The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden

by Jonas Jonasson

  The obvious disadvantages had kept Holger Two awake at night; they, too, had been researched to death several times over. Even a nuclear squabble limited to India and Pakistan would, according to the experts, kill twenty million people, before the total number of kilotons even surpassed what Two and Nombeko happened to have on hand. Computer models showed that, within a few weeks, so much smoke would have risen into the stratosphere that it would take ten years before the sun managed to penetrate it fully again. Not only above the two squabbling countries, but all over the world.

  But this – according to Holger Two – was where market forces would triumph. Thanks to the 200,000 per cent increase in the incidence of thyroid cancer, unemployment would go down. Massive population shifts from sunny vacation paradises (which of course would no longer have any sun to offer) to large cities around the world would create increased wealth distribution. A large number of mature markets would become immature in a single blow, which would make markets dynamic. It was clear, for example, that the de facto Chinese monopoly on solar cells would become irrelevant.

  Furthermore, by mutual effort, India and Pakistan could eliminate the entire runaway greenhouse effect. Deforestation and the use of fossil fuels could continue, with the benefit of neutralizing the two- or three-degree decrease in the Earth’s temperature that the nuclear war between the countries would otherwise have caused.

  These thoughts kept Holger’s head above water. At the same time, Nombeko and Gertrud had made good headway on the potato business. They’d had good luck along the way – indeed – because the Russian crops had failed for several years in a row. And because one of Sweden’s most discussed (and, for that matter, most meaningless) celebrities had a new, slim figure thanks to the OP diet (Only Potatoes).

  The response was immediate. The Swedes were eating potatoes like never before.

  Countess Virtanen Inc., previously swimming in debt, was now nearly debt-free. Meanwhile, Holger Two was just a few weeks from a double degree and, thanks to his excellent achievements as a student, was ready to start his journey towards a private meeting with the Swedish prime minister. Incidentally, there was a new one since last time. His name was Göran Persson now. He was just as unwilling as the others to answer the telephone.

  In short: the eight-year plan was nearing completion. So far, everything had gone as it should. All signs indicated that it would continue to do so. The feeling that nothing could go wrong was very similar to what Ingmar Qvist had felt in his day, just before he went to Nice.

  Only to be assaulted by Gustaf V.

  * * *

  On Thursday, 6 May 2004, the latest batch of five hundred flyers was ready to be picked up at the printer’s in Solna. Holger and Celestine thought they’d really done something special this time. The flyers had a picture of the king, and next to him was a picture of a wolf. The text underneath drew parallels between the Swedish wolf population and the various royal families of Europe. The inbreeding problems were said to be the same.

  The solution in the first case might be to introduce Russian wolves. In the second case, thinning the herd was considered one alternative. Or across-the-board deportation to Russia. The authors went so far as to suggest an exchange: one Russian wolf per deported royal.

  Celestine wanted to take One and fetch the flyers as soon as they received word from the printer in Solna, so that they could paper as many institutions as possible that very day. Holger One didn’t want to wait, either, but he said that Two had booked the car for this Thursday. This was an objection that Celestine waved away.

  ‘He doesn’t own the car any more than we do, does he? Come on, my love. We have a world to change.’

  It so happened that Thursday, 6 May 2004, was also supposed to be the biggest day in Two’s life so far. His dissertation defence was scheduled for eleven o’clock.

  When Holger, in suit and tie, went to get into the Blomgrens’ old Toyota just after nine in the morning – it was gone.

  Two realized that his disaster of a brother had been up to mischief, surely under the guidance of Celestine. Since there was no mobile-phone coverage at Sjölida, he couldn’t immediately call them and order them to come back. Nor could he call a taxi, for that matter. It was at least a third of a mile to the country road where there was intermittent mobile-phone coverage, depending on its mood. There was no question of running there; he couldn’t arrive at his defence sweating through his suit. So he took the tractor.

  At 9.25 he finally got hold of them. It was Celestine who answered.

  ‘Yes, hello?’

  ‘Did you take the car?’

  ‘Why? Is this Holger?’

  ‘Answer the damn question! I need it now! I have an important meeting in town at eleven.’

  ‘Oh, I see. So your meetings are more important than ours?’

  ‘That’s not what I said. But I had booked the car. Turn round right now, damn it. I’m in a hurry.’

  ‘God. Stop swearing so much.’

  Two gathered his thoughts and tried a new tactic.

  ‘Dear, sweet Celestine. When we get a chance, let’s sit down and discuss the car issue. And who had booked it for today. But I beg you, turn round right now and pick me up. My meeting is truly impo—’

  At that point Celestine hung up. And turned off the phone.

  ‘What did he say?’ wondered Holger One, who was behind the wheel.

  ‘He said, “Dear, sweet Celestine, let’s sit down and discuss the car issue.” In short.’

  One didn’t think that sounded so bad. He had been worried about how his brother would react.

