkeeper pulled out a chair from the big oak table for his visitor. Sure enough, just as Hanck sat down and was asked the question ‘How’s it going with the chef ?’ he heard the sound of running water.

  ‘He’s coming home today,’ said Hanck.

  ‘Then you’re bound to get some treats . . .’

  Hanck nodded.

  ‘Would the two of you like to come over some evening? Saussyr has been so filled with longing. Haven’t you?’

  His daughter came over to the table carrying a tray.

  ‘Oh yes, I really have,’ she said.

  It smelled of coffee, real coffee.

  ‘We’d like that,’ said Hanck. ‘As soon as he has a little rest.’

  Saussyr and Toby were the same age. They had often played together when they were kids, and their fathers had of course envisioned the perfect marriage. But lately, whenever Hanck mentioned the shopkeeper and his family, Toby would roll his eyes and say something condescending. It usually had to do with how old-fashioned, passé and ‘Iron-Age-like’ they were, among other things.

  Hanck might laugh at this, but it wasn’t a heartfelt laugh because he feared that his son included
him in the same context. He could get downright annoyed whenever the shopkeeper, a man who both lived off and lived for this inheritance from a distant past, took it for granted that Hanck was equally fascinated by, not to mention obsessed with, these inspired objects. ‘Those of us who are obsolete . . .’ he was in the habit of saying, referring to both himself and Hanck.

  Since Hanck wished to preserve a good business relationship with the shopkeeper, he would let the matter pass. But it annoyed him. He’d ended up in this profession by accident, sheer coincidence. He was not in the least fascinated by or reverential about anything that happened to have a ‘provenance’. That was an attitude based on the notion that everything was better in the past. As far as he knew, that was not something he had ever claimed. He would not even claim that he himself was better in the past. On the contrary.

  He was actually quite incapable of that sense of reverence, or at least ‘the proper reverence’ as the shopkeeper liked to emphasise. Hanck could show respect for all sorts of different phenomena, both living and dead. But he felt no genuine respect for objects that were simply old and had survived the ravages of time, or for people who held some sort of position that in and of itself was intended to arouse respect.

  He was actually more obstinate than obsolete. A fact that could make his son’s insinuations all the more troubling.

  It wasn’t until Hanck reached a mature age that he came to an understanding about that issue. When he himself became a father it was no longer possible to avoid certain recollections and memories that arose, sometimes as totally conscious comparisons, sometimes as sheer repetitions that could occur with comical regularity. For instance, in the way he washed a casserole dish, or his manner when remarking on everyday trivialities.

  Hanck grew up as the only child of a woman who worked with wigs and a man who called himself an entrepreneur. He felt that he’d had a good upbringing. Most of his childhood friends were gone now. Half had died in gang fights or other disputes; the other half had been wiped out by a virus that had swept over this part of the world like a wave. A man who was fifty years old, healthy, and the father of a talented son, couldn’t complain.

  Hanck’s father hadn’t even reached the age of fifty. His mother, who uttered her last words at sixty, blamed her husband’s death on the injuries he suffered while working ‘out there’.

  ‘That’s the way it goes,’ was her remark, followed as always by a pause and the confusing reservation: ‘But I don’t really know.’

  It was the usual story. Anyone who lived in the city but worked ‘out there’ remained ‘out there’. A certain amount of time might pass in suspenseful waiting, and then a couple of men in lavender overalls would knock on the door to give the widow the news of her husband’s death. If you were lucky, you might find the name of the missing person on the nearest monitor under the headline: ‘Deaths in the Outlying Area.’ That was an honour. The deceased was a hero who had made the ultimate sacrifice.

  ‘Out there’ referred to the entire world outside the city. The border was closed to ordinary citizens. With a certain amount of effort you could get out, but it was much harder to get in. Along the border lay a ring of quarantine areas where most people had to spend a long and vexing waiting period, only to be designated almost without exception as ill and then be turned away.

  Hanck’s father was part of a work team ‘out there’. They would work for a month at a time, spend a week in quarantine to have specimens taken and undergo other procedures.

  After that they had a month off.

  Hanck had never found out exactly what the work entailed.

  He later assumed that it had to do with transport lines that had to be secured, fires that had to be put out, or communities that had to be cleared.

  His father had brushed aside all questions.

  ‘What’s it like out there, Pappa?’

  ‘Pitch dark,’ might be the reply.

  ‘Is there a war going on?’

  His father would smile, rather evasively, and pat his son on the head. On rare occasions he would say, ‘It’s like after a war . . .’ That was all. Though of course supplemented by his mother’s remarks: ‘That’s the way it goes . . . but I don’t really know.’

  The rest was left to the boy’s imagination, firmly kept in check by the admonition: ‘Don’t worry about it.’

