The Accidental Further Adventures of the Hundred-Year-Old Man

Sweden

Yes, indeed, Olekorinko was more active than ever. It appeared a lucrative business to be a witch doctor of his calibre. But to copy his ideas Sabine needed to study them on-site. And since Africa wasn’t exactly next door, she would have to stick to what she already knew for the time being.

First they had to find out what the clairvoyant competition looked like. Sabine spent the evening and half their night at the pension on market analysis. It was depressing work. Not just because Allan whined non-stop about how she had stolen his toy, but also because it was all there in black and white, how the market for various types of clairvoyance had just about exploded in the past year. The supply was enormous. It would be easy to enter the branch anew, but it would be hard to position herself for financial viability, even ignoring the fact that Sabine had no talent for running economically viable businesses.

Julius left her in peace, partly because he believed she needed it and partly because he was busy wondering about the bloody asparagus. The old lady at the pension had an old-fashioned telephone on a table in the hall. It would have been possible to borrow it for an intercontinental call while she was out shopping, if the scrap of paper with Gustav Svensson’s number on it wasn’t missing. It must have been left behind on the table at the restaurant in New York.

Without Gustav’s number, and without Gustav having a number at which to reach Julius (who didn’t even have a phone), there was a considerable risk that the friends and business partners would never meet again. Julius thought some more and realized it was almost certain they never would. This was tragic on several levels. After all, he liked the Swedish Indian. And he also felt the need to hit him on the head with something hard.

While Sabine and Julius were otherwise occupied, Allan found a sofa in the pension’s common room upon which to settle himself. He lay there waiting for Sabine’s short breaks from the tablet so he could catch up on his surfing. Among other things, about the Swedes’ fury that postal delivery wasn’t working as it should. Far too many letters took two days to arrive rather than the stipulated one. The postal service’s solution was to change the rules rather than the routines. Now all letters would take two days, in accordance with the new regulations. Suddenly, delivery assurance was approaching a hundred per cent. Allan guessed the director of the postal service had a considerable bonus coming.

In other news, a leader of the National Front in France had sat down at a North African restaurant to eat couscous. And liked it! This was considered beyond unpatriotic. Soon the leader had been kicked out of the party, or perhaps he had stepped down of his own accord. Allan wasn’t sure what couscous was. Perhaps the Arab world’s answer to pea soup with ham. Too much of that stuff and he, too, would probably have stepped down. From what, however, was unclear.

Before Sabine demanded the tablet back, Allan also managed to read about the Swedish military’s investment in a fleet of helicopters so expensive that there was no money left to use it. But the helicopters looked nice sitting on the ground.

After the night’s work, Sabine had a list of forty-nine women and one man who all offered services in the same arena as her mother had.

‘How’s it going?’ Julius wondered, as they breakfasted together. He noticed how grim Sabine looked.

‘Not great.’

She expounded her statement. The world outside was swarming with angel cards, tarot cards and pendulums. Women devoting themselves to long-distance healing. Breaking up blockages in the soul. Speaking with animals. Telling love fortunes. Giving telepathic guidance. Having the universal laws of energy down pat. Seeing the past, present and future in glowing ash, coffee grounds or crystal balls.

‘It can’t be that hard to see the past,’ said Allan. ‘I could, before my memory got too bad. And isn’t the present the present?’

It wasn’t quite that simple. The past was made up of parallel events that together created an individual’s now and would do the same with said individual’s future.

‘Without the proper knowledge of the guardian angels, you are spiritually lost. With the wrong energies in the room, it’s still worse.’

Julius had known for a long time that Sabine was as spiritually lost as he was. Not to mention Allan. But business was business. What sort of focus did Sabine think they should have, in this clairvoyant muddle?

Well, that was the thing. The reasonably good news in all of this was that few of the mediums focused on ghosts, driving out ghosts, or conversations with the other side. Sabine saw potential market success in what had once been her mother’s speciality.

Allan delivered the good news that the ranks of those on the other side had recently increased by one. He read from the tablet about the hundred-and-seventeen-year-old Uzbek farmer’s wife who had just passed away after her only cow happened to sit on her.

Sabine was growing more tired of the old man with each passing day. Perhaps on his hundred-and-second birthday they could buy him a cow, and hope for the best.