He peered towards the rock face.
“Will you go and check?”
Norström stood with his hands on his hips and shot Johansson a challenging look. Norström disliked failed detonations. Partly because you never knew what might happen, partly because they held up the work. He was responsible for sticking to the schedule, and he knew this tunnel was going to cause them problems. Besides, he had a hangover. The day before he had turned fifty-five, and there had been a party in the evening. He had drunk akvavit all through the night until he crashed into bed at about two in the morning. And he had vomited at length and copiously when he got up two hours later to go to work. He almost regretted having turned down the offer of a day’s holiday to mark his birthday. A gesture from management, in recognition of his having worked for the railway’s construction division on and off since 1881. And because he had a reputation for keeping to deadlines and getting work done. This had earned him the nickname “Glory of Labour” from his fellow workers. It was never used in Norström’s presence, but that is how he was referred to when the blasters talked about him at home in the evening, or during rest breaks when he was busy with something else. When he first found out that he had a nickname he was angry, but then he began to see it as a sign that the blasters were afraid of him, and he liked that. Now he often used the name to refer to himself, when describing his job to his friends. Only yesterday he had gone on and on about how scared the blasters were of him. He had been with his brother-in-law, who had come to the birthday celebration, and had talked at length about his job.
It was nearly three o’clock, and in three hours their working week would be over. Then they would have a day off and Norström would be able to lie on his bed, swatting at the flies and telling the children to be quiet, and slowly plan next week’s work. According to the schedule he had thought out the previous Sunday, they had failed to meet their target. And nothing disturbed him more than when they fell short of expectations. It meant that his Sunday, the rest day, would be ruined. He would spend it fretting.
“Have you pulled off the detonating cable?”
Some of the blasters mumbled an almost inaudible “no”.
“Are you out of your minds? Why not?”
Norström was astonished that they had failed to do something so obvious. He had no sympathy for the fact that the blasters had been taking a short break in the heat.
“Get your arse over there nowand rip the cable off!”
He gave the helper a kick. The boy quickly scampered over to the small wooden box that stood a short distance from them and tore off a cable which was attached to a steel clip at the back.
Johansson pulled himself up to his full height, propped his metal spike against a huge lump of blast debris, and began to walk toward the rock face. He went slowly, as if he did not want to rouse the dynamite. He grimaced in the heat, and wiped the salty sweat from his eyes. A feeling of unease always settled over the entire team whenever an explosive charge did not go off. Dynamite was dangerous. You never knew what tricks it might get up to. But somebody always had to go and check, and caution was the only possible protection.
Johansson stopped just metres short of the rock face. He bit his lower lip and looked carefully at the hole in the cliff into which the detonating cable snaked. He turned around, and in a low voice called over to the others still standing there leaning on their spikes:
“Is the cable off?”
Norström strode over to the wooden box himself, something he did not usually do, had a look and then shouted:
“It’s disconnected. You can go on over.”
Johansson nodded, more for his own benefit than Norström’s. He did it to convince himself that everything was ready.
Then he turns, fixes his eyes on the drill-hole and slowly approaches the rock wall with short, stealthy steps. He does not take his eyes off the hole. He bites his lip, sweat pouring down his face; he blinks to clear his vision and when he is half a metre from the cliff he stops and carefully leans forward. Without relaxing his concentration, he slowly stretches out his right arm until his hand is resting just above the hole. He focuses, braces himself, and begins to tease out the detonating cable. He hears the faint sound of a metal spike clinking as it is laid against a stone. His fingertips tighten around the cable.
The next moment the rock wall explodes, and for many years afterwards foreman Norström will tell people how it was one of his men who, while working on the middle one of three railway tunnels, astonishingly survived an explosion at close range. His name was Oskar Johansson, and their helper, a lad of just fourteen years, fainted when they found Johansson’s right hand, rotting in a bush seventy metres away. They found it thanks to the flies that had gathered around. It was lying among the dandelions, its fingers stretched out.
And Norström would add that Johansson not only survived but kept on working as a blaster once he had recovered.
That Saturday afternoon in June 1911, Oskar Johansson lost all his fair hair. His left eye was ripped out of its socket by the force of the blast. The right hand was severed at the wrist by a shard of rock. It was sliced off with an almost surgical precision. Another shard tore through Oskar’s lower abdomen like a red-hot arrow, severed half of his penis on the way through and emerged via his groin, kidney and bladder.
But Oskar Johansson survived, carried on working as a rock blaster until his retirement, and did not die until April 9, 1969.
On the following Monday, the local newspapers reported that a young rock blaster had died in a terrible and harrowing accident. Nobody had been able to prevent the tragedy. The incident was attributable to the dangers of dynamite. By a small mercy nobody else was hurt, and the deceased did not have any family, which would now be left destitute.
The story was never corrected.
1962
The alarm clock rings, shrill and merciless. It is a quarter after three in the morning in the middle of May. The oil-fired heater is cold, and the room is chilly and damp. The sea is blue-black and still. A heavy grey-white mist weighs on the surface of the water. Barren images molded by the leaden light. Oak branches rising like ruins out of the grey haze.
As I walk along the path that hugs the shoreline, the sand and the brown-grey seaweed crunch like eggshells under my heels. A gentle ripple crosses the water. Dying waves roll soundlessly past. Somewhere in the distance a boat has been sailing by. A pike splashes on the surface and the sound bounces back and forth between the cliffs on the far side of the inlet.
The island is not big. It takes half an hour to walk around it. To the headland, where Johansson has his cabin, it’s about fifteen minutes. I follow the shore, branch off in among the oaks where the sand gives way to steep boulders, get back down to the beach again, squeeze my way through a tight thicket of alder, and then I only have to follow the gentle curve of the cove along to the headland, where the house is.
The door is ajar. Oskar is already up. He is sitting at the table playing Patience, a very special version of Idiot’s Delight. He nods at me and I pick up the coffeepot standing on the spirit stove. I sit down on the bench, help myself to a blue-speckled cup, and then I just wait until Johansson says it is time to go.
Oskar bought his cabin, an old sauna, seven years ago. It was at the time when the military were disposing of the remaining barracks buildings from the emergency standby years of the Second World War. Oskar was able to buy the bathhouse for 150 kronor, provided he removed the building himself. But Oskar talked to the owner of the land on which it stood and was given permission to leave the sauna there and to occupy it for as long as he lived. The following year I helped him to tear out the benches, line the walls with hardwood, make a small partition for his bed, fit a cupboard, and open up a window. Then we painted the whole thing white and red. Johansson moves out to the island at the beginning of April and stays there until it turns cold in October.