The Hurricane Party

by Klas Ostergren

Hanck checked to see whether Rachel wore any sort of crucifix, but he didn’t see one. She probably didn’t need it. She noticed him looking at her. She raised a hand to her chest, swiftly, as if she had suddenly realised that she wasn’t properly dressed, the way a God-fearing woman should be dressed, at least according to the image presented in historical illustrations.

  She sat in silence on the other side of the kitchen table while Hanck pretended to be busy with important insurance matters. But there was nothing uncomfortable or embarrassed about her demeanour. She let her gaze roam over the kitchen, out towards the corridor leading to the living room. As if with those eyes and that smile she were trying to get a sense of what it might be like to live there and walk around as a different person from who she was at the moment, as someone that she might become.

  To break the silence Hanck typed a full stop after a superfluous note and then said: ‘I was thinking of having something to eat. Would you care for anything?’

  ‘It’s getting late,’ she said.

  ‘How did you get here?’

  ‘I walked.’

  ‘The whole way?’

  She saw that he was trying to work out how long that might have taken. ‘It took all day,’ she said.

  ‘You can’t go back home now,’ he said. ‘It’ll be dark before you’re even halfway there.’

  ‘I’m not afraid,’ she said.

  ‘You should be.’

  He saw the smile again, the one that was slightly superior.

  ‘Maybe you think that I’m completely naïve?’

  He was more and more convinced that he actually didn’t think so. He could easily imagine that she knew precisely what the world out there was like, and how she needed to move through the city at night, and which roads were passable without landing in the clutches of those who were evil and ruthless, and for whom she represented desirable raw material. Kidnapped and threatened, painted with make-up and drugged, she could be used for anything at all.

  ‘What about the dogs?’ he said. ‘Did you see any?’

  ‘That’s nothing but talk,’ she said. ‘I’ve never seen a mad dog in all my life.’

  ‘I saw them,’ said Hanck. ‘When I was a boy.’

  They had appeared regularly, big herds of mad dogs that staged attacks on the city and bit to death anyone and anything they could find. It was a nightmare – to walk alone along a dark street and suddenly become aware of the sound of hundreds of claws clacking on the ground, and then turn around to see the horde attack. They didn’t bark, they didn’t howl, they crept along like a shaggy grey mass with claws and teeth as sharp as awls. No one knew where they came from, how the pack had formed, or why it was so bloodthirsty. The dogs never ate their prey. They just wanted to kill.

  ‘I still think that you should stay here overnight,’ said Hanck. ‘A woman at work heard something about those dogs. And she’s usually right.’

  ‘If you believe her,’ said Rachel, ‘then maybe it’s best if I stay.’

  ‘You can take a bath,’ he said, as if in passing. ‘I mean, if that’s something you like, taking baths . . .’ The moment he brought up the subject of baths, he realised that she might take it as an insult, that he thought she was dirty.

  And she did seem aware of that possibility, that she might feel or pretend to feel offended, but she chose another and perhaps more attractive option. ‘I’d like that,’ she said. ‘I’ve never bathed in a tub.’

  He would later notice that she left a grimy ring in the bathtub. He never mentioned that to his son. Nor did he mention what he felt when he later scrubbed the grime away.

  Hanck heated up soup from a tin that he had in the flat while he listened to her splashing around in the bathroom. When the food was ready she stood in the hall, drying her hair with one of his towels. She was fully dressed. She had turned her jumper inside out.

  ‘Do you need to call someone?’ he asked. ‘Your family?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They might be worried.’

  ‘They’re always worried,’she said and laughed. ‘Is that vodka?’

  Hanck had a glass in his hand. ‘Would you like some?’ She nodded. He gave her a glass, and they drank a toast to ancient luxuries like bathtubs.

  He had set the kitchen table. She sat down in the place where he usually sat, but he didn’t manage to say a word before she said, ‘I’m ovulating and starving.’

