The Hurricane Party

by Klas Ostergren

  Hanck hesitated.

  ‘How about winter?’

  ‘Snow.’ His voice sounded dejected.

  Bora shook her head. ‘You’ve never experienced the four seasons. Heard the sound of birds singing and brooks murmuring in the spring, trembled at the thunder on a summer day, tramped through frost-bitten leaves in the autumn, been snowed-in and freezing in winter.’

  ‘No. So what?’

  ‘That’s their world,’ she said. ‘Blood in the brooks, blood in the dew, blood in the frost and blood in the snow.’

  ‘I’ve seen blood,’ he said. ‘Plenty of it.’

  ‘But you’ve never seen them.’

  ‘No,’ he acknowledged. ‘I’ve never seen any of them.’

  ‘Their style. You may have seen a black limousine with tinted windows rush past one evening.’

  ‘That’s happened.’

  ‘But you’ve never sat inside. Slid around in a new suit on a leather-covered seat . . .’

  ‘Where are you going with all this?’

  ‘You’re the one who wants to go somewhere. You need to know something about your enemy. How he moves, where he moves.’

  ‘I know what he did,’ said Hanck. ‘That’s enough.’

  ‘You don’t even know what he looks like. If you ever did run into Loki, he’d make you forget all your hatred and all your despair in two seconds flat. He’d turn your whole world upside down, and then you’d sit there drinking and offering toasts like old brothers.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘You know nothing about him. Or his style.’

  Hanck paused to think for a moment. Touched the piece of brick in his pocket. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I give in. I can’t . . .

  I can’t think very clearly in here.’

  ‘Of course not,’ she said. ‘Ask for a treatment.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I can come to you as anyone you please. Just tell me the kind that you like.’

  ‘Stop it.’

  ‘I haven’t had a customer in years. My sisters would stop complaining about me. It’s a fair offer.’

  Hanck couldn’t understand her reasoning. He could see a connection, in the same way you might see a train come clattering in the distance – you may know where it’s coming from and where it’s going, but other than that, it has nothing to do with you.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, in spite of everything. He had to make some small attempt. ‘Then come as you are.’

  ‘Reserve the library,’ she said. ‘For midnight.’

  ‘The library?’ he said. ‘Books have no shame.’

  ‘That’s exactly the reason.’

  On his way to the dining room, he stopped in the lobby to make the reservation. Kolga was standing behind the front desk. Hanck said, ‘Regarding this evening, I’ve made up my mind . . .’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ said Kolga. She smiled suggestively.

  ‘I’d like Bora to show me the library.’

  The cold woman’s expression turned pensive. ‘The library . . . with Bora. That’s quite . . . advanced.’ She let her glance travel up and down, as if to inspect what she could see of him, again with that suggestive smile. It was as if he’d just ordered the most shameless thing that the house had to offer. ‘Yes, well . . .’ It almost sounded like a sigh.

  ‘Is there a problem?’

  ‘Not at all. As long as you’re up to it. It’s not something that we recommend on the first visit.’ She gave him a broad but ice-cold smile.

  ‘Do I have a table in the dining room?’

  ‘You can sit wherever you like.’

  He was alone in the dining room. There were items on the menu that he’d never heard of before, along with others that he hadn’t tasted in years. He ordered a full dinner, served to him in a most cordial and accommodating way by sisters in various guises but all with the same style.

  He drank vodka and beer and took another ‘Autobahn’, just to be on the safe side. He needed it, because he had to keep a poker face. He was deep in enemy territory. Anything at all might happen, the whole set-up could open up and then snap shut like a huge trap, and that would be it for him.

  He ordered coffee and more drinks. It was Kolga who served him this time. She paused for a moment at his table to chat. Without the fingernails. She had switched to a different, less formal tone. She asked about his job, where he lived, whether he was married and had children.

  Hanck answered as best he could without revealing too much. He had the impression that she already knew everything, that she just wanted to put his feeble imagination to the test and see how he handled the situation.

