"There Are Things I Want You to Know" About Stieg Larsson and Me (13 page)

AFTER STIEG’S
ritual “Anybody home?” later that same evening, we took a look at the manuscript at around midnight. It was in pristine condition.
Too
pristine. Not one crease, or dog-ear, or even the slightest smudge.… It was obvious that no one had opened it.

“I don’t get it,” Stieg sighed. “Well, what do we care. Never mind.… Want any coffee?”

“There’s some ready!”

AFTER STIEG’S
death and the book’s success, a woman called me from Piratförlaget in some despair. She was the one who had received the manuscript and she told me that because of a lack of personnel, a great number of manuscripts had been systematically rejected without being read.

So the first volume of
The Millennium Trilogy
sat out in our hallway for a while, and it was Robert Aschberg, the publisher of
Expo
, who later delivered another copy of the manuscript to Norstedts, Sweden’s oldest publishing house, founded in 1823. At the time, Stieg was completely immersed in his work with Cecilia Englund on their anthology about honor killings, and he had other things on his mind. Good news was on the way, however. Not long ago, I came across a letter to Stieg dated March 2004 from the publishing house of Hjalmarsson & Höglund, which would publish the first volume of the trilogy, they said, but only after extensive rewriting. Stieg did not reply. Especially since shortly afterward, in the spring of 2004, Norstedts agreed to publish
The Millennium Trilogy
as is! I remember emailing one of our acquaintances with the news: “Call Stieg to congratulate him—with this success, he’s walking on air, and he deserves it so much!”

That April, I began a new job in Falun, the capital of Dalarna County in central Sweden, 150 miles northwest from Stockholm. After many years of working on ways to introduce more efficient and sustainable practices into the construction sector, I now had the chance to try putting such practices into action. Since I was working directly with
local construction companies, I was spending four days a week in Falun. One weekend, Stieg told me he’d signed a contract for those first three volumes with an advance of 591,000 kronor (about $86,500). In the letter of confirmation, Norstedts explained to Stieg that like many authors, he could establish a company to which the advance would be paid, and if he wished, an administrator at Norstedts would discuss with him the advantages and disadvantages of various kinds of companies. Enthusiastic about this idea, Stieg told me that Norstedts could help set up some kind of partnership in which I would be a cofounder. I suppose that is why the 591,000 kronor were not paid to Stieg at that time, which would have been the normal thing to do. As for me, knowing how clueless Stieg could be about such things, I figured it made sense that this publishing house would offer to help authors who must all have been as innocent as Stieg in such matters. Did Stieg misunderstand what Norstedts told him? Was it an offer simply to advise him, but not to help him set up the company? In any case, as far as we two were concerned, it was agreed that from then on, everything we earned beyond our salaries—from articles, reports, the royalties from my Hallman book, etc.—would be paid directly to this company. So there was no need, Stieg explained to me, to start dealing with a mass of paperwork like wills, for example, because we would be equal co-owners of everything and the company statutes would stipulate that if one of us died, the other would get everything.

I later checked our inheritance laws and verified this information, and since Stieg himself knew nothing about
such things, a lawyer must indeed have spoken to him about them.

Every now and then, I asked him how the setting up of the company was going, and he would tell me that it was being taken care of, that there was no rush.…

ONCE STIEG
knew his novels would be published, a wonderful period began for us, one of the most beautiful memories of my life.

When I’d get home to Stockholm every Thursday night, Stieg would be waiting in the apartment and dinner would be ready: a simple meal, but home-cooked, like cutlets and green beans. This detail might seem unimportant, but it isn’t. Stieg was finally putting our life first. And he was changing the way he ate. The sandwiches, pizzas, junk food—gone. For the first time since I’d known him, he was starting to look after himself. He even bought some omega-3 fish oil supplements! I was beginning to recognize the man I’d met when he was eighteen years old. After all those years of stress, what with his job ending at the news agency TT, and the creation and difficult management of
Expo
, so chronically short of funding, Stieg was at last serene. His novels were going to be published and he was recognized for his true worth. He could breathe easy.

Aside from those few months Stieg spent in Africa, we’d never really been separated during the thirty-two years we’d spent together. So it was a real pleasure to be a couple
again after each week spent apart. Stieg had put the word out to his “entourage”: “Now I want to spend my weekends with Eva.” Putting me first, even before
Expo
, that was an absolute revolution.

We’d always had what was basically a good life together, even during the worst years, but during this period Stieg was full of zest and deeply happy.

We made all sorts of plans.

He was determined to leave his position as editor in chief of
Expo
and to work there only half-time. Once my contract in Falun was over, my intentions were to find a part-time job that would allow us to work together, to add my knowledge to his talent as a writer so we could publish other books. We were especially eager to tackle a subject as yet unexplored: the construction industry. And there’d be more to say there than would fit in an article on crooked asphalt contractors.

We thought
The Millennium Trilogy
would be a hit in the Scandinavian countries and perhaps Germany as well. As we saw it, this popularity would in itself be a kind of protection for Stieg. And we’d be able to appear in public together! What’s more, some of the money earned would pay for more sophisticated security when and where we might need it.

