My Struggle: Book 2: A Man in Love (41 page)

‘Is that true?’ Anders asked. ‘Ha ha ha!’

‘They don’t drink alcohol, that goes without saying. And my father doesn’t drink tea or coffee either. If he wants a treat in the morning he drinks hot water.’

‘I don’t believe that,’ Anders said.

‘But it’s true,’ Geir said. ‘He drinks hot water and they leave the sand by the gate for the Highways Department. They’re so good it’s almost impossible to be there. I’m sure having me as a son-in-law must be like the devil testing them.’

‘What was it like growing up with them?’ Helena asked.

‘I thought for ages that their world was the world, that was what it was like. All my friends and all my parents’ friends belonged to the movement. There was no life outside it. When I broke with it I also broke with all my friends.’

‘How old were you then?’

‘Twelve,’ Christina said.

‘Twelve?’ Helena repeated. ‘How did you find the strength to do that? Or the maturity?’

‘I don’t know. I just did. And it was tough. It was. I did lose all my friends.’

‘Twelve years old?’ Linda said.

Christina nodded and smiled.

‘So now you drink coffee in the morning?’ Anders asked.

‘Yes,’ Christina answered. ‘But not when I’m there.’

We laughed. I got up and started collecting the plates. Geir got up as well, took his own plate and followed me into the kitchen.

‘Have you changed sides, Geir?’ Anders shouted after him.

I slid the empty mussel shells into the bin, rinsed the plates and put them in the dishwasher. Geir passed me his, retreated a few steps and leaned against the fridge.

‘Fascinating,’ he said.

‘What is?’ I asked.

‘What we’ve been talking about. Or
talking
about it at all. Peter Handke has a word for it.
Erzählnächte
I believe he calls them. Nights when people open up and everyone contributes a story.’

‘Yes,’ I said, turning round. ‘Coming for a walk? I need a smoke.’

‘All right,’ Geir said.

When we were ready with our coats on, Anders came out.

‘Are you going for a smoke? I’ll join you.’

Two minutes later we were in the middle of the yard, me with a glowing cigarette between my fingers, the other two with their hands in their pockets. It was cold and the wind was blowing. Everywhere fireworks were going off.

‘I had another story on the tip of my tongue upstairs,’ Anders said, running one hand through his hair. ‘About losing everything you have. But I thought it best to tell it here. It was in Spain. I had a restaurant with a pal. It was a fantastic life. Up all night, high on coke and booze, lying in the sun during the day, starting again at seven or eight in the evening. I think it was the best time in my life. I was absolutely free. Did exactly what I wanted.’

‘And?’ Geir said.

‘Then perhaps I did too much of what I wanted. We had an office on the floor above the bar, I screwed my companion’s wife there, I couldn’t keep my hands off her. Of course he caught us red-handed and that was that. No more working together. But one day I want to go back. It’s just a question of getting Helena on board.’

‘It might not be the life she’s dreaming of?’ I suggested.

Anders shrugged.

‘But we can hire a summer house down there at some point. For a month every six months. Granada or something. What do you reckon?’

‘Sounds good,’ I said.

‘I don’t have any holidays,’ Geir said.

‘What do you mean?’ Anders asked. ‘This year?’

‘No, ever. I work every day all week, Saturdays and Sundays included, and all the weeks in the year, apart from Christmas Eve perhaps.’

‘Why?’ Anders asked.

Geir laughed.

I threw down my cigarette end and stamped on the ground a few times.

‘Shall we go up?’ I said.

