Swedish winters are cruel. Not least for someone who clothes his body with a shúkà and his bare feet with sandals. It was minus-four degrees Celsius on the front steps of the police station when Ole Mbatian the Younger said farewell to nosy officer Carlander with the bandaged forehead.
Ole found that the cold wind that struck him outside the police doors kicked his brain into gear. Up to this point, he had been absorbed by the goal of getting out into the fresh air; now he reminded himself of the task at hand.
Standing there unsure whether he should go to the right, the left, or straight ahead was not the best way to retain his body heat. So what should he do?
Kronoberg Remand Prison had a security guard permanently stationed outside the lobby, one hired from a private firm. The place locked up every imaginable type, and it wasn’t unusual for acquaintances or acquaintances of acquaintances to show up and make a scene. The guard on duty was named Pettersson.
Ole understood that the man stationed outside the door rather than inside it wasn’t a member of law-enforcement leadership. But he was wearing a uniform and, like most people, was likely susceptible to flattery.
The Maasai approached him. Better too much than too little.
‘Good day, Mr Chief of Police. I wonder if you have by any chance seen my son Kevin? I think he lives here in the city somewhere.’
From security company temp to chief of police in one second. Pettersson was instantly eager to lend a hand.
‘What’s his name, besides Kevin?’
‘Besides? He’s pretty tall, younger than me.’
The information that the missing son was younger than his father wasn’t much of a clue.
‘Do you have his personal identity number? If you do, we can look up his address.’
For the second time in ten minutes, Ole Mbatian had been asked the same peculiar question.
‘Well, I know it’s not nine.’
Temporary guard Pettersson was getting the feeling that this conversation might drag on for a bit, and he became anxious about standing in the cold and talking to the half-naked Maasai.
‘Shall we step into the lobby while we chat?’
‘This isn’t about locking me up, is it?’
‘Certainly not!’
‘Then that’s fine.’
Inside the doors, Pettersson said he needed more leads in order to have a decent chance of helping the gentleman look for his son.
Ole considered this. He gazed out at the street and the broad sidewalk through the large windows. All the while, people were passing in both directions. If one of them happened to resemble Kevin, perhaps it might be of guidance to the police chief or security guard.
Not that man, running by in some sort of tights. White of skin and red of cheek. Looked like he was in a hurry.
Not that woman, pushing a cart on four wheels in front of her. Still whiter, without red cheeks. And the wrong sex.
Definitely not whoever she had nestled down in the cart. Kevin would never fit.
The medicine man kept looking, gazing to the right and the left as temporary guard Pettersson began to lose interest. They couldn’t stand there staring at the sidewalk until every one of the God-knows-how-many residents of Greater Stockholm passed by. And a half a million tourists on top of that.
‘Listen, sir,’ he said, and was immediately cut off.
‘There, maybe!’ said Ole. ‘See those three over there, in a line, coming this way?’
‘Oh, please …’
Life as chief of police was not at all what Pettersson had imagined.
‘The one in the middle has the same colour skin as my Kevin. And me, now that I think about it. He’s the same height and age. Not as me, but as himself.’
Jenny, Kevin and Hugo came closer.
‘That’s exactly what he looks like,’ said Ole Mbatian.
There are about ten thousand people named Kevin in Sweden. A quarter of them live in or near Stockholm, among about two and a half million other people that are named something else. Locating the correct Kevin wouldn’t be easy for anyone. Not knowing his last name, address, or personal identity number wouldn’t make it any easier.
The best way to find him might be to put a notice in one of the city’s big newspapers, or in all of them.
This was what Ole Mbatian had done. Without being aware of it himself.
The four most important newspapers in the capital city reported on the incident at Nordic Light Hotel, where a police inspector got walloped. The editorial teams treated the matter differently, however. In the Daily News one could read, in an out-of-the-way corner, that an older man was suspected of minor assault on a public official after a scuffle in a hotel lobby in the central part of the city. The Express was more blunt:
‘Maasai Warrior Runs Amok at Hotel.’
The publication of the Express article was preceded by a discussion of media ethics in the newsroom. On the one hand, the arrested party’s ethnicity was not relevant. On the other hand, writing ‘a man in his seventies’ would provoke an unreasonable number of questions in the reader, given the photograph that showed someone wearing a red-and-black checked cloth and sandals being hauled off by police in the middle of winter.
