‘But it’s not “an indefinite amount of time”,’ said Maud, mimicking Henry’s sullen tone. ‘I’ll be back in August or September.’
‘You haven’t even told me where you’re going,’ said Henry, sinking onto the sofa and paying no attention to the record player. He was tired of music, worn out, tired of any kind of sound at all.
‘How did it go at the party, by the way?’
‘Who cares?’ said Henry with a groan. ‘Have you got anything to drink?’
Maud went out to the kitchen and came back with gin and Grappo on a tray. ‘Just don’t drink too much,’ she said.
Henry took out a pack of John Silvers, lit a cigarette and leaned back against the sofa.
‘You’re not using the cigarette case …’ said Maud. ‘Did you sell it?’
‘I did not sell it,’ said Henry, a little embarrassed. ‘But I did pawn it. As soon as I get some cash I’ll buy it back.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Maud. ‘Maybe that was the point, anyway. At any rate, he knows about everything now.’
‘And?’
‘And he doesn’t care. Or at least that’s what he says.’
‘Is he the one you’re going away with?’
Maud nodded and poured herself a small drink. Henry wasn’t particularly inquisitive in this condition. He merely felt a dormant sense of jealousy because he had been faced with an ultimatum right from the start, and he knew that he would never be able to have her all to himself. W.S. would always be there, like a shadow, an eminence gris that never left a calling card. Henry had already grown accustomed to this. He didn’t love Maud in the passionate way that he imagined he should. He loved Maud in a totally different way, perhaps a deeper and more serious way that he didn’t yet fully understand, nor would he ever understand it.
Maud had decided to lay all her cards on the table, to give Henry the facts of the case, to tell him who W.S. was and why she needed both of them.
________
Once upon a time, many years ago, a big American trunk and a couple of suitcases stood in a stifling hall, far, far away. Maud had very carefully labelled them with her name and then the word ‘SWEDEN’. She had long wondered why she actually wrote ‘SWEDEN’, because it could just as well have said ‘JAKARTA’ or ‘STATELESS’, since that was actually how she felt. She had lived in so many different places that she no longer felt Swedish. But now the destination was ‘SWEDEN’ on this particular ill- fated day so long ago.
Maud and everyone else knew that her mother easily forgot things. That was because of the pills she took for her nerves. If you told her something in the morning, she would have forgotten it by lunchtime. Not always, but almost always. Right now she had forgotten where Maud’s father was. Maud said that he was out at the Teahouse.
Her mother looked quite haggard even though she was still very lovely. She was the most beautiful of all the diplomat wives in Jakarta, including all the femmes fatales from the French delegation. In a way, Maud’s mother been brought down by her own beauty; it had made her unhappy.
She asked Maud to pour her a drink, a weak one, because it was already two o’clock. She asked her daughter if she’d heard from Wilhelm.
Maud went over to the drinks trolley, which stood against the wall next to the window. She looked out but saw only rain, the monsoon rain that had been coming down without interruption for over a week. Of course she’d heard from Wilhelm. He was going out to the Teahouse with Father. They had gone out to purchase some china and would be back by three.
Maud’s mother seemed out of sorts. She didn’t know if it was because of the rain, but she assumed that it was. Her shoulders ached, and that was probably due to the dampness. She was out of sorts and wanted to go back to Stockholm too. It was springtime in Sweden, and you could order artichokes at the pavement cafés. She longed for Swedish vegetables.
Her mother babbled on, but Maud wasn’t listening. She heard only the endless rain as she tried to sense whether she had travel fever and longed for ‘home’ in Sweden, whether she missed anything at all, though she couldn’t really think what it might be.
At about the same time as Maud was hanging her clothes in the big trunk labelled ‘SWEDEN’ and putting small items in the suitcases, her father, who was the counsellor at the Swedish embassy in Jakarta, and his good friend Wilhelm Sterner were sitting out at the Teahouse talking. The Teahouse was the name of a small cottage, or rather a very meagrely constructed cabin which they had rented in order to get out of the city once in a while. It was located on a mountain slope on the outskirts of a small town about nineteen miles south-east of Jakarta.
