The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared (2 page)

Just after three o’clock in the afternoon on 2nd May the calm of Malmköping was shattered. At first Director Alice at the Old People’s Home was worried rather than angry, and pulled out her master key. Since Allan had not concealed his escape route, it was immediately obvious that the Birthday Boy had climbed out of the window. Judging by the tracks, he had then stood among the pansies in the flowerbed, before disappearing.

By virtue of his position, the mayor felt he should take
command
. He ordered the staff to search in pairs. Allan couldn’t be far away; the searchers should concentrate on the immediate vicinity. One pair was dispatched to the park, one to the
state-run
liquor store (a place that Allan had occasionally frequented, Director Alice knew), one to the other shops on Main Street, and one to the Community Centre up on the hill. The mayor himself would stay at the Old People’s Home to keep an eye on the residents who hadn’t vanished into thin air and to ponder the next move. He told the searchers that they should be discreet; there was no need to generate unnecessary publicity about this affair. In the general confusion, the mayor forgot that one of the pairs of searchers he had just sent out consisted of a reporter from the local paper and her photographer.

The bus station was not included in the mayor’s primary search area. In that location, however, a very angry, slightly built young man with long, greasy blond hair, a scraggly beard and a denim jacket with the words
Never Again
on the back had already searched every corner of the building. Since there was no trace of either a very old man or a suitcase, the young man took some decisive steps towards the little man behind the only open ticket window, to find out where either or both had gone.

Although the little man was generally bored with his work, he still had his professional pride. So he explained to the
loud-mouthed
young man that the passengers’ privacy was not
something
that could be compromised, adding firmly that under no circumstances whatsoever would he give him any information of the type that he wished to obtain.

The young man stood in silence for a moment. He then moved five yards to the left, to the not very solid door to the ticket office. He didn’t bother to check whether it was locked. Instead he took a step back and kicked the door in with his boot, sending splinters flying in every direction. The little man did not even have time to lift the telephone receiver to phone for help, before he was dangling in the air in front of the young man, who had grasped him firmly by the ears.

‘I might not know anything about privacy, but I’m good at getting people to talk,’ said the young man to the little ticket seller before he let him drop down with a bump onto his
revolving
office chair.

At which point the young man explained what he intended to do with the little man’s genitals, with the help of a hammer and nails, if the little man did not comply with his wishes. The description was so realistic that the little man
immediately
decided to say what he thought, namely that the old man in question had presumably taken a bus in the direction of Strängnäs. Whether the man had taken a suitcase with him, he couldn’t say, as he was not the sort of person who spied on his customers.

The ticket seller then stopped talking to ascertain how satisfied the young man was with what he had said, and immediately determined that it would be best for him to provide further information. So he said that on the journey between Malmköping and Strängnäs there were twelve stops and that the old man could of course get out at any one of those. The
person who would know was the bus driver, and according to the timetable he would be back in Malmköping at ten past seven that same evening, when the bus made its return journey to Flen.

The young man sat down beside the terrified little man with the throbbing ears.

‘Just need to think,’ he said.

So he thought. He thought that he should certainly be able to shake the bus driver’s mobile phone number out of the little man, and then call the driver and say that the old man’s suitcase was actually stolen property. But then of course there was a risk that the bus driver would involve the police and that was not something the young man wanted. Besides, it was probably not so urgent really, because the old man seemed dreadfully old and now that he had a suitcase to drag around, he would need to travel by train, bus or taxi if he wanted to continue his journey from the station in Strängnäs. He would thus leave new tracks behind him, and there would always be somebody who could be dangled by the ears to say where the old man was heading. The young man had confidence in his ability to persuade people to tell him what they knew.

When the youth had finished thinking, he decided to wait for the bus to return so he could interview the driver without undue politeness.

When he had decided, the young man got up again, and explained to the ticket seller what would happen to him, his wife, his children and his home if he told the police or anybody else what had just occurred.

The little man had neither wife nor children, but he was eager to keep his ears and genitals more or less intact. So he gave his word as an employee of the national railways that no one would get a peep out of him.

That was a promise he kept until the next day.

The two-man search groups came back to the Old People’s Home and reported on what they had seen. Or rather hadn’t seen. The mayor instinctively did not want to involve the police and he was desperately trying to think of alternatives, when the local newspaper reporter dared to ask:

‘And what are you going to do now, Mr Mayor?’

The mayor was silent for a few moments; then he said:

‘Call the police, of course.’

God, how he hated the free press!

Allan woke when the driver kindly nudged him and announced that they had now reached Byringe Station. Shortly afterwards, the driver manoeuvred the suitcase out of the front door of the bus, with Allan close behind.

The driver asked if he could now manage on his own, and Allan said that the driver had no need to worry in that respect. Then Allan thanked him for his help and waved goodbye as the bus rolled out onto the main road again.

Tall fir trees blocked the afternoon sun and Allan was starting to feel a bit chilly in his thin jacket and indoor slippers. He could see no sign of Byringe, let alone its station. There was just forest, forest and forest in all directions — and a little gravel road leading to the right.

Allan thought that perhaps there were warm clothes in the suitcase he had on impulse brought along with him.
Unfortunately
the suitcase was locked and without a screwdriver or some other tool it was surely hopeless to try to open it. There was no other option but to start moving, otherwise he would freeze to death.

The suitcase had a strap at the top and if you pulled it, the suitcase rolled along nicely on its small wheels. Allan followed the gravel road into the forest with short, shuffling steps. The suitcase followed just behind him, skidding on the gravel. 

