A summer with Kim Novak (9 page)

We were on our feet first thing the next day even though we’d been awake for most of the night. Both Henry and Ewa were gone when we came down, so we assumed that he’d given her a lift in the early hours of the morning. It was understandable that she couldn’t stay away for too long when she visited my brother.

Or so we assumed. More precisely, that was what we each concluded in our fourteen-year-old heads. We didn’t say much that morning. Edmund stirred his cereal around the soured milk for five minutes before he took a bite. As usual. He spread whey butter on his toast with typical ceremonious fussiness. As if it were a very important task, as if it were some sort of ground-breaking scientific experiment on which depended the future of mankind. As if spreading any over the edges or leaving a square centimetre unbuttered would cause the universe to explode.

I still remember thinking that it might mean something: the difference in how we ate breakfast. Me, I usually polished off my toast and chocolate milk in under four minutes. For Edmund, breakfast was a kind of ritual, handled like the priest officiating at a communion service. Not that I had much experience of communion, but I had seen it once—when Henry was confirmed many years ago—and I’d never taken part in anything so slow or dull.

So maybe this difference in our breakfast rhythms meant something. Maybe it was one of those things that revealed our differences in character, and if one of us had been female instead of male, it would have been impossible for us to live together as man and wife. Completely out of the question.

I had to smile at that last thought. I was only speculating while I waited for Edmund to finish up that morning. Casual, daft speculation. Of course I’d never marry Edmund, however much of a woman I became; these thoughts took shape because I was tired of keeping my mind on track. That’s what it was like inside my head those days. When I was alert and awake, all was well, but when I hadn’t had enough sleep, anything could pop up. Cancer-Treblinka-Love …

In any case, the weather was beautiful on this day too. We lay on the dock reading until mid-morning, and then we went out on the boat. We rowed to Fläskhällen first and played a few rounds on the new pinball machine. We didn’t win a free go; it was a stingy game on the whole and slightly tilted. When we’d had enough we ate ice cream and rowed out to Seagull Shit Island. We had a rucksack filled with apple juice, a few books and
Colonel Darkin
. While Edmund ploughed through
Journey to the Centre of the Earth
for the fifth or sixth time, I tried my hand at some rather intricate panels. The image of Ewa Kaludis’s swinging breasts from last night danced before my eyes, but however hard I tried, I couldn’t capture it as it was in real life. I couldn’t even get close. So I decided that there would be no scenes of lovemaking in
Colonel Darkin.
Now or ever. It wasn’t my style, and it wasn’t the Colonel’s either.

When we’d taken our thirteenth dip and had opened the last apple juice Edmund put on his glasses and said: ‘I have a feeling.’

It sounded serious and his expression was uncommonly earnest.

‘You do?’ I said.

‘Yes,’ said Edmund.

‘What kind of feeling?’

Edmund hesitated.

‘That it’s all going to hell soon.’

I took a gulp of juice.

‘What’s going to hell?’ I asked.

Edmund sighed and said that he didn’t know. I waited and then asked if maybe he meant the thing between my brother and Ewa Kaludis. And Berra Albertsson.

Edmund nodded.

‘I think so,’ he said. ‘Something is bound to happen. It can’t go on like this. It’s like … it’s like waiting for a storm. Don’t you feel it?’

I didn’t answer. What my father had said that May evening at home in the kitchen on Idrottsgatan suddenly came into my mind.

A difficult summer. It’s going to be a difficult summer.

Then I thought of Ewa Kaludis again. And about Mulle, unconscious. About Edmund’s real father. About my mother’s grey hands on top of the hospital blanket. As sombre as the colour of oatmeal streaked with blueberries.

‘We’ll see,’ I said in the end. ‘Only time will tell.’

