Open Grave E-Book

Kjell Eriksson

• Herausgeber: Allison & Busby
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Serie: Inspector Ann Lindell
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Seitenzahl: 421

Beschreibung

Professor Bertram von Ohler has been awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine. This news causes problems in his otherwise quiet upper-class neighbourhood in Uppsala, Sweden, as not everybody is happy with the choice of winner. Mysterious incidents start to occur. 'Boyish pranks' say the police, but what follows is certainly not innocent amusement. Detective Inspector Ann Lindell becomes involved in the case and immediately is transported back into her own past.

Leseprobe

OPEN GRAVE

KJELL ERIKSSON

Translated from the Swedish by Paul Norlén

Contents

Title PageONETWOTHREEFOURFIVESIXSEVENEIGHTNINETENELEVENTWELVETHIRTEENFOURTEENFIFTEENSIXTEENSEVENTEENEIGHTEENNINETEENTWENTYTWENTY-ONETWENTY-TWOTWENTY-THREETWENTY-FOURTWENTY-FIVETWENTY-SIXTWENTY-SEVENTWENTY-EIGHTTWENTY-NINETHIRTYTHIRTY-ONETHIRTY-TWOTHIRTY-THREETHIRTY-FOURTHIRTY-FIVETHIRTY-SIXTHIRTY-SEVENTHIRTY-EIGHTTHIRTY-NINEFORTYEPILOGUEAbout the AuthorBy Kjell ErikssonCopyright

OPEN GRAVE

ONE

The notification came unexpectedly. Bertram von Ohler was eighty-four years old after all, somewhat frail, his legs did not always hold, the numbness in his hands created difficulties, especially at the dinner table. The dizziness in the evenings was getting more troublesome and meant that he socialised much less often. Bridge nights were sacred, however. There were some who thought he did not have much time left; the whispering about his ill health had increased.

Some were old colleagues who took pleasure in backbiting the old professor and competitor, or else they were simply acquaintances who for lack of other diversion spread unfounded rumours. One day it was some neurological disease that would soon break him down, the next the problem was advanced prostate cancer. There were also friends around him who listened eagerly, perhaps contributing a detail or episode and in that way kept the fire going.

Everyone took part in the rumour spreading with the same poorly masked enthusiasm. It was as if the sight of the old man, or the news that always flowed in during the autumn’s customary speculations, automatically elicited comments about his imminent demise.

His real remaining friends were few. Some had left earthly life, others were senile and put in homes. A professor in a related discipline, obviously demented, was shunted aside to a family estate in Skåne. But the few with whom Ohler socialised were upset.

‘I’m used to it, many have tried over the years to take honour and glory from me and now it’s my life they’re after,’ was his calm comment when his friends complained. But deep down he was distressed, disappointed at the pettiness and ill will, sometimes even genuinely angry.

He had reconciled himself with many things. Old grudges were buried, injustices that had been harboured for decades receded in a forgiving forgetfulness. Even Associate Professor Johansson, who lived only a stone’s throw away, could now exchange a few words with his former rival. Most recently, the other day they discussed Obama and ‘the other guy’, neither of them wanting to admit that for the moment they had forgotten his name. The professor stood on the pavement, the associate professor with a rake in his hand on the other side of the privet hedge.

Even the memory of his wife, deceased for many years now, had something conciliatory about it. Bertram von Ohler had developed a theory that in reality he had her to thank for his successes, indirectly and without her conscious assistance, but even so. She who the last thirty years of their life together constituted an unimaginable torment for him.

How could a phenomenon as lovely as Dagmar had once been turn into such a monstrous creature? He had consulted colleagues to get some explanation for her behaviour with the help of academic expertise. No diagnosis could ever be made. ‘Some people are mean, it’s that simple’, a professor in psychology once stated when Ohler let slip what a virago he was living with.

Every breakfast in the Ohler home was a minefield; a single false step and the morning’s peace was shattered. Every dinner was trench warfare, with ambushes and snipers, and on really bad days it escalated to veritable carpet bombing of reproaches and suspicions.

He did not desert his marriage, something which even his children advised him to do, but he fled to the department as often as he was able, and stayed until late in the evening. Sometimes he slept there in a little storage room.

