Mulle gave an assured nod. I didn’t get what he meant by “darkie”; Super-Berra did have dark hair and a buzz cut, but he wasn’t black.
He was silent. Seemed calm and collected, and when everyone was shielded from view by the tent, he handed his striped blazer to one of the handball players, ceremoniously rolled up his sleeves, got into position, and waited. Legs planted far apart, his guard up, and a smirk on his face. His knees were slightly bent and he was swaying, gently rocking from side to side, fists loose. I noticed I was holding my breath and Edmund was pressed up against me, grinding his teeth from all the anticipation. Other than the two gangs, Edmund and I were the only onlookers; the arena for the fight had been carefully chosen, no doubt about it. I shut my eyes and took a deep breath. The night air was full of summer and schnapps. I wondered where Ewa Kaludis was right then. “Twilight Time” spilled from the dance floor, it was getting late.
And then Mulle’s buddies sent him on his way. He let out an impressive roar—“Aaarrgh!”—tucked his head, and charged at Super-Berra. Even in the heat of the moment, I knew this was a terrible tactic. All Berra needed to do was move aside—a “sidestep” as it’s called in boxing—use Mulle’s own momentum against him, and strike.
And that’s exactly what he did, but he didn’t stop there. The red-faced Mulle doubled over like a clubbed ox after that first punch, then Berra lifted him up by the collar and walloped him three or four more times before turning him around and bashing his head into the ground, twice, with all his might.
My stomach lurched each time Mulle’s head made impact, and when it was done, a hush had fallen over the fighters. Mulle’s buddies and the handball players were dumbstruck, and when Super-Berra straightened up and gestured for his blazer, Atle Eriksson handed it over without a word. Then they turned their backs on Mulle and walked off.
Solemnly. Like after a funeral or something. Edmund and I slunk away. I felt ashamed for some reason and Edmund did too, I guess, because neither of us said a word until we were out of the park and unlocking our bikes.
“That was grim,” Edmund said, and I thought I heard his voice tremble.
“And unfair,” I said. “Damned unfair. You don’t hit a man when he’s down.”
As we biked home through the woods, I wondered where Ewa Kaludis had been during the fight and if being like Berra Albertsson was how you won over a woman like her.
I remember crying quietly as we trundled through the mild June night.
Yes, it was the middle of the night, the rear wheel of Edmund’s bike chirring and me crying quietly without knowing why.
-
8
On Sunday, my dad came to visit. He didn’t stay long because he’d got a lift from Ivar Bäck, who was helping someone in Sjölycke with their TV antenna.
We sat outside on the lawn for an hour, ate the watery strawberries he’d brought with him, and talked, but not much. Things with my mother could have been worse, my father said. She was going in for another series of tests. It would take a few weeks. A month, maybe.
And then we’d see.
Only time would tell.
Henry offered to drive our father home in Killer on his way into town later that evening, but our dad just shook his head.
“I’ll go with Bäck,” he said. “No fuss that way.”
Afterward, Edmund asked what he meant by that. Why it would be less fuss going with Bäck.
I shrugged.
“He thinks Henry drives like a madman,” I said. “He can barely stand being in a car with him.”
When my father was on his way, I noticed he hadn’t asked about Emmy Kaskel. Maybe Henry had told him after all.
“Buddy,” said Edmund when he’d finished reading Colonel Darkin and the Golden Ewes. “This is really something. You’re going to be a millionaire.”
I’d finished Colonel Darkin and the Golden Ewes before we went out to Gennesaret, and I’d brought it with me, along with a new notebook. For a rainy day, or if the spirit moved me.
The spirit moved me, but it was impossible to keep the comic-drawing a secret from Edmund. After some deliberation, I’d left the notebook out with the other books half by chance, and it wasn’t long before Edmund spotted it. And it wasn’t much longer before he read it.
“It’s not really any good,” I said. “No need to pretend.”
