The Summer of Kim Novak

by Haakan Nesser

  “No,” she said. “The police don’t know anything about Henry and me.”

  “Good,” Edmund said.

  “At least I think they don’t,” Ewa added. “But tell Henry something for me, will you? Give him a message?”

  “Of course,” I said. “What should we tell him?”

  She thought for a moment.

  “Tell him,” she said. “Tell him that everything will be fine and he shouldn’t worry on my behalf.”

  That didn’t seem to jive with how she was really feeling, but I still committed it to memory.

  Word for word, her message for Henry, my brother.

  Everything will be fine and you shouldn’t worry on Ewa Kaludis’s behalf.

  Before we left, she hugged both of us. Her bare arms and shoulders were hot from the sun and I had the pluck to hug her back properly. I took a long sniff of her skin, and a cloud of Ewa Kaludis unfurled in my head.

  It felt fantastic. The swelling cloud floated through me and held the Incident and Cancer-Treblinka and everything else unpleasant at bay for a few hours. Only when we were riding past Laxman’s did the cloud disappear. It was immediately replaced by a cold void in my gut.

  Like being gripped by an icy fist.

  So, maybe, I thought, maybe it would have been better not to inhale Ewa Kaludis’s scent.

  Maybe it would be easier to sit on the toilet for the rest of my life and forget about putting myself out there. Maybe Edmund’s theory about the soul wasn’t so crazy after all. It was easy to find, if you could be bothered to pay attention and sense where it was.

  Here, on this rough potholed path between Åsbro and Sjölycke, my soul was at the center of my heart.

  It seemed to go where it hurt the most. Who knew why.

  Henry still hadn’t returned by the time we got back to Gennesaret, and that was just as well. I’d have to have a serious talk with him, both about what Rogga Lundberg had said and about our visit to Ewa, but for the moment—in the fatal emptiness beyond that fragrant cloud—I was so crestfallen that I couldn’t have even if I’d wanted to.

  Edmund wasn’t in much better spirits. We ate a few bland hot dogs with bread—no mustard because there wasn’t any left—took a quick dip off the dock and went to bed.

  “This doesn’t feel good, Erik,” Edmund said once we’d turned off the light. “How could a summer as brilliant as this one go so wrong? So goddamn wrong.”

  “Let’s sleep on it,” I said.

  -

  19

  “Let’s take the boat out,” my brother Henry said, and so we did.

  Henry rowed and I sat on the thwart. It was another sunny day with a fair amount of wind; we approached the waves at an angle with our course set for Seagull Shit Island. Henry kept missing his strokes and I realized I was actually a much better oarsman than he was. He insisted on smoking while he rowed, which obviously made it much harder for him. When we were about one hundred meters from the island, he lifted the oars out of the water and took off his short-sleeved sweater.

  “We need to have a talk,” he said.

  “Yes,” I said. “I suppose we do.”

  “I didn’t know it would turn out this way.”

  “Me either.”

  He lit two Lucky Strikes and handed one to me.

  “Like I said, no idea.”

  I nodded.

  “What did Rogga Lundberg want?”

  I told him about the conversation with Rogga Lundberg, and while I talked Henry ran his hand over his stubble and looked even more blue. When I’d finished he just sat there, staring out at Fläskhällen, where we were slowly drifting.

  “Would you say his manner was threatening?” he asked.

  I thought about it.

  “Yes,” I said. “I think it was. I think he wanted to take advantage of you.”

  “Good,” said Henry. “Well done, brother. You can read people. That’s not bad for your age; most people never learn. Rogga Lundberg is an asshole. Always has been.”

  “Like Berra Albertsson?”

  Henry laughed.

  “Not quite. A different kind. There are many types of asshole, and the trick is knowing what kind you’re dealing with.”

  I nodded. Henry fell silent again. I leaned over the edge of the boat and cupped my hand in a wave. I rinsed my face. Henry watched me and then did the same. It wasn’t much, but I felt more equal to him than ever before. I cleared my throat and looked away. I was blushing.

  Henry drummed his fingers on his knee. “Anything else?” he asked.

  “We visited Ewa yesterday.”

  For a moment, he looked quite surprised.

  “Oh?”

  “She sent a message.”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “We were supposed to tell you that everything will be fine and you don’t have to worry on her behalf.”

  Henry nodded and sank back into his thoughts. Then he cleared his throat and spat in the water.

  “That’s good,” he said. “How nice of you to visit her.”

  I wondered if I should tell him that she’d seemed worried, but I decided against it. No need to add to his burden. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

  “Well, that settles it,” Henry said eventually.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Rogga Lundberg,” Henry said. “If Rogga knows about Ewa and me, then it’s just as well the police find out, too.”

  “I was gonna suggest that,” I said, because I was.

