by Will Dean
I drive to the office. Lena and Lars are here but Nils hasn’t come which is to be expected. I lock up and turn to walk up the short hill and the hearse is right there, long and dark and very much not built for Gavrik Februarys.
It looks like Mum’s hearse.
I stand still and let it make its cumbersome way up the gritted hill. There’s a fresh three centimetres of snow for the occasion and it’s brightened up the town and covered the grit slush. It’s fitting. It seems as though the factory’s operational, like people are working there today. They only close two days a year: Christmas Eve and Midsummer. The smoke from the one operational chimney, the left one, is black, and the air smells of burnt caramel. Bitter. The hearse passes me and I notice Anna-Britta, Gustav’s widow, walking behind it all on her own. She’s elegant in black with a small red brooch, and it looks like she needs more clothes on. The private ceremony’s over. This is the public part. Anna-Britta focusses on the coffin through the hearse’s rear window, at the man she was married to since she was eighteen, and she walks, sure-footedly, past the chimney he jumped from, and on to St Olov’s.
The town is as quiet as a minute silence.
It’s always quiet but today it’s reverential; hushed for a man who was fifty-five years old and who pinched the wick of his spluttering candle years before it would have dimmed away quietly.
The hearse’s rear wheels skid a little as it turns into St Olov’s and I set off to join the crowds of people already in the graveyard. I walk in and skirt the old ruin which looks like the decaying sunken corpse of a church: the bones, the skeleton, but nothing on top, just the uprights, no innards.
I melt into the throngs of people wearing their black ski jackets and fleece-lined hats. Maybe someone here knows why Gustav killed himself? The older people are wearing their best furs and the younger people are sporting their only coats: man-made black windproof things they’ve bought in ICA Maxi. I can see four examples of the same design from last winter’s stock and I’m not even trying.
There’s Benny Björnmossen from the gun store and Bengt the hoarder from Utgard forest, and then I spot the pretty cashier from the supermarket. I can see Agnetha Hellbom who works in the factory office. She’s wearing a black mink coat with a fox-trim hood. And then Henrik, her husband, the town’s hotshot lawyer. He looks as shiny as a dog in a dog show but his posture’s terrible. People are paying their respects to him and he looks like he’s caught in a wind tunnel he’s had so much work done. A short moustache sits atop his plumped lips. His cheekbones are artificially carved and his chin’s too square and his skin’s been pulled tight behind his ears and pinned in place. I’m looking for the new cop but I don’t see her.
‘Lot of people,’ says Lena, approaching from my side. She looks beautiful in a dark-grey wool coat.
‘Good turnout,’ I say, and then I instantly regret the stupid words, words I hate, words I never heard at mum’s funeral because you can’t say that when only seven people turn up.
The gravestones are each topped with a strip of snow, and the east-facing edges of the stones and of the gnarled yew trees are wind-blasted with Hoare frost.
There’s a hunched man in the distance, well back from the other mourners, and his dog’s almost as tall as he is.
The coffin comes through. They’ve carved an avenue through the snow and ridged it up each side so the procession can pass and it reminds me of Moses parting the red sea except this sea is white. No colour. Today is a black and white movie.
And then I notice the daughter. Gustav’s little girl, the woman who stepped out of the taxi, the one Janitor Andersson talked about. Karin Grimberg. She’s a pallbearer, front left, carrying her father with her own body along with five men. Her face is resolute and matt white and her shoulders look strong like she could carry twice the weight today even though she’s a twig of a person.
We, the masses, the uninvited masses, shuffle closer to the Grimberg family burial plot. People nudge forward to secure a good position. The factory looks different in daylight, it looms larger and it looks wet, like it’s secreting something; stains of moisture running up the walls and down from the ancient iron gutters.
‘Beautiful coffin,’ says Lars, beside me, wearing a black Muscovite hat with faux-fur trim. A vegetarian’s hat. And he’s right, it is beautiful, but it’s still a stupid standard off-the-shelf unoriginal funeral remark. Not that I’m doing any better. I glance at Lars and I can tell he’s wearing a tie. I can’t see it under his coat but his neck’s pinched and red like a sausage about to burst out of its skin.
