The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared (7 page)

So Allan sought out Estebán’s company commander,
introduced
himself as Europe’s leading pyrotechnical expert and said that he would be prepared to blow up bridges and other
infrastructural constructions for the company commander, in exchange for three square meals a day and enough wine to get drunk on when circumstances allowed.

The company commander was about to have Allan shot because he stubbornly refused to sing the praises of socialism and the republic and, almost worse, he insisted on serving in civilian clothes. As Allan expressed it:

‘One more thing… if I am going to blow up bridges for you, then I’m going to do it wearing my own jacket, otherwise you can blow up the bridges yourself.’

No company commander has ever been born who would let himself be browbeaten by a civilian in that way. The problem for this particular company commander was that the most skilled explosives expert in his company was spread in pieces across a rock on a nearby hill.

While the company commander sat in his foldable military field chair and ruminated upon whether Allan’s immediate future was employment or execution, one of the platoon leaders whispered in his ear that the young sergeant who so
unfortunately
had just been shot to bits had previously affirmed this strange Swede’s abilities as a master in the field of explosives.

That decided the matter. Señor Karlsson could a) stay alive, b) be fed three square meals a day, c) have the right to wear his jacket, and d) have exactly the same right as all the others to sample the wine now and then, in reasonable quantities. In return, he would blow up exactly what the commanders around him asked. Two soldiers were asked to keep a special eye on the Swede, because there was no way of knowing for certain that he wasn’t a spy.

The months turned to years. Allan blew up what he was told to blow up, and he did so with considerable skill.

The job was not without its risks. You often had to crawl along the ground in order to sneak up on the object that was
to be blown up, place an explosive charge there with a time fuse and then zig-zag your way back to safe ground. After three months, one of Allan’s two guards lost his life (by mistake he crawled right into an enemy camp). Six months later, the other one met the same fate (he got up to stretch his back and
immediately
that same body part was shot in two). The company commander didn’t bother to replace them, since Señor Karlsson had done such a good job with the explosives.

Allan couldn’t see the point of killing lots of people
unnecessarily
, so he tried to make sure the bridge in question was empty when the charge went off. That was true as well for the very last bridge he was ordered to blow just before the war ended. But this time, just as he had finished his preparations and had crawled back to some bushes beyond one of the bridge foundations, an enemy patrol came walking towards him with a medal-wearing little man in the middle. They approached from the other side and seemed to be totally unaware that the republicans were close by, and that they were just about to join Estebán and tens of thousands of other Spaniards in eternity.

But Allan had had enough. So he got up out of the bushes and started to wave his arms.

‘Go away!’ he hollered at the little man with the medals and his entourage. ‘Be off, before you get blown up!’

The little man with the medals gave a start. Then his entourage dragged him over the bridge and didn’t stop until they had reached Allan’s bush. Eight rifles were suddenly pointed at the Swede and at least one of them would have been fired if it hadn’t been for the bridge suddenly blowing up behind them all. The pressure wave knocked the little man with the medals into Allan’s bush. In the tumult, none of the little man’s entourage dared send a bullet in Allan’s direction, since it might hit the wrong person. Besides, he appeared to be a civilian. And when the smoke settled there was no longer any question of killing
Allan. The little man with the medals shook his hand and explained that a real general knows how to show his
appreciation
and that the best thing now was for the group to withdraw to the other side again, with or without a bridge. If his saviour wanted to come along, he was more than welcome. Once there, the general would invite him to dinner.

‘Paella Andaluz,’ said the general. ‘My cook is from the south.
¿Comprende
?’

Yes, indeed, Allan understood. He understood that he had saved the life of the generalissimo himself; he understood that it was probably to his advantage to be standing there in his dirty jacket instead of in enemy uniform; he understood that his friends on the hill a few hundred metres away would be watching the whole thing through binoculars and he
understood
that for the sake of his health it would be best to change sides in the war the purpose of which he hadn’t in any case understood.

Besides, he was hungry.

‘
Sí, por favor, mí general
,’ said Allan. Paella would hit the spot. Perhaps with a glass or two of red wine?

When, ten years earlier, Allan had applied for a job as an
ignition
specialist at the foundry in Hälleforsnäs, he had chosen to exclude from his résumé the fact that he had been in an asylum for four years, after which he had blown up his own house. Perhaps that was why the job interview went so well.

Allan thought back to that while he chatted with General Franco. On the one hand, you shouldn’t lie. On the other, it would be best not to reveal to the general that it was Allan who had set the charge under the bridge and that he had, for the last three years, been a civilian employee of the republican army. Allan wasn’t shy, but in this particular case there was a dinner and good booze on offer. The truth could temporarily be set aside, Allan thought.

