Alfred wants to write from the heart, and does so: on November 27, 1895, he signs his last will and testament.
The document is less than four pages long, handwritten in Swedish. Three sides deal with the details of which of the beloved individuals will get what, and less than one page deals with the new prizes he wants to set up and which his enormous fortune would finance.
The will is deposited at Stockholms Enskilda Bank. It is unevenly written in jagged handwriting, with a number of notes in the margins. It is opened on December 15, 1896, five days after Alfred’s death, and no one has cause to celebrate its contents.
No one, no one at all.
Quite the opposite, in fact: everyone is disappointed. His relatives are deeply dismayed, feeling themselves practically defrauded. He gives his brother’s children a million kronor, a million kronor, at that time a dizzying, immense sum, but they want more, much more, and they take their case to law, and in the end they win; they are drowned in money, all the income from the entire estate for one and a half years.
And they leave their uncle’s grave, counting the notes clutched in their fists through clenched teeth.
The future archbishop Nathan Söderblom is disappointed. He spoke beside Alfred’s coffin in San Remo, yet even so he does not get the hospital he had hoped for.
Even the Swedish king, Oscar II, is distantly disappointed, believing that the intention to establish prizes in order to reward not only Swedes but also foreigners is unpatriotic.
The future prime minister Hjalmar Branting, editor in chief of the newspaper The Social Democrat, calls the donation a major bungle.
But Alfred, he has thought and pondered. He wants five prizes to be awarded, five prizes in line with his life’s work and passions: physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and—perhaps most remarkable of all—peace.
His women are there, both of the women who have meant most in his life; they are both mentioned in the will, albeit in completely different ways.
Here she is again, the woman he never captured. He does not mention her by name, but he gives her his largest gift: in future the Norwegian parliament is to be instructed to reward the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.
Bertha Kinsky, married von Suttner, the beautiful countess from the Grand Hotel in Paris, who has become famous for arranging peace congresses, becomes the second woman ever to be awarded a Nobel Prize (the Peace Prize in 1905; the first is Marie Curie, awarded the Physics Prize in 1903).
Sofie Hess (now Mrs. Kapy von Kapivar) is mentioned by name, and of all the disappointed parties perhaps she is the most gravely overlooked. The will bequeaths her the equivalent of half a million kronor each year for the rest of her life, but Sofie wants more—she wants much, much more, and she is holding a trump card. Two hundred eighteen of them, in fact: Alfred’s letters to her over the years. She contacts the executor, Ragnar Sohlman, she fawns, she pleads, she cajoles. She has so many debts, they are such a burden to her, they are pressing her to the ground—could not the estate pay them off?
When this fails she makes threats.
Two hundred eighteen letters. Naturally, she doesn’t want anyone else to read them, an outsider, it would be shameful if that were to happen, she certainly doesn’t want that, considering the good name of the late Mr. Nobel …
One million, that’s what she wants, the equivalent of one million kronor.
Cash. Otherwise she will sell the letters, the scandalous letters, to the highest bidder.
And Sohlman pays.
The blackmail has worked.
So ends Sofie Hess’s long connection with Alfred Nobel.
She manages to exploit him even after his death.
SATURDAY, MAY 29
The Kitten stretched in the sun, letting the chlorinated water from the pool run down onto her towel. The kids were running and shrieking around her nonstop, shouting at each other in their uptight private-school British English (she could imagine them heading off to school in shiny Land Rovers driven by their neat, suntanned mothers, all school uniforms and starched white collars).
There were too many permanent residents in this complex now; she’d have to start looking for a new one soon.
She pushed her big, round sunglasses more firmly onto her nose and picked up a copy of Cosmopolitan: how to be hotter, thinner, richer.
The beach ball hit her right in the head, dislodging her sunglasses. She let out a cry, sat up, and looked round.
The ball was lying next to her, and two pale, pudgy British brats were standing in front of her, looking scared.
The Kitten smiled.
“Is this your ball?”
They nodded mutely, eyes wide open.
“Here,” she said, tossing it back to them. “But make sure you don’t hit anyone else. Who knows, they might get cross.”
The children nodded again; one of them picked the ball up and wandered off, but the second, smaller one didn’t move.
“Where are you from?” he asked.
The Kitten, who had adjusted her glasses and settled back on her chaise lounge again, sat up once more.
“I’m from America,” she said. “The best country in the world. Much better than Spain or England.”
Then she leaned back and raised her magazine demonstratively.
That usually worked. Arrogant Americans were the worst thing stuck-up Europeans could imagine.
But the little brat didn’t move.
“Why don’t you live there, then?”
She lowered the magazine. He really was incredibly annoying: pale, freckled, red-haired and evidently as stupid as they come.
“You know what?” she said, standing up and picking up the magazine and her towel. “That’s a really good idea, thanks a lot.”
She smiled at the brat and headed for the entrance that was furthest from her own flat. No point letting the whole pool know exactly where she lived.
“What did you do to your leg?” the kid shouted after her, but she pretended she hadn’t heard.
