The Rock Blaster

by Henning Mankell

  “Here’s Johansson. You’re to shake him by the hand and show him some bloody respect.”

  Norström’s face is puce. He is sweating from the alcohol coursing through his veins. Three other foremen sit around the table. All the same age as Norström. Somehow, they all look alike. The same sagging bellies. The same huge fists. The same booming voices.

  * * *

  —

  “Sit down here next to me.”

  Norström kicks out a chair. Oskar sits. The men peer at him.

  “So you’re the one who survived that bang. Well done.”

  “Well done? That’s putting it mildly.”

  Norström shows off his gem. Glasses are filled and drained.

  “Aren’t you having anything?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Don’t be stupid. Whoever heard of a blaster turning down a schnapps?”

  Norström booms:

  “Well, I suppose you have an excuse, after your accident. Have a beer.” Oskar sits with his glass while the foremen gradually turn to vying with each other over performance, curious episodes involving dynamite, eccentric blasters, terrible accidents. Oskar listens.

  “We had one who blew himself up. I guess he’d gotten himself plastered. During the lunch break he took some dynamite, lit it, and stuck it in his pocket. There was nothing left of him. I think we found half a shoe.”

  “Bloody hell.”

  “Bloody hell.”

  “Sometime in 1890 we lost two blasters in one day. One accident in the morning and another in the afternoon. And they were brothers. For a while I think we suspected that the one in the afternoon had done it on purpose. Presumably he was upset about what had happened to his brother.”

  Then the conversation moves on to socialism.

  “We should take care of the Party.”

  “But why the hell paint everything so black? To call the king a traitor and murderer is going a bit far, isn’t it? They went to jail, didn’t they?”

  “Yes. We collected money for them.”

  “There’s bound to be a revolution. Don’t you agree, Johansson?”

  “It goes without saying.”

  “It does indeed.”

  * * *

  —

  Oskar believes in the revolution. That is Magnus Nilsson’s doing. He has found a new way to talk to him about it. He has made Oskar restive. Change is possible. There has to be change. The way things are now is just wrong and unfair. And restive people soon begin to make demands.

  When Oskar leaves the foremen he goes home, but at the same time he is walking toward a different experience of reality.

  THE PARTY MEMBER

  This story skims the surface. It is recounted in few words, as spare in its telling as Oskar himself is. It has cracks and gaps. But the surface has pores in it. Gradually it begins to turn and open up. And under the surface lies this story.

  The story of the changes.

  * * *

  —

  Hjalmar Branting. Party leader.

  Oskar Johansson. Party member.

  Per Albin Hansson. Party leader.

  Oskar Johansson. Party member.

  Tage Erlander. Party leader.

  Oskar Johansson. Rock blaster who has left the Party.

  Olof Palme. Party leader.

  Hilding Hagberg. Party leader.

  Oskar Johansson. Party member, former rock blaster.

  C. H. Hermansson. Party leader.

  Oskar Johansson. Party member, former rock blaster. Widower, pensioner.

  * * *

  —

  Oskar is even-tempered. I know him as someone who never gets angry, who laughs a lot, who is an optimist. I know him to be stable.

  Was it always so? Once he tells me the old joke about the man who says: I’ve never been a pessimist. I’ve been an optician all my life. He tells it as if the story were about him.

  It may be. But the narrator has his doubts.

  * * *

  —

  Was it always so?

  No. It was not.

  * * *

  —

  “Elvira and I never argued. I don’t think we said a harsh word to each other during all the years we had together. I suppose we scolded the children when they were little and making a racket, but we never hit them. Elvira and I always agreed. We never needed to discuss anything. We wanted the same things. But there’s nothing out of the ordinary about that.”

  THE ICEBERG

  In the summer of 1912, the Olympic Games are held in Stockholm. The blasters are sitting under the birch trees, discussing the results.

  As yet not one of them can imagine that they would ever be able to attend the games.

  * * *

  —

  This story becomes anecdotal. The fragments are fragments. Oskar lives, is dead, is to be buried, has been buried, lives again. But his reality is always a continuum. There are no gaps there, no cracks, no spaces in the margins. Oskar Johansson’s reality is a matter of the struggle between capitalism and socialism, between revolution and reformism. That has been the stuff of Oskar Johansson’s life. Oskar Johansson regards himself as insignificant, significant, insignificant again.

  * * *

  —

  What were the causes?

  What was the political evolution that is Oskar’s life?