The coffin’s corners are curved and bevelled. It’s as shiny as fresh-cut coal and it looks nothing like Mum’s.
Lena takes my sleeve, not my hand, and pulls me gently toward a better observation space, closer to the ruin itself. I put on my sunglasses. Plenty of other people are wearing them, either because of snow glare or red eyes or because they’re a useful shield when you’re curious and you want to look. I need to look because next week I’ll have to write about all this for my last ever issue of the Posten. And because what Thord said about incitement is bothering me. Did Gustav have an enemy? Are they here with us today? Was that public chimney jump the lesser of two evils? My sunglasses tap the tops of my hearing aids and they rattle and it’s too loud so I pull them off.
A tailless cat runs over from the factory. It jumps the broad, snow-capped wall and scurries to the family grave, ignoring the throngs of stern-looking people. It sits down serenely on top of lilla Ludo’s grave, the one with the stone truck, and it hisses. I have difficulty hearing things in the open air this time of year what with ill-fitting aids and so many people muttering things under their breath, but I hear the hiss clearly. This cat has one ear and it looks malnourished and it is saying ‘leave us’.
The priest, a man as tall as an elk, stands by the grave, head bowed, wearing nothing more than a cassock. No scarf, no proper boots. I take my hat off to him, I really do. He talks gently to Anna-Britta who is now being visibly held up by her daughter, the Goth pallbearer, Karin, and gestures for them both to move to the grave. Anna-Britta touches the corner of the coffin. People mutter things all around me and the air is perfectly still and as cold as outer space.
The coffin gets lowered down and this makes me queasy all of a sudden. The sight of dug earth and the smell of my medicinal face cream. It was the same when Mum was lowered; the same smells and the same taking from this surface world, from all of us, from above, and sinking the person down, deep down, deeper than I’ve ever dug or stood or laid, slowly, smoothly, and leaving the person down there in that other realm. They’re supposed to rise but we sink them down.
A boy with frozen snot-trails running from his nose shrieks with delight on the other side of the graveyard, and faces and fur coats turn to him in disapproval. Their furs shimmer in the wind like they’re still animal. The boy plays on. He’s throwing snowballs except they’re not snowballs, they’re candle guards, little ice balls made by hand with love and kindness to protect the lights brought here by relatives. He picks another up and throws it at a gravestone.
‘He’s in a better place,’ says a middle-aged man beside me in a grey ski jacket. ‘No pain now.’ And I wonder where these vignettes of greeting card wisdom come from. How do we know he’s in a better place?
The two Grimberg women step gracefully to the grave and I can only see their backs now: one broad and elegant, one narrow and straight. Anna-Britta falters. She lets out a little scream and the crowd, the town, all of us, we hold our breath, uncomfortable somehow with that outpouring of emotion in public, in Gavrik, in Sweden, in February.
My head hurts and I can taste toothpaste on top of rum.
‘Mamma has to wait till spring or else it’s cremation,’ I hear a woman say in front of me. She has elastic straps around her boots with studs to stop her slipping. ‘We can’t afford this,’ she says. ‘Normal people can’t bury when it’s cold like this.’ I look around for the propane gas heaters but t
hey’ve been taken away.
Anna-Britta and Karin each throw earth on to the coffin.
I see mum’s oak version in front of me, down in its own hole, my chapped pale hands throwing dirt onto its lid, the final action, irreversible, the returning to nature.
Anna-Britta and Karin each drop a white lily into the deep dark pit.
I hear a low-level gasp, a noise collective but tiny, the sharp intake of a hundred breaths, and it’s her, the old woman, Gustav’s mother, Karin’s grandmother, the lady that gave me the lump of stale bread that I’m holding right now in my coat pocket.
