The Hurricane Party

by Klas Ostergren

  As did the rest of the world. He heard the sound of TomBola out in the corridor and said, ‘Maybe I should join the queue.’

  ‘What queue?’ his mother asked.

  ‘For TomBola.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘TomBola! The woman with the filthy wigs!’

  ‘Wigs?’

  Everything that had previously meant something to her was now irrelevant, unintelligible, wrapped in a veil. That included Hanck himself, but he sat with her until the end, through a long and unbearable dry spell.

  He wanted to hear her last words. The course of her illness entailed a loss of all contact with her surroundings, and she entered an inaccessible state. There were other illnesses with similar symptoms, but this particular disease had a special stage that occurred towards the end, often preceded by a great stillness, as if the patient were mustering her forces, and then she would utter her last words, sometimes mysterious, sometimes crystal clear, but almost always memorable, regarded as a premonition, a unique moment of clairvoyance.

  The last words spoken by Hanck’s mother were: ‘He’s going to be a chef!’ She said the words loud and clear, even though the meaning was not immediately understood.

  She left behind a good deal of money that she herself had forgotten all about, money that she had presumably won from gambling.

  The third time he went out there and knocked on the old man’s door, he was more determined. He had been there once with a sense of restrained suspicion, a second time with undisguised anticipation, and now with a very clear purpose in mind.

  A few days earlier he had spread his mother’s ashes in a memorial park. The ground was grey between the walls, almost dusty. There hadn’t been a drop of rain in more than three months. He had wandered around for half an hour, looking for a spot that hadn’t been claimed and covered with someone else’s ashes, but it was bone-dry, and the dust billowed up around his shoes wherever he went.

  He saw a group that had joined forces in an attempt to clear away a patch with their tears.

  Their grief made it easier for him to turn the urn upside down, feeling almost nonchalant about it, and empty the contents out onto the ground at a spot chosen at random.

  An hour later he was sitting in a restaurant in the pleasure district having lunch. Tradition did not demand anything special, but he thought he would indulge himself by honouring his mother with a good lunch. He drank vodka and fell into conversation with a woman sitting at the next table.

  They drank a toast and agreed that they were the freest individuals in the world, maybe even the freest individuals that had ever lived on this earth. She didn’t have a job, he didn’t either. She didn’t have any family, he didn’t either. She didn’t have any diseases, he didn’t either.

  They exchanged phone numbers, and he left with an elated joie de vivre.

  The narrow streets of the pleasure district offered shade that made it possible to be outdoors in the middle of the day. Hanck walked past a shop with scientific instruments. He’d never noticed the place before, probably because he was totally uninterested in such things.

  But now he stopped and peered into the display window. There, amid all the outmoded instruments made of brass and hardwood, was a typewriter, sitting inside a case that was tipped forward. It looked very much like the ones he had seen at the old man’s place near the field. And for a change there was an elegantly printed price tag stuck in the platen. The asking price was equal to a month’s salary. A low salary, perhaps, but enough to get by on.

  Hanck went inside the shop and greeted the owner. They talked a bit about the machine in the window. He learned that it had just come in and would most likely be there only a day, or possibly two. The machines were in high demand. Office workers were sick and tired of the constant power outages.

  ‘Young people are crazy for those machines.’

  ‘Young people?’ said Hanck. ‘Can they read and write?’

  ‘It’s become quite trendy.’ The shopkeeper lowered his voice to a whisper, as if he were relaying dangerous information: ‘There’s a protest movement.’

  ‘But what about paper?’ said Hanck. ‘There’s never any paper.’

  ‘It comes and goes,’ said the shopkeeper. ‘People hoard it.’

  Hanck nodded, thinking about this. Something new, an entirely new phenomenon for him.

  ‘The only problem,’ said the shopkeeper, ‘is that there aren’t any more machines to be found. They’re . . . obsolete.’

  He said the word in a hushed tone, as if it were a password, a code intended to arouse some sort of response. Hanck gave him a totally blank look. He didn’t want to reveal what he was thinking about.