  ‘If I had a daughter,’ said Hanck, ‘I’d be – ’ He stopped short, aware that she might find him boring.

  ‘Yes?’ she said. ‘If you had a daughter . . .’

  ‘I mean a little girl,’ said Hanck. ‘Then I’d be worried all the time too.’

  ‘What about a boy?’ said Rachel.

  ‘Then I’d be even more worried.’

  ‘Young men are their own worst enemies.’

  Hanck set the pot of soup on the table. ‘So you have brothers?’ he said.

  ‘They’re tame,’ she said. ‘You don’t need to be afraid of them.’

  Hanck laughed. ‘Why should I be afraid of them?’

  ‘In case we have intercourse later on,’ she said.

  ‘I see,’ said Hanck.

  ‘Just so you know,’ she said. ‘You don’t need to be afraid.’

  ‘Why should I be afraid?’

  ‘They might come here, kick in the door, demand retribution and cut your throat.’

  ‘In that case,’ said Hanck, ‘I hope you’re worth it.’

  He didn’t look at her but instead picked up her bowl and served the soup. This might indicate that he was familiar with the ways of the world, or unflinching in the face of death, or both. As if he were an experienced seducer, used to defying fate with more or less unknown women, the daughters and sisters of fathers and brothers who kept a number of outmoded ideas alive.

  Unfortunately the vodka ran out while they were still at the kitchen table. Hanck realised that he would have needed more to forget about those threats. They were not repeated, not even in jest, but they were still there, hovering just below the surface, no matter what else they talked about.

  He told her about his life, she told him about hers. They saw similarities that could unite them and bring them pleasure. The differences were, at the moment, less interesting.

  But she had planted an idea that took root and grew and would soon blot out all other prospects. The idea that their connection might have long-term consequences. Hanck had touched on the very same matter, just in passing, with several colleagues at work. He seemed to understand that they viewed those risks as an incentive, like some sort of exciting spice. The risk of reprisals and other undesirable consequences seemed merely to have a stimulating effect. He had a hard time sharing their view, or taking the whole thing so casually. He was forced to acknowledge his fear, and he needed something to assuage it. Alcohol or pills. But the alcohol was gone, and the pills that he had were old; he was unsure what effect they would have, if they had any effect at all.

  But the matter was solved; providence stepped in. After they had eaten and left their dishes in the kitchen and gone into the living room, he switched on the receiver. A mighty organ tone filled the whole room.

  Rachel wasn’t used to the organ. She’d heard it a couple of times before while visiting friends, but there was no receiver in her home. She was immediately gripped. Solemn, in a happy way.

  They sat holding hands. And after they’d sat there for half an hour or so, something happened that neither of them had ever experienced before and would probably never experience in their lifetime again.

  The organ changed tone. It had long remained on a G, but now it rose to an A, a major second. After a moment it rose to a B. Another major second. Stable. Breathtaking.

  Although she was no expert, Rachel knew at once that she had been witness to something enormous, unprecedented. Hanck could see it on her face, although that may have been the only thing he saw on that occasion. She in turn only needed to glance at him to have it verified – he leapt
up from the sofa, looking both dazed and radiant at the same time. Irresistible in his elation. And she was for him equally irresistible, as a participant in this major second.

  No clearer portent was needed. They made love on the sofa, as if enveloped in the tone, which was still echoing from the major second of the organ.

  Afterwards, in a tranquil moment, they were able to get up off the sofa and go to his bed. She whispered things in his ear in a language he didn’t understand. He thought it sounded beautiful, as if she were speaking indecent things that she had never whispered in anyone’s ear before. That made him even harder.

  They fell asleep for a few hours and then made love again, in the dawn. He lay awake at her side for a while. A pale sun was on its way up. She was sound asleep when he was forced to leave her.

  He washed himself, put on the best clothes that he owned, skipped breakfast, put on his hat and coat, and returned to the bedroom.

