I regretted it all the way home to Idrottsgatan, but I didn’t go back to get it.
A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, I thought.
The weather was changeable, sun and clouds, on the Sunday as Edmund and I left town. And there was gentle headwind. As we pedaled through Hallsberg it started to rain and so we went into Lampa’s bakery outside the station and each had a Pommac and a cinnamon bun. Edmund tossed a krona into the jukebox. Drinking our Pommacs and staring out at the rain, we listened to “Cotton Fields” three times in a row. There were no other tunes in the jukebox worth spinning, Edmund said, and I took him at his word.
And “Cotton Fields” was one heckuva song.
I had warned Edmund about the Kleva hill, but that had only pumped him up to perform a grand feat on this, our first day of summer vacation.
“I’m going to do it all in one,” he said. “I’ll put fifty öre on it.”
“I’ll give you one krona,” I said because I knew the stakes. “You can’t do all of Kleva without a racing bike.”
Both Edmund and I had second-hand bicycles without any customizations other than baskets and bells. No banana seats. No gears. No brakes on the handlebars. At least Edmund’s was a Crescent. Mine was a pale green Ferm, and it was nothing to write home about.
“I’m going to give it my best shot,” declared Edmund as the hill came into view. “No further questions.”
He made it almost halfway up. And then we had to sit on the roadside for fifteen minutes until Edmund’s legs would start obeying him again. His face was pale when I came up to him and a light froth had formed at the corners of his mouth. He lay on his back at the edge of the ditch, legs shaking, his bike beside him.
“That’s one hell of a hill,” he groaned. “In Sveg where we used to live there was a real killer, but this one was much worse, I tell you. Careful, I was a little bit sick over there, don’t sit in it.”
He pointed and I lay down at a safe distance. I clasped my hands behind my neck and squinted up at the clouds crowding together and thinning out as they moved across the sky. Edmund was still breathing heavily and seemed to be having trouble speaking, so we lay like this for a while, just being there.
Being there on the roadside halfway up the Kleva hill. One Sunday in June 1962.
This would have been out of the question had this been Benny instead of Edmund; it would’ve been impossible to simply lie still. We would’ve been smoking and swearing up a storm, but with Edmund I could just be silent without it feeling strange at all.
Not this time—when he was about to faint from lactic acidosis—and not the next times either. Talking was optional; it was that simple. I couldn’t put my finger on why. Was it because his mother was an alcoholic or because they’d lived up in Norrland for so long? It didn’t matter. The point was that it could be this way; Edmund’s silence was a good thing and I decided to tell him this after I got to know him a little better.
In a few days or so.
Henry had snapped up more than sixteen cans of Ulla-Bella’s meatballs in brown gravy for a song at Laxman’s—the convenience store in Åsbro, a village that lay a few kilometers away from Gennesaret—and on that first night we ate two of them.
As well as potatoes with the skin on and lingonberries Henry had brought with him from town. We had a choice of milk or apple juice.
It tasted decent. Edmund and I did the washing up while Henry sat outside on one of the deck chairs with his coffee and cigarettes. Occasionally he wrote a few lines in the writing pad on his lap while nodding attentively to himself.
Later in the evening he clattered on the Facit at the desk in his room. I knew it was the sound of that book being born. The one about life. The real deal.
And I could tell that this was how it was going to be.
Ulla-Bella’s meatballs with potatoes and lingonberries.
Henry and the existential novel.
Edmund and I doing the dishes.
“This is the life,” said Edmund when we were almost finished. He sounded moved, and I agreed with him.
“It could have been worse,” I said.
But of course Henry had other ideas about how things should be. From the start, it was clear that he’d take the bedroom on the ground floor and that Edmund and I would sleep on the top floor. No discussion needed.
Neither did we need to discuss the fact that the three of us would have free run of the kitchen and the main room.
“Except,” said Henry.
“Except what?” I said.
“Except if I bring a girl back one of these nights. Then the ground floor will be off-limits.”
“You bet,” I said.
“A gentleman’s agreement,” said Edmund.
“You cook every other day, and same goes for me. Just dinner, and no baby portions. Same goes for the dishes. Got it?”
“Got it,” we said.
“We shop at Laxman’s. I’ll take Killer, but you can bike or take the boat.”
We nodded. No problem.
“The shitter,” Henry then said.
“The shitter,” we said and sighed.
“The less we shit, the better,” said Henry. “And no pissing in it, it’s damn bad manners. If we look after it, we can get away with emptying it every other week. You know the deal, Erik … dig a hole, take it out, empty it. I know, there are better jobs. Okay?”
We nodded in earnest.
“That’s it,” said Henry. “Let’s not make life unnecessarily complicated. It should be like a butterfly on a summer’s day.”
That last bit sounded good. I mulled it over.
Life should be like a butterfly on a summer’s day.
There was exactly one month to go before the Incident.
“So, about your toes,” I said to Edmund when we went to bed that first night. “What’s the deal, anyway?”