  A few days later he went back out to see the old man. He knocked on the door with one clear purpose in mind: to strike a deal. The old man had something that he wanted to acquire.

  ‘The typewriters?’ said the old man suspiciously, as if refusing to understand. ‘You want to buy my machines?’

  Hanck confirmed that this was true. The old man had perceived the matter correctly.

  ‘What the hell do you want with them?’

  Hanck said as politely as he could, ‘That’s my own affair.’

  ‘You think there’s a market for them?’ The old man coughed and scratched his crotch. As if the very idea made him itch. ‘Is that how things are over there?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Hanck. ‘It’s a long shot. I got the sack because of what I wrote about your claim.’

  ‘I don’t owe you anything because of that,’ said the old man.

  ‘Correct,’ said Hanck. ‘That’s why I want to make you a fair deal.’

  ‘There aren’t any fair deals,’ said the old man. ‘Someone always gets screwed.’ He coughed again, much harder this time. He spat blood onto a rag.

  ‘You’re going to die out here,’ said Hanck.

  ‘Everyone dies out here,’ said the old man.

  ‘I’ve brought along two ingots. They’re yours if I can have the machines.’ The old man stared at him, looking him up and down, as if those two ‘trade ingots’ might be sticking out of his pockets.

  ‘Trade ingots?’

  Hanck nodded.

  ‘I’ve never seen one.’

  Hanck took a gold ingot out of his inside pocket. ‘With two of these you could eat and drink until – ’ ‘Until I die,’ said the old man. ‘Undoubtedly. Undoubtedly.’

  ‘Or move somewhere else.’

  ‘Move . . .’ said the old man scornfully. That would never come into consideration. But to be able to eat and drink him-self to death . . . Now that would be something.

  They shook hands on the deal, and a short time later Hanck returned with transport. He carried out the cases, two at a time, and loaded them onto the flatbed. Each machine weighed five kilos. They would add up to three tons in all.

  He’d carried about half of them out when he saw Rachel come walking across the now sun-scorched field. She walked slowly, in a manner that he at first perceived as shy, rather tentative.

  ‘Is he going to move?’ she asked.

  Hanck stopped, looked at her, tried to understand why she was smiling. ‘No,’ he said. ‘We’ve made a deal.’

  Rachel nodded. She probably had an ambiguous attitude towards typewriters. ‘Your work,’ she said, and pointed to the bulge of her belly.

  Hanck paused, hot and sweaty and feeling strangely distracted. As if all the weight he was dealing with had somehow lifted a burden from his mind. It took him a moment to comprehend what she had just said. He stood still, holding a heavy case in each hand.

  ‘My work?’ Now he saw it: she was pregnant. Either she was pleased and happy about her condition, or else her smile meant that she was uncertain about how he would take the news.

  And she had every reason to be wary. They hardly knew each other, after all.

  ‘They say that it’s going to be a boy,’ she said. ‘They can tell by looking at my belly.’

  Hanck hadn’t yet
recovered enough to load the cases he was holding, much less set them down on the ground. He stood there with one in each hand and looked at this woman who said that she was expecting his child. A son.

  ‘He . . . he . . .’ stammered Hanck. ‘He’s going to be a chef . . .’

  ‘I see,’ said Rachel. Now she gave him a different kind of smile. Maybe she was relieved that he had accepted it so quickly and was already envisioning the future. ‘Well, why not?’

  ‘My mother . . .’ said Hanck. ‘She died. Recently. Those were her last words. “He’s going to be a chef.” I . . . I didn’t understand. I’ve been thinking so much about . . . about . . .’ He should have said ‘you’, but he didn’t. He said, ‘I’ve been thinking so much about it.’

  ‘I see,’ she said. ‘Are you . . . ?’

  ‘No,’ said Hanck. ‘Actually not. Actually not at all. I’m sure it’s nothing but superstition, or . . .’ He gave her a look that was tentative, almost entreating. He didn’t want to put up any obstacles, but he would, no matter what he said.

