One afternoon in 1937 there is a knock at Oskar’s door. Once more it is a Sunday. They are sitting at the kitchen table and have just eaten.
When Elvira opens the door, there is a person standing there whom they both recognise. It is a woman, about forty years old, who is one of the driving forces behind an animal welfare association in the town. It is well-known. It has been agitating for more humane treatment of various domestic animals. She is married to an engineer at the largest textile factory, where Elvira once worked.
“I hope I’m not disturbing. Good afternoon.”
“Please, come in.”
“Thank you. I’m here to ask you for a little help, Herr Johansson. As you may know, I belong to a group which is actively engaged in trying to improve the lot of our most common pets, above all cats and dogs.”
The visitor speaks with passion, barely pausing for breath. She sits on the edge of a kitchen chair. Oskar is in the sofa. Elvira stands by the window.
“The thing is that we’re planning to put on an amateur show at Easter where we’d promote awareness of our activities and also have a sale of home-made articles and handicrafts donated by active members or supporters of our organisation or produced during our weekly get-togethers. And you see we’re thinking of having one scene in which we compare the injuries that irresponsible people inflict on their pets with those which human beings themselves can suffer. Now you, Herr Johansson, once had a serious accident which luckily ended well. We thought that one could compare the assistance you yourself received with the help that animals don’t get. It may seem a little far-fetched and odd, but we know that the only way people can be made to realise how badly they treat their pets is to contrast their treatment with their own situation. We were thinking of a scene in which a cat suffers an accident and is then dumped on a trash heap and after that we’d have another one in which you, Herr Johansson, have your blasting accident and then all the doctors and the whole hospital manage to save your life.”
After this torrent, she suddenly stops. When Oskar realises that she is waiting for an answer, he cannot utter a single word. And she is able to continue.
“You wouldn’t actually be acting out the scenes themselves, Herr Johansson, you’d only come in right at the end and hold a cat in your arms. Then you would just stand on stage for a moment before the curtain falls.
“We would of course be very grateful if you could help us with this, Herr Johansson. We obviously wouldn’t be able to pay you, but it is for the worthiest of causes.”
“Yes.”
“I know that you won’t say no.”
“No.”
Oskar sits in the kitchen sofa, Elvira stands by the window and ten minutes later it is agreed.
For the two rehearsals, Oskar has a wastepaper basket in his arms. The first time he enters from the right and stands in the spotlight in the middle of the stage for eleven minutes, because something has gone wrong with the curtain ropes. The second time he stands with his wastepaper basket for three minutes and everything runs smoothly.
During the first night and the three other performances, Oskar makes his entrance with a neutered tomcat which is black apart from a mark on its forehead. The cat is heavy and Oskar clutches it to his stomach. As Oskar goes onstage he is blinded by the light and notices that everything is very quiet. When the curtain is drawn shut and the light is dimmed, he leaves the stage and puts the cat down in a brown basket. Then he sits backstage on a broken ladder for more than an hour and a half. After that he goes back on for the curtain call with all the other actors.
Elvira sees the last performance. As they are lying in bed that night, she says that the whole thing was quite good but that Oskar looked dreadful in the harsh spotlight. Never before had she realised how badly injured his face was. Then she asks if the cat was heavy because that is how it seemed and Oskar answers that it weighed as much as a sledgehammer and then they fall asleep. First Oskar. Then she.
At Christmas that year a letter arrives from the animal welfare association. They thank Oskar for his participation and inform him that the collection, together with the proceeds from the sale of handicrafts, had amounted to 495 kronor and 34 öre, which has to be considered a success.
Some time later, Elvira asks what the cat’s name was. Oskar cannot remember but he says that it was called Nisse.
The Poster
In early April in 1949, Oskar buys a propaganda poster. It is one of the most famous ones, the most widely disseminated and translated, but above all perhaps the most effective graphic analysis of the capitalist system ever published. It is the well-known pyramid, which was first printed in the U.S.A. in about 1910.
The poster shows the pyramid on different levels, open on all sides. Right at the top is a sack full of money with four dollar signs on it, drawn like an illustration from a children’s storybook. On the next level below, where the pyramid starts to widen, three people are crowded together. The middle one is a king, dressed like the king on a playing card, or in a fairy tale. He is flanked by two heads of state wearing tailcoats and holding top hats. The next level down shows three priests. One Greek Orthodox, one Catholic and one Lutheran. They are standing far apart and do not seem to be relating to each other in any way. The Greek Orthodox priest is holding up his cross and turned towards the right. The Lutheran is in the middle and looks straight ahead. The Catholic priest is facing to the left. In the picture, they all have open mouths.
On the next level, exactly halfway down the pyramid, are the armed forces. Two cannon, their barrels pointed diagonally outwards, an officer with sabre raised and two regular soldiers frozen in an attacking pose. The services represented are the infantry and artillery and they are wearing American uniforms. At the rear of this image and the two previous ones are Gothic pillars supporting the platforms. The backdrop consists of large glass windows.
The next level, the second-widest and penultimate one, represents a large dining table, where rich bourgeois sit together, glasses raised, and they have turned as if to greet the person looking at the poster. They are all in high spirits, but one has fallen asleep on the table. The tablecloth is messy and the whole scene gives the impression of unrestrained gluttony.
And then the bottom level, the base that holds up the whole pyramid. There you have the workers, bearing everything on their shoulders. Industrial workers, blacksmiths, children, women, farmers and old people crowded together. There is a tremendous sense of concentrated power in the picture. To the left side you can see a red flag, flapping violently. The people nearest the flag have their eyes raised to the levels above. One is looking at the military and clenches his fist. Another looks at the dining table. A third, a woman, can just make out the feet of the diners. But none of them sees higher than that. In the front, to the right of the picture, is a child lying down. It is not hard to see that it is starved, perhaps dead. Further over stands a man who is lifting a shovel. He looks up at the pyramid, but it is difficult to say what exactly he has fixed his eyes upon.
Oskar buys the poster and pins it up in the kitchen. The text is in English, but the image is too clear for him to need to understand what it says.
We rule you, We fool you, We shoot at you, We eat for you, We work for all — and finally We feed all.
Often they sit and look at the poster. Not just because they spend a lot of time in the kitchen every day and the poster is there on the wall above the kitchen sofa and it is hard not to see it. They sit and they look at it and every time they notice something new, some new detail, some new combination. And the illustrations provoke thoughts and discussions. The propaganda poster becomes a textbook, because that is how they use it. At the same time, it represents a challenge and a call to action. That is the meaning Elvira reads into it one day and she says that she feels it would only take one more person to stand underneath the bottom level for there to be enough power to topple the whole pyramid and bring it to the ground. Then they sit for a long time and laugh and talk about the chaos that would ensue. How the one who had fallen asleep at the dining table would have a shock when he woke up. How bottles and glasses would be smashed over the priests and the soldiers. How the cannon would explode and tear apart the sack of money. How the skirts of the female diners would ride all the way up their thighs and how those who had propped up the pyramid for so long would be able to stretch their shoulders and their backs.