The view was magnificent, looking out over a long valley and an old, extinct volcano. The tropical rainforest clung to the volcano’s slope in dull green colours; heavy clouds shrouded the top and hid a Buddhist monastery. They had sat there on many a night, listening to the animals, drinking whisky and talking.
Wilhelm Sterner and the counsellor were old school chums. They had both studied law, specialising in international law, and they had ended up in the diplomatic corps, the big time. Now, in the year 1956, Sterner was hoping for an offer of a good job in private industry. He was going to leave the diplomatic big time and return home to Sweden. But the counsellor planned to stay.
They were now sitting out at the Teahouse, talking about the tropical rain. It would undoubtedly go on for a couple more weeks, and Wilhelm Sterner had no objection to heading home. He promised to look after Maud. The counsellor expressed regret; he seemed to have lost contact with his family. Things were not as they should be.
Wilhelm Sterner felt a bit uncomfortable. No one could really tell whether the counsellor knew what everyone else knew – he was, in some ways, an idealist, like Dag Hammarskjöld. The counsellor and Hammarskjöld had met in New York, and Maud’s father kept coming back to that meeting. He had a hard time explaining his true feelings. He had felt inferior and yet strong, as if he had found a kindred spirit in Hammarskjöld, as if their view of the world were exactly the same. Maud’s father had always been both an open and a closed sort of person at the same time, a public figure but a very private individual. His wife couldn’t take it; everyone knew that. She had sought out her own avenues, and it might seem as if he wanted and welcomed the weight of Christ’s cross as soon as he found the opportunity to shoulder it.
He now confided to Wilhelm Sterner that he was thinking of seeking a position that had been advertised in Hungary. He wanted a change, and there might be a need for him in Hungary right now.
Wilhelm Sterner attempted to steer him towards other problems, such as the difficulties in his own home. He had to sort things out with his family, first and foremost. And he would certainly be needed in Jakarta as well. There were movements in all these islands, these three thousand fermenting volcanic islands, that wanted to see Sukarno’s head on a platter. Then he’d have a chance to play the hero, if he liked. Sterner had talked to Maud, and she had wept – not because she was leaving but because she was scared and worried.
Wilhelm Sterner saw that the counsellor heard what he said but he wasn’t really listening. Maud’s father looked very focused, yet utterly preoccupied. Sterner was reminded of an animist trying to listen to the rain, to hear the raindrops speak, sing, and anticipate the crops.
Maud’s father was obstinately staring out at the rain, claiming that he could do more good in Hungary. He was going to apply for the position.
It was already very late, and they had to go back to the city. Maud and Wilhelm Sterner were going to fly home to Sweden at dinner time. Their two cars were parked on the slope in front of the Teahouse. The counsellor had a heavy English car with big tractor tyres. Sterner had rented a jeep, an old colonial jeep with a top. Driving on these roads required heavy-duty vehicles. The rain had penetrated into the soil, the ground was saturated with water, and in several places they had to drive through lakes a yard deep. In other spots the soil had started to give way in minor mudslides. The road out to t
he Teahouse was never the same; it was in a constant state of flux. No matter how often you drove there, you could never be entirely secure.
Maud’s father had filled his car with East Indian china. He had bought all of it at a very advantageous price and was going to send home a box with Maud. It was best to take home valuable items in small lots.
Wilhelm Sterner was following behind but having trouble maintaining his speed. The car skidded and slid on the curves, and he was surprised that the counsellor was driving so fast. They were both good drivers, but in this terrain none of the usual rules applied. The road was totally unpredictable; in the middle of a curve a huge clump of foliage might be hanging over the road and slap against your windscreen, obscuring the ground, which was enough to throw anyone off balance.
