Shadow

9

The smell of an apple. To be able to reach out his arm and pick it up, move it towards his face and breathe in its aroma. The lightning-quick displacement to a lost time; a magical gateway to the realm which normally lay dimmed by decades of change, but which in an instant could be resurrected.

Axel Ragnerfeldt looked at the bright green apples lying in the fruit bowl. Just as inaccessible as if they were still in the land of their origin named on the little label stuck to them. He consoled himself with the fact that they surely no longer had any smell, injected and manipulated as they were to withstand the long journey halfway around the world. They were not like the apples of his childhood, carefully harvested from the lone tree in their allotment, to be converted into golden juice and holiday apple sauce. The meticulously tended garden with potatoes, turnips and other practical vegetables, and some occasional extravagances such as snapdragons, columbines and sweet violets sneaking into the rows. Mamma hurrying about her thousand tasks and father’s steady hammer-blows, proud and precise. The little shed that slowly grew beneath his rough hands. Six square metres, but more precious than the most magnificent palace. He recalled the regulations posted: The allotment gardens are primarily intended for the great number of labourers and their like who live in the city in poor circumstances and have difficult living conditions.

‘Bliss’, they had named it, the little plot that like an oasis offered them solace from the cramped flat with one room and kitchen a stone’s throw away: the little wooden city with its simple dwellings in the gap between Ringvägen and Blekingegatan streets, built as an emergency solution to the acute housing shortage after the First World War, though it remained until the end of the sixties.

Fill your head with knowledge, boy, it’s the only thing that can take you out of here.

There was a knock at the door. He had never understood why they bothered. Since he’d ended up at the nursing home he could neither welcome anyone nor send them away, and he found their knocks insulting. As if rubbing it in. He heard the door open behind his back. Somebody came in but said nothing, so he didn’t know who it was until she appeared in his field of vision. He didn’t remember her name; everyday details often slipped his mind, perhaps because he wasn’t interested. Only things that happened long ago had sharp contours. Maybe that was his brain’s way of protecting him. His body had become a closed space in which he was locked inside. Without doors or windows and beyond all human contact. Monotonous days that came and went and had to be endured. His entire prize-winning intellect had moved into the little finger of his left hand, which sometimes obeyed his orders but lately had more often proved unco-operative. Trapped in a body he couldn’t move, but whose sensations of pain were intact. After hours in the same position the pain was unbearable. And yet he couldn’t ask for help. Then his only salvation was to escape into the past.

Though there were certain nooks and crannies he carefully avoided, to which his mind did not care to go.

‘Hi, Axel, are you comfortable or should I move you a bit?’

A towel wiped off the saliva that had drooled out of his mouth. How did she expect him to answer? A movement with his finger meant yes. The question was beyond his resources. He wanted to sit up and scream, release the roar of rage that filled him. This was no life, it was a condition, and his feeling of humiliation was his worst enemy. He had always been selective about the people with whom he associated, and few had passed through the eye of the needle. Forced gatherings had always been refused, and over the years even the select circle of acquaintances had shrunk. At the same pace that his fame had increased, the people around him had changed; a few had remained themselves but most of them had turned deferential or obsequious. He had experienced a sense of being an outsider, which soon became incorporated into his lonely writer’s life, and finally he could probably best be described as unsociable. Now he was fair game for unknown people. They came and went, and witnessed his humiliation. Strange hands that touched his body and became familiar with his most private parts. He was at their mercy and utterly dependent; he couldn’t even die by his own hand.

She was still standing to one side behind his back and he sensed that she was waiting.

‘Shall I move you a little?’

He concentrated but his finger refused to respond, even though his body was begging to be moved. Not until she turned and left did he see out of the corner of his eye how his finger gave a little twitch. He heard the door close and fled back into his memories.

How much had been made clear? He didn’t know. Perhaps what the eye saw and the ear heard could be distorted, but never the experience. Everything fallen into an oblivion that still carved tracks. The neighbourhood of his childhood was long gone, but was immortalised in several of his early novels. Despite poor circumstances it had been a good place to grow up. Constant chatter about the weather in the stairwell and from the windows. The games that changed with the seasons, always outside because of the crowded living conditions. Skating in the winter on rinks they flooded themselves. The gigantic snow caves that turned into forts during the snowball fights. The toboggan runs where red-cheeked kids with chapped lips slid on sheets of cardboard and the seats of their trousers. When the snow melted the games began; treasured marbles constantly changed owners. He would be rich one evening and destitute the next. He remembered playing rounders and games with home-made footballs of paper and string. In the summertime swimming in Årstaviken and chasing after the water-sprinkler truck that kept down the dust between the cobblestones. His envy of those who were lucky enough to go to holiday camp or had relatives in the countryside. The autumn, when they all got together again. The season of hide-and-seek and ghost stories.

