Kennedy's Brain

by Henning Mankell

  Heidi had come to Härjedalen after the war, 1946 or 1947. She was only seventeen, despite the fact that everybody thought she was older. She had found work at the Vemdalskalet mountain hotel for the winter season, and cleaned rooms and changed bed linen for the tourists. He had met her as a result of his work as a lumberjack, delivering logs. He was intrigued by her peculiar Swedish accent, and they married in 1948, even though she was only eighteen. A lot of documentation was required because she was a German citizen and nobody really knew what Germany was any more – did it really exist, or was it only a sort of no-man's-land under military supervision, devastated by fire and bomb sites? But she had never been involved in the horrors of the Nazi period – indeed, she was a victim herself. Heidi had never said anything much about her origins, only that her grandmother on her mother's side had been Swedish, called Sara Fredrika and emigrated to America around the time of the First World War. She had arrived in America with her daughter, Laura, and had been forced to live in very harsh conditions. In the late 1920s they had lived on the outskirts of Chicago, and Laura had met a cattle dealer of German descent and accompanied him back to Europe. They married, and in 1930 celebrated the birth of their daughter Heidi, despite the fact that Laura was so young. Both her parents had died during the war, victims of nocturnal bombing raids, and she had been a wandering refugee until the war was over and purely by accident had hit upon the idea of emigrating to Sweden, which had not been involved in the war.

  'A Swedish girl goes to America? Then her daughter emigrates to Germany before the circle is closed by her grandchild? Who returns to Sweden?'

  'She thought that her background wasn't all that unusual.'

  'Where did her grandmother come from? Did she ever meet her?'

  'I don't know. But she used to go on about the sea and an island, an archipelago somewhere or other. She suspected that there was some complicated reason why her grandmother left Sweden.'

  'Aren't there any relatives still in America?'

  'Heidi didn't have any documents, no addresses. She used to say that she had survived the war. But that was about all. She had no possessions. No memories. The whole of her past had been bombed out, and had been consumed by the flames.'

  They had returned to the logging track.

  'Are you going to carve Henrik's face?'

  The thought caused them both to weep. The gallery closed down on the spot. They sat in the car. He was about to start the engine when she put her hand on his arm.

  'What has happened? He can't possibly have taken his own life.'

  'He might have been ill. He used to travel to dangerous places.'

  'I don't believe that. Something doesn't add up.'

  They drove back home through the forest. The mist had lifted, it was a bright autumn day, the air clear. She made no objections when Artur sat down at the telephone with grim determination, refusing to give up until he had tracked down Aron.

  He is like his old hunting dogs, she thought. All the Norwegian elkhounds and spitzes that came and went, hunted in the forest, grew old and died. Now he has turned into a dog himself. His chin and cheeks are covered in shaggy fur.

  It took all of twenty-four hours, involving desperate attempts to work out time differences and opening times of the Swedish Embassy in Canberra, and countless calls trying to pin down some official of the Swedish- Australian Society, which turned out to have an incredible number of members. But there was no trace of Aron Cantor. He was not registered with the embassy, nor was he a member of the society. Not even an old head gardener in Perth by the name of Karl-Håkan Wester, who was reputed to know every Swede in Australia, could provide any information.

  They discussed the possibility of placing advertisements, or hiring somebody to find him. But Louise argued that Aron was so elusive that he could vanish at will. He could confuse anybody trying to follow him by turning into his own shadow.

  They would not be able to find Aron. Perhaps that was what she really wanted, deep down? Did she want to rob him of the right to accompany his own son to the grave? In revenge for all the hurt he had caused her?

  Artur asked her point-blank that very question and she told him the truth; she did not know.

  She spent most of those September days crying. Artur sat at the kitchen table in silence. He could do nothing to console her, all he could offer her was silence. But the silence was cold, it merely increased her desperation.

  One night she went to his room and snuggled down beside him in his bed, just as she had done for years after Heidi's death. She lay quite still, her head on his arm. Neither of them slept, neither spoke. The lack of sleep was like waiting for the waiting to come to an end.

  But when dawn came, Louise could remain inert no longer. Even if it was going to be impossible, she had to begin to try to understand what dark forces had robbed her of her only child.

  They had got up early and were sitting at the kitchen table. They could see the rain through the window, and autumn drizzle. The rowan berries were bright red. She asked to borrow his car, as she wanted to return to Stockholm that very morning. He seemed worried, but she reassured him. She would not drive too fast, nor would she drive over a cliff. Nobody else was going to die. But she must go back to Henrik's flat. She was convinced that he had left behind some clue or other. There had not been a letter. But Henrik never wrote letters, he left other kinds of message that only she would be able to interpret.

  'I have no option,' she said. 'I have to do this. Then I'll come back here.'