  It had been easy for Hanck to obey, especially when it came to that type of admonition. He was dissuaded from developing fantasies that had to be reined in so as not to run riot and become troublesome. He was a very level-headed person, even as a child. But the world ‘out there’ was still a cherished topic of speculation, especially among young boys. There is no reason to repeat all the wild rumours here; they weren’t particularly different from those of other eras or the notions of other peoples about the dark, unknown chaos that is always veiled behind warnings and prohibitions.

  Yet one thing was clear: there was no joy to be found out there. Those who returned were marked by it; they were ill, injured, or else something in their souls had simply been broken. The money they had saved up was not worth the sacrifice.

  During the months when his father was working ‘out there’, Hanck would accompany his mother to her job. She worked in a place that was also encumbered with a great many regulations. There were a number of dangerous tools and chemicals involved in wig-making, but of utmost concern was the humidity. The strands of hair had to be kept dry.

  It was a popular industry. Healthy young citizens with long hair would come in to have their hair washed and cut. They would get it cropped short and receive good money for the locks they left behind. Then the wigs would be made, often on commission from the wealthy in the City Under the Roof. Some owned great quantities of wigs in various bright colours, long and straight or short and curly. For some reason the old ladies who were especially skinny and sickly preferred wigs that were pale blue in colour.

  Much later, when Hanck wanted to describe his memories of this workplace to his son, it would have been natural for him to dwell on the peculiar atmosphere, the smell from the baths of dye, or the resonance in a room filled with hair. Or he might have tried to derive some useful life lesson from the transformation he witnessed when a young but impoverished girl was stripped of a beautiful head of hair, which would later adorn the skull of a rich, old woman. But he chose instead to emphasise the great craftsmanship of the wig-makers.

  Focusing on the positive was an attitude which, strangely enough, he had inherited from his father’s side of the family.

  His father’s departures and homecomings followed a specific pattern. During the days leading up to a departure he would be surly and irritable, cursing everything that had to do with ‘out there’. He was so difficult that it was a relief when he finally left.

  But it didn’t take long before the boy began to miss him, counting the days and nagging to find out when he’d be back. That lasted a week until a certain routine was established, in which his father had no part.

  And one day he was simply there again, sitting at the kitchen table with a bottle of vodka in front of him. Like a surprise. He might point at the bottle, at a spot just below the mid-point, and say: ‘I’m not home yet. But that’s when I’ll be home . . .’ And he was almost always right. The man was silent and unapproachable and not truly home until he’d downed at least half the bottle. Only then did he recover enough to start talking about a future without those trips ‘out there’.

  And that future did exist. After a few years ‘out there’, Hanck’s father had saved up a small nest egg, but above all he had made contacts within the wholesale trade.

  He started his own business and began buying and selling practically anything that could be bought and resold for a small profit, such as two hundred pairs of shoes, ten cases of vodka, or a large shipment of tinned goods.

  How he had managed to obtain permission to operate this business was just as mysterious as everything else concerning the man. Presumably he didn’t actuall
y have permission. All business activities were regulated by the Administration, which in turn was controlled by the Clan. The Administration had reinstated old laws and ordinances that were impossibly complicated and in principle turned every task into a life’s work for the civil servants in charge. For instance, it could take twenty-five years to reconstruct all the ordinances pertaining to the right to sing in public.

  Consequently, no one paid any attention to the prevailing regulations. Yet everything flowed smoothly as long as the Clan didn’t feel threatened. If a conflict should arise over an entrepreneur entering a particular market, the little upstart would be wise to withdraw quietly.

  As a budding businessman, Hanck’s father revealed sides of himself that he had previously kept hidden, such as a great self-confidence and an almost exaggerated sense of optimism. Apparently the world was turning in the right direction once again.

  He owned the last car in the neighbourhood, a very worn black car that he nursed with the greatest tenderness. Every evening, after numerous trips to make deliveries to the fancy shops in the City Under the Roof, he would back the vehicle into the building’s garage, which he had constructed himself inside an abandoned shop. When the car was behind lock and key, he would drape a covering over it, a big patchwork quilt made from old pairs of trousers.

  Hanck quickly learned that the business was based on bribes. When the Christian Christmas holiday approached, he would accompany his father to the yearly palm-greasing. The first year, before Hanck made his debut, his father had carefully rehearsed at home what the boy should say and do. He was supposed to go into the shop or the administrative office, tip his hat and say politely: ‘Good day, is the manager in?’ If that was the case, and he was introduced to the person, he was again supposed to tip his hat politely and hand over the Christmas gift he had brought, though it was proclaimed to be ‘Just a small sample from Orn’s wholesale business. Happy Christmas!’

  It all went quite smoothly. Hanck had a knack for that sort of thing. His father would wait in the car while the young gentleman made his business calls, thereby developing a precocious worldly wisdom.