He remembered the smells. Always the smells. The aroma of dinner and fresh-baked bread, the rank smell from the rubbish bins and outdoor toilets in the courtyard. The smell of sweaty coats drying in the dark hallways. Horse-shit on the streets and newly chopped wood. The fleeting smell of freshly washed sheets in the drying loft.

The shops, all with their distinctive smells: the fishmonger, the butcher, the bakery, the wood and kerosene cellar. And all the sounds. In the streets the noise from cars and trams, pushcarts, iron-shod hooves and clattering wheels. The new and the old in a struggle for space.

He remembered the silent winter, when sound was absorbed by the snow and the grown-ups stayed indoors. Huddled in their tiny flats and then released in early spring when everything returned.

The radio. That magical box around which everyone gathered and which conjured away the walls, opening the room to the wide world.

Fill your head with knowledge, boy, it’s the only thing that can take you out of here.

As a little boy those words had scared him; he didn’t want to go anywhere. He wanted to stay there with Mamma and Pappa where things were familiar, with all the safe routines and monotonous repetition. He had wondered why they wanted to get rid of him. Why they were so eager to drive him away from the life which in the next breath they were so quick to praise. Hard work, fastidiousness and order. Unity gives strength. High morals and a conscientious life, a bust of Hjalmar Branting, Sweden’s first Social Democratic prime minister, demonstrated their class affiliation from its place of honour on the bureau. One of the few objects in their home that was not utilitarian. So many times his memory had furnished this place. The kitchen, where his mother reigned until evening, and a bed made up for Pappa on the pull-out sofa. The room inside, which during the day stood empty but where at night he and his mother and his two-years-older sister slept. She was the one who had a good head for studying, but no notice was ever taken. Not even when her teacher took the time to knock on their door one evening to try and convince his parents to let the girl continue her studies after elementary school. They had stubbornly stood their ground. Axel was the one in their family who was going to study, and that had been decided long ago. He was going to be an engineer, a profession with a future. His sister had been filled with a bitterness that was constantly nurtured in the years that followed. She never forgave him, even though the choice had not been his.

The sun had reached past the window-sill and an irritating shaft of light struck him in the face. His eyes, which during the first year after the stroke would blink when he wanted them to and not merely when necessary, closed and left him in a reddish-purple darkness.

The fact that his parents had chosen engineering, of all things, had astonished him. Numbers had never been his allies. Nor was he particularly practical by nature. God knew that he tried; in his eagerness to impress his father he had done everything to become like him. His father’s indulgent glance when his hand demonstrably lacked talent for the hammer when they were building the shed at Bliss. Doggedly his father pulled out the misplaced nails and simply put them where they were supposed to have gone. Never a harsh word, only the silent message that practice made perfect and that one should never give up. Hard work, fastidiousness and order. At five thirty every morning except Sunday the alarm clock would ring, because at seven his father started work at the sugar mill. His mother did her part by taking the tram twice a week all the way to Östermalm, where she cleaned a flat. And it was from that family’s voluminous bookshelves that the treasures were gleaned, carefully smuggled out and then returned the following week – novels by Jules Verne, Alexandre Dumas and Jack London. He lost himself in the meandering stories, let himself be whisked away by the tales and continued the journey in his own words when he finished reading the books. His exercise book and loose sheets of paper were filled with fantastic stories about heroes and adventures. Both his mother and father read what he wrote, commenting on and evaluating his penmanship and spelling, but they never said a word about the content. The double message was imprinted early on – you in particular are expected to rise above the limits of your origin; but even so don’t believe that you’re anything special. When his stories finally were deemed far too verbose, the source of their inspiration stopped appearing in his home. The books that inspired his imagination, whose pages dripped with colourful fantasy, remained on the shelves in Östermalm; instead reference books and technical literature with bone-dry text were borrowed in an effort to usurp. All to prepare him for the day when he would take the exam for one of the free places at the Higher General Secondary School for Boys in Södermalm.