A couple of days passed. The heat held. We swam, lay on the dock and read, rowed to Laxman’s and to Fläskhällen. Everything seemed back to normal again. Henry sat in the shade and wrote and smoked his Luckys and we took care of the meals in exchange for fair compensation. Five or ten kronor. In the evenings Henry left in Killer and often didn’t come home until late at night. He never said a word about Ewa Kaludis and we didn’t ask either. We held our tongues and kept up a gentlemanly façade. Like Arsène Lupin. Or the Scarlet Pimpernel.

Or Colonel Darkin.

‘If nothing else, be a gentleman,’ went one of Edmund’s sayings from Ångermanland, and I agreed with him, full stop.

The next time she appeared at Gennesaret, it was
4
July. I remember the date well because Edmund and I had been talking about George Washington and the Declaration of Independence. And about President Kennedy and Jackie. It was just past ten in the evening; we’d just drunk chocolate milk and eaten a buttered rusk, as we did before bedtime; it was a bright evening and Henry was smoking constantly to keep the midges away.

I think the three of us heard the moped at the same time. Edmund and I looked at each other across the kitchen table and the clatter of the typewriter stopped. A half-minute passed until she reached the parking spot. She revved the engine and then switched it off.

‘Hmm,’ said Edmund. ‘I think I need to take a slash.’

‘Well, when you put it that way,’ I said.

At first I didn’t recognize her. For one flashing second, I couldn’t imagine that the woman who emerged from the lilacs and ran those few steps over the grass and threw her arms around my brother was in fact Ewa Kaludis.

Ewa Kaludis/Kim Novak on the red Puch. Ewa Kaludis with the glittering eyes and the ripe, bouncing breasts. With the black slacks and the red hairband in her hair and the open Swanson shirt that fluttered in the wind.

But it was her. And she was wearing the Swanson shirt and the slacks. Or a similar pair. But no red hairband. No glittering eyes and no wide smile. Just one eye, to be precise. The other, the right, looked as though it had been replaced by two plums. Or rather as though someone had smashed two plums where her eye was supposed to be. Her lips had changed, too. The upper lip had sort of been flattened and seemed to reach all the way up to her nose. The lower lip was large and swollen and had a wide dark line in the centre. One of her cheeks bore a large bluish stain. She looked awful and it took me a few more seconds to realize what must have happened. Someone must’ve done this to her. Someone had used their fists on Ewa Kaludis’s face. Someone had … that someone …

I think I blacked out as soon as I pieced it together. I closed my eyes and heard Edmund hiss a curse by my side. When I looked up again Ewa Kaludis was wrapped in my brother’s embrace; he held her with both arms, stroking her back, and you could see that she was crying. Henry’s head was bowed down, and he was mumbling something into her hair. Her shoulders juddered as she sobbed.

Other than Edmund letting out another quivering curse, nothing happened for a while. Henry helped Ewa sit down at the table where he’d been writing, and then he turned to us.

‘Listen,’ he said and his eyes darted between us a few times. ‘I don’t care what you do, but make sure you bloody well leave us alone. Go to bed, or go row on the lake, anything, but Ewa and I have to be by ourselves now. Understood?’

I nodded. Edmund nodded.

‘Good,’ said Henry. ‘Now, leave.’

I cast a glance at Edmund. Then we went for a piss. Then we went to bed.

She was still there the next morning.

Edmund and I had discussed the situation for the better part of the night and we both slept in. When I staggered down the stairs to get to the loo before it was too late, Ewa was sitting on one of the chairs under the ash tree wearing Henry’s worn terry-towelling robe. She seemed to be freezing cold and when she hesitantly raised her hand in greeting, a lump formed in my throat that took several swallows to get rid of.

‘Hi,’ I said. ‘I’m just going to do my morning ablutions. I’ll be back in a flash.’

She did something with her face. Maybe she was trying to smile.

I peed, took a swim and returned. Edmund was still snoozing. Henry was nowhere to be seen. I took the other chair and sat down with Ewa. Across from her and to the side, quite close.

‘Does it hurt?’ I asked.

She shook her head carefully.

‘Not so bad.’

I swallowed and tried not to look at her.

‘It’ll pass,’ I stated. ‘In a few days you’ll be the most beautiful person in the world again.’

