The Rock Blaster

by Henning Mankell

  Some of them.

  * * *

  —

  Algots’s autumn range. Young people in stiff poses, prancing about in variously colored empty rooms. Cold, forbidding tones. The pictures show them jumping around in grotesque capers and challenging Oskar with looks that say:

  * * *

  —

  Buy me.

  Be warm and safe this autumn.

  Buy me.

  Buy me.

  * * *

  —

  This week’s special at Domus. Delicious broilers, rock-bottom prices.

  * * *

  —

  The stencil is messy and blurred.

  And don’t miss the chance to visit our sports department. Our winter range offers many exciting novelties.

  Oskar on skis.

  Oskar on skates.

  Oskar on a winter walk.

  * * *

  —

  ABF’s adult education program.

  Our mission statement is…

  Needlework or English.

  Creative drama or university-level Spanish.

  * * *

  —

  With the course booklet in hand, Oskar looks out of the window. The garbage truck thunders past.

  * * *

  —

  I buy my own food.

  I do my own laundry. There isn’t that much of it.

  I do my own cleaning.

  * * *

  —

  Then he sits in front of the television and looks at a school program. High school physics. He watches intently. He nods when he has understood. He does not think that all is long over and done with. He is still very much a part of it, Oskar Johansson, even though he is now nearly eighty.

  * * *

  —

  His birthday. The newspaper says he is turning eighty. But there is no picture.

  They sit around the table in the living room. Two large cakes have been cut. Steam rises from coffee cups. Oskar is wearing a white shirt and a tie and a black jacket. The children are sitting there, all three of them, the daughters with their husbands and the son with his wife. They chat among themselves while Oskar sits and listens. The presents are on the table.

  A gray sweater. A pair of slippers. Sunglasses, polarized ones.

  * * *

  —

  Or. Oskar sits alone at the kitchen table, wearing his blue work trousers. The coffee cup, the cookies, and the glass of milk. He is turning eighty.

  * * *

  —

  Or back to the previous scene.

  “Would you like more coffee, Pappa?”

  “I’ve had enough, thanks.”

  “Go on, have some more. It’s your birthday after all.”

  “A little more then.”

  “You’re looking so well. Have you had a good summer?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you heard that I’m going to open a branch in the town where she lives?” The son points at one of his sisters.

  “Blimey.”

  “That would make it my third one.”

  “And is business good?”

  “It is. So far, at any rate.”

  The camera’s flash cuts through the room. The son is taking pictures. The daughters sit on either side of Oskar. Then it is time for them to leave. They get up, smooth down their dresses, straighten their hair with the palms of their hands. Smile and laugh. Bend down for a quick hug. Straighten their hair again.

  “Thanks, Pappa. You take care now.”

  “Thanks to you too.”

  “We’ll write soon.”

  “Drive carefully.”

  The door closes. It’s quiet. The clock ticks. Oskar goes and lies down on the bed. He is tired. He looks straight up at the ceiling.

  * * *

  —

  The days.

  * * *

  —

  The coffeepot. The cookies. The morning newspaper.

  The advertising leaflets. The occasional letter or postcard.

  Do some housework, stay clean. Sit in front of the television.

  Lunch. Coffee again.

  Shop if necessary. Rummage around in drawers. Straighten a mat.

  Sit by the window.

  Television. Coffee again.

  Undress. Lie and look at the ceiling. Sleep, sleep.

  * * *

  —

  “Of course I suffered and felt stupid and lonely because of my injuries. If I hadn’t met Elvira, I don’t know what I would have done. I couldn’t bear to see myself in a mirror and I was revolted by the sight of my mutilated arm. Then I also got that weird sensation. That I sort of felt my right hand even though it wasn’t there. It was dreadful. Some nights I would dream that everything was as it should be and then I’d wake up in the morning and begin to scream and go all funny. If I hadn’t had Elvira, I don’t know how things would have turned out. I kept myself to myself and in some way felt embarrassed. But I didn’t give up. I learned quite quickly to get by with my finger and thumb. It’s not as hard as people think. It seems difficult when you’re imagining it, but when you actually have to do it, it works itself out. It must be worse to be blind or deaf.

  “But I don’t know how I would have managed without Elvira. She gave me self-confidence, which is what I needed. Not pity, but kicks up the backside. In any case you get used to it. After four or five years I never again felt awkward because of my handicap. You see, there was just so much else that was important at the time, as I’ve told you. It was not until I got old and Elvira passed away that I started getting irritable again. But I suppose that was because my body was beginning to give out in other ways too. I don’t feel that I’ve been handicapped, though. That’s not how it seemed to me. Ever. And I was just as ugly before it happened. Although of course I’d never wish all this on anyone else. When I read about accidents where people have been maimed in different ways, or when I see what the bombs can do, I know what it’s like for the victims. And not everybody is lucky enough to meet an Elvira straight afterward. But there was always something else that was more important. And there still is, I suppose, but gradually I’m beginning to be out of it. Old age isn’t much fun. You become a different sort of underdog. There’s so much one has to put up with. But one always manages.

