The Shadow Girls

by Henning Mankell

‘Didn’t we say a quarter past one?’

  ‘No, it was a quarter to one.’

  Olof Lundin was overweight and a rowing machine sat among the manuscript piles that littered the floor. He also had a blood-pressure cuff beside the overfilled ashtray. When the company in its negotiations with the unions decided to institute a complete non-smoking policy it had led to war. Olof Lundin had simply refused to play along. He threatened to leave effective immediately if he were not allowed to keep smoking in his own office. Since a graphic designer had taken a similar position and been summarily denied, the matter had been taken up at the highest executive level. The publishing company which had been family owned for over a hundred years had suddenly been sold to a French oil company. The oil company had been interested in investing in media with the huge profits they had made from their Angolan oil fields. It was the directors of the oil company who finally debated the matter of Lundin’s refusal to obey the non-smoking policy on their table. At last a compromise had been reached and the company had a powerful ventilation system installed in Lundin’s office – at his expense.

  Humlin lifted a few manuscript piles from a chair and sat down. It was always chilly in the room since the ventilation system drew in air directly from the outside. Olof Lundin was wearing a woollen cap and mittens.

  ‘How is the book doing?’ Humlin asked.

  ‘Which one?’

  Humlin sighed.

  ‘The last one.’

  ‘As expected.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Not as well as we had hoped.’

  ‘Is it possible for you to clarify the matter for me?’

  ‘We don’t expect any book of poetry to sell more than about one thousand copies. To date your book has sold one thousand, one hundred copies.’

  ‘So it actually sold more than you expected?’

  ‘No, not really.’

  ‘How is that possible?’

  ‘What don’t you understand?’

  ‘If a book sells more than you expected, how can it then possibly not have done as well as you had hoped?’

  ‘Naturally we always hope that our expectations have been set too low.’

  Humlin shook his head and pulled his coat tight. He was cold. Olof Lundin pushed some piles of paper out of the way in order to have a clear view of him.

  ‘How is the new book coming along?’

  ‘I just came out with a new book. I’m not a factory.’

  ‘Well; how is the book that you are going to write?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Humlin said.

  ‘I hope it will go well.’

  ‘I hope so too.’

  ‘I just have some advice for you,’ Lundin said.

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘Don’t write it.’

  Humlin stared at him.

  ‘That’s your advice?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You don’t want me to write the book that you nonetheless hope will go fine.’

  Lundin pointed to the ceiling.

  ‘They’re a bit nervous upstairs.’

  ‘Perhaps I should write a book of poetry about oil?’

  ‘It’s easy for you to laugh. I have them to answer to. They are pressuring me to show better profit margins.’

  ‘And what does that mean, practically speaking?’

  ‘That we shouldn’t publish any book that we don’t expect to sell at least fifty thousand copies.’

  Humlin was taken aback.

  ‘How many of the books that you presently publish sell fifty thousand copies?’

  ‘None,’ Lundin answered cheerily.

  ‘Is the company about to go out of business?’

  ‘No, far from it. But we are going to start publishing books that sell fifty thousand copies.’

  ‘I don’t think there’s ever been a book in the history of Swedish literature that has sold so many copies, at least in a first edition.’

  ‘That’s why I advise you not to write the book that you are planning to write. The one that I naturally hope would go well.’

  Humlin was starting to get a stomach ache. Had he just been black listed? Was he one of the authors the company was planning to ditch?

  ‘Do you plan to drop me?’

  ‘Not at all. Why would I do that? Haven’t I always told you that you are one of our cornerstones?’

  ‘I don’t particularly appreciate being likened to cement. But you know as well as I do that the kind of books I write will never sell fifty thousand copies.’

  ‘That’s why I don’t want you to write books like that any more. I want you to write something else.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A crime thriller.’

  Humlin suddenly thought he saw an unpleasant resemblance between Lundin’s and Leander’s faces.

  ‘I am a poet. I don’t write crime fiction, and don’t particularly want to try. I have my artistic integrity to thank for what little respect I still get. I wouldn’t even know how to begin writing something like that.’

  Lundin got up, pushed some papers aside with his foot and got onto his rowing machine.

  ‘I’m not so sure you wouldn’t know how to do it.’

  Humlin always had trouble concentrating on the conversation when Lundin started rowing.

  ‘I don’t like crime fiction. I think whodunnits are boring. I couldn’t care less about reading a book where the only point is to guess who the murderer is before the book is over.’

  ‘That’s fine. That’s just what I had expected.’

  ‘Do you have to do that right now?’

  ‘I have to take responsibility for my high blood pressure. My doctor tells me I’ll be dead in four and a half years if I don’t exercise regularly.’

  ‘How can he be so exact?’

  ‘He retires in four and a half years. He’s planning to move to the Azores Islands.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Supposedly they have the healthiest population on the planet.’

  ‘I’m not writing a crime novel.’

  Lundin paused the machine.

  ‘That’s the spirit.’

