The Accidental Further Adventures of the Hundred-Year-Old Man

by Jonas Jonasson

  My friend Julius says, by the way, that you Germans are good at growing asparagus too, if, that is, German asparagus is actually grown in Germany, in contrast to

  At that instant, Julius yanked the pen out of Allan’s hand and told him to get a grip.

  ‘Konrad will be back at any moment! For God’s sake, hurry up!’

  He gave Allan the pen back, so he started a new line and kept on writing.

  The long and the short of it is, we ask you not to be too angry with Ambassador Konrad; he seems to us to be a fine representative of your country. If you must be angry with someone, Donald Trump is a better choice. Or perhaps Kim Jong-un over in North Korea. By the way, they say they have their sights on over one hundred times as much uranium as we managed to fool them out of. With five hundred kilos they could afford to keep on failing at their undertakings until they hit the mark. Konrad will be back soon. Better wrap this up. With kind regards, Allan Karlsson and Julius Jonsson

  Allan placed the three napkins on top of one another in the proper order and asked Julius to stick them into the side pocket of the briefcase.

  Julius did as he was asked, assuming there was no time to edit out the silly part about his relationship to German asparagus. Given the circumstances, Allan had actually done a rather good job on the napkins.

  Konrad, however, didn’t return for some time. Bathroom visits could, after all, vary by nature. This one was clearly of the longer sort. Julius had a sudden inspiration. He took a scrap of paper from the inner pocket of his worn summer jacket. There he had Gustav Svensson’s phone number. On the table was Konrad’s phone.

  ‘Do you suppose …?’ said Julius.

  ‘I absolutely suppose,’ said Allan.

  Julius called. And found himself speaking to the same voicemail as last time. This was deeply annoying.

  ‘Gustav, for God’s sake! What was the point of the phone if you’re going to keep it turned off all the time? Allan and I made it to New York from Pyongyang and next we’re going …’

  ‘Here he comes,’ said Allan.

  Quick as a wink, the phone was back on the table.

  ‘Well, then, my friends, I suppose we should be thinking of getting along,’ said Konrad, taking out his wallet.

  The bill was already on the table, next to the phone. Germany was about to become 620 dollars poorer, plus a hundred dollars in tips (plus the cost of a fifteen-second call to Indonesia). Konrad placed seven hundred-dollar bills and two twenties on the table, stood up, and said it was time for the friends to part ways.

  ‘And for me, I suppose, all there is to do is take over this exciting briefcase and catch a cab,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I suppose that’s true,’ said Allan, standing in the way so Konrad wouldn’t notice Julius commandeering the tip.

  USA, Sweden

  While Allan and Julius used part of the tip money to kit themselves out and most of the rest to take the bus to Newark airport, President Trump sat in the clubhouse at the golf course, feeling a frustration he couldn’t put into words.

  What was that meeting he had suffered through? Had Minister for Foreign Affairs Wallström sat in the UN building sneering at him while old man Karlsson babbled away? Maybe that was what had happened. That was definitely what had happened. Yes, it was.

  And Karlsson himself. Who on earth was he? Talking about goat’s milk with the President of the United States? In front of the hysterically sneering, almost mockingly laughing Minister Wallström?

  Not to mention what had happened next.

  The president was seething. The Communist had questioned his impulse control. He should have walloped him in the head with his golf club. Trump mused, self-critically, that now and then he went too far in his attempts to arrive at a compromise in every situation.

  What should he do now? The seething went on. The president opened his laptop and signed into Twitter.

  Three minutes later, he had ridiculed a television host, insulted a head of state, threatened to fire one of his own cabinet members, and declared that his declining approval numbers had been made up by insert-the-newspaper-of-your-choosing.

  He felt better.

  * * *

  Minister for Foreign Affairs Wallström had kept her promise: Messrs Karlsson and Jonsson were booked in business-class seats to Stockholm that very evening.