  She had the professional service person’s way of touching on certain matters that were private and even intimate with an ease that could make the guest feel insecure. Hanck could have said with complete honesty that he was sitting there with a loaded revolver in his pocket, prepared at any moment to blow the head off anyone who happened to fit the vague image he had of a mortal enemy. And she would have merely smiled at him, tilting her head to one side, and said: ‘Is that right?’ and ‘Well, of course.’

  But there was also another possibility, which became more and more plausible the more he drank: that the cold woman he had encountered before was her professional side, while this one was more personal. If she knew how everything stood and still showed him such friendliness, it might be because she and her sisters basically wished him well, that they shared his disgust. The kindness and concern that he thought he was seeing might be because they saw him as a benefactor, a man who defied all the nasty slander, someone who didn’t follow the mainstream, someone who went his own way.

  He had the same impression of the innkeeper. Late that evening the inkeeper made his own grand tour through the room. He needed no introduction; only a legendary old innkeeper could move through an empty and desolate salon and make it look as if he had to weave his way through a swarm of waiters, servers, buffet attendants and busboys, not to mention all the prominent guests he saw crowded around the tables, greeting them with a discreet nod, a small, secretive smile, perhaps also a glance of approval if the guest were there with a new female companion – all of them guests who had died long ago, who had first lent splendour to the place and later enjoyed it themselves; people who never paid, who obtained everything on credit, who behaved badly, quarrelling and flailing about, until finally, in the best of cases, they fired a shot into their temple, leaving unpaid bills behind. But now they were sitting there again, still, in the inner mind of the innkeeper, forcing him to don an expression of goodwill on his swollen, ruddy visage, a grimace which, as soon as it faded, looked like a scream of the utmost horror.

  The library more than matched Hanck’s expectations. It was housed in a salon with panelled walls. Heavy drapes hung in front of the leaded windows, and on the floor was a dark green carpet that was the same colour as the glass shades of the brass lamps. It was a complete branch of the Old Memory, filled with collected knowledge from various fields. There were even stuffed small animals and fish, pairs of mounted antlers and dried insects and butterflies affixed to boards on the walls.

  On the shelves were books with pale leather bindings, but the light was dim at midnight, and Hanck couldn’t read the titles. In the middle of the room, in front of the fireplace, stood a dark red leather sofa and a couple of armchairs, as well as an oval table with a marble top. On the table was a tray with vodka and two glasses.

  Hanck sat down in one of the armchairs, poured himself a drink from the bottle, and took a sip. By the time he set down the empty glass, Bora came in, promptly locking the door behind her. She had on a grey suit, her hair was pulled back into a knot at the nape of her neck and she wore glasses. Hanck assumed that she was supposed to represent a ‘horny conveyor of knowledge’, a category that he’d seen described somewhere.

  ‘High as a kite?’

  ‘More or less.’

  ‘Okey-dokey.’

  Before sitting down on the sofa, she went over to the
fireplace, checked the burning wood and stirred the embers with a poker, in a confident and accustomed manner, the way that you do only with a fire that you’ve made yourself and regard as your own.

  Bora sat down on the sofa facing Hanck, crossed her legs and pulled her skirt down over her knees. She poured herself a glass of vodka, and then sat holding the glass as she stared into the fire. Hanck looked at her, silently, with a newly aroused feeling of anticipation. He turned in his chair, and then he too stared at the fire.

  A long time passed in that manner. As if she were waiting for something to appear or for something that might disappear with the smoke up the chimney. Finally she spoke. Her voice sounded different, slightly deeper, less resonant, impersonal.

  ‘Everyone was there, that’s the sort of evening it was, the big night of the year, in Egir’s hall, glittering with gold. A gala evening for such prominent and legendary guests that no words of praise are worthy of them. They are unapproachable, beyond all description. If you’ve ever stood before them and watched them arrive, and then later you’re asked to recount to someone what you saw, you will immediately doubt your own ability, question the means at your disposal . . .’

