The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden

by Jonas Jonasson

  ‘That might be good to know, Miss Nombeko, if you’re travelling anywhere in the future.’

  Unlike many other things he said, the potter got away with this stupid remark, since Nombeko didn’t know where Borlänge was in relation to Gnesta.

  So the old Vietnam deserter was deeply mentally unstable and full of delusions. But he was also completely exceptional when it came to creating beauty out of clay and porcelain, with glazes in various shades of napalm yellow. This was what he sold at marketplaces here and there. Every time he needed money, he took the bus or Borlänge Taxi to the marketplace in question. He never took the train, because everyone knew that the CIA and Swedish Railways were hand in hand. With him he brought two cumbersome suitcases full of his collection. And then he would sell out of everything in a few hours, because he charged shamefully low prices. Any time he travelled by Borlänge Taxi, his trip always involved a loss. Taxi trips of 130 miles were not free, after all. Debit, credit and his own talent were among the many things the potter didn’t understand.

  * * *

  After some time, Nombeko spoke passable Swedish with the Holgers and Celestine, Wu Chinese with the girls, and English with the American potter. And she borrowed so much literature from the library in Gnesta that she had to decline, in Celestine’s name, a position on the board of the Gnesta Literary Society (GLS).

  She spent as much of the rest of her time as possible with the comparatively normal Holger Two. She assisted him with the bookkeeping for the pillow company and suggested efficiency improvements in purchasing, sales and delivery. Two was happy for the help, but it took until the early summer of 1988 before he realized that she could count. That is: count.

  It happened one beautiful June morning. When Holger arrived in the warehouse, Nombeko welcomed him by saying, ‘Eighty-four thousand four hundred and eighty.’

  ‘And good morning to you,’ said Holger. ‘What did you say?’

  It so happened that he had been running around cursing because the burned-out entrepreneur had upped and died before he had completed a proper handover of the company. For example, it was impossible to know the extent of the pillow stock.

  But now Nombeko was placing four pieces of paper in his hands. What she had been doing while Holger was lolling in bed was to pace off the area, measure the volume of one pillow, and calculate the correct number based on that.

  Holger looked at the top piece of paper and didn’t understand a thing. Nombeko said that wasn’t so strange: one had to look at the equation as a whole.

  ‘Look here,’ she said, turning the page.

  ‘Shadow E?’ said Holger Two, for lack of anything better to say.

  ‘Yes, I measured the volume of the loft while the sun was out.’

  And she turned the page again.

  ‘Who’s the stick man?’ said Holger Two, still for lack of anything better.

  ‘That’s me,’ said Nombeko. ‘A bit white in the face, but otherwise quite accurate, if I do say so myself. Ever since the engineer was kind enough to supply me with a passport, I have known how tall I am. So all I had to do was measure my shadow in relation to the loft. After all, the sun stays admirably low in this country. I don’t know what I would have done at the equator. Or if it had been raining.’

  When Holger still didn’t understand, Nombeko tried a different tactic.

  ‘It’s very simple,’ she said, and she was just about to turn the page again when Holger interrupted.

  ‘No, it’s not. Did you count the pillows on the crate?’

  ‘Yes. All fifteen of them.’

  ‘And the one on the bed in your room?’

  ‘I forgot that one.’

  CHAPTER 12

  On the love of an atomic bomb and differential pricing

  Life was complicated for Holger Two and Nombeko. But they weren’t the only ones having a tough time just then. Countries and television companies all over the world were mulling over what attitude they should take towards the birthday concert that had been arranged in honour of Nelson Mandela on his seventieth birthday in June 1988. Mandela was a terrorist, after all, and he would have stayed that way if only superstar after superstar hadn’t thought otherwise and made it known that they wanted to attend the concert, which was to be held at Wembley Stadium in London.

  For many, the solution was to recognize the event and yet not. It was said, for example, that the American Fox Television, which broadcast the concert after the event, first edited out any part of the speeches and songs that might seem political in order to avoid irritating Coca-Cola, which had bought advertising slots during the programme.

  Despite all of this, more than six hundred million people in sixty-seven countries ended up watching the concert. There was really only one country that completely quashed any news of what was going on.

  South Africa.

  * * *

  In the elections for the Swedish Parliament a few months later, the Social Democrats and Ingvar Carlsson managed to remain in power.

  Unfortunately.

  Not that Holger Two and Nombeko were letting any ideological opinion colour their view of the results, but the fact that Carlsson remained where he was meant that there was no point in calling up his government offices again. The bomb stayed put.

  Beyond that, the most remarkable thing about the recent election was that the Environmental Party, a new political movement, won seats in Parliament. Less attention was given to the fact that the one vote cast for the nonexistent ‘Tear All This Shit Down’ Party was declared invalid; it had been turned in by a girl in Gnesta who had just turned eighteen.

  On 17 November 1988, Nombeko had been a member of the condemned building for exactly one year. For that reason, she was surprised with a cake in the warehouse. The three Chinese girls had arrived on the same day, of course, but they were not invited. It was just Holger and Nombeko; that’s how he wanted it. She did, too.

