The Summer of Kim Novak

by Haakan Nesser

  The first year, we lived in a cramped one-bedroom apartment behind Östra Station, and then we moved to Glimmervägen in Eriksberg, a newly built residential area. We had a two-bedroom apartment with a view from the balcony of rocky slopes and a forest. My father perked up a bit; his shifts at the mustard factory were difficult, but the atmosphere was more relaxed there than at the prison. He made a number of new friends at work, started playing bridge once a week, and cautiously pursued a friendship with a widow in Salabacke. As for me, I soon fell in love with a dark-haired girl who lived in the building next to ours, and the summer I turned sixteen I lost my virginity on a blanket in Hågadalen while listening to “The House of the Rising Sun” on the transistor radio she’d brought along. I’m not sure if she was losing hers then too, but she said she was.

  Henry kept living in Gothenburg and was given increasingly secure employment at the Göteborgs Posten newspaper. Two years and two months after Berra Albertsson’s murder, his debut novel Coagulated Love was published by Norstedts. It was well received by both the Svenska Dagbladet and Dagens Nyheter, and his own newspaper gave it a decent review, but Henry never wrote another book. I read Coagulated Love over the Christmas vacation that same year and again a few years later, but I didn’t get much out of it on either read. When my father died in 1976 I found his signed copy of the book among his possessions; although all of the pages had been sliced open, there was a grocery receipt being used as a bookmark between pages eighteen and nineteen.

  My aunt, the victim of the moose-based tragedy, died in the Dingle asylum a few weeks before I graduated from high school; we managed to sell Gennesaret at a pretty decent price, and when I started studying philosophy in the fall, I was able to move into my own one-and-a-half-room flat on Geijersgatan. By this time, my virginity was but a distant memory. Even though I didn’t look as much like Rick Nelson as my brother, I still had good luck with the opposite sex; female students came and went and then there was one who stayed.

  She was called Ellinor and by the early eighties we’d managed to bring three children into the world. At that point Geijersgatan was also but a memory. We’d bought a house in Norby among the bourgeoisie and the boxwood; I taught history and philosophy at a high school, and when Ellinor wasn’t at home raising our children, she was employed as a lab assistant at a pharmaceutical company out in Boländerna.

  One May evening in the mid-eighties Expressen ran a two-page article about unsolved murders in Sweden, with a focus on cases where the statute of limitations was running out in a year or so.

  One of these was Bertil Albertsson’s murder. We were sitting out in the garden, Ellinor and I, the lilacs were about to bloom, and for the first time I told her what had happened at Gennesaret. Once I got going, I realized just how much it fascinated my wife, and I tried to draw as much as I could out of my memory’s well. Leaving out the odd detail, of course—even though we had an open and uninhibited relationship, I still felt embarrassed about how Edmund and I had masturbated by the window as Henry and Ewa Kaludis were making love inside. For instance.

  When I finished talking, my wife asked:

  “And Edmund? How did it go for Edmund?”

  I shrugged.

  “I don’t have the faintest idea, actually.”

  My wife gave me a bewildered look and wrinkled her forehead, most likely signaling that she’d once again been exposed to some sort of deep-seated male mystery.

  “My God,” she said. “You mean you lost touch, just like that?”

  “My mother died,” I pointed out. “We moved.”

  My wife grabbed the newspaper and re-read the summary of the murder. Then she leaned back in the deck chair and gave the matter some thought.

  “We’ll look him up,” she said. “We’ll look him up and invite him to dinner.”

  “Like hell we will,” I said.

  To my surprise, getting a hold of Edmund Wester was no problem. Personally, I didn’t lift a finger in the search, but in early June, just before graduation, Ellinor told me that she’d found him and he was going to come over and eat crayfish with us in August.

  “You went behind my back,” I said. “Admit it.”

  “Of course, dear eagle,” my wife answered. “Sometimes foolish men need to be circumvented.”

  “Where’s he living?” I asked. “How’d you reach him?”

  “It wasn’t hard,” my wife explained. “He’s a priest in Ånge.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. Norrland again.

  “He sounded friendly and genuinely happy to hear from me. He thought it was about time you met up again. You should have plenty to talk about, he said.”

  “Really?” I said. “Well, don’t get your hopes up.”

  “He’s coming out this way in August anyhow,” said my wife. “It’ll be interesting meeting him, in any case. You know, I’ve never met anyone from your childhood.”

  “You’ve met my father,” I pointed out. “And Henry.”

  My wife waggled her finger.

  “They don’t count,” she said. “Your father is dead. And I’ve seen your brother a whole three times.”

  She had a point. My father had been dead for almost a decade by then, and I hadn’t been in contact with Henry at all since he emigrated to Uruguay at the end of the seventies. His most recent Christmas card had arrived four years ago on Maundy Thursday.

  That year during the first week of the summer vacation I spent most of my time reflecting on my childhood, and one hot, fragrant night I dreamed of Ewa Kaludis for the first time in twenty years. Oddly, it wasn’t an erotic dream; it was filled with images and impressions from the day after she’d been beaten up and had sat in the deck chair massaging my shoulders.

