A third time Oskar asks me to buy him a pornographic magazine when I go to the mainland to do the shopping. First, he lists the usual things he wants. Milk, coffee, bread. But then he adds that he wants me to buy him a girlie magazine. He does not know of any particular title and asks me to choose. When I return, I have bought Kriminaljournalen and Cocktail. His only comment is that one would have been enough.
Then he sits down and flicks through the magazines. He is not interested in the text. He just turns the pages, pausing for a brief moment at each picture. Then he continues, and when he has finished he simply puts them away with the other newspapers he has in the house.
A fourth time he is asleep when I arrive to take up the nets with him. He is breathing evenly and when he opens his eye and sees me in the doorway he just turns over and goes back to sleep.
* * *
—
“I sometimes think it would be nice if it was all over.”
* * *
—
Only once do his words suggest that he is fed up and tired. It happens one beautiful day as we are sitting outside the cabin and the flies buzz around us. We are watching a fishing boat, packed with tourists, sail past, and they wave at us. This time Oskar does not wave back with his stump of an arm. Instead he raises his voice to be heard over the sound of the thumping engine.
* * *
—
“I sometimes think it would be nice if it was all over.”
* * *
—
He says nothing more. Soon afterward another boat comes past, equally full. This time he waves back.
* * *
—
“I think I’ll keep on waving.”
“Yes.”
“Because they look like a happy lot.”
“They’re on holiday now.”
“That will soon be over.”
“They’re lucky with the weather.”
“You can never be sure.”
“But you can always hope.”
“Yes.”
* * *
—
The picture of Oskar that never becomes complete is inextricably linked to the society in which he has lived. Oskar as a presence, but almost never a participant, runs like a red thread through the description he gives of himself. The incomplete fragments, the half words, half sentences, the short and disconnected episodes that he produces from his memory are his way of confirming what he means. The image he gives of himself is that of one who was present. But the person who he is every day, during the years when we meet, is a participant. Oskar tries to create a false picture of himself, and his story has to be seen and developed in the context of whatever motivated this choice. One of our last summers together I try to be more methodical in the way I put my questions, but it leads to the only episode of mistrust that ever arises between us. For a little more than a month he is reticent, taciturn even, sometimes a little gruff. But then one day he is back to normal again, stuttering out his own account of himself at irregular intervals. His words almost never seem to follow any thoughts he bears within himself; instead they give the impression of taking him by surprise, emerging from a room he would rather see closed and locked, slipping out almost unintentionally. Every memory, every word that has to do with his life is followed by a silence that is scarcely noticeable. Then he sometimes goes on to talk about things we are busy with, but there is still a small silence behind the words. And in his telling, there is rarely any enthusiasm. What he says can sometimes be incredibly insistent, but he almost never raises or lowers his voice. Here the unexpected song, the sudden outburst with “Elfsborg Fortress,” is a mysterious exception.
* * *
—
Once Oskar said that he had not been to the cinema since the midthirties. I remember him saying that it had simply not appealed to him. Then I asked him something and he once more replied that he simply did not like it, and that he himself found that a bit odd.
* * *
—
One summer Oskar develops a strange itch where his eyelids have grown together. It gets so bad that he begins to scratch the scar at night and one morning he sees pus on his pillow. He travels to the hospital and is admitted for a week. The scar is opened up and the infection healed. Then the socket is sewn together again and he can return to the island. A week later he goes back for the day and has the stitches removed. When he returns, he says that the doctors told him that they found a tiny piece of grit embedded in the socket and that it had presumably been there ever since the accident. Oskar gives a knowing smile and unfolds a handkerchief. I see a grayish-white piece of grit on the white fabric. Then he blows it onto the floor and it vanishes.
“I took it with me so you could see.” Then, just when I’m about to leave:
“In the olden days someone might have written a song about this grit in my eye.”
* * *
—
And the speck, which had been wrapped in the handkerchief, and bounced across the floor and disappeared down some crack, is the last episode I can remember. After that there are no more memories clear enough for me to describe.
* * *
—
The stone.
The piece of grit.
Those terse words.
All those summers.
OSKAR JOHANSSON, FORTY-FOUR YEARS OLD
He went down the stone steps to the quayside. The air was raw and cold, a few days into September 1932. He walked carefully, keeping very close to the rusty handrail so as not to fall. He could feel how his right foot was damper than the left and saw a yawning hole in the seam between the sole and the rest of the shoe.
He cut across the quay and turned into the old residential area that climbed up the cliffs on one side of the harbor. He was walking quite briskly and knew that he did not need to be too careful. All the trolleys were lined up in rows outside the long gray lime-washed warehouses. The railway tracks were deserted and empty freight cars stood crowded on the sidings between the storehouses.