Our beds were arranged in the only way possible. Parallel and each along one wall, with the slanted ceiling so close you couldn’t sit up. About a meter apart, and a chest of drawers with our clothes inside and tons of comics and books on top. Edmund had sent five shoeboxes full of magazines and one bag of books with Henry.
“My toes?” said Edmund.
“People talk,” I said.
“Oh?” said Edmund and giggled. “You can barely see anything anymore.” He thrust his left foot out and wiggled his toes. “How many do you see?”
“I count five,” I said. “Pretty ugly.”
“Correct,” said Edmund. “But when I had six, they were even uglier, so they took one away.”
“Who?” I said.
“The doctors, of course,” said Edmund. “If you look at the index toe or whatever it’s called, you can see a small scar at its base. That’s where the extra one was.”
I got on my knees on the floor and examined Edmund’s dirty left foot. What he said was true. Close to the base of the big toe was a small, delicate scratch, thin as a pencil mark and not more than a centimeter long.
I nodded and crawled back into bed.
“Thanks,” I said. “I just wanted to see.”
“Sure thing,” said Edmund and drew his foot back under the blanket. “Do you want to see the other one, too?”
“No need,” I said. “Did it hurt?”
“What?”
“When they took them away?”
“Dunno,” said Edmund. “I was asleep. I mean, I was under. But it hurt a little after. I was only six.”
I nodded. How in the world had anyone found out that he’d had twelve toes, if the eleventh and twelfth had been removed that long ago? He hadn’t lived in our town for more than a year.
There was only one explanation. He must have said something.
At first I thought this was strange, but the longer I lay there thinking about it, the more
unsure I became.
If I’d had twelve toes would I want to tell people about them? Maybe. Maybe not.
I couldn’t decide which and it bothered me. I don’t know why.
Like almost every night that followed, we fell asleep to the sound of Henry’s typewriter and to the sound of Henry’s tape deck.
Elvis. The Shadows.
Buddy Holly, Little Richard, the Drifters.
And to the gentle scratching of tree branches against the window when the wind from the lake blew through the forest.
It felt good.
Almost too good, but then I was being selective about what I was letting in—only what was within reach when we fell asleep at night or when we woke up the next morning.
-
6
During those first few days at Gennesaret, we surveyed our kingdom.
By sea and by land. Möckeln was about four kilometers across, going by the map. When you were out there rowing the boat, measures of distance felt pointless. Wherever you were going, it would take the time that it took; the important thing was to conserve your energy so you didn’t wear out your arms before you got there. In the summertime, there was no need to rush; time was an ocean one thousand times the size of Möckeln, there for you to do with as you pleased.
By the lake, there were really only three destinations. Near its center was Tallön, a barren islet only a couple hundred square meters in size where the seagulls liked to shit. Really there wasn’t much there besides bird shit, rocks, and the ten knotted pines growing in a circle in the middle, which had given the place its name. Well, the name it had on the map. Edmund and I called it Shit Island—or Seagull Shit Island: that rolled off the tongue better. With a normal wind it took one rowing session to get there; by “session” we meant that it was too short a trip to bother taking turns at the oars.
It took just about as long to get to Fläskhällen, a small beach with a café and twenty meters of sandy shore at the north end of the lake. From Gennesaret you could also take the gravel path through the woods, and it was much faster by bike than by boat.
The third destination by boat was Laxman’s market in Åsbro. You expected it to take up half of an afternoon if you were doing the shopping—and of course you would be. If you were lucky, Britt would be in the shop. She was also a Laxman, was around our age, and known for being flighty. I wasn’t sure what that meant; nor did I know how flightiness found its expression, but she had glittering eyes and plump lips and Edmund said he got a boner just thinking about her.
I didn’t like it when Edmund discussed his feelings so plainly. Even if I would freely acknowledge that certain things also gave me an erection, it was a private matter. You didn’t just talk about it willy-nilly. Eventually Edmund got the picture. Edmund was good at understanding awkward and sensitive things.
Whatever the case, we agreed that the hours it took to row to Laxman’s and retrieve provisions were well spent. We drifted past the area crammed with summer cottages, and the docks, keeping an eye out for suitable girls, even if there rarely were any, and then carried on to Mörk River. It was a lovely river. The reeds were so tall and dense that in some places they were separated by only a meter-wide channel. It was best not to cross paths with a motorboat in this narrow, shimmering green passage—and that our trips down this river bore a striking similarity to what a slow and steady infiltration of the Amazon’s swampy jungle would be like, to Edmund and me there was no question.
After a few days, we reached an agreement with Henry that put us in charge of provisions. For the rest of the summer—before what happened happened—Edmund and I journeyed down the Mörk River every second or third day. We took turns rowing, of course. The one who was oarless rested on his belly in the bow of the boat and, with his senses on high alert, he kept an eye out for beaches and watched for the first sign of an approaching crocodile in the quaggy water.
Or a water snake. Or Indians.
Or thought about Britt Laxman.
“The Log Cabin on the Lingking River,” said Edmund on one of our first expeditions. “Have you read it?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think so.”
