The Black Path

by Asa Larsson

  Mauri is drinking a bit too much, the way you do when you’re nervous at first. Diddi is keeping up with him, but he can tolerate it better. They take it in turns to buy. Diddi has a little coke in his pocket. Just in case the opportunity arises. He’s playing it by ear.

  But actually, this guy is not completely without interest. Diddi talks about selected highlights of his childhood. The pressure from his father to study. The outbursts of rage and the humiliating words when the exams had gone badly. He admits openly and with a laugh that unfortunately he’s just a ditzy blond, and doesn’t belong here.

  But then he defends his father. He’s got his own baggage, of course. Brought up in the old school, had to stand in the doorway and bow to his father, Diddi’s grandfather, before he was granted permission to come in. There weren’t too many cuddles, sitting on Daddy’s knee.

  And after offering these initial confidences, he begins to dig and to ask questions. And he watches Mauri, this skinny guy whose trousers are too big, who wears cheap shoes and a beautifully ironed shirt made of such thin cotton you can see the hairs on his chest through it. Mauri, who carries his course books in a supermarket carrier bag. He doesn’t spend his money on material things, that much is clear.

  And Mauri talks about himself. He did a break-in when he was twelve, and got caught. He talks about the social worker who made him pull himself together and start studying.

  “Was she pretty?” asks Diddi.

  Mauri lies and says yes. He doesn’t know why. Diddi has to laugh.

  “You really are full of surprises,” he says. “You don’t look much like a criminal.”

  And Mauri, who tells half-truths and chooses what he’s prepared to talk about, doesn’t say a word about the fact that it was a gang of older boys, his foster brother and his pals, who sent him and some other younger kids who weren’t old enough to be charged to do the crap jobs.

  “What does a criminal look like?” he asks instead.

  Diddi looks slightly impressed.

  “And now you’re the college star,” he says.

  “Just about passed Business Studies,” says Mauri.

  “But that’s because you study the stock market instead of anything else. Everybody knows that.”

  Mauri doesn’t reply. Tries to attract the barman’s attention to order two more beers, feels like a dwarf who’s being ignored, trying to be seen over the top of the bar counter. In the meantime Diddi takes the opportunity to smile at the blonde and gaze into her eyes. A little investment for the future.

  They end up in a club, in the packed bar, paying three times as much for their beer.

  “I’ve got a bit of money,” says Diddi. “You should invest it for me. Seriously. I’m willing to take the risk.”

  Diddi doesn’t quite have time to work out what it is he sees in Mauri. A split second where he kind of straightens up, switches to a sober section of his brain, checking, analyzing, reaching a decision. In time Diddi will learn that Mauri never loses his judgment. Fear keeps him alert. But it passes so quickly. Mauri gives a slightly drunken shrug.

  “Sure,” he says. “I take twenty-five percent, and as soon as I’m tired of it you can take over yourself or sell, whichever you want.”

  “Twenty-five percent!” Diddi is completely dumbfounded. “That’s profiteering! How much do the banks take?”

  “Go to a bank then, they’ve got good brokers.”

  But Diddi says okay.

  And they laugh, as if everything is just a joke, really.

  The program editors have included Mauri Kallis’s arrival at the interview. In the lower right-hand corner of the picture you can see Malou von Sivers’s hand rotating briefly, “keep rolling,” to the person behind the camera. Mauri Kallis is slender and short, like a stiff schoolboy. His suit is a perfect fit. His shoes are shiny. His shirt is white, these days they’re tailor-made in heavy, top-quality cotton, anything but see-through.

  He apologizes to Malou von Sivers for his late arrival, shakes her hand, then turns to Inna Wattrang and kisses her on the cheek. She smiles and says, “Master!” Diddi Wattrang and Mauri shake hands. Somebody produces a chair, and all three of them are sitting with Malou von Sivers in front of the camera.

