He went down the stone steps to the quayside. The air was raw and cold, a few days into September 1932. He walked carefully, keeping very close to the rusty handrail so as not to fall. He could feel how his right foot was damper than the left and saw a yawning hole in the seam between the sole and the rest of the shoe.
He cut across the quay and turned into the old residential area that climbed up the cliffs on one side of the harbor. He was walking quite briskly and knew that he did not need to be too careful. All the trolleys were lined up in rows outside the long gray lime-washed warehouses. The railway tracks were deserted and empty freight cars stood crowded on the sidings between the storehouses.
No ships were tied up along the dock. The quayside had large gaping cracks filled with the turbid black harbor water, viscous and polluted. He drew the sweetish smell of salt water in through his nose and looked out over the port. All he could see there were the half-rotten barges for use when the harbor entrance was dredged every few years. A fishing vessel, some row boats. Nothing more.
When he reached the housing area, he turned onto a narrow, winding gravel path running between the ramshackle houses. He walked past the first of the two-story houses and then stopped outside the third. He went in through the front door and walked up to the first entrance to the left on the ground floor.
He stood there in the faint light and knocked. The door was opened almost immediately.
As soon as he came in, he saw Lindgren sitting in a corner of the kitchen sofa. There he was, pale and skinny, and it was obvious that he had not shaved for some weeks. As Oskar stood in the doorway, Lindgren gave him a lifeless look.
“Afternoon.”
“Afternoon.”
It was Lindgren’s mother who let Oskar in. She was more than seventy and had shrunk so much that she hardly reached up to Oskar’s chest. She held out her right hand, her brown arm like a weathered stick, and squeezed Oskar’s thumb.
“Well, if it isn’t Johansson come to visit. That’s unexpected.”
“I have the time now. I thought I’d say hello to Lindgren.”
“How kind. He doesn’t really see people now.”
Lindgren sat there staring dully and openmouthed at Oskar and his mother. He was wearing a shirt with large checks and had broad suspenders that hung down his pant legs. His hair was black and tangled and his large fists rested on the table.
Oskar looked at Lindgren. They had not seen each other for nearly a year. Oskar could tell that Lindgren had gotten worse. His eyes were watery now and lacking any expression. The last time Oskar had met him, there had still been occasional signs of alertness about him, faint but unmistakable indications that the brain was still receiving impressions and processing them.
Lindgren was suffering from an illness that was slowly but inexorably killing his brain. He had worked on the same blasting team with Oskar for many years, until his condition had made it impossible to have him along. Since then he had lived at home with his mother, sitting on the kitchen sofa and being fussed over by her. Her senses too had been deadened by everything she had inhaled over thirty-five years of labor in a dye works, in addition to the arteriosclerosis that had crept up on her during the last year.
“Won’t you sit down, Johansson?”
Oskar lowers himself onto the sofa next to Lindgren, who slowly turns his head and stares at him with empty eyes. His mother is standing in the middle of the small, run-down kitchen and looks at her son.
“Aren’t you going to say hello to Johansson?”
She walks over to her son, somewhat irritated, and gives his shoulder a shove. He reacts slowly, stares at her.
“Don’t you see that Johansson’s come to visit you?”
Lindgren twists his head again and looks at Oskar.
“It’s nice to see you here, Joha, but I must slee now can we ge cakesfee…”
His brain is unable to finish the sentence he has begun. He falls silent and stares down at the table.
Oskar gets to his feet. He has not taken off his outdoor clothes.
“I thought I’d take him out with me to get him some fresh air.”
“Air?”
“I imagine he spends most of his days indoors. And I have time now.”
“You’re so kind, Johansson. Of course, the boy needs to get out. But in that case, I’ll pack a basket with coffee and buns for you to take with you.”
“Isn’t it a bit cold now to be taking coffee outside? September’s rather late for that.”
But Lindgren’s mother already pictures her son on an outing with Oskar. She wastes no time in preparing coffee and some dry buns and tying it all up in a piece of cloth. Then she helps her son into his outdoor clothes and presses the bundle into his hands, and Oskar and Lindgren walk out of the door and onto the gravel path and Oskar turns off in the direction of the woodland half a kilometer from the harbor. They walk there in silence, side by side. Lindgren clutches the bundle to his chest and keeps his eyes firmly on the ground. They head for the woods and Oskar does not have the heart to deny Lindgren his outing with a picnic, even though the fog is swirling and their breath steams around their faces.