The first time I met Anders he picked Linda and me up from the railway station by Saltsjöbaden, where they were renting a little flat, and on the way he expressed his contempt for the rat race there, life was about more than money and status, but even though I had an inkling he was humouring us and just saying what he thought we, as ‘arty people’, wanted to hear, a lot of months were to pass before I understood that he actually meant the opposite: his
only
real interest was money and the life money bought. He was obsessed by the notion of becoming rich again, everything he did was to that end, and as he could not do this with the knowledge of the tax authorities, he moved into the world of illegal earnings. When Helena met him all his affairs were murky, but she, while fighting her love for him for as long as she could, although finally she did crumble on a grand scale, set some demands, because not long afterwards they had a baby together, and apparently he complied: the money he earned was still illegal but in a certain light nonetheless ‘clean’. What exactly his work was I didn’t know, except that he used his many contacts from the days when he was in clover to finance a quick succession of projects and these somehow lasted only a few months at a time. Ringing him was a waste of energy because he was forever changing mobile phones, the same applied to his cars, so-called company cars which he exchanged at regular intervals. When we visited them, one evening there might be an enormous flat-screen TV along one wall in the living room, or a new laptop on the desk in the hall, the next they could be gone. The line between what he owned and what he could lay his hands on was evidently fluid, and nor was there any clear link between what he did and the money he had at his disposal. All the money he made, and frequently it was not trivial amounts, he used to gamble. He would gamble on anything that moved. Since his powers of persuasion were impressive he had no problem getting hold of money, so he was stuck in a real quagmire. As a rule he kept all this to himself, but now and then his dealings surfaced, like the time someone rang Helena and said that Anders had emptied the till of the company where he had gone to renegotiate contracts, a little matter of 700,000 kroner, and it would be reported to the police. Anders didn’t bat an eyelid when she confronted him with it; the company’s finances were in a mess and dubious, now they were bent on a cover-up by blaming him. Even though he was supposed to have run off with the money and gambled it away, the money was illegal and therefore the police would be the last people they would contact, so in that respect he was safe. Presumably he kept a watchful eye on the people he swindled, but the situation was no less dangerous for that. Once they had been burgled while they were out, Helena told Linda; the burglars probably did it just to show that they could. Then he became the co-owner of a grandiose restaurant scheme, but that became history for him after some months, then there were some building sites he was suddenly running, then he was renting exclusive rooms to a hairdressing salon, then there was a bacon factory he had to save from bankruptcy. The problem, if you can call it a problem, was that it was impossible to dislike him. He could talk to anyone, which is a rare gift, and he was generous, which you noticed as soon as you met him. And he was always happy. He was the person who stood up at parties and thanked the hosts for the spread or congratulated them on whatever occasion it was or did whatever was required, and he had a kind word for everyone, however much or little they had in common with him. More often than not, he knew how to make them feel good. Yet there was nothing of the schemer about him, no subtlety, and perhaps that was the reason – despite his general duplicity, which is one of the few qualities I find hard to accept – I still liked him so much. Naturally enough, he couldn’t give a flying fart about me, but whenever we met he didn’t pretend to be interested, the way people sometimes do when duty compels and the fracture between thoughts and actions becomes visible in one of those tiny revealing gestures that very few can control, such as the quick glance to another side of the room, meaningless in itself, but when it is followed by a kind of ‘jolt’ as their attention refocuses on you, the ritual as ritual becomes obvious. The feeling that you have been subjected to a charade will of course be disastrous for someone whose life depends on winning people’s trust. Anders did not ‘play games’; that was his secret. However, he was not ‘genuine’ either, in the sense that everything he said necessarily fell in line with what he thought, what he did and what he wanted. But then who is? There is a type of person who consistently says what he means without adapting it to the situation in which he finds himself, but such individuals are few and far between, I have met only two, and what happens to them is that all these social situations become incredibly charged. Not because people disagree and start quarrelling, but because their conversational aim excludes all other aims and their totalitarian attitude automatically rebounds on them and they appear mean and pig-headed, irrespective of their real nature, which in both cases was, as far as I could judge, basically generous and friendly. The social unease I myself could provoke came from the opposite cause. I always let the situation determine events, either by saying nothing at all or playing up to others. Saying what you believe others want to hear is of a course a form of lying. Hence the difference between Anders’ and my social behaviour was only one of degree. Even though his corroded trust and mine corroded integrity, the result was basically the same: a slow erosion of the soul.