  Malou von Sivers goes in softly to begin with. She saves the difficult questions for the later part of the interview. She wants Mauri Kallis to feel comfortable, and if the interview goes wrong it’s best if it happens at the end when they’re done.

  She holds out the copy of Business Week from spring 2004 with Mauri on the cover, and a center spread from the financial section of one of the major dailies. The newspaper article’s headline is “The Boy with the Magic Touch.”

  Inna looks at the newspapers and thinks it’s a miracle those articles were ever written, since Mauri refused to give interviews. In the end she got him to agree to the photographs. The photographer from Business Week chose a close-up shot with Mauri looking down at the floor. The photographer’s assistant dropped a pen and it rolled away. Mauri followed it with his eyes. The photographer took a lot of pictures. Mauri looks lost in thought. Almost as if he’s praying.

  MALOU VON SIVERS: From problem child to all this [she moves her head to encompass the Regla estate, his successful business empire, a beautiful wife, the whole lot]. The image we have of you is very much like a fairy tale; how does that feel?

  Mauri looks at the pictures and hardens himself against the feeling of self-loathing they bring out in him.

  He’s everybody’s property. They use him to prove their ideology is the right one. The national confederation of Swedish industry, Svenskt Näringsliv, invite him to speak. They point at him and say: “Look. Anybody can succeed if they want to.” Göran Persson mentioned his name on television recently during a debate on youth crime. After all, it was a social worker who put Mauri on the right path. The system works. The Swedish welfare state is still there. The weak have a chance.

  It sickens Mauri. He wishes they’d stop bloody using him, pawing at him.

  He lets nothing show. His voice remains calm and friendly. Perhaps a little monotonous. But he isn’t sitting there because he has a charismatic personality, Diddi and Inna can take care of that.

  MAURI KALLIS: I don’t feel…like a character in a fairy tale.

  Silence.

  MALOU VON SIVERS [trying again]: You’ve been described in newspapers abroad as “The Swedish Miracle,” and been compared with Ingvar Kamprad.

  MAURI KALLIS: Well, we both have a nose in the middle of our face…

  MALOU VON SIVERS: But there’s something in that, surely? You both started with nothing. Succeeded in building up an international company in a Sweden which is regarded as…difficult for new businesses.

  MAURI KALLIS: And it is difficult for new businesses, the tax laws favor old money, but there was a chance to build up some capital in the transition from the eighties to the nineties, and I took it.

  MALOU VON SIVERS: Tell me about that. One of your contemporaries at the Business School said in an interview that you didn’t like the idea of just using up your student finances, “eating them up and then crapping them.”

  MAURI KALLIS: That was rather coarsely put. And I wouldn’t wish to use language like that in this context. But yes, that’s true. I’d never had so much money at once before. And I suppose that brought out the entrepreneur in me. Money ought to work, be invested. [He allows a glimpse of a fleeting smile.] I was a real stock market nerd. Always had a copy of the latest stock market reports in my briefcase.

  DIDDI WATTRANG: And you read the Swedish version of Business World, Affärsvärlden.

  MAURI KALLIS: At that time it had edge.

  MALOU VON SIVERS: What did you do next?

  MAURI KALLIS: Well, then…

  Mauri’s student corridor consists of eight rooms with a shared kitchen and two shower rooms. A cleaner comes in once a week, but you still wouldn’t want to walk on the kitchen floor in your stocking feet. You can feel crumbs and garbage right th
rough them, and here and there you get slightly stuck to something tacky that hasn’t been wiped up but has just kind of evaporated. The chairs and table are made of yellow pine. Clumsy and heavy. The kind you’re always bumping into, for some reason. You end up with bruises on your thighs, keep stubbing your toes.

  There are some girls living on the corridor; they hang out together and go to parties he never gets invited to. Anders, who lives opposite Mauri, wears trendy glasses and is studying law; you see him in the kitchen sometimes, but he’s nearly always at his girlfriend’s.

