The sauna is one and a half metres wide and little more than three metres long. When I stand on tiptoe my head touches the ceiling.
The bed: the creaky old officer’s bed which he was given for free when the large barracks up on the slope was torn down.
A brown blanket, two changes of sheets, pillowcases with a red border and the initials “A. J.” in ornate letters. Two brown kitchen chairs, a lath table with a green wax tablecloth. Spirit stove, paraffin lamp, transistor radio, pack of cards, spectacles, wallet.
The cups, the plates, the coffee, and the potatoes.
With the index finger of his left hand, Johansson presses a button on the radio. The finger is thick, stronger than two normal ones. All he has left on that hand, which has had to assume the functions of both hands, is the thumb and index finger, and together they have developed into a claw for gripping things. The index finger presses down and music fills the room, much too loudly. But it is a sign. Soon we will get up and go. Just before half past four we sit in Johansson’s rowboat. It is light, made of hardboard riveted to a simple wooden frame. Grass-green and flat-bottomed. I sit in the stern and Johansson rows out from the shore. He grips the left oar with his finger and thumb. The right one is firmly in the crook of his right arm. Once we have cleared the three wooden planks that make up Johansson’s jetty, he turns the boat and we glide over toward the other side of the headland.
We move across the water in silence. It is still chilly and the mist is as grey as before. Johansson’s oar strokes are steady and follow the rhythm of his breathing. When he pauses, he also holds his breath.
Our nets are on the other side of the promontory. One for perch. One for flounder. First the perch. Then the flounder. We pull the nets up in the same order as we always do. With me crouching in the stern, Johansson slowly rowing the boat backward. Every fish we get is counted out loud by Johansson. A number, then another number. Just that.
“One.”
“Two.”
“Three.”
“Four.”
One big perch and three flounder. They flap about between our feet in the bottom of the boat. The nets in a pile over my boots. Johansson turns the boat around and we row back.
May 1962. We are listening to Radio Nord. Johansson usually laughs when the voice on the radio announces the transmission frequency and talks about megacycles.
“What the hell are they doing? Cycling around on the boat...?”
He chuckles to himself and squints at me with his one eye. His index finger is drumming on the wax tablecloth.
The fog is still just as thick, the sea equally leaden, but the light is growing brighter and cutting through the haze. Johansson twists around in his chair, grips the back of it with his finger and thumb and drags himself to his feet, enough to be able to see out through the window. He has a quick look and sinks back onto his chair again, and returns to his special version of Idiot’s Delight.
The cards are dirty and coming apart. The Jack of Spades has a bloodstain on one of his faces. The Seven of Clubs is from a different pack. One has all sorts of sailing boats on the back. The other a dark red background with a thin white border.
Radio Nord is playing “The Last of the Mohicans” by Little Gerhard.
The index finger drums slowly on the tablecloth, like a dripping icicle. The Idiot’s Delight will not work out.
1911
“I’d met her half a year before the accident. Pretty much exactly half a year. We got serious in June. We hadn’t really talked much about getting married. But in those days, there was no question of anything else. If you met and started walking out, then you were supposed to marry. She was the same age as me. There were three days between us, she was just those few days older. We used to meet on Thursday evenings. The only time she could manage. She had four hours off then. She worked for the manager of a textile company, looking after his small children. A boy and twin girls. She slept in a room at the back of the nursery. She belonged to that generation of working-class girls who spent most of their youth with a middle-class family, tucked away either behind a kitchen or in the children’s room. She didn’t like children at all, but that was the only work she could find. Mostly we used to walk around town. I don’t really remember what we talked about nor what we looked at. We just walked.”
“But there’s one thing I do recall. It must have been about a month before the accident. It was graduation day at the town’s high school. A Thursday, and we were out walking. Then three of those students came toward us on the pavement and refused to make way, so she and I were both jostled. I remember it clearly. It’s usually those sorts of things that come back to me. Meaningless details like that.”
Elly comes out of the kitchen entrance. She is wearing a white dress, brown boots, and a black shawl over her shoulders. She is quite short, a little chubby. Round face. Fresh complexion and green eyes. Brown frizzy hair. Pinched lips. Her teeth are pale yellow and she has already lost one, in her upper jaw, just where her laugh usually ends.
Johansson is waiting outside the iron gate. He watches Elly walking down the broad gravel path that leads from the white three-story house. She gives an embarrassed little smile as she fumbles with the lock on the inside of the gate. Then they stand there, face-to-face; nod; and start walking along the pavement. They don’t talk. The air is warm. They go along a street with high iron railings on each side, high walls, white detached houses. They head for the centre of town, toward their own world.
“How’s it looking for you next Thursday?” Oskar asks Elly.
Elly answers, “I’m probably free then too.”
An orange tram clanks past on its way into town. They pause and look to see whether there are any familiar faces in the two carriages. They stand and watch it make a stop; a middle-aged couple gets off and strolls toward Oskar and Elly. A soft wind is blowing. Elly brushes her face with her hand, looks away from Oskar when she smiles. Oskar takes her hand. He has washed himself with special care today, as he does every Thursday.
A month from now his hand will be lying with outstretched fingers among dandelions, while the blasting crew stand looking at it numbly.
Oskar and Elly cut across the cobbled square. In the distance, three students are approaching.
“Latin was the worst. Enoksson’s never liked me. He’d have flunked me, given half a chance.”
Black patent-leather shoes, blue walking sticks with silver-grey tips. Quick, jerky steps over the cobbles. A black-clad foot which changes direction in mid-air, narrowly avoiding a brown, sticky heap of excrement.
“Just imagine, they failed seven people this year. Many of the classes were weak.”
“That’s those plebs.”
Patent-leather shoes, clattering footsteps.
“Now look at that. See the girl over there. In the white dress. She’s one of our maids. Got big breasts. I’m going to walk in on her one evening and grab a handful.”