  ‘My maternal grandmother said: “Rosebud . . .” and we all thought that we were going to see a rose somewhere,’ said Rachel. ‘We went around looking for it. But then someone said that it was an old story. About an old man who died and said “Rosebud” and no one could understand why.’

  ‘It was a sledge,’ said Hanck.

  Rachel gave him a look of incomprehension. Her smile was gone.

  ‘Kids used to ride on them,’ said Hanck, ‘down hills.’

  ‘I see,’ she said. ‘A cart.’

  ‘No,’ said Hanck. ‘It didn’t have wheels. They rode on the snow. Slid on it.’ He had his hands full and had to gesture with his head to illustrate.

  ‘Hmm . . .’ she said, and Hanck assumed that she was unable to envision it very clearly. He’d had only a vague notion about the phenomenon himself until he was leafing through an old book with pictures of that substance called snow.

  But Rachel nodded nevertheless, once again smiling and seeming to weigh what he had said, as if quite by surprise she had come into possession of valuable information. Or maybe it meant that it had once again been confirmed to her that occasionally life was incomprehensible. Not that God’s work was incomprehensible, but rather His plans were. That which lay ahead, that which was called the future.

  By all accounts their future was a son, and he already existed but had not yet shown his face. And because that fact was incomprehensible, it had made a man and a woman think about other incomprehensible things. As if, when faced with what was least comprehensible of all, they would turn to something else, something that could be touched, slid upon, shaped into balls and tossed at each other. Something that had once existed but had now disappeared, something that belonged to nature. Just like themselves.

  Only now did Hanck realise that he was standing there holding two heavy cases in his hands. He heaved the load onto the flatbed truck. Rachel watched. She said, ‘Well, well,’ in a tone as if she were concluding or finishing something. ‘So at least we know that much. He’s going to be a chef.’

  ‘Do you want – ?’ He stopped himself but noticed that she reacted at once, as if paying close attention, as if they both realised that they were not facing something that was over. On the contrary, they had touched on something that was extremely unfinished. ‘Do you want . . . ?’ he repeated but came to a halt once again. What had occurred to him may have seemed awkward, an intimation that might be perceived as presumptuous or simply as something generally askew in their world. ‘Do you want me to . . . ? For us to – ?’

  Hanck was interrupted by the old man coming out the door. He paid no attention to them. He took up position a few metres away and had a pee. Rachel watched.

  She said, ‘I saw you. Here. The first time. And the time before this.’

  He said, ‘I don’t know what I was thinking.’

  ‘You had your hat in your hand.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘and I went into the old man’s house without wearing gloves or a mask.’

  In silence they pondered such recklessness. It should have meant something. She should have understood as much, if that was what she wanted.

  ‘You knew nothing about me,’ she said. ‘Maybe you enjoy taking risks.’

  ‘What about you?’ he said. ‘What did you know about me?’

  ‘Enough,’ she said. ‘And they agreed . . .’ She tipped her head towards the field, at the other side where her family was standing behind the curtains, staring. Watching and giving their blessing. Or perhaps they were completely indifferent, eyeing this encounter with the same interest that they would give to an empty cardboard box that the wind had blown across the field on a blustery day. It meant nothing at all, but with the proper attitude, it might offer a moment’s diversion.

  For Hanck, prey to a flood of emotions that were incomprehensible and maybe even undesirable, it was a relief to tackle the mechanisms of an old typewriter.

  He turned one of the two rooms that faced the street into a workshop. Along the walls stood shelves, heavy-duty warehouse shelves, holding the machines in their cases, sorted and arranged into various categories, by series, manufacturer and quality.

  Next to the window stood a solid workbench with tools neatly lined up, easily accessible. There were screwdrivers for every imaginable size of flathead screw, pliers, small wrenches, brushes for cleaning, various solvents, oils and everything else that was needed.

  Hanck soon learned the basics of the mechanism, and by the time the rainy season set in he was making use of the skills that he had acquired as a child for keeping moisture out of his mother’s wig workshop. By Christmas of that year, he had delivered four first-class machines to the shopkeeper. He’d become a valued supplier.