  She described this glittering retinue, reflected in the gleam from gold and precious gems in tiaras, from earrings, teeth, rings and plunging décolletages. Njord and Skadi were ‘seldom seen near each other’, their Frej and Freja arrived with Gerd and Od, respectively; the one-handed ‘Tyr the Adventurer’; the ‘well-read’ Bragi with his ‘eternally young Idun’; Vidar the Silent and Heimdall the fair-haired; Gefion the maiden, and Sif, on her own since her spouse, as usual, was away on business; and there came Loki, ‘as always clad in something new’. The entourage included a large contingent of attendants with chauffeurs and underlings who stood with their legs astride, watching every move. Last of all, wearing a blue paletot and a black patch over one eye, came Odin with his wolves and ravens, Our Lord, paterfamilias, accompanied by his wife Frigg, tested and wise.

  It started out so well. Everyone kissed each other on the cheek, said friendly things to each other, praised one person’s jewellery and another person’s boat. Everyone behaved themselves. ‘But they all knew of the prevailing bad mood. They had accumulated so much shit. The situation was downright explosive. Anything at all might happen, and if anyone lost his temper they might tear the whole place apart . . .’

  The Old Man could be angry and cross for reasons that he kept to himself. He could sit in a corner and sulk over a glass of white wine and turn any evening into a torment. But on this night he was in good spirits. He sampled both the drink and the food, like a regular fellow.

  The tables were set. The staff bustled about. The Old Man expressed his satisfaction with all the arrangements, graciously but also a bit sharply. He knew that the innkeeper had disapproved of the whole event from the very start, but that he felt under pressure from the Clan to hold this celebration year after year. And he had been rewarded for it.

  Everyone sat down at the tables, and the staff bustled about even more. When the platters were empty more were brought in, appearing as if of their own volition. Glasses and plates seemed to sail through the air, no one needed to ask for anything, new dishes were suddenly there in the middle of the table, glasses were filled and set in the hands of those who were thirsty.

  The tense atmosphere grew lighter. Hands began groping freely here and there under the tablecloth, and feet, which only the dogs could see, slipped off their shoes and crept up other people’s legs, landing in crotches, coaxing with their toes, shooed away with a hand belonging to someone with a blustering face, grinning foolishly, high above.

  What one of the ravens overheard in the Ladies’ matched what the other learned in the Gents’. Everything ended up in the ears of the Old Man.

  ‘Freja wants to sleep with her brother.’

  ‘Frej wants to sleep with his sister.’

  ‘Skadi says no to the coast.’

  ‘Njord says no to the forest.’

  ‘Sif has slept with Loki.’

  ‘Loki isn’t feeling well.’

  Disturbing news perhaps, but nothing new. The Old Man didn’t let all the information trouble him, not yet. He wouldn’t intervene; they all deserved a celebration. It had been a good season, the warehouses were full, the supplies were bountiful, the money flowed. So it was a matter of maintaining the concord and peace.

  He raised his glass for a toast, to the host of the inn and his nine daughters, to the excellent staff, especially the chefs. Everyone joined in. They drank toasts, applauded, emptied their glasses and flung them away. Those goblets that were caught before they struck the ground were refilled, set on the table, spilled, toppled, emptied onto the trousers of one person or into the plunging neckline of another. People laughed and screamed. They were intent on drinking and fornicating all night long.

  ‘Exactly as usual, year in and year out. Always the same thing, the same commotion. Repetitions and reiterations. A magic that was not to be broken even though everyone knew that someday it would have to come to an end.’

  She wanted to emphasise that her father had tried to get out of it. They had demanded fresh beer in honour of the day, and he had said that he didn’t have the resources to brew beer in such quantities. Which happened to be true, but they refused to let that stop them.

  ‘That was at the beginning of time,’ as she said. Tyr the One-Handed knew where a vat could be found that was big enough for the task. His mother had one in her home, ‘out there’, far away in hostile territory.

  Would she voluntarily let it go?

  No, but with a bit of cunning they would be able to wrest it away from her.

