Open Grave

Thirty-six

There was something strange about the flower bed. He saw it immediately, even if it took awhile before it became completely obvious. It meant he had to take out the binoculars. He had done that before, sneaked it out between the plants in the tower, to check the surroundings. He was ashamed, but not enough to keep him from doing it.

The perennials were sitting wrong. Haller would never be guilty of such amateurish planting. Maybe he had been in a hurry, been sloppy, been eager to get away? No, he had not gained any time by planting that way. It was simply poorly executed.

However, in the long run it did not matter much, the wintergreen would quickly spread over the whole surface and hide the mistake.

“Strange,” murmured the associate professor.

Then he caught sight of the bicycle that was leaned against Lundquist’s wall, which made him even more perplexed. Haller had said that he had finished the work but perhaps there was some task he had forgotten on the front side of the lot?

He looked at the clock. They had decided that Haller would come by for mid-morning coffee. Gregor was curious about the gardening books Haller was bringing. “Duplicates,” he had said, but the associate professor suspected that partly it was an excuse for a visit. There was something vague and introverted about Haller. It was obvious that there was something on his mind, perhaps it would come out today? He smiled to himself, satisfied over the sprouting friendship with the gardener.

Why did it feel as if the end was approaching? Not his own death, he did not want to imagine that, but something ominous-he smiled at the ridiculous word-rested over the house and the whole block. An endpoint was approaching. Perhaps it was something that Torben Bunde, quite certainly unconsciously, expressed in his article about Ohler and the Nobel Prize? The associate professor could not put his finger on what it was other than that it was about existence in the nature reserve that constituted the Kåbo district.

Perhaps it was only his customary dissatisfaction making itself known? He had become a recluse, somewhat of a misanthrope. It was not something he was proud of. But the lifelong feeling, since he left his parental home in Rasbo, of not feeling really at ease with his colleagues, his position, had developed over the years into a slightly contemptuous attitude toward his surroundings. He was no longer indulgent, but instead condescending, sometimes spiteful, when he thought back on his experiences. There was no reconciliation of old age.

With the publication of the article in Upsala Nya Tidning-only a month ago a completely unimaginable action-he had joined an academic quarrel, but also, through his conclusions about the inbred isolation and camaraderie of the research world, placed himself outside, distanced himself. It was as if he recounted his own private quarrel that had followed him his whole life. Nice to finally speak out, he might think now, if a trifle unpleasant to make himself known.

Now he was tagged, out of the game. Even if perhaps he won some people’s sympathy he had defined himself out, pooped in his own nest, as his uncle would have put it.

For that reason he looked forward to the gardener’s visit. Haller stood for something else.

What had originally caught his attention was not Lundquist’s flower bed but instead the big car that was parked on the street outside the professor’s house.

The associate professor could not figure it out. He did not recognize the young man who was lugging out sacks and suitcases from the house. At first he thought hired help had been brought in to do a big cleaning but when the housekeeper’s sister showed up on the sidewalk he realized that something else was up.

And now his suspicions were confirmed. The sister and Agnes came out together. They got into the car without ceremony. They drove off. It could be explained in many ways, but the associate professor was suddenly convinced that Agnes had resigned her long service with Ohler and now definitively taken off.

It pleased him. He liked the thought that the professor would live alone in that gigantic house.