Perhaps it was this fact, this absence from home and wife, that was the basis for his success in the medical field. He had Dagmar’s quarrelsome and suspicious nature to thank for his research results and his professorship, and for this belated crowning of his career.

The word came late in the morning. Bertram von Ohler had just come home from a short walk and was preparing to have a pasta salad, which Agnes had prepared the day before, when the telephone rang. It was Professor Skarp at the Karolinska Institute.

Ohler had only met him in passing at a few gatherings. For that reason it was somewhat surprising that after the introduction he started with the word ‘brother’, as if they were members of an order, which Ohler doubted.

‘Brother, I have the great honour and happiness to report that Professor Emeritus Bertram von Ohler has been awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in Medicine.’

‘Good for him,’ was the only thing Ohler got out, incapable of putting these simple facts together into a coherent sentence.

‘What did you say?’ asked Skarp.

Bertram von Ohler, that’s me of course, the thought passing like a projectile through his head.

‘What did you say?’ he let out like an echo.

Professor Skarp left out ‘brother’, but otherwise repeated the sentence word for word. When he got no response this time either, other than laboured breathing, he added something to the effect that he understood that this was overwhelming news, not unexpected in any way, but still no doubt difficult to take in immediately.

‘Professor von Ohler, dear colleague … are you all right?’

‘Fine, thanks. And I was just about to eat pasta.’

‘Now it will have to be something more festive,’ said Skarp, laughing with relief.

‘I must call my children immediately. I’ll have to get back to you.’

‘Of course. You can certainly expect an onslaught of phone calls and visits, brother, so perhaps it’s wise to notify those closest to you first.’

As if someone had died, thought Ohler.

‘You don’t want to hear the motivation?’

‘No, thanks, I think I understand. If you’ll excuse me now.’

They ended the call and he hurried to the toilet.

‘Now I’m pissing as a Nobel Prize winner,’ he said out loud, managing to squeeze a few drops from his wrinkled sex.

Instead of calling his two sons, both professors, one in Lund, the other in Los Angeles, and his daughter, who was research director at a pharmaceutical company in town, he pulled out the phone jack, quickly shovelled down a little of the pasta, took a few gulps of water, and left the house.

It was a radiant day, so he found, as he expected, Associate Professor Johansson in his yard. Marching in through the gate and ringing the doorbell would seem too forward, they were not on such good terms with each other.

The associate professor looked almost happy as he stood with the rake in his hand, surrounded by parallel rows of leaves. He had explained to Ohler that leaf raking must be done in a systematic way, and he understood now that his neighbour was about to combine the rows into neat small piles.

‘It’s a good thing it’s not windy,’ the professor began, but realised at once that this was not a particularly apt remark.

‘I would never rake on a day like that,’ said the associate professor.

‘No, of course not.’

The associate professor took a few swipes with the rake. Ohler realised that he could not linger too long, and decided to get right to the point.

‘A few minutes ago I got some happy news and I decided to share it with you first of all.’

The associate professor looked up.

‘Yes?’

‘We are colleagues, after all, we shared a laboratory for many years, we took part in joint projects, shared successes and disappointments, I don’t need to remind you of all that, but I’m doing it anyway, on a day like this.’

The associate professor stopped his work, leant the rake against the trunk of a copper beech and took a few steps closer to the gate.

‘That is an amazing tree,’ said the professor, pointing towards the beech tree. ‘Surely the most magnificent we have in the area.’

The associate professor looked even more surprised. It was uncertain whether it was due to the unexpected praise or that the professor used the word ‘we’, as if he included the whole neighbourhood as owner of the tree.

‘I’m guessing that it’s the same age as the house,’ the professor continued.

Now the associate professor was standing right inside the gate. His long, thin face expressed a touch of impatience, perhaps irritation, but he was trying to smile anyway, uncertain of what occasioned this unexpected charm offensive. But the smile mostly remained a twitch in his face.

‘I’ve won the Nobel Prize.’

The cheeks rosy from sun and wind, the watery eyes, the narrow mustache, a barely visible streak over an open mouth, where a few fangs were visible, the narrow, sloping shoulders and the delicately built chest, all that was visible of the associate professor above the wooden gate, expressed an astonished distrust.