The door behind him was opened, but there was no knock this time. His eyelids refused to obey his command and remained as they were, a shield against the glaring sunshine. Only when he sensed the wheelchair moving and he ended up in the shade did they open, and he saw that it was Jan-Erik who had come.

‘Hi, Pappa.’

Once again he felt the towel wipe his chin, where the drool still ran; the itching was driving him crazy. Jan-Erik’s hand was tentative, not firm like that of the attendants. It revealed that his son was just as uncomfortable in this situation as he was, that he experienced it as equally unnatural.

‘Would you like to lie down for a while? They said you’d been sitting up all morning.’

With all his strength he concentrated and finally managed to lift his little finger.

‘Okay, I’ll just go and fetch someone to help me.’

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jan-Erik disappear. He realised he ought to be grateful, surely his son’s visit was out of duty and not of his own free will, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to feel grateful. He had never really understood his son, and to be honest he wasn’t even sure that he liked him. His total lack of ambition. Born with every opportunity served up on a platter, yet he had never made use of a single one. Only hopped about half-heartedly without purpose or goal, without ever taking the helm. Axel himself had been born without any opportunities at all, but his parents’ toil and his own indomitable will had propelled him forward. Against all odds. He remembered the shame he felt when he failed the scholarship exam, and his parents’ disappointment. His mother and father, whose motto was ‘Never give up’, had not let themselves be deterred. Over the next eight years they had endured constant hardship to finance his studies to become a graduate of the secondary school, all to open the doors to the Royal Technical College where the final goal hovered like a mirage: his degree in civil engin eering. No sacrifice had been too great. Both his parents had two jobs, saving every krona to be able to afford the tuition fees. Axel himself had spent every waking moment fulfilling their ambitions, trying to convince himself that those ambitions were his as well. But the school had been a foreign environment in which he slowly changed. Pupils from his social background were rare, and to get along in that setting he was forced to adapt. Here conflicts were not solved with fists like in the back courtyards; here it was always language that brought superiority. Unlike his own environment, the goal was to distinguish himself, to believe seriously that he was somebody. Difficulties arose when he had to switch back and function in his own neighbourhood, where the old rules applied.

His transformation led him farther and farther away from his origins, and also from his parents who had fought so doggedly for his cause. His language changed, his thoughts ventured outside their traditional realms. At home, where everything was done for his benefit, he felt more and more alone. He sensed that he was cherished not so much for who he was, but for what he would someday become. He began to regard himself as a project and not as a member of the family. His sister’s bitter envy and the weight of his parents’ expectations were sometimes so oppressive he could hardly breathe.

In his third year he was already having trouble with mathematics. Words fell into place of their own accord, but he found no logic in numbers; they refused to yield up their secrets to him. He got the highest marks on all assignments in Swedish class, while he barely passed his maths exams. It was during the same period that his father had been called up; the country was being mobilised after the Germans had occupied Denmark and Norway. The lack of his father’s income brought the family to their knees. Not only was there food rationing; in poor homes there was a lack of everything. He remembered the endless queuing in shops with empty shelves. The cold nights. How there was never enough wood, and how the dampness ate into the fabrics. How he and his sister went out in the evenings to try and find something to put in the stove. The blackout curtains, the frenetic voice on the radio and the terror that Hitler would come.

He concealed his failed maths exam, made sure the results were never seen by his eager parents, and when it was time to choose a major subject he was forced for the first time to go behind their backs. The scientific path with mathematics as a major focus was the one that would open the way to the Royal Technical College. Instead he selected the humanistic linguistic path, and thus the anticipated door was secretly closed.

Jan-Erik came back again with an attendant. Together they lifted Axel onto the bed. He felt the relief as the pain gave way and his body was straightened out on the soft bedding. The head of the bed was raised and some pillows were arranged behind him. Then came the constantly recurring question.

‘Is that comfortable?’

No, he wanted to scream. No, it’s not comfortable. I want you to bring me all the sedatives you have in this ward and pump them into my bloodstream so that I can go to sleep once and for all. But he could only lift his little finger and assure them that everything was fine.

