And you’re really gifted when it comes to maths. You ought to continue your education, Hjalmar. You have the chance to catch up in your other subjects. Then you could go on to high school.”
“Huh,” Hjalmar says.
“What do you mean, huh?”
“My father would never allow it. We have to work in the haulage business, me and Tore.”
“I’ll have a word with your father. It’s up to you to decide what you’re going to do next. Do you see that? If you stop fighting and…”
“I couldn’t give a toss,” Hjalmar says vehemently. “I’ve no desire to continue at school anyway. It’s better to get a job and earn some money. Can I go now?”
Herr Fernstrom sighs again. And this time the sigh is definitely aimed at Hjalmar Krekula.
“Yes, you can go,” he says. “Go away.”
But Fernstrom really does have a word with the old man. One day when Hjalmar comes home, Isak Krekula is bubbling over with rage. Kerttu continues making pancakes with a grim expression on her face while Isak lays down the law in the kitchen.
“I want you to be quite clear that I sent that schoolmaster of yours packing with a flea in his ear,” he bellows at Hjalmar. “I’ll be damned if a son of mine is going to become an anaemic calculating machine, and I made sure he understood that. Maths, eh? Who the devil do you think you are? Too posh to work in the transport business, is that it? Not good enough for your lordship? I’ll have you know that it’s the haulage business that has put food on your table for your entire life.”
He gasps for breath, as if his fury is well on the way to choking him, as if it were a pillow over his mouth.
“If it doesn’t suit you to help to take responsibility for your family, then you’re not welcome to stay here, is that clear? Work away at your maths if you like, but in that case you’ll have to look elsewhere for a place to live.”
Hjalmar wants to tell his father that he has no intention of going to high school. This is all something thought up by Herr Fernstrom. But he does not say a word. His fear of his father gets in the way of what he wants to say. But there is something else as well. A flash of insight.
The insight is that he really is good at maths. Even talented. Just as the headmaster said. He is a talented mathematician. Fernstrom told the headmaster, and Fernstrom drove all the way to Piilijarvi to tell his dad.
And when Isak Krekula yells, “Well, how’s it going to be?” Hjalmar does not reply. Isak gives him a box on the ear, two in fact, making his head spin and throb. Hjalmar has the feeling that he can become “an anaemic calculating machine”. And that is something way beyond the reach of the rest of the family, something that makes Isak froth at the mouth with rage.
Then Hjalmar goes to the lake to sit on the shore. Has to turn the cheek that has been smacked away from the autumn sun, to prevent it hurting even more.
He watches two ravens playing tag with a twig. One of them performs wild acrobatics with the twig in its beak, the other chases close behind it. They loop the loop, spin round on their own axes, dive down towards the water, then shoot back up again.
The one with the stick flies straight into the crown of a tree; it seems certain that it will collide with the trunk or a heavy branch and break its neck, but the next second it emerges on the other side – it has found its way through the network of branches like a black throwing knife. It sails out over the lake and gives a reckless “korrrp” – and drops the twig, of course. Both ravens circle above the water before they decide they cannot be bothered and fly off above the tops of the pine trees.
I land on the jetty next to Hjalmar. He’s thirteen years old, and his cheek is flaming red. Tears are streaming down his face, although he’s trying hard not to cry. And then comes the anger. It hits him with such force that he starts trembling. He hates Isak, who bawled and yelled so violently that spit was flying in all directions. He hates Kerttu, who simply turned her back on it all, as usual. He hates Herr Fernstrom – why the hell did he have to go and have a word with his father? Hjalmar didn’t ask him to. He has never even thought about going to high school. He’s had something taken away from him that he didn’t have in the first place. So why is he crying?
The fury inside him is like a red-hot poker. He stands up, has to struggle to stay on his feet. He goes looking for Tore, who is messing about with his Zundapp moped, fitting a bigger jet to the carburettor.
“Come on, there’s a job we need to do,” he says.
Herr Fernstrom’s black Volkswagen is parked in its usual place, a hundred metres from the school.
Hjalmar has brought a crowbar with him. He starts with the rear and front lights. Soon the glass is lying like heaps of diamonds on the tarmac. But that’s not enough: he still has so much anger pulsating inside him that needs to come out, out. He smashes the windscreen, the side windows, the back window. There is a loud bang as the panes splinter, the glass shoots out in all directions, and Tore takes a couple of paces backwards. Some children walk past.
“If you squeal on us, it’ll be your skulls next time,” Tore says, and they run off like startled mice.
Tore places one foot on the frame of a shattered side window and vaults up onto the roof, bounces up and down several times until it is completely dented and ruined, then jumps down onto the road via the bonnet.
It happens very quickly, all done within three minutes, and then it’s time to run.
“Come on,” Tore shouts, already on his moped, having driven some way off.
Hjalmar’s arms ache, and he feels sweaty. He’s calm now. He’ll never cry again.
Opening the car door, he searches through the briefcase on the front passenger seat. Tore is shouting away, worried in case some adult should turn up at the scene. There is no wallet, just three maths textbooks –
I leave them to it. Soar up with the thermals. Up, up.
I shall start things moving with regard to Prosecutor Rebecka Martinsson and Hjalmar Krekula.
Martinsson is sitting in her office after the morning’s proceedings. They comprised cases of dangerous driving, G.B.H. and fraud. The documentation needs putting in order, and decisions must be made. She knows that if she knuckles down, it will take half an hour, no more. But she doesn’t feel like it; she is finding it hard to concentrate.
The snowy weather has passed over. Quickly. As it tends to do in the mountains. Just when it felt as if it would never cease. When the wind was raging and howling, and the sticky April snow was forcing its way inside people’s upturned collars, wet and icy. Suddenly, everything died down. The clouds blew away. The sky became light blue and cloudless.
Martinsson checks her mobile. Hopes her man will ring or text her. Outside the sun is shining down on the facades and roofs of buildings, onto all the newly fallen snow.
Two crows are sitting in the tree outside her window. They are calling to her, enticing her out. Although she has no awareness of that.
People don’t think about birds. Birds inspire them with big, ambitious thoughts, but people never ask themselves why this is the case. Never wonder how it is that twenty little birds in a birch tree
