‘Why?’ Anders asked.
Geir laughed.
I threw down my cigarette end and stamped on the ground a few times.
‘Shall we go up?’ I said.
The first time I met Anders he picked Linda and me up from the railway station by Saltsjöbaden, where they were renting a little flat, and on the way he expressed his contempt for the rat race there, life was about more than money and status, but even though I had an inkling he was humouring us and just saying what he thought we, as ‘arty people’, wanted to hear, a lot of months were to pass before I understood that he actually meant the opposite: his only real interest was money and the life money bought. He was obsessed by the notion of becoming rich again, everything he did was to that end, and as he could not do this with the knowledge of the tax authorities, he moved into the world of illegal earnings. When Helena met him all his affairs were murky, but she, while fighting her love for him for as long as she could, although finally she did crumble on a grand scale, set some demands, because not long afterwards they had a baby together, and apparently he complied: the money he earned was still illegal but in a certain light nonetheless ‘clean’. What exactly his work was I didn’t know, except that he used his many contacts from the days when he was in clover to finance a quick succession of projects and these somehow lasted only a few months at a time. Ringing him was a waste of energy because he was forever changing mobile phones, the same applied to his cars, so-called company cars which he exchanged at regular intervals. When we visited them, one evening there might be an enormous flat-screen TV along one wall in the living room, or a new laptop on the desk in the hall, the next they could be gone. The line between what he owned and what he could lay his hands on was evidently fluid, and nor was there any clear link between what he did and the money he had at his disposal. All the money he made, and frequently it was not trivial amounts, he used to gamble. He would gamble on anything that moved. Since his powers of persuasion were impressive he had no problem getting hold of money, so he was stuck in a real quagmire. As a rule he kept all this to himself, but now and then his dealings surfaced, like the time someone rang Helena and said that Anders had emptied the till of the company where he had gone to renegotiate contracts, a little matter of 700,000 kroner, and it would be reported to the police. Anders didn’t bat an eyelid when she confronted him with it; the company’s finances were in a mess and dubious, now they were bent on a cover-up by blaming him. Even though he was supposed to have run off with the money and gambled it away, the money was illegal and therefore the police would be the last people they would contact, so in that respect he was safe. Presumably he kept a watchful eye on the people he swindled, but the situation was no less dangerous for that. Once they had been burgled while they were out, Helena told Linda; the burglars probably did it just to show that they could. Then he became the co-owner of a grandiose restaurant scheme, but that became history for him after some months, then there were some building sites he was suddenly running, then he was renting exclusive rooms to a hairdressing salon, then there was a bacon factory he had to save from bankruptcy. The problem, if you can call it a problem, was that it was impossible to dislike him. He could talk to anyone, which is a rare gift, and he was generous, which you noticed as soon as you met him. And he was always happy. He was the person who stood up at parties and thanked the hosts for the spread or congratulated them on whatever occasion it was or did whatever was required, and he had a kind word for everyone, however much or little they had in common with him. More often than not, he knew how to make them feel good. Yet there was nothing of the schemer about him, no subtlety, and perhaps that was the reason — despite his general duplicity, which is one of the few qualities I find hard to accept — I still liked him so much. Naturally enough, he couldn’t give a flying fart about me, but whenever we met he didn’t pretend to be interested, the way people sometimes do when duty compels and the fracture between thoughts and actions becomes visible in one of those tiny revealing gestures that very few can control, such as the quick glance to another side of the room, meaningless in itself, but when it is followed by a kind of ‘jolt’ as their attention refocuses on you, the ritual as ritual becomes obvious. The feeling that you have been subjected to a charade will of course be disastrous for someone whose life depends on winning people’s trust. Anders did not ‘play games’; that was his secret. However, he was not ‘genuine’ either, in the sense that everything he said necessarily fell in line with what he thought, what he did and what he wanted. But then who is? There is a type of person who consistently says what he means without adapting it to the situation in which he finds himself, but such individuals are few and far between, I have met only two, and what happens to them is that all these social situations become incredibly charged. Not because people disagree and start quarrelling, but because their conversational aim excludes all other aims and their totalitarian attitude automatically rebounds on them and they appear mean and pig-headed, irrespective of their real nature, which in both cases was, as far as I could judge, basically generous and friendly. The social unease I myself could provoke came from the opposite cause. I always let the situation determine events, either by saying nothing at all or playing up to others. Saying what you believe others want to hear is of a course a form of lying. Hence the difference between Anders’ and my social behaviour was only one of degree. Even though his corroded trust and mine corroded integrity, the result was basically the same: a slow erosion of the soul.
It was of course ironic, though not incomprehensible, that Helena, who was drawn to the spiritual side of life and was continually trying to understand herself, should have ended up with a man who swept all other values apart from money to the side with a smile on his face, for they shared an essential ingredient, a lightness and a joie de vivre. And they were an attractive couple. With her dark hair, warm eyes and strong facial features, Helena’s appearance was striking, her personality winning and her presence palpable. She was a talented actress. I had seen her in two TV series: in one, a crime programme, she played a widow, and the sombreness she radiated turned her into a stranger for me, it was like watching a different person with Helena’s face. In the other, a comedy programme, she played a bitch of a wife, and I had the same impression, a different person with her features.
Anders was also good-looking, in a boyish kind of way, although whether it was his aura, the glint in his eye, the slim body or perhaps the hair — which would have been described as a mane in the 1950s — that did it, was hard to say because Anders was not an easy person to see. Once I had bumped into him in Sergels torg in the city centre, he seemed to be hanging around by a wall, hunched and very, very tired, I had barely recognised him, but when he caught sight of me, he straightened up, he seemed to lift himself and in the twinkling of an eye he transformed himself into the happy energetic man I was familiar with.
When we returned, Helena, Christina and Linda had cleared the table and were now chatting on the sofa. I went into the kitchen and put on the coffee. While waiting for it to brew I went into the adjacent room, which was completely quiet and empty, except for the breathing of Helena and Anders’ child, who was asleep on our bed, clothed and with a blanket over him. In the half-light the empty cradle, the empty cot, the changing mat and the dresser with the baby’s clothes beside it seemed a bit eerie. Everything was ready for our baby to arrive. There was even a pack of nappies we had bought on the shelf beneath the changing mat, with a pile of towels and clothes, and above it a mobile from which hung tiny planes, quivering in the draught from the window. It was eerie because there was no baby, and the line between what could have been and what was to come was so fluid in these matters.