A summer with Kim Novak

by Håkan Nesser

  10

  During the last week of June it was so hot, the bog was boiling.

  At least it felt that way if you forgot to cover it properly with peat moss litter, and there was a clear advantage to holding in your shit until the evening.

  The need to periodically cool off in the lake became much more pressing—as well as the need to finish the floating dock. It was too much of a faff to go out in the boat every time you wanted to take a dip, and none of us—neither I nor Edmund nor Henry—was especially fond of teetering around on the sticky bottom where you might sink down to your knees in a mud hole or trip on a root and land on your face.

  So, the dock. It was about time. We’d already transported six empty barrels from Laxman’s and Henry had sketched it out. Hammers, ropes, nails and saws were stored in the shed by the privy. Wood was the only thing missing.

  Planks.

  ‘The Lundins,’ said Henry when the sun was high in the sky of a new day, hotter than Marilyn Monroe’s kisses. ‘You’re going to have to nick a few planks from the Lundins’ pile.’

  ‘Us?’ I said.

  ‘You,’ said Henry. ‘I’ve got a lot to do. You want to have a dock, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, we do,’ I said.

  ‘All right, then,’ said Henry. He put on the old straw hat that he’d bought at a flea market in Beirut and went to his typewriter in the shade. ‘Twenty kronor if you’re done before nightfall!’ he called out when he’d sat down. ‘Shouldn’t be a problem for two sharpshooters such as yourselves.’

  ‘Who says it’s a problem?’ said Edmund. ‘What a load of rubbish.’

  But he said it quietly, certain that Henry couldn’t hear.

  The Lundins’ timber stockpile lay next to the path down to their house, not more than ten metres from the parking spot up by the road. It was a considerable pile, hidden by an old, mouldy tarpaulin, and it had lain there as long as I could remember. Most likely some of them had nicked it from a building site a long time ago and couldn’t be bothered to carry it any further than just out of sight from the road—and most likely none of them would care in the slightest if a few planks went missing from the pile.

  Especially if they didn’t notice.

  The safest thing would have been to launch our mission under the cover of night. But you never really knew with the Lundins. They had their own circadian rhythm. It was also clear that at least a few of them had arrived for the summer now; we’d heard a bit of a commotion over the past days: swear words, glass breaking, and so on.

  Another reason not to go at night was of course that twenty kronor were on the line, so we really just had to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and get on with it. No hesitation, no objections: Edmund and I agreed on that point.

  You could say that our mission was a success. For a few hours, we dragged planks through the marshy, inhospitable midge and gadfly hell that lay between the Lundins and Gennesaret. We swore and were stuck with thorns, swore and were bitten, swore and made our way down, scratching ourselves up and bruising our bodies all over. The heat drove us mad, but we did it. We made it.

  By twelve thirty we had amassed a respectable pile of planks that Henry—leaning back, lifting his hat, squinting and lighting a Lucky Strike—deemed sufficient.

  ‘Good, good,’ he said. ‘Do you need a hand? It’ll cut into your fee, obviously.’

  ‘Like hell we do,’ we said.

  While we sawed and hammered and fastened we talked about Edmund’s real dad. And about why he was so violent. Because it seemed strange—at least to me.

  ‘He was sick,’ said Edmund. ‘He had an unusual brain disorder. When he drank, he got aggressive.’

  ‘Sustained,’ I said. ‘Why did he drink?’

  ‘That was another part of the illness,’ Edmund suggested. ‘He simply had to have alcohol. Or else he’d go mad. Yes, that’s how it was …’

  ‘So, either he went mad or he went mad?’ I said.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Edmund. ‘That’s how it is for some people. It’s a shame that it had to be my dad.’

  ‘Bloody depressing,’ I said. ‘He shouldn’t have been a dad at all.’

  Edmund nodded.

  ‘But it wasn’t like that in the beginning. Before I was born. The illness came creeping … then it was what it was.’

  ‘Hmm,’ I said. ‘Is it hereditary?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  A few seconds passed.

  ‘But I hate him anyway,’ Edmund said with rising anger. ‘It’s so damn cowardly to attack people who can’t defend themselves. And with a belt … Why did he have to use a belt, can you tell me that?’