They decided to handle the matter by calling the arrested party a Maasai warrior, after the editor-in-chief determined that this could be considered a profession like any other. Furthermore, there were enough Maasai warriors that this one could not be considered singled out (which would be in violation of Swedish journalism law). After all, each Maasai warrior was free to practise his job anywhere in the world he wished. The issue of whether the Maasai had truly ‘run amok’ was not put to further discussion. Some things sounded too good to resist.
The result, for the Express, was more single issues sold in one day than at any other time in the past seven years. Meanwhile, Dagens Nyheter, to no commercial benefit, prioritized the story about continued disorder in British parliament.
Jenny saw the front pages posted outside the newsstand she and Kevin passed on their way to the bus. She poked Kevin in the shoulder and pointed. Her boyfriend looked at the headline and photograph.
‘Dad!’ he said.
They opted for a taxi, rather than a bus, to the office. When they arrived, Jenny and Kevin kept talking over each other and it took a minute for Hugo to understand what was going on. And another fifteen seconds to get a grip on the situation.
‘They arrested him for assaulting an officer. That means Kronoberg. Ten minutes away. Come on!’
The reunion of father and adopted son was an emotional one. The son begged for forgiveness; the father hugged him and said he would be silly to expect anything else. They spoke English with one another; Swahili and Maa were best left to the savanna.
Temporary guard Pettersson looked on. And decided to drop his plans for a career in the police when he heard what he heard.
‘Beloved Kevin! No one will cut your willy without your consent. No one!’ said the man in the red-and-black checked cloth.
‘Thank you, Dad, thank you!’ said the youngster.
Ole and Kevin hardly had time to finish hugging before a young woman entered, discovered the Maasai, and walked over to introduce herself. Behind her was a cameraman.
‘Hello. I’m Magda Eliasson from TV4. I understand you are Ole Mbatian, could we have a word?’
The medicine man did not know what TV4 was, but he certainly liked to talk.
‘Sure we can, of course.’
Also, ‘Magda Eliasson’ sounded fun to say.
‘What do you want to talk about, Magda Eliasson? I’m a medicine man by trade. If you become pregnant too often and find it troublesome, Magda Eliasson, I’m your man.’
The TV reporter said she wasn’t suffering from that particular malady, but she wanted to speak to Mr Mbatian about who he was, where he came from, and what had happened the day before at Nordic Light Hotel.
She took out the microphone and nodded at her colleague to begin filming.
‘I understand that all charges against you have been dropped. Has there been any police violence?’
Ole Mbatian was struck by a guilty conscience. But it was important to tell the truth, even when it felt uncomfortable.
‘I confess I happened to strike down a policeman, but it was under special and unfortunate circumstances. Furthermore, I must say that he was awfully easy to drop. The blow I dealt him wouldn’t have taken down a pygmy antelope. Whyever one might wish to do that.’
The reporter hadn’t got quite the answer she was hoping for. But she tried again.
‘And after that? Did the police retaliate?’
‘After that we chatted for a bit and then they offered me dinner. Macaroni, it was called. Have you ever tried that, Magda Eliasson?’
The TV4 reporter dropped the topic of police violence; it was too difficult to combine with the served-up macaroni. So, what was the angle on this piece, if any? Might as well start over again.
‘Tell me, what are you doing here?’
By ‘here’, she meant Sweden.
‘Nothing in particular, I probably would have left by now if Magda Eliasson weren’t holding me back.’
‘What about up to this point?’
‘Up to this point I have been given a comfortable bed to sleep in, after the wonderful dinner. And breakfast in the morning, pale brown leaves in milk with jam. Sweet, but good. Also, I did a deal for two sandwiches with a caviar named Kalle, a clever swap indeed if you’ll allow me to place my humility aside for a moment, Magda Eliasson.’
‘A deal?’
‘Long story. It started with a bite. But plenty wants more. I put two oil paintings from my past in the pot and got double sandwiches in return. Her name was Irma. Pleasant lady. But sickly. Dad saved her life. My my, it was so long ago.’
Ole was in a chatty mood now. Besides the fact that he’d found his Kevin, the best part of the trip was that he seemed to be meeting so many people to talk to, in contrast to his lonely hours, days, and sometimes weeks on the savanna.