Then Oskar sits Lindgren down on a tree stump at the edge of the wood, takes the bundle, and after a while manages in spite of the damp to start a small sputtering fire and warm the coffee. Then they each sit on a tree stump facing one another in the cold and the silence. Autumn is already well under way this year.
Lindgren stares dumbly ahead. Oskar looks at him with sadness in his heart. So they sit there in silence on this September woodland outing with their picnic and Oskar then gently asks:
“How are you doing, Lindgren?”
“Very well, thanks. It was ni…”
Then his words drown. His brain is able to transmit a first impulse and his nerves can transform this into an opening, but then he is unable to continue the sentence.
So they fall silent once more before Oskar tries again.
“Your mother seems very fit.”
“She really is ve…”
The words fade away and Lindgren’s mouth hangs slack, open.
They sit opposite one another like this for nearly an hour before Oskar packs up the bundle, takes Lindgren by the arm, and walks him back home.
When Oskar leaves Lindgren’s house it is late in the afternoon, and as he turns onto the quayside, he reflects that today he has been out of work for exactly six months. It was a Sunday like today when he realized that come the Monday he too would be dismissed.
Oskar is forty-four this year. Lindgren, who is now tucked up on the kitchen sofa, is the same age. Oskar is one of thousands who are unemployed. Lindgren has a brain that will soon have ceased to function. They have celebrated a Sunday in September together, as autumn creeps further and further along.
On Sundays those who have been laid off no longer wear their work clothes, the way they do the rest of the week even though they have no jobs. Every weekday morning, they put on their usual clothes before setting off on the long trek between the State Unemployment Agency, the factory gates, the cafés, and home. But there are no jobs, because the depression has the nation’s whole economy in its grip. Goods lie piled up in warehouses. There are no buyers and the gates remain closed. The public relief work that the State Unemployment Agency organizes—wood chopping, forest clearance, snow shoveling, and foraging for coal—has hundreds of applicants for each opening. And the mass of unemployed grows. The days come and go. National socialists and communists take turns out in the streets. The Social Democrats gradually consolidate their newly acquired position in power.
But on Sundays you get into your best clothes and roam around town and Oskar, who is not yet ready to eat, goes into the café down at the harbor. He walks into the crowded room. He nods at people and some of them nod back at him. He spots an empty place at someone else’s table, orders coffee, and blows into his hands to warm them. An old railway worker is sitting on the other side of the table. Oskar recognizes him from some photographs in the local newspaper. Oskar knows that he is called Leandersson and that he is a relatively successful local wrestler. Leandersson beats nearly everyone in the bantamweight class, and if he were not already nearly forty years old, he could even have had a successful career at a higher level.
Leandersson looks at Oskar and gives a slightly crooked smile. A little curious, Oskar searches for the famous cauliflower ears that wrestlers soon develop. But Leandersson’s ears are smooth, without swollen earlobes or damaged cartilage.
Leandersson is drinking beer. In front of him on the table he also has a black notebook. It is greasy and he runs his thumb across the smooth surface.
“Is this seat free?”
“Go on, sit down.”
“The weather’s pretty rough.”
“Autumn’s early this year. The houses are cold. And I suppose you’re also out of work.”
“I am.”
“What do you do?”
“I’m a blaster.”
“I see. I’m on the railways.”
“And a wrestler, right?”
“Well. I could have become one maybe. But I’d say it’s too late now.”
“I read about you in the papers sometimes.”
“I think it’s not me who’s good but the opposition that’s bad. I usually wrap a load of scrap iron in a mattress and train with that. That’s about the toughest opposition I get.”
“Really? Are there so few who wrestle?”
“That’s not it. I’m in the wrong division. There don’t seem to be many who weigh as much as I do. Or as little, I suppose I should say.”
“I see. But in that case can’t you put on or lose some weight?”
“I don’t want to. It’s not worth it. At any rate, not any longer.”
“How long’s it been?”
“Without a job? I’ve been chopping wood for a mate who was off sick for a few days but apart from that it’s been four months, nearly five, I think.”
“That’s bloody terrible.”
“You can say that again.”
“And it doesn’t seem to be getting any better.”
“It probably will, eventually.”
“Let’s hope so.”
“Yes. Let’s.”
Then Leandersson starts to leaf through his black notebook and Oskar stirs his cup and looks around the café. The warmth and the smoke are getting in his eyes and he asks to pay. Just as he is about to get up and leave, Leandersson slams his notebook shut.
“One can’t very well just sit around and do nothing. And I can’t wrestle with those bloody mattresses every day.”
Oskar, who had been about to go, remains seated.
“No.”
“So I’ve been spending some time tracing my ancestors.”