On the other side of the wall. A vision. Cecilia Grimberg is colour, a hundred colours and textures, a tropical bird, a psychedelic dream where tulips merge into flamingos against a turquoise sky. She steps to the wall that separates her world from ours, her lips as orange as they were last night, her hands ungloved, her nails lime-green, and she throws a bouquet of long-stemmed roses, orange and pale pink and white and deep blood-red, into the hole. Onto her son. And then she turns back.
8
We all watch Cecilia walk back to the arch in the centre of the factory, and disappear. The world returns to monochrome.
The priest comforts Anna-Britta, and I sense people start to retreat in respectful mini-steps, shuffling silently away from this fresh grave, now that what was to be done has been done. It is swine cold and people can’t stand still for too long.
The rabble of ski jackets and hats, a mismatch of old-world fur and new-world Thinsulate, head out through the gates of St Olov’s and onto the bend of Storgatan. We move as one; hushed and careful not to slip. Black smoke bellows from the one operational chimney and, without anyone announcing anything, without any obvious organisation, we follow each other into the grounds of the factory like a troop of black beetles.
I start to look around for Lena or Lars but I can’t see them anywhere. We move past Gustav’s death spot and under the brick arch cutting through the old factory. We turn left through a door in the wall of the arch. There’s a staircase but nobody climbs it. Two signs point upwards: one to the office, and one to the ‘Receiving Room’ whatever that is. We walk without speaking, scraping and tapping our outdoor boots as we go, rubbing them on the extra mats provided, filing into the ground floor canteen.
The room is square with a kitchen and counter on one side, the side closest to the chimney base. We’re in the front left half of the building as I’d see it from my office and the ceilings are high and the décor is nineteenth-century convent. Round tables, battered old metal chairs, enamel jugs of water on each table. Everyone’s sitting down, unsure why we’re here or who invited us but aware that this must have been the Grimberg’s intention, despite none of them being here to welcome us.
‘Watch it,’ a woman ten years older than me says as I approach the kitchen counter.
I look down at what she’s pointing to.
‘Watch what?’ I say.
She points again and then, not looking up, says, ‘Step on a crack, break your mamma’s back.’
‘Sorry?’ I say.
‘That crack.’
There’s a crack on the stone floor, perhaps from when the chimney was used as an exit for furnace smoke rather than just the final stage of the air extraction system to breathe liquorice air out into Gavrik.
‘She’s dead,’ I say.
The woman looks at me.
‘My mother,’ I say. ‘She’s already dead.’
She looks down at the crack again and then turns and walks away. Serves her right. But I step over the crack, not on it, no point in tempting problems.
The spread is better than the room. Thermoses of coffee and tea, boxes of Grimberg salt liquorice, slices of kladdkaka chocolate cake. It’s all homemade here, well, factory-made I guess, by the kitchen staff in hairnets and aprons. I take a slice of apple-and-cinnamon cake and a cup of coffee and go find a seat.
There’s a free spot on Lena’s table although not directly next to her. I smile at the men either side of me, and sit down.
The conversation in the canteen is hushed. The high ceiling and the subdued voices play hell with my aids so I turn down the volume. You’d think I was just pushing my hair behind my ears if you saw me. I’ll lip-read instead. I don’t get one hundred per cent of the words, not even close, but the skill, and the fun, is in the deciphering and the gap-filling. Interpreting body language helps. I take a fork to my cake and the man beside me, I recognise him, I think he’s a delivery driver here, I’ve seen him climb into one of the Grimberg trucks, he sucks air through his teeth.
He looks like a younger version of Janitor Andersson. I look at the hairs sprouting from his nostrils, then turn back to my cake and he sucks air through his teeth again.
‘Can I help you?’ I ask.
‘Nice cake,’ he says.
I smile-frown.
‘Best not let it fall.’
‘What?’
‘The cake.’
I frown at him. No smile this time.
‘If it falls over the saying goes you’ll never marry.’
I knock the cake over with my fork and then I pick it up with my hand and knock it over again and then I eat it in two anaconda mouthfuls.