Up in the apartment everything was cool and white. She hung the towel up (white, of course) to dry in the bathroom, and put the magazine front side up in the wicker basket next to the linen-covered sofa. Her bathing suit was wet and cold, chilling her stomach pleasantly in the heat. She never wore a bikini. The large scar on her chest was too noticeable, the sort of detail people tended to remember. Heart surgery, she said on the few occasions when someone had seen it and asked. But she could just as easily have told the truth, because no one tended to live very long after asking. An injury at work: I was shot once a long time ago but that’s all forgotten now, forgotten, and long since buried.
She went into the bedroom, switched on the computer, fetched a new towel that she folded and laid on the office chair so the seat wouldn’t get wet. Logged into Happy Housewives and looked for any sign of her agent.
She had a new message waiting for her.
The shit has hit the fan. Erase your hard drive. Avoid all usual hangouts. Person who identified you: Bengtzon, Annika, Stockholm, Sweden. DO NOT USE THIS CHANNEL AGAIN.
The message had been left at 9:13 AM, central European time, the same zone as her—in other words twenty minutes ago.
The Kitten read the message through three more times.
Then she turned off the computer, opened her desk drawer and took out a small screwdriver. She unscrewed the base of the computer and pulled out the hard drive. It was gray, its size and shape reminiscent of a cigarette packet. The RAM memory could stay: any information on there was erased as soon as the power was switched off. Then she left the bedroom, taking the hard drive with her, and headed into the bathroom. She quickly took off her bathing suit and pulled on a pair of dark jeans and a blue T-shirt. She pulled her still-wet hair up into a ponytail and hung her sunglasses in the neck of the T-shirt.
This was what she
had always suspected, that her agent was also a clumsy idiot.
Erase your hard drive, as though that would help! Everything could be reconstructed, and then they’d have emails and websites and chat and IP addresses from here, there, and every-fucking-where. Erase your hard drive? Kiss my fucking ass.
She put the hard drive in her handbag and grabbed the car keys from the hall table. She didn’t bother about fingerprints: that stage was over now.
She pulled the door shut behind her without looking back—never look back. Instead she focused on the future, and on her future markers.
Bengtzon, Annika, Stockholm, Sweden.
Annika woke up with the sun streaming onto her face. It was making her sweat so much that her hair was stuck to her neck and back. Without opening her eyes she lay there for a minute or so listening to the sounds of the house. There was a radio on somewhere, the sound of loud chatter on P1, accompanied by the sound of a newspaper rustling. There were children making a noise somewhere, and she presumed they were hers.
She ought to get up.
She had to pull herself together.
She would have to go and buy a proper roller-blind from IKEA.
With an effort she heaved herself out of bed and over to the bathroom. Thomas was whistling downstairs, the noise cutting into her head.
The weekend, a whole weekend that they were obliged to spend together, unable to hide behind their jobs.
She pulled on a pair of jeans and a hooded top and went down to the kitchen.
“Good morning,” Thomas said without looking up from the paper. “There’s coffee in the pot.”
She went over to the countertop and poured herself a large mug.
“I don’t know what we’re going to do about Wilhelm Hopkins,” she said. “If he doesn’t stop using my garden as his private playground, I’m going to do something silly.”
“So it’s your garden now? I thought we lived here together?” Thomas said, leafing through the paper, still without looking up at her. He was wearing a tracksuit and sneakers.
Annika sat down opposite her husband and put her hand over the article he was reading.
“He can’t carry on using our garden as a shortcut every time he takes his car out—that has to count as arbitrary conduct under the law.”
Thomas pulled the paper away and held it up instead.
“There’ll be six people coming to dinner on Monday evening,” he said. “Larsson and Althin and their wives, and Cramne and Halenius.”
“And digging holes in the grass because that’s where Midsummer always used to be celebrated is completely insane,” Annika said.
Thomas turned the page.
“We have to show a bit of understanding,” he said. “These are old traditions, and until recently people living in the area had the right to use this piece of land. It’s pretty natural if they’re upset that they’ve lost it. What were you thinking of cooking?”
“Fish soup,” Annika said to the copy of Svenska Dagbladet held up in front of Thomas. “But the council sold the land, we live here now, and the neighbors can’t just carry on doing as they like.”
Thomas lowered the paper, folded it up, and finally looked at her.
“You have to be a bit subtle when you live in a villa,” he said, standing up.
At the front door he stopped.
“Mom phoned,” he said. “She’s coming over this afternoon. Wants to see how we’ve settled in.”
“Okay,” Annika said, looking down at her mug.
So she can reassure herself that this isn’t Djursholm proper, and point out yet again that there’s no sea view except from upstairs, she thought.
Thomas went out, closing the door behind him. She pushed her mug away and darted over to the window, and watched him jog out of the gate and down Vinterviksvägen with short, easy steps, his shoulders rolling slightly. She saw him vanish into the greenery down toward the shore and the pressure in her chest grew: why was he being so distant?
She went back to the countertop, gathered together the breakfast things, and put them in the dishwasher, wiped the table, then wiped it again.