“Is that so?”
“I’m trying to find out where I come from. It’s pretty interesting when you find something. I’ve been looking at church records here and there. Luckily the family comes from villages around here so I can use my bicycle.”
“Indeed?”
“I knew that Farfar on my father’s side had been a farmer, but I had no idea where his parents came from. But now I know a little more.”
Leandersson the wrestler then opens his notebook and begins to read.
“My great-grandfather’s name was Leander and he came over from Denmark. He moved here in 1802. He was described as a farmer, but he must have been a sailor as well since it says that he was lost in a storm, was never heard of again, and was then declared dead in 1821 at the request of his wife, Maria Louisa. Then I’ve written to a parish in Jutland and they tell me that a Leander emigrated in 1800 and bugger me if he didn’t push off on the first day of the century, January 1, taking his wife and a child with him. Farfar wasn’t born until later. But in that letter from Jutland it then says that Leander was born in 1769 and that he was the son of somebody called Christian Leander, who was also a farmer, born in 1738. But that’s as far as I’ve gotten. Now I’m getting to grips with my mother’s side. It’ll be interesting to see where that leads. I had no bloody clue that there were Danes in the family. But you’ve got to keep yourself busy with something.”
“It’s interesting to find out all that.”
“Certainly is.”
Then Oskar gets up, they nod at each other, and Oskar leaves the café.
On the way home he stops at the display window of the newspaper office and looks at the pictures there. He can count as many as eleven in which you see Per Albin Hansson.
On his way out of parliament. On his way into parliament.
Patting a cow and smiling at the camera.
Talking to von Sydow.
On a rostrum at the People’s House in Sala.
On a rostrum at the People’s House in Norrtälje.
On a rostrum at the People’s House in Värnamo.
In an armchair in his office.
With his cabinet on the way to a meeting of the government.
With his cabinet on the way back from a meeting of the government.
In his office with a general in attendance.
The window is misted over on the inside and the lighting is poor. Oskar examines the pictures one after the other and counts them twice. Then he goes on his way.
Later they sit at the kitchen table, he and she, and Oskar talks about Lindgren.
“Is it really that bad?”
“I expect he’ll die soon. And she’s a bit confused now too. But that’s understandable.”
“Poor things.”
“It’s awful.”
“Can’t medicine help?”
“No. It seems it can’t be cured. It just spreads and spreads. The head rots.”
“That’s terrible.”
“He probably doesn’t notice it himself.”
“Thank goodness for that.”
“Yes. But it must have been good for him to get some fresh air.”
“That must have made her happy.”
“Yes. It did.”
Then they fall silent and soon they will sleep.
When they have gone to bed, she tells him that in a few days, on September 13, 1932, there is going to be a political debate on the radio. While sleep steals over them, they go on talking.
“Who’s taking part?”
“Per Albin. Wigforss.”
“What about the other side?”
“Pehrsson. Axel Pehrsson. The bloke who bought the Bramstorp property.”
“Why not Sköld? And Engberg?”
“We can’t just have our lot, can we?”
“Will they be talking about Kreuger in that case?”
“They’ve got more important things to discuss, I imagine. Now that we’re in government. There are thirty million people around the world who are out of work.”
“How do you know?”
“I saw it in the paper.”
“But here?”
“There must be more than a hundred thousand without a job.”
“Maybe we should be giving them a voice.”
“Yes.”
Until the end of the 1920s, Oskar has no idea what determines labor and wages, crises and economic booms. He does his job and is only faintly worried at the prospect of becoming one of the 16 percent of Trade Union Confederation members who are out of work. He listens to discussions, he sees changes, he reads newspapers, but he has no understanding of the forces that drive the economic and social situation. He works and is present.
The next day Oskar is sitting in a café in the harbor, listening in on a conversation. Two brothers are sitting at a table by the window. There is no one else there. That is because an important soccer match is being played in the town that same day.
The younger brother is a syndicalist. The other is a follower of Kilbom. There is a striking similarity between them. They use the same gestures and have the same halting way of expressing themselves. Oskar is alone at the far end of the room and he hears their increasingly heated conversation. The waitress leans against the counter, scratching her chin.
It is not known what the two brothers said to each other, but when Oskar leaves it is with one thought in mind. He walks fast and the momentum helps to push ahead this idea that has possessed him. When he gets home, he stops abruptly in front of the door and then continues on at the same pace.
He strides four times around the block before entering the house and climbing the two flights of stairs. His thought has now become a clear image inside his head and he is almost elated.