She tried to smile again. It wasn’t any more successful than her previous attempt. Her lips were evidently causing her pain because she flinched and put her hand in front of her mouth.

‘I look terrible,’ she said. ‘Please don’t look at me.’

I turned my head away and studied the tree trunk instead. It was grey and rough and not particularly interesting.

‘Where’s Henry?’ I asked.

‘He went to town to buy some plasters. He’ll be back soon.’

‘Oh.’

We sat in silence.

‘It’s terrible,’ I said. ‘I mean, that someone would do this to you.’

She didn’t answer. Just straightened up in the chair, and cleared her throat several times. I guessed that she had blood in her throat, like the victims in some of the books I’d read. It sounded like it.

‘Can I get you anything?’ I asked. ‘Something to drink?’

She blinked a few times with her good eye.

‘No, thank you,’ she said. ‘You’re sweet, Erik.’

‘Oh, it’s no bother,’ I said.

She cleared her throat again and wiped her forehead with the sleeve of the robe.

‘You have to learn to weather the blows,’ she said. ‘You have to.’

‘Yeah?’ I said.

‘Don’t worry about me. I’ve had worse.’

‘Worse?’ I said.

‘When I was your age,’ she continued. ‘And younger. I come from another country, as you may know. Just me and my sister. My parents stayed behind. We travelled across the sea in a boat, not much bigger than your rowing boat … I don’t know why I’m telling you this.’

‘Neither do I,’ I admitted.

‘Maybe it’s because Henry told me about your mother,’ she said after a pause. ‘I know you’re not having an easy time of it, Erik. I didn’t know before, but I know now.’

I nodded and looked at the pattern of the bark. It hadn’t changed.

‘You don’t like talking about it?’

I didn’t answer. Ewa studied me with her good eye. Then she leaned forward in the chair and patted the grass in front of her.

‘Sit here for a moment, please.’

I hesitated at first, but then I did as she said. I floundered out of the chair and sat down on the ground between her knees. Leaned back carefully against the chair’s slats. Her thighs against my sides.

‘Close your eyes,’ she said.

I closed my eyes. She took hold of my shoulders and gave me a gentle, slow massage.

Slow and gentle. Strong and warm. I felt dizzy inside. For all the new discoveries and experiences this summer, a hundred years must have passed since graduation at Stava School.

‘Your shoulders are tense. Try to relax.’

I relaxed and became like putty in her hands. I got an erection of course, but I made sure that it couldn’t really be seen through my baggy swimming trunks. Then I gave into the pleasure of sitting between Ewa’s legs, enjoying her hands. I realized that I’d started to cry again, but that this time there weren’t any tears. Just a lovely, gentle buzz behind my eyes, and for a clear, flashing second I knew what it was like to be Henry.

My brother Henry.

Eventually Edmund woke, and eventually Henry returned from his trip to the pharmacy, but that didn’t matter. When Ewa let go of my shoulders and mussed my hair it felt as if we’d entered into a sworn brotherhood. Or had made some sort of secret pact. We hadn’t spoken much—not at all, really. We were just sitting in the grass together, but still it was something else, as Edmund might have said.

Something bloody else. I thought about it once or twice a day in the time leading up to the Incident, and every time I did, a strong, warm feeling filled me. Warm and strong just like her hands on my tense shoulders.

The feeling of slipping into a nice warm bath after a cold winter’s day, I know that’s what I thought then.

But it sort of radiated from within.

Henry left with Ewa that night. I think he rode the Puch while Ewa drove Killer; it must be harder to drive a moped than to drive a car when you only have one working eye. In any case, the parking area was empty when Edmund and I returned from a long bike ride around ten.

Then another couple of days passed. The weather volleyed between sun and rain. But it was generally quite warm. We tried to go fishing, but Möckeln had a reputation for being dead when it came to fish, and neither Edmund nor I were particularly amused by sitting around and staring at a float.

