The Hurricane Party

by Klas Ostergren

  Young and amenable as Hanck was, he had complied with this suggestion and started to read. Access to books was limited, but his boss had succeeded in procuring borrower status at the library, which could be used by his employees. That alone was considered a remarkable feat.

  Hanck had read many books, though without understanding why. Of course he had latched onto a word here or an expression there, things that he could use in his daily work, but each time he finished reading a book, he ended up with a bad taste in his mouth. He felt somehow dirty, or sullied. Reluctantly he had to acknowledge that he’d been affected. The stories disturbed his otherwise peaceful slumber, and he might wake up several times in the night, fully convinced that his department boss was standing in his bedroom, rummaging through his dirty laundry and loudly commenting on every stain that he found.

  There was an uncomfortable impertinence in the books, an intimacy that could seem downright offensive, as well as an indecent sentimentality that clung to the whole enterprise. Those old books were considered invaluable assets, true treasures that were tenderly safeguarded by a chosen few who themselves dripped with sentimentality whenever they talked about Literature. There had once been a golden age, of course, and that Age of Sagas lay encapsulated in a distant, shimmering glow. Whenever he read a book from that period, it turned out that the authors of that time all said approximately the same thing – in sentimental terms they eulogised the past.

  Hanck remained unresponsive, unless he felt outright sullied. He couldn’t come up with any better word for it.

  And that was undoubtedly the rub, as he and other critical readers had to admit: the fact that they got lost in emotion.

  An international agreement had been reached long ago regarding the restoration of such aspects of the old culture as were deemed essential. In accordance with that agreement, the task of local commissions was to classify and define those emotions that were sufficiently essential to be preserved for the future.

  Many emotions seemed simply to have become passé. At one time they had been experienced and described with such precision and depth that the description had become worthless, since their perfection was unattainable and incomprehensible to ordinary people. No one could fill those perfect works with any vital emotion. That particular emotion was hence found to be extinct. Psychobiologists had followed and recorded this ongoing depletion, pointing out a parallel with the biological forms of life that had disappeared. A number of species corresponded to a clearly specified emotional nuance.

  In the meantime, new ones had emerged, and the task of the Affect Commission was also to determine which ones should be recognised and be given a common name.

  The few contemporary stories that Hanck had become acquainted with had not alleviated the bad impression that he had. They were all permeated with sentimentality, self-pity and a false sense of ingratiation. Hovering over every page he saw the exhortation: ‘Love me!’ Or, in the best case, the somewhat more moderate: ‘At least show me a little affection!’ Few authors managed to conceal this entreaty. And to procure this favour, they resorted to low tricks that were hardly worthy of any decent human being. One commiserated over a birthmark, another mourned over a maternal grandfather who was dead. What remarkable things they were! And it was all swathed in an air of grandiose compassion for their fellow human beings, a blazing passion for what was right and true and beautiful.

  Hanck had encountered just such a grandiose human being with a blazing passion for what was right and true and beautiful, meaning a real author. The man in question had come to the insurance company to deliver a damage report to one of Hanck’s colleagues, along with an accompanying claim for compensation. A defect had occurred in his solarium, causing him to suffer burns that were of a moderate yet noticeable degree, something that was indisputably apparent in the attached photographs. They were definitely authentic.

  The pictures showed a well-groomed author with a red face. The author, an expert on outmoded expressions, described the colour as ‘lobster-red’, referring to an extinct shellfish in a boiled state.

  The unfortunate accident had occurred on the very day when the author had intended to make a well-paid appearance with TomBola, ‘since today I’m considered to be the foremost . . .’

  Hanck had spoken to the burnt author on the phone several times, and during the conversation the man had occasion to repeat the same things he had pointed out in his written report, including ‘since today I’m considered to be the foremost . . .’

  Based on the facts, Hanck had recommended rejecting the author’s claim, and management had followed his recommendation. That led to the entire company being subjected to an extensive slander campaign, conducted by the author himself in all his bright-red glory. He was allowed to deliver a fiery but quite incoherent speech that was seen on every monitor in the whole city. The fact that he thereby discredited one of the few companies that at least occasionally spoke up for the little guy didn’t seem to bother him at all. Instead, he emphasised that he was favoured by the friend of authors, the paterfamilias. He had sampled author’s mead from the great man’s treasure chamber.

  Afterwards Hanck decided that he’d had enough of that sort, both living and dead. But he was still young, and he didn’t know that authors can be their own worst enemies.

  Without being aware of it, he was himself an author in the making. One day in the future his deep aversion to conceitedness and his distrust of grandiose claims would be an asset, yes, something even resembling a prerequisite for the writing process itself.

  What was missing was a motive. But that was something fate would provide.

  But Hanck had actually been writing ever since his son’s birth. The information that had been revealed about Rachel may have been concrete, but it wasn’t substantial enough to satisfy a son’s curiosity. He bombarded his father with questions about her, about their time together.

  When Hanck saw that his son was suffering from a lack of information, he felt compelled to make the meagre and paltry facts more detailed.