  I couldn’t.

  ‘Hitting a person when they’re down—’

  He broke off. I pictured Mulle’s ruddy, unconscious face, and recalled how Super-Berra had lifted it up and bashed it into the ground.

  ‘Mm,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing worse. Do you think you’ll look him up when you get older? Your real dad. Track him down and corner him?’

  ‘Yessir,’ said Edmund. ‘You can count on it. For that reason alone I hope that he’s still alive. I have it all worked out. First I’m going to find him and not tell him who I am, and then I’m going to be nice to him, sweeter than honey, buy him a coffee and some cake … and a drink … and then when he least expects it I’ll tell him who I am and then I’ll lay into him so hard that he’ll hit the ground. And then—’

  And that’s when Edmund hit his thumb with the hammer and started swearing and screaming blue murder. I never found out how he was going to continue exacting revenge on his father. What would I have done in his shoes? Would I have felt the same way? I couldn’t work it out.

  So, I decided that I didn’t want to think about the situation at all. One more. Cancer-Treblinka-Love-Fuck-Death.

  And Edmund’s dad.

  I slotted him in between Fuck and Death. Preliminarily.

  Even though it was hot, I liked sawing and nailing and building. Especially nailing. When you hammered nails, it was as if you didn’t need to think about the things that you didn’t want to be thinking about. You could just concentrate on what you were doing. Bang. You just had to bang on. Drive the nail into the wood. Bang. Bang that bugger. Bang. Bang. Bang. And then that extra bang when it was in its place. When it couldn’t go in any further.

  Bang. To put it in its place. Now you’re in there, you wretched nail, and that was the idea all along. Even if you tried to be stiff and crooked and worm your way left and right. You shitty nail. I’m the one in charge here. Damn right. I thought of our teacher Gustav in school and saw that there was woodwork and then there was woodwork.

  The sun was still high when we were done. Henry inspected the eight-metre-long building project, checking to see if the barrels were secured properly. He said was going to make pancakes while we put the dock in place.

  ‘Okay?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Edmund and we started to drag the fruit of our labour to the edge of the lake. Following Henry’s drawing, we moored the dock with four ropes to two stable birches and anchored it with a half-slack hawser both at the end of the dock and closest to the shore. A bit of slack was necessary, Henry had explained, but not too much. Then we stood and admired the wonder for a while before we strode out over the planks. It was a bit wobbly and here and there your feet sank below the water line, at least when there were two of you, but, yes, it worked. We had built a bloody dock.

  Now we had a floating dock and twenty kronor. We looked at each other with satisfaction.

  ‘A brilliant summer,’ said Edmund with a slight tremble in his voice. ‘Huzzah, as they said in Ångermanland.’

  At the far end of the dock the water was nearly two metres deep and we managed to dive off thirty-eight times before Henry came out and shouted that the pancakes were ready. We ate as if we’d never seen food before and then went out and dived into the lake thirty-eight more times. We thought the sun might never set that night, so after Henry had made his debut dive
and paid us our promised ten kronor each, we lay on the dock, reading or playing cards, which was tricky. You had to keep your arse in the wagon—as Edmund said in his Norrlandish way—otherwise the cards got wet.

  But never mind. The point was that we were lying on the planks that we’d swiped and hammered together ourselves. And floating on barrels we’d transported ourselves all the way from Laxman’s and had expertly bound together. That was what this never-ending hot day was all about. Lying on your own dock.

  ‘King of spades,’ said Edmund. ‘I hear a moped.’

  I listened. Yes, the sharp noise of a moped zipping along was coming from the forest. It seemed to be just about level with the Levis’.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Pass. A Puch, I think.’

  We had played another few hands before we heard it stop and switch off up by the parking area. That made us lose our concentration. If we’d had any to lose in the first place.

  ‘Eh,’ said Edmund. ‘I’m tired of this game. Let’s call it a day.’

  ‘Works for me,’ I said, collecting the cards. I sat up on the dock with my legs in the water and looked toward the edge of the woods. Henry walked out on to the lawn and I noticed that he had put on jeans and a white nylon shirt.