  He hesitated before saying what had to be said. What about the funeral?

  'It must take place here. Where else could he be buried? But that can wait.'

  She left an hour later. His car smelled of hard work, hunting, oil and tools. A ragged dog blanket was still in the boot. She drove slowly through the endless forests, thought she had glimpsed an elk on a hillock near the Dalarna border. It was late afternoon by the time she reached Stockholm. She had slithered around on the cold, slippery roads, tried hard to concentrate on her driving and told herself that she owed it to Henrik. It was her duty to stay alive. Nobody else would be able to find out what had really happened. His death made it imperative for her to live.

  She checked into a hotel at Slussen that was far too expensive. She left the car in an underground car park, and returned to Tavastgatan as dusk fell. To help give her the required strength, she opened the bottle of whisky she had bought at Athens airport.

  Like Aron, she thought. I always used to be annoyed when he drank straight from the bottle. Now I am doing it myself.

  She opened the door. The police had not sealed it.

  On the mat was some junk mail, but no letters. Only a postcard from somebody called Vilgot, with enthusiastic descriptions of stone walls in Ireland. The card was green and depicted a slope down to a grey sea, but oddly enough without any stone walls. She paused motionless in the hall, holding her breath until she was able to control her panic and an instinctive urge to run away. Then she hung up her coat and took off her shoes. She worked her way slowly through the flat. There were no sheets on the bed. When she came back to the hall, she sat down on the stool by the telephone. The light on the answering machine was flashing. She pressed the appropriate button. The first message was from somebody called Hans who wondered if Henrik had time to go to the Ethnographical Museum to see an exhibition of Peruvian mummies. Then came a click, and a call but no message. The tape kept running. Now it was her calling from Mitsos's house. She could hear the enthusiasm in her voice, looking forward to the reunion that never took place. Then it was her again, this time from Visby. She pressed the repeat button and listened to the messages again. First Hans, then an unknown person, and herself. She remained sitting by the telephone. The light had stopped flashing. Instead she felt something go off inside herself, a warning light, just like the one on the answering machine. It was as if she'd received an incoming message. She held her breath and tried to isolate her thoughts. It happens all the time tha
t somebody phones, says nothing although the sound of breathing can be heard, then hangs up. She did it herself sometimes, no doubt Henrik did as well. But what troubled her was her own messages. Had Henrik heard them at all?

  Suddenly she was certain. He had never heard them. The sound of the telephone ringing had echoed round the flat but no contact had been made.

  She felt scared. But she needed all her strength now in order to look for clues. Henrik must have left something for her. She went to the room he used as a study, where he also had a hi-fi system and a television. She stood in the middle of the room and looked slowly round.

  Nothing appeared to be missing. It's too tidy, she thought. Henrik was not into tidiness. We sometimes used to quarrel about what was reasonable and what was pedantic. She went round the flat again. Had the police cleared up? She needed to know. She called Göran Wrath. She could hear that he was busy, so only asked him about the state of the flat.

  'We don't do that,' said Wrath. 'Obviously, if we've disturbed something we try to put it right again.'

  'The sheets have been taken from his bed.'

  'That can't have been us. There was no reason to take anything away as there was no sign of a crime having been committed.'

  He apologised for having to cut short the conversation and gave her a time when she could phone him the following day. She stood in the middle of the room again and looked round once more. Then she investigated the linen basket in the bathroom. There were no sheets, only a pair of jeans. She searched methodically through the flat, but could find no trace of any dirty sheets. She sat down on his sofa and looked at the room from a different angle. There was something odd about how neat and tidy everything looked. But she couldn't put her finger on anything specific. She went to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. It was almost empty, but that was what she had expected.

  Then she turned her attention to his desk. She opened all the drawers. Papers, photographs, old boarding cards. She picked one out at random. On 12 August 1999 Henrik had flown to Singapore with Qantas. His seat number had been 37G. He had made a note on the reverse side: 'N.B. Phone call.' That was all.

  She continued cautiously to become better acquainted with her son's life, the parts of it she did not know about. She lifted up the mouse pad with a picture of cacti in a desert: there was a letter underneath. She could see immediately that it was from Aron. She recognised his sprawling handwriting, always scribbled in a great hurry. She hesitated before reading it. Did she really want to know what kind of a relationship the two of them had? She picked up the envelope and turned it over. There was something that could have been an undecipherable address.

  She stood by the kitchen window and tried to imagine how he would react. Aron, who never wore his heart on his sleeve, who always tried to keep a stiff upper lip when faced with the realities of life and everything it could throw at him.

  You need me, she thought. In the same way that both I and Henrik needed you. But you never came when we appealed to you. Not when I did, at least.

  She went back to the desk and looked at the letter. Instead of reading it she put it in her pocket.