That night, after Elvira has fallen asleep, he goes into the kitchen and sits at the table. He turns to a page in his union passbook and tears it out as delicately as he can. And, after reflecting for a while, he writes in clear block letters:
TOMORROW THERE WILL BE A POLITICAL DEBATE ON THE RADIO.
WE UNEMPLOYED WORKERS AND SOCIAL DEMOCRATS MUST LISTEN TO THE THOUGHTS AND WORDS OF OUR ELECTED LEADERS.
Then he signs it “Oskar.” He leaves the piece of paper on the table and steals into the bedroom so as not to wake her up. There he gets dressed and then returns to the kitchen. He picks up the paper and tiptoes out of the front door.
He is alone in the deserted streets and keeps close to the walls of the houses. He walks all the way to the main square and stops for a moment in a doorway. He listens to the deep silence and then hurries over to the glass door of the savings bank. There he fastens the piece of paper that he has torn out of his union passbook. He spits on the back and presses it against the glass.
Then he hurries home. As he comes in through the door he listens for a while to her breathing to be sure that she is asleep. Then he undresses, puts his clothes on a kitchen chair, and pulls on his nightshirt. He sits on one of the chairs and smiles to himself. He leafs through his union passbook, from which the page is missing, and it is very late when he gets into his side of the bed to sleep.
But she had not been sleeping. When he went out a few hours earlier she had quickly gotten dressed and followed him. While he had been standing in the doorway close to the largest square, waiting and listening, she had been in another doorway a little further down the street. When he was by the window she stopped in the same place as he had a minute or two earlier and was terrified, thinking he was about to commit a crime.
As he leaves the savings bank window, she remains where she is in the doorway. Then she runs up, sees the sheet of paper, reads the text, and hurries home across backyards and over boarded fences to get back before him.
She gets into bed fully dressed, with coat and shoes on under the blanket, and hears him come in, hears him pause to make sure she is asleep, sees him undress, sees him sit at the kitchen table and turn the pages of his union passbook, and only once he has gotten into his side of the bed and she is certain that he is asleep does she slip out from under the bedclothes; avoid the creaking floorboard, which is the third one along from the kitchen door; take off her clothes; and crawl back under the blanket again.
Only then is she filled with joy, and she lies awake until morning, when they get up together and Oskar asks how she has slept.
Then they have their coffee and porridge. They hear the neighbors upstairs begin to argue and eventually Oskar goes upstairs to them to borrow a little sugar, and he knows he has made both of them happy because the arguing stops.
Oskar starts work again in 1933. He is among the first to get a job after unemployment peaks early in the year. In May he begins working in Stockholm and it is there one Sunday that he sees the Nazis parading through the streets. He feels a knot in his stomach as he stands on the pavement and sees them passing and recognizes Sergeant Lindholm right at the front. He can imagine himself charging in and jabbing his finger and thumb into the sergeant’s face.
Then, after the procession has gone by, Oskar goes back to where he is living, a rented room on Katarina Bangata, and the next day he reads in the newspapers how the Nazis were set upon in Humlegården by some young communists and others.
At a Nazi election rally in early summer he is standing to one side by a tree in a park and listening to the hoarse and strident language in which the speaker clearly states that there are many who will have to go, and Oskar realizes that he is one of them.
Later he returns to his hometown and once again joins the ranks of the unemployed. He continues to take Lindgren out for walks, but he avoids the woodland where they had their picnic when autumn had already set in. He is the only one in church at Lindgren’s funeral apart from his mother.
When she is about to go home, for the second time the mother holds out her weathered arm, which looks like a stick, and Oskar takes hold of it with his finger and thumb and he is very moved when he sees how confused she is.
The first time Oskar sees Hitler’s face is one day in 1936. He and Elvira are standing in front of the window of the newspaper office, looking at pictures from Hinke Bergegren’s funeral. She is just saying that she thinks she recognizes one of the women in gray coats pulling the funerary carriage, to which he mutters an indistinct “Is that so?,” when he sees Hitler, his hand raised, inspecting serried ranks of young women in a large stadium.
He has come across pictures of Hitler before, but now it is as if he were seeing the face for the first time. The clenched jaw muscles. The low forehead with the deep folds. And as he looks at those young women lined up in rows, he has the impression that he is seeing the face clearly for the first time.
Then they move on and as they pass the savings bank window they are sharing an experience without Oskar’s being aware of it.
They take their time walking home and speak in low voices, with many steps between their words.
“It’s cold.”
“Yes.”
“Did you remember to pay the rent?”
“I did.”
“Are your shoes all right?”