The TV4 reporter had come for a different reason, but she was well aware of the story of the goat-sex man and his forgeries. Instagram, Facebook and Twitter had seen to that. Had he and the Maasai done art deals in jail?
‘Irma Stern, I understand. So, the paintings you mentioned are authentic?’
‘What do you mean, authentic?’
‘I mean, they were painted by Irma Stern?’
‘Who else would paint an Irma Stern painting? Are you not feeling quite well, Magda Eliasson? It can’t be the heat – that disappeared somewhere around Istanbul.’
The reporter fumbled for her next question. It was more unclear than ever what this story was about. Was it about the Maasai or the guy with the goat? Maybe a bit of both. She would have to keep asking questions and then edit together something that could be broadcast. Best-case scenario.
‘So you and the jailed art dealer know each other?’
‘The art dealer?’
‘Victor Alderheim.’
‘Oh, him. No, we don’t. We just spoke for a while even though he didn’t want to. I never figured out whether he was angry because he had sex with goats or because he didn’t.’
‘But the paintings … you said your friend Irma was the one who made them. What is the connection between … er, the goat-sex man and her?’
‘None, as far as I’m aware. Except for the paintings, of course, but that one is brand new. Why, at first he said he knew nothing about them. Then he wanted them so badly that he not only gave away his own sandwich in the deal but made me another one. Back home on the savanna, we call that the art of negotiation. Oops, there I go placing my humility aside again.’
‘So the Irma Stern paintings belong to you?’
What was wrong with Swedes?
‘Didn’t I just say I sold them to him?’
Jenny, Kevin and Hugo were listening. Befuddled. Bewildered. Bedevilled. Hugo’s mind was spinning fastest of all.
It was Irma Stern who had painted the Irma Stern paintings.
For a reason as incomprehensible as it was unpleasant, Ole Mbatian the Younger had traded them for two sandwiches. And the man who owned them now was the one man on earth who deserved them least.
This whole thing had turned out to be the greatest failure Sweet Sweet Revenge Ltd had ever seen. Hugo Hamlin’s greatest failure in every category, including the golden potato peeler. They had destroyed the art dealer’s reputation, but in return he had come to possess paintings worth millions.
Hugo didn’t know if the worst part was that the medicine man had sold the paintings from under his nose; or that he had sold them for two sandwiches with Kalles Kaviar; or that he had sold them to Victor Alderheim, of all people.
But Hugo wouldn’t give up. There were signs of hope. Such as, for example, that the Ole Mbatian paintings had changed artists and in doing so had increased a thousandfold in value. For the time being they were in the extremely wrong hands, but if that detail could be changed then Hugo’s fortune would be made. They could share, incidentally. There was plenty for both unpaid colleagues and Maasais and then some.
Hugo decided that the newly formed quartet should regroup. He checked Jenny and Kevin into one guest room at his home in Lidingö, and Ole Mbatian into the other.
The adman called a meeting in the dining room; they certainly had a lot to talk about and a horrendous development to hinder. But they still had to eat. They could order pizza.
‘Not pizza,’ said Kevin.
‘Hamburgers?’
‘Better.’
Kevin began by telling his adoptive father about his former life in Sweden. After all, the Maasai believed that his son had been delivered by En-Kai, and Kevin had never disabused him of the notion, mostly because he thought there might be something to it. Or perhaps it was the other way around: Ole Mbatian was a godsend to him. Now he was afraid that Ole Mbatian would lose faith when he learned that his son had not come straight from heaven but had previously lived a worldly life.
But the medicine man’s faith in God was stronger than that. What a waste it would have been, to hold onto such a fine boy for so many years. Of course he had been down and back before.
Indeed, and his first time on earth hadn’t gone so well. The father he had back then was not actually a real father, but something called a guardian. And he was none other than Victor, whom Ole had of course met while in custody.
‘The angry man? The one with the goat? Then we’re basically family! If I’d known that, I would have kissed him on the forehead.’
Kevin was glad he hadn’t. Not only was the angry man angry, he was a bad person. God had missed the mark that time, which was perhaps why he’d started over with Kevin and sent him to the savanna.
Ole nodded thoughtfully. That could be.
Hugo was getting impatient. He wanted to move things forward, get straight to the point. Their task was to destroy Victor’s reputation – they’d done a good job of that thus far – but also, now, his newfound wealth.
‘We’re out to get revenge on Victor,’ he said.