  She found Henrik's journals and diaries in a box under the desk. She knew that he kept an account of his activities. But she did not want to find anything in the diaries about her son that she had never suspected. She would save those for later. She also found several CDs, which according to what was written on them were copies of material from his computer hard drive. She looked but failed to find a computer. She put the CDs in her handbag.

  She picked out his diary for 2004 and looked up the latest entry. It was dated two days before she had left Greece. Monday, 13 September. Try to understand. That was all. Try to understand what? She looked at previous entries, but there were not many for the last few months. She looked into the future, at the days Henrik would never experience. She found only one note: 10 October. To B.

  I can't find you, she thought. I still can't interpret the clues you have left for me. What happened in this flat? Inside you?

  Then it dawned on her. Somebody had been in the flat after Henrik's body had been taken away. Somebody had been here, just as she was here now.

  It was not Henrik's movements she was having difficulty in tracking. She was being thrown by a trail left by somebody else. The compass was whirling round.

  She searched methodically through the desk and all the drawers and shelves. All she found was that letter from Aron.

  She suddenly felt very tired. He must have left a clue. Once again, the feeling came sneaking up on her. Somebody else had been in the flat. But who would take it upon his or herself to tidy up, and take away the bed sheets? Something else must be missing, something she had not been able to identify. But why the sheets? Who had taken them?

  She started searching the wardrobes. In one of them she found several fat files bound together by an old belt. Henrik had written JFK on the cover, in Indian ink. She took out the individual files and laid them out on the desk in front of her. The first one was full of computer printouts and photocopies. The text was in English. The subject matter astonished her. They were about the brain of the American president, John F. Kennedy. She frowned more and more intensively as she read, then started again from the beginning and read more carefully.

  When she closed the last of the files several hours later, she was convinced. Henrik had not died of natural causes. This catastrophe was caused by some external means.

  She stood by the window and looked down into the dark street, into the shadows.

  Something or someone out there killed my son.

  For one brief moment she thought she had noticed somebody slinking into the darkness. Then all was still again.

  It was midnight when she left the flat and returned to her hotel. She kept turning round checking her back. But nobody was following her.

  CHAPTER 5

  Her hotel room enveloped her in silence. Rooms occupied by people constantly moving in and out collected no memories. She stood in the window and contemplated the Old Town, watched the traffic flowing past and noted that no sound penetrated the thick glass. The soundtrack of reality had been switched off.

  She had taken with her some of the fattest folders. The desk in her room was very small, so she spread the papers out on her bed and started reading again. She spent nearly the whole night reading. At some point between half past three and a quarter past four she nodded off, afloat on the sea of paper oozing out of the folders. Then she woke up with a start, and continued reading. Sorting out the information about Henrik she had in front of her seemed to be similar to the problems she faced as an archaeologist. Why had Henrik devoted so much time and energy to something that had happened to an American president over forty years ago? What had he been looking for? What information was buried there? How do you look for something that somebody else has been looking for? It was like one of the many shattered Grecian urns she had faced during her life. A pile of tiny pieces, and her task was to produce a phoenix rising from the ashes of a vase smashed a thousand years ago. She needed knowledge and patience in order to succeed, and not be too frustrated by the recalcitrant bits that refused to fit into the puzzle. But what should she do now? How would she be able to glue together the shards Henrik had left behind?

  Over and over again during the night she burst out crying. Or was it that she had been crying all the time, without noticing that the tears occasionally dried up? She read through all the confusing documents that Henrik had collected, most of them in English, some of them photocopies of extracts from books or archives, others emails from university libraries or private foundations.

  As dawn broke and she felt incapable of reading any more, she stretched out on the bed and tried to sum up the most important things she had read.

  In November 1963, round about midday, Central Time, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy had been shot while travelling with his wife in a motorcade through the centre of Dallas. Three shots were fired from a rifle. Bullet
s had hurtled forth at mind-boggling speed and transformed everything in their path into a bloody mash of flesh and sinew and bone. The first shot hit the president in his throat, the second one missed, but the third hit him in the head and created a large hole through which lumps of his brain were blown out with enormous force. The president's body was flown back to Washington that same day in Air Force One. On board the flight, Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as president: by his side was Jackie, still in her bloodstained clothes. A post-mortem examination of the president was carried out at an air force base. The whole procedure was veiled in secrecy, and nobody knows what actually happened. Many years later, it was established that what remained of Kennedy's brain after the shot and the subsequent post-mortem had disappeared. Several investigations attempted to find out what had happened to the missing organ, but it proved impossible to establish the facts. The probability was that Robert Kennedy, the dead president's brother, had the remains buried. But nobody knew for sure. And a few years later, Robert Kennedy was also murdered.