The stone.
The piece of grit.
Those terse words.
All those summers.
Oskar Johansson, Forty-Four Years Old
He went down the stone steps to the quayside. The air was raw and cold, a few days into September 1932. He walked carefully, keeping very close to the rusty handrail so as not to fall. He could feel how his right foot was damper than the left and saw a yawning hole in the seam between the sole and the rest of the shoe.
He cut across the quay and turned into the old residential area which climbed up the cliffs on one side of the harbour. He was walking quite briskly and knew that he did not need to be too careful. All the trolleys were lined up in rows outside the long grey lime-washed warehouses. The railway tracks were deserted and empty freight cars stood crowded on the sidings between the storehouses.
No ships were tied up along the dock. The quayside had large gaping cracks filled with the turbid black harbour water, viscous and polluted. He drew the sweetish smell of saltwater in through his nose and looked out over the port. All he could see there were the half-rotten barges for use when the harbour entrance was dredged every few years. A fishing vessel, some rowing boats. Nothing more.
When he reached the housing area, he turned onto a narrow winding gravel path running between the ramshackle houses. He walked past the first of the two-storey houses and then stopped outside the third. He went in through the front door and walked over to the first entrance to the left on the ground floor.
He stood there in the faint light and knocked. The door was opened almost immediately.
As soon as he came in, he saw Lindgren sitting in a corner of the kitchen sofa. There he was, pale and skinny, and it was obvious that he had not shaved for some weeks. As Oskar stood in the doorway, Lindgren gave him a lifeless look.
“Afternoon.”
“Afternoon.”
It was Lindgren’s mother who let Oskar in. She was more than seventy and had shrunk so much that she hardly reached up to Oskar’s chest. She held out her right hand, her brown arm like a weathered stick, and squeezed Oskar’s thumb.
“Well, if it isn’t Johansson come to visit. That’s unexpected.”
“I have the time now. I thought I’d say hello to Lindgren.”
“How kind. He doesn’t really see people now.”
Lindgren sat there, staring dully and open-mouthed at Oskar and his mother. He was wearing a shirt with large checks and had broad braces which hung down his trouser legs. His hair was black and tangled and his large fists rested on the table.
Oskar looked at Lindgren. They had not seen each other for nearly a year. Oskar could tell that Lindgren had got worse. His eyes were watery now and lacking any expression. The last time Oskar had met him, there had still been occasional signs of alertness about him, faint but unmistakable indications that the brain was still receiving impressions and processing them.
Lindgren was suffering from an illness which was slowly but inexorably killing his brain. He had worked on the same blasting team with Oskar for many years, until his condition had made it impossible to have him along. Since then he had lived at home with his mother, sitting on the kitchen sofa and being fussed over by her. Her senses too had been deadened by everything she had inhaled over thirty-five years of labour in a dye-works, in addition to the arteriosclerosis that had crept up on her during the last year.
“Won’t you sit down, Johansson?”
Oskar lowers himself onto the sofa next to Lindgren, who slowly turns his head and stares at him with empty eyes. His mother is standing in the middle of the small, run-down kitchen and looks at her son.
“Aren’t you going to say hello to Johansson?”
She walks over to her son, somewhat irritated, and gives his shoulder a shove. He reacts slowly, stares at her.
“Don’t you see that Johansson’s come to visit you?”
Lindgren twists his head again and looks at Oskar.
“It’s nice to see you here, Joha, but I must slee now can we ge cakesfee...”
His brain is unable to finish the sentence he has begun. He falls silent and stares down at the table.
Oskar gets to his feet. He has not taken off his outdoor clothes.
“I thought I’d take him out with me to get him some fresh air.”
“Air?”
“I imagine he spends most of his days indoors. And I have time now.”
“You’re so kind, Johansson. Of course, the boy needs to get out. But in that case, I’ll pack a basket with coffee and buns for you to take with you.”
“Isn’t it a bit cold now to be taking coffee outside? September’s rather late for that.”
But Lindgren’s mother already pictures her son on an outing with Oskar. She wastes no time in preparing coffee and some dry buns and tying it all up in a piece of cloth. Then she helps her son into his outdoor clothes and presses the bundle into his hands, and Oskar and Lindgren walk out of the door and onto the gravel path and Oskar turns off in the direction of the woodland half a kilometre from the harbour. They walk there in silence, side by side. Lindgren clutches the bundle to his chest and keeps his eyes firmly on the ground. They head for the woods and Oskar does not have the heart to deny Lindgren his outing with a picnic, even though the fog is swirling and their breath steams around their faces.
Then Oskar sits Lindgren down on a tree stump at the edge of the wood, takes the bundle and after a while manages, in spite of the damp, to start a small sputtering fire and warm the coffee. Then they each sit on a tree stump facing one another in the cold and the silence. Autumn is already well advanced this year.
Lindgren stares dumbly ahead. Oskar looks at him with sadness in his heart. So they sit there in silence on this September woodland outing with a picnic and Oskar then gently asks:
“How are you doing, Lindgren?”
“Very well, thanks. It was ni...”
Then his words drown. His brain is able to transmit a first impulse and his nerves can transform this into an opening, but then he is unable to continue the sentence.
So they fall silent once more before Oskar tries again.
“Your mother seems very fit.”
“She really is ve...”
The words fade away and Lindgren’s mouth hangs slack, open.
They sit opposite one another like this for nearly an hour before Oskar packs up the bundle, takes Lindgren by the arm and walks him back home.
When Oskar leaves Lindgren’s house it is late in the afternoon and, as he turns onto the quayside, he reflects that today he has been out of work for exactly six months. It was a Sunday like today when he realised that come the Monday he too would be dismissed.
Oskar is forty-four this year. Lindgren, who is now tucked up in the kitchen sofa, is the same age. Oskar is one of thousands who are unemployed. Lindgren has a brain which will soon have ceased to function. They have celebrated a Sunday in September together, as autumn creeps closer and closer.
On Sundays those who have been laid off no longer wear their work clothes, the way they do the rest of the week even though they have no jobs. Every weekday morning, they put on their usual clothes before setting off on the long trek between the State Unemployment Agency, the factory gates, cafés and home. But there are no jobs, because the depression has the nation’s whole economy in its grip. Goods lie piled up in warehouses. There are no buyers and the gates remain closed. The public relief work which the State Unemployment Agency organises — wood-chopping, forest clearance, snow-shovelling and foraging for coal - has hundreds ,of applicants for each opening. And the mass of unemployed grows. The days come and go. National socialists and communists take turns out in the streets. The Social Democrats gradually consolidate their newly acquired position in power.