The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared

by Jonas Jonasson

  ‘Don’t worry, my dear Yury Borisovich, Mr Karlsson won’t die. At least not yet.’

  Marshal Beria explained that he intended to keep Allan Karlsson out of the way as a backup, in case Yury Borisovich and his fellow scientists continued to fail to make a bomb. This explanation had an inbuilt threat, and Marshal Beria was very pleased with that.

  While waiting for his trial, Allan sat in one of the many cells at the headquarters of the secret police. The only thing that happened was that every day Allan was served a loaf of bread, thirty grams of sugar and three warm meals (vegetable soup, vegetable soup and vegetable soup).

  The food had been decidedly better in the Kremlin than it was here in the cell. But Allan thought that although the soup tasted as it did, he could at least enjoy it in peace, without anyone shouting at him for reasons that he couldn’t quite follow.

  This new diet lasted six days, before the special tribunal of the secret police summoned Allan. The courtroom, just like Allan’s cell, was in the enormous secret police headquarters beside Lubyanka Square, but a few floors higher up. Allan was placed on a chair in front of a judge behind a pulpit. To the left of the judge sat the prosecutor, a man with a grim expression, and to the right Allan’s defence lawyer, a man with an equally grim expression.

  For starters, the prosecutor said something in Russian that Allan didn’t understand. Then the defence lawyer said something else in Russian that Allan didn’t understand either. After which the judge nodded as if he was thinking, before opening and reading a little crib (to make sure he got it right) and then proclaiming the verdict of the court:

  ‘The special tribunal hereby condemns Allan Emmanuel Karlsson, citizen of the kingdom of Sweden, as an element dangerous to the Soviet socialist society, to a sentence of thirty years in the correction camp in Vladivostok.’

  The judge informed the convicted man that the sentence could be appealed, and that the appeal could take place within three months of the present day. But Allan Karlsson’s defence lawyer informed the court on behalf of Allan Karlsson that they would not be appealing. Allan Karlsson was, on the contrary, grateful for the mild sentence.

  Allan was of course never asked whether or not he was grateful, but the verdict did undoubtedly have some good aspects. First, the accused would live, which was rare when you had been classified as a dangerous element. And second, he would be going to the Gulag camps in Vladivostok, which had the most bearable climate in Siberia. The weather there wasn’t much more unpleasant than back home in Södermanland, while further north and inland in Russia it could get as cold as -50, -60 and even -70 °C.

  So Allan had been lucky, and now he was pushed into a drafty freight car with about thirty other fortunate dissidents. This particular load had also been allocated no fewer than three blankets per prisoner after the physicist Yury Borisovich Popov had bribed the guards and their immediate boss with a whole wad of roubles. The boss of the guards thought it was weird that such a prominent citizen would care about a simple transport to the Gulag camps, and he even considered reporting this to his superiors, but then he realised that he had actually accepted that money so perhaps it was best not to make a fuss.

  It was no easy matter for Allan to find somebody to talk to in the freight wagon, since nearly everybody spoke only Russian. But one man, about fifty-five years old, could speak Italian and since Allan of course spoke fluent Spanish, the two of them could understand each other fairly well. Sufficiently well for Allan to understand that the man was deeply unhappy and would have preferred to kill himself, if in his own view he hadn’t been such a coward. Allan consoled him as best he could, saying that perhaps things would sort themselves out when the train reached Siberia, because there Allan thought that three blankets would be rather inadequate.

  The Italian sniffled and pulled himself together. Then he thanked Allan for his support and shook hands. He wasn’t, incidentally, Italian but German. Herbert was his name. His family name was irrelevant.

  Herbert Einstein had never had any luck in his life. On account of an administrative mishap, he had been condemned – just like Allan – to thirty years in the correction camps instead of the death he so sincerely longed for.