‘The Nobel Prize,’ he repeated awkwardly.

The professor nodded.

‘In medicine?’

‘Yes, what else?’

‘For IDD?’

‘I assume so,’ said the professor.

IDD was the abbreviation they had used in the research group for the discovery that had been presented about twenty years ago and for which the professor had now been granted the honour.

‘Assume?’

‘I didn’t ask, I had to take a piss when Skarp called.’

Associate Professor Johansson shook his head and the professor saw doubt change to conviction, and he understood why: never in public life had he used swear words or other strong expressions, never before had he uttered the words ‘take a piss’, not even in his youth or in family circles. At the most, ‘have to pee’.

He thinks I’ve lost my mind, thought Ohler, and at that moment it struck him that perhaps he had been the butt of a cruel joke. He was barely acquainted with Skarp, they had not had so much contact that the professor could say he would recognise the voice with certainty, in other words it could be anyone at all pretending to be the chairman of the Academy of Sciences. Someone sufficiently familiar with his background, his research, in the procedure around how the prize winner in medicine is named. Someone who wanted to play a trick on him, have a good laugh at his expense. That the person who called had addressed him as ‘brother’ was a hint that something was amiss.

This sudden insight, that the whole thing perhaps was a deception, made the ground sway. He took hold of the gate, tried to suppress the dizziness by closing his eyes, lower himself somewhat with bent knees and arched back, the technique he always used. The fireflies behind his eyelids glistened in rapid bright streaks, there was singing in his head, and he had a slight taste of iron in his mouth.

When the attack was over and he opened his eyes, he discovered that the associate professor was glaring hatefully at his hand, as if it was a violation of his private life and property. But the professor did not dare release his hold on the gate.

‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘I haven’t eaten properly today.’

The associate professor did not say anything.

‘Could it be a joke? I mean the phone call.’

‘Maybe so,’ said the associate professor, and now the hint of a smile could be seen at the corner of his mouth.

‘Do you think I’m mentally deranged?’

‘Of course not, what makes you say that?’

‘You think I’m bluffing, don’t you. But Skarp called!’

He was staring at the associate professor, whose Adam’s apple bobbed. I see, you’re swallowing your words, thought the professor bitterly. He stared at the wrinkled neck, which concealed oesophagus, trachea, and the artery where the blood was pumped up to the brain. You don’t dare talk, afraid of saying too little, or too much. You haven’t changed.

He had decided to seek out the associate professor to show his willingness to share the honour. I go to an associate professor to spread lustre over the entire research group, as if to say, ‘The credit is not all mine, we were a whole team. And then I am met with scorn.’

He shook the gate. Nothing remained of the associate professor’s smile other than a grimace.

He had done it without an ulterior motive, wasn’t that so? The thought had come quite spontaneously, what else would be possible, besides the presumptuousness of rehearsing his comments and actions in advance, to have them ready when the Nobel Prize committee called. Or was there, on an unconscious level, a degree of calculation? Because immediately in his mind he had formulated his first statement to the media: ‘I am overwhelmed and obviously very grateful’ – something like that as an introduction. And then the hook itself on which to hang his own excellence: ‘The first thing I did was go over to a neighbour, a dear friend and research colleague, Associate Professor Johansson, to share the joy with him, because the prize is not mine alone, it is shared with a whole staff of untiring, dedicated associates. Without them I would be nothing. Then I returned home and called my children.’

That was how the humility would be formulated. Not a dry eye. Perhaps he should mention the pasta salad?

The associate professor interrupted his train of thought.

‘If it was even him.’

‘I know him.’

No one was going to take the prize away from him now!

‘Ferguson then?’

Allen Ferguson was an American researcher, active in Germany during the eighties, who had arrived at similar research results as the colleagues at Uppsala University Hospital. There were those who thought that his efforts were more pioneering and just a hair ahead in time besides.

‘Ferguson based his results on our research, you know that very well.’

The associate professor was smiling again.

‘I’m going to mention Ferguson,’ the professor snapped.

‘You’ll have to list a lot of names.’

‘I thought you would be happy,’ said the professor. ‘But clearly I was mistaken there. Of course I’m going to list a lot of names. Your name included.’