Even less amused, in fact, by the thought of having to reel in a poor dace or perch and stick a knife in it. Or whack it until it died. Or whatever you did to fish.

As luck would have it we never needed to come up with a solution to the problem because we didn’t get one to bite.

But Edmund did get strep throat. A mild case—according to his own diagnosis; he’d had strep throat a few times before—but he still was lethargic and feverish and preferred to sleep. Or read.

‘Read, sleep, drink,’ he said. ‘From these threads, my wellness is woven.’

‘An idiom from the heart of Lapland?’ I asked.

‘Not exactly,’ said Edmund. ‘My dad says that.’

‘Your real one?’

‘No, for Christ’s sake,’ said Edmund. ‘Not him. Only crap comes from him.’

Those days it was harder than usual to talk to Henry. When he wasn’t running errands in Killer, he mostly went around muttering and smoking. His writing didn’t seem to be moving forward either; he often just sat staring at the Facit, as if he were trying convince it to write the existential novel itself. Sometimes I heard him curse and tear a sheet of paper out of the roller. He was constantly grumbling and irate.

Because both my brother and Edmund were busy—Edmund with his strep throat, Henry with other things—I also kept to myself. I drew more than ten pages of
Colonel Darkin and the Mysterious Heiress
and was chuffed with the result. Since I had decided to censor all the half-naked female bodies, it was much easier to get on with the story. I guess that’s how it is, I thought, glumly. As in literature, so in life.

During those days, the meals were monotonous, too. Edmund had lost his appetite and when Henry ate, he didn’t care what he put in his mouth. You could just as well have set a plate of moss on the table for him. Because of this and the situation in general, we mostly ate potatoes with butter. We placed two jars of herring on the table at every meal, but none of us bothered to twist off the lid of either of them and take a whiff.

It was what it was, and we had plenty of potatoes in stock.

I’d just finished
And Then There Were None
and had turned to the wall to sleep, when I heard them walking across the lawn.

Henry and Ewa. I looked at my self-illuminating watch. Twelve thirty. Edmund was breathing heavily with his mouth open over in his bed. It was a blustery day and every now and then a tree branch swished against the window. I couldn’t help but think how safe and secure it felt lying in a warm bed. How free from danger.

Well, only for as long as you were lying in bed. The reality beyond the bed was another matter. Something else. The simple act of putting your feet on the cold floor and then going out into the world meant that you were exposing yourself to a plethora of risks and dangers. There were Henrys and Ewas and Edmunds. But also black eyes and swollen lips and fists that were as hard and merciless as stone. Decisions that had to be made and matters that had to be handled whether you wanted to or not. Dads who hit and Treblinkas and cancerous tumours that grew and grew.

Out in the world. Beyond the bed, on the floor. I rolled over and pulled the blanket around me more tightly. I could hear Henry and Ewa speaking softly down below. No music tonight, apparently. No rhythmic creaking of the bed or libertine whimpering. I knew this wasn’t that kind of night. This night was different.

I wondered what they were talking about. I thought about that trick detectives used in the movies where they place a glass against the wall so they can listen in on conversations in the adjoining room. If that really did work, it could work against the floor as well.

There was a half-full glass next to Edmund’s bed. Drinking plenty of liquids was part of his war against strep throat, so if I wanted to test it out, I could; if I really wanted to know what Ewa and Henry were talking about down there, I wouldn’t have to make too much of an effort. Open the window and toss out the apple juice. And then lie on the floor with the glass against the wooden boards and my ear against it. Easy as pie.

I couldn’t be bothered. Maybe I was too tired. Maybe I felt it wouldn’t be gentlemanly.

If nothing else, be a gentleman.

It wasn’t a bad rule to live by, we’d decided, Edmund and I. The gentility of standing in the flower bed and wanking to Ewa and Henry the other night was debatable, but surely even a gentleman was allowed a day off. Like the sun has its spots.