  They had discovered one another. Hanck was reticent about his assets, always expressing himself rather vaguely, if not downright evasively, regarding the prospects for future deliveries. The shopkeeper accepted this uncertainty, deciding that Hanck was a wizard who was able to conjure up typewriters, which is what he told his customers. And that, in turn, had a favourable effect on the prices he charged.

  Hanck thrived in his new life. He set his own schedule, delivering a machine now and then, taking in others that he inspected and then repaired if necessary, and earning good money. He was frugal with his rations, and had everything he needed. Considering what he knew about life, he couldn’t complain.

  One day he was sitting under the glow of the lamp with a machine that had to be adjusted to suit the wishes of a customer. The shopkeeper didn’t like it when Hanck tampered with the typewriters, swapping out keys and modifying the keyboard so that it would satisfy a number of linguistic demands. But Hanck had no trouble with doing that. The machines were meant to be functional and put to use. It was of no consequence what he might think of how they were used.

  He sat there filing off the dots and circles above the å, ä and ö – a change that in the eyes of the shopkeeper constituted a ‘tremendous assault’ or an ‘utter violation’. Choose either one. Hanck considered it a reasonable measure, an acceptable alteration. He could easily return the machine to its original condition.

  Hanck would end up remembering this incident well, in every detail, because he himself was facing a change that would put this momentary tampering with an old typewriter in its proper light. But the change he faced was irrevocable. His entire existence was about to be altered in a way that happens only a few times in a person’s life.

  ‘I sat there filing the capital Ö,’ he might say later. ‘The Ö that was once part of the Swedish word for eagle – örn – which was the name of my paternal great-grandfather. Like a proud bird. It had disappeared, taking the two dots with it.’ It was the sort of thing that no longer concerned a single living soul, except obsoletes like the shopkeeper, who insisted on keeping the dots and the circles.

  Hanck was sitting there filing away at those dots when someone knocked on the door. He put down his tool and went to ope
n up, putting on the serious expression with which he preferred to greet his customers, an expression warning that whatever their problem might be, it was in principle unsolvable.

  In the stairwell stood two men wearing lavender overalls. Communicators. It could mean several things – that he was about to receive the news that someone was dead, or that he was going to be asked to identify someone who had recently been found dead.

  Naturally, Hanck was surprised, and he looked at the two men with an expression that they presumably saw every day – a look filled with terror, distaste, aversion. Their appearance was a good match, weighted down as they were with solemnity, worn out in the way that people get when they’ve gone beyond even cynicism and rough jargon to a dogged pleading.

  ‘Hanck Orn?’ said one of them. He was holding a clipboard with a well-thumbed, greasy, frayed piece of paper. They had to use every scrap until it was completely covered, erased clean and filled up again on both sides, until it was impossible to erase again.

  ‘Yes?’ said Hanck. ‘What’s this about?’

  The man who had asked his name checked the paper. ‘Your code?’

  Hanck rattled off the numbers.

  ‘You need to come with us.’

  ‘Why?’

  At first he received only a weary look in reply. Then the other man said, ‘It’s urgent.’

  Hanck knew that he had to obey these men. It was the law, probably one of the few laws that no one had ever managed to break.

  Outside the front entrance stood a delivery van painted the same lavender colour as the men’s overalls. It was not an ambulance for emergency transports, but rather a hearse. It smelled of cadavers.

  They drove north, making a wide arc around the City Under the Roof, heading out through the suburbs until the buildings grew sparser and the houses were of a different style. Characteristic of the northern slums there were huge complexes constructed of rusty steel and cracked cement. There were long, flat façades with fewer windows, old industrial areas that had been put to new use, first as temporary lodgings and later as permanent residences, where the ownership was unclear and the maintenance neglected. These were neighbourhoods where no one wanted to be seen out-doors, not even in daylight, not even the people who actually lived there. Outside every door stood a lavender delivery van, waiting.