‘Mine?’

‘Why such surprise?’

The associate professor laughed, a laugh that resembled the hacking sound of an Angola hen. He made a grimace and twisted his mouth in a sneering smile.

Is this how it’s going to be? thought Ohler, but decided to make a new attempt. He was the one who could, and must, be generous.

‘Your efforts were decisive, we both know that. So why put on a show? We are both old, I’ll turn eighty-five in December and you’ll soon be eighty, we can disappear from earthly life sooner than we know, so why this pretence, this play-acting? We know how it works. There is never any absolute justice, above all not in our world. It could have been a Ferguson, it could have been a Johansson, now it turned out to be a von Ohler.’

‘A von Oben.’

‘What do you mean?’

At that moment a taxi turned onto the street. The old men saw it slowly approach, to finally stop outside Ohler’s driveway. In the back seat of the car a figure could be seen reaching out an arm, presumably to pay. The driver laughed, took the payment, and during the seconds that followed the duo by the gate breathlessly observed the scene. In order to see better the associate professor had leant forward and supported himself against the gate, so that his hand almost touched the professor’s. Unaware of this nearness, almost intimacy, which perhaps was reminiscent of something twenty, thirty years ago, when they stood leaning over a flickering screen, a diagram, or a report, they watched the driver get out of the car, still laughing, and open the back door.

Bertram von Ohler’s cloudy eyes did not perceive what was happening, other than that a figure released itself from the inside of the taxi. But he heard how the associate professor took a deep breath, and realised that this identified the passenger.

‘I think I have to piss,’ said the associate professor, and this unexpected comment, which the professor immediately understood as an outstretched hand, a conciliatory gesture, made him sob.

‘Splendid, Gregor,’ he said. ‘Splendid.’

The driver hurried up.

‘Mr Olon?’

The professor nodded in confusion. The driver took his free hand, raised it and shook it frenetically, while with the other hand he patted the Nobel Prize winner on the shoulder. His broad smile and his entire appearance testified to great excitement and unfeigned delight.

‘A good day,’ he said.

The passenger, who had fallen behind, had now joined them.

‘On behalf of the entire university I want to congratulate you.’

The taxi driver reminded him about the flowers.

‘So true!’

When Bertram von Ohler later summarised the day, the congratulatory call on the street would stand out as the most successful tableau. First the people’s tribute, in the form of taxi driver Andrew Kimongo, followed by academic blood-red roses and the university rector’s torrent of words, at the head of the long line of callers who then followed in quick succession.

It was a restless night, he was constantly wakened from the unsettled slumber that characterises persons born under the sign of Sagittarius, in Ohler’s case on the fifteenth of December. It was a theory that was championed by his daughter, Birgitta: Sagittarius dozes through the night, Taurus sleeps heavily, Libra gets up early. She herself was Aquarius, whose most distinctive feature was dreaming intensely.

Bertram von Ohler was somewhat concerned. His daughter was actually scientifically educated, a medical doctor, but still firm in the intellectually lightweight, stupid theory of astrology. It didn’t fit together.

She was a lesbian besides – a pure defence measure, she asserted, in this era of male violence – and for the past ten years living together with a nurse with Finnish background. A woman of whom Bertram disapproved. Maybe it was the Finnish accent. Liisa Lehtonen had been a successful competitive shooter and won medals at a number of international competitions.

If anything could be associated with violence it must be firearms, the professor asserted, but according to his daughter this was solely about mental balance and psychic energy. Liisa was a Virgo.

But despite the astrology, her sometimes meddlesome lifestyle advice, which might concern diet, exercise, wine drinking, open window at night, or basically anything at all, and as the cherry on the cake Liisa with accent and gun cabinet, and thereby self-imposed childlessness – despite all this Bertram von Ohler loved his daughter.

She was the youngest of the siblings and therefore also the one who fared the worst due to their mother’s capricious moods and increasing misanthropy. The two sons, ten and thirteen years older, had moved away from home as soon as possible and thereby avoided the worst tumult.

The oldest was christened Abraham, as a concession to his mother. He had studied in Lund and remained there, even adopted a Scandian accent.