  “Much is to Elvira’s credit. But my character and my convictions were also important. I still hold those beliefs, but there’s a limit to what one can do.

  “At least I don’t talk aloud to myself. Many lonely people do. I wonder what they have to say to themselves. I hope it’s something fun.

  “If I was young, I’m sure I’d do it all again. I would certainly have believed in the same cause. There’s nothing extraordinary about socialism, let’s face it. Once you’ve worked out how everything hangs together, it’s actually obvious. Then everything else is wrong and strange. Is there anything more crazily illogical and unreasonable than capitalism? I don’t think so.

  “Socialism is nothing special. And neither am I. So we probably go well together. Elvira sometimes said that she thought we did. And then she laughed, of course. As always.

  “I wouldn’t want to have been born as anything else. That’s not what matters, after all.

  “Whether you like it or not, you’re a part of it. Just spit into the ocean once. And then you have all the eternity you need.”

  * * *

  —

  Oskar.

  A strange old boy who lives in an old army sauna.

  He usually waves when you go by. He’s only got one hand and one eye.

  You should see his index finger. It’s this thick.

  He probably sits out there, drinking akvavit. It must be an awful mess. Who tidies up after him? And I suspect he never bathes.
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  I wonder who owns the land he’s living on.

  He’s a great old man. He used to be a rock blaster and had a terrible accident. But he’s a cheerful soul anyhow. He’s a nice old boy. And he looks after himself. He’s happy in his sauna, they say.

  * * *

  —

  Oskar on the ground floor.

  Oskar’s son owns that big laundry business, you know the one?

  He has two girls too.

  His wife is dead.

  He turned eighty just recently.

  He does his own shopping.

  * * *

  —

  “He walks with a cane.”

  * * *

  —

  “But he’s so handicapped.”

  * * *

  —

  “He always says hello.”

  * * *

  —

  “I hear him when he takes out the trash.”

  * * *

  —

  In the middle of November, he is admitted to the hospital and his right leg is amputated. It is the only way they can stop the gangrene. He lies in his white bed and a few days before Christmas he suffers his first stroke. It paralyzes him and he cannot talk. In the afternoon on Christmas Eve his children come to visit him. They stand around the bed. Oskar looks at them. His mouth has become locked in a stiff smile. They pat his cheek, stroke his hair, touch his two fingers. Then they leave the ward.

  * * *

  —

  “Poor Pappa.”

  “Let’s hope he won’t have to lie there too long.”

  “It would be best if he could die.”

  “Some go on like that for ten years. He has a strong heart, after all.”

  “There’s hardly anything left of him.”

  “It’s terrible to see.”

  “We must be prepared for him to die at any moment.”

  “We must call each other.”

  “I’ll come back here as soon as I can.”

  Out through the hospital entrance. Bare ground, Christmas Eve. Darkness falls.

  “Merry Christmas, then. Love to everyone.”

  “You too.”

  “And we’ll call.”

  “Yes. Where do you need to go? I can give you a ride.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “My car is right over here.”

  * * *

  —

  The assistant nurse is sitting by the bed, feeding him. It is Christmas Eve.

  * * *

  —

  The second stroke comes one day in April. The bowl of porridge tips over onto his chest and Oskar is dead.

  AFTERWARD

  The spring of 1971.

  I have an errand in town. I arrive in the morning and am only staying for a few hours.

  Before I catch my train back, I have time to go into a pub by the station and drink a beer.

  The place is packed. Smoky and the sour smell of beer.

  The darts whirl through the smoke and hit the board. Clattering, glasses, jostling.

  * * *

  —

  Oskar is dead.

  And now for the future.

  * * *

  —

  Exactly as he said.

  THREE POINTS IN TIME

  It is 1972, and Henning Mankell learns that his novel Bergsprängaren has been accepted for publication. It is his first book. Writing about the international political situation at the time, he explains that “I remember what I was thinking. It was a time of great joy, of great energy. Everything was still possible. Nothing was either lost or settled. Except that the Vietnamese were certain to win. Imperialism was beginning to show signs of strain.”

  The book is a modern Everyman, the story of an ordinary life filled with small triumphs and little tragedies, set against the great Swedish and international political developments of the twentieth century. Oskar Johansson is right at their center, but he doesn’t believe that he has had anything to do with the changes that have taken place in Sweden during his lifetime. They have happened, and they have had an effect, but he feels—at least, this is what he tells the narrator—that he himself has had no part in shaping them. He has been present for them but played no role in their coming about.

