by Håkan Nesser
Wanker Rob got headlines almost as big as Miss Hälsingland, but in the final programme (2,011,775) – in which the ice hockey player rather unexpectedly (single odds: 6.60; double odds: 21.33) emerged as the lucky stud and father of the child – he was not to be seen. He had left Fucking Island and was undergoing trauma therapy in a convalescent home at an undisclosed location in the Kingdom of Sweden.
Robert pulled his cap down over his eyes and put on the yellow-tinted glasses before he went into the petrol station to pay. He bought a coffee and some cigarettes, too; it suddenly struck him that it would be impossible to bear either his father or his big sister without a constant high dose of nicotine in his veins.
The time was quarter past four. It was Monday 19 December and he was less than an hour and a half’s drive from Kymlinge. He walked round the perimeter of the petrol station forecourt four times to help pass the time. Smoked two cigarettes. He had promised to be there by seven at the latest. There was no reason for arriving at six or half past. When he crawled back into the car, it still felt way too early, but perhaps he could allow himself another stop? Buy some chewing gum and a Loka mineral water with lemon at another filling station and waste an extra ten minutes.
He rejoined the road and tried to conjure up the elusive image of Jeanette Andersson, who might turn out to be a saviour in his hour of need, but it was hard to lick her into any sort of shape, though the thought that she had been lusting after him even as a teenager was appealing, and more appealing the more he sucked on it. Fifteen to twenty years of repressed, pent-up sexual desire; what blossom of love might not flourish in such rich earth?
But it was hard to keep her in his mind; he had not been driving more than ten or fifteen minutes when he found himself engulfed by something he had never experienced before. A chafing yet paralysing discomfort, so intense and implacable that he had to pull into a lay-by, get out of the car and light another cigarette.
He looked about him. It was an extremely humdrum lay-by and no other cars had stopped there in the inhospitable grey chill of the dusky afternoon. The tarmac was glossy and free of snow. Not slippery, so presumably it was a few degrees above zero. Dense fir forest on both sides of the road, little traffic – roughly a car a minute in each direction – and the wind was light and from a northerly direction, if he was judging correctly.
But it wasn’t the external world pushing in on him. The feeling that gradually spread inside him was both familiar and totally alien. It came from a spot somewhere between his stomach and his ribcage, possibly his solar plexus, and it grew slowly, and predominantly upwards, it seemed to him, turning everything in its path to ashes. Like an internal desert fire, or gangrene, impossible to fight against, it was just a question of waiting and accepting.
I’m going to die, thought Robert. Right here and now in this darkening lay-by, I’m finally going to die. I can’t stop it, and I don’t even need to step out in front of a car. I’ve had the seed of death inside me for a long time, it has been lurking there, growing and growing and biding its time, and now the moment has come. I can’t move. I simply can’t move, it’s inexorable, this is the end of the road, and there’ll never be a novel penned by my hand. Nobody will ever be able to read Man Without Dog.
He tried to raise his cigarette to his mouth, but his hand would not obey. He tried to open his fingers and drop the cigarette to the ground, but not the slightest tremor indicated that the signal had arrived from his brain. He tried to turn his head and look at the car rather than the dark forest and the restless sky, but nothing happened.
Nothing at all.
Not until the cigarette slipped from between his fingers almost without him noticing, and landed a few centimetres in front of his right foot. It smouldered gently for a few moments before going out; Robert could see it on the edge of his field of vision without lowering his eyes.
My God, thought Robert Hermansson. Am I dead now? Did I just die? Am I leaving . . . am I leaving my body this very instant and turning into something else?
But everything still seemed whole and indivisible. The ache in his chest was still griping, his breath came in short little bursts, the wind was still light and from the north and felt lethally cold to his damp brow, the lights of a vehicle dazzled him momentarily, went past and were gone. Light and sound. Light and sound.
An unknown number of vehicles passed by in the same way for an unknown number of minutes, an unknown number of events occurred or did not occur, out there in the world, and then he fell.
