The princess of Burundi

by Kjell Eriksson

  He didn’t accuse anyone, or direct blame at others, but inside he hated his teachers and the rest of the adults. At home, Albin stuttered out his admonitions. Aina became nervous and could oftentimes not take care of herself, let alone her difficult son. Aina found comfort in her youngest, John, whom she nonetheless saw being dragged into his older brother’s increasingly wild escapades.

  “John was a good guy,” Micke said. He heard how inadequate it sounded, how flat.

  “There’s one thing I’ve been wondering,” Lennart said and sat down at the table again. “Did John have another woman?”

  Micke looked at him in disbelief.

  “What are you saying? That he was fooling around on the side?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he said something to you.”

  “No, I never heard him talking about another girl. You should know that. He adored Berit.”

  “Of course he did. He was only unfaithful with his cichlids.”

  “What’s going to happen with those fish?”

  “Justus is taking over,” Lennart said.

  Micke thought about John’s son, Daddy’s boy. In Justus he could see the teenage John. A man of few words, an easily averted gaze. It was as if the boy saw through whomever he was talking to. Many times Micke had felt inadequate, as if Justus was choosing not to burden his mind with Micke’s chatter, much less dignify it with an answer.

  Come to think of it, in childhood John too had had that attitude. John could also give the impression of being superior, proud, unwilling to make compromises. That’s probably why he and Sagge had never seen eye-to-eye, even though John was a good craftsman.

  It had been only in his closest relationships, especially with Berit, that John had revealed himself at all, flipping up the visor to display a thoughtfulness and capacity for dry humor that it took a while to catch on to.

  “If anyone should carry on, it’s that boy,” Micke said.

  He wanted another beer but knew that if he had one, Lennart would inevitably join him. And he wouldn’t stop at one. Chances were they would clean out his whole supply.

  It was close to midnight and Lennart made no motion to leave. Micke got up against his will. He had a hard day to look forward to.

  “Don’t know when it last snowed this much before Christmas,” he said and went to get the beers.

  Seventeen

  Berglund had been posted at the number 9 bus stop downtown for more than an hour. He had a police ID in one hand and a picture of John Jonsson in the other. It seemed to him that he had asked hundreds of people if they recognized the man in the photograph.

  “Is he the one who was murdered?” someone had asked eagerly.

  “Do you recognize him?”

  “I don’t associate with people like that,” the woman had said.

  She was weighed down by numerous bags and boxes, like most of the others. There was a general air of tension. The people did not look happy, Berglund thought.

  He had been a policeman in Uppsala for a long time. This was another routine assignment, one of several thousand, but he never ceased to be amazed by the reactions of his fellow citizens. Here he was, trying to solve a murder, working overtime, freezing his butt off when he should be home helping his wife with the Christmas preparations, and he was met by reserve, if not outright distaste.

  He walked up to an older man who had just stopped, put his bags down, and lit a cigarette.

  “Hello, my name’s Berglund. I’m from the police,” he said and held up his ID. “Do you recognize the man in this picture?”

  The man inhaled deeply and studied the photo.

  “Yup, I’ve known him for a long time. He’s that metalworker’s boy.”

  He looked up and scrutinized Berglund.

  “Is he caught up in some trouble?”

  Berglund liked the sound of the man’s voice. A little hoarse, he must smoke a great deal, he thought. The face matched the voice: a lined, friendly face with clear eyes.

  “No, quite the opposite, so to speak. He’s dead.”

  The man dropped his cigarette and crushed it under his foot.

  “I knew his parents,” he said. “Albin and Aina.”

  Berglund suddenly sensed a great network. It was a diffuse feeling that, strictly speaking, had nothing to do with solving a crime. It was rather that the man’s pleasant voice and demeanor fit into a certain context. Sometimes Berglund pursued this instinct, although if he tried to put it into words they felt awkward, insufficient.

  He guessed that the man had been some kind of worker, perhaps in the construction business. His weathered skin told of years exposed to sun, wind, and cold. His dialect gave him away, also his way of wearing the overcoat, the slightly moth-eaten but respectable hat, the hands and their hard nails. He looked after himself, somewhat hunched but still tall.

  If they talked a while the network and connections would become clear. And surely they would find a number of shared acquaintances, experiences, and reference points, despite their fifteen-some years’ age difference.

  Solving a crime was a matter of discerning a pattern, Berglund knew, and in that way this man and his context, his part of town, his expressions, gestures, and language were a part of the answer. It was as if nothing was impossible if one only had the ability to put the pieces of the puzzle, the puzzle of the town, together.

  “Do you live nearby?”

  The man gestured with his head.

  “Marielundsgatan,” he said. “But right now I’m on my way to see my boy. He lives in Salabackar.”

  “I’m going to stand here for another hour,” Berglund said. “But maybe you could come by later and we could have a cup a coffee together.”

  The man nodded as if being stopped by a policeman and taken out to coffee was the most natural thing in the world.

  “I need to flesh this thing out,” Berglund said.

  “Yes, I see that,” the man said. “My name is Oskar Pettersson. I’m in the phone book so you can call me if you like. I’ll be home again around eight. I’m just taking herring and some other things to my boy.”