‘Thrilling,’ said Ole Mbatian.
The Maasai was well-acquainted with the concept of revenge. It could be sly; you had to remain on guard. Ole recalled a time many years earlier when eighteen of the village goats vanished overnight. The youngster in charge of watching them had fallen asleep on the job. Everyone knew that it was thieving Miterienanka from the neighbouring village who had come by. Chief Kakenya gathered a large and duly armed delegation from their own village. They killed the thieving man, burned down his village, and took back the eighteen goats plus another thirty who no longer had anywhere to go.
Hugo thought this sounded like a rather harsh reaction, but it wouldn’t serve his purposes to say so. ‘Scary story’ would have to suffice.
The medicine man nodded.
‘It was just a bit of a letdown to find the eighteen goats were back when we got home. They had slipped out through a hole in the fence because the grass was greener on the other side. After their meal they got homesick and came back.’
Hugo didn’t want to hear the rest. He guided the conversation back to the present moment and continent at hand.
Ole was happy to be of service. Revenge sounded like a nice change of pace; it had been too long.
‘Will you come home with me afterwards?’ he asked Kevin.
His adopted son felt ill at ease.
‘I just got engaged, Dad.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I’m getting married.’
‘To how many women?’
‘One, to start with.’
‘To me and no one else,’ said Jenny.
Ole Mbatian congratulated them both. He said he would understand if they chose Sweden over the savanna, even if it was cold beyond all reason. It explained why Jenny was so pale, along with just about everyone else. But couldn’t they give it some thought?
Kevin loved his adopted father more than ever.
‘We’ll see how it all turns out. But first we need to make sure justice is served.’
Hugo was pleased to hear that Kevin was getting back on topic.
‘That’s right. The first thing we should try to do is get your paintings back from the angry man.’
Everything ground to a halt.
‘But he bought them from me.’
‘For two sandwiches,’ said Hugo. ‘That doesn’t count.’
‘With caviar,’ said the medicine man.
‘Cod roe, sugar and potato flakes,’ Hugo corrected him.
‘A deal’s a deal.’
Curtain.
Darkness.
What were they supposed to do now?
The only thing Hugo was certain of – one hundred per cent – was that Ole Mbatian was not going to change his mind. This happened on occasion, in the ad business: a client could be objectively wrong yet lack the ability to change their mind. When this occurred, the adman had to do it for them.
Hugo’s plan had been, from the start, to make two counterfeit paintings appear authentic. Complications ensued. Circumstances changed.
The new plan had been: get two counterfeit paintings to look like forgeries under production. Circumstances changed. Complications ensued.
Coming up with a fresh idea in this case meant getting the now authentic Irma Stern paintings to appear as unauthentic as possible. This would demand a reverse authentication. A shattered provenance. Whatever words Jenny was showing off with this time.
So thought Hugo.
Six kilometres away sat Victor with his goat, thinking the same thing. But the other way around.
Two days after the news of the paintings was made public, thanks to tasteless stories of sex toys, drugs and goats all over the press and social media, the art world was roiling with excitement. Two presumed Irma Stern forgeries! How it happened was unclear, but the media had got their hands on the police photographs (it wasn’t unclear to those involved: the current list price dictated five thousand pre-taxed kronor per image to Officer X from Newspaper Y). The photographs were of high quality and it seemed as though their motifs were extraordinary. If they had not been made by the artist herself – and it seemed highly unlikely – then people wanted to know more about the forger. Among the most vociferous participants in the debate was a high-profile member of the Swedish Academy in Stockholm. He was famous for his opinions that art transcended rape and the breaking of both rule and law. The most interesting aspect of this case – according to the member of the academy – was consequently not the alleged forger’s alleged drug dealings or what he had done with his goat, but how he could have achieved such lustre in his counterfeits.
The main character of this artistic worldwide drama had been freed and was back in his art gallery. A few minutes earlier, a police van had come by to return two Irma Stern paintings, four large boxes of sex toys, and one goat. The bags of flour had vanished somewhere along the way.
Victor tried to refuse the goat and the sex toys, but the carriers wouldn’t let him.
‘They’re on our list, you can’t pick and choose. Please sign the delivery slip.’
To maintain a modicum of control over the goat, they had put it on a leash. As soon as Victor signed the document, one of the carriers handed him the leash.
‘Have a nice day, sicko!’