Carl, named after his grandfather, moved into a student flat belonging to the Kalmar student association. By tradition the family was registered there. Bertram’s great-great-grandfather originated from a family of pharmacists in Kalmar.

Like his brother Carl studied medicine and after several turns at various Swedish hospitals ended up in California, where he was now a moderately successful researcher in diabetes. According to his father a completely worthless field, an opinion he never uttered to anyone however.

He was proud of his children, happily bragged about them, as fathers do, remembered their birthdays, likewise the wives’ and grandchildren’s. Abraham had three children and Carl two. When Liisa’s birthday was, however, he had no idea.

He had actually never needed to send money to his children after they left home, except for the costs for university studies. They never talked about money at all. It was there, had always been there. Since the seventeenth century.

The progenitor of the Swedish part of the Ohler family, originally from Hannover, had been recruited by Axel Oxenstierna to build up the administration of the Royal Mint. Apparently a lucrative occupation, because already after a decade Heinrich Ohler had built up a considerable fortune. That Queen Kristina contributed a few estates on Öland and right outside Vastervik did not make circumstances worse.

From that soil the Ohler family tree sprouted, where one branch became the ‘pharmacists/doctors’. There was also a minister branch, an officer branch, and an agricultural branch.

Just as happily as Bertram talked about his children and grandchildren, he could also, not without pride, tell the story of poor Heinrich, who came to Stockholm with an empty hand. In the other hand he had a knapsack.

In his bed, whose headboard was war booty from Bratislava, the professor argued with selected representatives on the extensive tree and came to the conclusion that the Nobel Prize outshone all else that had been presented to the family: being raised to nobility, loads of medals and distinctions, and through the centuries membership in a number of learned societies.

A conclusion even his father Carl would have endorsed – that was the professor’s final, triumphant thought before he fell asleep at four o’clock in the morning.

TWO

The voice was not reminiscent of anything he had heard before, sharp and aggressive but at the same time anxious.

It was Swedish, with no obvious dialect or accent – he was always attentive to that sort of thing – but still a voice foreign to the extent that when he told his daughter about the episode a few hours later, he hesitated when she asked if it was a foreigner.

‘In a way,’ he said. ‘Maybe it was an immigrant, someone who has lived here a long time.’

‘Maybe someone who was disguising their voice,’ his daughter suggested, ‘someone you know.’

‘Who would that be?’

‘Have you called the police?’

Bertram von Ohler laughed, even though he’d had that thought himself, because half-awake in the early morning hours he had experienced the call as an actual threat, just as real as if someone stood in front of him with a weapon raised to strike.

‘It’s the sort of thing you have to expect.’

‘But what did he say exactly, is there something you’ve missed?’

Misunderstood, he realised that his daughter meant.

‘No, he said he would see to it that I “would never receive the prize,” and then he muttered some vulgarities.’

‘What were they?’

‘You don’t want to hear that.’

‘Of course I do!’

‘Abusive language never deserves to be repeated. Besides, it didn’t mean anything.’

The fact was that what he called abusive language was what perplexed him the most, but there was no reason to drag his daughter into that.

He regretted mentioning the episode to her at all, and tried to guide the conversation to something else, said that Agnes showed up, even though she was supposed to be off. She had obviously congratulated him, but in that reserved way that only a person from a Roslag island can do, as if a Nobel Prize did not mean all that much, whether in Söderboda or in Norrboda.

No, she had viewed the matter purely professionally. The house must be, if not decontaminated, then gone through anyway and more thoroughly than what Ohler had allowed until now. She had threatened to bring in her sister Greta to help out.

‘Then I gave her free rein, just so she doesn’t involve that ghost under any circumstances.’

Birgitta laughed heartily and the professor understood that for the moment he had diverted the danger, but to be really certain he continued.

‘Agnes will order new curtains in the drawing room and the library and “polish” all the floors, as she says. Then it will be the silver’s turn.’

‘You’re lucky to have her.’

‘Of course,’ said the professor.

‘That was lovely of you, those statements you made on TV. But you must be sure to use a comb, your hair was standing straight up.’

‘It was windy.’

‘But why didn’t you go inside the house?’

‘Agnes phoned and forbade me from letting anyone in. If she hadn’t been in Gräsö visiting her sister she would have come here and organised the world press.’

