Stieg Larsson, My Friend

7

It is impossible to describe Stieg without mentioning his insomnia. The man seemed never to sleep. He was aware of this and we often spoke about it. One conclusion we came to was that there are people who manage to do their jobs efficiently despite sleeping very little at night. When it comes to comparing him with insomniacs like Churchill and Napoleon, however, I sometimes have the feeling that Stieg had something else in common with them: he was always ready to do battle. The difference being that the battles Stieg fought always took place in the mind, in mental arenas. I would call them battles over human values.

I occasionally used to say that Stieg was a sleep saver. Maybe there is no such expression, but I always thought it suited him. He admitted that even as a child he had found it difficult to go to bed in the evening. He had become a night owl early on, despite the fact that his constant curiosity and his eagerness to work meant that he was driven to be just as active during the day.

We often discussed whether sleeping well resulted in a longer life. Looking back, it feels uncomfortable to recall those many discussions; we agreed it did not necessarily follow that people who always slept well accomplished more. We could think of too many cases where the opposite applied.

One might even ask if it is possible for any dedicated and committed person, always involved in hundreds of projects, to sleep well. How can a good-hearted individual relax when human rights are being violated on a daily basis? When there are people with no roofs over their heads? When there are millions of refugees in the world? For somebody unacquainted with Stieg, such questions might sound somewhat naive and illogical; but in all our conversations these undeniable facts were an overwhelming driving force that empowered his will to change things.

The fact is that Stieg himself sometimes compared his sleeping habits to Churchill’s. He used to say that they were in the same league when it came to insomnia, but that the old statesman had the edge. Apparently Churchill seldom slept for more than three hours per night. Nevertheless he lived to the ripe old age of ninety, as Stieg never failed to point out when I or somebody else complained about his bad nocturnal habits.

I suggested that the number of hours one slept was not the most important thing. When you sleep is also crucial. Stieg usually went to bed when most other people were getting up. I don’t actually know if the time when you sleep is all that significant in fact, I suppose I just wanted to see him properly rested – something as unlikely to happen as our bringing about peace. Tired, red eyes, irregular breathing and slowing reflexes spoke for themselves. Winning the peace, as we used to put it, was the greatest achievement possible.

If Churchill had his champagne and cigars, Stieg had his coffee and cigarettes. Not such a grand combination, one has to admit. I know nobody who was as inveterate a smoker as Stieg. He had been chain-smoking since he was a teenager and it was hard to imagine him not puffing away at a cigarette. Coffee was his second greatest love. Churchill wanted his champagne “cold, dry and free”, and Stieg wanted his coffee with milk but no sugar. Most of all, he wanted lots of it. There was no limit to the amount of coffee he could drink. I have never come across anybody as hooked on caffeine as Stieg. When we spent sixteen hours together at Prime Minister Persson’s international conference on the Holocaust, I kept a count of how many servings of coffee Stieg drank. I made it twenty-two, most of them plastic mugs.

That amount of coffee can hardly be conducive to decent sleep. Swilling down twenty or so cups of coffee a day and smoking two or three packets of cigarettes no doubt ruin more than just a decent night’s slumber. They must slowly but surely undermine your whole body.

The slim, elegant young man I had met at the Vasa restaurant in the autumn of 1992 started to acquire chubby cheeks. His body became increasingly bloated, and he needed to buy bigger trousers and shirts. He had no interest at all in food. He ate if and when he had the time. Usually greasy junk food. But his weight increase had no effect on his energy, his enthusiasm for work or his lust for life. He was always smiling. It is true to say that he became more and more stressed as the years went by, but he never lost focus or became distrait.

He would spend most of his time glued to his computer, focusing all his attention first on one project, then on the next. Full speed ahead all the time. Interestingly enough, he was always motionless in front of his screen. The only part of his body he kept in trim was his brain – the rest of him had to survive as best it could.

I frequently suggested that he take up swimming. He thought that sounded even worse than going for walks in the woods. He would often grasp at any excuse to avoid having to listen to all the nagging – he was under constant threat of being murdered, he couldn’t possibly risk anything of the sort. That would be reckless in the extreme. He had a point, of course: but his main reason was to avoid taking any physical exercise. He very rarely did anything of the sort. He never stopped smoking, although he did cut down during the last year or so of his life. I occasionally saw him taking snuff as well.