  He picked up his bags and stepped on the bus that had just pulled up. Berglund saw him settle in a seat. He didn’t look out the window, but then why would he?

  Berglund stayed the course until seven. A few passengers seemed to recognize John, but no one had any information to give, no one had seen him at the bus stop.

  He walked back to the station. It was cold and he was freezing. He had called home and said he was working late, which had not come as a surprise to his wife.

  Berglund did not feel like going into his office. Instead he got a snack from the vending machine and sank down in a worn armchair. A few colleagues in uniform came by. They talked about Christmas. Berglund took his coffee and went to the calling station. Nothing out of the ordinary had been reported, but when he had finished his cup and was about to leave, an emergency call came in. He lingered and heard patrol cars being ordered to Sävja and knew that it meant Fredriksson would be working late.

  “Attack on a woman,” said the officer manning the phones.

  Berglund walked out into the December night.

  Oskar Pettersson lived in a two-bedroom apartment on Marielundsgatan, a short street in the Almtuna district. Berglund declined his offer of coffee. Pettersson took out a beer and two glasses and put them on the kitchen table. A radio was on in the background. Pettersson listened for a few seconds as if he heard something of interest to him, then turned it off with a thoughtful air.

  “I only listen to the public radio station nowadays,” he said. “My ears can’t take anything else.”

  Berglund poured out the beer, first his own glass and then Pettersson’s.

  “I knew Albin well,” the latter said without further ado. “We were related, and then I’d see him on construction jobs from time to time. And back when we were young I’d see him out and about. The town was smaller back then.”

  “You worked in construction?”r />
  “Laid concrete mostly,” he said and then looked around the kitchen. “I’m a widower now.”

  “How long?”

  “It’ll be three years in March. Cancer.”

  He took a sip of beer.

  “It was really through Eugene—Aina’s brother, that is, John’s uncle—that I came to spend time socially with Albin and Aina. Eugene and I worked together for a long time. First with Quiet Kalle and then at Diös. He was a happy fellow. Aina was more careful. Albin too. But I think they liked each other. It seemed that way anyhow. You never heard them arguing or anything. Albin was one of the best metalworkers you ever saw. He died, you probably know that.”

  Berglund nodded.

  “I would bump into John in town after that, especially after he got his foot in the door at the workshop. I wonder sometimes what it is that makes a man. If it’s genetic, there’d be no reason for Lennart and John to get mixed up in crime.”

  “Upstanding,” Berglund recalled Ottosson saying.

  “And then there’s environment,” Pettersson continued in the gentle but forceful voice that Berglund had immediately responded to. “They grew up in this area. There were a few bad eggs of course but mostly responsible folk. Where are you from anyway?”

  Berglund laughed at the rapid turn of conversation.

  “Born in Eriksberg,” he said. “When it was still out in the country. My dad built a house there in the forties. He worked at Ekeby.”

  Pettersson nodded.

  “He handled the furnace out there, and Mom stayed home and took care of the kids. Dad worked a lot of nights and slept during the day.”

  “There you go. Are you sure you don’t want any coffee?”

  “No, thanks. Tell me more about John.”

  “I think he was damned bitter about losing his job. He said something once, something about feeling worthless. It was kind of his thing, welding. He had inherited Albin’s attention to detail. A person has to find a place where they fit in, that’s all. Don’t you think?”

  “That’s probably right,” Berglund said. “Did you see each other regularly?”

  “Not really. Sometimes at Obs. I like to go down there and have a bite to eat and talk to the other guys. A few times we met up and had a coffee. I think he liked to talk to me. He liked to talk, period.”

  That’s strange, Berglund thought. This is the first time I’ve heard someone describe John as talkative.

  “But I could tell he was sitting on something.”

  “What was it?”

  “Well, he had those fish. You know about that. I got the impression he was cooking something up with those fish, so to speak. He was incredibly active in some kind of organization. Turns out there are organizations for anything you can think of.”

  “And what can you cook up when it comes to fish? Start up a shop, is that what you mean?”

  “I don’t know. Just something to do with that fish tank. He must have been nursing a dream.”

  “But he didn’t say anything specifically about what that would be?”

  “No, nothing straight out, nothing more than that something was going on.”

  “When you met, did you ever talk about how things were at home?”

  “Not a lot. He was close to the kid. Maybe you know someone called Sandberg who worked at Ekeby. He also worked the furnace, I think. A fat little guy, short-tempered.”

  Berglund laughed.

  “Everyone who worked the furnace was short-tempered. I thought that was part of the job description.”

  Their eyes met and both men smiled.

  “He must have been dead for forty years,” Pettersson said. “But he knew my dad.”

  “What was the state of John’s finances?”

  “I don’t think he was in dire straits. He was always well dressed, and so on.”

  “Did he drink?”

  Pettersson shook his head.

  “What a way to go,” he said. “Everyone putting your life under the microscope. What if we paid that kind of attention to people while they were alive?”