So, Allan told the generalissimo that he had found himself in the bush while fleeing from the republicans. Luckily he had personally observed how the charge had been set, so he was able to warn the general. Furthermore, the reason he had ended up in Spain and the war at all was that he had been tempted there by a friend, a man who had a close relationship with the deceased Primo di Rivera. But since that friend had been killed by an enemy mortar shell, Allan had been forced to struggle on his own to stay alive. He had been in the clutches of the republicans, but eventually managed to break out.

And then Allan quickly changed the subject, telling instead of how his father had been in the inner circle of the court of the Russian Tsar Nicholas and that his father had died a martyr’s death in a hopeless battle with the leader of the Bolsheviks, Lenin.

Dinner was served in the general staff’s tent. The more red wine Allan downed, the more colourful the descriptions of his father’s heroic deeds. General Franco could not fail to be impressed. First his life is saved, then it turns out that his saviour is practically related to Tsar Nicholas II.

The food was excellent, the Andalusian cook did not dare let it be anything else. And the wine flowed in an endless series of toasts in honour of Allan, of Allan’s father, of Tsar Nicholas II, and of the Tsar’s family. And finally the general fell asleep just as he was giving Allan a big hug to seal the fact that they had just progressed to the familiar
tu
.

When the two now firm friends woke up again, the war was over. General Franco took charge of the government of the new Spain and offered Allan the position as head of his internal bodyguard. Allan thanked him for the offer, but said that it was high time for him to be heading home, if Francisco would allow it. And Francisco would, even writing a letter giving the generalissimo’s unconditional protection (‘just show this if you
need any help’) and then providing Allan with a princely escort all the way to Lisbon from where the General thought boats would leave for the north.

From Lisbon, boats left in every direction imaginable, it turned out. Allan stood on the quay and thought about it for a while. Then he waved the letter from the general in front of the captain of a ship sailing under the Spanish flag, and he soon had a free passage. There was no question of his having to pay his way.

The ship wasn’t actually going to Sweden, but on the quay Allan had asked himself what he would do there, and he hadn’t really come up with a good answer.

After the afternoon’s press conference, Bucket sat down with a beer to think things over. But however much he thought, he couldn’t make head or tail of it. Would Bolt have started kidnapping centenarians? Or did one thing have nothing to do with the other? All this thinking gave Bucket a headache, so he stopped and phoned the Boss instead, reporting to him that nothing at all had happened that was worth reporting. He was told to stay in Malmköping and await further orders.

The conversation over, Bucket was alone again with his beer. The situation was becoming too taxing. He didn’t like having no idea what was going on, and now his headache came back again. So in his mind he fled to the past, remembering his youth back home.

Bucket had started his criminal career in Braås only about twenty kilometres from where Allan and his new friends now found themselves. There, he had got together with some
like-minded
peers and started the motorcycle club called The Violence. Bucket was the leader; he decided which newspaper kiosk was to be robbed of cigarettes next. He was the one who had chosen the name – The Violence, in English, not Swedish. And he was the one who unfortunately asked his girlfriend Isabella to sew the name of the motorcycle club onto ten newly stolen leather jackets. Isabella had never really learned to spell properly at school, not in Swedish, and certainly not in English.

The result was that Isabella sewed The Violins on the jackets instead. As the rest of the club members had had similar
academic
success, nobody in the group noticed the mistake.

So everyone was very surprised when one day a letter arrived for The Violins in Braås from the people in charge of the concert
hall in Växjö. The letter suggested that, since the club obviously concerned itself with classical music they might like to put in an appearance at a concert with the city’s prestigious chamber orchestra Musica Vitae.

Bucket felt provoked; somebody was clearly making fun of him. One night he skipped the newspaper kiosk, and instead went into Växjö to throw a brick through the glass door of the concert hall. This was intended to teach the people responsible a lesson in respect.

It all went off well, except that Bucket’s leather glove
happened
to follow the stone into the lobby. Since the alarm went off immediately, Bucket felt it would be unwise to try to retrieve the item of clothing in question.

Losing a glove was not good. Bucket had travelled to Växjö by motorbike and one hand was extremely cold all the way home to Braås that night. Even worse was the fact that Bucket’s luckless girlfriend had written Bucket’s name and address inside the glove, in case he lost it. So by the following morning the police had worked out who the primary suspect was, and picked up Bucket for questioning.

