The Hurricane Party

by Klas Ostergren

  ‘Did he say that?’ Hanck asked.

  ‘Yes, word for word,’ said Bora. ‘I remember the words exactly. I was still there, I couldn’t move from the spot. I was on the verge of tears, all I wanted was to get out of there, I wanted to run as far away as I could. But I was stuck there, couldn’t move a muscle. No one else could, either. It was as if everyone had finally realised what was about to happen.’

  Loki spoke quite calmly, gesturing with his hands: ‘I picked up a pair of scissors and said, “It will cost you a lock of your hair for every thrust I make.” You knew I was serious, that I would toss in your face every snipped-off lock of hair so that you would see what it had cost, so you would tell me to stop. Or at least that’s what I thought! And you agreed. Why would I joke about such a matter? Why shouldn’t it cost you something? So I thrust and cut and paused and said: “Should I stop?” But there was no question of stopping. You wanted more and more and more. I thrust and cut until the whole bed was covered with hair. And you lay there, bald, with your cheeks flushed. Guilty and blissful.’

  ‘What is it you want?’ Sif couldn’t object or accuse him of lying. That must have been what really happened, in spite of any fanciful reconstruction after the fact. ‘Do you want to die?’

  ‘Death in truth, life in lies. All of it is shit.’

  ‘You have a wife and children back home. Don’t you care about them?’

  ‘I’ve heard, I’ve understood. I’ve already taken precautions.’

  ‘You understand the consequences?’

  ‘Consequence is my middle name.’

  A swinging door squeaked. There stood Thor, the Enforcer. He’d been there for a while, listening; the situation had already been made clear to him. On his way up from the dock he’d come upon a couple of underlings having a pee. ‘By devil, don’t go inside!’ they told him. ‘It’s Loki . . . No one knows what he’s taken, but he’s gone completely mental, he’s been attacking everyone. He doesn’t want to be part of the group any more.’

  But nothing had ever made the Enforcer back down. And now there he stood, having been served up a full confession, realising that his wife and an old friend had betrayed him while he was out on missions, long, perilous journeys, exerting himself in order to maintain some sort of peace and quiet.

  He had arrived in good spirits, terribly late of course, and yet counting on making another of his jubilant entrances, his pockets filled with ‘the very last jars’ of caviar.

  And this was what awaited him instead. Thor, the upright and unequivocal, the always reliable, was a cuckold. Perhaps this wasn’t even news to the others, perhaps he was the last to find out. None of them seemed especially surprised, at any rate. They were more surprised at seeing him standing there. He was more used to being eagerly awaited, coming as a liberator, someone who would mete out a righteous punishment.

  Instead he felt embarrassed faces glancing his way, alternately filled with anguished sympathy and the contempt that people gladly bestow on someone who has been betrayed. Things had deteriorated so much that it would make no difference what he did.

  He wasn’t good at intrigues, he liked things to be black and white, in straight lines. He could listen for a while in a crisis situation, and if what he heard aroused his anger, he would usually start delivering blows until things calmed down. That was his method. It had taken him far. Good, old-fashioned violence; of benefit to them all.

  He saw no reason now to try anything different. He came into the hall, went right over to Loki and said, ‘I’m going to kill you.’ That usually worked when he said it to people who had encroached into their realm and had done things they shouldn’t have done. Especially when he put force behind his words and knocked someone down first. He didn’t take them aside, drag them out to an alley, or even into the next room. He knocked people down on the spot, right where they were standing, so the blood sprayed all around, across tables and chairs, onto gowns and suits.

  But this place was protected, and Loki could calmly reply: ‘You have people out there, I know that.’

  ‘You have to leave here. For good.’

  ‘Where am I supposed to go? Out east? Get a pain in my arse?’

  ‘One more word and I’ll kill you.’

  Loki moved closer to the Enforcer, stepped within reach. ‘I don’t believe you,’ he said. ‘You’ll let the others outside do the job. Not that I mind. Somebody has to do it. Am I right?’

  A question. Thor tried to work out what it meant.

  ‘Maybe you want to, but you can’t. Am I right?’ said Loki.

  Another question.

  ‘I’m going to bash . . .’

  Loki turned to the others again. They sat there without moving, wooden, no matter how much they’d had to drink. ‘You should see him as a woman. So ladylike. They’re wild about him out there.’

  The Enforcer was breathing hard as he stood utterly motionless, as if preparing to lunge, launch an attack. But he was thinking, trying to think so hard and with such intensity that his body felt heavy, almost intractable.

  ‘We’ve taken a lot of shit, you and I. Wept and laughed. You can kill me, send me wherever you like. But it no longer makes any difference.’

  ‘I’m going to kill you.’

  ‘You are?’

  ‘I’m going to kill you.’

  ‘So do it! Do it!’

  Loki waited a moment, with his hands hanging limply at his sides, as if ready to be killed on the spot. But he waited in vain. He turned his back to Thor, giving him time to pull himself together.

  No blows were delivered. Loki let his gaze sweep over the whole party, every single guest, the entire Clan. He knew that he was seeing them for the last time in this life. On his way out he stopped and said, ‘I just said whatever I felt like saying.’