No ships were tied up along the dock. The quayside had large gaping cracks filled with the turbid black harbor water, viscous and polluted. He drew the sweetish smell of salt water in through his nose and looked out over the port. All he could see there were the half-rotten barges for use when the harbor entrance was dredged every few years. A fishing vessel, some row boats. Nothing more.
When he reached the housing area, he turned onto a narrow, winding gravel path running between the ramshackle houses. He walked past the first of the two-story houses and then stopped outside the third. He went in through the front door and walked up to the first entrance to the left on the ground floor.
He stood there in the faint light and knocked. The door was opened almost immediately.
* * *
—
As soon as he came in, he saw Lindgren sitting in a corner of the kitchen sofa. There he was, pale and skinny, and it was obvious that he had not shaved for some weeks. As Oskar stood in the doorway, Lindgren gave him a lifeless look.
“Afternoon.”
“Afternoon.”
It was Lindgren’s mother who let Oskar in. She was more than seventy and had shrunk so much that she hardly reached up to Oskar’s chest. She held out her right hand, her brown arm like a weathered stick, and squeezed Oskar’s thumb.
“Well, if it isn’t Johansson come to visit. That’s unexpected.”
“I have the time now. I thought I’d say hello to Lindgren.”
“How kind. He doesn’t really see people now.”
Lindgren sat there staring dully and openmouthed at Oskar and his mother. He was wearing a shirt with large checks and had broad suspenders that hung down his pant legs. His hair was black and tangled and his large fists rested on the table.
Oskar looked at Lindgren. They had not seen each ot
her for nearly a year. Oskar could tell that Lindgren had gotten worse. His eyes were watery now and lacking any expression. The last time Oskar had met him, there had still been occasional signs of alertness about him, faint but unmistakable indications that the brain was still receiving impressions and processing them.
* * *
—
Lindgren was suffering from an illness that was slowly but inexorably killing his brain. He had worked on the same blasting team with Oskar for many years, until his condition had made it impossible to have him along. Since then he had lived at home with his mother, sitting on the kitchen sofa and being fussed over by her. Her senses too had been deadened by everything she had inhaled over thirty-five years of labor in a dye works, in addition to the arteriosclerosis that had crept up on her during the last year.
“Won’t you sit down, Johansson?”
Oskar lowers himself onto the sofa next to Lindgren, who slowly turns his head and stares at him with empty eyes. His mother is standing in the middle of the small, run-down kitchen and looks at her son.
“Aren’t you going to say hello to Johansson?”
She walks over to her son, somewhat irritated, and gives his shoulder a shove. He reacts slowly, stares at her.
“Don’t you see that Johansson’s come to visit you?”
Lindgren twists his head again and looks at Oskar.
“It’s nice to see you here, Joha, but I must slee now can we ge cakesfee…”
His brain is unable to finish the sentence he has begun. He falls silent and stares down at the table.
Oskar gets to his feet. He has not taken off his outdoor clothes.
“I thought I’d take him out with me to get him some fresh air.”
“Air?”
“I imagine he spends most of his days indoors. And I have time now.”
“You’re so kind, Johansson. Of course, the boy needs to get out. But in that case, I’ll pack a basket with coffee and buns for you to take with you.”
“Isn’t it a bit cold now to be taking coffee outside? September’s rather late for that.”
* * *
—
But Lindgren’s mother already pictures her son on an outing with Oskar. She wastes no time in preparing coffee and some dry buns and tying it all up in a piece of cloth. Then she helps her son into his outdoor clothes and presses the bundle into his hands, and Oskar and Lindgren walk out of the door and onto the gravel path and Oskar turns off in the direction of the woodland half a kilometer from the harbor. They walk there in silence, side by side. Lindgren clutches the bundle to his chest and keeps his eyes firmly on the ground. They head for the woods and Oskar does not have the heart to deny Lindgren his outing with a picnic, even though the fog is swirling and their breath steams around their faces.
* * *
—
Then Oskar sits Lindgren down on a tree stump at the edge of the wood, takes the bundle, and after a while manages in spite of the damp to start a small sputtering fire and warm the coffee. Then they each sit on a tree stump facing one another in the cold and the silence. Autumn is already well under way this year.
Lindgren stares dumbly ahead. Oskar looks at him with sadness in his heart. So they sit there in silence on this September woodland outing with their picnic and Oskar then gently asks:
“How are you doing, Lindgren?”
“Very well, thanks. It was ni…”
Then his words drown. His brain is able to transmit a first impulse and his nerves can transform this into an opening, but then he is unable to continue the sentence.
So they fall silent once more before Oskar tries again.
“Your mother seems very fit.”
“She really is ve…”
The words fade away and Lindgren’s mouth hangs slack, open.
They sit opposite one another like this for nearly an hour before Oskar packs up the bundle, takes Lindgren by the arm, and walks him back home.
* * *
—
When Oskar leaves Lindgren’s house it is late in the afternoon, and as he turns onto the quayside, he reflects that today he has been out of work for exactly six months. It was a Sunday like today when he realized that come the Monday he too would be dismissed.