In the interrogation, Bucket explained that there were
extenuating
circumstances and described how he had been provoked by the management of the concert hall. The story of how The Violence became The Violins ended up in the local newspaper, and Bucket became the laughing-stock of all Braås. In a rage, he decided that the next newspaper kiosk they were robbing should be burned down instead of just having its door smashed in. This in turn led to the Turkish-Bulgarian owner – who had gone to bed in his storeroom to guard against thieves – narrowly escaping with his life. Having decided that one glove was better than none on a cold evening, Bucket wore his
remaining
glove to the scene of the crime (with the address noted just as neatly as in the first glove), lost it, and not long after
found himself on his way to prison for the first time. There he met the Boss, and when he had served his sentence Bucket decided it was best to leave Braås and his girlfriend behind. Both seemed only to bring him bad luck.

But The Violence lived on, and the members retained the misspelled jackets. Lately, however, the club had changed its focus. Now it concentrated on stealing cars and on rolling back the speedometer. Or as the new leader of the group, Bucket’s little brother, used to say: ‘Nothing makes a car prettier than when you suddenly discover it has driven only half the mileage.’

Bucket was occasionally in touch with his brother and the old life, but had no wish to be back there.

‘What a fuck-up,’ was how Bucket concisely summed up his own history.

It was tough to think in new ways and equally tough to remember the old. Better to have a third beer and then, in accordance with the Boss’s orders, check in to the hotel.

It was almost dark when Chief Inspector Aronsson,
accompanied
by the police dog-handler and Kicki, the dog, arrived at Åker village, after the long walk along the railway track from Vidkärr.

The dog hadn’t reacted to anything along the way. Aronsson wondered if she actually realised that they were working, not just out on an evening stroll. But when the trio came to the abandoned inspection trolley, the dog stood to attention, or whatever it was called. And then she raised one paw and started to bark. Aronsson’s hopes were raised.

‘Does that mean something?’ he asked.

‘Yes, it certainly does,’ answered the dog-handler.

And then he explained that Kicki had different signs, depending on what she wanted to convey.

‘Well then, what is she trying to tell us?!’ asked the increasingly impatient Aronsson and pointed at the dog which was still
standing
on three legs and barking.

‘That,’ said the dog-handler, ‘means that there has been a dead body on the trolley.’

‘A dead body? A corpse?’

‘A corpse.’

Chief Inspector Aronsson saw in his mind’s eye how the Never Again member killed the unfortunate centenarian Allan Karlsson. But then this new information merged with what he already knew.

‘It must be the exact opposite,’ he mumbled and felt strangely relieved.

The Beauty served beef and potatoes with lingonberries and beer, followed by a glass of bitters. The guests were hungry, but first they needed to know what sort of animal they had heard from the barn.

‘That was Sonya,’ said The Beauty. ‘My elephant.’

‘Elephant?’ said Julius.

‘Elephant?’ said Allan.

‘I thought I recognised that sound,’ said Benny.

The former hot-dog-stand owner had been struck by love at first sight. And now, at second sight, he felt no different. This constantly swearing redhead with the full figure seemed to have popped straight out of a novel!

The Beauty had discovered the elephant early one August morning in her garden stealing apples. If she had been able to talk she would have said that the previous evening she had absconded from a circus in Växjö to look for something to drink, because the elephant keeper had gone to do the same in town instead of doing his job.

When darkness fell the elephant had reached the shores of Helga Lake and decided to do more than simply quench her
thirst. A cooling bath would be very nice, the elephant thought, and waded out in the shallow water.

But suddenly it wasn’t so shallow any more, and the elephant had to rely on her innate ability to swim. Elephants in general are not as logical in their thinking as are people. This elephant was a prime example; she decided to swim two and a half kilometres to the other side of the cove to reach firm ground again, instead of just turning around to swim four metres back to the shore.

The elephantine logic had two consequences. One was that the elephant was quickly declared dead by the circus people and police who rather belatedly thought to follow her tracks all the way to Helga Lake and out in the fifteen-metre deep water. The other was that the still-very-much-alive elephant, under cover of darkness, managed to spirit herself all the way to The Beauty’s apple orchard, without a single soul observing her.

The Beauty didn’t know that, of course, but afterwards she worked out most of what happened when she read in the local paper about an elephant that had disappeared and was now declared dead. How many elephants could be running around in that area, and at that particular time? The dead elephant and the still-very-much-alive elephant were presumably the same item.

The Beauty began by giving the elephant a name. She became Sonya, after her idol, the singer, Sonya Hedenbratt. This was followed by several days’ negotiations between Sonya and the Alsatian, Buster, before the two agreed to get along.