  I don’t know if I had time to sense what was coming—afterward, Edmund claimed that he had anyway—but just over a minute after the moped’s engine had been turned off up by the road, Ewa Kaludis appeared on Gennesaret’s lawn. She wore a short white dress and a red shirt over it; when she spotted Henry she laughed and pulled a bottle of wine out of her tote bag—then she pressed herself against him and his white shirt.

  Right then Edmund started to hiccup, an affliction that would last for several hours.

  ‘No fucking way, hiccup,’ he said. ‘Your brother and Ewa Kaludis. Then it was them, hiccup, I heard … no fucking way.’

  I got up, lost my footing, almost fell into the water, and then made my way to the shore. Henry and Ewa Kaludis turned toward me. Edmund hiccupped again. I felt paralyzed—as if I had lost all sensation in my legs and had no choice but to stand here on this patch of grass and earth for the rest of my life. In a dripping, faded bathing suit—Oh well, it’d dry eventually … I swallowed and closed my eyes and counted to one, then Henry said: ‘So, Erik. Brother. There’s a lot I’m working on, like I said. A lot.’

  ‘Hi, Erik,’ said Ewa Kaludis. ‘And hello, Edmund.’

  ‘Hi, hiccup,’ said Edmund from behind me. He sounded like a frog down by the edge of the lake. I opened my eyes and got my tongue and legs going again.

  ‘Hi there, Miss Kaludis,’ I said. ‘I was just going to the bog. See ya.’

  I sat there a while. Reading the same page of True Stories in an old issue of Reader’s Digest fifty times. I don’t know what was buzzing more—the three-quarters-full, summer-warmed drum of shit beneath me or my fried noodle of a head—but I sat where I sat and it took a while. Only when Edmund knocked on the door and wondered if I’d had a shit-thrombosis—a rare illness from the depths of Medelpad—I pulled on my swimming costume and gave up. I opened the door and stepped out into the world.

  ‘Hiccup,’ said Edmund and tried to smile like Paul Drake. ‘What do you think about Berra Albertsson … and everything.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  ‘Some brother you have there,’ said Edmund, but it was clear that he was more worried than he was letting on.

  ‘He’s out of his mind,’ I said.

  ‘Hiccup,’ said Edmund. ‘You smell like shit.’

  Cancer-Treblinka … I started to think, but I had already forgotten where Edmund’s father went.

  ‘Maybe we should just have a swim?’ I said.

  ‘You’re preaching to the converted,’ said Edmund.

  We swam until the sun had fully set and the midges started to buzz like mad at the edge of the shore. Ewa Kaludis and Henry were on the dock, testing it out, and Ewa said that it seemed to be a sterling dock.

  A sterling dock. I floated on my back out in the water and my entire body blushed. And wondered what would happen tonight.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Edmund and sprayed water like a seal. ‘Built to last, hiccup. No more, no less.’

  Ewa Kaludis laughed.

  ‘You’re a funny one, Edmund,’ she said.

  Then she linked arms with Henry and they started to walk back toward the house.

  My brother Henry and Ewa Kaludis. She hadn’t swum all day, even though it had been so warm. Who knew why? Maybe she didn’t have a swimming costume with her.

  But she did try out the dock. Sterling work.

  11

  Before my mother got sick with cancer she said a number of strange things. It was in the weeks right before the diagnosis; maybe she sensed misfortune coming and wanted to make sure she had imparted some of her wisdom. A few words for the road before it was too late, I suppose.

  ‘You’re the dove, Erik,’ she would say, looking at me with her mild, watery eyes. ‘Henry is the hawk; he always manages to come out on top. But you, you we have to be careful with, you’re the one who has to watch his step.’

  Those exact words came to mind when it started to sink in that Henry was involved with Ewa Kaludis. That he was actually with her. I mulled over the idea of the dove and the hawk and, thinking of Berra Albertsson, reflected on how lucky it was for Henry that he was a bird of prey. Because when Super-Berra found out what was going on between Ewa and my brother, well, there were sure to be consequences. That was my view, at least, but I knew what a miserable amateur I was when it came to navigating love’s labyrinths.

  And Edmund wasn’t any more skilled. Not at all.

