The colonel handed the Soldier’s Creed – in a splendid burgundy leather- bound folder – to his adjutant and began inspecting his troops along with the company commander, a sun-tanned major. The soldiers saluted. The colonel may have paused for a couple of seconds in front of Henry Morgan to give the private’s salute closer scrutiny.
It’s possible to imagine that even then the colonel could see that this particular individual – who actually presented a decent salute – was completely hopeless, that this lad was already too burned, that no authority would be able to scare him because he had already been too far down, so deep down that confinement, orders for punishment, or a denial of leave would never stick, bite or take hold of him. It’s possible that the knowledge of human nature occasionally displayed by a military officer of the colonel’s rank would have unequivocally indicated that Private Morgan was going to present problems.
We can only guess what the others, the soldiers, saw. Perhaps they saw an odd comrade who was always the last man in the canteen and who beat everyone at poker; a man who was the last one to get up in the morning but the first to complete every order; the one who never flinched when a furious major with bad breath started shouting in his face so that the saliva flew; and the one who could always defend a sinner so that even an officer relented. In any case, that was the image Henry wanted to project, as well as the image that he presented to me.
After dinner on that day when they had heard the Soldier’s Creed and been given a few hours’ free time before dinner, they were lying as usual on the shore at sunset, savouring the taste of coffee and a cigarette. Henry had acquired some compatriots who were going to try to preserve their integrity in the face of the System. There was a religious, top-class athlete who was thinking of refusing to be armed when they were supposed to receive their sub-machine guns; a terrible but powerful drummer whom Henry knew from the Gazell in Gamla Stan; as well as a couple of other guys who didn’t make much of a fuss about themselves.
There could be quiet nights, at any rate, in this uniformed celibacy. Henry had suffered. He had graduated from school, gone out drinking and carousing and tried to get over the affair with Maud. But he now knew that it was all a lie. He would never get over it. She would have him in her power forever, and the only chance he had was never to see her again, to get as far away from the city as possible.
They were now lying on the shore, as usual, looking out across the bay. The sunset was inexpressibly beautiful, and they were talking quietly about serious matters such as whether to carry a gun or not. A soldier came rushing up to them, shouting.
‘Henry, you’ve got a visitor, a broad, over by the gate,’ the soldier panted.
‘A visitor?’ said Henry rather absentmindedly.
‘Hurry it up! She’s already been waiting half an hour.’
Henry shambled over to the big gate and saw Maud leaning against the shiny radiator of a Volvo. He tried hard not to feel anything, not to be concerned.
‘It’s been a while,’ said Maud, and Henry noticed that this was the first time he’d ever seen her really nervous or anxious.
Henry persuaded the guard to let him go out to the car and sit inside, just for a few minutes. The guard asked them to drive off a ways so that they wouldn’t be seen, in case an officer turned up.
Henry was wearing comfortable baggy fatigues with a belt and marching boots. Maud gave him a long look without speaking, her expression distressed. She looked tired. He climbed into the front seat next to her and stared out of the window. He wanted to cool the whole situation down because otherwise he was afraid of completely falling apart. He lit a cigarette and remained silent.
‘Whose car is this?’ he asked after a while.
‘What does that have to do …’ said Maud and then stopped herself. ‘It was a present, actually,’ she admitted.
Maud took hold of Henry’s head and turned his face towards her. Her eyes were no longer distressed and frightened but calm and tearful. She pressed her lips together, making them turn pale, and burst into tears. Henry couldn’t touch her.
‘How’s W.S.?’ he asked, swallowing a lump in his throat.
‘Fine,’ Maud sobbed.
‘Tell him hello and thank him for not bringing charges.’
Maud nodded and sobbed.
‘How did it go with his teeth?’
‘Two,’ sobbed Maud. ‘He had to have two of them replaced …’
‘I’ve got this scar,’ said Henry, holding up his right fist and pointing at a deep scar left by two sharp teeth on one of his knuckles.
‘But …’ murmured Maud. ‘I need a … a handkerchief.’ She fumbled to open her purse and then pulled out a handkerchief. ‘How are you doing here?’
‘How do you think?’ said Henry. ‘But I’m not complaining. I get to look at the water all day long, and the grub is free. It could be worse – in prison.’
‘Why haven’t you called me? You’re a cruel man, Henry. Cruel and selfish!’
‘I just wanted to be left alone,’ he said. ‘Let’s not talk about selfishness right now, Maud.’
‘Are you scared of me? You have to forgive me … I’ve tried to forget all this, but I can’t.’
‘Me?! Forgive?!’ yelled Henry. ‘Surely you’re the ones, you and W.S., who should forgive me?!’
Maud shook her head, ignoring the fact that her make-up was running down her cheeks, making her look unattractive and tragic. Henry actually thought that she looked more beautiful than ever.
‘That’s all over now,’ she said. ‘You know that. Willie realised that he behaved badly. He should have known better.’
‘Call him whatever you like, just not “Willie”,’ said Henry. ‘And it’s never going to be over for me.’
‘Do you have to keep harping on the past?’