  ‘Any bags to check?’ asked the woman at the check-in counter.

  ‘No, thank you,’ said Allan.

  ‘Just carry-ons?’

  ‘We just gave our carry-on away.’

  Their journey to the motherland was a pleasant experience. It began even before the plane took off, when Allan and Julius were offered something to drink.

  ‘Champagne? Juice?’ said the flight attendant.

  ‘Yes, please,’ said Allan. ‘And no, thanks.’

  ‘Same here, please,’ said Julius.

  Later came a three-course dinner (not that the old men were hungry, but free was free) and if you pushed the right button after dessert you could lie down without even having to go to bed first.

  ‘What will they think of next?’ said Allan.

  ‘Mm-hmm,’ said Julius, who had already covered himself with a blanket.

  ‘Shall I read aloud to you from the tablet?’

  ‘Not unless you want me to take it away and throw it out of the window.’

  Sweden

  Allan and Julius stood in the arrivals hall of Terminal 5 at Arlanda Airport, looking around. Julius summed up the situation: they were freshly kitted, well rested, full – and had twenty dollars in assets.

  ‘Twenty dollars?’ said Allan. ‘That ought to be enough for a beer each.’

  Two small beers. Then they were out of cash.

  ‘Now we’re freshly kitted, well rested, full, and not quite as thirsty as we just were,’ said Allan. ‘Do you have any ideas about what to do next?’

  No, Julius didn’t, not off the top of his head. Perhaps they should have considered this before drinking the last of their money, but what was done was done. The bit about personal finance was probably at the top of the agenda.

  The hundred-and-one-year-old nodded. Money made life easier in many ways. How were the asparagus funds? They had reached Sweden: didn’t Julius have a whole bunch of asparagus contacts here? Allan wasn’t familiar with the details of how Indonesian Swedish asparagus was sent this way and that, all over the world, but he assumed it made a stopover in this country. Wouldn’t anything else have been verging on unethical?

  Brilliant! Julius didn’t have a whole bunch of contacts, but he did have Gunnar Gräslund.

  ‘Who might he be?’ asked Allan.

  Gunnar Gräslund was an acquaintance from the past. Most people knew him by the name ‘Gunnar Grisly’ because that was what he was. He never showered; he shaved once a week; he did snuff and swore. And he had spent his entire life swindling people (Julius didn’t blame him for that last part). He was the one who’d been handed the task of selling Gustav Svensson’s locally grown asparagus onwards and, however grisly he was otherwise, he fulfilled his commitments.

  ‘All we have to do is travel to Gunnar, explain our situation, and he’ll take out his wallet.’

  ‘Travel on what?’ asked Allan.

  ‘On foot,’ said Julius.

  * * *

  Sweden is sixteen hundred kilometres in length, but not quite so wide. A relatively enormous surface for a trifling ten million people to share.

  In most of the country, you can wander for hours without meeting another person, or even a moose. You can buy yourself a valley including your own lake for an amount that wouldn’t get you more than a shabby studio apartment on the outskirts of Paris. The downside to this purchase is that you will soon discover it is 120 kilometres to the nearest store, 160 to a pharmacy, and even longer to limp if you step on a nail and require a hospital. If you want to borrow cream for your coffee from the nearest neighbour, there’s a good chance they’re a three-hour walk away. And three hours back. The c
offee will have gone cold long before you return home.

  Not everyone wants that sort of lifestyle. Those who want it least have made a silent pact to gather in Stockholm and its immediate surroundings. With them come the businesses. H&M, Ericsson, and IKEA prioritize the areas where two and a half million potential customers live over places like the village of Nattavaara north of the Arctic Circle, where seventy-seven people still haven’t left.

  So it wasn’t particularly surprising that the regional warehouse for Julius Jonsson and Gustav Svensson’s asparagus operation was located outside Stockholm and nowhere else. For a firm that has no need of direct contact with the consumer, yet moves imports and exports by plane, the area around Arlanda Airport poses an advantage. More specifically, Märsta. Even more specifically, a two-hour walk from Arlanda Airport. Two and a half if you’re old.