“Not any good!” Edmund said. “It’s the best damn thing I’ve seen since Grandma got her tits caught in the mangler!”
This was a saying from Norrland, and was meant to convey the highest praise and appreciation. I couldn’t contain my joy.
“Oh,” I said. “Shit on you, you squirt.”
This was another saying from Norrland.
The spirit that moved me to draw definitely had something to do with what happened on Saturday night in Lacka Park. I needed to draw and tell a story about a woman like Ewa Kaludis; it was like an ache in me. Maybe I wanted to get a few of my own punches in—but in a cleaner way than in the fight I’d witnessed between Super-Berra and red-faced Mulle. The day after, we’d started to discuss how Mulle might be doing, but both Edmund and I got the chills when we thought about what his face must look like now. Not to mention how his head must be feeling.
In any case, there were a few rain showers on Sunday evening, and while Edmund was on his bed trying to write a letter to his mother in Vissingsberg, I was on mine, drawing the first panels of Colonel Darkin and the Mysterious Heiress.
I remember thinking what a pleasant evening it was.
The deeper into summer we got, the more my brother Henry was consumed with his existential novel. He was nigh on secretive about it. He often slept long into the day, got up and took a dip in the lake, and sat down by the typewriter with coffee and a cigarette. Preferably out on the lawn by the wobbly table, weather permitting. Which it did, for the most part. When the question of supper arose, he almost always talked his way out of kitchen duty and tossed Edmund and me five or ten kronor to take care of it: secure provisions, cook, and do the dishes.
It was no skin off our backs. Though money was tight, our basic needs were met, and it was nice to be able to buy an ice cream now and again. At Laxman’s or by Fläskhällen. Or a few loose cigarettes; we couldn’t always be pilfering them from Henry, even if he probably never would have noticed.
After dinner Henry would disappear in Killer, and at least two out of three evenings Edmund and I would be in bed before he returned. Sometimes I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of the Facit’s clatter and the tape deck playing Eddie Cochran. The Drifters. Elvis Presley. He’d recorded “Wooden Heart” on several places on the tape. When the music ended, the birds singing in the bushes under the window took over. Sometimes I asked Henry how it was going with his book, but he never felt like talking about it. “It’s going,” he’d say and take a drag from one of his eternal Luckys.
It’s going.
In a low-key sort of way, I was curious about what he was writing, but he never left any papers out and I didn’t want to ask him more than once. One night, just after he’d driven away in Killer, I happened to catch sight of a sheet still in the machine on the desk. There were just a few lines on it; gingerly, I sat down on the chair and turned the roller up a few notches so it would be easier to read.
I must have read the text five or six times. Maybe because I thought it was good, but also because it was so unexpected. Unexpected and eerie:
rushes him from behind, stopping at just the right distance. A step forward across the gravel, no more than one, hand tightly gripping the shaft, and then the brief fatal blow. When steel meets skull the sound that is born is mute. The inverse of a sound, audible because it is more silent than silence, and when the heavy body meets the earth the thick summer night smiles wryly; everything slips into everything else and
He’d stopped there. I twisted the roller ba
ck, feeling like a thief in the night. As Benny’s mother would say.
Cancer-Treblinka-Love-Fuck-Death, I thought. What sort of book are you writing, brother?
It took a few days to plan our night raid on Karlesson’s shop, and on Thursday, the day before Midsummer’s Eve, we did the deed. Henry had apparently decided to stay home that night, but we said we had business to attend to in the evening and shortly after nine we were on our way. Henry didn’t seem to care.
“If you get up to no good, make sure you don’t get caught,” he said without looking up from his typewriter.
We took four apple juices and a baguette as provisions, and just over ten kronor, so we could each buy a hot-dog special at Törner’s on the square before he closed at eleven.