This place is the reason why Gavrik doesn’t have more cafes and restaurants. Lars explained it all to me my first month here. The factory employs over four-hundred locals, if you include the delivery drivers, and they all get fed, for free, on-site. If this factory had fallen down last century then my three years here would have been a lot more tolerable.
I sip coffee, the rum from last night a distant memory, a memory asking me if I’d like another drink, just a couple tonight, maybe three.
People are getting into their stride all around me now. They’re talking louder, the hush of dignified funeral etiquette long forgotten, and they’re talking freely. There’s a pink shrimp of a guy opposite me, mid-forties, parking-inspector moustache, and he says, ‘It’s old money, all this, they’re worth a fortune what with all the artwork, three Edvard Munchs and a Gauguin in the Grand Room upstairs, that’s what I heard. Biggest producer of salt liquorice in the country.’
Third biggest, I want to say to him.
And then a woman with auburn hair and a purple ski jacket, the clash is so extreme it kind of works, she perks up without having been invited to join the conversation, and she says, ‘It’s cowardly if you ask me. Easy way out, off that chimney.’
Double doors with cracked safety glass open to let someone in and now I can see through to the new part of the factory. There are women and men out there in hairnets making jet black liquorice on today of all days.
‘They’re working,’ I say to myself.
The man next to me, the cake man who looks like the janitor, he mumbles something but I can’t hear him clearly, his diction’s poor and his tongue looks too big for his mouth.
‘Sorry?’
He talks again but now he has a mouthful of kladdkaka cake, the shiny chocolate sticking to his gums as he chews, half an incisor covered in cocoa butter and flour and sugar.
‘I’m deaf.’ I point to my hearing aid. ‘Can’t hear you.’
He chews and stares at my ear for a while, then licks his teeth.
‘You don’t look deaf.’
If this wasn’t a weird post-funeral coffee party I’d take this guy apart.
‘What were you saying?’ I ask.
‘Only close down two days a year, Christmas and Midsummer. Today they’re working at half capacity out of respect.’
‘They might have closed out of respect,’ I say.
‘Grimberg’s wife would never do that,’ he says. ‘Most ambitious of all of them. Probably celebrating right now, up there counting her kronor. Always wanted to run this place and now she is.’
He gets up and taps his nose and leaves.
Benny Björnmossen’s here and he’s looking pretty good, like he just got back from Tenerife or someplace. But I can’t see the new cop.
‘You got it all wrong,’ says a man to her left. I turn and look at the stoat face on this man, all sparse facial hair and scabby cheeks and little ears set too far back on his head. He is at least half stoat this guy, maybe sixty per cent. ‘The family, what’s left of them, they live in a big mansion on Lake Vänern. Lovely place it is, all servants and well away from the likes of you and me. Upstairs is just their townhouse is all.’
I stand up and gesture to Lena that I’m leaving. I tighten my scarf and walk out onto the sodden rugs and gaze left up that staircase toward the Receiving Room. Receiving what? The walls are covered in paintings and photos, and the stone steps are carpeted down the centre with a red runner bolted to the staircase with brass rods. I need to get up there and work out this family. Work out why Gustav really jumped. I step out and that smell of burnt caramel hits the back of my throat. A delivery truck enters through the gates. It looks vintage, maybe late seventies. On the side of the truck someone’s spray-painted ‘soon’ in bile yellow.
I zip up my jacket to higher than I like it. My phone beeps so I pick it out of my pocket. David Holmqvist. I open the message.
‘Farewell dinner at seven. My house. Bring nothing.’
9
My dash reads 18:10 and minus fifteen degrees and apparently I’m overdue for a service. Not my problem. I drive behind a snowplough in my fleece-lined jeans, no long johns required with these, and scratchy wool jumper. As I head down Storgatan I notice white glows from second-floor windows, people using their SAD lamps to harvest a little bonus serotonin before they embark on their Saturday nights at Ronnie’s Bar or McDonald’s.