Whenever he thought I was nagging him too much, Stieg would tell me that he was about to take his annual fortnight’s holiday. When I asked if he was going to leave his computer at home, he would always change the subject.

You can imagine how astonished I was to hear that in his younger days, he took part in skiing competitions. That sounds so unlikely. I have never been able to establish how good he was, but the very fact that he must once have been sufficiently interested to enter flabbergasts me. I have never met anybody less interested in sport – never ever.

My friend Stieg Larsson was one of those people who believe in their own immortality. He was in good company. Most people think that accidents only happen to others. But I know that he sometimes thought about how his mother had died far too early from a cerebral haemorrhage. This was a great sorrow always at the back of his mind. She died at the age of fifty-six in Erland’s arms, one summer’s day in 1991, as he was combing her hair. Shortly before her death she had read Stieg’s newly published book on the Extreme Right, Extremhögern, at a single sitting.

No, there is no explanation for the way in which Stieg waged war on his own body. Nor would he ever be able to explain it himself. More than anything else it was like a vicious circle that could not be broken.

Yet again I come back to the contradictory nature of Stieg’s character. That overwhelming work ethic – most probably made even stronger by his working-class background – which he insisted on forcing others to adopt. And then the direct opposite: a total inability to discipline himself when it came to looking after his own body. Worst was, of course, his lack of sleep, and perhaps his complete lack of discipline in this respect was due to what the medics call insomnia. Anybody suffering from this complaint can seldom get to sleep for any reason other than utter exhaustion.

For Stieg it was a case of working until 5.00 or 6.00 in the morning, then falling asleep worn out. Only a few hours later he would start a new day by taking breakfast and reading a book and newspapers in a café. Then he would go first to the Svartvitt editorial office, then to Expo and embark on another packed working day.

The doctors I have spoken to point out that insomnia can be dangerous, especially if it persists for a long time. In Stieg’s case it probably lasted for the whole of his working life. They say it can be hereditary, but I have found nothing in Stieg’s past to suggest that this applies to his case. I asked Erland, his father, about it.

“No,” he said, “I sleep soundly at night and nobody else in the family has ever had any trouble getting to sleep.”

I met Erland on 19 March, 2001. It was in Umeå and the whole town was covered in snow. Later that evening I was due to give a lecture in Mimerskolan about the integration of youngsters with an immigrant background into Swedish society.

Quite a long time had passed since Stieg and I had begun to call each other big brother and kid brother. They had become our nicknames, even though we only used them when we were alone together. That was also how I had introduced myself to Erland when I’d phoned to arrange our meeting. “Stieg said that as I am his kid brother, I must have lunch with Dad.” Erland had had a good laugh at our absurd way of addressing each other.

The first thing that struck me when I met Erland was how amazingly young he looked. So it was not difficult to work out where Stieg had got that trait from. Erland was wearing a dark cardigan and a black shirt. It was easy to infer that he came from northern Sweden, not just because of his dialect but also because of a tendency to express himself in few words without unnecessary embellishment. His eyes also seemed to wander as he talked, something I took to be linked to the Norrland shyness of which I had become so fond.

The moment we finished our salad, Erland said, “Stieg ought to visit me more often. What’s he up to in Stockholm? He always sounds so stressed. It would be good if the three of us could meet some time.”

I immediately tried to explain what kept Stieg so busy. It was a long explanation, but Erland listened intently as we sat at our window table. What I really wanted to get across was how Stieg’s work was the very breath of life for him; it wasn’t a question of stress in the usual sense of the word. When Erland and I said our goodbyes, we decided that we would definitely arrange that lunch with Stieg. “Then it will be my turn to get the bill,” I insisted.

Stieg, Erland and I never did manage to have lunch together. The fact is that we only once met, the three of us, and that was in a Stockholm hospital. In order to write about that moment, so painful and inscribed for ever in my memory, I have needed to gather my strength for four and a half years. That was how long it took before I was able to start writing this book.

As I sit thinking about this, I find myself returning again and again to one particular thing. I think about Stieg and his fight to ensure that one day he would win the peace. When that day came, we used to say, he would finally be able to get a good night’s sleep.