Straight ahead in a north-easterly direction with his hands at his sides; just before he hit the ground he managed to twist a little so his right shoulder took the impact. He remained prone, lying on his right side with arms and legs spreadeagled, and felt no pain, but was aware of his lower jaw starting to shiver. He tried to clench his hands without success and get his jaw to keep still before finally giving up and losing consciousness.
A short dream drifted in through the barred window of his sleep. He was only a child, four or five years old, and was standing before his father, having wet himself.
‘You did it on purpose,’ said his father.
‘No,’ he replied. ‘I didn’t do it on purpose. It just came.’
‘Oh yes you did,’ said his father. ‘I know you, and you did it on purpose. You could have got to the toilet, but you wanted to torment your mother by making her wash your pissy clothes.’
‘No, no,’ he insisted, tears rising in his throat. ‘It wasn’t like that at all. It just came, and I can wash my pissy clothes myself.’
His father clenched his fists in anger.
‘What’s more, you’re lying,’ he said. ‘You wet your trousers deliberately, you wear out your own mother and you tell lies. Why do you think we brought you into the world at all?’
‘I don’t know, I don’t know,’ he cried in desperation. ‘I couldn’t help it, it’s not at all like you say, Father, I love you all, let me live and I’ll show you.’
But his father pulled out one of the drawers in the big desk where he was sitting and produced something. It was Kristina’s head. It was bloody and horrible and severed from her body, and his father dangled it at arm’s length, where it swung from right to left, from left to right above the desk. Kristina looked so sad and forlorn, and in the end he hurled her head straight at Robert, who was now wetting himself all over again, and just as he was trying to catch his beloved sister’s head, at the very second he stretched out his hands towards it like a handball goalie trying to save a well-aimed shot, but before his fingertips made contact with her auburn hair, he woke up.
He scrambled hastily to his feet. Took three steps towards the edge of the forest, undid his flies and took a much-needed pee.
He crawled back into the car, shivering with cold, and was barely able to turn the ignition key and start the engine.
‘No, wait,’ said Ebba Hermansson Grundt, ‘let’s leave the audio book for later. We’ve got to have a thorough report from Henrik first. The first term at university is always a milestone in our personal development, whether we like it or not.’
Leif Grundt gave a sigh and turned off the CD player. For his part, he’d ended his personal development after two years majoring in business studies at upper secondary. Of course he took an interest in how his eldest son was getting on in Uppsala, for he performed his fatherly duties to the best of his ability and had himself grown up in Uppsala – in Salabacke, at a safe distance from the ivory towers, but even so. Henrik was Ebba’s territory, a legal claim she had evidently staked and won when he was still in the womb, and that was just the way it was. Particularly now, with his law course, living in a hall of residence, part of the student-club culture, with parties, gentlemen’s dinners, afternoon imbibing of Swedish punch, Latin drinking songs and all that stuff.
We’ll see, thought Leif Grundt, but it could be the making of him in the end.
‘It was fine,’ said Henrik Grundt.
‘Fine?’ said his mother Ebba. �
�You’ll have to give us a bit more detail than that, I’m afraid. The end-of-term exams are in January, aren’t they? I can’t think why they have to extend the autumn term over Christmas and New Year, it wasn’t like that in my day. Some little test, possibly, but a full set of exams? Oh well, at least it means you’ve got three weeks to revise, eh?’
‘No worries,’ said Henrik. ‘There are four of us, we’ve been studying together all autumn. We’ll start again on the second of January and cram for ten solid days.’
‘But you’ve brought your books home with you, haven’t you?’ asked Ebba with a hint of maternal unease and concern in her voice.
‘A couple,’ said Henrik. ‘You and Dad needn’t worry about that.’
Leif started overtaking a German juggernaut in a dirty shade of yellow, and since Ebba Hermansson Grundt never spoke while overtaking was in progress, there were ten seconds of silence in the car. Kristoffer cast a quick glance at his brother, beside him in the back seat. Needn’t worry about that, he thought. Was he just imagining it or was there a hidden meaning in what Henrik had just said? Was there something they actually ought to be worrying about? Something else?