The carrier’s colleague, in the meantime, was carrying in toys and paintings with their easels and stacking them all inside the door. On his way back, he spit on the ground at Victor Alderheim’s feet.
The men in the van took off. Victor noticed someone had written something in white paint across his two big shop windows:
PER on one, and VERT! on the other.
He hurried inside, goat and all, and locked the door.
Stockholm’s most prominent pervert sat in the kitchen of the six-bedroom apartment to gather his thoughts. At first it didn’t work at all, because the goat was bleating for food and drink. One litre of water and four apples later, it turned out that the goat wasn’t potty-trained.
So someone had broken into the gallery, gone down to the cellar, and rigged up paintings, sex toys, pretend heroin – and a goat.
This someone had to be Kevin, the former ward whom Victor had also thought was ‘former’ in every sense.
But why would he have done this? And how had he come across the paintings? Via the Maasai man in prison. Who had presumably run into the youngster there on the savanna in the middle of the night and saved his life. Indeed, their kind stuck together.
The Maasai was named Mb-something and claimed that the paintings were his. But more importantly, he claimed they were authentic – and Victor had bought them for a Kalles Kaviar sandwich apiece. Without a receipt, as luck would have it. What with the police inspector’s entrance and the hubbub that ensued, the napkin was never signed.
Now he had to tread carefully. If he was dealing with two authentic, yet-undiscovered Irma Sterns, he would be financially home free. In which case it couldn’t have come at a better time; the gallery’s accounts had become an increasingly sad story since that old devil Alderheim died. No one had better luck than him when it came to buying low and selling high.
Speaking of the old man, the Alderheim name was ruined – a goat and a few other things had seen to that. But names could be changed, and Victor had done it before. Incidentally, he was fine being called both PER and VERT if he must, as long as he had millions in the bank. Quite a few millions, as it seemed.
With them he could put his twenty-eight-year detour as an art dealer behind him. He would have enough for both paid love encounters and effecting real-world change. Exactly how he would do that he hadn’t yet figured out; it had all happened so quickly there at the end. Maybe he would track down the revolutionaries from his past (the ones who weren’t in the slammer, that is), and on the strength of his age, cleverness and capital place himself at the top of the hierarchy.
Victor had hated the clientele of Alderheim’s art gallery from his very first day. It was as if proud nationalism no longer had a place there. Old Man Alderheim bragged about what a broad selection of art he carried. ‘We have everything,’ he used to say. Everything but anything that meant something, Victor thought.
Alderheim’s prided itself on being a leader in the Scandinavian art world, but beyond a lone Carl Larsson in one corner, there was nothing there, on Victor’s first day, to remind one of the soul of the Swedish people. The Larsson painting was a tribute to a traditional Christmas celebration in rural Sweden, totally free of Kurds, Afghans, and other such half-people. Yet it remained unsold. Victor was sure this was the fault of the social-liberal government and had nothing to do with the fact that he’d doubled the price to do justice to Larsson.
Beyond the Scandinavian, the gallery offered a broad assortment of European sculptures, Asian porcelain, and antiques from every corner of the world. And above all: that bloody modernism.
As the years went by, Victor learned more about the art trade than Jenny knew or would have liked to admit. He hated Irma Stern, of course, but understood her commercial value. She was – almost sixty years after her death – hotter than ever. And he was aware (unlike Hugo Hamlin) that his authentic Irma Stern paintings needed to be so in the eyes of the experts as well. It wasn’t enough for a confused Maasai in Stockholm to say they were.
The leading Irma Stern expert was in New York. But things had to be done in the right order. Other tasks were more urgent. The most urgent of all was tied up next to Victor’s stove, peeing on the floor.
Background knowledge was everything. The day after Ole Mbatian’s astonishing appearance in Stockholm, Hugo assembled his lodgers in the living room. To start with, he wanted to know all about Irma Stern’s connection with the medicine man.
Ole, who considered himself extremely forgetful, said he remembered it like it was yesterday. He immediately followed up by proving that this wasn’t quite true. He wasn’t sure if he’d gone through his test of manhood before Irma showed up. Back then, a Maasai warrior-to-be didn’t have to live under the open sky from long rain to long rain before his circumcision; it was enough to encounter a lion on the savanna and win the fight. A boy who lost wasn’t given the final test. Or an honourable burial.
