Between Summer's Longing and Winter's End

by Leif Gw Persson

  “But you’ve never worked at SePo, have you?” said his wife suddenly when they were sitting on the subway a while later on their way to her sister’s. For what use would they have for someone like you? she thought.

  “No,” said Wiijnbladh, trying to sound as mysterious as the circumstances allowed. “Not in a formal sense, no.”

  So you’re a secret agent, she thought. In that case they can’t be right in their heads.

  He’d gone to a simple place in the city. Simple clientele, many women by themselves, middle-aged or on the way to being so, already passed over or on their way down. Abandoned, vulnerable, searching, desperate in their hunt for something better, or at least a few hours’ company. He’d found her in the bar where she sat, showing her generous cleavage for anyone who cared to look. Considering the competition she was the beauty of the place, red-haired, white-skinned, busty, twenty pounds overweight, heavily made up, intoxicated, and Waltin had felt a completely irresistible desire to hurt her.

  Is that why you’re always so nervous that you can never get it up? thought Lisa Wiijnbladh while feeling how the shaking of the subway car touched the inside of her thighs.

  “I’ll be darned—you’re so secretive, old man,” she said. Smiled, leaned forward, and patted him on the cheek.

  “Well,” said Wiijnbladh, suddenly feeling both happy and embarrassed. “There are certain things in my job that are hard to talk about.” She touched me, he thought.

  “You and he have met socially,” said his wife, trying a mischievous smile on him. It’s not talking that’s your major problem, she thought.

  “Perhaps you might say that,” Wiijnbladh nodded. “We’ve met privately.”

  “Where does he live, then?” asked his wife.

  Waltin had taken her to one of the front addresses he used for the operation, choosing this one because there were no neighbors and the bed had sturdy corner posts. He’d brought everything else he needed with him.

  “You’re awfully curious,” said Wiijnbladh evasively. What was it he’d said that time he’d approached him at work? he thought nervously. He’d mentioned it in passing.

  “Admit that you don’t have a clue,” said his wife, looking exactly as she always did.

  “Norr Mälarstrand,” said Wiijnbladh, suddenly remembering.

  First he’d spread her out, binding her hands and feet to the four corners of the bed, and as usual he’d used his leather straps. Pulled a little tighter because she was rather drunk, because she needed it, but mostly because he was in the mood for it. Pulled her top and bra up over her head, pulled up her skirt to her waist and cut apart her panties. It was simplest that way, he liked doing it, liked the sound when he did it, and he felt as if he was going to burst apart from within when he entered her.

  . . .

  “Norr Mälarstrand,” repeated his wife. And why would someone like him invite a little shit like you home? she thought.

  “Fantastic apartment,” said Wiijnbladh, nodding. “He had a really fantastic art collection,” he added, nodding again. What was it Waltin had said when he showed him that Matisse forgery? he thought.

  It was not that she hadn’t played along. She went along, she was a part of it. The fat sow was actually enjoying it, and despite the fact that she was as drunk as she was she had suddenly achieved orgasm, just shrieked flat out and arched her body in the bed despite the fact that he’d tied her up. And he had immediately folded up; all his strength had suddenly simply run out of him.

  “I had no idea that you were an art lover,” said Lisa Wiijnbladh sourly.

  “Art is really nice,” said Wiijnbladh evasively. Now she’s her usual self again, he thought.

  He’d put the muzzle and blindfold on her and tightened her a little harder. But that hadn’t helped either. Then he shaved her between her legs, for that usually helped, but all that had happened was that she’d come to climax one more time while he was at it.

  And then he gave up.

  “Perhaps you ought to start painting yourself,” said Lisa Wiijnbladh. “Like that Zorn.” Wasn’t that his name? she thought.

  “Oh well,” said Wiijnbladh, stealing a glance at his watch. “When would I have time for that?” Won’t we be there soon? he thought.