  Håkan is tall and comes from Kramfors. Mattias is big and fat. And then there’s Mauri himself, who’s a skinny little midge. What a collection. None of them goes to parties. And there’s no point in organizing one themselves—who would they invite? They sit in front of the television in Håkan’s room in the evenings gazing mindlessly at porno films with cushions on their laps, like teenage boys.

  That’s the way things have been, at any rate. But now Mauri has turned into a stock market nerd, and at least that means you’re somebody. And not because he hangs out with the others who stand around just inside Kopparporten beneath the monitor.

  He’s become a real player, skipping lectures, sitting up at night with dry eyes reading Dagens Industri instead of studying.

  It’s a fever, and he’s in love. The rush you get when you’ve got it right.

  That first coup. He can remember how it felt, he’ll never forget, it’s like your first girl. He bought five hundred shares in Cura Nova before the merger with Artemis. Then the price shot up. First the leap, then a steady climb as others caught on and bought. They were a long way behind him; he was already thinking of selling. He didn’t say a word about how much he’d actually earned, not to anyone. Went outside. Stood under a street lamp with his face turned up to the falling snow. The certainty. The feeling. I’m going to be rich. This is my thing.

  And as a bonus he’s become friends with Diddi. Diddi, who stops beneath the monitor, checks the prices and chats a little, sometimes sits next to Mauri in lectures.

  Sometimes they go out on the town. Mauri takes twenty-five percent of Diddi’s profits; he doesn’t do anything for nothing.

  He’s no fool either. He knows it’s money that gives him his entry ticket into the Other World.

  So what, he says. For him, money is the ticket. For another person it’s their face, for another their charm, for yet another it’s their name. You have to have a ticket of some kind, and any ticket can be lost. It’s a matter of holding on to what you’ve found.

  There are rules. Unspoken rules. For example: it’s Diddi who gets in touch with Mauri, Diddi who rings and asks Mauri if he fancies going out. It isn’t acceptable to do things the other way round; it would never occur to Mauri to take the liberty of ringing Diddi.

  So Mauri waits for Diddi to call. There are voices inside him. They talk about a different circle of acquaintances that Diddi has, a circle to which Mauri is not admitted. Beautiful people. Cool parties. Diddi calls Mauri when he has nothing else on. Something like jealousy stirs inside Mauri. He sometimes thinks he’ll stop trading for Diddi. The next minute he defends himself by telling himself that he’s making money out of Diddi, it’s a mutual exploitation.

  He tries to study. And when he can’t manage either that or share dealing, he plays cards with Håkan and Mattias. Thinks that Diddi’s bound to call. Runs to his room when the phone rings, but it’s nearly always the room next door where one of the girls lives.

  And when Diddi calls, Mauri says yes. Every time, he thinks he’s going to say no next time. Pretend to be busy.

  Another rule is that Diddi chooses the company. It’s absolutely out of the question for Mauri to take somebody along, Håkan or Mattias for example. Not that he’d want to anyway. There’s no friendship there, no solidarity or whatever the hell it’s supposed to be. They’re outsiders, that’s all they have in common. But not any longer.

  And Mauri and Diddi get completely pissed. Wide awake and high on cocaine. He sometimes wakes up in the morning without the slightest idea of how or when he got home. He’s got slips and tickets in his pockets, stamps on his hands, all clues as to how the journey went. From the pub to Caféet to a club to a late-night party to some girls.

  And he’s allowed to screw the less attractive friends of the prettiest girls. And that’s absolutely fine, and so much more than Håkan and Mattias bloody get.

  Six months pass. Mauri knows that Diddi has a sister, but he’s never met her.

  Nobody can shrug their shoulders like Diddi. They fail an exam, both of them. Mauri turns his anger inward, it chafes and eats away at him inside. A voice tells him he’s worthless, that he’s just a fraud, that he’ll soon slip over the edge and fall down into the world that’s really meant for him.