  The alternative was a fifteen-minute taxi ride, but that possibility had been drunk for breakfast.

  Indonesia

  Gustav Svensson had already had to manage without his partner for far too long. First Julius had disappeared, on Allan’s birthday and everything. Gustav had unfinished business with their hotel and couldn’t go there to look for him, but by asking around he discovered that Julius and Allan had gone to sea in a hot-air balloon.

  After a few days, Gustav assumed Julius was dead, but almost a week later his cell phone received a call. He was alive! And asking questions about the operation, without leaving a call-back number.

  Then came a few days of quiet before the next sign of life. Another message on the voicemail. Gustav promised himself he would get better at charging the phone. This time, his friend said he had travelled to New York from Pyongyang! He’d gone to America? In a hot-air balloon? Via North Korea?

  Even so, the question of where Julius was and when he planned to return home was subordinate to the necessity of having someone to make important daily business decisions. Gustav didn’t know what to do other than sit down at his partner’s desk and make those decisions in said partner’s spirit. Without Julius, he listened to the Swedish importer/exporter who suggested that they call the so Swedish-sounding asparagus Swedish in Sweden as well. That would bring an even higher price.

  Gustav had some vague memory from his conversations with Julius that this was something to look out for. But only a vague memory. The advantage of arak was that it freed your thoughts; the disadvantage was that they were not only freed but also, by the next morning, gone.

  Julius would have put a stop to further Swedifying Gustav Svensson’s asparagus, if he’d had the chance. The last time it had happened, a stupid middleman had laid waste to the entire operation by doing that very thing.

  Sweden

  Thus it came to pass that Allan and Julius, after two and a half hours of slow walking, arrived at the warehouse of the Swedish partner, the day after the police had raided the place and arrested the partner in question. The door of the warehouse bore a yellow sign with a red outline and black text: ‘Sealed in accordance with Code of Judicial Procedure Chapter 27, Paragraph 15. Trespassing is punishable by law.’ Signed: ‘The Police.’

  ‘What happened here?’ Allan asked a woman passing by with her dog.

  ‘A raid on an illegal vegetable importer,’ said the woman.

  ‘Bloody Gunnar Grisly,’ said Julius.

  ‘Nice dog,’ said Allan. ‘What’s its name?’

  The friends were once again at a loss. And as penniless as before. Furthermore, Julius had a blister. He limped alongside Allan towards central Märsta, and had trouble keeping up with the hundred-and-one-year-old’s pace. At last he had to give up.

  ‘I’m not taking another step,’ he said. ‘I’m about to die of this blister.’

  ‘It’s not that easy to die,’ said Allan. ‘I know from my own personal experience. You’ll just have to take a few more steps.’

  He pointed at a corner shop across the street; it appeared to share a wall with an undertaker. ‘Won’t that be nice? Inside the door on the left you can buy bandages, and if they don’t have any for sale you can die inside the door on the right.’

  Allan stepped into the corner shop with his limping friend two metres behind. A woman of late middle age with three different kinds of amulet around her neck sat at the cash register. She looked up in surprise; she wasn’t exactly drowning in customers.

  ‘Good morning,’ said Allan. ‘Might there be any bandages for sale here? My friend Julius has grown weary of his blister.’

  Yes, there were. The woman pointed at the shelf of personal hygiene items. Julius staggered over, found what he needed, and staggered back to the amulet lady, who scanned the item and informed him of the price.

  ‘Thirty-six kronor, please.’

  ‘Well, that’s the thing,’ Julius thought up. ‘I forgot my wallet today. Can I come back and pay tomorrow?’

  ‘That’s fine. I’ll put the bandages aside for now,’ said the woman, snatching the box back so fast her amulets rattled.

  ‘No – that is, I have a blister now, but money later. I want to take the bandages with me, come back tomorrow and pay.’