‘I’m not harping on the past. But something happened. I need to stay away from you two. I need to have time …’
‘How much time? You’re being so harsh, Henry. Harsh and cold.’
There was a pack of cigarettes in the open glove compartment, and Henry took out another cigarette, lit it with the car lighter, and inhaled deeply.
‘That’s only your opinion,’ he said. ‘I’m just like everybody else after they’ve been out here. Soon I’ll know how to butcher anybody I want to. Maybe that’s the point.’
‘Don’t you ever long for me?’ pleaded Maud. ‘I can’t stand this anymore.’
‘No, I never long for you,’ said Henry. ‘It’s something bigger than that, much bigger …’
________
As soon as they were granted leave, there was celebrating on the boat to Stockholm. Henry, just like all young recruits – and also from a sort of provincial instinct for self-preservation – had adopted the vulgar and insolent jargon that can seem so repugnant to outsiders. They went on and on about the calibre of this and the bore of that, and to a listener at a distance it might all sound quite ridiculous. But Henry was right in the thick of it.
Back home in the city, he went over to see Greta and Leo to show them his khaki uniform. Greta’s eyes filled with tears as soon as Henry appeared. She thought he looked so stylish, and she hoped that this was the acid test that would once and for all make a sensible, mature and responsible citizen out of Henry. He was a commando, after all, and was going through special training. He was the only one from the neighbourhood chosen for that.
That autumn Leo Morgan was fourteen years old and about to make his debut as the sensational young poet with the collection Herbarium. The book hadn’t yet arrived in the bookshops, but the boy had received his free copies, and when Henry showed up one weekend, his younger brother handed him a copy. Henry was deeply moved, and for a change he was quite speechless. He realised that he had totally lost touch with his little brother and that somehow he needed to repair the damage, though he didn’t know how. He felt awkward and managed only to accept the book in silence, maybe giving his brother a gentle chuck on the chin the way he used to do. Leo w
ould surely understand.
But it’s well known that a young whippersnapper on leave does not sit at home, biding his time. Henry the recruit hurled himself out on the town – as soon as he took off his military clothes and threw on his old tweed jacket, a checked shirt with the initials W.S. and a suitably jazzy tie. He found Bill from the Bear Quartet in the studio of a brooding painter in the Klara district.
A sense of gloom hovered over the studio. Death had swept through the bohemian world, gathering up its victims, separating the healthy from the afflicted. Bill looked worn out. Henry went up to the studio, feeling in top form and appropriately stimulated because he was on leave and he’d had several lagers in the city. But Bill and this painter were down in the dumps. The pianist for the Bear Quartet had died after a blood transfusion, and Marilyn Monroe had voluntarily ended her life. The painter had been keen on Pollock in the past, but now he had abandoned action for a more meditative approach, including an extremely sensitive portrait of M.M. It was praise of the highest order, and now they were sitting there, Bill and Henry, listening to Coltrane next to a couple of lit candles which sent a flickering glow over Marilyn, forever and ever, as if she were in marble.
They drank a couple of bottles of wine and got over the worst of their grief. Bill had grown accustomed to the idea of losing his pianist, and he wanted Henry to join the Bear Quartet, but Henry was in the midst of completing his military service; he couldn’t hang around. All he had to do was go AWOL, according to Bill. But that thought had never even occurred to Henry. To go AWOL was the same thing as deserting. It was practically the same thing as death.
Bill had made plans for himself and the Bear Quartet. That winter they were going to practise hard for guest appearances in Copenhagen, at the Montmartre club and at the Louisiana art museum, which had already been booked for April. It would be a sort of international breakthrough for them, and Henry could come along if he liked. Henry wanted to but he couldn’t. He wouldn’t be discharged until late summer. He couldn’t do it.
After a couple of bottles of wine, when Henry – somewhat insensitively and thoughtlessly – started in on a military story, they got into a fight. Bill and the painter thought Henry was an idiot, a nobody who might as well stay in the military forever. He was lost. And that was the last he would see of Bill from the Bear Quartet for the next five years.
________
It’s true that Henry’s memories of the military seem to suggest heroism and bravado in which he, to the astonishment of the officers, distinguished himself as a paragon of courage and strength. He claims to have rescued a canoe and two comrades during a long paddling trip that took place in November. He carried half of an exhausted buddy’s gear during a march without breathing a word of it. But these are mythic anecdotes that are of no further interest for this story.
In any case, the year passed and we have to assume that Henry was simultaneously worried and very comfortable in the role of a special commando. In fact, Henry must have been worried sick at the thought of what had happened.
That difficult winter of 1963 was coming to a close. Springtime freed the ice from the coves and bays with desolate, shrieking cries. It had been a long winter, the most bitterly cold in living memory. The ice had crept far up onto shore, breaking loose piers and boathouses, ruining things for the fishermen, who now had to repair what the sea had reclaimed.
The commanding officers were apparently very pleased with their commandos. They had drilled their soldiers, subjecting them to hardships that to an outsider might seem unbearable, but the lads had pulled through, driven by a strange sort of pride. As I’ve said, it was a hard winter, and now that spring had arrived it was time for some gratification. The higher-ups turned a blind eye if the soldiers relaxed a bit after all their exertions. That was only human.