  “There’s no reason to put your destiny in the hands of someone like him. Remember that, brother. Sometimes you gotta tell the truth. There are no shortcuts, and you have to do it yourself. Do you know where I was yesterday?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “With the police.” He laughed his short, sharp laugh. “I spent the whole afternoon at the police station in Örebro with Detective Superintendent Lindström and two other detectives. They couldn’t agree on whether to let me go or not, but in the end Lindström decided that I could. But I’m barred from traveling.”

  “A travel ban? How does that work?”

  Henry shrugged.

  “I can’t go anywhere, have to stay close to home … so it’s just as well I talk to them about Ewa.”

  I thought about it.

  “Before they find out from someone else,” I said.

  “Exactly,” said Henry and splashed another handful of water on his face. “Before some asshole or other tries to make a few bucks. I wonder if that bastard’s been to see Ewa as well.”

  “She didn’t mention it,” I said.

  “No,” said Henry. “Let’s hope he hasn’t gotten around to it.”

  He took hold of the oars again. A few seagulls came flying our way, shrieking. Henry cursed at them; then he gave me a long, serious look before he began to row.

  “I don’t like talking about this,” he said. “And I know you don’t either. But it had to be done. Do we understand each other?”

  “I think so,” I answered.

  Before Henry set off he gave me and Edmund seventy kronor for the shopping. Every last cheese rind in the pantry had been eaten, so we were sorely in need of provisions. On top of that, once Henry was at the police station, he might not return to Gennesaret—if they’d been unsure of him yesterday, then he’d hardly be better off after admitting to having relations with the deceased’s fiancée.

  It was just like a Perry Mason story, Edmund and I concurred, after I told him about the conversation.

  Except that Perry himself was nowhere to be found.

  We took the bikes out that day, spent every last coin at Laxman’s, and on the way back Edmund told me more about his real dad.

  About how he used to cry.

  “Cry?” I said. “What do y
ou mean, cry?”

  “When he was hitting me,” said Edmund. “Or after. When he was done. Sometimes he did, anyway.”

  “Why’d he cry?”

  “I don’t know,” Edmund said. “I’ve never understood it. He would sit on his bed sniffling and saying it hurt him more than it hurt me, and that I’d understand when I got older.”

  “What were you supposed to understand?”

  Edmund shrugged so sharply he lost his balance and almost fell over his handlebars. He regained control of the bike and swore. “How the hell should I know? Why he had to beat me up, I suppose. As if there was a reason, but I was too young to understand … that he was hitting me against his will somehow. As if something were forcing him to and he couldn’t be held responsible …”

  We pedaled in silence.

  “That’s weird,” I said. “Hitting someone on purpose, then crying about it.”

  “He was sick,” said Edmund. “What else can I say? Sick from the worms crawling around and eating up his brain or something like that.”

  “Sounds like a load of baloney,” I said, but deep inside—deep down in an underdeveloped part of my fourteen-year-old brain—I suspected that those people did in fact exist.

  People who cried over what they did and for those to whom they did it.

  I didn’t like it. This idea contradicted what Henry and I had talked about.

  Sometimes you gotta tell the truth.

  No, I had no desire to think about stuff like Edmund’s dad. As I said, I’d made that choice long ago. Cancer-Treblinka-Love-Fuck-Death.

  No further questions.

  -

  20

  My brother Henry was charged with the murder of Bertil “Berra” Albertsson on Thursday July nineteenth, and it was in the papers on Friday.

  It was also on that Friday that Detective Superintendent Verner Lindström paid me and Edmund another visit. By nine in the morning, he’d arrived with a few copies of the Läns newspaper, where he had us read about the developments in the case, before interrogating us.

  Henry’s name wasn’t given, he was either called “the accused” or “the suspect” and there was no mention of him having gone to the police of his own volition.

  And neither was there anything about what had made him a suspect in the first place. All it said was that the suspect had “certain relations” with the victim. The charge was the result of laborious and fruitful investigative work, but the young man hadn’t confessed to anything, Detective Lindström had said during a short press conference on Thursday evening.

  There wasn’t much more to it.

  “False information has been given about this case,” Lindström said when we’d finished reading. “By you two, for instance. This time I want the truth, gentlemen. The whole truth.”

  He sounded much rougher than before. Like sandpaper or something. Edmund folded the newspaper and pushed it back across the table.

  “And nothing but the truth,” Edmund said in English.

  “You can go wait outside for now,” Lindström said. “Stay close. And stick to Swedish from here on in.”

  Edmund’s cheeks went a little red, and he left us alone in the kitchen.

  Lindström took out the tube of Bronzol but didn’t open it. He just set it on the table and rolled it back and forth with his right index and middle fingers. Apparently, he didn’t need a notebook this time around; I didn’t really know how I was supposed to interpret that.

  I didn’t know how I was supposed to interpret the silence either, the one he filled with the sound of his breath flowing through his hairy nostrils while watching me, no more than an arm’s length away. He was like a cold sun lamp; I looked between the Bronzol and my hands, which I was wringing in my lap.

  “You and your brother,” he finally began.