  She was still asleep. He stood there a moment, looking at her. Even in her sleep, she was smiling. He decided that it was a satisfied smile.

  He had refrained from asking very much about her faith, what it was like, what it might mean. At any rate, it didn’t seem to stand in the way of much of anything.

  He let her sleep and left without locking the door behind him. She was free to go. If she wanted to take something with her, she could do so. The pepper, he thought. She would probably steal his genuine pepper. It was worth it.

  But more than anything, he wanted her to be there when he came home.

  The report that Hanck wrote regarding the fire on the old man’s property was the most unambiguous account he had ever produced. Citing witnesses, he concluded that the fire had been set by ‘known berserkers’. But he didn’t stop there. Since the event displayed such blatant similarities with others, he found it justified to call attention to a clear and obvious pattern of persecution of individual citizens and proprietors who had not yet voluntarily joined the Clan’s protective operation. To emphasise the degree of persecution, he had used the old-fashioned term ‘systematic terror’.

  He had never before expressed himself so clearly. He knew that it might entail danger, at least for his future prospects with the company. There the most diplomatic of forces prevailed.

  Such as his new boss, a matter-of-fact, unsentimental and almost heartless man. He was the one who, for some reason, wore a big wooden cross on a chain around his neck. Every time he sat down to eat in the employee cafeteria and leaned over the table to pull his chair forward, the cross would land in his plate. Then he would sit there wiping it off with a paper napkin as his food got cold.

  One day when Hanck was in the process of finishing his report about the old man with the barn, the power went out just as they sat down at a table in the cafeteria.

  ‘This is just like the Middle Ages!’ his boss said.

  Then someone at the table cautiously reminded him that there weren’t any power outages in the Middle Ages since they didn’t have electricity back then. The boss, not accustomed to being contradicted, had then triumphed by stating that electric current existed in all ages, people just hadn’t understood how to use it. After saying that, he sat there in contented silence, wiping off his cross.

  The talk then prompted someone else to ask what other discoveries or inventions each person at the table valued most.

  The suggestions that were offered were largely to be expected, except for one, which was proposed by an older woman from Hanck’s department. She said quite firmly: ‘The work day.’

  Hanck found this extremely sensible. It wasn’t really an invention, or even a discovery, but more a way of establishing an orderly life in which each person did his part; an absolute requirement so that a few select individuals could then make their inventions or discoveries. It was grey and lacklustre yet comforting for a young man who saw his whole life ahead of him confined to a labyrinth of archived reports.

  Though Rachel would soon appear as the key witness to widespread nefarious acts. He had cited her without revealing her identity. He didn’t even mention any neighbours, let alone any Sneezers or Etherists. He knew that she was right – they had a dubious reputation and were worthless as witnesses.

  He had looked them up in New Memory, in which the whole phenomenon was described in the past tense, as an extinct ‘-ism’, also found under the heading ‘Etherism’: ‘One of the many crisis-related spiritual movements that arose between the First and Second Wave (cf Wave). Basically Christian in its creed, but linked to antiquity’s idea of ether (cf Ether, Ether media, etc.), the noblest form of matter, further developed in Aristotle’s idea of the fifth element, quinta essentia, the everlasting element that constitutes the heavenly spheres; among animists and spiritists regarded as a divine substance. Etherism added Christian ideas from medieval thinkers, primarily the mystics. The highest form of religious experience consisted of unio mystica, union with the divine in ecstasy. A prerequisite for this, according to the Etherists, was the extinguishing of desire and consciousness, a state in which an individual’s sensitivity to his own body and surroundings ceased, and the soul became receptive to the divine; an experience preferably expressed in antithetical terms (a dark light, a roaring silence, a moment’s eternity, etc). Etherism stressed that the path to this experience was not, as with its predecessors, through prayer, meditation or mortification. Etherism emphasised instead physical manifestations of the divine presence, primarily in the cavities in which the ether could penetrate the human body and arouse excitation. Etherism never became a widespread movement and soon split into two main branches following internal strife. The ‘orthodox’ group emphasised every perception of the divine as a spontaneous reaction to a natural blessing. In opposition to this ‘passive’ belief, the ‘radical’ movement stressed the importance of arousing this blessing. This consisted of an extensive use of stimuli such as essential oils, pepper, genuine pollen and so on. Of the two branches, the orthodox group became more widespread, partially due to the fact that access was limited to substances for arousing the desired excitation. Etherism’s ideas are today regarded as antiquated, and no adherents are mentioned in the official registry of viable communities.’

