Clinch (3 page)

Back home in the wardrobe I have a Husqvarna pistol, which I kept after my conscription years. The few times I’ve fired it, it’s had quite a kick. When I come at last, the recoil of my ejaculation reverberates in the same way. The youth heaves against me
another three or four or five times before also coming himself. Out of breath, I lie with my nose against his neck for a few seconds, then glide out of him without meaning to. I stand up and back away a little.

‘Oh damn,’ I mumble, breathing hard.

The days when I could run ten kilometres in forty-five minutes are definitely over. The boy pulls up his trousers and turns towards me. I stand there coughing, my hands on my knees and my trousers down to my ankles. The youth puts his hand on my shoulder and titters a little. I look up. What a stupid little dandy. Some people get everything served on a silver platter and sail through life without a care in the world, while others have to slave for every inch of happiness.

The vein in my forehead starts pounding. My mouth waters. Maybe it’s because of his damned lisping. He must be retarded. By his age, he should have learned to talk properly. But that damned arrogant grin of his is the worst of all.

Again he sucks his bottom lip in between his teeth in that seductive way, while grinning idiotically. I stare for a moment at his fur-lined lace-up boots. They’re polished, proper, and expensive. I inhale deeply and blow it out of my nose at the same time as I plant a quick left-handed upper-cut on the tip of his chin. It puts his lights out. At least it wipes that grin off his face.

My footwork is not the best because of the trousers, which means that some of the power of the punch is lost, but he’s still out cold by the time he hits the ground. I lean forwards, coughing, with my hands on my knees again. The boy lies on his back with his arms stretched out at right angles from his body. The headlights form a half-circle of light around him. The scene feels very familiar. The teeth of his lower jaw stick out of the wound below his lip.

‘That won’t exactly help your damned lisp.’

My back clicks as I straighten up. I take off my hat and mop the sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand, before pulling up my trousers. The boy makes a pitiful gargling sound from somewhere at the back of his throat. I get out a cigar from my pocket to get rid of the aftertaste in my mouth and rummage for matchsticks, but can’t find any.

I walk over to the kid and take his gold lighter from his trouser pocket, then get the cigar going and watch him struggling with his breathing for a while. I hold up the lighter, angling it so I can read the name engraved diagonally across it. Leonard. I put it in my pocket and then check my watch. It’s half past eight.

I’ve knocked lots of people unconscious, I’ve harmed people so they don’t function properly afterwards, and I’ve put them in month-long comas, but I’ve never beaten anyone to death. Not as far as I know, anyway.

Before I set off on the short walk home I roll the boy onto his side, so the blood can run out of him.

Lundin feeds the meter on the wall with a couple of gas tokens before he lights the ring and then puts the water on for coffee. Almost every day for the past ten years we’ve had breakfast in his kitchen behind the undertaker’s reception. The room is almost identical to my own, directly above us.

I sit at the table while Lundin waltzes about at the hob. Through the window I see an accordion player on Ingemarsgatan, churning out one heartrending tuppenny opera after another. The undertaker and I sing ‘Lioness Bride’ so heartily that the window panes are practically rattling. We have both taken swigs from the bottle to prepare the way for the tot in the coffee afterwards.

The sun reflects off the accordion, making a sun cat whizz across the kitchen’s yellow floral wallpaper, finding the shining surfaces of the copper saucepans.

‘A roaring sound as our Lord sighed, then the lion tore the stranger’s bride.’

The reflections shoot off Lundin’s gold fillings as he opens his mouth wide at the end of the verse, then slink round a washing-up basin of marinated herring, hound across a selection of white-enamelled tins, and momentarily lose themselves above a shelf that holds a soap dish and other paraphernalia. Finally, the accordion player leans back with the instrument splayed across his belly, sending the reflections up to the ceiling, by the drying slats for laundry.

‘Bread we’re having, as well. Sausage and cheese. And a saffron bun each, in honour of St Lucia. Or what do you say, brother?’