So: Stieg had decided that what now came first was us, as a couple. That’s why he planned to have the money from the first three novels go toward improving our living situation, the first step of which was to pay off the 440,000 kronor ($64,500) debt remaining on our mortgage. Then we’d
agreed to donate the proceeds from the fourth novel to
Expo
, to put the magazine on a solid financial footing and assure its continued publication. The income from the fifth book would be invested in the establishment of safe houses for women victims of violence. As for the other books, there was plenty of time to think about that.

Our absolute dream, as I’ve already said, was to have—at long last—our own cabin on an island. This would be “our little writing cottage,” as we called it, where we’d go regularly to work. And thanks to the publication of the trilogy, this dream was going to come true. To us, this cottage was more than a hideaway; most of all, it was the symbol of a new life. Our chief requirements were modest. Stieg wanted it to be near a café and a place that sold newspapers. I wanted a cabin that was soundly built and easy to maintain. The single thing we both wanted was two wooden settees. Why? At home, the battle for the single one in the living room was escalating into silliness. We could both stretch out on it by facing each other at opposite ends, but as soon as one of us got up, the other would spread out or, even worse, snag the coveted spot over by the corner of the wall. Aside from this most vital detail, we wanted our cabin to be gray, not red in the Swedish style, and the slanting roof was to be covered in sedum, a plant of the Crassulaceae family. Sometimes called stonecrops, these flowering succulents are known especially for their fat, stubby leaves, which provide protection from both heat and cold. I also wanted to use new construction techniques, such as a compact, insulated rubber floor for the bathroom.
We daydreamed for weeks about our paradise, drawing pictures of it while we were apart and then comparing our sketches on weekends.

At the same time, we were also looking for the right piece of property. And later, in the autumn, I would prepare a computer rendition of the final sketch and floor plan for our cabin. (By that time, I’d managed to fit in our two famous settees and even a little corner for overnight guests, so in October I sent the computer proposal to a factory specializing in the construction of “green” houses with a request for a cost estimate.)

The last summer with Stieg was completely different from all the others. Of course, Stieg was very tired, and no wonder: in addition to readying the first volume of the trilogy for publication with Norstedts, he’d been continuing his work at
Expo
and still giving lectures. In June, for example, he’d gone to Paris with a Swedish delegation sent by the Ministry of Justice to a conference on hate crimes and the Internet, organized by the OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe). But now that we had some time to spare, it seemed important to “make the rounds” of our friends. (And after Stieg’s death, how thankful we were, our friends and I, that we hadn’t postponed our tour until the following year.)

Transformed into a walking travel agency, I busied myself with the itinerary and with organizing our transportation and lodgings. My sister Britt accompanied us to Scania, the province on the southern tip of the
Scandinavian Peninsula, as well as to Gothenburg and the scenic Koster Islands off the west coast of Sweden. It was on this trip that I realized how tired Stieg actually was. When Britt and I would go off for a walk, for example, instead of going with us as usual he would remain at the hotel, reading the papers. I wasn’t particularly alarmed, though. For his fiftieth birthday, which we’d recently celebrated in mid-August, my sister had wanted to give him a complete checkup as a present, but since we weren’t the kind of people who consult a doctor when they aren’t ill, my sister, brother, and I opted in the end for a DVD player. Two months later, we would bitterly regret this.

That summer, Stieg and I wound up our long tour as we always did, in a small rented cottage on the Stockholm archipelago.

One evening, home again at the end of August, when we were sitting close together on our settee, he asked me timidly, “Why don’t we get married now?” He’d spoken as if fearing a refusal, but I made a show of my delight, and was also a touch embarrassed, from surprise. We decided that in the autumn we’d give ourselves a huge party for our fiftieth birthdays and then reveal to our friends that it was really our wedding celebration. Ever since a trip to Lisbon in 2001, we’d been saving a bottle of Quinta do Noval Porto 1976 for our fiftieths. But we never had time for either the marriage or the party. That bottle of port turns up in Lisbeth Salander’s new apartment in the second book of
The Millennium Trilogy
. Now it’s in my kitchen. I will never open it.

During that last summer, the sea was with us everywhere. Those constantly renewed horizons seemed to us the symbol of all the changes ushering in our new life. Well, my life did change. Unfortunately.

Monday, November 8

THAT DAY
, as always, Stieg was running late. Toward the end of the morning, he’d gone out to have breakfast in a café, also as usual, before heading on to
Expo
. I kissed him goodbye. He was in good spirits. At around a quarter to eight that evening, I phoned him from the station just to say hi before my train left Stockholm. He was fine. Three hours later, I arrived in Falun. It was winter, a dark night, and I had to make my way through poorly lighted narrow streets. (I always carried a can of mace.) As soon as I arrived, I called Stieg to tell him all was well; it was one of our rituals, it reassured him. There was no real news to relate. “Lots of love, good night.”