  He made the boy’s mother more beautiful than she was, her family bigger, her father uglier, and the house they lived in smaller and more decrepit. That was about as far as his imagination would go.

  But his son said: ‘Tell me more!’ When Hanck confessed that there was no more to tell, the boy became furious. He sobbed and flailed his arms about, and Hanck saw no way out but to say: ‘Hmm, well, that’s right . . . I forgot about . . .’ Then the boy would instantly calm down and start listening. Hanck was forced to come up with something. Out of necessity and compassion he invented a love story that never took place, though it might have taken place, and, in the eyes of a former insurance man, it even seemed plausible.

  Hanck seized upon stories from everywhere, stories that he’d heard or had actually experienced himself with other women, but he made all of them refer to only one person.

  About how they had gone out celebrating when the whole city was filled with vodka; about dance palaces that no longer existed; about an old smuggler king who took a liking to her and gave her fabric for dresses, satins and silks, though god only knew where they’d come from; and about how cleverly she had managed to make their ration quota last each month.

  Toby listened intently to all of this, and when the narrator occasionally hesitated or took a little too long to remember exactly how one thing or another had occurred, the boy would show great understanding or a type of indulgence – as if at heart he realised that it was all nothing but fiction.

  Among his favourite stories was the one about Etherism and its adherents. They were called Etherists or, preferably, Sneezers. Hanck made them have permanently runny noses. They were born into snot, they lived their lives in snot and they died in snot. They were the happiest people with colds in the whole world. They regarded snot as holy. Their Church was a handkerchief, and snot was the sacrament. Each time they sneezed, god would send a spark through their soul. They did everything they could to sneeze as often and
as much as possible.

  They doused themselves with pollen, they stared at the sun and they tickled themselves under the nose with bird feathers sprinkled with finely ground pepper. They enticed forth such torrents of sneezing that the sound echoed all through the neighbourhood. They were blessed, filled with god at every audible ‘Achoo!’ Which was always followed by the congregation crying in unison: ‘Gesundheit!’

  Every time they were mentioned, the boy would ask: ‘Why don’t they exist any more?’ And Hanck had to explain how they had died out, how one by one they had passed away. Some had stared too long at the sun and got scorched. Others had plucked feathers from infected birds. The happiest of them had died in the midst of a torrent of sneezing that had split their brains apart. Finally not a single one was left.

  By the time Toby turned ten and had heard these stories many times, he decided that he wanted to go there, to the place where he was born. ‘I want to see if it looks like I’ve always pictured it.’

  ‘There’s nothing to see,’ said Hanck. ‘It’s all gone.’

  ‘I want to go, I want to, I want to.’

  A week after the major second Hanck had gone out there to deliver his report to the old man. That might seem to show a rather exaggerated concern for a client, but Hanck had made it look like a momentous gesture on the part of the company, a question of policy, to look out for the interests of every client, no matter how insignificant the case might seem.

  Then he had stood there, with his back to the client, facing the field with the hovels on the other side. He knew that his presence had been noticed; he had been seen by the people over there. And that constituted a danger, to be standing there – and bareheaded, no less. If any of them thought that he had done something inappropriate with Rachel, he was a ready target for any weapon they might have.

  But nothing happened. Maybe they were letting the sun do the job. He hadn’t given it any thought – the fact that he had appeared before the old man’s ramshackle house with his hat in his hand. He had never allowed himself to do such a thing before, to stand in the strong sunlight with his head bare and his eyes stinging. It was not at all premeditated; it was an impulse that later surprised even him, when he finally came to his senses, maybe from a desire to sneeze, and went inside to see the old man. There he was called back to another reality that was filled with the old man’s sour smells, the buzzing of newly awakened flies, and rags stained with coughed-up blood.

  It later occurred to him that he had displayed a recklessness that flouted all regulations. He had stood out there in the glaring sunlight, bareheaded, and he had gone inside to see the old man without wearing gloves or any type of face mask.

  The only explanation he could muster was that he was the one standing out there, for personal reasons and not as the official from an insurance company. He had been unaware of the real motive for his visit, or at least he had refused to admit it to himself – that it had less to do with notifying a client of a positive outcome and more to do with being seen and recognised by a woman on the other side of the field.

  Hanck told the old man what he had written. The man stumbled around in bewilderment among all the small cases inside the house, and finally, when there was no more to be said and nothing had happened across the field, Hanck asked him what all the cases were for. He wanted to prolong the visit, give Rachel one last chance to put in an appearance.

  But instead of hearing a few longed-for footsteps in the gravel of the front yard, or the discreet sound of her knocking, he listened to the old man’s tedious account of a father and a grandfather and a great-grandfather who had all been collectors and junk dealers; a remarkable and noble family, as it turned out.

  The treasures had been passed down through several generations. He opened a case and showed Hanck its contents: a typewriter. The old man had inherited some and collected others, and he now owned more than six hundred of the machines. Most of them were fully functioning.