  Desperate, Holger Two stood on the country road in his suit for more than ten minutes, hoping to hitch a ride with a passer-by. But in order for that to happen, there would have to be passing cars in the first place, which there weren’t. By the time Two realized that he ought to have called a taxi a long time ago, it dawned on him that his coat and wallet were still hanging on a hook in the hall. With 120 kronor in his breast pocket, he made the decision to drive the tractor to Norrtälje and take the bus from there. It would probably have been faster to turn round, get his wallet, go back again, and then call a taxi. Or even better: call the taxi first, and while it was on its way, make the trip to the house and back on the tractor.

  But Two, as gifted as he was, had a stress-tolerance level that wasn’t much better than the potter’s, may God bless him. He was about to miss his own dissertation defence. After years of preparation. It was awful.

  And yet it was only the beginning.

  The first and last tiny piece of luck Holger Two had that day involved the transfer from tractor to bus in Norrtälje. At the next-to-last possible second, he managed to block the bus’s way so he could catch it. The driver stepped down to give the tractor driver in question a mouthful, but he stopped short when the yokel farmer he had expected was a well-groomed man in a suit, tie and patent leather shoes.

  Once on board, Holger got hold of the dean of the university, Professor Berner, and he apologized and said that some extraordinarily unfortunate circumstances would cause him to be half an hour late.

  The professor replied acidly that delays of dissertation defences were not in line with university traditions, but by all means. He promised to try to hold the opponents and the audience.

  * * *

  Holger One and Celestine had arrived in Stockholm and had already signed for their flyers. Celestine, who was the better strategist of the two, decided that their first target should be the Museum of Natural History. It had a whole section on Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution. Darwin had stolen the concept of ‘survival of the fittest’ from a colleague, and he used it to claim that the way of nature was such that the strong survived while the weak did not. Thus Darwin was a Fascist and now he would be punished for it, 120 years after his death. Celestine and Holger did not reflect upon the fact that there were some considerably Fascistic elements to their flyers as well. Time to put up posters on the sly. All over the museum
. In the holy name of anarchy.

  This is indeed what happened, and it went off without a hitch. Holger One and Celestine were able to work undisturbed. Swedish museums are far from crowded.

  Their next stop was Stockholm University, a stone’s throw away. Celestine tackled the Ladies and left the Gents to Holger. It happened as One stepped through the first door and met a certain someone.

  ‘Oh, are you here already after all?’ said Professor Berner.

  Then he dragged the surprised Holger One down the hall and into Room 4 while Celestine was still busy doing her thing in the Ladies.

  Without understanding what was going on, One found himself standing at a lectern in front of an audience of at least fifty people.

  Professor Berner made some preliminary remarks in English, and he made use of words both plentiful and complicated; Holger had a hard time following. Apparently he was expected to say something about the benefits of detonating a nuclear weapon. Why? one might wonder.

  But he was happy to do it, even if his English wasn’t so great. And anyway, wasn’t the most important thing not what one said, but what one meant?

  He had had quite a bit of time to daydream as he picked potatoes, and he had come to the conclusion that the best thing to do would be to transport the Swedish royal family to the wilderness of Lapland and set the bomb off there, if they wouldn’t all abdicate voluntarily. Hardly any innocent people would bite the dust in such a manoeuvre, and in general the damage would be minimal. Furthermore, any increase in temperature that might result from the detonation would be beneficial, since it was terribly cold up there in the north.

  It was perhaps bad enough to have these sorts of thoughts in the first place. But now Holger One was expressing them from his lectern.

  His first opponent was a Professor Lindkvist from Linnaeus University in Växjö. He began paging through his notes in time with Holger’s speech. Lindkvist, too, chose to speak in English and he began by asking if what he had just heard was some sort of introduction to what would come next.

  An introduction? Yes, one might call it that. A republic would be born and grow out of the demise of the royal family. Was that what the gentleman meant?

  What Professor Lindkvist meant was that he didn’t understand what was going on, but what he said was that it struck him as immoral to take the lives of an entire royal family. Not to mention the method Mr Qvist had just described.

  But now Holger felt insulted. Why, he was no murderer! His basic argument was that the king and his lot should resign. Nuclear-weapons-related consequences ought to come into play only if they refused, and in that case as a direct result of the royal family’s own choice, and no one else’s.

  When One was subsequently met by silence from Professor Lindkvist (the cause being tongue-tiedness), he decided to add another dimension to his argument: an alternative to no king at all might be that anyone who wanted to be king could do so.

  ‘This isn’t something I would argue for personally, but it’s an interesting thought nonetheless,’ said Holger One.

  It was possible that Professor Lindkvist didn’t agree, because he shot a beseeching look at his colleague Berner, who in turn tried to remember if he had ever felt as unhappy as at this moment. This defence was meant to be a showpiece for the benefit of the audience’s two guests of honour, namely the Swedish minister for higher education and research, Lars Leijonborg, and his newly appointed French counterpart Valérie Pécresse. The two of them had long been working to establish a joint educational programme, with the possibility in the future of bi-national diplomas. Leijonborg had personally contacted Professor Berner to ask for suggestions for a good defence that he and his minister colleague might attend. The professor had immediately thought of model student Holger Qvist.

