The Rock Blaster

by Henning Mankell

  But Oskar Johansson survived, carried on working as a rock blaster until his retirement, and did not die until April 9, 1969.

  * * *

  —

  On the following Monday, the local newspapers reported that a young rock blaster had died in a terrible and harrowing accident. Nobody had been able to prevent the tragedy. The incident was attributable to the dangers of dynamite. By a small mercy nobody else was hurt, and the deceased did not have any family, which would’ve been left destitute.

  * * *

  —

  The story was never corrected.

  1962

  The alarm clock rings, shrill and merciless. It is a quarter after three in the morning in the middle of May. The oil-fired heater is cold, and the room is chilly and damp. The sea is blue-black and still. A heavy gray-white mist weighs on the surface of the water. Barren images molded by the leaden light. Oak branches rising like ruins out of the gray haze.

  As I walk along the path that hugs the shoreline, the sand and the brown-gray seaweed crunch like eggshells under my heels. A gentle ripple crosses the water. Dying waves roll soundlessly past. Somewhere in the distance a boat has been sailing by. A pike splashes on the surface and the sound bounces back and forth between the cliffs on the far side of the inlet.

  The island is not big. It takes half an hour to walk around it. To the headland, where Johansson has his cabin, it’s about fifteen minutes. I follow the shore, branch off in among the oaks where the sand gives way to steep boulders, get back down to the beach again, squeeze my way through a tight thicket of alder, and then I only have to follow the gentle curve of the cove along to the headland, where the house is.

  The door is ajar. Oskar is already up. He is sitting at the table playing Patience, a very special version of Idiot’s Delight. He nods at me and I pick up the coffeepot standing on the spirit stove. I sit down on the bench, help myself to a blue-speckled cup, and then I just wait until Johansson says it is time to go.

  * * *

  —

  Oskar bought his cabin, an old sauna, seven years ago. It was at the time when the military were disposing of the remaining barracks buildings from the emergency standby years of the Second World War. Oskar was able to buy the bathhouse for 150 kronor, provided he removed the building himself. But Oskar talked to the owner of the land on which it stood and was given permission to leave the sauna there and to occupy it for as long as he lived. The following year I helped him to tear out the benches, line the walls with hardwood, make a small partition for his bed, fit a cupboard, and open up a window. Then we painted the whole thing white and red. Johansson moves out to the island at the beginning of April and stays there until it turns cold in October.

  * * *

  —

  The sauna is one and a half meters wide and little more than three meters long. When I stand on tiptoe my head touches the ceiling.

  The bed: the creaky old officer’s bed he was given for free when the large barracks up on the slope was torn down.

  A brown blanket, two changes of sheets, pillowcases with a red border and the initials “A. J.” in ornate letters. Two brown kitchen chairs, a lath table with a green wax tablecloth. Spirit stove, paraffin lamp, transistor radio, pack of cards, spectacles, wallet.

  The cups, the plates, the coffee, and the potatoes.

  * * *

  —

  With the index finger of his left hand, Johansson presses a button on the radio. The finger is thick, stronger than two normal ones. All he has left on that hand, which has had to assume the functions of both hands, is the thumb and index finger, and together they have developed into a claw for gripping things. The index finger presses down and music fills the room, much too loudly. But it is a sign. Soon we will get up and go. Just before half past four we sit in Johansson’s rowboat. It is light, made of hardboard riveted to a simple wooden frame. Grass-green and flat-bottomed. I sit in the stern and Johansson rows out from the shore. He grips the left oar with his finger and thumb. The right one is firmly in the crook of his right arm. Once we have cleared the three wooden planks that make up Johansson’s jetty, he turns the boat and we glide over toward the other side of the headland.

  We move across the water in silence. It is still chilly and the mist is as gray as before. Johansson’s oar strokes are steady and follow the rhythm of his breathing. When he pauses, he also holds his breath.

  Our nets are on the other side of the promontory. One for perch. One for flounder. First the perch. Then the flounder. We pull the nets up in the same order as we always do. With me crouching in the stern, Johansson slowly rowing the boat backward. Every fish we get is counted out loud by Johansson. A number, then another number. Just that.

  “One.”

  “Two.”

  “Three.”

  “Four.”

  One big perch and three flounder. They flap about between our feet in the bottom of the boat, the nets in a pile over my boots. Johansson turns the boat around and we row back.

  * * *

  —

  May 1962. We are listening to Radio Nord. Johansson usually laughs when the voice on the radio announces the transmission frequency and talks about megacycles.

  “What the hell are they doing? Cycling around on the boat…?”

  He chuckles to himself and squints at me with his one eye. His index finger is drumming on the wax tablecloth.