  Anyway, I thought it was strange when I woke up. And a bit of a shame, but you don’t get to choose your dreams, now do you?

  Only a few weeks before Edmund’s visit did I realize that if he’d joined the priesthood he must have studied in Uppsala. I stayed in that university town for a long time, so we would have been near each other as adults, Edmund and I. At least for a few years. I mulled this over. Had we ever crossed paths in town—when I was a student, perhaps?—and why wouldn’t we have recognized each other? I brought this up with my wife, but she said a person can change quite a bit between the ages of fourteen and twenty and it was the rule rather than the exception that you missed people in a crowd.

  When Edmund Wester turned up I saw that she was dead right.

  When I opened the door the gargantuan, heavily bearded man standing on our steps reminded me as much of fourteen-year-old Edmund as a duck reminds me of a sparrow. I did some rough math in my head and concluded that if his weight gain had followed a steady trajectory then he’d have put on about five kilos a year since I’d last seen him at school in Kumla. It wasn’t just the beard hiding the clerical collar, but his double chins. His ragged corduroy suit had room for another three to four years of growth at the same rate.

  “Erik Wassman, I presume?” he said, hiding the bouquet for my wife behind his back.

  “Edmund,” I said. “You haven’t changed one bit.”

  The evening was more pleasant than I’d dared hope. In each of our professions, we’d learned to make both frivolous and serious small talk, and the crayfish were truly exquisite—my wife had made her signature marinade. Our children behaved quite well and went to bed without kicking up too much of a fuss. We drank beer and wine and schnapps and cognac, and any disappointment Ellinor might have felt about our reluctance to discuss the summer in Gennesaret eventually ebbed away.

  It’s not that we didn’t mention Berra Albertsson and the murder, but both Edmund and I were eager to change the subject whenever she brought it up. I remember how we’d kept the same distance when it was all going on, and realized how easy it was to pick up where you had left off with some people, even after such a long time.

&n
bsp; If my wife hadn’t brought up the subject of a priest’s vow of silence and crises of conscience, it would have been a wholly successful night. Unfortunately, we were already in deep when I noticed that Edmund was troubled by the question.

  We were well into the coffee and cognac too, so perhaps my lapse in concentration was to be expected.

  “It’s never made sense to me,” my wife said. “What gives a priest the right to keep quiet about things us regular people have to spill? Things we would be punished for?”

  “It’s not that simple,” said Edmund.

  “It couldn’t be any simpler,” my wife said. “What kind of God keeps murderers and miscreants under his wing?”

  “There is more than one law,” said Edmund. “And more than one judge.”

  “Isn’t our legal system built on Christian ethics?” she insisted. “Isn’t the West built on a Christian system of values? Isn’t that clause a construct that’s ready for the scrap heap?”

  Edmund sat quietly and scratched his beard, suddenly grave. I introduced a fresh topic, but wasn’t quick enough.

  “There are cases,” he said. “There will always be situations where a person needs to unburden their heart … We could never impose a vow of silence on everyone. However, we need some people to have taken one. There have to be options. Someone who listens; someone to whom you can turn and bend the ear of when the need is most pressing. With whom your words are received and sealed-off.”

  “I don’t understand it,” said my wife.

  “It’s a difficult question,” Edmund repeated. “There have been moments when I’ve had my doubts.”

  He left shortly thereafter. We promised to keep in touch, but it was clear to all three of us that the sentiment was mostly a concession to custom.

  After he left, my wife and I sat in our armchairs for a while.

  “It has something to do with the Gennesaret murder,” she burst out. She poured a finger of cognac for each of us.

  “I’ve had enough cognac, thanks. But what do you mean?”

  “The crisis of conscience, of course. His discomfort with the question. It’s related to the murder of Bertil Albertsson twenty years ago.”

  “Twenty-three,” I said. “Oh, nonsense.”

  “It has nothing to do with being part of the clergy.”

  “How much have you had to drink?” I asked. “Of course something’s happened to him. Someone’s confessed to a crime and he doesn’t feel he can go to the police. Every priest is bound to face that conflict at some point. It wasn’t particularly polite of you to bring it up.”

  My wife sipped her cognac, thinking.

  “All right,” she said. “It was rude of me, but I don’t think I’m wrong. He’s very nice, whatever the case.”

  “I liked him then, too,” I said.

  For about a week I was preoccupied by what had been said and what was left unsaid between Edmund, my wife, and me. I finally called him in Ånge and got straight to the point.

  “You know what happened that night, don’t you?”

  “Whatever do you mean?” Edmund asked indignantly.

  “I mean, when you went out for a pee, for instance. That wasn’t all, was it?”

  There was a pause. The phone line crackled and, for a moment, I believed it was the sound of Edmund’s thought processes materializing rather than the poor connection.

  “I have no reason to discuss this with you any further,” he finally said. “But I’d like to ask you the same question, if you don’t mind. Do you know who killed Berra Albertsson?”

  “How would I know?” I answered crossly. “I was asleep, you know that perfectly well.”

  There we were, on the phone, not saying anything. Then we hung up.

  Perhaps one could describe running into Ewa Kaludis that very autumn as an event that looked like a fantasy.