It happened only about six miles or so outside Jakarta. Wilhelm Sterner had fallen behind and was crawling along at a snail’s pace, approaching a curve, when he saw people screaming and waving in a disquieting and alarming manner up ahead. Some were leaping down a muddy, brush-covered slope, screaming and pulling at their hair, wailing and hollering.
Sterner stepped on the brakes with an ominous feeling about what had happened. He later claimed to have sensed it all along. Maud’s father had been driving so damned fast, so unnecessarily fast, because they really had no reason to be in such a hurry.
His car had slid off the road, rolled down a slope, and finally came to rest at the base of a palm tree. His body was covered in bloody shards of East Indian china.
All summer long after the ceremonious funeral – as was befitting a departed counsellor – Maud’s mother stayed at a sanatorium up in the area around Leksand in Sweden. She was consumed with guilt towards her betrayed and buried spouse. The hysteria which had been somewhat under control became an acute psychosis even before they left Indonesia, during those desperately hectic days as they tried to settle everything before their departure for home. Maud had been forced to take over all the arrangements and also keep an eye on her mother so that she wouldn’t take too many pills.
Wilhelm Sterner was indispensable. He was the one who had brought them word of the death. He was also the one who made the preparations for their return home and arranged the funeral service, as well as their housing in Stockholm.
During that entire hot summer of 1956, Maud’s mother stayed at the sanatorium in Dalarna province. Her psychosis underwent several stages, but at the bottom of everything was an absolutely irreparable and incurable guilt that had plagued her ever since her husband’s death. Maud’s mother – after the terrible shock – was convinced that she should die, was going to die. Sometimes she lay in bed all night, loudly moaning about the lumps of death she’d found in her shattered chest.
Thanks to a very patient psychiatrist and Maud’s support, she was later released and able to begin a more or less respectable life in a moderately large flat on Karlavägen back in Stockholm. Maud had found a good job as a secretary at the foreign ministry. That was why she had planned to leave Jakarta in the first place, before the tragedy had intervened.
Wilhelm Sterner was also the one who arranged for the small two-room flat in Lärkstaden. He had lived there himself, as the incurable bachelor that he was, but over time and with higher-level positions, he needed more space. He had now been recruited by big business and – according to many rumours that were both persistent and unconfirmed – he had become a sort of Young Turk to Wallenberg.
Maud moved into the charming flat in the autumn of 1956. She redecorated it, creating a place to live that suited her particular needs. She furnished it in a spartan style but with exquisite taste, hanging wood carvings from the Far East on the walls, and putting in that unusual, exclusive wall-to-wall carpeting.
Maud was a modern young woman. She did quite well living on her own. She bought a record-player and was even so modern that she bought herself a TV. That was back during the first days of television, and watching TV may not have felt exactly like a solemn experience for a worldly young woman like Maud, but it was still quite extraordinary.
She was most likely watching TV on that autumn evening when she heard the front door open and someone come into the hall. She was terrified and undoubtedly didn’t even have time to decide whether she should pretend she hadn’t noticed and keep staring at the TV, or whether she should get up and start shouting.
It was Wilhelm Sterner who came into the living room. He said hello to the terrified Maud and explained that he had an extra key which he wanted to give to the rightful owner.
She exhaled and told him that he could have been good enough to ring the bell before he came in. Sterner apologised. His shoulders slumped and he looked generally distressed. He asked her for a cup of coffee.
Maud made coffee as Sterner sat on the sofa, still wearing his coat and looking dejected and distressed. Naturally she wondered what was going on, whether something special had happened.
Wilhelm Sterner looked at her with eyes that were melancholy and clear, yet demanded respect. He admitted that the damn key wasn’t the reason he had come to see her at all. There was something more important.
Maud didn’t even have time to light a cigarette before Wilhelm Sterner collapsed onto her lap, weeping despairingly. He confessed at once that he had been in love with her ever since Jakarta. He was prepared to do anything for her sake – sacrifice his career or do whatever she asked.