  And he wouldn’t freeze to death on the Siberian tundra either, the extra blankets would see to that. Besides, January 1948 was the mildest January for many a year. But Allan promised that there would be many new possibilities for Herbert. They were on their way to a labour camp after all, so, if nothing else, he could work himself to death. How about that?

  Herbert sighed and said that he was probably too lazy for that, but he wasn’t really sure because he had never worked in all his life.

  And there, Allan could see an opening. In a prison camp you couldn’t just hang around, because if you did then the guards would shoot you.

  Herbert liked the idea, but it gave him the creeps at the same time. A load of bullets, wouldn’t that be dreadfully painful?

  Allan Karlsson didn’t ask much of life. He just wanted a bed, lots of food, something to do, and now and then a glass of vodka. If these requirements were met, he could stand most things. The camp in Vladivostok offered Allan everything he wished for except the vodka.

  At that time, the harbour in Vladivostok consisted of an open and a closed part. Surrounded by a two-metre-high fence, the Gulag correction camp consisted of forty brown barracks in rows of four. The fence went all the way down to the pier. The ships that were going to be loaded or unloaded by Gulag prisoners berthed inside the fence, the others outside. Almost everything was done by the prisoners, only small fishing boats and their crews had to manage on their own, as did the occasional larger oil tanker.

  With few exceptions, the days at the correction camp in Vladivostok all looked the same. Reveille in the barracks at six in the morning, breakfast at a quarter-past. The working day lasted twelve hours, from half-past six to half-past six, with a half-hour lunch break at midday. Immediately after the end of the working day, there was supper, and then it was time to be locked up until the next morning.

  The diet was substantial: mainly fish admittedly, but rarely in the form of soup. The camp guards were not exactly friendly, but at least they didn’t shoot people without cause. Even Herbert Einstein got to stay alive, contrary to his own ambition. He did of course work more slowly than any other prisoner, but since he always stayed very close to the hardworking Allan, nobody noticed.

  Allan had nothing against working for two. But he soon introduced a rule; Herbert wasn’t allowed to complain about how miserable his life was. Allan had already understood that to be the case, and there was nothing wrong with his memory. To keep on saying the same thing over and over again thus served no purpose.

  Herbert obeyed, and then it was okay, just as most things were okay, apart from the lack of vodka. Allan put up with it for exactly five years and three weeks. Then he said:

  ‘Now I want a drink. And I can’t get that here. So it’s time to move on.’

  Chapter 17

  Tuesday, 10th May 2005

  The spring sun shone brightly for the ninth day in a row and even though it was cool in the morning, Bosse set the table for breakfast out on the veranda.

  Benny and The Beauty led Sonya out of the bus and into the field behind the farmhouse. Allan and Pike Gerdin sat in the hammock sofa and rocked gently. One of them was one hundred years old, and the other just felt as if he was. His head throbbed, and his broken ribs made it hard to breathe. His right arm was good for nothing, not to mention the worst of all – the deep wound in his right leg. Benny came by and offered to change the dressing on the leg, but he thought it was perhaps best to start with a couple of strong painkillers. They could then resort to morphine in the evening if necessary.

  After which Benny returned to Sonya and left Allan and Pike to themselves. Allan thought that it was high time that the two men had a more serious conversation. He was sorry that – Bolt? – had lost his life out there in the Södermanland forests and that – B
ucket? – ended up under Sonya. Both Bolt and Bucket had however been threatening them, to put it mildly, and perhaps that could be a mitigating factor. Didn’t Mr Pike think so?

  Pike Gerdin answered that he was sorry to hear that the boys were dead, but that it didn’t really surprise him that they had been overpowered by a hundred-year-old geezer, with a little assistance, because they had both been hopelessly daft. The only person who was even more daft was the fourth member of the club, Caracas, but he had just fled the country and was well on his way to somewhere in South America, Pike wasn’t really sure where he came from.