  And now this.

  Berner decided to interrupt the spectacle. It was clear that he had misjudged the candidate, and it was best that said candidate leave the podium now. And after that, the room. And the university, as such. Preferably also the country.

  But because he said what he did in English, One didn’t quite catch it.

  ‘Shall I start my argument again from the beginning?’

  ‘No, you shall not,’ said Professor Berner. ‘I have aged ten years in the past twenty minutes, and I was quite old to begin with, so that will do. Please just leave.’

  And One did. On the way out, it occurred to him that he had just spoken in public, and that was something he’d promised his brother he wouldn’t do. Would Two be angry with him now? Maybe he didn’t need to know.

  One caught sight of Celestine in the hall. He put his arm around her and said it was best that they work somewhere else. He promised to try to explain on the way.

  Five minutes later, Holger Two came running through the doors of the same university. Professor Berner had just had to apologize to the Swedish minister for higher education, who in turn did the same before his French counterpart, who replied that, based upon what she’d just seen, she thought it would be better for Sweden to turn to Burkina Faso in its search for a partner of equal standing in educational matters.

  And then the professor caught sight of that bastard Holger Qvist in the hall. Did Qvist think all he had to do was change from jeans to a suit and everything would be forgotten?

  ‘I truly must apologize—’ began the well-dressed and out-of-breath Holger Two.

  Professor Berner interrupted him and said that it wasn’t a matter of apologizing but of going away. As permanently as possible.

  ‘The defence is over, Qvist. Go home. And sit down and think about the economic risks of your own existence.’

  * * *

  Holger Two did not pass the defence. But it took him an entire day to work out what had happened, and another day to understand the extent of his misfortune. He couldn’t call the professor to tell him the truth: that for all these years he had been studying in someone else’s name and that this other person had happened to take over on the very day of his defence. This would lead to nothing but even greater misery.

  What Two wanted most of all was to strangle his brother. But this didn’t come to pass, because One was at the Anarchists’ Union’s Saturday meeting when Two had his lightbulb moment. And by the time One and Celestine were back that afternoon, Two’s condition had already turned into depression.

  CHAPTER 18

  On a temporarily successful newspaper and a prime minister who suddenly wanted a meeting

  No matter how wretched everything was, Holger Two realized after a week that he couldn’t just keep lying there in bed. Nombeko and Gertrud needed help with the harvest. One and Celestine also helped with that to a certain extent, so from a purely economic perspective there was no reason to strangle both of them.

  Life at Sjölida went back to normal, including the dinners together several nights a week. But the atmosphere around the table was tense, even if Nombeko did her best to create distractions. She continued her reports on what had happened and was still happening in the world. Among other things, she informed them one evening that Prince Harry of Great Britain had gone to a party dressed in a Nazi uniform (which was nearly as big a scandal as the one that would happen a few years later when he partied wearing nothing at all).

  ‘But can’t you all see how embarrassing the monarchy is?’ Holger One said, apropos the uniform.

  ‘Well, yes,’ said Nombeko. ‘At least the democratically elected Nazis in South Africa left their uniforms at home.’

  Holger Two didn’t say anything. He didn’t even tell his brother to go to Hell.

  Nombeko realized that something had to change. What they needed more than anything was a new idea. What they got, for starters, was a potential buyer for the potato business.

  The fact was, Countess Virtanen Inc. now consisted of two hundred hectares of potato fields; it had modern machinery, good sales, nice profits and almost no debt. This had all come to the attention of the biggest producer in central Sweden, who added it all up and put in
an offer of sixty million kronor for the whole lot.

  Nombeko suspected that the Swedish potato boom was nearing its end. The celebrity who had gone on the potato diet had got fat again, and according to the news bureau ITAR-TASS, the Russian potato harvests were about to go right instead of wrong for once.

  So, even aside from the fact that Gertrud’s potato farm was probably not the meaning of life, it might be time to make a deal.

  Nombeko brought up the matter with Countess Virtanen Inc.’s formal owner, who said that she would be happy to change profession. She was starting to get fed up with potatoes.

  ‘Isn’t there something called “spaghetti” nowadays?’ she mused.

  Nombeko nodded: yes. Spaghetti had been around for a while. Since about the twelfth century. But it wasn’t so easy to grow. Nombeko thought they should do something else with their money.

  And she suddenly realized what.

  ‘What would you say if we started a magazine, Gertrud?’

  ‘A magazine? Super! What things will it say?’

  * * *

  Holger Qvist’s reputation was ruined: he had been more or less kicked out of Stockholm University. But he did possess extensive knowledge of both economics and political science. And Nombeko wasn’t exactly a dimwit herself. So the two of them could work behind the scenes.

  Nombeko explained her reasoning to Two, and so far he was with her. But what scenes was Nombeko thinking they would be behind? And what would be the point of all of this?