  ‘What do you mean, that’s the spirit? I thought you wanted me to write one?’

  ‘I believe I’ve made it as far as Möja.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I row back and forth to Finland about once a month.’

  Humlin felt exhausted.

  ‘I just want to make myself understood. I don’t write crime fiction. What do oil executives know about good literature?’

  Lundin resumed his rowing.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘I’ll be turning in my usual book of poetry.’

  ‘A crime novel, you mean?’

  ‘No, no crime novel. How many times do I have to say it?’

  ‘It will be a sensation. A renowned poet who neither cares to nor knows how to write one does so anyway. It will be completely different from what others are writing. But excellent. Perhaps it will be a very philosophical crime novel?’

  ‘If you no longer want my poem there are other publishing companies. Ones that are not owned by oilmen.’

  Lundin dropped the oars and stood up. He lit a cigarette then placed the blood-pressure cuff around his arm.

  ‘Aren’t you supposed to rest before doing that?’

  ‘I’m just checking my pulse. Of course I want your poems.’

  ‘They don’t sell fifty thousand copies.’

  ‘But your crime novel will.’

  ‘I don’t write whodunits. I am a poet.’

  ‘You will continue to write poetry. Just as you always have. The crime novel comes in between.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘My pulse is at ninety-eight.’

  ‘I don’t care about your pulse right now. I want to know what you mean.’

  ‘It’s very simple. You write a crime novel where the poem at the start of each chapter gives the reader some clues.’

  ‘What kind of clue
s?’

  ‘Most likely the kind that it will take some literary knowledge to decipher. I am convinced it will be a sensation. A philosophical thriller. Jesper Humlin is treading a new path. It will be wonderful. I think it will go to sixty-two thousand copies.’

  ‘Why not sixty-one?’

  ‘My instinct tells me this one will go to sixty-two thousand.’

  Humlin looked at the time and got up. He felt a need to escape from this room that was starting to look more and more like a battlefield.

  ‘I have a reading in Gothenburg tonight. I have to go.’

  ‘When can I expect the manuscript?’

  ‘I’m not writing a thriller. That’s it.’

  ‘If I get it in April we can have it out by September. The title should be something along the lines of “Deathly Rhyme”.’

  Humlin left the building and took a few deep breaths when he got out onto the street. The conversation had both unsettled and angered him. Usually these conversations only left him exhausted. As he collected himself he realised that Lundin was serious about this. Viktor Leander was not the only one who was convinced that crime novels were the way of the future.

  While he walked to the Central station he thought about the cover design of the last book. He had protested against it until the last, right until he left for the South Pacific. He had made a number of angry phone calls to Olof Lundin. The cover had nothing whatsoever to do with the content, and to top it off it was extremely ugly, hastily sketched in the sloppy style that was in fashion. Lundin had insisted it would help sales. Humlin could still recall their conversation. He had been at the airport on the morning of his trip and decided to make a last attempt to change Lundin’s mind.

  ‘I hate the cover and I will never forgive you if you give it the green light.’

  ‘Just because your poems are unreadable doesn’t mean the cover has to be.’

  ‘And what do you mean by that?’

  ‘Just what you think it means.’

  ‘You’re insulting me.’

  ‘I don’t mean the poems are bad, I mean they’re difficult. They require a great deal of their reader.’

  ‘If that’s what you really mean you should say so.’

  ‘I’m saying it now.’

  ‘I hate the cover.’

  ‘It’s a good cover.’

  He had to end the conversation because his name was called on the intercom system. Recently, it had become a habit of his to wait until the last minute to board, just to get his name read aloud and thereby enjoy the small buzz of attention it garnered him.

  *

  The train pulled out of the station. Humlin decided to mull over the conversation with Lundin until he reached Södertälje, at which point he had to start thinking about tonight’s reading. He had been planning to do this first thing, but the visit to his mother’s last night had made that impossible.

  His phone rang. It was Andrea.

  ‘Where are you?’ she demanded.

  ‘On my way to Gothenburg. Have you forgotten about my reading?’

  ‘I haven’t forgotten about it since you never told me about it in the first place.’

  Humlin sensed that she might be right. He decided against having an argument he was bound to lose.

  ‘We’ll talk when I get back.’

  ‘When I see you I want to talk about reality, not your poetry.’

  Andrea ended the conversation abruptly, as she often did. Humlin kept thinking about what Lundin had said. He grew more and more agitated.

  When the train left Södertälje, however, he forced all thoughts of crime novels out of his head and thought about the evening ahead. He liked jetting about the country and speaking about his work. Leander had once – after an especially inebriated dinner – accused him of being nothing more than a vain impresario. Humlin especially enjoyed speaking at libraries and adult education settings. He was more sceptical of high schools and plain fearful of any school at a lower level. This evening in Gothenburg promised to be to his liking. A civilised evening at the library with a focused audience of upper-middle-aged women who clapped heartily and never asked difficult questions.

