It appears to be evening in Småland as I fly over the treetops. Apart from a few specks of foreboding blue in the distance, revealing the lakes hidden in the forests, I can see nothing but fir and pine. Only tiny empty pockets create gaping holes where trees seem to have been ravaged. Not to worry, they’ll plant new ones. Soon they too will stand in straight rows and salute their pointy tips towards the sky. Their shadows will join the others fawning across the twirling asphalt road and over the landscape that I am now returning to; a scenery engulfed in pine and darkness.
My arms flap effortlessly in the silky sky and my legs follow obediently as I soar through the dark landscape. The smell of pine is overwhelming. It is the familiar smell of scouting and outings and wearing gumboots in case of a snake. It is the fragrance of being forced on an orienteering expedition by the handsome Physical Education teacher Roland, and getting lost in the lingonberry thickets, despite holding onto the eternally confusing compass. Pine is the anxious odour of wondering if there is a moose nearby while eating sweaty cheese sandwiches and drinking tepid lemonade, sitting on a cold flat stone and hoping it’s time to go home soon. It is the exotic scent of motor racing and strangers on the track nearby.
Like a velvet rug below me, the bog-lands are covered in moss. Soft and slushy, no wonder there was a need for gumboots. Nothing could be built on this swampy wetness. But as I head closer to Svenstorp, I remember its people. A truce has long since grudgingly been declared between the moss and the inhabitants. The people of Svenstorp have tamed the bog-lands in their own peculiar ways. Tired of the ground’s uselessness for farming but most of all of being poor, they thought carefully but daringly. Factories are now dotted everywhere in the landscape; inside, people have stubbornly worked the last century ignoring the odds of success. There is nothing that hard work and grim determination can’t solve they believed, with the same faith they believed in Jesus their Saviour and the perils of drinking, gambling and dancing, and it seems they were right. See how well they’ve all done—well, almost everyone.
One visionary Svenstorper even decided to build a racing track on the moss. He was well known for two facts: one, he was not a Believer, two, he liked to smoke a cigar and was commonly and rather affectionately it must be said, despite this sinfulness, known as the Cigar. When the Cigar bought a large chunk of moss just outside Svenstorp, he got it cheap, the owner shaking his head in amazement at such stupidity. The proof of the purchase is still here, the remnants of the old track that put the moss on the map in the early 1970s. Persuading the world to come to Svenstorp for a few glorious years was a breeze to the Cigar once he convinced the business community to get behind him, making them believe there might be a buck to be made. And thus it was born: Svenstorp Grand Motor Track, the host of two major events in alternate years: Svenstorp Formula One Grand Prix and The MC 250 CC World Championships. For a few weeks every year, the moss was covered in tents and people camping, kiosks, grill parties and shops on wheels; journalists from all over the place, and even a film crew from Swedish Television followed. Believe me, I was there.
Even His Majesty the King attended. It is true he was only a Crown-Prince then, but for a few glorious days he lived next door to my family while our neighbour moved out to make room for the prince and his security entourage. A shiny Porsche was waiting in the driveway next to our pavement. The moment our future king stepped outside to drive towards our moss, we swiftly assembled on the lawn opposite, applauding and cheering him as he reversed quickly out of the driveway, leaving his adoring subjects behind in a cloud of smoke.
My older cousin, Britt, who lived in a remote village, screamed on the phone in delight. She arrived just in time to watch the security man pull the blind down in our neighbour’s bedroom, before the prince went to bed: the same time every night. A man of regular habits, our prince! We could watch it all from our back window, in the tiny bedroom that used to be a wardrobe, which suddenly had acquired the best view in Svenstorp, our heads close together, noses pressed against the cool glass, giggling excitedly. Once the blind was down, we lingered for a while, before we pulled down our own. It was a heady moment in our childhood: sleeping so close to our future king.
At night, everyone in Svenstorp would take their car for a drive to have a look at all the people; we weren’t used to seeing that many all at once. Round and round the roads we went, as if participating in our own—but at a snail’s pace— race. Slowly down Grand Street we made our way to the outskirts to have a peek at the campers with their beer cans and tents in the pine woods when the motorbike races were on, the smell of grilled sausages mingling with petrol and pine. When the start pistol for the more glamorous Formula One event was raised, we turned our attention to the more fancy looking people taking over every hotel in the neighbourhood. Not many of the locals saw the races; some rented out their houses and went on holidays, muttering about getting some peace and quiet, but really, as their habit was, to not to let an opportunity to make some money pass them by. The rest of us could hear it from our backyards: the buzzing sound of the Big World, out there, on our moss.
My father made business like never before. Grand Prix Svenstorp 1971, his bags declared in shiny letters, his shop filling up with big city people, exclaiming in piercing, big-city accents, “Ja men Herre Gud, Oh, my God, it’s so cheap! In Stockholm we pay double the amount!”