The drying slats are bare. Like me, Lundin takes his laundry to Sailor-Beda opposite. I don’t know how many black suits he has. When not wearing his cylindrical top hat, he brushes his grey tendrils over his bald pate. His sunken cheeks are always well shaven. His bushy moustache usually seems slightly skew-whiff, because he wipes it with the back of his hand from left to right. People around here say he brings bad luck, because he smells like the dead. I don’t know. Not like when they’re decomposing, anyway: Lundin gives off a sweetish, but not foetid, smell, like fallen fruit. He’s going on seventy years old, with a sparrow chest, and a terrible, hacking cough that’s even worse than mine. Maybe he’s on his way to the other side. On several occasions I’ve thought his time might be up. He suffers from dizzy spells, and sometimes he collapses in a disfiguring fit. For his own part, he claims to be up with the cockerel every day, doing his morning gymnastics from the radio program with Colonel Owl.

‘And then another scoop for the top of your head, and another just because.’

He throws a couple more heaped spoons of coffee into the saucepan from a bag of ready ground. We both like it strong, with sugar cubes and a tot of something alcoholic. The accordion player changes to ‘The King of the Thieves’. I tip the kitchen chair, sitting there in my trousers, braces and a singlet. I always go downstairs in my socks. Lundin catches his breath. The coffee boils and he takes it off the ring to let it brew for a while.

He puts bread on the table, also the saffron buns from the bakery on Ingemarsgatan. He’s in an unusually good mood, most likely because we’ve agreed that the rent will be paid today. I’d
asked for a deferment until St Lucy’s Day. The Zetterberg job came along in the nick of time. I open the window and toss a fifty-öre coin to the accordion player, who catches it expertly between two notes.

The cobwebs in the window disperse the weary daylight across the table. At one end of the windowsill lies a dry wasp. Lundin puts the food on the table and sits down opposite. The accordion player finishes his song, and Lundin pours coffee and a tot of schnapps into our cups, then slides over the sweet wheat bread he has baked himself.

‘The bread of knowledge he eats, the water of wisdom he drinks.’

Lundin inserts a sugar cube between his teeth and takes his coffee cup. I follow suit, and we enjoy a few bracing gulps. There’s a soreness in my throat from my adventure last night in Bellevueparken. I pull out a drawer at the short end of the table and clatter with the cutlery. Lundin gets out his accounts book and slaps it on the table. He finds the page marked ‘K’ and slowly moves his snuff-brown finger down the lines.

‘Let’s see now…’

‘It should be the same as last month.’

‘It’s the rent with two weeks of respite, plus…’ He picks up a pencil and a little penknife to sharpen it.

‘It should be about the same as last month.’ I get my wallet out from the back pocket of my trousers and put it on the table. Lundin scrawls his squiggles in the book.

‘Three litres, six each.’ He runs the back of his hand across his moustache. I chew a piece of bread. The number 6 tram rings its bell as it goes by on Roslagsgatan. ‘Eggs on five occasions, sausage on seven, ham on three.’

‘We never had ham…’

Lundin holds up his brown forefinger. ‘Ham on three. You can check it against my accounts with “B-b-bruntell with the Kodak”,’ he says, imitating the grocer’s stutter.

‘No need for that.’

I have a pull at the bottle. Lundin taps his pen shaft against it twice and makes another annotation.

‘One hundred and twenty-seven kronor and fifty. Neither more nor less. Exactly on the öre.’

‘That’s three kronor less than last month.’

‘Three twenty-five less.’

‘Much obliged to you.’ I pull the strap off my wallet and open it.

‘Even the poor man shall find grazing in my pastures.’

Lundin sucks his moustache. I wet my thumb and count out the money on the table. The pipes surge whenever someone uses the toilet in the corridor. A bell tinkles: the door of the undertaker’s is being opened. Lundin scrabbles the money together and puts it in his inside pocket.