She had to pull herself together. Had to do something.
She rinsed her face under the kitchen tap, dried herself on a tea towel, and went out to see the children.
They were playing with trucks and spades in the hole that Wilhelm Hopkins had dug.
“Look, Mommy,” Kalle cried when he caught sight of her, “we’ve got a volcano! It spits fire, but Spiderman is going to stop it, vroom …”
In his hand the boy held a plastic bucket that was standing in as the flying superhero. Ellen picked up a dump truck and followed her brother’s example, “vroom, vroom …”
“Would you like to do some more digging?” she asked, making an effort to sound cheerful. “What do you think about planting some nice flowers?”
The children dropped their toys and ran over to her, grabbing a leg each.
“I like you lots, Mommy,” Ellen said, hugging her thigh.
Annika crouched down and took both children in her arms.
“And you’re the best in the world,” she whispered, the pressure in her chest growing again. She rocked them, hugged them, loved them.
Then let go of them, and stood up and cleared her throat.
“Bring your spades and we’ll set to work doing some digging.”
She fetched her own spade from the basement and led the children over to the hole in the hedge where Wilhelm Hopkins drove in and out in his car. The Merc was parked with its front bumper just a meter from the boundary of her garden.
“Here,” she said. “We’re going to plant a really nice flower bed here.”
With the children milling around her legs, she quickly dug out a three-meter-long strip of the churned-up grass, laying the turfs as a barrier against her neighbor.
“There,” she said. “Now we can go and buy some flowers.”
The children rushed off toward her car, scrambling up onto the backseat without arguing. She locked the house up, putting the key in a boot outside the door so Thomas would be able to get in, jumped in the car, and drove off to Hortus out in Mörby.
There were masses of people at the garden center, and she had to keep telling the children to stay close to her. In return, she let them choose some of the plants they were going to put in the new bed.
Ellen chose pansies and summer phlox, while Kalle picked oxeye daisies and Busy Lizzies. Annika chose different sorts of marigold; her grandmother always used to grow trays of those on the windowsills of her flat in Hälleforsnäs before planting them out in front of her cottage at Lyckebo. A young lad helped her carry three big bags of compost out to the back of the SUV; then they were done.
When they got home, the children were tired of their gardening adventure. They ran back to the volcano and carried on digging with the Spiderman tractor.
Annika got the bags of compost onto the ground and started dragging them toward the new bed.
“You could have told me you were going out,” Thomas said behind her, making her jump and drop the compost.
He was sitting on the terrace at the back of the house reading the evening papers.
“I put the keys in one of the boots by the back door,” she said, bending down to take a new hold of the bag.
Thomas got up and walked around the house.
He’s going to help me, Annika thought. He’ll soon be back with the rest of the compost.
She tore open the bag and emptied the compost onto the flower bed, glancing over at the corner of the house around which Thomas had disappeared.
He’ll be pleased that I’m making an effort, she thought. We can have the house and garden as a shared project; together we’ll turn this garden into our own little oasis, a place to relax and recharge our batteries.
But Thomas didn’t come back. Instead she saw him walking about inside the kitchen, standing at the sink and talking into his cell phone.
For some reason the s
ight of him there made her feel like crying. Disappointment was forming a noose around her neck, making it hard to breathe.
Nothing she did was any good. No matter what she did, it was never good enough.
“Hello there!” Ebba called from the road. “What are you planting?”
Annika spun round and forced a smile, then drove the spade into the soil and walked over to the fence. Francesco started barking happily and wagging his tail when he caught sight of her.
“Hello boy,” Annika said, bending down to pet him and taking the opportunity to wipe her eyes and nose.
“Wilhelm won’t be very happy about where you’re putting your new bed,” Ebba said, looking over at the bare soil.
“Guess if that was the intention,” Annika said. “Would you like a cup of coffee, or some lunch? I was planning to do an omelette …”
“Thanks,” Ebba said, taking a few involuntary steps as the dog tugged her toward a squirrel, “that would be lovely, but I’m on my way to the Institute. Francesco! Come here!”
“You work on Saturdays?” Annika asked, trying to sound relaxed.
“The Nobel Assembly has organized a really interesting seminar,” Ebba said, “The Global Challenge of Neuroprotection and Neuroregeneration; then there’ll be drinks and nibbles. It’s become something of a tradition, open to staff and postdocs; it’s usually very popular.”
“A sort of staff party?” Annika said, glancing over at the house. She could no longer see Thomas through the windows.
“Yes,” Ebba said. “The Nobel Committee is meeting today to draw up its preliminary list, and that usually means there are a lot of heightened emotions. By the way, could I ask a favor?”
Annika looked back at Ebba.
“Of course,” she said, “no problem.”
“I’m going up to see my cousin in Dalarna tomorrow for a few days, and I was wondering if you could keep an eye on the house?”
Annika nodded, looking over at the huge villa.
“Of course,” she repeated. “What do I have to do? Water the plants, water the dog, bring in the mail?”
Ebba laughed and dug for something in her jacket pocket.
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