  “Yes?” I said.

  “What’s it like between the two of you?”

  “Good,” I said.

  “He’s quite a bit older than you.”

  That didn’t sound like a question, so I didn’t respond.

  “How much older?”

  “Just over eight years.”

  “Would you say that you know him well?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “You know about the kinds of things he gets up to?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “What does he do?”

  “Journalism,” I said. “He’s freelance. But he’s taken time off this summer to write a book.”

  “A book?”

  “Yes.”

  “What kind of book?”

  “A novel,” I said. “About life.”

  “Life?”

  “Yes.”

  Lindström tapped the tube on the table, but still he didn’t open it.

  “How does he do with the ladies?”

  I shrugged and looked uninterested. “Good, I suppose.”

  “Who’s Emmy Kaskel?”

  “Emmy? His ex-fiancée.”

  “Ex?”

  “Yes.”

  “And who’s his fiancée now?”

  I looked at his blue polka-dot bow tie. Had it been a Christmas present from his wife? Did he even have a wife?

  “No one, I think.”

  “Really?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “How does Ewa Kaludis fit in, then?”

  “She was our substitute teacher this spring,” I said.

  “I know she was your substitute teacher,” said Lindström. “You said so last time. Now I want to know what kind of relationship she had with your brother Henry.”

  “I think they knew each other,” I said.

  “Aha,” said Lindström. “So you think they knew each other. How come you didn’t say so last time?”

  “You didn’t ask,” I said.

  He paused and his breathing was the only sound. He studied the fingers on his left hand, as though checking for dirt under the nails.

  “How old did you say you were?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “So tell me.”

  “Fourteen.”

  “Fourteen? Only fourteen years old, and you think you need to protect your twenty-two-year-old brother?”

  “I’m not trying to protect my brother. I don’t know what you mean.”

  Lindström’s mouth twitched.

  “You know very well what I mean,” he said. “You’ve always known that Henry was involved with Ewa Kaludis, and you think you’re helping him by keeping that to yourself.”

  “That’s not so,” I said.

  Lindström ignored my interjection. He was on a roll, and it was feeling like a real cross-examination.

  “You think you’re helping Henry by keeping quiet about what you know,” he explained. “You’re not. You’re on the wrong track, just like your friend. Henry told us everything and having his little brother try to blindside us will only hurt him.”

  “I told you they knew each other.”

  He opened the tube and tossed back two pastilles.

  “How many times has she been here?”

  I shrugged. “A couple. Three maybe.”

  “At what time?”

  “I don’t remember. Evenings, I think.”

  “Nights?”

  “Maybe.”

  “This July?”

  I thought about it. “Yeah, maybe.”

  He leaned back and looked out the window. He seemed tired all of a sudden. He probably hadn’t been sleeping much lately. He probably had a lot on his plate. He chewed the pastilles, then continued speaking.

  “So Ewa Kaludis spent a couple or more nights here in the house with your brother Henry at the beginning of July. Are we in agreement on that point?”

  I gave a slight nod.

  “You kn
ew that Ewa Kaludis was Bertil Albertsson’s fiancée?”

  “Yes.”

  “Didn’t you think it was strange that she was sleeping here with your brother instead of with her fiancé?”

  “I didn’t think about it much.”

  He studied the nails on his other hand.

  “The ninth of July,” he then said. “Tell me about the ninth of July.”

  “What day was that?” I asked.

  “Wednesday last week. The day before the night Bertil Albertsson was murdered.”

  I thought for a good while.

  “I don’t really remember,” I said. “It wasn’t anything special, I think.”

  “You remembered it well the last time we spoke.”

  “I did?”

  His fist hitting the table was like a gunshot. I flinched and almost fell backwards in my chair. I caught myself on the table top at the last second and found my balance again.

  “Enough messing around,” Lindström snapped, his voice coarser than sandpaper now. “We know Henry had Ewa Kaludis over that night, and we know that you know. If you want to make things even the slightest bit easier for your brother, you need to tell us what happened. Everything you’re holding back. The way you’re going, you’re making it worse for him.”

  I didn’t reply right away. I counted backward from ten to zero and avoided looking at him.

  “You’re wrong,” I said. “I have no idea if Ewa Kaludis was here that night. We fell asleep early, both Edmund and I, and I didn’t wake once during the night.”

  Detective Lindström put the Bronzol tube in his jacket’s inner pocket. Buttoned all three jacket buttons and put his elbows on the table. I met his gaze. Five seconds passed. I aged a decade.

  “Go and get your friend,” said Lindström.

  After I had taken two steps out onto the lawn, he changed his mind.

  “Stop!” he called. “I’ll get him myself.”

  “Of course, detective,” I said, changing course and heading for the lake.

  Edmund looked downhearted when he laid down beside me on the dock half an hour later.

  “Is he gone?” I asked.

  Edmund nodded.

  “Unbelievable,” he said. “They’re thinking of locking him up for it.”