“What do you mean, all right?”
“Are your feet getting wet?”
“They’re not too bad.”
“The shoes will wear out again, I’m sure.”
“Not yet though.”
“Let’s hope they last.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the left shoe.”
“Funny that only one keeps giving out.”
“Yes, it is a bit strange.”
And like all the other unemployed they struggle on and in time leave the thirties behind for a war that will last nearly six years. That evening in 1936, Oskar is forty-eight, and he walks by her side and looks at the stones on the pavement.
His thoughts rarely went beyond anything to do with his family. It was his joy that they never had to do without any of the necessities of life.
At night he dreamed about the pictures he saw through the steamed-up window of the newspaper office. He dreamed about the day just past. Sometimes he dreamed that he was running with other children and shouting and climbing through holes in the boards between backyards.
He wished for what was in his thoughts and believed in the things that filled his dreams.
One afternoon in 1937 there is a knock at Oskar’s door. Once more it is a Sunday. They are sitting at the kitchen table and have just eaten.
When Elvira opens the door there is a person standing there whom they both recognize. It is a woman, about forty years old, who is one of the driving forces behind an animal welfare association in the town. It is well-known. It has been agitating for more humane treatment of various domestic animals. She is married to an engineer at the largest textile factory, where Elvira once worked.
“I hope I’m not disturbing. Good afternoon.”
“Please, come in.”
“Thank you. I’m here to ask you for a little help, Herr Johansson. As you may know I belong to a group that is actively engaged in trying to improve the lot of our most common pets, particularly cats and dogs.”
The visitor speaks with passion, barely pausing for breath. She sits on the edge of a kitchen chair. Oskar is on the sofa. Elvira stands by the window.
“The thing is that we’re planning to put on an amateur show at Easter where we’d promote awareness of our activities and also have a sale of homemade articles and handicrafts donated by active members or supporters of our organization or produced during our weekly get-togethers. And you see, we’re thinking of having one scene in which we compare the injuries that irresponsible people inflict on their pets with those that human beings themselves can suffer. Now, you, Herr Johansson, once had a serious accident that luckily ended well. We thought that one could compare the assistance you yourself received with the help that animals don’t get. It may seem a little far-fetched and odd, but we know that the only way people can be made to realize how badly they treat their pets is to contrast their treatment with their own situation. We were thinking of a scene in which a cat suffers an accident and is then dumped on a trash heap and after that we’d have another one in which you, Herr Johansson, have your blasting accident and then all the doctors and the whole hospital manage to save your life.”
After this torrent, she suddenly stops. When Oskar realizes that she is waiting for an answer, he cannot utter a single word. And she is able to continue.
“You wouldn’t actually be acting out the scenes themselves, Herr Johansson, you’d only come in right at the end and hold a cat in your arms. Then you would just stand onstage for a moment before the curtain falls.
“We would of course be very grateful if you could help us with this, Herr Johansson. We obviously wouldn’t be able to pay you, but it is for the worthiest of causes.”
“Yes.”
“I know that you won’t say no.”
“No.”
Oskar sits on the kitchen sofa, Elvira stands by the window, and ten minutes later it is agreed.
For the two rehearsals, Oskar has a wastepaper basket in his arms. The first time he enters from the right and stands in the spotlight in the middle of the stage for eleven minutes, because something has gone wrong with the curtain ropes. The second time he stands with his wastepaper basket for three minutes and everything runs smoothly.
During the first night and the three other performances Oskar makes his entrance with a neutered tomcat that is black apart from a mark on its forehead. The cat is heavy and Oskar clutches it to his stomach. As Oskar goes onstage he is blinded by the light and notices that everything is very quiet. When the curtain is drawn shut and the light is dimmed, he leaves the stage and puts the cat down in a brown basket. Then he sits backstage on a broken ladder for more than an hour and a half. After that he goes back on for the curtain call with all the other actors.
Elvira sees the last performance. As they are lying in bed that night, she says that the whole thing was quite good but that Oskar looked dreadful in the harsh spotlight. Never before had she realized how badly injured his face was. Then she asks if the cat was heavy because that is how it seemed and Oskar answers that it weighed as much as a sledgehammer and then they fall asleep. First Oskar. Then she.
At Christmas that year a letter arrives from the animal welfare association. They thank Oskar for his participation and inform him that the collection, together with the proceeds from the sale of handicrafts, amounted to 495 kronor and 34 öre, which has to be considered a success.
Sometime later, Elvira asks what the cat’s name was. Oskar cannot remember but he says that it was called Nisse.