Except for the locals, who were mainly there to have a look at the Stockholmers, and after having a good peek, would take me aside in confidence: “See, that Father of yours, ’e always takes a bit off! Know ’im well, Konrad, used to go to school together see, and ’e always gives me a good price.” “Five kronor, that’s the best I can do”, I’d smile back as cunningly as any Svenstorper, knowing full well they couldn’t possibly all have gone to school in the small village of Kulla with my father. Everyone would know that; everyone knew my father.
The motor track looks deserted now. Many years have passed since it’s been in use and the King goes to Monaco on his holidays now, I think. I’ve seen him inside glossy magazines, diving off his yacht in the turquoise Mediterranean Sea. Moss has once again taken over the track. Soon it will completely surrender; pine trees will obstruct the view of the desolate old track and no one will remember its heady televised days in the sun anymore.
It is getting lighter as I reluctantly fly in over Svenstorp. The immaculate colour schemes glow from the new apartment blocks next to the kiosk, even on the ugly brick walls of the National Dental Service. How small Grand Street seems from this angle, there’s nothing to it. It’s just a street, a few lights, a frozen pond. An old, gravelled road covered with asphalt and ideas of grandeur! It’s hilarious. I circle around the monument in bronze, erected in the beginning of the street. Proudly outside the bank entrance it was raised, the purchase of the good businessmen of Svenstorp for the enjoyment of all: The Statue of Liberty. It looks exactly like the one in New York, except smaller and a bit chubbier somehow. As if to make up for its size, there is an added water feature in front of it. Perhaps it’s meant to resemble the water surrounding the original. Perhaps someone went there once on a holiday, taking the boat out to Long Island thinking, that’s a really nice-looking statue, why don’t we build one in Svenstorp too? It’s not like we can’t afford it! There is nothing the Svenstorpers can’t afford. The cars bear witness to this fact; every car passing by is a Mercedes or Saab, only the occasional bashful Volvo. All in the latest models, all nice and shiny. Just like the houses. All nice and new. No one seems to care much for the dreary old past here, including me.
The water feature in front of the statue where I once fell in has fishes trapped inside it now. Cold bodies shimmer beneath the surface, their round fishy eyes blinking helplessly at me, before I’m hauled back onto the street.
A shiny white building further down seems to be heading towards me. It’s the Mission Church, run by the Swedish Missionary Society for many a proud year. Listen to the sound of chirpy singing, the trumpeting from the pulpit and th
e beat of a drum set! The building where “Jesus Loves His Little Children” and the movements to “This Little Light of Mine” are known by all us blessed. Where every word on the pamphlet handed out when marching steadfastly through the entrance every Sunday is sincerely felt: “I was filled with joy when told to walk into the House of Our Lord.”
There was no mention of how to feel on the way out.
The white building comes to a sudden halt. Behind it, the spire of the Lutheran State Church bashfully pokes out, surprisingly still there. Nothing much exciting—and therefore good for the business community—has ever taken place there: an old building, with old visitors, surrounded by the dead. Old graves ignoring the call of the modern world, looking like they always have. Watching. Waiting. The way I’m being watched.
Opposite is the old bathhouse where swim-coach Ralf ruled. Ready to swoop us up into his sturdy arms and throw the less brave of us into the deep end of the pool. Parents didn’t react to his unorthodox swimming teaching methods. They seldom did in the 1960s. His wife worked there too. She didn’t pay much attention to him either. She was too busy reading magazines and eating bananas. She must have liked them a lot: a pile of banana peels was always lying next to her deckchair by the end of year one’s weekly session. At the end of Ralf’s throwing antics, she would sigh and reluctantly stand up, in order to lead us into the sauna and the next part of the program, a task carried out by another staffer, the enormous Ruth. We sweltered in the tiny sauna, our naked bodies hotter than the hissing stones, and tried not to panic. Ruth would place her giant bottom at the door, you could see it through the glass window, and she wasn’t going to move it until it was time to push us firmly into the final ritual of hot and cold showers, muttering to the row of steaming, red-skinned seven-year-olds to hurry up.
When they built a modern pool near our school in year two, Ralf didn’t follow, neither did his wife. There was talk about him having taken too much interest in certain activities, such as Ladies Only Tuesdays, where, rumour had it, he had been hiding on the small grandstand, peeping out at the ladies swimming around naked in the pool; this was Sweden, after all, where nakedness seemed a healthy and natural state to be, at the time.
The bathhouse went through a metamorphosis and began a new era as a rehearsal space for the school orchestra. We sat inside the old pool, the glazed tiles creating a strange echo, playing one popular hit after another under the Danish Maestro Jensen’s conduction, who cheerfully wiggled his bottom, dancing and laughing away in, for us, a rather confusing manner at first, not behaving like the adults we were used to; too much life in him somehow. We put down his peculiar behaviour to him being Danish and got on with it: Minuet Allegro by Mozart, one, two, three.