A week after the long march, in early April, a couple of ruffians had gone to Vaxholm and bought some smuggled vodka for the whole platoon. They had sneaked the shipment into the barracks, and after dinner the unofficially sanctioned festivities began.
After only a couple of hours the entire platoon had nearly passed out. Henry tried to hold back, but then joined in as best he could. After the first drink, he could tell that it was no good, that it didn’t give him any relief – on the contrary, the convulsive grip on his stomach got worse and worse with each drink he took. Around ten that night, several desperate athletes started breaking up the toilets in the west wing. They stamped and roared in there, smashing the whole latrine to smithereens. After that they came out and started on the barracks, breaking every single thing as thoroughly as they had just been trained to do.
At an early stage Henry could tell where this was all headed, and it was at this point that something took shape inside him. He had been out there for nearly ten months, and he felt done with it all. He had grown more and more agitated and restless, but he still had four months left, four long hot summer months. When he heard his buddies roaring and hollering like wild men, going berserk in one barracks after another, he realised that powerful forces were at work that night. There was no holding back.
In Henry’s barracks two commandos were vomiting into their helmets. Otherwise he was alone. He took action exactly as if he had been planning this for a long time, but he hadn’t. It had just popped into his head, and then half a bottle of smuggled alcohol had stripped away his inhibitions. Instead of participating in the vandalism, he gathered up his things, made a little package of his personal belongings and wrapped it up in his big, waterproof coat. He put on longjohns, a woollen sweater and fatigues. In the very bottom of his metal foot-locker he put a small package with a letter, saying that no one needed to worry – he hadn’t killed himself, but it was pointless for them to search for him. He knew these waters better than anyone else.
Shortly after midnight he slipped out. It was now dark enough, and he went down to a boathouse where they kept the smaller Canadian canoes, a lighter type that he could paddle alone without difficulty.
A party was going on in the mess hall that spring night, and the whole camp was crazy. Not a single person noticed that a commando had stolen a Canadian canoe and paddled off like an Indian to disappear and never return.
Henry had half a bottle of vodka left, and as he paddled for an hour without stopping, he occasionally took a sip to calm himself down. The canoe moved well and the sea was obliging. He had a slight night-time breeze at his back, and he headed in a north-easterly direction, straight for Storm Island. He estimated that he’d have to paddle for at least three hours to reach his destination. The search for him wouldn’t start in earnest until seven, at the earliest. That was an adequate margin of safety.
His estimate proved to be accurate. Henry had stayed on course as precisely as he could, and just as the sun came up over the horizon in the east, he saw the black silhouette of Storm Island appear like a low cloud, a heavy black cloud.
Storm Island had been Henry’s second home when he was a boy; he knew every rock, every small spit of land sticking out in the sea, every little windblown shrub. The people who still lived there – his mother’s relatives – would recognise him from miles away. He was known as a gale, partly because of the weather that presumably was raging when he came into the world, partly because of his temperament.
It was important to keep out of sight. The inhabitants on Storm Island might seem stupid, but they could still put two and two together. If they saw Henry paddling into Storviken in a Canadian canoe with camouflage paint, the talk would instantly start up, and even though there wasn’t a single telephone on the whole island, the wind or the waves or the fish would carry the gossip to the mainland faster than a telegraph.
Henry slipped into a cove on the north side at daybreak. He was tired and felt sick from the vodka. He wanted to sleep, to stretch out his legs and sleep, to go numb. He knew that the dozen or so people who lived on the island kept to their own territory and seldom went to the north side. So he pulled the canoe into a crevice in the rocks, and
from a distance of a few yards the camouflage paint did its trick; the vessel was no longer visible.
Several hundred yards from the little cove stood the lighthouse, casting its red and white lights out into the boundless sea. The lighthouse was unmanned, and Henry seized the opportunity.
________
Everything he tried went well. Several adventurous days later he entered the flat late at night. He was back home on Brännkyrkagatan, in the middle of Stockholm. Greta and Leo were asleep. Henry hung up his heavy coat in the hallway, put his package in a wardrobe and went into the kitchen.
‘Is that you?!’ stammered Greta, dazed with sleep as she tied the sash of her bathrobe. ‘Are you crazy, boy?’ she went on, giving her son a bitter hug. ‘You’d better believe that I was worried. Your commanding officer rang to tell me that you’d taken off … I knew that you weren’t in any danger … But are you crazy? You’re going to end up in prison!’
‘There’s no chance of that, Mum,’ said Henry. ‘They’ll never get hold of me again.’
‘You really are crazy, Henry,’ said Greta with a groan. She was soon busy heating up some food for the deserter.
‘I’ve come here to say goodbye,’ Henry said solemnly.
Greta gave all her attention to the food and refused to comprehend what her son was actually trying to say.
‘Say goodbye?’ she repeated bitterly. ‘Are you going to give me nothing but trouble?’
Gentlemen (Klas Ostergren) (FO8) Page 22