I was musing from the comfort of my own bed. The voices down below only reached me as a distant mumbling and when I finally drifted off, my dream silenced Henry’s grave voice. I only heard Ewa’s and she was speaking to me. She sat next to me in bed, or rather, behind me and to the side, and she was massaging my tense shoulders.

My shoulders and other things. I wouldn’t have minded if I’d never woken from that dream.

The next morning, there was a note on the kitchen table that read ‘Have a lot to take care of. Will be back before midnight. Meatballs and peaches in the larder. Henry.’

It wasn’t like my brother to leave a note about what he was up to, and I guessed Ewa Kaludis was behind it. Henry wasn’t usually away from Gennesaret for more than six or eight hours at a time and now he would be gone both day and night, apparently, but it still wasn’t like him leave a note like this. Not my brother.

I checked to see if there really were two tins on the shelf in the larder. There were. One with Mother Elna’s moose meatballs in a creamy sauce. One with halved pears in thick syrup. It didn’t sound bad, even if I didn’t really see the point of the syrup. If Edmund’s lack of appetite held strong, I could—if nothing else—look forward to a decent tuck-in later in the day. Shame there wasn’t any cream for the peaches, but cycling or rowing all the way to Laxman’s for a splash of cream seemed excessive. Not worth worrying about with the clouds of unease that had been rolling in lately.

It was quite a listless day. To begin with, at least. Edmund was on the mend, he said, but only slightly. It would probably take another day or two to be rid of the sodding strep, he figured.

Sleep, read and drink, then. Absolutely no outings. Not to Laxman’s, not anywhere. There were no two ways about it, he had no desire to get out of bed. He was ‘convalescing’, as they liked to say in Västerbotten.

I placed two bottles of apple juice on the table, and wished him well and went outside and sat on one of the loungers with
Darkin
and a new Agatha Christie. The last one hadn’t been bad; the new one was called
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
and Edmund said it was a super story.

And that was essentially how I spent the day before the Incident.

Sitting in the sun lounger with
Colonel Darkin
and Agatha Christie. Edmund came out a few times, but when it was sunny he thought it was too hot and when clouds covered the sun he froze. He complained that he was having a hard time with books as well, because he kept forgetting the pages he read before he fell asleep and had to start again when he woke. I suggested he try
Journey to the Centre of the Earth
once more—you could make sense of that one backward and upside-down—but he said he wasn’t in the mood for Jules Verne. He needed something like Patrick Quentin and Ellery Queen, and you could definitely read crime novels more than once.

Except certain ones, of course.

I prepared the moose meatballs in the middle of the afternoon. I ate nine; Edmund ate one. We split the peaches between us more evenly, four–two. All in all, I was satisfied with my meal.

Even though I had to prepare it
and
do the washing up.

Just as I had finished with the latter, we received our first caller of the afternoon. Gladys Lundin walked across the property clearing her throat and coughing, asking if we had any schnapps to spare.

Normal people, like Benny’s mum and Mrs. Lundmark two floors up on Idrottsgatan, would sometimes knock and ask for a cup of sugar or flour for pancakes or rhubarb pie, but the Lundins were not normal people. Far from it. As far as I knew, Gladys was the matriarch of the tribe; she was at least seventy and probably weighed more than a bit over a hundred kilos. She propelled herself forward with two sturdy oak canes and always had a lit cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth. None of this prevented her from coming over and begging for schnapps when the need struck.

I explained that we didn’t have any alcohol in the house at the moment, and so she asked for a kilo of potatoes instead.

I could hardly deny her that, because we had half a crate. With the canes and the cigarettes, the carrying became complicated, but in the end I hung a bowl on a cord around her neck. She hobbled away without saying thank you and I wondered if she was going to sit down and make schnapps with the potatoes as soon as she got home. I only had a vague idea of the process, but with some luck she might distil a glass by the evening.

From that day forward, I thought it was strange that they showed up so soon after each other, Gladys Lundin and the next visitor, but whichever way I looked at it, I couldn’t find a logical connection.

But never mind; after getting rid of Gladys I hadn’t been in the chair for more than twenty minutes before I heard another cough behind me. Much stronger and much more ominous.