  Love is like a train, I’d heard Benny’s mum say once. It comes and goes. Maybe there was something to it, but Benny’s mother was no expert in matters of the heart.

  But I didn’t really think about it; you couldn’t quite put words to it. My brother and Ewa Kaludis. Kim Novak on the red Puch. Her breast against my shoulder in the classroom. Berra Albertsson and red-faced Mulle in Lackaparken.

  That was more than enough already.

  Anyway, we didn’t hear much that night. Nothing that suggested that they were lying there, doing it. They had the tape deck on low; Ewa laughed now and again: it had a sort of cooing sound. Henry’s hoarse guffaw rose through the floorboards a few times, too. That’s it. Maybe they were just sitting and talking: what did I know? That might be what you did sometimes. When you weren’t in the mood.

  Still, Edmund and I stayed awake in the dark. We lay completely still in our beds and pretended to be sleeping until we heard Ewa and Henry say goodbye out on the lawn. A minute passed and then the Puch fired up in the clearing. Edmund sighed deeply and turned toward the wall. I looked at my self-illuminating watch. It was half two; it had probably started to get light outside, but we had the blinds pulled down as usual.

  Cancer-Treblinka-Love-Fuck-Death, I thought despondently.

  And Edmund’s dad. And Henry and Ewa Kaludis. No, that was too heavy, as I said. Not worth thinking about.

  It was nothing for a fragile dove to trouble his fried-noodle head with.

  ‘It’s a sensitive situation, you understand. Sensitive.’

  Henry looking earnestly at us across the dining table. First me, then Edmund. We looked back at him equally earnestly and each swallowed a lump of macaroni. It’s much easier to appear earnest and to inspire confidence when your gob isn’t stuffed with macaroni. Especially if you happened to have mixed in too much flour, as Edmund had done this time.

  ‘Of course,’ I said.

  ‘Discretion is the better part of valour,’ said Edmund.

  I had no idea what that meant, but Edmund was full of strange expressions:

  Discretion is the better part of valour.

  Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

  Seh la gehr, as the Germans say.

  Not to mention all the Norrlandish.

  ‘Good,’ said Henry. ‘I trust you. But rememb
er that even if you think you know a lot, there’s very little that you understand.

  ‘That doesn’t just go for you. It applies to me too,’ he added after a while. ‘And to everyone else.’ He waved his fork in the air in front of him, as if he wanted to write what he was saying on the air. ‘We would do much better, we people, if we stopped creating bloody context all the time. We should be living in the moment.’

  He fell silent and lit a Lucky Strike. Pensively blowing smoke across the dining table. It wasn’t often that Henry let more than one sentence slip at a time, at least not with us, and the effort seemed to have tired him out.

  ‘In the moment,’ said Edmund. ‘I’ve always thought so.’

  ‘How’s the book coming?’ I quickly asked.

  ‘What?’ said Henry, staring at Edmund.

  ‘The book,’ I said. ‘Your book.’

  Henry took his eyes off Edmund and took a drag.

  ‘Wonderfully,’ he said and stretched his arms over his head. ‘But you’re not allowed to read it until you’ve turned twenty, remember that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it’s that kind of book,’ said my brother Henry.

  The hawk protecting the dove, I thought, and then that half-page came to mind. The one I’d read eight or ten days ago, about the body that landed on the gravel road and the dense summer night. Suddenly I felt ashamed: as if without warning I had found myself in possession of something that was apparently forbidden and inappropriate for children. I muttered something vague in reply, but it seemed a response wasn’t actually necessary, so I hastily shovelled more macaroni in my mouth.

  ‘I was thinking about visiting Mum tomorrow,’ said Henry when he’d stubbed out his cigarette. ‘Want to tag along?’

  I finished chewing again.

  ‘No thanks,’ I said. ‘I don’t think so. In a week or so, maybe.’

  ‘As you wish,’ said Henry.

  ‘Say hello for me,’ I said.

  ‘Of course,’ said Henry.

  ‘The soul is located just behind the vocal cords.’ That was another one of those strange things my mother said before she was admitted to hospital. ‘If you listen carefully, you’ll always be able to tell the difference between right and wrong. Remember that, Erik.’