It seemed very unlikely. Super Henrik had never given his parents anything to worry about. He made a success of all that he touched, and that applied to everything from school, sporting prowess and piano playing to Trivial Pursuit and fly fishing. It had always been like that. Once, when Henrik was eleven and was declared district champion in ‘Ask Year 5’, Dad had said Henrik only had one problem in life, and that was needing to decide whether to be a Nobel prize winner or prime minister. Mum had instantly declared that it would be no problem for Henrik to fit in both of those – and Kristoffer, who was six at the time, had gone to his room and sulked because, as usual, his big brother would grab all the plaudits and carry off both the trophies. Prime minister and Nobel prize winner. Blow you, Piss Henrik, he’d thought. I’ll be king and then you’ll see. I shall make you eat raw veg for the rest of your life until you choke.
But now – possibly, if he had interpreted that slight dissonance in his brother’s voice correctly – there might be grounds for unease?
Fat chance, thought Kristoffer the Sinner, glowering mournfully at the salt-spattered juggernaut as it slowly slipped backwards outside the car window. Things like that simply don’t happen in our family.
‘And this girl?’ asked Ebba, starting to file her nails, a task she only ever found time for if she was in a car but not driving herself, so she never missed the opportunity. ‘You look out for each other, I hope?’
That means using a condom, Kristoffer translated silently to himself. ‘Yes,’ replied Henrik. ‘We look out for each other.’
‘Jenny?’ said Ebba.
‘Yes, Jenny.’
‘Medical student from Karlskoga?’
‘Yes.’
‘Does she sing in the student-club choir, too?’
‘Yes, but we’re not in the same one. I told you that already, didn’t I?
Another brief silence followed. Fuck, thought Kristoffer. There really is something up.
‘You seem a bit tired,’ Leif put in. ‘It’s all that non-stop swotting and partying, I expect?’
‘Leif,’ said Ebba.
‘Sorry, sorry,’ said Leif Grundt, preparing to overtake another vehicle. ‘But he seems a bit lethargic, don’t you all think? Not in the same league as Kris and me, of course, but even so?’
Kristoffer smiled inwardly and thought about how much he loved his Co-op manager dad. ‘How much further is it?’ he asked.
‘God and Mum willing, we’ll be there for evening milking,’ declared Leif Grundt, receiving an expressionless stare from his wife for his trouble.
‘Thank goodness we’re staying at the hotel,’ said Kristina as they turned off the main road and the Gahn industrial area came into view, along with the church. ‘It means I can pretend I don’t belong here.’
It was a thought she would never have put into words if she hadn’t been so tired, she knew that. When she was tired, almost anything could pop out of her mouth, unfortunately, and although it was true that she loathed all contact with the town of her childhood in the present age, there was no need to add fuel to Jakob’s fire. No need at all.
‘I’ve never really got the point of small towns at all,’ he proclaimed. ‘They’re some kind of faulty link between the country and the proper towns, aren’t they?’ He waved to indicate a terrace of modern houses that they were just passing. A development designed for family living in the early seventies, the white brick showing signs of damp, with electric Advent candles shining from eight out of ten windows and small estate cars from south-east Asia on seven of the front drives. ‘God must have had a real hangover when he created this lot.’
‘There are people who think Stockholm isn’t the centre of the universe, too,’ Kristina said. She put the dummy in Kelvin’s mouth, and he immediately spat it out again. ‘I’m glad we’ve got here, anyway. So we’ll check in and have a shower like we said, shall we?’
‘Fine by me, if there’s time.’
‘It’s only quarter to six. We don’t have to be there until seven.’
‘Your wish is my command,’ said Jakob, stopping at a red light. ‘Well look at that, they even have traffic lights now. Things are on the up.’
Shut up, you flabby Stockholmer with your sense of entitlement, thought Kristina, but although the fatigue hung like a ball of lead inside her, not a word passed her lips.
‘Cock,’ said Kelvin, unexpectedly.