  Then Pike Gerdin’s voice grew sad. He seemed to feel sorry for himself, because it was Caracas who had been able to talk to the cocaine sellers in Colombia; now Pike had neither interpreter nor henchmen to continue his business. Here he sat, with God knows how many broken bones in his body, and without a clue as to what he should do with his life.

  Allan consoled him and said that there was surely some other drug that Mr Pike could sell. Allan didn’t know much about drugs, but couldn’t Mr Pike and Bosse Baddy grow something here on the farm?

  Pike answered that Bosse Baddy was his best friend in life, but also that Bosse had his damned moral principles. Otherwise, Pike and Bosse would by now have been the meatball kings of Europe.

  Bosse interrupted the general melancholy in the hammock by announcing that breakfast was served. Pike could at last get to taste the juiciest chicken in the world, and with it watermelon that seemed to have been imported directly from the Kingdom of Heaven.

  After breakfast, Benny dressed Pike’s thigh wound and then Pike explained that he needed to have a morning nap, if his friends would excuse him?

  The following hours at Bellringer Farm developed as follows:

  Benny and The Beauty moved things around in the barn so that they could rig up a fitting and more permanent stable for Sonya.

  Julius and Bosse went off into Falköping to buy supplies, and while there became aware of the newspaper headlines about the centenarian and his entourage who had evidently run amok across the country.

  Allan returned after breakfast to the hammock, with the aim of not exerting himself — preferably in the company of Buster.

  And Pike slept.

  But when Julius and Bosse came back from their shopping expedition, they immediately summoned everyone to a big meeting in the kitchen. Even Pike Gerdin was forced from his bed.

  Julius told them what he and Bosse had read in the newspaper. Anyone who wanted to could read it in peace and quiet after the meeting, but to sum up, there were warrants out for their arrest, all of them except Bosse who wasn’t mentioned at all, and Pike who according to the newspapers was dead.

  ‘That last bit isn’t entirely true, but I am feeling a bit under the weather,’ said Pike Gerdin.

  Julius said that it was, of course, serious to be suspected of murder, even if it might end up being called something else. And then he asked for everyone’s views. Should they phone the police, tell them where they were, and let justice run its course?

  Before anyone could say what they thought about that, Pike Gerdin let out a roar and said that it would be over his half-dead body that anyone voluntarily phoned and reported themselves to the police.

  ‘If it’s going to be like that, then I’ll get my revolver again. What did you do with it, by the way?’

  Allan answered that he had hidden the revolver in a safe place, bearing in mind all the weird medicines Benny had given to Mr Pike. And didn’t Mr Pike think that it was just as well that it remained hidden a little longer?

  Well, okay, Pike could go along with that, if only he and Mr Karlsson could stop being so formal.

  ‘I am Pike,’ said Pike, and shook hands with the centenarian.

  ‘And I’m Allan,’ said Allan. ‘Nice to meet you.’

  So by threatening to use weapons (but without a weapon) Pike had decided that they wouldn’t admit anything to the police and prosecutor. His experience was that Justice was rarely as just as it ought to be. The others agreed. Not least on account of what would happen if Justice this time should turn out to be just.

  The result of the short discussion was that the yellow bus was immediately hidden in Bosse’s huge warehouse, together with a lot of as yet untreated watermelons. But it was also decided that the only person who could leave the farm without the group’s permission was Bosse Baddy – that is, the only one among them who wasn’t wanted by the police or presumed dead.

  As for the question of what they should do next, what for example should happen to the suitcase of money, the group decided to postpone the decisions until later. Or as Pike Gerdin said:

  ‘I get a headache when I think about it. At the moment I’d pay fifty million for a painkiller.’

  ‘Here are two pills,’ said Benny. ‘And they are free.’