‘See you tomorrow morning, then,’ he says. He puts on his top hat, adjusts the fit of his coat and runs his finger over his moustache again. I nod. He lowers his head as he goes through the door. I take a sip of the coffee and open the snuff-thumbed accounts book. I stay there for a long while, trying to get a grip on the figures.

A few hours later I’m standing by the window of my corner flat with my notebook in my hand. Dusk is falling over Sibirien. An old bat wrapped in a shawl is thrashing a boy on Roslagsgatan, holding him by his collar and striking at him with her fist. The brick building opposite, where Sailor-Beda has her laundry,
catches the dull sounds of the thumps and accompanying oaths, hurling them all back at me. I push my hat away from my face.

‘Thieving son of a whore!’

She lets go of the boy. Sobbing, he drops onto the pavement with a bloodied nose. The old nag gathers up her skirts and apron and resolutely marches south, past Bruntell’s grocery store and Ström’s junk shop.

I fish a Meteor out of the breast pocket of my unbuttoned shirt and bite off the end. Up in Vanadislunden, St Stefan’s church tolls three times and, to the south, Johannes answers in baritone. Outside, the kid gets up on unsteady legs, rubs his nose and makes off towards Roslagstull. A fat rat darts across the street.

‘That old girl had a decent punch,’ I mumble, lighting the cigar and blowing a plume of blue-grey smoke at the window-pane. Outside, the day is dying in a welter of fire. The last few rays of the sinking sun are caught by the golden pretzel over the entrance to Ingemarsgatan’s bakery, from where it reflects against the façade on the other side of the street. In a few hours it’ll be time for me to go to work.

I go around the big oak desk that faces the hall. The green Oriental rug absorbs the sound of my steps. My wide trouser legs swish against one another. I pass the full-length mirror and hit the light switch next to the kitchen door. The electric chandelier has six tasselled yellow lampshades. Most of them have singed patches. Only four of the bulbs are working.

I cough drily and go and sit in the armchair by the desk. I take a puff and put the cigar in an ashtray decorated on the base with a hula-dancing figure. Smoke is already hanging heavy in the flat. My very own Battle of Lützen. Grey wreaths are sweeping across the brown wallpaper, trying to brush off the dust on top of the swine leather sandbag that dangles in a corner, and then
seeking the hall, where the ceramic wood burner reaches up to the ceiling. The smoke attaches itself to the arms of the chandelier like ash-coloured streamers in a Christmas tree, and caresses the bindings of the books in the little bookcase to my left, where Strindberg rubs shoulders with Dahlin – a working-class author – and Piraten. I’ve read them all, and more still, at the city library a few blocks to the south. Not only tramps spend time at the library.

I turn on the green-shaded desk lamp and the flat now shows itself off to much better effect. The place is cluttered with souvenirs from my years at sea. Ships in bottles, a short-bladed paper knife of ivory from Kaolack, and a porcelain mermaid sitting on a flat rock from Kirkwall. The walls are bare. Above the wardrobe next to the sleeping alcove is a crooked nail. Behind the wardrobe is a photograph of Branting, which fell down years ago.

The one-room flat with a separate kitchen has both gas-and wood-burning stoves. On the landing is a room with a toilet, which I share with the neighbours. As far as I know, Lundin is also arranging to put a bathtub in the cellar for general use. I can’t complain. Usually, husband, wife and a pile of children share the same space. Whole families live in what are little more than huts around Stadshagen or Vita Bergen; if you turned over one of the boats pulled up around Årstaviken, there would be a decent chance of running into the man of the house, telling you to close the door as there was a draught.

The number 6 tram rattles by. I open the top drawer of the desk and, as usual, it gets stuck halfway. I rummage among letters, old newspaper cuttings from
Boxing Monthly!
, a green scrap of fabric and a lot of other crap that I ought to clear out. I roll out a half-litre bottle of Kron and fill the schnapps glass, which is always ready on the desk.

‘Good evening to you, Kvisten!’

