“Thanks for asking,” said the special adviser. “I feel truly excellent, exactly as I deserve. Like a pearl in gold. But you yourself, Johansson, you’ve become a real athlete lately. Soon you’ll be looking like Gunde Svan, that skier-or was he a high jumper?-you know,” he said with a slight wave of his left hand. “Shall we sit awhile and refresh ourselves while my dear housekeeper puts the final pieces in place?”
Then he made an inviting gesture and went ahead of Johansson across all the creaking parquet floors to the large salon where a small buffet was set out with mixed finger foods, a gigantic cut crystal vodka carafe, champagne, and mineral water in a table cooler.
Mostly beluga caviar, duck liver, and quail eggs, and why fritter away your short life on nonessentials? He still had free access to the beluga through one of his contacts “from the bad old days” who now ran an apparently successful contract operation in Kiev. The quail eggs he got from an acquaintance in the province of Sörmland, “a count and a landowner interested in hunting,” who also supplied him with pheasant, wild duck, grouse, and partridge. Plus all the “large game” of course. Such as moose filets, deer steaks, wild pig cutlets, and saddle of venison. His housekeeper shopped for the duck liver at the specialty food shops in the Östermalm market. On the other hand he’d stopped consuming goose liver. It was much too fat nowadays to be consumed in risk-free forms. Pure animal torture besides if you considered the source. He didn’t drink beer anymore either, not good for either the stomach or the liver, and in the golden middle age in which he and Johansson were now living, they had to keep an eye on what they put away.
“Caution and precision should characterize temporal things as well,” the special adviser summarized. “Water, vodka, champagne, and a little bite to eat with it. Cheers, by the way,” he said, raising his full glass.
“Cheers,” said Johansson. Talk, talk, talk, he thought.
After two sturdy shots, mineral water, a couple glasses of champagne, and ten or so small appetizers each it was time to sit down to a serious dinner. “No negligence this time,” said the special adviser, shaking his flaming red face with emphasis. This evening he intended to compensate Johansson for previous frugal entertainments and treat him to “a really old-fashioned, bourgeois dinner.” As soon as Johansson had accepted his invitation the special adviser had also conducted a number of “special reinforcement measures” to guarantee a successful result.
True, it was Thursday, but Johansson did not need to be troubled about either peas or pork. Much less pancakes with jam. The last time the special adviser had eaten such things was many years ago at a lunch at the defense department. Under silent protest, but unfortunately on duty and thereby without a choice. Before the end of this barbaric gathering he was already tormented by gas and for several days was confined to bed with tympanites, feverish and miserable, and if it hadn’t been for the diet his considerate housekeeper had quickly established-plenty of Fernet Branca, boiled fish, light white wines, mineral water without bubbles-the situation might have ended very badly.
“How can the military be allowed to challenge our armed forces like that?” asked the special adviser with an indignant glance at his guest. According to him it was pure treason, and regardless of whether it was a crisis situation or not those responsible should be brought before a military court, convicted of high treason, and immediately executed. If the special adviser could decide, that is. Or even better, beheaded with a dull, rusty ax if they’d had the nerve to serve warm punch with the peas. Food that only barbarians could ingest, and according to the special adviser it was obviously not by chance that Hermann Göring was supposed to have been particularly fond of both peas and pork plus pancakes with whipped cream and jam. Not to mention warm punch.
Talk, talk, talk, and personally I think that sounds good, thought Johansson.
His host’s reinforcement measures were clearly visible as soon as Johansson crossed the threshold to the dining room. The adviser’s dining room table accommodated twenty-four guests, this too was a good old bourgeois custom, according to the host. Now it was set for two at one end of the table. The special adviser at the short end and his guest to his right. At a comfortable conversational distance without the risk of spilling on each other. On their plates were elaborate folded damask napkins plus printed menus, around them a parade of various cut crystal glasses and an improbable amount of silverware. Simply the host and his guest at a table for twenty-four and obviously only two place settings. But otherwise the table was completely set with a white linen tablecloth, candelabras, centerpieces, and flower arrangements.
In honor of the evening the special adviser’s housekeeper had the help of a male steward in black tuxedo and a cook in full getup waiting in the background.
“Yum,” said the special adviser delightedly, rubbing his fat hands together and sitting down as soon as his male reinforcement measure pulled the chair out for him.
Johansson had to seat himself, and it was probably his own fault. When his host’s housekeeper hurried over to help him, he just shook his head deprecatingly and sat down. He quickly pulled in the chair and for lack of a straw reached for his napkin. I’m a simple boy from Näsåker. Hope she wasn’t offended, thought Johansson. His mother, Elna, would never have dreamed of pulling out the chair for her husband or her seven children either as soon as they were big enough. On the other hand she often stood at the stove while the others ate. Here it was more complicated than that, thought Johansson, and when the day came that he wasn’t man enough to seat himself it would probably be the end of most everything, he thought.
A nine-course dinner, different wines with every course, and already with the introductory consommé of lobster, finely shredded onions, and petits pois, the special adviser started the monologue that was his own variation on the cultivated conversation one was expected to carry on during the consumption of a bourgeois dinner. First of all however he spilled on himself. Just like happy children always have a habit of doing, and without even noticing it.
“I see you’re admiring my tuxedo, Johansson,” said the special adviser, sighing contentedly as he lowered the spoon and began his initial comments.
Despite the color it apparently had nothing to do with the French Academy. Such small societies for mutual admiration left the adviser cold. The French Academy was an ordinary, government-financed soup kitchen for various literary aesthetes who had never done an honorable day’s work in their entire lives. As a mathematician he was above such things, and in his case it was far better than that. This was namely the particularly comfortable tuxedo that the special adviser would wear to dinner when he sat at High Table in the banquet hall at his English alma mater, Magdalen College, Oxford. Founded in the Middle Ages when most northern Europeans could barely express themselves comprehensibly, much less read, and obviously named for Mary Magdalene, the foremost of Jesus’s female disciples.
“Mohdlinn, pronounced Mohdlinn without an English ‘e’ at the end,” the special adviser clarified, pouting with enjoyment.
As Johansson perhaps didn’t know, for many years his host had been an honorary member of this fine old college. Honorary fellow, first-class member of the faculty by virtue of his scientific merits in mathematics but also in the more philosophically oriented theory of science. Over the years there had been numerous prominent physicians, physicists, biologists, and chemists who had studied at Magdalen College, two Nobel Prize winners in fact, all of whom gratefully enjoyed the insights that were basically unique to the special adviser when it came to constructing intricate theoretical models and testing more complex empirical lines of reasoning.