‘Yes, you said you were going to live in Rotebro? How long does it take to Stockholm from there?’
Elin laughed nervously. ‘I mean, Rotebro is Stockholm though?’ she said and tried to smile.
Odén smothered a yawn. ‘Rotebro isn’t Stockholm. It’s out in Sollentuna.’
An abyss opened inside Elin. Had she heard right? No, no, no. Was she moving from one small town to another? No, of course not.
‘But it’s an area of Stockholm! Right, an area?’
Odén grimaced, as if she was trying to think. ‘No, you couldn’t really say that. It’s definitely outside of Stockholm.’
It was a zero eight phone number, Elin was sure of it. And that’s exactly what you said about Stockholmers, that they were Zero-Eighters, wasn’t it? Therefore, Rotebro was Stockholm. Right? Right?
‘But surely it’s still the case,’ tried Elin, ‘surely it’s still the case that you say that you live in Stockholm? If you live in Rotebro, I mean. Because surely Stockholm is bigger than “Stockholm”? That’s just a purely bureaucratic point? If you eat an apple for example, then you don’t say that you’re eating a Granny Smith? Then you just say ‘yum, this is a great apple,’ right? Granny Smith is an apple, even if not all apples are Granny Smiths. Surely that’s how it works? Rotebro is Stockholm, even if Stockholm isn’t Rotebro. You’d say that?’
Elin looked pleadingly at Odén, who listened carefully and nodded slowly.
‘You mean that the relationship between Stockholm and Rotebro is asymmetrical in some way then.’ Odén stroked her cheek. ‘Interesting. Maybe there’s something in that. Like how all Englishmen speak English, but not everyone who speaks English is an Englishman?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe. If all Englishmen de facto do speak English?’
Odén looked dubiously at Elin. ‘I don’t know. But purely hypothetically then, if you meet someone abroad. In France for example, you meet a French woman and she asks you where you live, maybe then you could say that you live in Stockholm. For the sake of simplicity.’
‘Exactly! Or if I meet someone in, let’s say, Nässjö…’
‘No, no, no. Then you live in Rotebro.’
Elin felt dizzy.
‘Definitely in Rotebro,’ Odén underlined.
The word echoed inside Elin. ‘Definitely in Rotebro, otebro, ebro.’ She could see her classmates doubled over with laughter. The Gothenburg-dwellers, who with cocktails in hand tried not to spill any. Those from Malmö elbowed each other in the ribs. Rotebro! Even the guy who was still living in Nässjö sneered at her. Rotebro? Have you ended up in Rotebro? Hahaha! They fetched people in from the other room: ‘You have to hear this!’ People came in from the street, the music went quiet, she stood there alone and had to explain herself and her mistake, her enormous mistake. Elin’s pulse raced, she felt faint. Her face flushed. What had she done?
But calm down now, she thought. She took a deep breath in, breathed slowly out. Tried to get a bit of perspective. It couldn’t be that bad? She would still be working in Stockholm, even if she lived in that… Rotebro? No one needed to know exactly where her apartment was. She worked in Stockholm. That was how it would be. It would do. ‘Oh me, I work in Stockholm.’
‘Where do I live?
‘Where I live, did you say?’
‘I live… to the north.’
That’s just so me
Einar Bark was known throughout the whole of Sjuhärad county. He started as early as the seventies, sold paper and pens to offices in the local area. In the beginning it was a modest enterprise, hardly enough to live from. But Einar Bark held out, went through the companies in the phone book one by one and built up a loyal customer base. Knocked on doors, made calls. The product range grew, the client relationships became stronger. He gradually grew so big that all of his competitors in the region moved away or went bust. He was, it was said, a phenomenon, when it came to office supplies. Everyone had a relationship with Bark’s Office Goods – or just “Bark’s” as it was known – and by the end of 2016, the company was declaring a turnover of 640 million kronor and a sizeable profit. In every workplace there was a photo copier from Bark’s, it was from there that one bought ink and paperclips and ring binders and folders and USB memory sticks and glue and Sellotape and mouse mats and laser pointers. Whiteboards, everything. There had been two cases in the last ten years where competing chains had made the mistake of trying to break into the local market, but in vain. It was irrelevant whether they were cheaper, Bark’s was synonymous with office supplies and going to anyone else was not viewed kindly by one’s neighbours. Einar Bark almost had a whole complex of informers backing him, completely of their own will.