  * * *

  —

  The fog is still just as thick, the sea equally leaden, but the light is growing brighter and cutting through the haze. Johansson twists around in his chair, grips the back of it with his finger and thumb, and drags himself to his feet, enough to be able to see out through the window. He has a quick look and sinks back onto his chair again, and returns to his special version of Idiot’s Delight.

  * * *

  —

  The cards are dirty and coming apart. The Jack of Spades has a bloodstain on one of his faces. The Seven of Clubs is from a different pack. One has all kinds of sailboats on the back. The other has a dark red background with a thin white border.

  * * *

  —

  Radio Nord is playing “The Last of the Mohicans” by Little Gerhard.

  * * *

  —

  The index finger drums slowly on the tablecloth, like a dripping icicle. The Idiot’s Delight will not work out.

  1911

  “I’d met her half a year before the accident. Pretty much exactly half a year. We got serious in June. We hadn’t really talked much about getting married. But in those days, there was no question of anything else. If you met and started walking out, then you were supposed to marry. She was the same age as me. There were three days between us, she was just those few days older. We used to meet on Thursday evenings. The only time she could manage. She had four hours off then. She worked for the manager of a textile company, looking after his small children. A boy and twin girls. She slept in a room at the back of the nursery. She belonged to that generation of working-class girls who spent most of their youth with a middle-class family, tucked away either behind a kitchen or in the children’s room. She didn’t like children at all, but that was the only work she could find. Mostly we used to walk around town. I don’t really remember what we talked about nor what we looked at. We just walked.”

  * * *

  —

  “But there’s one thing I do recall. It must have been about a month before the accident. It was graduation day at the town’s high school. A Thursday, and we were out walking. Then three of those students came toward us on the pavement and refused to make way, so she and I were both jostled. I remember it clearly. It’s usually those sorts of things that come back to me. Meaningless details like that.”

  * * *

  —

  Elly comes out of the kitchen entrance. She is wearing a white dres
s, brown boots, and a black shawl over her shoulders. She is quite short, a little chubby. Round face. Fresh complexion and green eyes. Brown frizzy hair. Pinched lips. Her teeth are pale yellow and she has already lost one, in her upper jaw, just where her laugh usually ends.

  Johansson is waiting outside the iron gate. He watches Elly walking down the broad gravel path that leads from the white three-story house. She gives an embarrassed little smile as she fumbles with the lock on the inside of the gate. Then they stand there, face-to-face; nod; and start walking along the pavement. They don’t talk. The air is warm. They go along a street with high iron railings on each side, high walls, white detached houses. They head for the center of town, toward their own world.

  “How’s it looking for you next Thursday?” Oskar asks Elly.

  Elly answers, “I’m probably free then too.”

  An orange tram clanks past on its way into town. They pause and look to see whether there are any familiar faces in the two carriages. They stand and watch it make a stop; a middle-aged couple gets off and strolls toward Oskar and Elly. A soft wind is blowing. Elly brushes her face with her hand, looks away from Oskar when she smiles. Oskar takes her hand. He has washed himself with special care today, as he does every Thursday.

  A month from now his hand will be lying with outstretched fingers among dandelions, while the blasting crew stand looking at it numbly.

  Oskar and Elly cut across the cobbled square. In the distance, three students are approaching.

  * * *

  —

  “Latin was the worst. Enoksson’s never liked me. He’d have flunked me, given half a chance.”

  Black patent-leather shoes, blue walking sticks with silver-gray tips. Quick, jerky steps over the cobbles. A black-clad foot changes direction in midair, narrowly avoiding a sticky brown heap of excrement.

  “Just imagine, they failed seven people this year. Many of the classes were weak.”

  “That’s those plebs.”

  Patent-leather shoes, clattering footsteps.

  “Now, look at that. See the girl over there? In the white dress? She’s one of our maids. Got big breasts. I’m going to walk in on her one evening and grab a handful.”

  “How much will you pay her?”

  “Ten kronor, but then it’s the whole hog.”

  “Have you done it before?”

  “Of course. Twice.”

  “With her?”

  “With prettier ones.”

  “Who’s she with?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Shall we push them around a bit?”

  “Yes, let’s.”

  Patent-leather shoes, pointed ones. Silk socks. Gray woolen trousers. Jackets. The white student’s caps. Pimples on their chins, their backs, their buttocks. Elbows that have not yet been sharpened jab Oskar and Elly in the side. A greeting, cigar out of the mouth, cap in slim hand.

  “Good evening, Elly.”

  * * *

  —

  Oskar says nothing. They walk on and he holds on to her hand. But then, trying to make it sound unimportant, he quickly asks:

  “Did you know them?”

  And Elly. Elly, you cannot leave this unanswered.

  “He’s a son in the house where I work. From another marriage.”

  “I see.”