He was rewarded with another laugh. He felt a need to keep his daughter in a good mood, perhaps as apology for not telling the whole truth about the telephone call at dawn.

‘But it was beautifully expressed, that part that you weren’t alone.’

I was alone, he thought.

‘Do you wonder what Mother would have said?’ That was a question that the professor found no reason to speculate about.

‘Do you ever miss her?’

‘No.’

Perhaps he ought to have said something beautiful here too, even if it wasn’t true? He knew that his daughter was of two minds about her mother.

‘Do you suppose they’re excited here at work?’ she continued, apparently unperturbed by her father’s abrupt responses. ‘Angerman called from Milan to congratulate, but I think he was mostly thinking about the company, because he said something to the effect that it was good I kept my maiden name, that it could benefit us in contact with customers, especially in the US. He invited me to go along to Boston next week.’

‘Pill-rollers,’ said the professor.

‘If they were even that,’ said Birgitta with a sigh.

Under normal circumstances he would have asked what she meant, but he was bothered by his daughter’s unnecessary talk about Dagmar.

He had not thought about Dagmar at all, not even on a day like this one. During the night’s review of the family tree she did not even show up in his thoughts. She was as if erased; never before had he experienced that so clearly.

‘I’m not going to invite any of her relatives,’ he said unexpectedly vehemently.

‘But Daddy! Not even Dorothy?’

He knew that his daughter kept in contact with Dorothy Wilkins, widow of Dagmar’s brother Henrik, whom he despised but never commented on. He was convinced that Dorothy maintained contact with his daughter solely to keep herself informed about the Ohler clan, primarily the patriarch himself. Now as before he chose to pass over her with silence.

Birgitta sighed.

‘She’s old,’ she said.

‘She stays alive just to get to see me die,’ he mumbled. ‘There is something vulture-like about her.’

‘That’s not true!’ his daughter countered. ‘You can be generous now.’

I’ll never invite her, he thought, increasingly embittered, and he realised that he had to end the conversation before it got out of hand completely.

Dorothy was otherwise the one who had followed him the longest of all, from his student days in the 1940s. She was the daughter of one of his father’s friends from youth, who’d come from England to Uppsala in May of 1945, right after the war ended. Perhaps her father had the idea of marrying off his daughter to the young and promising Bertram. The project had failed because no interest ever arose – from him in any event.

Dorothy went back to England but returned later and was introduced to Dagmar’s brother. They took a liking to each other and she and Henrik got married after only a few months.

Early a widow and childless she had visited all the family gatherings in the Ohler house as long as Dagmar was alive but after that more and more seldom. Now it must have been ten years since she last visited the house.

Should he let her return now? Never! Not even a Nobel Prize and a large portion of generosity could get him to change his attitude.

‘No, now I have to rest a little,’ he said, an argument his daughter could not oppose, as she often insisted that he ought to take it easier. ‘I’m going to meet some journalists this afternoon. I have arranged it so there is only one meeting with the press today.’

‘Do you want me to come over?’

‘That’s not at all necessary. I have Agnes. She’s as good as three people. Besides, the meetings will take place at the hospital. I wanted it that way.’

When they ended the conversation he thought about whether he had been too brusque towards his daughter. She meant so well and was actually the only one, besides Agnes, who seriously cared about how he was doing. His sons showed a formal interest, called now and then and questioned him about the ‘situation,’ perhaps told some piece of news from work or family life, that was all. They never discussed any scientific questions or asked for advice. They probably considered his knowhow antiquated. No filial affection was ever expressed by either Abraham or Carl, not even indirectly. Bertram was not surprised, and not particularly distressed. It had always been that way in the Ohler family.

He himself had never been molly-coddled by his parents, even though he was their only child. On the contrary. His father, Carl, prescribed corporal punishment, and his mother, Lydia, carried it out, when it was considered necessary to shape Bertram into a respectable son and citizen. ‘Respectable’ was one of his father’s favourite words; ‘proper’ another.

Bertram was not bitter about this after the fact. Those were the times. They didn’t know better. When he became a father himself other upbringing methods had replaced corporal punishment. For that reason he had never hit his children.

