Red Wolf

20

The man was walking hesitantly, breathlessly, up Linnégatan towards the Fyris River. He was clutching his left hand against his stomach, and holding the right one up to protect his ear, grimacing slightly, not at the pain but rather at the wave of nostalgia the train journey had released. He was defenceless – the memories flooded over him, thundering through him, crashing like a tidal wave right into his mind, stirring up the sludge that had been lying on the bottom so long that he had forgotten it existed. Now it had all come back, the images and smells and sounds that had never done any harm as long as they were hidden among the other forgotten nonsense. But now they were singing, chanting and proclaiming so loudly that he couldn’t hear himself think.

He found himself staring up at a window on the second floor of the Fjellstedska student hostel, one with an Advent star and a little plant on the window sill. They were there again, the girls he had had behind that barred window three and a half decades ago, his first women; he could feel their beery breath and blushed at his own clumsy shyness.

He had been so amazed. The world had seemed so strange. What naïve astonishment at its scope and opportunities. What bitter disappointment when its limitations slammed in his face like iron gates.

The howl of the sounds became lonely. He could feel the draught from the floor, the rat that had stared at him from the window sill that ice-cold morning, the same window sill. He saw it in another light, the frost on the inside of the glass, the rug he had taken with him to remind him of Mother, the nice one where she had woven in his childhood smock and her worn-out petticoat.

‘It came from Kexholm,’ she had said, letting him feel the fine fabric beneath his child’s fingers, and he had appreciated the power of the old country, Mother’s childhood home, and understood her terrible sense of loss.

He gave a snort. This was too difficult. However would he manage?

The task. He had not failed yet, and he wasn’t about to start now where his family was concerned. They were all he had left.

He turned his back on the student hostel, keeping the window in the corner of his eye as long as he could, letting it slide away. He would never see it again.

He took a few stumbling steps along Svartbäcksgatan. The noise subsided, and it became easier to breathe. Slowly everything around him settled down. He had no memories of this place being full of the commercialism of Christmas. It must have looked completely different at the end of the sixties. He straightened his back, letting the hand fall from his ear, allowing reality to wash over him. Half-naked and headless plastic mannequins begged and enticed from the shop windows, with noisy battery-driven toys made in China, flashing strings of lights running across dressing gowns and silk ties, cordless electric tools to charge and use, charge and use.

He raised his head to escape the windows and his eyes fixed on a green artificial pine garland stretched across the whole street. He turned off to the right, across the river, up to the university.

Stopping to catch his breath, he heard the howling monster of consumer society like a waterfall behind him.

The cold was particularly harsh today. He could hardly remember ground this frozen. He was amazed at how the stillness of air from the arctic could emphasize colours and light, sharpening and clarifying his perceptions. He stared up at the cathedral’s twin towers as they struggled, heavy and full of shadows, to reach the translucent sky. He closed his eyes, it was long ago, so long ago; he had almost forgotten what it felt like to breathe in the glass-clear air that could only be found in Uppsala. Now the cold was taking possession of his insides, freezing his airways and the soles of his feet. His teeth started to chatter unconsciously.

He struggled on and stopped outside the ornate main building of the university, brick and limestone, looking up the long flights of steps and studying the four statues above the entrance, the four faculties of the university when it was founded: theology, law, medicine and philosophy. His gaze wandered back to the first of these, the woman with the cross, his faculty.

You betrayed me, he thought. You should have been my life’s work, but you turned into a lifetime of denial.

He walked up the steps, his eyes fixed on the three heavy oak doors, the huge iron handles. Well-oiled hinges swung the door open surprisingly easily, and he walked cautiously into the entrance hall. The cathedrallike space opened up above him with its three enormous glass domes. His steps echoed against the mosaic floor and smooth granite pillars, the stucco detailing, the paintings on the ceiling, bouncing off the staircase up to the auditorium as it curved past the wise, gilded words of the great humanist, Thorild: To think freely is great, but to think correctly is greater.

Freedom, he thought, the tyranny of our age. The betrayal of our simple medieval way of life, where everyone knew their place in society. People who set the salvation of the soul above all else: economic gain, personal freedom, the questioning of social structures.

He turned his back on the room. The developments during the Renaissance made him want to weep with rage – Eve’s betrayal of Adam, the whore who tricked humanity into biting into the fruit of the tree of knowledge, its innocence raped. The rise of greed that went on and on for centuries, poisoning people’s relationships with ambitions of profit and glory. He hurried out of the heavy academic atmosphere and the burned colour scheme, turning right outside the door and finding himself facing a strangely familiar building, and all of a sudden he was back again, back when the building was new, he had never seen such a modern building, the student union hall.

That was where he belonged, his spiritual home, where he had discovered all that was inadequate and evasive in the great tented meetings and grinding services of Læstadianism. This was where he encountered the Master’s words for the first time: People of the world, unite and defeat the American aggressors and all their lackeys. People of the world, be courageous, and dare to fight, defy difficulties and advance wave upon wave. Then the whole world will belong to the people. Monsters of all kinds shall be destroyed.

He shut his eyes and it was suddenly dark around him and within him. It was late at night again, as it had been before, windswept and cold, he was a lone island in the night sea, standing between ecstasy and the applause rolling out through one of the modern building’s misted windows. Mao’s words were like fireflies in the darkness, recited by trembling young voices and received euphorically, without any trace of doubt: The Chinese and Japanese peoples should unite, the people of various Asian nations should unite, all oppressed people and nations of the world should unite, all peace-loving countries should unite, all countries and individuals subject to US imperial aggression, control, intervention or bullying should unite and form a broad united front against US imperialism to frustrate its plans for aggression and war and to defend world peace.

Soon afterwards they came out – sweaty, pumped up, happy, satisfied, and he went up to them and they saw him. People saw him, they asked him if he was a true revolutionary and he said yes, people of the world, unite and defeat the American aggressors and all their lackeys. And they slapped him on the back and said, tomorrow, comrade, Laboremus, seven o’clock, and he nodded and was left standing there with a new fire in his soul. The landing strip of life suddenly lit up beneath him and he knew it was time to go down.

He opened his eyes with a sigh. It had got dark, and he was tired. He would soon have to take his medicine again. It was quite a way to the motel he had booked into, and he had to find the right bus again. Anonymous rooms in a large establishment, never taxis.

He walked back towards the central station, one hand on his stomach and the other hanging by his side.

Aware that he was an almost invisible man.