  He certainly is sweet, that Holger, she thought, giving him a kiss on the cheek.

  For his entire adult life, Holger Two had dreamed of being able to exist, and of doing so as part of a larger whole. He longed for a normal life, with a wife and kids and honest work – anything at all, as long as it had nothing to do with pillows. Or the royal family.

  Mum, dad and kids . . . that would be something. He hadn’t had a childhood himself. While his classmates had put up pictures of Batman and Sweet on the walls of their bedrooms, Holger had portraits idolizing the Finnish president.

  But would it ever be possible to find a prospective mother for the potential children in a hypothetical family? Someone who would be satisfied with a dad who existed for her and the kids, but not for the rest of society? And with living in a condemned building for that very reason? And with the fact that the family game they were best equipped for was the children having pillow fights around an atomic bomb?

  No, of course that wouldn’t happen.

  All that would happen was that time would go on.

  But with that, a thought was born, a sneaking suspicion that . . . Nombeko . . . in some ways, she existed just as little as he did. And she was even more mixed up with the bomb than he was. And on the whole, she was pretty . . . wonderful.

  And then that kiss on the cheek.

  Two made up his mind. She wasn’t just the one person he wanted above all others, she was also the only one available. So if he didn’t give it a chance, he didn’t deserve any better.

  ‘So, Nombeko,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, dear Holger?’

  Dear? There was hope!

  ‘If I . . . If I were to think about moving a little closer . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Would the scissors come out?’

  Nombeko said that the scissors were in a box in the kitchen, and she thought that was a good place for them. In fact, she said, she had been wishing for a long time that Holger would want to do just that – move a little closer. Both of them were about to turn twenty-eight, and Nombeko admitted that she’d never
been with a man. In Soweto she had been a child, and then she was locked up for eleven years, surrounded by men who were essentially repulsive in every way, and of a forbidden race. But happily, what was forbidden there wasn’t forbidden here. And Nombeko had felt for a long time that Holger was the exact opposite of his brother. So if he wanted to . . . she did, too.

  Holger almost couldn’t breathe. That he was the exact opposite of his brother was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to him. He said that he didn’t have any experience with . . . that, either. It just hadn’t . . . there was all that stuff with Dad . . . did Nombeko really mean that . . .

  ‘Can’t you just be quiet and come here?’ said Nombeko.

  Naturally, a person who doesn’t exist does best with someone who also doesn’t exist. Nombeko had left the refugee camp in Upplands Väsby after just a few days, and since then she had disappeared from the face of the Earth and had been listed as ‘missing’ for a year; she was a parenthetical line in a Swedish register. She hadn’t had time to get any sort of formal residence permit.

  Holger, for his part, still hadn’t done anything about his continued nonexistence. It was such a complicated matter. And his interest in Nombeko made it even more so. Anything might happen if the authorities started investigating him in order to corroborate his story, including that they might find both Nombeko and the bomb. In both cases, he risked losing the joy of a family before it had even had time to begin.

  Given the situation, it might seem contradictory that Holger and Nombeko decided early on that if they had a child, then so be it. And then, when they didn’t have one, they longed for it to happen.

  Nombeko would have liked a daughter who didn’t have to carry shit starting when she was five and who didn’t have a mother who lived on thinner until she was no longer alive. Holger didn’t care which sort of child it was; the important thing was that the child would be allowed to grow up without being brainwashed.

  ‘A girl who can think whatever she wants about the king, you mean?’ Nombeko summarized, snuggling closer to her Holger among the pillows on the crate.

  ‘With a dad who doesn’t exist and a mum who’s on the run. What a great start to life,’ said Holger.

  Nombeko snuggled even closer.

  ‘Again?’ said Holger.

  ‘Yes, please.’

  But on the crate? It seemed troubling, until Nombeko promised that the bomb wouldn’t explode, no matter how many times she did.

  * * *

  The Chinese girls’ cooking was truly something special. But the cafeteria in the living room of the fourth-floor apartment was seldom full. Holger One worked in Bromma. Celestine was often out delivering pillows. The American potter kept to his pantry of preserves so as not to put himself in unnecessary danger (only he understood what this danger might consist of). Occasionally there were times when even Two and Nombeko preferred to go somewhere in downtown Gnesta to be a bit romantic.

  If the concept of ‘pissing into the wind’ had existed in Wu Chinese, it would have been what the girls felt like they were doing, off and on. And it wasn’t as if they were paid for their work; they weren’t getting even a tiny bit closer to their uncle in Switzerland.

  In all their cluelessness, the girls decided to start a restaurant for real. The idea was fuelled by the fact that so far the only Chinese restaurant in Gnesta was run by a Swedish man, who had two Thai employees in the kitchen to increase his credibility. It ought to be illegal to let Thais make Chinese food, the girls thought, and they put an ad in the local advertising flyer to say that the restaurant Little Peking had opened its doors on Fredsgatan.