“Damn good book. It reminds me of this. It’s one helluva summer, Erik. Lordy, I hope it never ends.”
“Of course it won’t,” I said. “Toss me a licorice stick.”
“Aye aye, Captain,” said Edmund. “Do you think Miss Laxman would be interested in a boat trip some time?”
“White man talk crazy,” I said. “Laxman is really religious. I’m sure she’s chained up behind the counter.”
“Hmm,” said Edmund. “We’ll have to take firearms and a metal saw next time. I can tell by looking at her that she’d be willing to satisfy a young man’s every need.”
“Only time will tell,” I said. This was a sign that I wanted to change the subject, and right on cue Edmund started down another track. Like I said, that Edmund, he was perceptive. Uncommonly perceptive.
Between Gennesaret and the Sjölycke summer resort, there were two so-called real homesteads.
The first, the one nearest to us, was a red shanty down by the edge of the lake, overgrown with reeds, alders, raspberry thickets, and nettles.
And a lush, untamed forest, as my father would say with a knowing smile that I never fully understood.
When the house was in use, it was inhabited by one or more members of the Lundin family, but it was often empty, because the male Lundins were usually locked up for something or other and the female Lundins were whores or nude dancers or madams and were more at home in an urban environment.
The most famous Lundin was Evert, who had stabbed a cop within an inch of his life when he was only a boy, and later had moved on to bank robberies and arson, as well as racking up numerous assault charges. As far as I could tell, he preferred to assault young women, but if there were none to hand, beating up senior citizens or children would do. It was said that he was illiterate and never learned to tell left from right, no matter how hard he tried, and that said plenty about the Lundin family.
You could say we shared a parking spot with the Lundins, because neither their house nor Gennesaret could be reached by car. Instead, there was a small clearing up the road where cars, bicycles, or mopeds were parked. Then you had to walk down a rugged path for the last hundred meters. One hundred and fifty, if you wanted to get to the Lundins’. But in the other direction, of course. There was a big difference between the Gennesaret path and the Lundin path.
Just as with the narrow and wide ways in the Bible, my mother once explained.
But the Lundin path was both rugged and narrow, so it wasn’t really a direct comparison. The other so-called homestead was an old soldier’s cottage that lay on a bend off the gravel road that wound through the woods, set a good ways up from the lake. The Levis lived there, an old Jewish couple who had survived Treblinka and who didn’t interact with other people. Once a week, they rode down to the village on an old tandem bicycle with a cart that they loaded up at Laxman’s with supplies for the next seven days.
At the time I didn’t really know what it meant to have survived Treblinka, but I knew that it was so awful you didn’t talk about it.
Not my father, not my mother, or anyone else. It seemed as if it might’ve been better to have died in Treblinka than to have survived it. When I rode past the peaceful cottage in the woods, I wondered if this is what the world was like. Some things were so bad you shouldn’t even try to wrap your head around them. You had to just leave them be, allowing them to be unseen and silent, shielded by the words one used to described them nonetheless.
The world, its good and evil, was far bigger than we knew, that I understood, and this fact made me feel oddly calm yet terrified.
I don’t know why.
“What’s actually the matter with your mom?” Edmund asked one afternoon after we’d biked to Fläskh�
�llen and bought ice cream. We sat by the gray picnic table at the top of the sandy beach, which was empty because it was a cloudy day.
I bit the chocolate coating off my nutty ice-cream bar before I answered.
“Cancer,” I said.
“Oh,” said Edmund, as if he understood. I don’t think he did. Cancer was one of those words. Like Treblinka. Like death. Like fuck.
I didn’t want to talk about them. Love? I wondered. Does that belong?
And as we sat there licking our ice cream and looking at the graffiti on the table—all the hearts and the Cock and Cunt and Bengt-Göran 22/7/1958—I repeated the words in my head, the whole chant.
Cancer-Treblinka-Love-Fuck-Death.
All this existed in the world. Existed, existed, existed; and from then on—that whole summer—the chant came to mind occasionally, just those five words, like gibberish. No, not gibberish; more like a kind of incantation against something I understood, but didn’t want to understand, I think.
Something shameful, perhaps, that the whole world—not just me—was also ashamed of. A protective language.
Especially when we cycled past the Levis’, of course.
Cancer-Treblinka-Love-Fuck-Death.
I needed them, these words. Sometimes I wondered if it was a sign that I was losing my mind.
“Your brother Henry,” Edmund said one afternoon. “What’s he writing?”
“A book,” I said.
“A book?” said Edmund. “Like Introducing Rex Milligan?”
That book was part of the library he’d brought with him. We’d both read it a few times already, and agreed that it was a real treat.
Introducing Rex Milligan by Anthony Buckeridge.
“No,” I said. “It’s something else, I think. Something serious.”
Edmund wrinkled his forehead and took off his glasses. They were new for the summer and still in one piece, even though almost a whole week of vacation had already passed.
“There’s nothing wrong with being serious,” he said. “I’d probably feel more at home in the world if people were a bit more serious.”
The Summer of Kim Novak Page 5