I rose to my feet and then I was eyeball-to-eyeball with Bertil Albertsson. Super-Berra. The man who had such a strong arm that if a ball he threw hit a goalkeeper, the impact would be fatal. The man who had hung his striped blazer nonchalantly on one finger and handed it to Atle Eriksson before he started the battle royal against red-faced Mulle in Lackaparken.

The man whose fiancée was called Ewa Kaludis.

I dropped
Colonel Darkin
in the grass but I didn’t think to pick it up. Tried to swallow; it wasn’t easy and I wondered if Edmund had given me his strep throat. Berra stood before me with the same wide stance that he’d employed at Lackaparken. He wore a white, short-sleeved shirt and his tanned, hairy arms rippled with muscles and veins. His rough-hewn face was inscrutable; he had one eyebrow raised a few centimetres, and he looked at me as if I was something he happened to have stepped on in the gutter.

‘Hi,’ I said.

He didn’t reply. His eyebrow stayed just below his hairline, but his jaw was moving slightly. Grinding. I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I tried to stare back. No use.

‘Where’s your brother?’ he said in the end. Without moving his lips.

‘Who?’ I asked.

I don’t know how I came up with such a daft question, but I think I was trying to buy some time. Time to faint, or time for some merciful god or goddess to come to my rescue. To arrive at Gennesaret and carry me away to a desert island in the South Seas for all eternity.

No god appeared and I didn’t faint.

‘Your brother,’ Berra Albertsson repeated. ‘Henry. I have a few things to say to him.’

‘Oh, him,’ I said.

‘How many brothers do you have?’ asked Berra.

‘Just one,’ I said.

‘And where is he, then?’

‘He’s not in,’ I said.

‘When will he be back?’

‘I don’t know. Late.’

‘Late?’

‘Tonight. Twelve. Or even later. He left a note.’

‘Tonight.’

‘Yes.’

‘Hmm.’ He lowered his eyebrow. Coughed twice and spat on the lawn. The gob landed twenty centimetres from my left foot. Five centimetres from
Colonel Darkin
.

‘Tell him,’ he said. ‘Tell him that I’ll be back at one tonight. There are some things I want to discuss with him.’

‘He might not be here then either,’ I said. ‘He might be even later.’

‘Then I’ll wait.’

And with that he left. I stayed still and watched him. When he’d disappeared behind the lilac bushes, I lowered my gaze and looked at the gob of spit that lay glittering in the grass.

It’s never going to go away, I thought. That damned gob is going to be on Gennesaret’s lawn one hundred years from now. It is what it is.

‘Who were you talking to?’ Edmund stuck his head out of the window. ‘I was sleeping and then I heard voices. Who was here?’

Edmund went as pale as a corpse when I told him about my conversation with Berra Albertsson.

He took off his glasses and put them back on again ten times and he gnashed his teeth, but mostly he looked frightened. Dogged and focused in spite of the fever, but also confused. This must have been what it was like when he was waiting for his real dad to come and whack him with the belt. He barely said a word while I recounted what Berra had said and what I’d said. Clasped and unclasped his hands and then tried to swallow, but that was all. He had no idea what we should do.

Not one.

‘The storm,’ he finally said. ‘I told you. We’ve been waiting for the storm and now it’s here.’

‘Goddammit,’ I said, because I didn’t know what to say and I felt that I needed to buck myself up with a few swear words. ‘Damn it all to hell.’

‘Exactly,’ said Edmund.

The rain started to fall around eight p.m. and I kept Edmund company by going to bed a little after nine. It was a proper storm. Bright streaks of lightning and thunder claps too close for comfort. It seemed like it would never end.

‘Some storms go round and round,’ Edmund commented. ‘In Ånger once the thunder and lightning went on for over twelve bloody hours non-stop. It can make you feel quite small, actually.’

‘How’s the strep?’ I asked, because I didn’t want to talk about the storm. It was bad enough as it was.