In any case, the Maasai recalled how Auntie Irma had painted him by a stream. He had to sit there poking a stick into the water for almost an entire day.
‘Boy by stream,’ Jenny said reverently.
In Hugo’s world, this was bad news. Any proven connections between Irma and Mbatian were harmful to the cause.
‘Do you have any lovely mementos of those days left back home?’ he asked insidiously.
He was hoping for the opposite.
‘Oh, yes. My father had a camera – no one else in the village had one. They still don’t. We’re not known for adapting new things. That’s because we have a half-toothless numbskull for a chief. I have a lot to tell him when I get home, about escalators and so forth.’
‘Escalators?’ said Hugo.
‘Yes, it looks like an ordinary staircase, but it moves all on its own in either one direction or the other. Just think, walking and walking and getting nowhere. Kind of reminds me of the chief, actually.’
Hugo gently interrupted the Maasai, saying he believed he did know what an escalator was. What he wanted to know more about was Ole’s father’s camera.
‘Well, he used it to take photographs, which he developed himself in the medicine hut. I got to be his assistant. I recall one time as a little boy I tasted the developer, which I should not have done. Lucky Dad was the man he was – he saved my life. If you ingest such a thing you must neutralize it with arrowroot and—’
But Hugo was too impatient to find out what sort of concoction Ole Mbatian had used to save the life of his son.
‘That’s fine,’ he said.
It wasn’t, though. Each piece of news was worse than the last.
‘According to Murphy’s Law, those photographs must still exist, right?’
‘I’m not familiar with that law, but each image has been saved. Dad photographed me and Auntie Irma down by the stream.’
Well, goddammit. If there were photographs of Irma Stern painting a boy by a stream, an expert would have to be both blind and reality-challenged not to assess the painting as authentic, even if sixty years had passed. Ole Mbatian’s photographic archive must disappear. Immediately!
But Hugo didn’t know whether he could trust the proud Maasai. Best to keep him partially in the dark about the details.
‘It would be so fantastic to see those pictures. Would you be comfortable with letting me go down and get them? Then we can sit here and look through them together.’
It wouldn’t be cheap, but this was war. Hugo couldn’t stand the fact that they’d just made Victor Alderheim beyond rich. Revenge had been achieved in the sense that the art dealer’s reputation had been destroyed. Now said revenge just needed to be made sweet. It felt like a tough nut to crack.
‘That’s fine,’ said Ole Mbatian. ‘But it’s a terribly long journey.’
Hugo said he was aware.
‘As long as you’re there, why don’t you bring back Irma’s delightful thank-you letters to Dad as well? They’re in the same drawer.’
Letters too? Hugo cursed inwardly. Irma Stern might as well just come back from the dead to confirm everything in person.
Now, a strange white man couldn’t simply march into Ole Mbatian’s village, ask directions, and take with him the medicine man’s belongings. He might end up with a spear or two through his body.
‘Perhaps it’s best if I come along,’ said Ole Mbatian.
‘But Dad! You just got here!’ said Kevin.
Hugo did not like the idea of moving between continents with the unpredictable Maasai as a travel companion.
Jenny came to his rescue. She had read in her boyfriend’s adoptive father’s passport that his visa was valid for no more than a single entry into the Kingdom of Sweden. If he went home and came back, he would have to apply again, and no one knew how that might turn out, given that he now had a police record.
‘Too bad,’ said Hugo.
They arrived at an agreement: Ole Mbatian the Younger would call Civil Servant Wilson at city hall in Narok to ask him to travel to the Maasai village a half-day’s journey away to prepare the chief for the upcoming visit from a white man.
‘Hello there, Wilson. It’s Ole.’
‘The medicine man?’
‘The Kenyan. You made that happen with your red stamp, or maybe it was the blue one.’
‘Both, actually.’
‘I’m calling from … that country. My memory, you know. Sweden! I need a favour from you.’
‘Just don’t ask me to close city hall, I almost got fired by the mayor last time.’
‘I was going to ask you to close city hall.’
Before the conversation was over, it had cost the medicine man yet another cow. Oh well, he had plenty to spare.
Wilson was already on his way to the village. That just left Hugo.
‘Shall I explain how to navigate the last little bit?’ Ole Mbatian asked.
‘Please do.’
How else would he find his way?