  The woman was more than just a cashier. In fact, she owned the store. She aimed a grave look at one of her first customers of the day. ‘I am a hardworking business owner. I’ve been here since eight this morning for almost no reason. Are you suggesting that I should start handing out my wares for free, once someone who needs something finally appears?’

  Julius sighed, not sure he had the energy for the dialogue he could see coming. But he responded that he understood the woman’s point of view, and that he wished she could come to understand his own. This was a very special situation. He was an honourable person, a diplomat, in fact, who had just returned from America on an urgent matter. He had accidentally left his wallet at the embassy.

  ‘Then why not go and get it?’

  ‘In the United States.’

  The amulet lady took an extra look first at Julius, then Allan, then Julius again. One of them was older than her; the other seemed older than was possible. Neither of them looked like a diplomat, whatever one of those looked like.

  ‘Then how about calling a friend?’

  Julius’s left heel was bleeding. His right heel was calling attention to itself as well. And it had been several hours since he’d had any food. ‘I have no friends,’ he said.

  ‘That’s not true,’ said Allan, who was standing nearby. ‘You have me, Julius.’

  ‘And how much money do you have?’

  ‘None, but still.’

  The lady with the amulets followed the gentlemen’s conversation.

  ‘I’m sorry. No money, no bandages. That is the policy of this poor little shop. Put into place by me, the owner, Sabine Jonsson.’

  ‘But that’s Julius’s last name too,’ said Allan. ‘Isn’t that reason enough to make an exception?’

  The amulet lady shook her head. The amulets followed. ‘There must be close to a hundred thousand Jonssons in this country. What would become of my finances if I handed out free bandages to them all?’

  Allan said he supposed her finances would go to pot if she did that, but right now they were talking about one Jonsson, not a hundred thousand. To be on the safe side, of course, she could put up a sign on her door later, which clearly stated that all the country’s Jonssons shouldn’t bother asking.

  The amulet lady was about to reply, but Julius was in absolute despair. He couldn’t deal with this any longer. It was impossible to consider limping away without bandaging himself first.

  ‘Give the bandages here,’ he said. ‘This is a robbery!’

  The amulet lady looked more surprised than scared.

  ‘What do you mean, a robbery?’ she said. ‘You don’t have anything to rob me with. Not even a water pistol. If you’re going to rob someone, at least do it properly.’

  Julius had never robbed anyone before, but he felt insulted on behalf of all the professional robbers of the world. How could a robbery victim
be so disrespectful?

  Allan asked if the woman had water pistols for sale. It might be just the thing to get them out of the impasse in which they were currently stuck.

  She did not. What was more, how was he planning to pay for the pistol? If he had money, wouldn’t it be better to pay the ransom for his friend’s bandages?

  Allan realized she was right. But he also sensed a note of forgiveness in the air. Perhaps the woman with the amulets didn’t want to argue any more. He quickly worked out a plan for peace.

  ‘I see you have a small café corner over there. If my friend and I have a seat with the bandages, might you keep us company over a cup of coffee, ma’am? Wouldn’t that be a decently unexpected turn of events?’

  The amulet lady smiled for the first time. She handed the box of bandages to Julius with the comment that he and his friend weren’t thirty-six kronor in debt, but another twenty on top. The coffee was ten kronor a cup.

  Julius nodded gratefully and shuffled over to the closest empty chair. Allan wondered if there would be an extra charge for a sugar cube.

  ‘Both sugar and milk are included. Have a seat. I’ll be over in a tick.’

  Sweden

  Sabine Jonsson arrived with three cups of coffee, a bowl of sugar cubes, three decilitres of milk from the fridge, and three cinnamon buns she’d just warmed in the microwave. Julius had finished bandaging himself and decided to stay in socks for a while longer.

  ‘Just so we can keep our accounts in order,’ said Allan, ‘what do we owe for the buns?’