To Oskar, none of this is real. Everything is only strange and he is unable to grasp what has happened even when his mind is least affected by the drugs. It is beyond his comprehension. He sees no images of a cliffside exploding. No images of himself in the June heat, watching from a distance as he stands by a rock wall, gripping a detonating cable with one hand and then being blown into nothingness. No images that show him lying on the ground, contorted. There is no sound of Norström bellowing or the young helper crying. An endless row of people dressed in white glides through Oskar’s mind. Dressed in white, but with bright faces, they sometimes take on Elly’s appearance. Faces that look down at him, smile at him, stroke his cheek, straighten out his blanket, change his bandages. Reality is reduced to what is immediately present. Everything else is gone. There are no memories staring at him from within his head. There is no inkling of anything from his past. His world is reduced to what is palpable, easily grasped. It is confined within these walls. Infinity is the blue or grey sky. He travels when his bed is pushed through the corridors to X-ray and the laboratories. The faces looking down at him in his bed represent both event and memory all at once.
The only thing that remains from another time is Elly’s face. She has not yet been allowed to visit him. He is not well enough. But there is her face, leaning over him and smiling her pinched smile. During the day her face sometimes appears outside the window, in relief against the grey or blue background.
And then there are the dreams. Vividly coloured and chaotic. Since he wakes up so often, he nearly always recalls them. Every new waking spell begins with him looking back at the most recent dream.
There is one where he is sitting in a dark cellar sewing flags. A narrow slit of a window, just where the wall meets the roof, lets a faint light into the room. The walls are grey, bare. The floor is of trodden clay. The air is cold and damp. He is sitting on a brown wooden table in the middle of the room, sewing hems on flags that are two metres long. A roll of yellow-and-blue material is standing by one of the walls. The yellow cross is already woven into the coarse cloth. He sits and sews, pushing the needle up and down through the hem, with the thread winding into an even spiral. And then the flag in his lap begins to flutter. A wind starts blowing in the room and the fabric slaps against his knees. The only sounds are those of the flag beating against his legs.
In another dream, Elly and he are running along a street at night, chasing an enormous rat which is galloping ahead of them. It is the size of an Alsatian. There are mouldy spots all over its brown coat. Its grey tail whips against the paving stones like a length of steel wire. Elly and he run after the rat. Suddenly he sees that Elly is also a rat, with tiny dark brown eyes.
He wakes up and runs the images of his dreams through his mind once more. For him they are pictures, two-dimensional. Nothing more. He opens his eye, the empty socket twitches under the bandage, and he sees the portrait of the royal family on the wall opposite.
Day is dawning. The steely light of early morning. Soft sounds from the corridor outside his door make their way into the room. Footsteps, voices growing louder and then moving on.
Oskar has been in hospital for two months and ten days. Outside, summer is coming to an end and the blasters have just started on the third and last railway tunnel.
This breaking day is different for Oskar. He is going to have visitors, although he does not know it. Elly is coming. Norström is coming. And through their words Oskar will begin to understand what has actually happened. His mind will turn to wondering, the images and the dreams will be different.
It is afternoon, and Norström is the first to arrive. He enters the room. He has changed out of his work clothes and is wearing a black suit which is too small for him. His collar feels tight and he is afraid and sweaty-faced. He is twisting his mouth round and round and trying to wet his lips. He pulls up a chair and drops heavily onto it. Sits and looks at Oskar. ,
“Well then, Johansson. You made it. Not bad, bloody good effort. We thought you were done for. Hard to imagine anything else. The thing went off only half a metre from you. Damn near brought down the whole rock face.”
He wipes his lips and tries to hide the mixture of disgust and unease he feels at the sight of Oskar lying there, wrapped in bandages and blankets.
“Must hurt like hell, I suppose. It seemed pretty bad when we got to you.”
Oskar looks with his one eye. He recognises Norström, but he does not understand what he is hearing and cannot place it in any context.
“I won’t stay for long. They said you had another visitor.”
Norström tries to look cheerful. He feels uncomfortable and wants to get away even after just these few minutes. His mouth is dry and his lips move faster and faster. He tries to suck on his teeth to get the saliva going.
“We’ll do our best to come along quite often now, one of the boys or I. We weren’t allowed to before.”
Silence. Oskar tries to smile, but the bandages are tugging.
“Well. I’d better be going, then.”
Norström gets up, wonders if he should move the chair back, but he leaves it where it is.
“Fine. ’Bye then. You get better now.”
Norström walks towards the door, turns around, and looks once more at Oskar. Then he goes out and gently closes the door.
Something is troubling Oskar. An obscure memory is starting to nag at his consciousness. But as yet he does not know what it is.
Elly.
She is sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at you.
Was it really that awful?
It must hurt so much.
Isn’t there anything left of the eye?
Oskar.
She sits on the edge of the bed. I recognize that dress.
I don’t remember.
I’ve got used to it.
Apparently there’s nothing left.
Elly. Tell me what happened.
“I saw in the paper on the Monday that you were dead. It had fallen onto the floor from the table in the hall. I was just going to put it back. I was on my way to the kitchen to have my morning coffee.”
Now she is crying. Floods of tears as she leans down towards Oskar who is lying in the bed with his blanket pulled up to his chin.
“It was so awful. I thought I was going to faint. I had to sit down on the floor. I sat on top of the galoshes and was shaking all over. My heart kept beating faster. I thought I was going to die. Then I went straight in to the lady of the house and said that my husband had been killed in an accident and that I couldn’t work. That’s what I said. My husband is dead, and the lady sat there on the little sofa eating her breakfast and got annoyed because I hadn’t knocked.”
“But you’re not married, Elly. Not as far as I know. Now go back to the nursery. I don’t want the children to be left alone. Go back now.”
“But my husband is dead. It says so in the paper.”
Elly is standing there holding the newspaper. She takes the remaining steps to the sofa where the lady is sitting with her tea, and holds up the newspaper. With both hands.
“It says so here.”
And the lady of the house takes it, reads the piece.
“But surely your name isn’t Johansson? It’s Lundgren. If Johansson is a close friend of yours then I understand that it’s sad. But go back to the nursery now. Someone must be with the children. Take them out this afternoon. They need it. It’s nice and warm. Go now. Leave the newspaper here.”