* * *
—
Oskar is forty-four this year. Lindgren, who is now tucked up on the kitchen sofa, is the same age. Oskar is one of thousands who are unemployed. Lindgren has a brain that will soon have ceased to function. They have celebrated a Sunday in September together, as autumn creeps further and further along.
* * *
—
On Sundays those who have been laid off no longer wear their work clothes, the way they do the rest of the week even though they have no jobs. Every weekday morning, they put on their usual clothes before setting off on the long trek between the State Unemployment Agency, the factory gates, the cafés, and home. But there are no jobs, because the depression has the nation’s whole economy in its grip. Goods lie piled up in warehouses. There are no buyers and the gates remain closed. The public relief work that the State Unemployment Agency organizes—wood chopping, forest clearance, snow shoveling, and foraging for coal—has hundreds of applicants for each opening. And the mass of unemployed grows. The days come and go. National socialists and communists take turns out in the streets. The Social Democrats gradually consolidate their newly acquired position in power.
But on Sundays you get into your best clothes and roam around town and Oskar, who is not yet ready to eat, goes into the café down at the harbor. He walks into the crowded room. He nods at people and some of them nod back at him. He spots an empty place at someone else’s table, orders coffee, and blows into his hands to warm them. An old railway worker is sitting on the other side of the table. Oskar recognizes him from some photographs in the local newspaper. Oskar knows that he is called Leandersson and that he is a relatively successful local wrestler. Leandersson beats nearly everyone in the bantamweight class, and if he were not already nearly forty years old, he could even have had a successful career at a higher level.
Leandersson looks at Oskar and gives a slightly crooked smile. A little curious, Oskar searches for the famous cauliflower ears that wrestlers soon develop. But Leandersson’s ears are smooth, without swollen earlobes or damaged cartilage.
Leandersson is drinking beer. In front of him on the table he also has a black notebook. It is greasy and he runs his thumb across the smooth surface.
“Is this seat free?”
“Go on, sit down.”
“The weather’s pretty rough.”
“Autumn’s early this year. The houses are cold. And I suppose you’re also out of work.”
“I am.”
“What do you do?”
“I’m a blaster.”
“I see. I’m on the railways.”
“And a wrestler, right?”
“Well. I could have become one maybe. But I’d say it’s too late now.”
“I read about you in the papers sometimes.”
“I think it’s not me who’s good but the opposition that’s bad. I usually wrap a load of scrap iron in a mattress and train with that. That’s about the toughest opposition I get.”
“Really? Are there so few who wrestle?”
“That’s not it. I’m in the wrong division. There don’t seem to be many who weigh as much as I do. Or as little, I suppose I should say.”
“I see. But in that case can’t you put on or lose some weight?”
“I don’t want to. It’s not worth it. At any rate, not any longer.”
“How long’s it been?”
“Without a job? I’ve been chopping wood for a mate who was off sick for a few days but apart from that it’s been four months, nearly five, I think.”
“That’s bloody terri
ble.”
“You can say that again.”
“And it doesn’t seem to be getting any better.”
“It probably will, eventually.”
“Let’s hope so.”
“Yes. Let’s.”
* * *
—
Then Leandersson starts to leaf through his black notebook and Oskar stirs his cup and looks around the café. The warmth and the smoke are getting in his eyes and he asks to pay. Just as he is about to get up and leave, Leandersson slams his notebook shut.
“One can’t very well just sit around and do nothing. And I can’t wrestle with those bloody mattresses every day.”
Oskar, who had been about to go, remains seated.
“No.”
“So I’ve been spending some time tracing my ancestors.”
“Is that so?”
“I’m trying to find out where I come from. It’s pretty interesting when you find something. I’ve been looking at church records here and there. Luckily the family comes from villages around here so I can use my bicycle.”
“Indeed?”
“I knew that Farfar on my father’s side had been a farmer, but I had no idea where his parents came from. But now I know a little more.”
Leandersson the wrestler then opens his notebook and begins to read.
“My great-grandfather’s name was Leander and he came over from Denmark. He moved here in 1802. He was described as a farmer, but he must have been a sailor as well since it says that he was lost in a storm, was never heard of again, and was then declared dead in 1821 at the request of his wife, Maria Louisa. Then I’ve written to a parish in Jutland and they tell me that a Leander emigrated in 1800 and bugger me if he didn’t push off on the first day of the century, January 1, taking his wife and a child with him. Farfar wasn’t born until later. But in that letter from Jutland it then says that Leander was born in 1769 and that he was the son of somebody called Christian Leander, who was also a farmer, born in 1738. But that’s as far as I’ve gotten. Now I’m getting to grips with my mother’s side. It’ll be interesting to see where that leads. I had no bloody clue that there were Danes in the family. But you’ve got to keep yourself busy with something.”
The Rock Blaster Page 8