At first all went as planned. It was a blustery night; a headwind was charging over the plain, but we pulled into the square in Kumla around quarter to eleven. Rain was in the air and there was barely a soul on the street. After we’d eaten our sausages and drained our apple juices, Törner sputtered home in his food truck and we searched for spoons. After we’d combed the square we carried on to the trash cans outside Pressbyrån by the station and around the other hot-dog stand in town: Herman’s by the apartment buildings. By midnight we thought we had enough: fifty-three pieces. If you could expect about three gumballs and one plastic deal per twist, it would all add up to one hundred and fifty balls and fifty-three plastic deals.
But we couldn’t possibly manage to chew all that gum and there probably wasn’t more than that in Karlesson’s dispenser anyway. Cautiously, we pedaled the last two hundred meters south along Mossbanegatan. Nothing crossed out path. Not even a cat. It started drizzling. We were looking forward to working undisturbed during the small hours, no question. I was buzzing with anticipation, and the excitement made Edmund giddy. We braked in front of the slumbering kiosk.
There were two handwritten notes on the empty glass container. On one it said “Broken,” on the other “Not in servis.” Karlesson wasn’t known for his spelling.
I stared at the dispenser for a few seconds. Then I saw red. I wasn’t normally one to lose my cool, but I couldn’t get a handle on my rage.
“Damn fucking Cunt-Karlesson!” I screamed, and then I kicked the iron pole that the glass jar was mounted on as hard as I could.
I was only wearing flimsy blue sneakers and the pain shooting from the now broken toe was so intense I thought I was going to faint.
“Calm down,” Edmund said. “You’ll wake the whole town, you ape.”
I moaned and slid down the wall of the kiosk.
“Aw, hell, I think I broke a toe,” I whined. “How the hell could the damned dispenser be broken tonight of all nights? It hasn’t been broken in three years.”
“Does it hurt?” Edmund wondered.
“Like all hell,” I said through clenched teeth.
But the first wave of bright white pain was already receding. I pulled off my shoe and tried to wiggle my toes. It didn’t go well.
“God’s finger,” said Edmund after watching my wiggling for a moment.
“What?” I said.
“The fact that the dispenser is kaput,” said Edmund. “It must mean that we weren’t supposed to raid it tonight. It wasn’t meant to be, you know. God’s finger. That’s what it’s called.”
I had a hard time being interested in anyone’s finger with my toe hurting so much, but I suspected Edmund had a point.
“Is there another dispenser in town?” he asked.
I thought about it.
“Not outside. They have one inside Svea’s, I think.”
“Hmm,” said Edmund. “What should we do?”
I tried to put my shoe back on. I couldn’t, so I shoved it in my backpack and opened an apple juice instead. Edmund sank down next to me and we each took a sip.
That’s when the police car showed up.
The black-and-white Amazon came to a stop right in front of us and the driver rolled down the window.
“What are you two up to?”
I was speechless, even more speechless than when I’d been face-to-face with Ewa Kaludis in Lacka Park. More speechless than a dead herring. Edmund got up.
“My friend hurt his foot,” he said. “We’re on our way home.”
“Is it serious?” asked the policeman.
“No, we can manage,” Edmund said.
“We’ll give you a ride if you need one.”
“Thank you so much,” Edmund said. “Maybe another time.”
I stood up to show that everything was indeed fine.
“All right,” said the policeman. “Hurry on home now, it’s late.”
And then they drove away. We hung back until their red taillights were out of sight. Then, Edmund said:
“See? God works in mysterious ways. Now tell me, is there another dispenser in Hallsberg?”
We made off with 166 balls, 45 rings, and 20-something invaluable plastic thingies from the chewing-gum dispenser by the train station kiosk at Hallsberg. It went smoothly; it was five past two according to the station clock by the time we were done and my toe didn’t hurt at all anymore. It was stiff and swollen and numb, but what the hell did that matter when you had a week’s worth of gum?
Edmund didn’t try to conquer Kleva that night. Instead, we walked all the way up the hill, which took a while on account of my broken toe. Over the next few days, I’d learn that it was much easier to ride a bike than it was to walk.