6
Rosemarie Wunderlich Hermansson added the finishing touches to her seafood quiches, put them in the oven and stood up cautiously to stretch her back. It was six o’clock on Monday evening and no children or grandchildren had turned up, but within the hour, the house would be full. Ebba had called just after five to say they would be a bit late, but would still be there for seven of course, Mummy, no problem. Kristina had called in the last five minutes to say they had got to Kymlinge and checked in at the hotel. They were just going to freshen up and change little Kelvin’s nappy.
Robert had not called.
A buffet of hot dishes with beer and schnapps was in prospect. Christmas root beer for the boys. Maybe Henrik, too, was grown-up enough for a proper beer. He was at university now, after all. But definitely no schnapps; Rosemarie and Karl-Erik were in complete agreement on that point.
Other than that, they were in disagreement on most things. Admittedly they’d scarcely spoken to one another all day, but that was the way it felt. And she felt it to the very marrow of her spine. It was a truth universally acknowledged that after forty years of marriage, words are no longer needed. It was simply in the nature of things – to the extent that she still had any power over her husband, that power was best exercised in the form of mute looks, and silences that spoke volumes. If she tried to use language as her weapon, she always fell short, something she had learnt at an early stage. Karl-Erik was possessed of a vocabulary that far outstripped the number of molecules in the universe, but to give him his due, he wasn’t at all bad when it came to the pirouettes of silence, either – and which of them would actually claim the larger number of victories in the long run was anybody’s guess.
Though perhaps it was worth bearing in mind what Vera Ragnebjörk once said: some duels had two losers. Perhaps they were the most usual kind, in fact. Long-drawn-out duels, so dreary and commonplace that you scarcely registered they were in progress.
She had allowed herself a mid-afternoon nap, just half an hour, and in the course of this well-earned repose she had once again dreamt that one of them had to die. They were on an island, surrounded by emerald-green water – presumably Robert’s wretched Koh Fuk, as it had been on her mind – with the aim of survival. Him or her. Karl-Erik or Rosemarie. Some kind of trial of strength was approaching, a decisive battle in an old war with extremely hazy conditions and rules – and with weapons that went far beyond silences and looks – but ever
ything was still at the preparatory stage, and she woke up before it was time to make the first thrust or parry the other’s lunge.
But it meant the thought was still being kept alive in her. It was floating there, a diffuse and jellyfish-like plasma, in the semi-transparent layer between the perceptible and the imperceptible in the sea of her consciousness.
Eh, she asked herself in confusion, what? Was it really me who thought that?
Homemade meatballs. Smoked salmon. The dullest green salad ever, with some shop-bought French dressing. Two quiches. A big Jansson’s Temptation. Halves of hard-boiled egg topped with red and black caviar.
God, what lack of imagination, she noted, surveying the spread. At least it would fill the kitchen table, especially once she added the bread and the big piece of cheddar. But it was Karl-Erik’s menu preferences that counted here. On Monday evening and on Tuesday as well. He was the one turning sixty-five, not her. So, no laying of the dining table tonight, they’d save that for the big dinner tomorrow. The hot buffet could easily be consumed in armchairs and sofas in the living room. The informal family touch. Pleasant chat on topics great and small. The years gone by. The travails of the autumn. But not a TV supper, heaven forfend. A life seen in its context. Karl-Erik could reflect on his pedagogical achievements, now completed, with the help of illuminating and humorous anecdotes. Ellinor Bengtsson’s unforgettable beetroot project in 1974. The fire in the church during the Saint Lucia celebration in 1969, when one of the candle-carrying girls in the procession ended up as bald as a coot. Assistant master Nilsson and his car deals – good God, she hoped he would at least keep Nilsson out of it. And indeed, Mr Grunderin the deputy head, and all that awkwardness over the nuclear power referendum in 1980.
And as she stood there, turning her eyes from the sad salad to the gloomy darkness outside the kitchen window, Robert popped into her head again as an even darker cloud and she suddenly wished that this, her whole life, was just one of those old films about the British upper crust, in which she could simply go upstairs to lie down, pleading a migraine or some other suitable indisposition, and stay there for as long as she felt like it.