  When they were sitting on the sofa afterward he’d poured her a hefty drink. She’d needed it, for she’d looked unbelievably awful. The makeup that had run all over her face, the large white sagging breasts, the skirt bunched up around her waist, and her legs spread while she looked at her shaved sex. Suddenly the tears had started to flow.

  “What have you done?” she’d whimpered. “What will I say to my husband?”

  “That might be a nice surprise for him,” Waltin had said lightly, and suddenly the familiar feeling had returned. You have a husband, he’d thought.

  “Or draw naked women,” persisted his wife. “What is that called, when they sit and draw naked women?” Although you’d hardly be able to manage that either, she thought.

  “Life drawing,” said Wiijnbladh sourly, for he’d learned that on the job. “It’s called life drawing.”

  “My God,” she’d sniffled. “What will I say to my husband?”

  Now the tears had sprayed out of her and she’d suddenly appeared quite inconsolable.

  “You can surely think of something,” Waltin had said helpfully. Otherwise I’ll have to help you, he’d thought, for now the feeling had come back again, just as strong as before. Before, she wasn’t able to behave the way she should.

  “He’s never going to believe me,” she’d sobbed. “He’s a policeman.”

  Policeman, Waltin had thought. This is too good to be true. It had felt as if he were going to burst again as he pulled her up and forced her down across the arm of the sofa. Then he’d entered her from behind and she had howled like a banshee the whole time and before he drove her home he’d tied her up on her belly in the bed and given her a good going-over with his belt.

  “Maybe you think that’s really fun,” his wife teased. “Lots of naked women. Drawing them shouldn’t be all that hard.”

  “We’re here now,” said Wiijnbladh evasively and got up. “It’s here we change trains,” he said. Actually I ought to kill you, he thought.

  . . .

  Because he had snooped through her handbag when she went to the bathroom, and because her name was what it was, a look at the Stockholm Police Department employee register had been sufficient to find him.

  Detective Inspector Göran Wiijnbladh with the technical squad. I must meet him, Waltin had thought, feeling almost as enlivened as that time when he’d seen his dear mother take the escalator down to the subway at Östermalm Square.

  The prime minister’s special adviser celebrated Christmas together with his old friend, teacher, and mentor, Professor Forselius. True, both had a number of ex-wives, even more children, and in the case of Forselius an almost unbelievable and quickly increasing number of grandchildren and great-grandchildren, but when it was finally time to celebrate Christmas, for various reasons they only had each other, and it had been like that for a number of years.

  It wasn’t so strange either that they always convened at the home of the special adviser. Forselius either ate canned food or went to the exclusive gentlemen’s club Stora Sällskapet, while the special adviser had access to all the resources that his secret life could offer. If you looked in the phone book—he was actually in the phone book with both first and last name, but without title—he had a very modest address on Södermalm where he never set foot other than to fetch his mail, and the telephone number that went there had been forwarded from the first day to the large home in Djursholm where he actually lived. In addition he had a housekeeper, a wine cellar, a party membership book, and several million dollars that he’d buried abroad with all the care of which only people like him and Forselius were capable. Strangest of all, he’d earned all his money himself and he’d done it before he’d turned thirty-five.

  Forselius lov
ed him more than his own children, while the special adviser’s feelings for Forselius were more mixed. He liked his children best anyway, he used to think, for actually Forselius was only a grumpy old bastard who could be totally and uniquely self-absorbed. He did have one characteristic, though, that was hard to beat. Forselius was the only person that he could talk with about the kinds of things that no one else understood, and because questions of that type made up the essential reason for his continued existence, the answer was also a given.

  And who the hell wants to toast themselves in a shaving mirror on Christmas Eve? thought the special adviser, raising his glass toward his only and recurring guest.

  “Skoal, professor,” said the special adviser. “And merry Christmas.”

  “Skoal, young man,” said Forselius, savoring the wine in his glass. “And merry Christmas to you too.”

  “Well,” said the special adviser, looking at him with curiosity.

  “Petrus,” said Forselius. “1945.”

  “My birth year,” said the special adviser.