  Berglund stayed until shortly before ten. Pettersson followed him to the door but then turned as Berglund was putting his coat on and went back to the kitchen. Berglund heard the radio come on in the middle of a religious program, a brief evening meditation.

  “I like to hear the news rundown before I go to bed.”

  Pettersson came back out into the hall.

  “Then I like to read a little,” he said while Berglund was doing up the laces of his boots.

  “That’s serious footwear,” he said approvingly. “I’m a member of Association of Retired Persons and we meet once a month and talk about books.”

  “What are you reading right now?”

  “A book about the black plague, actually. But there’s something I’ve come to think of: How are things with Lennart now, the brother?”

  “Well,” Berglund said uncertainly. “He is what he is.”

  “No improvement then. He was always of a different caliber. I remember the grief he caused Albin and Aina though he did work a few years at Diös. It ended with him underneath some prefab material, or perhaps he fell from a scaffolding, I can’t remember. He was always poorly after that.”

  “Albin fell off a roof,” Berglund said.

  “Typical. It was a job for the rich folk on the other side of the river.”

  “Thanks for the beer,” Berglund said.

  “Thank you,” Pettersson said and shook Berglund’s outstretched hand. “Feel free to look me up again. Maybe we can sort out that question of why people who work the furnace get so short-tempered.”

  Berglund started walking home—barely one kilometer away—rather slowly. It was here in Almtuna it all started, he thought. He dallied outside the antique store where a Santa Claus lit up the display window with a small electric lantern. With its frozen expression and waxy red-painted cheeks the Santa looked a little spooky.

  Ymergatan—that was named after the giant Ymer of Norse mythology. He was killed and out of his flesh the world was made and out of his blood all the world’s water. The heavens were formed from his skull and a wall was constructed out of his eyebrows to help defend people against the giants. Midgard, the human realm. That’s where it started. Our history. I wonder if the people who walk up and down this street and who are descendants of Ask and Embla know this story. Probably not.

  He couldn’t remember the legend in its entirety but enough to make him pause before crossing the street. A few other people were out walking around, a Volvo drove by, and Berglund had the distinct impression that it was a colleague in an undercover car.

  He let his gaze wander down the length of Ymergatan. John’s little sister had died somewhere along this street. “What is it that makes the man?” Oskar Pettersson had asked. The Jonsson family had lived here in Almtuna. The disasters had come one after the other. Now three of them were dead: the little girl, Albin, and his son John. One accident, a possible suicide, and a homicide. As if the collective violence of the street, of the neighborhood, were concentrated upon one family.

  Berglund had seen their kind before, the unfortunate ones who seemed to form their own group. Families who appeared destined to suffer accidents, heart attacks, lightning strikes, fires, and other violent deaths rather than draw their last breath peacefully between two sheets. As if they took upon themselves the quota for society as a whole, numerical abnormalities in the predictable world of statistical probability.

  One accident led to another, Berglund believed. You could also find the accident-prone in books. Sometimes living, but dead more often than not, talked about, ill-fated, and pitied.

  Ymergatan. For half a minute or so Berglund perceived the beauty of the late evening. The snow was blanketed in snow, disturbed only by a few bicycle tracks running down its length like tiny tracks in the land of the giants. Trees were weighed down, resting, waiting, the windows lit up by Christmas stars and candles. The big snowflakes whirled in the stree
tlights.

  My town, Berglund thought. Even though he had grown up on the other side of the river, he knew these streets in Almtuna; they formed the basis for the ideal society that his father, the furnace keeper at Ekeby, had always dreamed of. Berglund was able to thrust the thoughts of John and his family out of his mind only by thinking that Christmas was soon approaching. He had always liked this holiday.

  For a moment he wanted to say, I’m a criminal inspector in the middle of a murder investigation. But he would remember the sight of Ymergatan enveloped in snow for a long time.

  His city. Oskar Pettersson had talked about skånkarna, an old slang word for university graduates. It had been a long time since Berglund had heard anyone use this word. But Berglund was certainly aware of the fact that there were two cities, two Uppsalas: Oskar’s and the skånkarna’s, with their academic degrees. You didn’t hear people talk about it much anymore, but you still felt the effects of this division. Even at the police station.

  Would things have been better if Albin had fallen from any old roof and not one of the buildings of the university? Berglund knew what the old man had been talking about. It was about a class system, the fact that the underclass, Oskar and Albin, always slipped off the roofs of the rich folk. That had been Berglund’s father’s opinion and he had inherited it. He had always voted for the Social Democrats. You seldom heard political talk along party lines down at the station, but he knew he belonged to a minority there. Ottosson voted for the Folkpartiet, not out of a strong sense of political urgency but out of habit and a lack of imagination. They agreed in their analyses of social developments. Ottosson wanted to be like the people, and that’s why he voted for the Liberal Party. Ann Lindell was harder to pin down. She seemed uninterested in politics. Riis belonged to the Conservatives, like Ryde. Sammy Nilsson was for the Center Party, mainly because he had grown up in the country.

  Berglund pushed away these thoughts of his colleagues. It was time to get home, but he couldn’t help getting out his cell phone and calling Fredriksson.