  He decided which poems he would read and which version of his journey to authorship he would present. He had tried a variety of different stories over the years and had finally settled on three accounts that he could choose between at will. The first of these was the closest to the truth. He talked about his sheltered upbringing and the frightening fact that he had never felt the need to rebel in adolescence. He had done well in school, never joined any radical factions nor travelled too adventurously. It usually took him about twenty minutes to talk about this abnormal normality.

  The second version of his life was mostly lies. It consisted of a far more colourful youth and since his old classmates sometimes turned up in the audience, he had made sure to only claim such experiences as would be impossible to verify.

  The third story was about a long and uncertain path to becoming a writer. In this account he claimed to have written his first novel at the age of eight but that he had burned it when he published his first real book. This version came the closest to describing the man he wished he had been. But he would never have admitted that any of these things he said about himself were not true.

  *

  The train arrived on time. He took a taxi to the Mölndal library and was greeted by a young librarian.

  ‘So is anyone coming to see me tonight?’

  ‘All of our tickets are gone. We’re expecting one hundred and fifty people.’

  ‘Whoever said the Swedish Folk Movement was dead?’ Humlin said with fitting humility. ‘One hundred and fifty people are coming to listen to a simple poet on a dark and cold night in February.’

  ‘There are some groups coming.’

  ‘What kind of groups?’

  ‘I don’t know. The other librarian should know.’

  Later Humlin would regret the fact that he never took the time to seek out the other librarian and ask her about these groups. He assumed they were a book club or perhaps a retired persons’ association. But when he stepped up to the lectern at seven o’clock he saw a group of people that reminded him neither of retirees nor of book lovers. In the usual audience of beaming older women he noticed some people he couldn’t quite place.

  In the front row there were a group of middle-aged men who did not look like the kind of audience members he usually saw, neither in their clothing nor their looks. Many had long hair and pierced ears and wore leather jackets and jeans, often torn over the knees. Humlin immediately grew more guarded. He also noticed a group of dark-skinned women sitting together. Immigrants, or so-called New Swedes, were not a usual part of his following, apart from a Chinese man who lived in Haparanda and who often sent him long letters with complicated and altogether incomprehensible analyses of his poems. Nonetheless there was an immigrant group here in this library in Mölndal listening to him.

  Jesper Humlin drew a deep breath and launched into his lecture, the one that was closest to the truth and took twenty-one minutes. Afterwards he read a few poems from his latest collection that he thought would go over best. The whole time he was speaking he kept a surreptitious eye on the men in the front row. They listened attentively and he began to think with increasing satisfaction that he seemed in fact to have reached a new reading public. But the atmosphere in the room changed when he started reading his poems. One of the men in the front row shifted restlessly and started rocking back and forth in his chair as he sighed audibly. Humlin started to sweat. He skipped a whole stanza in the poem he was reading out of sheer nervousness, making the already challenging poem completely incomprehensible.

  When he finished the poem, he looked up to find the men in the front row staring at him. None of them clapped. Humlin leafed through his book and hastily decided to change his approach and only read a few more of the shortest poems. At the same time his mind was ever more desperately trying to figure out who these men with their l
eather jackets and torn jeans could possibly be. The other unusual group, the immigrants, were staring at him impassively. They clapped dutifully but without enthusiasm. Humlin had the distinct impression that it was all going to hell, but without really being able to say why. He had never experienced a reading quite like this one.

  He finished the final poem and wiped the sweat from his brow. He looked up at the people he considered his normal public and received their enthusiastic applause. The men in the front row were staring at him with what he now saw were glazed eyes. He lay aside his book and smiled, trying to hide his fear.

  ‘I am happy to take any questions that you may have. After that there will be a short time for book signing.’

  A woman put up her hand and asked him to define his usage of the word charity. She felt it was a concept that underpinned the whole collection. Humlin thought he heard a low growl from the front row. He started to sweat again.

  ‘Charity, in my opinion, is simply a more beautiful word for kindness.’

  The man who had shifted restlessly during Humlin’s poetry reading stood up so violently that his chair was knocked to the floor.

  ‘What the fuck kind of question is that?’ he shrieked. ‘What I would like to ask you, Mr Poet, is what you think you’re doing when you force us to listen to this stuff. If you like I can tell you what I think.’

  ‘Please do.’

  ‘I don’t understand how all this shit fits between the covers of such a little book, one that costs three hundred kronor, by the way. I have only one question I would really like to get an answer to.’

  Humlin tried to control his voice as he replied.

  ‘What’s your question?’

  ‘What do you get paid by, the word?’

  A shocked mumble arose among those members of the public who had enjoyed the reading. Humlin turned to one of the librarians who was sitting behind and slightly to one side of him.

  ‘Who are these people?’ he hissed.

  ‘They’re clients from a halfway house outside Gothenburg.’

  ‘What the hell are they doing here?’

  The librarian gave him a stern look.

  ‘One of my most important duties is exposing people who have never previously had the opportunity, to the world of literature. You have no idea what I had to go through in order to get them here.’