  Of course Hanck had rushed home from work on that day, the day after the major second, without being entirely conscious of doing so. Time had passed at an interminably slow pace. He had looked at the clock every other minute, something he usually never did.

  He had stood in front of the water cooler, chugging down water. People had walked past and said: ‘Hanck – you look radiant!’

  And after that remark was delivered, someone else would say: ‘You seem impatient.’ And: ‘Don’t think that it’s going to happen again tonight.’

  On his way home he had run into a distant acquaintance who stopped him on a street corner simply to say: ‘What’s your hurry?’ Only then did Hanck realise that he was more or less racing along.

  But she wasn’t there when he came home. The flat was silent and empty, almost desolate. The dirty dishes were still on the worktop. The bed was unmade. The light was on in the bathroom.

  It was then that he saw the grimy ring in the tub. He stood there studying it for a long time before he decided to get rid of it. He got out the cleaner and a rag and started scrubbing, filled with a troubling, ambiguous feeling. No doubt it had been exhaustively described before, analysed and drained of all imaginable nuance. Under the heading ‘Disappointment’.

  There were no doubt a thousand paths to that experience, but the quickest way was probably via ‘Anticipation’. That was the route he had taken, at any rate, a seductive, magical path that made the dreary reality of the destination bearable; yes, it was almost worth the price. He had never felt such anticipation before, not even when he was a boy.

  When the bathtub was clean, he went out to the kitchen to see if the pepper was gone. But it stood right where it had always stood.

  Disappointment turned to shame, because it had been stupid of him to sus
pect her of something like that.

  She hadn’t taken anything with her, he thought now. She had left information. She had left a ring of grime. She had given him an unforgettable memory.

  He didn’t know whether she would remember him. At least he had given her food and protection for the night. They had shared a major second. Maybe that was a fair trade.

  It never crossed his mind that she, when she got home, was someone who had taken away much more than she had left behind.

  That was pretty much all Hanck had to say about the woman who was Toby’s mother, claiming that it was the truth. Of course there was more to say about her, but Hanck lacked access to that information. She’d had a big family, and she’d probably had friends and even one or two enemies. But Hanck had never had contact with any of them.

  If he was ever forced to explain the circumstances surrounding the birth of his son in a trustworthy way, it would be a brief and concise report, exemplary in its clarity and easily comprehended, as his boss would say, but much too meagre for a son.

  Before he became a father, Hanck had regarded himself as a level-headed person. There’s good reason to assume that those around him perceived him in the same way. He wasn’t troubled by an excess of imagination but possessed an excellent ability to see through others. That had been an asset when it came to interpreting the contradictory stories that victims of misfortune often devised.

  It’s commonly believed that someone whose job it is to gather information would be well-served by a sense of curiosity, an eagerness to learn and a thirst for knowledge, but that’s a misconception. Those types of passions might possibly serve the practitioners of liberal professions, poets, and those who can handle facts, evidence and proof with less constraint.

  As an author of reports, Hanck belonged to a strict school in which anything irrelevant was regarded as ‘rhetorical redundancy’ and eradicated. His first boss had been a more liberal type, one of the obsolete; an educated and cultivated gentleman who was prone to outpourings about the shabby use of language by the young. He spoke ardently about the literature of the past, and he recommended that everyone in the department should read at least one of the so-called classics each year.