  ‘Look what we did!’ they said proudly when they showed the ad to Holger Two.

  When Two had recovered, he explained that what they had done was start an unlicensed business in a condemned building they were not allowed to live in, in a country they were not allowed to be in. And what’s more, they were about to break at least eight of the National Food Administration’s strictest regulations.

  The girls gave him a strange look. Why would the authorities have any opinion on where and how they made food and whom they sold it to?

  ‘Welcome to Sweden,’ said Two, who knew the country that didn’t know him.

  * * *

  Luckily the ad had been small and also in English: the only person who showed up that evening was the municipal environment director – not to eat, but to close down what had apparently just opened.

  But she was blocked at the door by Holger Two, who reassured her that the ad had just been a prank. Of course no one was serving food in the condemned building, and obviously no one lived in it. Pillows were warehoused and distributed here, and that was it.

  Would the environment director like to buy two hundred pillows, by the way? That might sound like a lot for an environment department, but, Holger was afraid, that’s how they were sold, as a unit, and there was no way to buy fewer pillows.

  No, the municipal official did not want any pillows. The people at the environment department in Gnesta prided themselves on staying awake during working hours, and apparently just afterwards as well. However, she was satisfied with Holger’s prank explanation, and she returned home.

  With that, the immediate danger had passed. But Holger Two and Nombeko realized they had to do something about the Chinese girls, who had started to become impatient about their next step in life.

  ‘We’ve tried distraction before,’ said Two, referring both to One’s helicopter work and his girlfriend’s joy over illegally driving a truck with stolen plates. ‘Couldn’t we try that again?’

  ‘Let me think,’ said Nombeko.

  * * *

  The next day, she went to visit the American potter for yet another chat. On this particular morning she got to listen to his proven truth about how all phone calls in Sweden were recorded and analysed by personnel who took up an entire floor of the American intelligence headquarters in Virginia.

  ‘It sounds like a large floor,’ said Nombeko.

  While the potter expounded upon the subject beyond all rhyme and reason, Nombeko’s thoughts moved in the direction of the Chinese girls. What could they do, if they couldn’t start a restaurant? What were they good at?

  Well, poisoning dogs was one thing. But they were a bit too good at that. And Nombeko couldn’t see any immediate financial application in Gnesta and its environs for such a talent.

  And they could make geese from the Han dynasty. Maybe that would work. There was a pottery studio on the other side of the street. And a crazy potter. Could one bring him and the girls together somehow?

  An idea began to germinate.

  ‘Meeting this afternoon at three,’ she said while the potter was still going through his phone-tapping argument.

  ‘About what?’ said the potter.

  ‘At three,’ Nombeko replied.

  At exactly the appointed time, she knocked once again on the door of the nervous American. With her she had three South African Chinese girls.

  ‘Who’s there?’ the potter said through the door.

  ‘The Mossad,’ said Nombeko.

  The potter had no sense of humour, but he recognized her voice and opened the door.

  The American and the Chinese girls had hardly even met each other, because for reasons of safety the former preferred his own preserves to the girls’ delicious lunches and dinners. In order to get them to hit it off, Nombeko convinced the potter that the girls belonged to a minority group from Cao Bằng in North Vietnam, where they had devoted themselves to the peaceful cultivation of opium before the horrible Americans hounded them out of there.

  ‘I am truly sorry,’ said the potter, apparently buying that the girls were not who they were.

  Nombeko turned things over to the big sister, who explained how good they had once been at making two-thousand-year-old pottery. But now they no longer had access to a work area, and their mother the designer was back in South Africa.

  ‘South Africa?’ said the potter.r />
  ‘Vietnam.’

  The big sister rushed to continue. If Mr Potter might consider giving the girls access to his pottery factory and being the one who created the planned Han dynasty pieces, the girls promised to help by giving him advice about how the pieces should look. In addition, they knew all about the final stage of the process: treating the clay surface so that what one ended up with really was a genuine Han dynasty goose. Or half genuine.

  Yes. The potter was with them up to this point. Their subsequent conversation on pricing, however, was a rough one. The potter thought that thirty-nine kronor would be a good price, while the girls were thinking more like thirty-nine thousand. Dollars.

  Nombeko didn’t really want to get involved. But at last she said, ‘Perhaps you could meet halfway?’

  The collaboration actually ended up working. The American was quick to learn how the geese should look, and in addition he got so good at making Han dynasty horses that they had to knock one ear off each horse to make it more authentic.

  Every finished goose and horse was then buried in the dirt behind the pottery, and the girls tossed hen droppings and urine on top of the pieces so that they would age two thousand years in three weeks. When it came to pricing, the group eventually agreed on two different categories. One was the thirty-nine-krona category; those pieces would be sold at marketplaces all over Sweden. The other, the thirty-nine-thousand-dollar category, would be supplied with certificates of authenticity created by the big sister, who had learned how to make them from her mother, who in turn had learned from her brother, the master of all masters: Cheng Tao.