  It was a hectic day for Chief Inspector Aronsson. Thanks to all the publicity, they were now drowning in tips about where the presumed triple-murderer and his companions were holed up. But the only tip-off that Chief Inspector Aronsson had any faith in was the one that came from the deputy chief of police in Jönköping, Gunnar Löwenlind. He reported that on the main road somewhere near Råslätt, he had met a yellow Scania bus with a badly dented front and only one functioning headlight. If it hadn’t been for the fact that his grandson had just started throwing up in his babyseat in the back of the car, Löwenlind would have phoned the traffic police and tipped them off.

  Chief Inspector Aronsson sat for a second evening in the piano bar at the Hotel Royal Corner in Växjö and once again made the mistake of analysing the situation while under the influence.

  ‘The northbound road,’ the chief inspector reflected. ‘Are you going back into Södermanland? Or are you going to hide in Stockholm?’

  He decided to check out of the hotel the next day and set off home to his depressing three-room apartment in the centre of Eskilstuna. Ronny Hulth from the bus station at least had a cat to hug. Göran Aronsson didn’t have anything, he thought and downed the last whisky of the evening.

  Chapter 18

  1953

  In the course of five years and three weeks, Allan had naturally learned to speak Russian very well, but also brushed up on his Chinese. The harbour was a lively place, and Allan established contact with returning sailors who could keep him up to date on what was happening out in the world.

  Among other things, the Soviet Union had exploded its own atom bomb one and a half years after Allan’s meeting with Stalin, Beria and the sympathetic Yury Borisovich. In the West, they suspected espionage, because the bomb seemed to be built according to exactly the same principle as the Los Alamos bomb. Allan tried to work out how many clues Yury might have picked up in the submarine while vodka was being drunk straight from the bottle.

  ‘I believe that you, dear Yury Borisovich, have mastered the art of drinking and listening at the same time,’ he said.

  Allan also discovered that the United States, France and Great Britain had combined their zones of occupation and formed a German federal republic. And an angry Stalin had immediately retaliated by forming a Germany of his own, so now the West and East each had one, which seemed practical to Allan.

  The Swedish king had gone and died, as Allan had read in a British newspaper which for some obscure reason had found its way to a Chinese sailor, who in turn remembered the Swedish prisoner in Vladivostok and so brought the newspaper with him. The king had admittedly been dead almost a whole year when it came to Allan’s attention, but that didn’t really matter. A new king had immediately replaced him, so things were fine in the old country.

  Otherwise the sailors in the harbour mainly talked about the war in Korea. And that wasn’t so surprising. Korea was after all only about 200 kilometres away.

  As Allan understood it, the following had happened:

  The Korean Peninsula was kind of left over when the Second World War ended. Stalin and Truman each occupied a bit in brotherly agreement, a
nd decided that the 38th parallel would separate north from south. This was then followed by negotiations lasting for ever about how Korea should be able to govern itself, but since Stalin and Truman didn’t really have the same political views (not at all, in fact) it all ended up like Germany. First, the United States established a South Korea, upon which the Soviet Union retaliated with a North Korea. And then the Americans and the Russians left the Koreans to get on with it.

  But it hadn’t worked out so well. Kim Il Sung in the north and Syngman Rhee in the south, each thought that he was best suited to govern the entire peninsula. And then they had started a war.

  But after three years, and perhaps four million dead, absolutely nothing had changed. The north was still the north, and the south was still the south. And the 38th parallel still kept them apart.

  When it came to getting that drink – the main reason to escape from the Gulag – the most natural way would of course have been to sneak on board one of the many ships that stopped in the harbour in Vladivostok. But at least seven of Allan’s friends in the camp hut had thought the same over the years, and all seven had been discovered and executed. Every time it happened, the others in the barrack had mourned. And the biggest mourner was Herbert Einstein, it would seem. Only Allan knew that the reason for Herbert’s sadness was that, yet again, he hadn’t been executed.

  One of the challenges of getting onto a ship was that every prisoner wore black and white prison clothes. It was impossible to blend in with the crowd. In addition, there was a narrow passageway to the ship and that was guarded, and well-trained guard dogs sniffed at every load that was lifted on to the ship by crane.