On the home stretch, from Åsbro and through the forest, it began to pour, and by the time we tossed our bikes aside in the parking area, we were beat. In addition to Killer and a few of the Lundins’ old motorbikes, a moped was parked up there. A red Puch. If I hadn’t been soaked-through and so tired, I might’ve recognized it.
When we reached the house, the rain stopped. The sun was on its way up and one of Henry’s ties was knotted around the flagpole.
-
9
On the afternoon of Midsummer’s Eve, both of our dads came out to visit for a few hours. Mr. Wester was full of summer cheer; in addition to herring and new potatoes he brought a bundle of blue and yellow paper flags and an accordion. The weather wasn’t bad; we ate at the table out on the lawn while he played us a few tunes. “The Rush of the Avesta Rapids,” “Afternoon at Möljaren,” and a couple more I didn’t recognize. As well as one of his own compositions called “For Signe.”
As he played it, tears welled in his eyes, and I was struck by the absence of women in our lives. “Eight-sixed,” as Karlesson would say when you wanted something he didn’t have in stock.
Five men sitting around celebrating Midsummer as best they could, and I tried to project myself into the future. What would it be like in ten years? Would my father and Edmund’s father be all alone then? Would Henry have settled down and had a family? And Edmund? That was hard to picture. Edmund with a wife and children! Four six-toed tiny Edmunds with broken glasses.
And me?
“What sadness,” Edmund’s dad said and put the accordion aside. “As with life, so with summer. It’s only just begun and suddenly it’s autumn. So sad.”
But then he laughed out loud and helped himself to more herring and potatoes.
“Truer words were never spoken,” said my father.
Henry sighed and lit a Lucky Strike.
They left us around five, our fathers; they’d only borrowed their colleague’s car for the afternoon and were both working the evening shift at the prison. Edmund’s dad suggested they pick nine kinds of flowers to put under their pillows, but my father was none too amused by the idea.
“We already know which women we’ll be dreaming of,” he said with a half-hearted smile. Then they waved goodbye and walked up to the parking spot.
Edmund and I had decided to check out Fläskhällen, where they usually celebra
ted Midsummer by raising a maypole, dancing, the whole kit and caboodle. He’d be damned, Edmund said, if Britt Laxman didn’t turn up at a place like that, and as soon as we were done with the dishes we climbed in the boat and rowed away. When we were out on the lake, Edmund said:
“Were you awake at all last night?”
“Awake?” I said. “What do you mean?”
“Well, maybe you heard something.”
“Heard what?”
Edmund stopped rowing.
“Your brother, of course. And that chick, whoever she is. They were going at it.”
“I see,” I said and tried to sound uninterested. “No, I was sleeping like a log.”
Edmund looked at me hesitantly and we didn’t speak for a while.
“Should we switch places?” I asked when we’d gone about halfway.
“No, no,” said Edmund. “You need to rest your toe.”
“My toe won’t be doing the rowing,” I said.
But Edmund didn’t let go of the oars. The music from Fläskhällen grew louder. I was resting on the stern thwart, running my hand through the water, trying to not think about what’d I’d missed out on in the night.
Or in the morning, which it must have been. We hadn’t gone to bed until after three and not a sound was coming from Henry’s room then.
I couldn’t really get my thoughts in order; while it was quite arousing to know that my brother might’ve been having sex with a girl right under our floorboards, it was disgraceful somehow, too. As if Edmund had unearthed an indecent family secret. As if I should feel ashamed of what Henry was up to. Of course thinking along these lines stunk, I’d be the first to admit that. If there was one thing in this world I envied it was the ability to find yourself a girl and get what you wanted from her. That was what life was all about, wasn’t it? Life and everything.
I slipped my whole arm into the water, trying as hard as I could to think about something else, but it was tough going, like I said. Edmund rowed along, carefree, and didn’t seem to be trying to think of anything else. To the contrary.
The Summer of Kim Novak Page 7