At first there was no answer. Then the door flew open and there was Westman with his piercing blue eyes and massive chest and enormous fists. He seemed built to hurt people, which was why he so often got to play the bad guy on screen, even if none of his roles — Balder was convinced of this — was as evil as the person he played in real life.
“Christ,” Westman said. “Look what we have here. The genius himself has come to visit.”
“I’m here to fetch August,” Balder said.
“You what?”
“I’m taking him with me, Lasse.”
“You must be joking.”
“I’ve never been more serious,” he tried, and then Hanna appeared from a room across to the left. True, she was not as beautiful as she had once been. There had been too much unhappiness for that and probably too many cigarettes and too much drink as well. But still he felt an unexpected wave of affection, especially when he noticed a bruise on her throat. She seemed to want to say something welcoming, even under the circumstances, but she never had time to open her mouth.
“Why should you care all of a sudden?” Westman said.
“Because August has been through enough. He needs a stable home.”
“And you think that you can provide that, you freak? Since when have you done anything except stare at a computer screen?”
“I’ve changed,” he said, feeling pathetic, in part because he doubted that he had changed one little bit.
A shiver ran through him as Westman came towards him with his mighty bulk and his pent-up rage. It was crushingly clear that he would have no means of resistance if that madman let fly. The whole idea had been insane from the start. But the strange thing was that there was no outburst, no scene, just a grim smile and then the words, “Well, isn’t that just great!”
“What do you mean?”
“That it’s about time, isn’t it, Hanna? Finally some sense of responsibility from Mr Busy. Bravo, bravo!” Westman clapped his hands theatrically. Afterwards that is what Balder found the most frightening — how easily they let the boy go.
Perhaps they saw August only as a burden. It was hard to tell. Hanna shot Balder some glances which were difficult to read and her hands shook and her jaw was clenched. But she asked too few questions. She should really have been cross-examining him, making thousands of demands, warning him and worrying that the boy’s routine would be upset. But all she said was:
“Are you sure about this? Will you manage?”
“I’m sure,” he said. Then they went to August’s room. Balder had not seen him for more than a year and he felt ashamed. How could he have abandoned such a boy? He was so beautiful and strangely wonderful with his curly, bushy hair and slender body and serious blue eyes, engrossed in a gigantic jigsaw puzzle of a sailing boat. His body seemed to cry out “Don’t disturb me!” and Balder walked up to him slowly, as if approaching an unknown and unpredictable creature.
He nonetheless managed to get the boy to take hold of his hand and follow him out into the corridor. He would never forget it. What was August thinking? What did he imagine was happening? He neither looked up at him nor at his mother and of course he ignored all the waving and the words of farewell. He just vanished into the lift with Balder. It was as simple that.
August was autistic. He was most likely also mentally disabled, even though they had not received unequivocal advice on that point and anyone who saw him from afar might easily suspect the opposite. His exquisite face radiated an air of majestic detachment, or at least suggested that he did not think it worth bothering with his surroundings. But when you looked at him closely there was something impenetrable in his gaze. And he had yet to say his first word.
In this he had failed to live up to all the prognoses made when he was two years old. At the time, the doctors had said that August probably belonged to that minority of autistic children who had no learning impairment, and that provided he was given intensive behavioural therapy his prospects were quite good. But nothing had turned out as they had hoped and Balder had no idea what had become of all that remedial care and assistance or even the boy’s schooling. Balder had run away to the U.S.A. and lived in his own world.
He had been a fool. But now he was going to repay his debt and take care of his son. Right away he ordered up casebooks and called specialists and educational experts and one thing became immediately apparent: none of the money he had been sending had gone towards August’s care, but instead had trickled out to pay for other things, probably Westman’s extravagances and gambling debts. The boy seemed to have been left pretty much to his own devices, allowed to become set in his compulsive ways, and probably worse — this was also the reason why Frans had come home.
A psychologist had called to express concern about unexplained bruises covering August’s arms and legs, chest and shoulders. According to Hanna they were because the boy had fits and hurt himself thrashing back and forth. Balder witnessed one already on the second day, and it scared him out of his wits. But that could not account for the sheer number and type of bruises, he thought.
He suspected violence and turned for help to a G.P. and a former policeman whom he knew privately. Even if they were not able to confirm his fears with any degree of certainty he grew more and more angry and set about submitting a series of formal letters and reports. He almost forgot all about the boy. He realized that it was easy to forget him. August spent most of his time sitting on the floor in the room Balder had made ready for him in the house in Saltsjöbaden, doing his exceedingly difficult jigsaws, assembling hundreds of pieces only to break them up and start afresh.
At first, Balder had observed him in fascination. It was like watching a great artist at work, and sometimes he was taken by the fantasy that the boy would glance up at any moment and say something grown-up. But August never uttered a word. If he raised his head from the puzzle it was to look straight past him towards the window overlooking the sea and the sunshine reflected in the water, and eventually Balder just left him alone. Balder seldom even took him outside into the garden.
From a legal point of view he did not have custody of the boy and he did not want to take any chances until he had sorted this out. So he let the housekeeper, Lottie Rask, do all the shopping — and all the cooking and cleaning. Balder was no good at that side of things. He understood computers and algorithms but not much else, and he immersed himself in them even more. At night he slept as badly as he had in California.
Lawsuits and storms loomed on the horizon and every evening he drank a bottle of red wine, usually Amarone, and probably that did little good either, except in the short term. He began to feel worse and worse and fantasized about vanishing in a puff of smoke or taking himself off to some inhospitable place, somewhere remote. But then, one Saturday in November, something happened. It was a cold, windy evening and he and August were walking along Ringvägen in the Södermalm district, feeling frozen.
They had been having dinner at Farah Sharif’s on Zinkens väg. August should have been asleep long since, but dinner had gone on late and Balder had revealed far too much. Farah Sharif tended to have that effect on people. Balder and she had known each other since they read computer sciences at Imperial College in London and now Farah Sharif was one of the few people at his level in Sweden, or at least one of the few who was by and large able to follow his thinking. It was an incredible relief for him to meet someone who could understand.