I finally steer off Grand Street and turn right past the bust of the Cigar’s head, his balding head shining in the morning sunshine. Svenstorp’s only journalist, the tall and gangly Sören Svensson, is lying on the grass next to it, photographing what might be the first spring flower, or a potato in an unusual shape, which will no doubt make headlines in the local paper in days to come. I dip so close to the ground now that I can almost press his shutter before creating some rather nice strokes up Alley Road. I’m really getting the hang of this now, but it’s been a long journey. I’m getting tired. I spot the pastor’s wife, fru Herring, ahead of me. She is cycling with her usual boundless energy. Her feet in the pointy purple suede boots that I used to find so compellingly ugly are pedalling eagerly up the hill. She is probably on her way to our neighbour. Not the neighbour where our future king stayed, but the one on the other side. She has probably had another message from God to give to farbror Werner. His wife, tant Berta, one of the great Believers, had no such luck with her husband. He preferred to read books (profane) and hunt with his dogs that were locked up in a kennel at the back of their house, howling through the night. He was a bit frightening he was, Werner, he howled almost as much as his dogs; you have to admire fru Herring’s tenacity and optimism.
Unless she falls off.
We were actually surrounded by non-Believers, which was quite remarkable in Svenstorp on such a nice street and all. Although old Harry across the street belonged to the local branch of the temperance society, which was almost the same thing, he was even the chairman, and came to our school talking about the perils of alcohol and how that “leads you into Ruin”. Just one taste and you’d be hooked. I promised myself solemnly never to go near it. Not that there was much chance in our family, mind you.
Our neighbour across to the right, farbror George, also a non-Believer, even danced. He belonged to the local dance society, not in Svenstorp, of course—no such thing there—but in the very close and equally small town of Träby. There was only a moss in between us, but they might as well have lived on another planet. They didn’t start their own businesses there; instead they went to work at the enormous factory that poured out fumes as you passed by on your way to Jönköping. People from Träby swore and drank and probably even voted for Prime Minister Palme.
Worst of all, they also had this dance parlour where local dance bands performed. This is where our neighbour went. He even wore a T-shirt, in itself quite a radical step, with a slogan asking: “May I?” Oh yes, you may, George! My father didn’t say anything about George’s t-shirt; he relied on him too much for an abundance of talents he himself did not possess. The fridge was leaking? The oil-heater in the cellar was making a strange sound? You couldn’t flush the toilet? George could. Unburden my confused father, holding yet another electronic device that had given up. Patiently explain the water pipes and plumbing system, or the dishwasher’s intricate inner secrets after a desperate phone call: “You wouldn’t know how to change a fuse, would you, George?” Of course George did. All things considering, you would have to say a daring T-shirt suggesting what George got up to in his spare time paled into insignificance.
I decide to take a short cut across Werner’s dog kennel, but there are no dogs barking now. Fru Herring has parked her bike in front of their house and is pressing their doorbell. A heavy wind is blowing, and I start to feel giddy as I finally manage to reach the old fence separating us from Werner’s. Someone is laughing hysterically in the background and I try to make it stop. They’re everywhere now, one of them bending down behind the garage. I need to go faster, but my arms feel so heavy.
My mother and father are standing in the garden with outstretched arms, as if they know I’m coming: Hej, hej, hello! I gasp, but they just keep waving as someone gives me a final push and I tumble in a series of clumsy somersaults across the fence.
There’s the sound of a church bell. Everything suddenly feels frantic now: the tolling of the bell, the chill in the air, the flapping of my arms. I misjudge the landing onto our beautiful garden, which is blooming heavenly despite the season. I try to protest and scream Nej! Nej, as I crash land into the potato patch, but no sound will come out. The coarse soil in my mouth, the bells ringing: Dong-dong-dong!
And then everything is darkness.
When I open my eyes, gulping for air, it’s still dark. The air feels sticky, the smell of pine gone. I can still hear laughter; it seems to be coming from outside. Dazed, I listen to kookaburras laughing away in the early hours of the morning, or are they seagulls? Some jogger is breathing heavily on the path below, there’s the distant sound of a dog barking. I’m lying on the floor, tangled up in damp sheets, in Sue’s guest room in her flat by Port Phillip Bay, Melbourne, Australia. Caesar is snoring next to me. It’s 4:59 am her digital alarm clock informs me, as I stumble back into bed. Bells are still ringing. I finally reach for the phone.
Miles and miles of wire have been dug up and down and telephone poles erected. Intricate systems connected above and below the ground have journeyed over many lands and rivers, climbed mountains and crossed the seas, to the other side of the world, to a different time and day and season so that I can hear a voice in a familiar tongue from as far away as Svenstorp now so close to me.
&nb
sp; A voice of doom, slowly reaching my still drowsy brain: The voice of my older sister.
“You better come home,” Anita says, “Dad’s dead.”
Power of a Poster Girl
Peter Forbes
The Voyage: Edited by Chandani Lokuge & David Morley Page 21