After a few hundred yards, Allan came to what must be Byringe Station – a closed-down building next to a most
definitely
and absolutely closed-down former railway line.

Allan was a prize specimen as far as centenarians went, but it was all getting to be a bit too much. He sat down on the suitcase to gather his thoughts and strength.

To Allan’s left stood the shabby, yellow two-storey station. All the windows on the bottom floor were covered with planks. To his right you could follow the closed-down railway line into the distance, straight as an arrow even deeper into the forest. Nature had not yet succeeded in entirely eating up the tracks, but it was only a matter of time.

The wooden platform was evidently no longer safe to walk on. On the outermost planking you could still read a painted sign: Do not walk on the track. The track was certainly not dangerous to walk on, thought Allan. But who in his right mind would voluntarily walk on the platform?

That question was answered immediately, because at that very moment the shabby door of the station building was opened and a man in his seventies wearing a cap and solid boots stepped out of the house. He clearly trusted the planks not to give way and he was entirely focused on the old man in front of him. His initial attitude was hostile, but then he seemed to change his mind, possibly as a result of seeing the decrepitude of this trespasser.

Allan sat on the newly stolen suitcase, not knowing what to say and in any case lacking the energy to say it. But he looked steadily at the man, letting him make the first move.

‘Who are you, and what are you doing in my station?’ asked the man with the cap.

Allan didn’t answer. He couldn’t decide whether he was dealing with friend or foe. But then he decided that it would be wise not to argue with the only person around, someone who
might even let Allan inside before the evening chill set in. He decided to tell it like it was.

Allan told the man that his name was Allan, that he was exactly one hundred years old and spry for his age, so spry in fact that he was on the run from the Old People’s Home. He had also had time to steal a suitcase from a young man who by now would certainly not be particularly happy about it; his knees were not for the moment at their best and he would very much like to give them a rest.

Allan then fell silent, awaiting the court’s verdict.

‘Is that so,’ said the man in the cap and smiled. ‘A thief!’

He jumped nimbly down from the platform and went over to the centenarian to have a closer look.

‘Are you really one hundred years old?’ he asked. ‘In that case, you must be hungry.’

Allan couldn’t follow the logic, but of course he was hungry. So he asked what was on the menu and if a nip of the hard stuff might be included.

The man with the cap stretched out his hand, introduced himself as Julius Jonsson and pulled the old man to his feet. He then announced that he would personally carry Allan’s suitcase, and that roast elk was on the bill if that suited, and that there would absolutely be a nip of the hard stuff to go with it, or rather enough to take care of the knees and the rest of him too.

Julius Jonsson had not had anybody to talk to for several years, so he was pleased to meet the old man with the suitcase. A drop of the hard stuff first for one knee and then for the other, followed by a drop more for the back and neck, and then some to whet the appetite, all in all made for a convivial atmosphere. Allan asked what Julius did for a living, and got his whole story.

Julius was born in the north of Sweden, the only child of Anders and Elvina Jonsson. Julius worked as a labourer on the
family farm and was beaten every day by his father who was of the opinion that Julius was good for nothing. when Julius was twenty-five, his mother died of cancer – which Julius grieved over – and shortly afterwards his father was swallowed by the bog when he tried to rescue a heifer. Julius grieved over that too – because he was fond of the heifer.

Young Julius had no talent for the farming life (in this his father had essentially been right) nor did he have any desire for it. So he sold everything except a few acres of forest that he thought might come in handy in his old age. He went off to Stockholm and within two years had squandered all his money. He then returned to the forest.

With great enthusiasm, Julius put in a bid to supply 5,000 electricity poles to the Hudiksvall District Electrical Company. And since Julius didn’t concern himself with such details as employment tax and VAT, he won the bid, and with the help of a dozen Hungarian refugees he managed to deliver the poles on time, and was paid more money than he knew existed.

So far, all was well. The problem was that Julius had been obliged to cheat a little. The trees were not yet fully grown, so the poles were a yard shorter that what had been ordered. This would probably have gone unnoticed if it hadn’t been for the fact that virtually every farmer in the area had just acquired a combine harvester.

The Hudiksvall District Electrical Company stuck up the poles, with cables criss-crossing fields and meadows in the area, and when it was harvest time, on one single morning the cables were pulled down in twenty-six locations by twenty-two
different
newly bought combine harvesters. The entire region had no electricity for weeks, as harvests were lost, and milking machines stopped working. It was not long before the farmers’ fury – at first directed against the Hudiksvall District Electrical Company – was turned against young Julius.

‘The town slogan “Happy Hudiksvall” was not on many people’s lips at that time, I can tell you,’ Julius said. ‘I had to hide at the Town Hotel in Sundsvall for seven months and then I ran out of money. Shall we have another swig of the hard stuff?’

Allan thought that they should. The elk had been washed down with beer too, and now Allan felt so comprehensively satisfied that he began to be almost afraid of dying.

Julius continued his story. After being nearly run down by a tractor in the centre of Sundsvall (driven by a farmer with a murderous look in his eyes), he realised that the locals weren’t going to forget his little mistake for the next hundred years. So he moved a long way south and ended up in Mariefred where he did a bit of small-time thieving for a while until he tired of town life and managed to acquire the former station building in Byringe for 25,000 crowns he happened to find one night in a safe at the Gripsholm Inn.

Here at the station, he now lived essentially via handouts from the state, poaching in his neighbour’s forest, small-scale production and sale of alcoholic spirits from his home-distilling apparatus, and resale of what goods he could get hold of from his neighbours. He wasn’t particularly popular in the
neighbourhood
, Julius went on, and between mouthfuls Allan answered that he could imagine as much.