  In 1997, twenty-five years later, Bergsprängaren is republished, and Mankell adds a preface: “Certainly, much has happened in those twenty-five years. Some walls have come down, others have gone up. One empire has fallen, the other is being weakened from within, new centers of power are taking shape. But the poor and exploited have become even poorer during these years. And Sweden has gone from making an honest attempt at building a decent society to social depredation. An ever-clearer division between those who are needed and those who are expendable. Today there are ghettos outside Swedish cities. Twenty-five years ago, they did not exist.

  “As I read through this book again after all these years, I realize that this quarter century has been but a short time in history. What I wrote here is still highly relevant.

  “I have made a number of small changes to the wording for this edition. But the story is the same. I have not touched it. It was not necessary to do so.”

  And now, in 2020, almost another “short time in history” after Mankell wrote his preface, Bergsprängaren is finally published in English as The Rock Blaster. What would Mankell say about it today?

  Of course, the global political landscape has not exactly improved. Migration, a significant issue ever since the end of the Second World War, has been brought into particular focus as immigration, and the Swedish ghettos of which he wrote in 1997 have seen frequent unrest. Populism, misinformation, and the weakening of liberal democratic values, which loom ever larger in our lives, would attract his strong criticism. His socialist heart would be no less saddened by the current state of social democracy in Sweden. What he wrote concerning the rise and fall of empires has been borne out, and the disparity between wealth and poverty has continued to grow, exacerbated by the dominance of corporate giants. And what would he make of climate change and the threat to our physical environment?

  Oskar’s reality, according to Mankell, is a matter of the struggle between capitalism and socialism, between revolution and reformism. We know whose side both he and Oskar are on in the first. But that battle is no longer the main one that divides our world—the primary focus now is not on left versus right, but on growing authoritarianism in many societies, and nobody speaks of “imperialism,” in the sense that Mankell meant it, anymore.

  As for the second struggle, however intense both Oskar and Mankell’s longing for revolution—a longing in part romantic and fueled by their disappointment in what Oskar calls social democracy’s “greatest outrage,” the fact that it “turned socialism into some sort of organization for unnecessary civil servants to line their pockets at the expense of the workers”—in practice they are both reformers. Yes, Oskar is happy every time there is a revolution somewhere on the globe. And yes, he expects, and wants, “this whole society” to be blown apart (appropriately enough). But his contribution will merely be to “give them all my regards.” Confronted by Sergeant Lindholm at the Nazi rally in Humlegården, he does not take action; he can only “imagine himself charging in and jabbing his finger and thumb into the sergeant’s face.”

  Yet one hopes that Mankell would still consider what he wrote in The Rock Blaster “highly relevant.” Because Oskar and Mankell are Everyman. As most of us are. Ordinary people standing in the whirlwind. And that is what makes The Rock Blaster such an engaging book, especially in a world as challenging and bewildering as ours today.

  GLOSSARY OF SWEDISH TERMS, PEOPLE, PLACES, AND ORGANIZATIONS

  20 Frågor. Long-running radio program based on the game Twenty Questions. Panelists have included the author Astrid Lindgren.


  A. B. F. Arbetarnas bildningsförbund (Workers’ Educational Association), which offers its members a wide range of courses, study groups, and seminars.

  Algots. Swedish manufacturer of ready-to-wear clothes, which it sold chiefly through the Co-operative Federation. Founded in 1907 by Algot Johansson, it went bankrupt in 1977.

  Andrée, Salomon August (1854–1897). Attempted to reach the North Pole in a balloon in 1897, together with Knut Frænkel and Nils Strindberg. The expedition failed, and after a number of weeks traveling across the ice, all members of the expedition died.

  Axbom, Sven (1926–2006). Swedish footballer born near Norrköping (the city of Oskar’s birth) who played in every Swedish match in the 1958 World Cup.

  Bergegren, Hinke (1861–1936). Swedish politician who was an early member of the Social Democratic Party but whose particular views (anarcho-syndicalist, pro–birth control) led to his expulsion from the party and a short prison sentence. He subsequently joined the Communist Party of Sweden.

  bombing raids. Given the date (1968), this is likely a reference to the U.S. aerial bombardment campaign in Vietnam nicknamed Operation Rolling Thunder, which began in March 1965 and ended on November 2, 1968.

  Boren. Lake in south-central Sweden that forms a part of the Göta Canal. See also Göta Canal.

  Branting, Hjalmar (1860–1925). Swedish politician. He was a long-serving chairman of the Social Democratic Party and became prime minister three times (notably the first from that party). Joint winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1921.