Many believed that his progress was largely due to Einar Bark’s personal touch, the fact that wherever possible, he delivered the supplies himself, that he was visible in the catalogue, that he called up customers and asked how it was going with their machine – a role that became all the harder as the company grew larger. The fact was though that in the year 2017, the majority of customers still had personal contact with Einar Bark, if not physically, then at least by phone or email. Bark’s Office Supplies had gone from being a single store to comprising a large logistics complex where orders were processed, originally from mail orders but now mainly from the internet.
The story of Einar Bark was well known. When Carina Alm applied for the job as administrator at Bark’s Office Supplies, she already knew very well who the CEO was and what the company’s strengths were, even if she had never met him in person. He was hardly a celebrity in the real sense of the term, he didn’t have any star power, but Carina still felt a certain nervousness before meeting a man whose face was on the side of every other truck in Borås. It was perhaps, when she thought about it, just the usual mild discomfort which was always there just before an interview. The fear of failure, quite simply. But there was definitely something particular about the idea of standing eye to eye with Einar Bark at any moment, Sjuhärad county’s own Richard Branson. She leafed through some magazines, unable to focus on the text, as she sat in the reception waiting.
Suddenly he was standing there, Einar Bark, as if she had called him forth by turning pages in the magazine. She started when she noticed him a couple of feet away. He was short, but still loomed over her like a pine tree.
‘Did I scare you?’ he asked and laughed.
Carina stood up, took his hand and said hello. His eyes sparkled. He had a firm handshake, not so much a CEO’s as a manual labourer’s. He was strong in a stocky, farmer-like way, with lower arms which no gym in the world could turn out, just a long life of physical work. Bricklayer’s arms, she thought, that’s what they are. Bricklayer’s arms.
‘I didn’t mean to sneak up on you. It’s these shoes,’ he said and pointed at his feet. ‘They’re completely silent. They hardly make them like this anymore. Bought them in Germany. Afterwards I was in at the Shoe Zone and said to them, you need to get these in stock, it would be a hit. Thick, comfortable soles. The real deal.’ He took his left shoe off and gave it to Carina. ‘Feel this!’
She pulled at it a bit. ‘Very nice,’ she said.
‘No, feel properly! Give it a twist, try to really bend it. Crazy how solid they are.’
‘Definitely. Really solid,’ she said and gave the shoe back to him.
‘And what do you think happened?’ he said as he bent down and put the shoe on again.
‘With what?’
He stood up. ‘With the Shoe Zone.’
‘Oh. I don’t know?’
‘They took the shoes on, of course.’
He smiled and looked expectantly at her, like a performer waiting for applause.
‘How funny.’
‘I just can’t shut up, you know. When I think that something is good, people get to hear about it. It’s kind of typically me. I was in Italy once, had a crazy good pizza. The wife and I were sat there, it was sunset, my whole soul was just singing. So I asked the baker to write d
own the recipe. Daft, Swedish tourist you know, you can get away with it. But I got the recipe and when I came home to Sweden I headed over to the pizzeria round the corner from here. They know me, right, so I just went up to Elias there and gave him the piece of paper. You guys should try this, I said.’
‘How fun,’ said Carina. It was clearly important to encourage the guy, she thought.
‘And what do you think happened?’
‘They started making it?’
He nodded. ‘And not just that. They had never sold as many before. Everyone wanted that pizza. ‘Bark brought it back from Italy’ and all that, they went like hot cakes. Some people have said I should have charged them for the idea, but I just wave them off. You win by being generous, I’ve always said that.’
‘Absolutely,’ said Carina.
‘So,’ said Einar Bark and turned round on the spot, ‘let’s go for a wander and I’ll show you our little company.’