  During a conference about educational materials, I stayed at a hotel in Gothenburg for two nights and, whereas I’d had a hard time recognizing Edmund after several decades, I had no problem recognizing Ewa. No problem at all.

  She was standing behind the reception desk when I checked in, and time didn’t seem to have left a mark. She had the same beautiful posture. Same high cheekbones. Same crescent eyes. Her blond hair was now red, a hue that suited her even better—I imagined it was her natural color. Though she was surely approaching fifty, she was still an astonishing beauty.

  At least in my opinion.

  “Dear God.” The words slipped from me. “Ewa Kaludis.”

  She looked at the list of reservations.

  “Aha, you’ve arrived,” she said. “Yes, I saw your name.”

  Ever since we’d exchanged our marriage vows, Ellinor and I had been unswervingly faithful, but I knew I was about to break them. I knew this was about to happen not just because I wanted to, but because—more importantly—I could tell Ewa wanted it, too. She called in to the reception area and ordered a young blond girl to take her place at the desk; she clearly held some sort of managerial position at the hotel. Then she flipped up the counter and walked over to me.

  “I’ll show you to your room,” she said. “What fun to see you again after all these years.”

  We rode the elevator up.

  “Do you remember the last thing you said to me that summer?” she asked when we were in the room.

  I nodded.

  “And what you did?”

  I nodded again.

  “Do you still have that fourteen-year-old inside of you?”

  “Every single inch of him,” I answered.

  She’d just had her period—and was a bit preoccupied—so on the first night we just talked.

  “I want to thank you for what you did that summer,” said Ewa. “Thank you and Edmund for how you acted afterward and so on. There was never really the right moment to say it.”

  “I loved you,” I explained. “I think Edmund loved you, too.”

  She smiled.

  “It was Henry who loved me. And I loved Henry.”

  I asked how it had gone between her and my brother. If anything had happened in the end, or if it had all run out with the sand after the Incident.

  “We did meet up eventually,” she said after a pause. “Here in Gothenburg. More than a year later. We didn’t dare before. Then we were together for a while. Did he never tell you?”

  I shook my head.

  “I’ve barely had any contact with my brother. He moved and we moved.”

  “It never really worked,” she continued. “I don’t know why, but what happened, well, it—the Incident, as you call it—was in the way.”

  I nodded. I understood. I could see how it would’ve been strange if it had worked out. I hadn’t thought about it that way when I was fourteen, sitting across from Detective Lindström, but now it seemed logical that not only had nothing lasting transpired between Henry and Ewa, but also there was a reason for it.

  A kind of justice.

  “Are you married?” I asked.

  She shook her head.

  “Was. I have a fourteen-year-old daughter. That’s why I don’t have much time tonight.”

  “I remember your hands on my shoulders,” I said. “And I want to make love to you tomorrow night. To try at least.”

  She laughed.

  “I have time tomorrow,” she agreed. “I’ll try to meet your expectations, otherwise I think it will be enough to be able to sleep together.”

  Sleeping wasn’t enough. The night between the sixteenth and seventeenth of October I made love to Ewa Kaludis after waiting for over twenty years.

  Making love to her for the first time was the most serious undertaking of my life, and I think the feeling was mutual. In the following year we met up a number of times—at ever more frequent intervals—and one month after the divorce with Ellinor ca
me through, I moved to Gothenburg. I managed to secure a decent job at a high school out in Mölndal and by early 1987 we were finally living under the same roof.

  Me, Ewa Kaludis, and her daughter Karla.

  “It feels like coming home,” I told Ewa that first night.

  “Welcome home,” said Ewa.

  Not many weeks passed before I had to tell her how Edmund and I had watched as she’d made love with Henry that night. I’d only been an immature fourteen-year-old at the time, so I hoped she’d understand.

  When I’d finished the story she put her hand over her mouth and wouldn’t look at me. At first I was worried, but then I noticed she was laughing.

  “What’s going on with you?” I asked.

  She grew serious, lowered her hand, and took a deep breath.

  “I saw you,” she said. “I didn’t want to say, but I knew all along that you were standing there.”

  “Oh dear God,” I moaned. “No. Impossible.”

  “Anything is possible,” said Ewa Kaludis and started laughing again.

  -

  23

  Verner Lindström hadn’t gotten any younger.

  “The statute of limitations will run out on the case in two months,” he explained as he adjusted his bow tie. “But that’s not why I want to talk to you. I’m working on a little memoir. I retired in the spring and a person has to keep busy somehow.”

  We sat in the innermost room at Linnaeus, a restaurant on Linnégatan. As far as I knew Lindström had taken the train down to Gothenburg just for this conversation; he was clearly having a hard time getting through his days in retirement.

  It is what it is, I thought. Some people never learn to enjoy their leisure time; others seem made for it.

  After we’d eaten Lindström took out his Bronzol tube. I couldn’t remember seeing those pastilles in the last ten or fifteen years, but maybe he’d bought a lifetime supply in the early seventies.

  “The fact of the matter is,” he said and put two pastilles in his mouth. “The fact of the matter is that I don’t have many unsolved cases to investigate. Just one murder. Bertil Albertsson.”