  * * *

  —

  Nineteen sixty-eight. Oskar talks about what is happening in Paris, in Berlin. He talks about America. He is sitting in the cabin, a few days before I am due to leave and we are never to meet again. He is sitting in the sauna, it is autumn, and the paraffin lamp gives off a warm light. He has just changed the wick and topped up with paraffin. Our faces and movements cast shadows against the wall. We can hear the wind outside, it is pitch-black, and the waves are rolling against the shore. We hear a faint rumble from the sea crashing against the cliffs on the other side of the headland. The radio is on and we are listening to Dagens Eko. They have stepped up the bombing raids again. The voice on the radio sounds harsh and dry in the room. Oskar is listening, his arms resting on the table.

  * * *

  —

  His head is bent forward. He has his summer cane across his knees, over his blue work trousers. When the Ekot ends, the finger presses the button. There is silence. The ocean beats against the island. Then Oskar gives his brief comments about the bombs. He never raises his head. His index finger is still.

  “They’re crazy. You’d think the devil really exists, at least when you hear what they’re doing down there. What do they think they can achieve? They can kill a load of people. But there are quite a few of us.”

  * * *

  —

  I get up and we shake hands as we do when I arrive and when I leave. We nod, say that we’ll see each other next year, and I walk into the night. The wind is lashing and tearing. It is dark and hard to see. There is salt in the air.

  * * *

  —

  The story of Oskar is like an iceberg. What you see is only a small part. Most of it is hidden under the surface. That is where the bulk of the ice is, keeping its balance in the water and making its speed and course steady.

  The story consists of two strands that run in parallel. A few summers’ worth of events and memories shared with a retired rock blaster. Then we have the course of history, the developments that changed the society in which Oskar lived. He talks about his affinity with the first strand and ignores the other. It is a fault line where two plates grind against each other, two cogwheels mesh with each other. The two of them reflect the same evolution. They are mirror images of each other. They share a single identity. They describe the features of the society that is Oskar Johansson’s.

  * * *

  —

  Oska
r Johansson’s face.

  The narrator’s face.

  Together they become the story.

  * * *

  —

  There is salt in the air. The wind tears at my eyes and I walk through the forest instead of following the shoreline. It is like walking through a black wall. Bushes and branches beat against my face. The juniper pricks, the birches whip.

  * * *

  —

  It is the early autumn of 1968. The narrator has visited Oskar Johansson for the last time.

  THE PENSIONER

  Once he tells me about his last day at work. He left his job at six o’clock on September 14, 1954. He stood in the yellow changing hut with a bunch of flowers in his hand. It consisted of two tulips and three green twigs. He held the flowers pinched between thumb and index finger and heard one of the assistant directors of the construction company speak. The air was muggy and hot because of the bad ventilation and the stench from the damp raincoats and boots. There were nine of them in the cramped little hut. From his description, I get the impression that it was even smaller than the cabin that to all intents and purposes later became Oskar’s home.

  Oskar had intended to go on working until Christmas that year, but then he changed his mind.

  * * *

  —

  “I just don’t know why. But the closer it got, the more pointless it seemed to keep on working, since I didn’t have to. So one Friday I told them. Next week will be my last. They didn’t really say anything. Even in those days there was no room at work for older men. So don’t think there’s anything new about this idea that you’re old before you’re even forty. But there weren’t so many people then.”

  * * *

  —

  When the cleaner came to clear up the hut at four in the morning on September 15, the flowers were still on the table. Oskar never says whether he left them there on purpose or forgot them.

  * * *

  —

  “The flowers never made it home. I suppose they got left behind.”

  * * *

  —

  On September 15, Oskar stayed in bed. He lay there and listened to the trams clanking past in the street and was glad not to have to go outside in the slush. He clearly remembers how it rained that morning. He remembers that it was a sustained, heavy downpour, and he remembers the awning on the balcony of the apartment above flapping in the wind.

  He lay in his bed and heard the mail thump down into the letterbox. He felt no regret that his work was over. He lay there thinking that next year, next summer, he would move out early to the archipelago.

  * * *

  —

  In the afternoon he leaves the apartment and buys a calendar. He has never done that before. But now he buys one, which he hangs up in the kitchen. It is a tear-off calendar where one page has to be removed every day. With a large disc that he rotates once every month. The theme on the disc changes according to the seasons. For September that year, 1954, there is a black-and-white picture of people in rain gear waiting for a yellow number 34 bus.

  * * *

  —

  When the assistant director has finished his speech, he pats Oskar on the shoulder and calls for three cheers. A roar goes up in the hut and then the assistant director leaves. After that Oskar and his workmates start to change to go home. Oskar throws his blue work trousers into a box that serves as a trash can. They lie there among sausage skins and greaseproof paper.