  “A great year in Bordeaux,” said Forselius.

  “A great year here, there, and everywhere,” said the special adviser generously, thinking of his own inception.

  “Have I told you about that Pole?” said Forselius. “It was the same year.”

  “The one you killed,” said the special adviser, chuckling so that his fat belly jumped.

  “Oh well,” said Forselius. “What the hell choice did we have?”

  Appetizer, main course, cheese, and dessert, but not a herring butt, slice of ham, or Christmas pudding as far as the eye could see. A skinny, middle-aged, black-clad woman who moved like a lost soul between the kitchen, the serving corridor, and the enormous dining room table, never saying a word. Now she stood in the door between the dining room and the library, exchanging a glance with the master of the house.

  “I believe that coffee and cognac are waiting,” said the special adviser, setting aside his damask napkin, pushing his chair back, and getting up with a certain effort.

  Forselius nodded, cleared his throat, winked meaningfully, and leaned forward.

  “Is she mute, man?” he whispered. “Is she really mute?”

  “I really don’t know,” said the special adviser. “She’s never said anything.”

  . . .

  With coffee and cognac they usually exchanged Christmas presents. Always the same kind of Christmas present, yet always different than the one they’d received and the one they’d given the year before. Each a folded-up slip of paper that they gave to each other and then unfolded and read. A frighteningly long row of numerals on both pieces of paper, different numerals, wrinkled brows. Forselius’s brow smoothed out first and his wrinkled old man’s face split into a contented grin.

  “I won again,” he said with delight.

  “You and your fucking prime numbers,” said the special adviser sourly. “I’ve got a job to take care of, you know. Besides, I’m sure you’re cheating with the military’s big computer,” he added indignantly.

  “Why do you think that?” said Forselius slyly. “Perhaps I just think better than you do?”

  “Ha ha,” said the special adviser, who was a poor loser and a completely insufferable winner.

  Then they played billiards and drank highballs half the night before Forselius staggered up to his guest room on the second floor early on Christmas morning. There he fell asleep immediately after he’d kicked off his shoes and despite his advanced age flung himself on top of the bedspread.

  Waltin had prepared himself carefully. First he’d found out everything that was worth knowing about that fat red-haired sow and her miserable husband. Neither background, money, nor schools, but no one would have expected that, he thought contentedly. Dreary four-room apartment in a suburb, no children, the sow clearly worked at the phone company and was otherwise best known for kicking herself weary under men other than the one she was married to. Certainly started as one of those old-time switchboard operators who sit putting things in small holes the whole time and then it had just gone on from old habit, he’d thought, giggling with delight.

  . . .

  As soon as he was bored he used to take out the pictures he’d taken of her as she lay tied up with muzzle and blindfold and everything, and for a while he’d seriously considered sending the best picture as a reader’s contribution to those miserable porno rags you found in pretty much all places where there were lower-class men, but on further reflection he’d refrained. Perhaps I might need her again, Waltin had thought, and the thing about her husband appealed to him much more.

  He’d called him up a month or so after the encounter with the sow, and when he’d said who he was the miserable little shit had been so flattered that Waltin regretted that he hadn’t recorded him on tape.

  “As I said,” Waltin had said, “I need to freshen up my technical knowledge without blabbing about it to the whole operations bureau.”

  “Of course, of course,” Wiijnbladh had gushed. “Then I propose Saturday morning, for I’m at the after-hours unit then and for the most part I’m usually alone there,” he had said officiously. Wonder who gave him my name? This can lead who knows where, he had thought, and in his mind he had already seen himself as head of the secret police’s myth-shrouded, covert tech squad.

  “Fine with me,” Waltin had replied in English. “Shall we say ten o’clock on Saturday?” Wonder if he understands English, he’d thought.

  “Discretion a matter of honor,” Wiijnbladh had said, unknowing procurer that he also was.