  At the door stood the innkeeper. He too was sweaty, drunk and upset. The prospect of finally getting rid of Loki didn’t seem to make him particularly relieved.

  Loki cast a glance at him, gave him an icy smile. ‘You can close this place down. It’s going to burn. And you’ll have fire up your arse.’

  He left. If his intent was to ‘sow discord, provoke wrath, mix harm into the mead’, then he had succeeded. Nothing would ever be the same again.

  Maybe his intent wasn’t clear in the beginning, other than as an obscure, unformulated discontent, an unpleasant feeling that something was going on that no one dared see, except for him.

  It didn’t become clear until the young chef stood at his side and sneezed, right out into the air. Contradictory as it may seem, that had caused everything to look sharp and distinct.

  A little, insignificant sneeze had stirred up the air, setting a whirlwind in motion; the swinging doors had fanned in more oxygen, giving it nourishment, making it bigger and stronger, feeding it with all the sins, all the betrayals and all the guilt that hovered in the air in there until it grew into a storm that would soon reach hurricane force.

  Five Fathoms of Guilt

  The Colonial Club was located in the area around the old Central Station, wedged between a shop selling protective clothing and a bicycle repair shop. It was in a large, red-brick building that took up a whole block, the bricks laid in Gothic formation with columns and arches around the windows and doors. It looked like an old factory.

  The entrance was on the reclaimed ground underneath a steel railway bridge. The train heading for the outskirts of town clattered past, causing a draught that made the dry dust under the bridge swirl up into the air and then settle back onto the ground. Everything was covered with dust, soot and a fine-grained sand. The rain never reached this area. The water spilled down like thick curtains on either side of the bridge. A bunch of homeless people stood coughing around a fire they’d made in an oil drum.

  It was just after five in the morning, and the Colonial Club was packed. The lighting was as dim inside as it was out on the truncated stretch of road under the bridge. Bare bulbs cast a faint glow over the tables so that the guests sittin
g there appeared as a murmuring grey mass in which only small, defined parts could be distinguished: a hand with broken nails wrapped around a beer glass, a heavily powdered cheek, a shiny forehead with a deep gash, an ear sporting a dozen little rings.

  Hanck had never been there before. He stepped inside the doorway, coughing from the dust out on the street. The clientele was not his sort – they were bohemians, artists and intellectuals, along with those who tried to look and behave like them, plus a few ragged souls asleep on the floor, leaning against a cast-iron pillar.

  He went over to the bar. It was presided over by two men who looked like twins, both bald, with big, drooping moustaches. A beer appeared on the counter before he even asked for it.

  ‘Shot?’

  He nodded, and received a glass of vodka. He swallowed it in one gulp and washed it down with the cold beer. Neither the vodka nor the beer was any worse than others he’d had. Maybe even a little better.

  He looked around the room. His eyes were now used to the dim light. He saw a woman with pink hair singing softly as she took up position in front of a man who looked as if he were asleep except that now and then a big smile would light up his whole face. Maybe it was a bawdy tune about what he had to look forward to if he decided to go home with her.

  At one table sat four young men involved in a heated discussion, or rather an animated conversation, since they seemed more in agreement than agitated. Hanck caught a few words in the mumble of voices. ‘An illusion about restoration . . .’ and ‘A democratic deficit . . .’ A number of comments prompted loud laughter, the kind of scornful laughter that young men emit to indicate that they’ve seen through something and find it contemptible.

  They had brought papers with them, sheets of paper printed with words, brief texts that they occasionally picked up and passed round or read aloud to each other. Maybe they were the ones who bought his old typewriters, young radicals who wrote poetry about ‘claustrophobia’.

  There were also a number of older men and women; most of them seemed to be alone, and they neither received nor heard any promises about imminent pleasures or freedoms. They’d probably been drinking all night and would soon head home before it got light. It made no difference whether it was raining or not. They had their routines.

  Hanck surveyed the room, and whoever happened to observe him in turn could see that he was looking for someone or something. Though no one was observing him that closely. He looked most of all like one of those chance guests who might turn up late at night to have a drink on his way home without mixing with the regular customers. It was a peaceful place with a peaceful clientele. They might be dangerous to the system, critical and questioning, but not dangerous to him. He felt certain that he was the only person in the place who was armed.

  From his position at the bar he could see through a doorway into a back room, slightly smaller than the room facing the street, with an arched window looking out on the back courtyard, wainscoting of dark wood, and walls yellow with nicotine. Hanging on the walls were glass display cases holding newspaper placards that no living soul ever read. There were booths with tables and benches. Smoke from pipes rose up towards the ceiling, swirling into the dark globes of the lamps.

  Hanck got another vodka and beer and went into the back room. A few men were asleep, leaning over the tables with their heads resting on their arms. Others sat quietly with their smoking paraphernalia. A young couple was snogging.