The room-temperature schnapps sends a shudder down my spine as I open my notebook to plan out the route of my jobs. I almost always have plenty to get on with. People are desperate and impoverished and more or less at that point is when I turn up with my ugly mug and nail them. I’ve had a fruitful working arrangement with Wernersson’s Velocipedes on Odengatan for a number of years. When people stop making their monthly payments, I turn up to reclaim the bicycles, and Wernersson pays me off with their deposits. This yields between ten and thirty-five kronor per object.

This evening’s jobs include three bicycles: a black Monark lady’s, a Pilen gentleman’s and an Adler three-wheeler with a back-loading flatbed. All the addresses are conveniently located in Vasastan. From there I can easily pedal them to Wernersson before I go back to Kungsgatan to pick up the dough from Zetterberg, as agreed. I wonder if he’s swept up the glass from the shattered mirror since last night.

Outside, the tram rattles past on its way back. I make a note in my book of the bicycle models, the registration numbers and the addresses, put the cigar down in the ashtray and push back my hat. I check my pocket watch. There’s no hurry.

I sit back and put my feet up on the desk. A coin falls out of my trouser pocket and rolls like a torn-off uniform button across the floor of an officer’s cabin. I close my eyes and smile.

With sixty-five kronor in my pocket and slightly aching knuckles, I close the door of Wernersson Velocipedes and stroll up Odengatan. It’s raining again, and, on the corner of Standards, a voluptuous redhead stands smoking under a parasol. She follows me with her eyes.

I hurry my steps past the National Library. A coughing fit is tickling in my chest. As I reach the crest of the slope I can already sense the mighty dome of Vasa Church through the skeletal lime trees. I ignore the cough and jog the remaining distance.

A vendor on the platform between the tram tracks and the lanes of traffic makes a gesture over his spruce twigs and corn sheaves. He’s had the good sense to dress himself in a thick imitation astrakhan hat and big clogs filled with straw. I shake my head.

My run sets my heart bouncing in my chest. I post off the completed crossword for the weekly
Social-Demokraten
competition. I send it because they promise a prize for a correctly solved crossword, but I’ve never got the slightest whiff of cash.

The bells of Vasa Church chime six times. Just a few years ago there was a dairy farm up here on the ridge, and one could hear the cows lowing at evening milking time. Now there’s only the persistent sound of engines, the growling horns of trucks, shrieking factory whistles and the ringing of trams.

More and more people on their way home from work are crowding the shelter, and soon it’s about as packed as the Söder baths on Saturdays. A lady in a grey coat that almost reaches her feet shakes the water off her umbrella.

‘Oh, what dreadful weather!’

‘It’s even worse than snow.’ A bloke in a cap and a long blue shirt under his jacket squints at the rain-heavy skies. There’s soot around his eyes.

The lady looks him up and down for a few moments. ‘That’ll come along as well, soon enough.’

Like yesterday I take the number 3 tram to Norra Bantorget and walk the short distance to Kungsgatan. I’ve stopped by Lennartsson’s renowned shoe shop on Vasagatan, and I’m standing there gawking at the window displays when I get an unpleasant
sensation in the pit of my stomach. I don’t know why. Something feels wrong, and it’s not just my wet feet.

Two stints in Långholmen Prison for assault and years of harassment mean that I can smell goons at a good distance. All of my adult life I’ve been hounded by goons. Just wearing a blue collar is reason enough for them to tail you in the park, at public baths, even in urinals.

I put my newly lit cigar in my mouth, shove my hands in my coat pockets and hurry towards the Kungsgatan junction. I peer round the corner.

‘Damn it!’

I take my Meteor out of my mouth while I’m swearing. The area by Zetterberg’s front entrance is being guarded by two goons in uniform. In the street, a vehicle from the fire department is parked alongside a car with stretchers. In the doorway opposite stands a mixed group of gossips: men, women and little boys. I turn up the collar of my overcoat and stroll forwards.