According to Ole, it was complicated. He could ask for directions to find the road to Narok; there were even signs. The difficult part started once he got there. It was most important that Hugo did not take a left at the intersection where the post office used to be, but continued on to the next one.
‘How am I supposed to know where the post office used to be?’
‘No, you’re not supposed to turn there.’
Kevin interrupted the adman and his father before anything went off the rails.
‘Wouldn’t it be better if I sent you a link with the coordinates, Hugo?’
So it would, and so it was.
‘Just think, I lived in my village for an entire life without knowing that it has coordinates,’ said Ole Mbatian. ‘Let’s not tell the chief back home, he would ban them.’
The toothless one seemed less and less well-travelled with every passing day.
Victor Alderheim was not particularly digital. Or social. He didn’t have any personal accounts on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. He did, however, regularly visit online forums, where people who shared his worldview exchanged both information and thoughts.
There were threads about almost everything. Such as conflict between true nationalism and liberalism. The general public had such a ridiculously hard time understanding that strong nations were not built by the raising of hands. But the laughable notion of ‘one citizen one vote’ had, during the past decade, bitten itself in the arse. While traditional politicians, traditional media, and state-controlled television continued to walk hand in hand towards the abyss, people were silently mobilizing. Like in Victor’s preferred forum: those who knew what was what told the masses all they ought to understand. This had already begun dismantling the liberal fag-democracy in basically every country in Europe. The developments in the United States and parts of South America showed promise as well. The post-communist democracy in Russia was already history, while in China they had never even pretended to have one. That fucking Irma Stern ought to have been sent to a prison camp there as punishment. Now, instead, she was about to make Victor a multi-millionaire, which could be considered punishment enough.
The right forum threads made him feel like he had things in common with other people, even if the level of discourse was seldom as high as he might wish. To find sufficiently intellectual stimulation, he turned to the National Library. He who searched meticulously through the shelves would find the nuggets of gold he was after. Such as Paul Schultze-Naumburg’s extraordinary Art and Race, in which the author alleged that only Aryan artists could create culturally advanced works. In his argument against rebellious art forms he compared specific modernist paintings with carefully selected photographs of people with developmental disorders. Schultze-Naumburg was of the opinion that the only correct traditions were the medieval and classical Greek ones. Modernism was mental illness, not art. Alderheim thought more than once about making a post with book recommendations, but to do so he would have to register on the forum, and he didn’t want to do that.
That Victor himself would become a hot topic on the forum was not a development he could have predicted. Thus far, the free discussion there was serving the purposes of the revolution, so he could let it go. But Christ, how people exaggerated. Alleged sex with goats was not something you could get away with.
The plus side of his character assassination on social networks was that it had some influence on the traditional media and prompted them to push some boundaries. For instance, TV4 actually allowed the phrase ‘goat-sex man’ to be used in their feature on the Maasai. He really should have sued, but he had gained so much for his trouble. Such as the medicine man’s name. Ole Mbatian the Younger. And the fact that the stupid bastard stood there on TV and confirmed that he had sold his paintings to Victor. There – his signed contract!
And incidentally, the animal was out of the way. It had taken a certain amount of brainpower to get rid of it properly. He couldn’t simply tie Sweden’s most publicized goat to a lamppost in downtown Stockholm and walk away. He would have been branded a whole new dimension of animal abuser the very next day.
Nor could he drive it into the country and sneak it into the nearest paddock. It was February. The paddocks were full of snow and empty of animals.
His solution was to sell the damn thing. Victor knew nothing about the current market value of a goat, but he feared it was worse than nothing. He formulated a classified ad in the right place online: ‘For sale: goat and five thousand kronor. Price: one hundred kronor.’
After two minutes, he received a response from a taxi driver in Solna.
He wanted to know if the goat already had a name; if not, he planned to name it after his mother.
‘Go right ahead,’ said Victor Alderheim. ‘I’m sure that’ll make her proud.’
With the goat gone, the authentication of the Irma Stern paintings was top of the Alderheimian agenda. The expert in New York, one Dr Harris, was not easy to get hold of. From the start, he communicated via his secretary’s secretary. After two rounds of emails, Victor was allowed to deal with the secretary herself, who informed him that she would shortly be bringing this matter to the doctor’s attention.
Alderheim hated the American Irma Stern expert’s guts before he’d even got hold of him. But he needed a thumbs up from the arrogant man. And he wouldn’t get one unless he did his homework first.