Strangely enough, Maud was not the least bit surprised. She didn’t want anything from him. She’d had a hunch about this but didn’t really know what to do. Sterner was already middle-aged, a man in the upper echelons of big business, and a good friend of her late father’s. She had seen this man at regular intervals in various places around the world for as long as she could remember. No one knew whether she could think of him as anything but a substitute father.
She ran her hand through Sterner’s thick hair and pressed his head close, presumably with no idea that she would be doing this many times in the future.
It became the sort of relationship that is usually labelled an ‘affair’. Officially, their activities would remain as much a secret as her mother’s ‘affairs’. There are hyenas who claim that such tendencies are inherited.
________
‘I want to see a photo of him,’ said Henry. ‘You must have a picture of him.’
‘Is that really necessary?’ said Maud. ‘It’ll just give you a complex.’
By now it was quite late on that night when Henry went to Maud’s flat after the graduation party and she told him how she had gradually become Wilhelm Sterner’s lover – she called him ‘my lover’, at any rate. And it’s highly likely that the story was much less banal than my account of it. I’m telling it in Henry’s dramatised form, which was no doubt distorted by his growing jealousy. At that time in the early sixties he had become fixated on his rival, whom he had never seen; he could only imagine him. Wilhelm Sterner was a corporate magnate who had trained with Wallenberg; non videre sed esse, to exist but not be seen – that was his slogan in life.
‘I do have a photo album,’ said Maud, giving in. ‘But do we have to look at it right now? I’m tired. And I have to leave early in the morning.’
‘I want to see a picture of him,’ said Henry. ‘I need to see it.’
Maud went into the bedroom and came back with a photo album. They started paging through it. It was a typical family album with captions that she had written herself, except for the very first ones. Her mother had given her the album for her tenth birthday with the earliest pictures showing Maud as a baby dressed in white lace, with a proud father wearing a uniform and leaning over her cradle in the tumultuous year of 1936.
Maud giggled as she read out loud her childish comments to the pictures from walks taken in New York, London and Paris. Grey-and-white pictures taken in Sweden in the early forties when her father was home on leave, wearing his uniform. Henry could see that the man had become a sergeant, and back then Maud’s mother was still happy, sitting at home an
d listening to Ulla Billqvist with the curtains drawn.
‘Here’s a picture of Pappa and Wilhelm Sterner,’ she said finally, showing him a photo from Jakarta in 1956. ‘It was taken just before the accident …’
Henry was not as curious about her father as he was about Sterner. The man looked just about the way he had pictured him, wearing a double- breasted, pin-striped suit. He looked both heavy and massive in some indefinable way. He looked like a man at the height of his career, a man with ideas, initiative and creative power, easy-going when appropriate, serious and solemn when the situation called for it. He looked very fit; he had presumably thrown the javelin when young, because he had a powerful neck. That was why Henry looked so good in his shirts.
‘Are you satisfied now?’ asked Maud.
‘He looks exactly the way I imagined him,’ said Henry. ‘He looked good back then.’
‘And he still does.’
‘Do you make him happy?’
‘I think so.’
‘And what about you?’
‘I love both of you, as a matter of fact,’ said Maud. ‘You’re so different, and not just in terms of age. I feel like a whole different person with you. You’re so … inexperienced, so innocent … But it’s different with him. He’s so reserved and hard-working, although I don’t really care about his work. He’s actually very … witty, even though that sounds ridiculous. He says that I make him forget about death …’
‘How long do you think you can keep this up?’ asked Henry. ‘You can’t very well split yourself in half all your life.’
‘Why not?’ said Maud. ‘But we’re not going to see each other for a while, you and I. Maybe you’ll have found someone else by the time I get back.’
‘I wouldn’t count on it,’ said Henry. ‘So what does he say about me?’
Gentlemen (Klas Ostergren) (FO8) Page 19