Oskar is now sixty-one years old. He is starting to feel tired in the mornings and on Sundays he likes to sleep until eleven. From time to time he thinks he may be ill, but he never goes and gets himself examined. Sometimes the two of them will sit and talk about the fact that they are getting old and then occasionally they both feel very frightened at the thought of being left alone. They never say so to each other, but each is gripped by a sudden anxiety that they will be the one who survives the other. Both of them harbour this fear, which grows stronger and more pervasive with each passing day. But they never speak of it. Only rarely do they talk about old age.
At the same time, around 1950, Oskar increasingly longs to spend more time in the countryside. His thoughts are not detailed or clear-cut but there is always water in the scenes of nature he conjures up in his mind. They vary between small rivers and the seashore, forest lakes and torrents. But the water is always there, without his knowing exactly why.
And as his thoughts begin to dwell on nature and water, he also feels hopeful that he will live to a great age.
He does not know why, but one day he is suddenly certain that he will be allowed to grow old. And it makes him happy and the images of nature crop up in his mind increasingly often.
But on Sundays he prefers to sleep rather than go out. He lies in his bed and sees the images in his mind. Only on rare occasions, such as on the first day of May, do they go out into the forest.
One Thursday, Oskar is asked if he would like to stop working and retire. He is surprised, but after a few seconds he answers with an emphatic no.
“No. Not yet, not unless I have to.”
And just once, that same evening as he is sitting on a chair in the kitchen, untying one of his shoelaces, he stops what he is doing and thinks that it might have been nice after all.
But he wants to go on working for a few more years. And he feels deep inside that if he were not so sure that he would live to become old, then he would stop work as soon as he could.
The Developing Process in Photography
One day in August in 1958, Oskar is sitting by his radio, listening to Lennart Hyland report on the unbelievable atmosphere as Richard Dahl skims over the bar at 2.12 metres. He only just clears it and the bar trembles and for a few seconds there is total silence on this day during the European Athletics Championships. But once it is clear that the bar will not fall, a fearsome racket breaks out in Stockholm Olympic Stadium and Oskar can hear his neighbours in the upstairs apartment stamp on the floor and bang their fists on the table. Oskar feels his heart pounding inside his ribs and he is overwhelmed with joy that Richard Dahl has surpassed himself. It does not cross his mind that this means a gold medal for Sweden, and likely the only one. Then he gets up and measures out a rough 212 centimetres on one wall of the kitchen. He is amazed when he sees the result.
In the course of 1958, Oskar has read a lot about sports in the newspapers and listened to a great deal on the radio. Many reports said that it was unlikely this century would ever again see such a year for sporting events in Sweden. There were the European Athletics Championships and a soccer World Cup with Sweden as the runner-up, and Oskar once saw the left back Sven Axbom in the street.
But Oskar is not particularly interested. Sometimes he is enthralled by the atmosphere, by success and adversity, but often he does not even know the rules of the different sports. He is also capable of laughing at himself, like the time when he realizes that relay races do not work as he had thought, which was that the runners turn around and sprint back again at every baton handover.
One of the first World Cup matches is between Sweden and Hungary. It is an evenly poised and exciting game with Sweden leading 2–1 in the middle of the second half. Then the Hungarians start to apply more pressure and begin to dominate. Lennart Hyland gets excited. After the Hungarians have laid siege to the Swedish goal for a long time, their inside left aims a hard and well-placed shot at goal with his instep. Kalle Svensson has to stretch as far as he can to tip the ball around the right-hand goalpost. Just as the Hungarians get ready to take their corner and Oskar is on tenterhooks, he clamps his jaws shut and feels one of his upper canines crumble... He sticks his thumb into his mouth and pushes half of the tooth out onto the tablecloth. He feels a shooting pain and realizes that the nerve is exposed.
The next day he goes to a dentist, who knocks out the rest of the tooth and kills the nerve. At the same time, he examines Oskar’s other teeth and after a while says that Oskar’s teeth are coming loose in both his upper and lower jaws and that the condition is too far advanced for it to be corrected without surgery. The dentist tells him what that would cost and Oskar replies that it is impossible. When he then asks how long he is likely to keep his teeth, the dentist answers that in all likelihood he will lose them quite quickly. Then, when Oskar leaves, he is given a brochure that describes what it is like to have dentures. Oskar sits down at the kitchen table and studies the brochure intently. He tries to imagine wearing a dental plate and feels uncomfortable at the thought. He puts aside the brochure and knows that he will never wear false teeth. He would rather go toothless. For the rest of the day he feels very unhappy at the thought that his body is starting to fall apart.
That evening he gets undressed, pulls the kitchen curtains shut, and sits naked on a chair in the middle of the room. Then he carefully examines his body. He pinches his skin, scratches it with the nail of his index finger. He stretches and clenches his toes and tries to bend in different directions. He checks his pulse on his carotid artery. He blocks one ear at a time while he listens for sounds from the apartments next door.
When he has finished his examination, he realizes to his surprise that he has been sitting naked on the chair for more than an hour. He finds it hard to believe that so much time has passed. He puts on his nightshirt and goes to bed. He lies there with his mental images, and on this particular evening he sees a greenish-blue ocean that is perfectly calm, and he tries to conjure up a string of memories. He falls asleep picturing all this.
A few years earlier a total eclipse of the sun is visible in the country. There is great excitement, because it is not going to recur in the foreseeable future. It has therefore been turned into a sacred moment, lasting less than a minute. Like everybody else, Oskar prepares himself for the day. Well in advance he makes sure that he has a piece of blackened glass through which he can watch the moon’s disc gliding in front of the sun. With growing interest, he follows the discussions of the meteorologists as to whether the eclipse will take place behind thick cloud cover or whether it will be possible to see it.
He is out early that morning. He puts the blackened glass, which he has wrapped in a handkerchief, in his pocket and follows the gravel path out into the forest. Walking along, he thinks back to the times he has gone there with Elvira. The thought makes him a little melancholy, but at the same time he is happy that he is still alive and can experience the remarkable eclipse. He stops in the clear-cut and sees that there are only very few clouds gliding across the sky. He has put an alarm clock in his other pocket and has set it by the radio. He puts it on a tree stump and finds himself a low pile of logs to sit on. The air is warm and he squints at the sun.
Then he stays sitting on the woodpile, alone, as he waits for the momentous occasion.
He keeps an eye on the hands of the clock and stands up as the time approaches. He has set the clock to go off a quarter of an hour before the eclipse is due. He hears it and sees a squirrel stop in surprise halfway up the trunk of a pine tree. He unwraps the blackened glass from the handkerchief and with his head tilted upward he holds the glass before his eye.