  Wiijnbladh had met him dressed in white coat with a sash; only the stethoscope was missing. Plus the education, of course, but altogether it was better than Waltin could even have imagined in his wettest, most secret dreams. Then they’d walked around the unit and Wiijnbladh had shown and demonstrated and babbled like a little windmill while Waltin had had a half erection practically the whole time.

  “Here, for example, we have a Matisse that came in last week,” Wiijnbladh had said, showing a painting that someone had set on a workbench. “Forgery, of course,” he’d said, sighing like the art connoisseur he surely was.

  What do you say? Waltin had thought. I thought he’d painted that with his feet.

  “I have a few pieces myself,” Waltin had declared with the bon viveur’s matter-of-factness. “Feels nice to hear that you keep a close watch on those kinds of things.”

  Of course he had gotten on a first-name basis with him as soon as they’d shaken hands. That was half the fun. Then he’d made little snide remarks during the course of the journey whenever there was an opportunity.

  “It’s just horrible that someone could do that to a child,” Waltin had said, shaking his head mournfully while Wiijnbladh showed him a little pair of undies on which one of Wiijnbladh’s colleagues in the forensic vineyard had evidently succeeded in identifying semen stains.

  “Ugh yes,” Wiijnbladh had said.

  “You have kids yourself,” Waltin had said; this was more a statement than a question, and of course he’d already known the answer.

  “Unfortunately,” Wiijnbladh had answered, “my wife and I have not had any success in that regard.”

  And in no other regard either, it appears, despite the fact that she can hardly be accused of a lack of willingness, Waltin had thought, making an effort to preserve an indifferent and sufficiently regretful expression.

  “I myself don’t even have a woman by my side,” Waltin had said, shaking his head. I hardly have time to screw everyone else’s, he thought.

  “Yes,” Wiijnbladh had said, and suddenly he’d seemed to have his thoughts somewhere else. “Although marriage can have its drawbacks.”

  What is he saying? Waltin had thought. This is almost too good to be true.

  Finally Wiijnbladh had shown him the weapons room: hundreds of weapons of all imaginable sizes and manufacture. Military and civilian automatic weapons, rifles and ordinary shotguns with whole or sawed
-off barrels, revolvers and pistols, shootable walking sticks, pen pistols, bolt pistols, nail pistols, even a regular slaughtering mask.

  “Mostly confiscations we’ve made in connection with various crimes,” Wiijnbladh had explained. “Although we purchase quite a few as well, to have in our weapons library.”

  Yes, for you probably can’t read, Waltin had thought. What an unbelievable mess, he’d thought. Weapons on the walls, on shelves, in boxes and cabinets. Weapons and parts of weapons in an old shoe box that someone had clearly started sorting into smaller piles before he’d found something else to do. Weapons and parts on tables and benches and even a sawed-off, disassembled shotgun that someone had set aside on the seat of a chair before he’d run off to do who knows what.

  “Seems to be quite a lot,” Waltin had said, nodding, as a telephone started ringing in the background.

  “We have almost a thousand weapons here in the unit. Excuse me a moment,” Wiijnbladh had said.

  “Sure,” Waltin had replied, and as soon as he’d heard him lift the receiver in the room outside, and without understanding how it really happened or why he did it, he’d stuck his hand down in a half-opened drawer, fished up a revolver with a short barrel, and let it glide down into his very deepest pocket.

  “Excuse me,” Wiijnbladh had said when he came back, “but that was the after-hours unit that called.”

  “Not at all,” Waltin had said. “If there’s anyone who should beg pardon it’s I, who am taking you away from more important tasks. I’d like to thank you greatly for the visit. It’s been very instructive.”

  Almost as good as that time he’d seen dear Mother come out of the doorway where she lived and with the help of her canes and the usual antics limp away toward the stairway to the subway.

  Wiijnbladh and his wife as usual celebrated Christmas with his sister-in-law, her semi-alcoholic husband, and their fourteen-year-old son in the town house in Sollentuna where they lived. It was exactly as wretched as it always was. First they ate and then they watched TV and then they passed out Christmas presents, and after that they watched TV again.