It was of course ironic, though not incomprehensible, that Helena, who was drawn to the spiritual side of life and was continually trying to understand herself, should have ended up with a man who swept all other values apart from money to the side with a smile on his face, for they shared an essential ingredient, a lightness and a
joie de vivre
. And they were an attractive couple. With her dark hair, warm eyes and strong facial features, Helena’s appearance was striking, her personality winning and her presence palpable. She was a talented actress. I had seen her in two TV series: in one, a crime programme, she played a widow, and the sombreness she radiated turned her into a stranger for me, it was like watching a different person with Helena’s face. In the other, a comedy programme, she played a bitch of a wife, and I had the same impression, a different person with her features.

Anders was also good-looking, in a boyish kind of way, although whether it was his aura, the glint in his eye, the slim body or perhaps the hair – which would have been described as a mane in the 1950s – that did it, was hard to say because Anders was not an easy person to see. Once I had bumped into him in Sergels torg in the city centre, he seemed to be hanging around by a wall, hunched and very, very tired, I had barely recognised him, but when he caught sight of me, he straightened up, he seemed to lift himself and in the twinkling of an eye he transformed himself into the happy energetic man I was familiar with.

When we returned, Helena, Christina and Linda had cleared the table and were now chatting on the sofa. I went into the kitchen and put on the coffee. While waiting for it to brew I went into the adjacent room, which was completely quiet and empty, except for the breathing of Helena and Anders’ child, who was asleep on our bed, clothed and with a blanket over him. In the half-light the empty cradle, the empty cot, the changing mat and the dresser with the baby’s clothes beside it seemed a bit eerie. Everything was ready for our baby to arrive. There was even a pack of nappies we had bought on the shelf beneath the changing mat, with a pile of towels and clothes, and above it a mobile from which hung tiny planes, quivering in the draught from the window. It was eerie because there was no baby, and the line between what could have been and what was to come was so fluid in these matters.

From the living room came the sounds of laughter. I closed the door behind me, put a bottle of cognac, cognac glasses, coffee cups and dishes on a tray, poured the coffee from the machine into a vacuum flask and carried everything into the living room. Christina had a teddy bear on her lap, she seemed happy, her face was more open and calmer than usual, while Linda, sitting next to her, could scarcely keep her eyes open. At present she was going to bed at about nine. It was getting on for twelve now. Helena searched for some music among the CDs on the shelves while Anders and Geir were at the table continuing their conversation about mutual criminal acquaintances. A whole menagerie of criminals had obviously frequented the boxing club in the years Geir hung out there. I set the table and sat down.

‘You met Osman, didn’t you, Karl Ove?’ Geir asked.

I nodded.

Geir had once taken me up to Mosebacke to meet two of the boxers he knew. One, Paolo Roberto, who had boxed for the world championship title, was now a TV celebrity in Sweden, and was preparing for a new title fight in a kind of comeback. The other, Osman, was at the same level but not as well known. With them was an English trainer whom Geir introduced as a ‘doctor in boxing’. ‘He’s a doctor in boxing!’ I shook hands, didn’t say much, but carefully followed what went on because this was very different from what I knew. They were very relaxed, there were no tensions in the air, which, it occurred to me, I had always been used to. They ate pancakes, drank coffee, watched the crowds, squinted into the low but still hot sun and talked about the old days with Geir. Even though his body was as calm as theirs, it was filled with a different, lighter and more excited, almost nervous energy, it was apparent in his eyes, always looking for openings, and in the way he spoke – effusive, resourceful but also calculating – because he was adapting to them and their jargon while they just spoke as it came to them. The one called Osman was wearing a T-shirt, and even though his biceps were large, perhaps five times larger than mine, they were not disproportionately large but slim. The same was true for the whole of his upper body. He sat there, supple and relaxed, and every time my eyes rested on him it crossed my mind that he could smash me to pulp in seconds without my being able to do anything about it. The feeling it gave me was one of femininity. It was humiliating, but the humiliation was all my own, it could not be seen, nor could it be sensed. Yet it was still there, damn it.