  So they went out there in Thor’s wagon. It moved quite slowly; one of the goats was lame. They stopped to rest at a farm and left the wagon there to let the goat recover.

  They could just as easily continue on foot. They were out in the wild. Endless forests soon spread out in all directions, dark refuges for dark forces, a menacing chaos beyond all honour and integrity.

  But that was of no concern if you were young and the sun was glittering on an unspoiled lake, and the forest was fragrant with mushrooms, buzzing with life and animals that rushed about bringing in supplies.

  You stand on a rocky hill where the canopy of pines and spruce trees opens to the blue sky, and you see a flock of birds up there slowing down, dispersing, regrouping into the shape of a sharply carved arrow heading south.

  In the shiny centre of a bog stands a pair of cranes, peering at the surrounding strip of land, the pines and birches, lavender heather and golden cloudberries.

  Then cones crackle in the sun, ants cross a stretch of ground, a slug pauses motionless in the moss on a rock.

  A woodpecker taps on a tree trunk, an eagle shrieks loudly above everything else, a desolate sound.

  They wandered through all that wilderness until the days grew shorter, the sun paler, and the leaves on the trees lost their fresh green colour and faded, turning yellow, red, brown.

  ‘You have to see all of this,’ she said, ‘in order to understand the rest.’

  ‘I see it,’ said Hanck. ‘I see it.’

  They arrived at the place where Tyr’s mother lived, a blonde, strong and stately woman. She in turn kept her own mother in the house, an old crone with nine hundred heads, terrifying to look at and even worse to hear.

  No wonder that the master of the house – Hymer was his name – was surly and cross, with a mother-in-law like that so close at hand. Whenever her ears were cold he had to ransack a whole forest for game. Nine hundred caps had to be sewn from the pelts of bears and beavers, mink and ermine, foxes and squirrels. When she was hungry there were nine hundred mouths to feed. If she still wasn’t satisfied, and it must be assumed that she never was, he had to face the criticism of an entire league.

  Whether the daughter was worth all this trouble only Hymer could say. Generally speaking he was savage and violent, flinging about objects and curses. Ac
cording to hearsay, he was capable of crushing anything at all with a mere glance. But there was a woman even for someone like Hymer.

  Tyr’s mother was of course glad to see her son. She immediately took out what there was in the larder, making an extra effort because he’d brought along such a fine and famous comrade: Thor, the protector of humans, the slayer of beasts; not a great conversationalist, but a man of action.

  After the youths had eaten they found themselves barricaded behind an array of household utensils, jars, buckets, pans and wash tubs. No one knew how Hymer might react to a surprise visit. What he would think of Thor could be surmised in advance. It was best to proceed cautiously.

  Then the fierce-tempered Hymer came home from the forest with icicles in his beard and a terrifying countenance. He far exceeded his reputation.

  No doubt all he wanted was to come inside where it was warm, to eat and drink, to have a go at his wife, and then fall asleep until spring, or until his mother-in-law started kicking up a row again.

  His wife fussed and fawned over him as much as she could, chirping a stifled ballad about her son Tyr and his comrade Thor, hinting that they might be . . . in fact they already had . . . and so on. The picture emerged, little by little, even for a worn-out and exhausted giant.

  He got up on top of the bin and looked all around, glaring, sniffing, putting two and two together. Finally he caught sight of a pillar behind which the guests were huddled. The stone burst apart under the giant’s gaze. Out of the fragments and junk crept the youths; they brushed off the dust and dirt, bowed and uttered a greeting, standing there empty-handed.

  No matter what sort of gifts they might have brought for Hymer, he would have been just as ill-tempered. Right now, to top it all off, he was hungry.

  Three bulls were slaughtered, and Thor ate two of them all by himself. The host found him gluttonous and decided that from now on the guests would have to survive on whatever they caught themselves.

  The next day they went out in the boat with the gear they would need to go fishing. Thor had brought along his own bait. He had been out in the woods, wrung the neck of a bull and secretly dragged the carcass aboard.