  Oskar’s face darkens. He slams his heels into the cobblestones. With jealousy welling up, he can feel an evil thought gnawing all the way down to the pit of his stomach.

  “Fucking bastard. Did he shove you too?”

  “A bit.”

  Oskar looks like thunder. Fucking rock blaster, working-class pig, nothing but riffraff. Twelve children in a kitchen, another ten in the living room. Stack them up on top of each other. Rat catchers. Moldy food. Let them freeze. Block out the sun with tall white houses. Build our houses, and walls to shut out the sun. Pull their teeth, remove their vocal cords. Bang nails through their feet.

  “What is it, Oskar?”

  Elly pulls her hand away. She looks at him. He shakes his head.

  “Nothing. I was just thinking.”

  One more block to go. The sun’s setting.

  “What were you thinking about?”

  One more block.

  “Nothing in particular. Shall we turn back?”

  “Might as well.”

  And already they have turned around. Piano music can be heard from an open window. Elly and Oskar. Elly and Oskar.

  * * *

  —

  The town they have to cross: Wooden hovels clinging desperately to one another, propping each other up, warming each other. High white brick walls framing a square, screening off the slums. The short walk from the middle-class homes. The long way back.

  * * *

  —

  Elly goes into her room beyond the nursery. The other girl is already asleep. Her blanket has slipped off. She is snoring, openmouthed. The noise cuts into Elly’s ears. She takes off her white dress. Without knowing why, she pushes it under her end of the long, narrow pillow. Clambers over her bedfellow and lies down against the wall. Slowly, she runs her little fingernail along the wallpaper. She thinks she can see a tram in the white-brown pattern. She falls asleep with that image in her mind.

  * * *

  —

  As to Elly: In the spring of 1911 she is twenty-three years old. Her employer is the manager of a textile company in the town.

  As to Oskar: He is wandering through the streets. In seven hours, he will be standing in front of Norström holding his metal spike in his hand.

  THE ISLAND

  The fog has lifted. I get up to go. Oskar is shuffling his cards. He uses his thumb to lay them out in a row along the table. He stirs them around with his index finger. With his thumb he pushes them together again into a stack.

  “Shall we put them out tonight?”

  “Yes. We should get more tomorrow.”

  “I’ll be along at about seven. Bye till then.”

  “Bye.”

  Oskar is sitting on the chair. It is a quarter past seven. Soon he will lie down on his bed. Soon he will sleep for a few hours.

  * * *

  —

  The island is in the outer archipelago. It is shaped like a truncated boomerang. There are oaks, birches, cliffs, and sand. From three sides you can look straight out to the open sea. The fourth side slopes down into a narrow strait that leads to an island with a fishing village.

  On a national survey map the island is shown as a nameless rocky islet.

  The customs boat ties up at the island once in the spring, once in the autumn. There is a radio antenna on the highest point. The customs officers usually come down to Johansson’s old sauna to say hello. You can hear Radio Nord blaring out across the water. The customs men laugh, and so does Oskar. One of them goes around to the back of the cabin. There is a food store there, dug into the ground. A square one meter deep, with a wooden cover. They fetch out the cans of beer, go back into the cabin, and every now and then you hear the sound of Oskar’s rough voice shouting out.

  THE SISTERS

  “It’s a bit strange, I suppose, that I ended up marrying her sister. But it took over a year for me to recover and Elly moved away. At first, she used to come and visit me, but I could tell that seeing my injuries was painful for her. I think the eye bothered her less than my hand. Then she told me that she was leaving town. I noticed she had been putting on some extra weight and trying to hide it. I don’t remember feeling all that much. I’d had all my pain. I knew her sister for nearly three months before I realized that she was Elly’s younger sister. It wasn’t as if they were alike. The color of their hair perhaps, but nothing else. I saw Elly several times after we got married. There were never any problems. She had a good man. And we had never really gotten that close. I read in the pa
per a few years ago that Elly had died.”

  THE OAR STROKES

  Oskar moves his oars in time with his breathing.

  * * *

  —

  Oskar is distorting his own history. He claims a poor memory, that none of it is important, that he does not feel like talking about it. He picks fragments out of his story and gives a terse account of them, while drumming his index finger on the wax tablecloth. Rarely answers questions. Doesn’t avoid them, but his replies are always ambiguous and open-ended.

  His many voices form a whole that does not actually exist.

  * * *

  —

  His way of being evasive.

  * * *

  —

  “Others have already described it so well.”

  “I don’t really remember that bit.”

  * * *

  —

  Surely you can’t have forgotten.

  * * *

  —

  We are sitting on the bench outside the sauna, slapping at flies, mending nets, drinking coffee, and occasionally Oskar mentions something in passing. I hear the words, close up the gaps between them, fill in the margins.