They went past a few offices, Einar Bark nodded and introduced every employee who was sitting at their computer. He stopped at the doorway to one of the rooms where a man was sat behind a screen and knocked to get his attention. The man looked up, Einar Bark leaned against the doorframe, crossed one foot over the other. He smiled and glanced back at Carina before turning to the man again.
‘Well then, so you’re sitting here twiddling your thumbs.’ He turned towards Carina and grinned, turned back to the man again.
The man smiled. ‘Always,’ he said. ‘Although right now I’m playing patience.’
‘Patience!’ laughed Einar Bark. He turned back to Carina again and pointed with his thumb over his shoulder at the man. ‘Jeez, Måns, he is priceless.’
Carina forced out a chuckle.
‘Joking aside, you have to have fun in the workplace. Right, Måns?’
‘Fun? You can get that at home!’ said Måns.
‘At home! Haha! You’re crazy, Måns,’ said Einar Bark. He banged twice quickly on the doorframe with the palm of his hand and continued on. Carina followed him. They moved quickly through the office section and came out into the warehouse.
A couple of forklifts zoomed around between the rows of pallets. The background noise forced Einar Bark to raise his voice. ‘I started with this,’ he shouted and held out his empty palm to Carina. ‘Nothing. In 1973 I was nineteen. I ordered crates of office supplies to my place, there was stuff everywhere in our apartment. “What are you up to?” the old man asked me. “I’m going about getting rich,” I replied. He didn’t believe me. Nobody did. But my motto has always been that everything is possible until the opposite is proven.’
‘That sounds smart.’
‘People these days think that you can get rich quick. But there aren’t any shortcuts. It’s all hard work. Look here!’
He took a step forward and reached out his left hand. ‘You don’t get hands like this from tapping away at a computer all day.’
There was only a stump left of the thumb on Einar Bark’s left hand.
‘Oh! How did that happen?’
‘I’ve always been persistent. Our forklift had broken down, our only one at that time and I got it into my head that I’d climb up to fetch down a cabinet from the fourth shelf up. A customer was waiting on their order. I climbed up, everyone said it was impossible, but I just get stuck in with that sort of thing, so I climbed up. Got hold of the cabinet and was about to start climbing down again. I had a pair of work gloves on and one of them got caught somehow in the rigging up there, with my thumb in it. And I slipped and fell off. My thumb was still up there in the glove.’
Carina grimaced. ‘Ow, ow, ow.’
‘Everyone runs over to me, they think I’m more or less dead, it’s a three metre fall. But what do you think I do? Yeah, I get up and say “I said it would be fine.” They didn’t know what to believe, the poor people were probably in shock. It’s so typical of me, that is, to take everything on the chin.’
‘But didn’t you have to go to hospital?’
‘They rang for an ambulance, but I wanted to deliver that package first. “The customer first, then the thumb,” I said, but they held me back. You can understand it really, it was bleeding terribly.’
‘I can imagine,’ said Carina.
They went on through the warehouse.
‘This is where the goods come in, through that door there.’
Carina followed Einar Bark.
‘And then go out through that door over there. I’m the one who designed the flow. I’ve never had much of a thing for books, I’ve always learnt by experience. Sitting at a school desk all day? No chance! Simple common sense, that’s my tune. And now when the experts come here to teach me how to do things, they see that I’ve had it right all along. It’s too much! They spend years at university just to work out something that I’d already figured in the eighties. Supply chain management and all that nonsense. There’s too much talking these days.’
They completed the tour of the warehouse in a few minutes and went back into the office area via another door. New corridors, new faces behind screens. Einar Bark slowed down and stopped, nodded to a framed newspaper article on the wall. Carina looked at it. Einar Bark looked at Carina.
‘From the twentieth anniversary. The council’s chief spokesperson was here,’ he said.
She scanned the article. ‘Impressive,’ she said and turned back to him.
‘Did you manage to read it all?’
‘No-o, I didn’t.’
‘Read to the end!’
