When Oskar returned to the blasting team he was received with great respect.
“You’re welcome back. We want you to know that.”
Norström is standing there, tall and heavy, and slaps Oskar on the shoulder.
“From now on it’s you who blows up the dynamite, and not the other way round.”
Norström’s laughs his loud rumbling laugh.
“And we don’t have to do those bloody tunnels anymore. No need to make holes which end up collapsing sooner or later. Every single piece of rock has to go.”
Norström points. They are blasting along the main road. It is to be widened.
“I don’t see the point. It’s not as though we’re so crowded that we can’t all fit on the road. But never mind. As long as we get to blast it all away.”
Then the work begins again. Oskar does what he can, given his handicap. He bakes dynamite, he primes charges, he takes care of detonating cables and explosions. But when a charge does not go off, it is one of the others who goes to check. Others carry the metal spikes. Others take the cart and the shovels. Norström walks around, kicks at the young helper, who is new.
“You see that, Johansson. The last one got so scared when you were blown in the air that he quit. Weaklings.”
Norström yells at everybody except Oskar. Oskar’s accident is the gem in Norström’s life as a rock blaster. Oskar is a blaster again. For the second time in his life.
One evening Norström asks Oskar to his home. He has invited colleagues, blasting bosses from other teams, and Oskar will be on show. Amid boozing and bragging.
Oskar arrives at about seven. The same wooden house, the same flat, but always somewhere else in town. The children have been turned out. The wife stays in the back room. The foremen are in the kitchen, sitting around the table.
“Here’s Johansson. You’re to shake him by the hand, and show him some bloody respect.”
Norström’s face is puce. He is sweating from the alcohol coursing through his veins. Three other foremen sit around the table. All the same age as Norström. Somehow, they all look alike. The same sagging bellies. The same huge fists. The same booming voices.
“Sit down here next to me.”
Norström kicks out a chair. Oskar sits. The men peer at him.
“So you’re the one who survived that bang. Well done.”
“Well done? That’s putting it mildly.”
Norström shows off his gem. Glasses are filled and drained.
“Aren’t you having anything?”
“No, thanks.”
“Don’t be stupid. Whoever heard of a blaster turning down a snaps?”
Norström booms.
“Well, I suppose you have an excuse, after your accident. Have a beer.” Oskar sits with his glass while the foremen gradually turn to vying with each other over performance, curious episodes involving dynamite, eccentric blasters, terrible accidents. Oskar listens.
“We had one who blew himself up. I guess he’d gotten himself plastered. During the lunch break he took some dynamite, lit it, and stuck it in his pocket. There was nothing left of him. I think we found half a shoe.”
“Bloody hell.”
“Bloody hell.”
“Some time in 1890 we lost two blasters in one day. One accident in the morning and another in the afternoon. And they were brothers. For a while I think we suspected that the one in the afternoon had done it on purpose. Presumably he was upset about what had happened to his brother.”
Then the conversation moves on to socialism.
“We should take care of the Party.”
“But why the hell paint everything so black? To call the king a traitor and murderer is going a bit far, isn’t it? They went to jail, didn’t they?”
“Yes. We collected money for them.”
“There’s bound to be a revolution. Don’t you agree, Johansson?”
“It goes without saying.”
“It does indeed.”
Oskar believes in the revolution. That is Magnus Nilsson’s doing. He has found a new way to talk to him about it. He has made Oskar restive. Change is possible. There has to be change. The way things are now is just wrong and unfair. And restive people soon begin to make demands.
When Oskar leaves the foremen he goes home, but at the same time he is walking towards a different experience of reality.
The Party Member
This story skims the surface. It is recounted in few words, as spare in its telling as Oskar himself is. It has cracks and gaps. But the surface has pores in it. Gradually it begins to turn and open up. And under the surface lies this story.
The story of the changes.
Hjalmar Branting. Party leader.
Oskar Johansson. Party member.
Per Albin Hansson. Party leader.
Oskar Johansson. Party member.
Tage Erlander. Party leader.
Oskar Johansson. Rock blaster who has left the Party.
Olof Palme. Party leader.
Hilding Hagberg. Party leader.
Oskar Johansson. Party member, former rock blaster.
C. H. Hermansson. Party leader.
Oskar Johansson. Party member, former rock blaster. Widower, pensioner.
Oskar is even-tempered. I know him as someone who never gets angry, who laughs a lot, who is an optimist. I know him to be stable.
Was it always so? Once he tells me the old joke about the man who says: I’ve never been a pessimist. I’ve been an optician all my life. He tells it as if the story were about him.
It may be. But the narrator has his doubts.
Was it always so?
No. It was not.
“Elvira and I never argued. I don’t think we said a harsh word to each other during all the years we had together. I suppose we scolded the children when they were little and making a racket, but we never hit them. Elvira and I always agreed. We never needed to discuss anything. We wanted the same things. But there’s nothing out of the ordinary about that.”
The Iceberg
In the summer of 1912, the Olympic Games are held in Stockholm. The blasters are sitting under the birch trees, discussing the results.
As yet not one of them can imagine that they would ever be able to attend the Games.
This story becomes anecdotal. The fragments are fragments. Oskar lives, is dead, is to be buried, has been buried, lives again. But his reality is always a continuum. There are no gaps there, no cracks, no spaces in the margins. Oskar Johansson’s reality is a matter of the struggle between capitalism and socialism, between revolution and reformism. That has been the stuff of Oskar Johansson’s life. Oskar Johansson regards himself as insignificant, significant, insignificant again.
What were the causes?
What was the political evolution that is Oskar’s life?
1968. Oskar talks about what is happening in Paris, in Berlin. He talks about America. He is sitting in the cabin, a few days before I am due to leave and we are never to meet again. He is sitting in the sauna, it is autumn and the paraffin lamp gives off a warm light. He has just changed the wick and topped up with paraffin. Our faces and movements cast shadows against the wall. We can hear the wind outside, it is pitch black and the waves are rolling against the shore. We hear a faint rumble from the sea crashing against the cliffs on the other side of the headland. The radio is on and we are listening to Dozens Eko. They have stepped up the bombing raids again. The voice on the radio sounds harsh and dry in the room. Oskar is listening. His arms resting on the table.