  The newspaper readers had once sat there – men of industry, financiers, entrepreneurs – with cups of coffee on the table. And in the light from the window they had read the stock exchange quotations, the raw-material futures; they had followed the market and stock prices, read accounts of military operations in the colonies where the latest mineral deposits had been found. They may have sat there since the very first cup of coffee was ever made and served at that latitude, coffee that was just as exclusive and desirable as it was now, subversive in its fortifying and invigorating effect.

  It was a room for quiet reading, discreet calculations, hushed conversations. The rustling of the newspapers, the clacking of a spoon chopping up a sugar cube in the bottom of a steaming cup, the scrape of a safety match against a striking surface, sputtering as it was lit, the crackle of tobacco starting to burn in a pipe.

  Smoke from pipes, cigars and cigarettes had swirled up towards the cornices and mirrors in the stucco of the ceiling as from a factory smokestack, colouring the surface first a golden yellow, then a mahogany brown, and finally a tar-like black.

  It was as if all that exploiting, extracting and refining had left traces in the room, on the ceiling and the walls, like smoke and steam from the combustion that has been the end and the purpose of everything. A consumption which in turn aroused visions of new markets, new speculation. The discreet sound of a spoon against a saucer in the same key as the ringing of a steel beam being unloaded at the railway station off in the distance and, even farther away, the rattling of a sabre.

  But that was back then, in a bygone and lost world. Now the place had been taken over by a different clientele with a different mindset. The rustling of newspapers was gone, the reports from the outside world were monotonous and stripped of illusion, prompting no visions of raw materials other than sand and salt.

  There was an empty booth in the room. Hanck sat down with the glasses of beer and vodka in front of him. He tried to collect his thoughts and stopped looking around. He assumed it might bother people, attract unnecessary attention. He was restless and upset, tired and worn out, emotion raging through his body; he had tried to counter them with alcohol and various pills, but could find no balance. Violent attacks of sobbing gave way to long, lethargic spells of depression which in turn could be replaced by brief, intense periods of feverish activity that immediately afterwards seemed inexplicably meaningless. And the thoughts that tried to keep pace might take shape as evil, destructive plans that he was able to perceive and comprehend for only brief moments. The next second they would become vague, as if lost, contradicted by another emotion, a new impulse.

  His visit to the archipelago had hardly made his intentions any clearer. He had woken up, or rather come to, as soon as dawn arrived. He was freezing, sitting on an uncomfortable Windsor chair in a cold room. A table and a chair on a bare floor. No curtains, no other furnishings.

  His body felt stiff, as if he’d been sitting there a long time.

  When he stood up, his legs protested – they had fallen asleep and could hardly hold him up. He had to lean against the table to stand upright.

  He had no idea how he had ended up there, how long he had sat in that chair, or how the evening had ended. This place was nothing like the snug library where he had sat with Bora; there were no bookshelves, no wonderful armchairs, no fireplace. Only a table and a chair.

  He felt his pockets to see if anything was missing. But everything was still there: pills, money, the piece of brick and the revolver.

  As soon as he felt more or less steady, he went over to the only door in the room and tried the handle. Then, only then, with his hand holding onto the door handle, did he notice that he had blood on his fingers, along the cuticles. He sniffed, noticed the faint smell of iron. Using a fingernail he scraped off a little; it was brittle and crumbly, exactly like dried blood.

  He saw no other traces anywhere, not on his hands or his clothes. His hands were otherwise clean, as if he had washed them carefully but missed a strip along three fingernails on his right hand.

  The door led to a narrow corridor. At the other end he found another door. That too he was able to open. It led to the lobby. A night-light glowed from the front desk. It was quiet and still; no staff members in sight. The breakfast service hadn’t yet started.

  He went up one flight of stairs to his room. It looked exactly as he had left it the night before. His overcoat was flung across the bed, along with the brochure with the picture of Toby.

  He was too restless to stay there. He washed himself, studying h
is naked body in the bathroom mirror to see if there were any traces from the night. Then he put on clean clothes and a pair of shoes with heavy soles, and his coat and hat.

  He went out. After only a couple of minutes on foot he had left the buildings behind. Daylight was appearing in earnest, the contours of the island emerged, looking clear and distinct against the sea and the sky. A rocky hill formed both the centre and the highest point of the landscape. The sea hadn’t reached that high in thousands of years. But big storms and torrential rains had filled the hollows and crevices farther down, creating stagnant pools that stank. Farther down towards the sea the rocks were flat, forming smooth slabs that were shiny and slippery.

  The wind was moderate and the waves calm. Hanck made his way diagonally across the island, from the harbour in the north-west to the outermost cliff in the south-east, as far away from the inn as he could get.

  He stood there, looking out at the sea. On the horizon, far away to the east, lights were visible on a platform that once upon a time had been used to guard a gas line running along the sea floor. A serpent circling the visible world, a dangerous creature not to be disturbed by anyone who was not authorised. It had to be guarded round the clock, as if it were still filled with energy. But no one believed that any more.

  So this was where he had stood, the murderer, gazing out into the darkness, looking at the little lights on the distant horizon and taking the opportunity to think, to ponder his life, if he were even capable of doing such a thing. He had struck down a young and innocent person. Maybe his knuckles still hurt.