  Diddi swears too, but then he turns his failure outward, it’s the invigilator, the examiner, the guy who was sitting in front of him farting silently…it’s everybody’s fault except his. And he only broods about it for a little while. Then his usual insouciance returns.

  It’s a while before Mauri realizes Diddi isn’t rich. He’s always thought that upper-class guys, especially those from the nobility, have plenty of money. But that’s not the case. When Diddi gets to know Mauri he’s managing on virtually nothing, just the contributory element of his student finances. He lives in an apartment in Östermalm, but it belongs to some relative. His shirts have come from his father’s wardrobe, they’re the ones his father grew out of long ago. He wears them casually buttoned over T-shirts. He owns one pair of jeans and one pair of shoes. He’s always cold in the winter, but he always looks good. Maybe he looks best of all when he’s freezing cold. When he hunches his shoulders with his arms pressed tightly against his body. You have to stop yourself throwing your arms around him.

  Where Diddi got the money to invest in Mauri’s share dealing Mauri doesn’t know. He tells himself it’s not his concern. Later, when Mauri worked out how a pissed, slurring Diddi could go into the toilets in the bar and come out a short while later on top of the world, he wondered where Diddi got the money for his habits. He has his own ideas about that. Once when they were out, an older man came over and started chatting. He hadn’t got past hello when Diddi got up and just disappeared. Mauri sensed that it was absolutely taboo to ask who he was.

  Diddi likes money. All his life he’s seen money, hung out with people who have money, but never had any himself. His hunger has grown. It doesn’t take long before he starts to take out more and more of his profits from the trading. Then it’s Mauri’s turn to shrug his shoulders. That isn’t his concern either. Diddi’s share in their simple company falls.

  Diddi starts to disappear for long periods, traveling to the Riviera and to Paris. His pockets are full of money.

  Everybody has to be crushed at some point. Soon it will be Diddi’s turn. And soon Mauri will get to meet Diddi’s sister.

  MALOU VON SIVERS: You call him master.

  INNA WATTRANG: We are his curs, after all.

  MAURI KALLIS [smiling and shaking his head slightly]: They’ve stolen that from Jan Stenbeck, the financier. His employees used to call him master. I don’t know whether I should be flattered or insulted.

  MALOU VON SIVERS: Are they your curs?

  MAURI KALLIS: If we’re sticking with the animal theme, then of course I’d prefer to work with starving cats.

  DIDDI WATTRANG: And we’re fat…

  INNA WATTRANG:…and lazy.

  MALOU VON SIVERS: So, tell me about it. A very unusual friendship seems to have developed between the three of you. Inna and Diddi Wattrang were born with a silver spoon in their mouths, and you’re what’s known as a “superkid,” succeeding against all the odds; is that a fair comment?

  MAURI KALLIS: Yes.

  MALOU VON SIVERS: So it must be you who’s the starving cat. What is it that makes the three of you such a good team?

  MAURI KALLIS: Diddi and Inna complement me. A major part of this ent
erprise involves finding people who are prepared to gamble, who are prepared to take a big risk for the chance of bringing off a big profit. And who can afford to do it. Who don’t have to sell a stock holding when it hits rock bottom, but who can afford to stay in a company that’s losing money until I’ve brought in a winning project. Because it always comes along. Sooner or later. But you have to be able to wait. That’s why we never float our companies on the stock exchange; we prefer private investments so you have some idea of who’s buying. It’s the same thing with, for example, mining in Uganda. Just at the moment, things are so unstable down there that we can’t actually do any business. But it’s a long-term project, and I believe in it. And the last thing I need is a gang of shareholders breathing down my neck and wanting to see profits within six months. Diddi and Inna find the right kind of investors for different projects. And they’re very good at selling. They find adventurous investors and gamblers for risky projects, and patient investors without liquidity problems for long-term projects. They’re much more socially adept than I am. They have that financial magnetism. And now we’re running a number of mines within the group, I’m delighted to have them working with the people on the ground and with colleagues. They can move in high or low circles, effectively and without falling out with anybody.