  Then they all go off, one after the other.

  “Have a nice time, then. In this weather.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Only two more years to go.”

  “They’ll pass quickly.”

  “Let’s hope so.”

  “Thanks for all our time together.”

  “You too.”

  Then they all leave the hut and pick their way across the muddy ground. Some take their bicycles; others practically run away. Oskar walks toward the tram stop.

  * * *

  —

  “Can’t for the life of me remember what he said. It wasn’t much. But there was something about the accident.”

  * * *

  —

  Oskar and the accident always go together. Everyone mentions it as Oskar’s distinguishing feature.

  “An old boy who was blown up but somehow managed to survive.”

  “A thumb that looks bloody awful. But he’s a decent sort.”

  “He certainly gets by in spite of it.”

  * * *

  —

  Oskar hardly ever talks about the accident. On the rare occasions that he does, he sounds hesitant and not at all forthcoming and gives the impression of being disconnected from what once happened.

  * * *

  —

  Oskar is lying in bed. It is the evening of September 15, 1954. He has switched off the bedside light and lies there in the half dark, looking out into the room. Then he gets to his feet and goes into the kitchen. He takes a pencil from the kitchen table and draws a little cross over September 13. He puts down the pencil and goes back to bed.

  The following day, when he is having his coffee, he notices that he put the cross over the wrong date, but he does not bother to change it.

  * * *

  —

  “All of that autumn and winter I sat and waited for spring. I don’t think I did anything else. But I had a yearning in me and you can live on that for a long time. Not only when you are young.

  “The days passed. I mostly just waited. And luckily the winter was short that year. So it wasn’t too long.”

  * * *

  —

  When Oskar leaves the Social Democratic Party, it is no sudden and dramatic decision, rather the result of a long series of developments. But when he talks about it, it is mainly because of his feeling that too little happened over too long a period of time. He never explains exactly what he means. All he says is that something came to a standstill. And since Oskar very rarely discusses the reasons for the changes he himself has brought about, all he really mentions are the words “standstill” and “too slow.” He makes no comparisons between the party he leaves and the one he joins. All he does is change his party membership.

  * * *

  —

  But once, one evening in August during one of the last summers, he says that his pension has increased and adds in passing that he has often found that one never has anything to lose by changing one’s opinions, if necessary. He says that one can easily change party once a year if one really thinks it worthwhile.

  “But your pension? How do you mean?”

  “It’s gone up.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, it should have gone up even more. You know what food costs.”

  “Yes, of course. I know.”

  “Well. Precisely.”

  * * *

  —

  One evening, Oskar tunes in to a radio drama for the first time, and after that he repeats the experience a couple of times a week. This continues over two summers. But the third summer, he no longer listens. Not that he switches over to some other program. The radio stands there silent. Instead, he has started to solve crossword puzzles. He has picked out a dozen or so of them from old newspapers under his bed. He has torn them out and put them on the table in front of the radio. He starts in May and by one of the last days in August he has solved them all, and as we burn trash one evening, I see them catch fire among the leftover food and cardboard.

  * * *

  —

  But one of the puzzles is left behind, has slipped down and gotten stuck behind the table. When the time comes to move the sauna after Oskar’s death and the table is carried out, the yellowing piece of paper drops onto the floor.

  He has solved the crossword. But I see that he has made a spelling mista
ke in one place and as a result has gotten the wrong words to fit in. He has written “ögonblick” without a “c.” And after that, a whole section of the crossword is skewed, but he has still managed to fit in words so that the letters match even though the clues in fact referred to quite different words. He has solved his crossword puzzle and with his spelling mistake created a new one.

  * * *

  —

  The picture of Oskar is obscure. Contradictions and empty answers, silence and ambiguous pronouncements are just a part of the unfinished picture. Sometimes, too, minor events break into the picture, opening up cracks, ensuring that all the way through the picture remains incomplete.

  Sometimes I think Oskar is doing it deliberately.

  At other times, I’m sure I’m wrong.

  * * *

  —

  Once I forget my wallet on the table. When I fetch it the next day and later want to take out a postage stamp, I find that it is gone.

  Another time, as we are sitting in the gloom of the cabin with the radio turned off and his index finger drumming on the wax tablecloth, Oskar suddenly bangs his fist on the table and in a loud and tuneless voice starts to sing a few verses from the chapbook song “Elfsborg Fortress.” He sits with his head bowed over the table and sings at the top of his voice. Then all of a sudden he stops, midverse, and the index finger begins to drum on the table again.