Carina read the text out loud. Einar Bark’s lips moved in time with hers when the article got to the final sentence: ‘and none of this would have been possible without the founder and driving force, Einar Bark.’ Carina looked up and appeared impressed. Einar Bark waved a hand dismissively.
‘Ach,’ he laughed. ‘That old article. It must have been a slow news day or something! Let’s go sit in my office.’
They each sat down on a club chair with a coffee table between them in Einar Bark’s office. On the table were two cinnamon buns on top of napkins.
‘It’s important that you feel at home here. Dig in!’ he said. ‘Coffee?’ He poured each of them a cup from a thermos, tore off half the bun in one bite, as if with his neck muscles.
‘It’s really great to meet you,’ he said between bites. ‘I love meeting new people, that’s just the way I am.’
‘Likewise. Thank you.’
‘I don’t really know how else you can be. People! People have always been front and centre for me. Jeez, the number of people I’ve met down the years. And I remember all of them. There’s something in here, it just sticks,’ he said and tapped a finger against his temple. ‘If I see a face I recognise in town, it just clicks, I know the name straight away. I have a strange ability I think, some form of affliction I drag around. But now we should be talking about you, Carina!’
‘Yes, right. Where do you want to begin?’ she said.
He swept together a few crumbs with the underside of his hand, brushed them down into the thumbless left hand, stood up from the chair, took two steps over to the waste paper basket and dropped the crumbs into it.
‘Please excuse me if I’m overly inquisitive, but people interest me, you understand, they always have,’ he said and sat down. ‘I want to know everything! What do you like?’
‘What do I like?’
‘Yes, what do you like doing?’
‘Yes, well… I don’t know, I like travelling.’
Einar Bark held up an index finger to silence her. ‘Have you been to Rhodes?’
‘No, not Rhodes specifically, but Crete…’
‘You need to go! My wife and I have always said, if we were to move abroad somewhere, it would be to Rhodes. I’m basically one of the old school who believe that you can’t beat the summer in Sweden. That’s just how it is, the Swedish summer is superior, but at the same time there are eleven other months in the year. We’ve really fallen in love with Rhodes. Eva is completely nuts about
the wine down there, there’s something special about drinking it when you’re actually there. I mean, not that she drinks too much, absolutely not, but you know, there’ll be one glass with dinner and maybe one more afterwards on the balcony. No, no, we drink when we eat, both Eva and I. And the people too! A totally different culture, a different attitude. Just sitting looking at them, letting the hours pass, I always say it’s an art that has been lost in this country, just sitting and watching people. But at the same time, it would take a lot to leave this country permanently. It would have to be when I’m retired in any case. If I retire. People say to me, “Hey Einar, you’ll never stop working.” And as it feels now, they might be right. But when I relax then I really relax. We’ve been to Croatia and to Italy and Majorcs and so on, and that’s all lovely and pleasant, but when we got to Rhodes, we just looked at each other, Eva and I. It was as if we both said, “We’ve found it.” Of course, it’s a personal thing, some people like Spain. Or Thailand. But I have to say, Asia has never tempted me. Sticky wok dishes and coconut milk, no chance. Sit on a plane for twelve hours just for a slightly worse time than you’d have in the Mediterranean. Nope.’
He shook his head. Carina realised that it was her turn to speak.
‘Yes, but travelling is fun. And I like painting.’
Einar Bark looked confusedly at her.
‘Speaking of things I enjoy,’ she added with a forced laugh.
‘Aha! An artist no less! I have to say, what separates us from animals is the ability to appreciate art. I can get all teary eyed just from walking into a gallery. I guess I had something of an ambition in my youth to paint, but it never reached more than amateur level, high amateur level certainly, but then all this with the company and the family happened. I shouldn’t complain. Now I’m mainly a consumer of art. I like that Dutchman.’
‘Rembrandt?’
‘No. What’s he called… the guy with the ear.’
‘Van Gogh.’
‘Van Gogh! Wonderful drawings, wonderful drawings.’
‘He is good,’ said Carina.
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