He’s a charmer, she thought. He’s really posing. Lolling back against the pine trunk, pipe in hand.
“Were you the photographer?” she said.
“Yes,” Pantzare said, his voice sounding hoarse.
She looked round the room. Pantzare had no pictures of children hanging on the walls. There were no wedding photos among the framed ones on the bookshelf.
You did more than just like him, she thought, looking hard at Pantzare.
“He would have approved of you telling us about this,” she said. “That you continued to be brave.”
Pantzare nodded and his eyes glazed over.
“I don’t know all that much,” he said. “About the haulier in question, that is. The British said there was someone reporting to the Germans, and that we should watch our step. They were particularly concerned about the intelligence stations, of course. They called him the Fox. And there’s no doubt that Isak Krekula was on good terms with the Germans. He made lots of shipments for them, and it has always been the money that counted as far as he was concerned.”
“Pull yourself together!” Tore Krekula said.
He was standing in Hjalmar Krekula’s bedroom looking at his brother, who was in bed with the covers over his head.
“I know you’re awake. You’re not ill! That’s enough now!”
Tore opened the blinds with such force that it sounded as if the cords were going to snap. He wanted them to snap. It was snowing.
When Hjalmar had failed to turn up for work, his brother had taken the spare key and gone to his house. Not that a key was necessary. Nobody in the village locked their doors at night.
Hjalmar did not respond. Lay under the covers like a corpse. Tore was tempted to rip them off, but something held him back. He did not dare. The person lying there was unpredictable. It was as if a voice under the covers were saying: Give me an excuse, give me an excuse.
This was not the old Hjalmar who could be kicked around however you liked.
Tore felt helpless. This was an emotion he found difficult to handle. He was not used to people not doing as they were told. First that police bitch. Now Hjalmar.
And what could Tore threaten his brother with? He had always threatened Hjalmar.
He made an impatient tour of the house. Piles of dirty dishes. Empty crisp and biscuit packets. The kitchen smelled of stale slops. Big empty plastic bottles. Clothes on the floor. Underpants, yellow at the front, brown at the back.
He went back to the bedroom. Still no sign of movement.
“For fuck’s sake,” he said. “For fuck’s sake, what a mess this place is. What a pigsty. And you. You disgust me. Like a bloody big beached whale, rotting away. Ugh!”
Turning on his heel, he marched out.
Hjalmar heard the door bang closed behind him.
I can’t go on, he thought. There’s no way out.
There was an opened packet of cheese nibbles next to the bed. He took a few handfuls.
He heard a voice inside his head. His old schoolmaster, Fernstrom: “It’s up to you to decide what you’re going to do next.”
No, Fernstrom never understood.
He did not want to think about all that. But it made no difference what he wanted. Thoughts came flooding in like water through an open sluicegate.
Hjalmar Krekula is thirteen years old. On the radio Kennedy is debating with Nixon in the run-up to the presidential elections. Kennedy is a playboy; nobody thinks he is going to win. Hjalmar is not interested in politics. He is sitting in the classroom with his elbows on the varnished lid of his desk. His head is resting on his hands, his palms against his cheekbones. He and Herr Fernstrom are the only ones there. Once all the other children have gone home and the smell of wet wool and stables has disappeared along with them, the smell of school takes over. The smell of dusty books, the sour smell of the rag used to clean the blackboard. The smell of soft soap from the floor, and the peculiar smell of the old building.
Hjalmar Krekula can sense Herr Fernstrom occasionally looking up as he sits at his desk, correcting exercise books. Hjalmar avoids meeting his gaze. Instead, his eyes trace the wood grain of his desk lid. It resembles a woman lying down. To the right is an imaginary creature, or perhaps a ptarmigan: the mark where a twig branched off is an eye.
The headmaster, Herr Bergvall, enters the room. Herr Fernstrom closes the exercise book he has been marking and pushes it to one side.
Bergvall greets him.
“Well,” he says, “I’ve spoken to the doctors in Kiruna, and with Elis Seva’s mother. His wound needed six stitches. His nose wasn’t broken, but he has concussion.”
He says nothing for a while, waiting for Hjalmar Krekula to react. Hjalmar does what he always does: says nothing, fixes his eyes on something else, on the wall chart featuring a map of Palestine, on the harmonium, on the pupils’ drawings pinned up on the wall. Tore had taken young Seva’s bicycle. Seva had told Tore to give him the bloody thing back. Tore had said, “Come on, I’m only borrowing it.” A fight had ensued. One of Tore’s mates had gone to fetch Hjalmar. Seva had been furious, hitting out left, right and centre.
Herr Fernstrom looks at the headmaster and with a barely noticeable shake of the head indicates that there is no point in waiting for an answer from Hjalmar Krekula.
The headmaster’s face becomes somewhat flushed and he starts breathing heavily, provoked by Hjalmar’s silence. He says that this is bad, very bad. Assault and battery, that is what it is – hitting a schoolmate with a spanner: for God’s sake, there are laws against that, and those laws apply in school as well.
“He started it,” Hjalmar says, as usual.
The headmaster’s voice goes up a tone, and he says he thinks Krekula is lying to save his own skin. Says his friends might back up Krekula’s story to save their own skins.
“Herr Fernstrom tells me that Krekula is a talented mathematician,” the headmaster says.
Hjalmar Krekula says nothing, looks out of the window.
Now the headmaster loses his patience.
“Whatever good that will do him,” he says, “when he is failing virtually every other subject. Especially conduct and attitude.”
He repeats the last sentence.
“Especially conduct and attitude.”
Hjalmar Krekula turns to face the headmaster. Gives him a disdainful look.
The headmaster immediately starts to worry that he might have his windows smashed at home.
“Krekula must try to keep his impulses under control,” he says in a conciliatory tone.
And he adds that Krekula will have one-to-one tuition with the deputy head for two weeks. Get away from the classroom for a while. Have an opportunity to think things over.
Then the headmaster leaves.
Herr Fernstrom sighs. Hjalmar has the impression that the sigh is a reaction to the headmaster rather than to himself.
“Why do you get involved in fighting?” Herr Fernstrom says. “You’re not a fool.