The sun was shining in through the windows that faced south-east and revealed that the study belonged to an old man. The piles of books and folders, the old kind in a depressing dirty shade of brown that cluttered up a few side tables, had something tragically forgotten about them. The glass of the bookcases was not smeared even by the handles, no one had consulted any medical works for a long time. Only the flies marched back and forth across the frosted glass leaving their tracks.

A stuffed, shabby kite hawk – a gift from his colleagues at the clinic on his sixtieth birthday – hung its head tiredly and its eyes had lost their former lustre. Only after many years did he understand the slightly malicious gibe in giving him that particular kind of bird, but he let it sit there on its perch above the liquor cabinet, which these days contained only a lonely bottle of port wine and an almost empty bottle of cognac.

Should he have his old friend Hjalmar take a look at the kite? Then he remembered that he had seen the obituary. The taxidermist was gone. There was a time when they used to meet and discuss specimens.

He decided to draw the curtains but instead went around the desk, sat down on a neglected visitor’s chair – God knows by whom, or when, it was last used – and observed the room from a different perspective. He studied the bird, which did not look any more spry from that direction.

A Nobel Prize winner’s study, where during an entire professional career he had honed his theories, despaired and suddenly become optimistic, wandered around, slapped his palm on the desk in a moment of brilliant clear-sightedness, or touched his head when he realised a chain of thought had broken.

He could imagine it that way. He visualised the study, the whole house, as a future museum. He would always be there, if not physically then at least through the objects, in the way they were arranged. The ingenuity, originality, and industry would shine, but in gentle colours. An Ohler did not need to shout. It was enough to point to all the branches on the framed, glass-covered family tree that his father Carl had made in the forties: thought, governing, the Word, in the form of members of Parliament, officials, and ministers; natural science, the systemisation the pharmacists and doctors were responsible for – a Julius von Ohler was helpful to Linnaeus; the prosperity and improvement of agriculture were the noblemen’s contribution – a Gustaf von Ohler was particularly active in the development of Swedish plant cultivation. And to defend this construction there were the warrior Ohlers who fought at Narva as well as in Copenhagen and in the Finnish archipelago.

They were all hanging like lightly curled leaves in an extensive crown. He himself was there in the upper right-hand corner of the chart. When the chart was made he was a blank page; now he was a prize winner.

The family tree spoke for itself. Agnes would only need to clean the glass and dust off the frame. But wasn’t it hanging a little crooked?

She would have to clean up in general too, he continued his reflections, but not too meticulously, it could be a little messy, right here in the study he could meet the horde of journalists that would stream in. He could have a tray brought in with a tea cup, a teapot, and a plate of crackers, set it on the serving table, a neat little piece of furniture that some relative had dragged home from China, feign activity, to show that there isn’t time enough to leave the study, for even in the autumn of his old age, when his workmates were either buried or subjected to nursing care, Bertram von Ohler is still active.

He smiled to himself at his childish vanity. Wasn’t the Nobel Prize good enough in itself, so why this mental theatre?

THREE

Associate Professor Johansson’s house was equipped with a four-metre-high glassed-in tower, where he cultivated his sun-loving plants. In the winter the thermostat made sure that the temperature was favourable for Mediterranean flora, around twelve degrees Celsius. He was particularly proud of a magnificent olive tree.

From his tower he had a good overview of the neighbours. Partly hidden behind foliage he could observe the peaceful life on the block.

He often had his morning coffee up there, read the newspaper, and puttered. So too this morning. The front page of Upsala Nya Tidning was naturally taken up by the news about the prize.

The associate professor lived at number seven and Professor von Ohler at number three. Sandwiched between these two scientists was a true humanist, Torben Bunde, literary scholar and writer, who from time to time entertained Uppsala residents with newspaper articles. It might be mental bric-a-brac about all sorts of questions – why the bells in Vaksala Church were tuned in minor, while those in Holy Trinity were tuned in major – or else flattering pieces appeared about some representative from the local rural gentry who happened to own a painting whose signature Torben Bunde found intriguing, or was simply of interest because Bunde played bridge in the house.

But principally his contribution consisted of very seriously intended reviews of books, preferably works that few had heard of and even fewer read.