  For Hanck, that collection of typewriters was at the time merely a pile of scrap metal. His thoughts were elsewhere, his attention was directed outdoors, he was listening for sounds from across the field. But when he couldn’t prolong the visit any longer, he thanked the old man and went outside to take up his position in front of the house.

  He heard the old man coughing. Smoke was rising from the chimney of her house. A curtain fluttered. She didn’t want to show herself.

  At the risk of disappointing his son, Hanck had taken the boy out there, ten years later. It took several hours. They went through parts of town where Hanck had never set foot, and through others where he’d once had business, but the neighbourhoods had now changed beyond recognition.

  But out there, after they left the city behind, everything was just the same. The old man’s house was still there, as were the charred remains of his warehouse. Scattered all over the property were piles of empty glass jars.

  They crossed the field. All that was left of Rachel’s house was the foundation, an old granite foundation that must have been there for hundreds of years. A meagre relic. Hanck was worried about how his son would react.

  But the boy walked around checking the place over, taking up position at various points and gazing in different directions, as if to take in the view, as if to see the world the way his mother had once seen it. It was quite a depressing view: the old man’s hovel across a tainted field, and farther away, on the other side of a bare, rocky hill, the upper half of a big tenement building, grey and sooty; and even farther in the distance, a rusty minaret.

  ‘This is where it was,’ said Hanck, ‘This is where her bedroom was.’ He went over to stand on a corner of the foundation. He persuaded himself that it must have been a bedroom. ‘This is where you were born.’

  Toby went to stand next to his father; he seemed pleased by what he had heard. He poked at the ground and found a piece of brick, possibly from a chimney stack. He picked up the brick fragment, looked at it with satisfaction, and stuffed it in his pocket.

  Many decisive events were to be played out in the vicinity of that ugly, inhospitable field. A steady wind blew out there, the wind of change. During the rainy season the wind could be harsh and brutal, whipping rain in the face of anyone who had business in that district. During the dry season the wind swept in hot gusts over the scorched ground, only aggravating the torturous heat. But it was always connected with change, new conditions, new circumstances.

  The old man’s insurance claim had its consequences. One day in the middle of the worst of the heat, Hanck was summoned to the office of his department boss. The air conditioning was going full blast, but it was still oppressively hot in the whole building. His boss was wearing shorts, he had his feet propped up on his desk, and he was scraping off bits of food from his wooden cross with a penknife. He was as blunt as usual. ‘Sorry, Hancky,’ he said, without taking his eyes off the cross. ‘The coffee has gone cold.’

  That was an in-house expression that meant you were getting the boot. It referred to the beginning of everything – how this company, like many others, had started out in a coffee shop. The founder had sat at his usual table in the harbour district, receiving skippers and supercargoes who bought insurance polices for valuable shipments, an enterprise that benefited from the invigorating effect of coffee.

  Now Hanck’s cup was ice-cold. It didn’t come as any surprise. The company had been showing poor profits, and other departments had already been shut down. Now it was Hanck’s turn. Malicious rumours had even hinted that it was soft-hearted people like Hanck who had contributed to the flagging finances. Those who were allowed to stay were the more thick-skinned and hard-boiled types.

  But it wasn’t exactly a death blow. He was prepared. He received severance pay in accordance with the prevailing agreement, and he was sent home the very same day.

  He stayed at home for a while, moving about behind drawn curtains to keep out the heat. But during those days it was still more than forty degrees Celsius in his flat. Now that
he had no job to go to, he tried to change his daily routine, staying up at night and sleeping at the height of the heat. But it didn’t really suit him.

  He stuck to his routines, and when his lack of employment became too burdensome, he would listen to the organ. It carried him through a couple of dreary weeks until he had other things to occupy his mind.

  His old mother fell ill. He had an inkling what was going on when he rang her to report that he had lost his job. She had listened attentively, commenting with what he thought was understanding and sympathy. She had even offered a few words of encouragement at the end, saying, ‘I’m sure that you’ll find . . . find another wife.’

  ‘I was talking about my job,’ he attempted to explain.

  ‘All right,’ she had said. ‘Yes, well, that’s the way it is . . .’ Then she paused, and he had waited for the customary remark about how she didn’t really know, but she didn’t say it. He waited and waited, but the remark never came, and he realised that something serious had happened or was in the process of happening. By omitting that bewildering subordinate clause, she made him more uneasy than ever before.

  She quickly grew worse, and it was obvious how things would end. When the cooling system broke down, which happened from time to time, everything went even faster. She lost her powers of perception. With some effort she could comprehend, but just barely, what was happening right in front of her eyes. If she turned even halfway round, she had no clue what was behind her or what she had just been looking at. The whole world became incomprehensible.

  Hanck sat with her in the hospital. He had nothing else to occupy his days. He talked to her all the time. The staff claimed that his voice had a soothing and comforting effect, but he doubted it. Every time she came round, he had to reintroduce himself. And every time she realised who he was, she said, ‘Yes, that’s the way it is . . .’ And each time he waited in vain to hear the rest. But the words stayed away.