Jan-Erik sat down in the visitor’s chair, and the attendant left. His son usually brought along the day’s paper and read aloud to him, and he had done so this time as well. Axel didn’t understand why he had to be kept informed. How could anyone believe that he had the slightest interest in the world he had already left behind? He had to be kept company, and this was Jan-Erik’s brave attempt. Their relationship was not constructed in such a way that the power balance would tolerate a shift. He couldn’t explain his antipathy, why he had never felt close to his son. There was something about his compliant gaze, the fact that he never demanded his rights. Never burned so strongly for something that he dared take up a fight. And on the rare occasion he had tried, he had been so wrong. As if he had no concept of what was best for him.

Jan-Erik’s voice droned on through the endless columns, and Axel returned to his own thoughts.

It was during the final year before graduation that the conflict inside him had erupted in earnest. A consuming anxiety about having to tell his parents that their engineering dreams would remain nothing but dreams. But also about the other matter that was becoming stronger and stronger. He knew that he had a talent, and the years of study had confirmed his brilliance. His lack of aptitude for mathematics had left room for another quality: he was drawn irresistibly to language, like a moth to the light. The temptation was irresistible. He could feel the stories jostling about inside him, waiting to be given life. But writing was not a real profession, it was a dissolute hobby that one might take up in free moments. There was every reason to be suspicious of literature that did not lead to concrete knowledge. He knew that his parents would never understand, and with each day that brought him closer to the conversation he would have to have with them, his fear grew.

It had been on the day of his final examination. They were sitting in the room next to the kitchen where in honour of the day they were going to have their coffee, watched over only by Hjalmar Branting. No guests had been invited; you shouldn’t believe that you were somebody even though your son against all odds had just passed his final exam. But real coffee would be served, not that substitute they’d got used to during the wartime rationing. They were all dressed up, his parents beaming with pride and his sister joining them, although in silent protest. With excruciating clarity he recalled how something in their eyes was extinguished when he told them about his decision. The fact that there would never be a civil engineer in the family, but rather a writer. His sister’s spontaneous guffaw. His father’s slap that silenced her. On that day he passed the fork in the road and went on to meet his calling.

Sixty-three years later he still didn’t know whether he had done the right thing. He had followed his conviction, but with the years his perspective had changed. A nagging guilt had become his companion, constantly driving him forward. No matter how much fame he acquired, it would never sink in. He could stand and look at his books and all his fine prizes, but he had never been able to feel any pride. They were and remained mere mileposts that he needed to surpass.

And all his life he had felt uneasy every time he was unlucky enough to meet an engineer.

Young people believed there was a goal in life. He had believed it himself; on that particular day he had believed it, believed it blindly, when in spite of his parents’ annihilating disappointment he had set off to write his book. And he had written his book. And he had become an author. And he had realised that life was an infinite journey. The redemptive goal had always turned out to be a new starting point by the time he managed to get there. It wasn’t possible to reach any goal. Only an end. And when he finally arrived, much like before, so many things had forever been left too late.

He woke up when it was suddenly silent and realised that he’d fallen asleep for a moment. With a rustling sound Jan-Erik was folding up the newspaper.

‘I have to get going now. I’ll swing by the house and see if I can find a picture of Gerda Persson. She died about a week ago and they want one for the funeral.’

All of a sudden he was wide-awake. His eyes flew open. The name had taken him straight into the nooks and crannies of his mind.

‘I thought I’d see if I could find something. You probably know if there’s something in your office, don’t you? Maybe in the cupboard where you saved everything over the years?’

He was having heart palpitations. Gerda was gone and he ought to feel grateful. Evidently she had remained loyal to the end. Now there was only one person left who could obliterate his life’s work. If he was still alive. As long as Axel had been able to talk it would have been both of them dragged through the mud if the truth had come out. But since the stroke not a day had passed without his thinking of that man’s name and what he might be capable of doing.

And then there was the cupboard in his office, where things were kept that nobody must see. He had begun to clean it out shortly before he had the stroke, suddenly aware of the insanity of keeping those things. Perhaps his unconscious had been warning him that time was growing short. But he hadn’t finished. He wondered whether the rubbish bag was still there or whether Jan-Erik had thrown it out by now. He hoped so. Even more he hoped that Torgny Wennberg was dead. The Devil himself in human form. If only these two wishes were fulfilled, the name Axel Ragnerfeldt would for ever be allowed to retain its radiance.

Then it would all have been worth the effort.