Winter arrived, meaning an endless search for food for poor Sonya who ate like the elephant she was. Conveniently, The Beauty’s father had just popped his clogs and left an inheritance of one million crowns to his only daughter. (When he became a pensioner twenty years earlier, he had sold his successful
brush-making
factory and subsequently looked after his money well.) So The Beauty resigned from her job at the local clinic in Rottne, to be a stay-at-home mum for a dog and an elephant.

Then spring arrived and Sonya could once more sustain herself with grass and leaves, and then that Mercedes drove into the yard, the first visitor since daddy, bless his dear departed soul, had come to see his daughter one last time two years before. The Beauty said that she wasn’t one to argue with fate, so it never occurred to her to try to keep Sonya a secret from the strangers.

Allan and Julius sat quietly and let The Beauty’s story sink in, while Benny said:

‘But what was that bellowing from Sonya? I feel she must be in pain.’

The Beauty stared at him wide-eyed:

‘How the hell could you hear that?’

Benny took a bite to give himself time to think. Then he said:

‘I’m almost a vet. Do you want the long or the short story?’

They all agreed that they would prefer the long version, but The Beauty insisted that first she and Benny should go to the barn so the almost-vet could have a look at Sonya’s painful left front foot.

Allan and Julius remained at the dinner table, both
wondering
how a vet with a pony tail could end up as a failure of a
hot-dog
-stand proprietor in one of the most out-of-the-way places in the county of Södermanland. A vet with a pony tail, what sort of sense did that make? These really were strange times.

Benny examined poor old Sonya with confidence, he had done this sort of thing before, during the practical part of his studies. A broken-off twig had become jammed under her second toenail, and made part of her foot swell up. The Beauty had tried to get the twig out but she had not been strong or dextrous enough. It didn’t take Benny more than a couple of minutes to manage it, with the help of calm talk with Sonya and a pair of tongs. But the elephant’s foot was badly swollen.

‘We need antibiotics,’ said Benny. ‘About a kilo.’

‘If you know what we need, I know how to get it,’ said The Beauty.

But ‘getting it’ would require a visit to Rottne in the middle of the night, and to pass the evening Benny and The Beauty returned to the dinner table.

They all ate with a good appetite and washed the food down with beer and bitters, all except Benny who drank juice. After the last mouthful, they moved into the living room and the armchairs beside the fire, where Benny was asked to explain how he came to be an almost-vet.

It all began when Benny and his one-year-older brother, Bosse, who grew up just south of Stockholm, spent several summers with their Uncle Frank in Dalarna. Uncle Frank, who was never called anything other than Frasse, was a successful entrepreneur who owned and ran a number of different local businesses. Uncle Frank sold everything from campers to gravel and most things in between. Besides eating and sleeping, work was his great passion. He had some failed romances behind him, since all the ladies soon got tired of Uncle Frasse just working and working, eating and sleeping (and showering on Sundays).

Anyway, during a number of summers in the 1960s, Benny and Bosse had been sent to Dalarna by their father, Uncle Frasse’s older brother, on the grounds that the children needed some fresh air. It is doubtful whether they got much of that, because Benny and Bosse were quickly trained to look after the big stone crushing machine at Uncle Frasse’s gravel pit. The boys liked working there, even though it was hard, and for two months they had to breathe in stone dust rather than fresh air. In the evenings, Uncle Frasse delivered moral sermons, regularly exhorting:

‘You boys make sure you get a proper education; otherwise you’ll end up like me.’

Now neither Benny nor Bosse thought it would be such a bad thing to end up like Uncle Frasse – at least until he fell into the stone crusher and came to a gravelly end – but Uncle Frasse had always been bothered by his own limited schooling. He could hardly write, he was no good at maths, he didn’t understand a word of English and it was only with difficulty he could remember that Norway’s capital was called Oslo, if anybody happened to ask. The only thing Uncle Frasse knew was how to do business. And he ended up rolling in money.

Exactly just how much money Uncle Frasse had at the time of his departure, was hard to say. It happened when Bosse was nineteen and Benny almost eighteen. One day, a lawyer contacted Bosse and Benny, and informed them that they were both mentioned in Uncle Frasse’s will but that the matter was somewhat complicated and that a meeting was required.

Benny and Bosse met the lawyer at his office and discovered that a considerable amount – unspecified – of money awaited the brothers the day they both completed their university education.

And as if that wasn’t enough, the lawyer would supply the brothers with a generous monthly allowance (to be regularly increased according to the rate of inflation) while they were studying. But the monthly allowance would stop if they
abandoned
their studies, just as it would when they had passed a final examination and should be able to support themselves. There was more to the will, some more or less complicated details, but on the whole what it meant was that the brothers would only be rich once they had both finished their studies.