It was a mystery to the readers that the editors let these screeds be published year after year. There were those who maintained that it was a conscious tactic. Through publication the image of the literary scholar as a fool, a charlatan, was reinforced, and the intent was thus that people should be amused at his expense. The section was called ‘Culture and Entertainment’ after all; the literary scholar could very well be put in the latter category.

The price was high, however; those who were not initiated in the intricate academic game in the city, such as souls incorporated into the city from Östervåla or Lycksele, observed it all with wonder.

Associate Professor Johansson was convinced that Bunde in number five was now wrestling with considerable problems. He had seen him retrieve the newspaper from the mailbox by the street and immediately unfold it, and then remain standing as if paralysed. Obviously it was there and then the news reached him that his neighbour had been presented with the world’s most prestigious scientific prize.

How would Bunde react? Send flowers, like so many had done thus far – too expensive; visit his neighbour – an absurd idea, because it had never happened before; call – improbable, as Bunde was hard of hearing; write an article in homage – less probable, as despite unlimited self-confidence he surely had the feeling that he was not conversant in the subject; write a scathing article where he went on the attack against the selection of prize winners – more likely, even though he was no more conversant in that subject.

Or perhaps pass over all of it with silence? And when some acquaintance brought it up he could smile, tip his head, and mutter something indulgent that could be interpreted any number of ways.

By not showing so much as an ounce of desire to bask in the radiance that now fell on the whole street he could reject the selection of prize winners in an elegant way, while he high-mindedly did not utter anything obviously unfavourable. Perhaps he could simply let slip something about the professor’s failing health.

There were several possibilities and from his lookout point the associate professor sensed that internally Bunde was in uproar. After the initial shock the neighbour had raised his eyes towards Ohler’s house, and his look had expressed unfeigned astonishment, as if he had never noticed the building before.

The associate professor lingered in his tower. This morning the otherwise rather sleepy street would surely be somewhat livelier than usual. Already a number of couriers had delivered flower arrangements, curiosity seekers had cruised past in their cars. The professor’s housekeeper, who had been there as long as the associate professor could recall, was no doubt hard at work arranging vases. The associate professor had seen glimpses of her in the windows on several occasions.

She would stop on the pavement outside his house, praise his plantings, perhaps comment on the weather or some everyday incident. Once, perhaps ten years ago, he had received a compliment. That was after he had given her a few violet tulips, which she had admired during the spring.

‘You are a good person, associate professor,’ she had said when, embarrassed but very pleased, she received the package of bulbs.

He understood that it was an uncommonly generous statement coming from Agnes Andersson. Perhaps also a veiled criticism of the professor; hadn’t she emphasised ‘associate’ a little? He would like to believe that.

Now he glimpsed her in the professor’s study on the second floor, as she drew back the dark-brown curtains, opened the windows, and fastened them wide open. The associate professor tried to smile sarcastically at the futility of trying to air out all that was old in the Ohler house, but it was not a convincing smile, more a grimace that illustrated the distress he felt.

He ought to be proud; as someone involved in the breakthrough in the IDD project he could claim a share of the credit for the prize. But the proper delight would not appear. Twenty-two years ago – he remembered it was a Thursday in May, as usual pea soup was served for lunch – he read the thirty-page summary in The Lancet, an article that landed as a sensation, and he saw that his own name was missing.

Decades of toil and his name was omitted. An inconceivable ignominy. As if there was room for only one. The one who got to shine, receive congratulatory telegrams and telephone calls from near and far, and now the Nobel Prize.

Associate Professor Johansson’s entire worldview took a serious blow that spring day. In principle he had long been aware of the academic machinations, backbiting to manoeuvre colleagues out, fighting for funding, where no means were shunned. But now it struck him personally and with such force that he questioned his own research achievements, his entire career. The insult of being ignored he also read as a sign of a kind of general societal rottenness.

After that day he started to distrust everything and everyone. He never ate pea soup again. That, and the associated Swedish pancakes, came to symbolise the mendacity in the world.

The years up to retirement were marked by great indifference. The excitement and enthusiasm had disappeared. He was running on idle.

A lecture trip to Göttingen, Hamburg, and Berlin was the only occasion when he got to experience some of the sweetness of victory. It was intended for Ohler to travel to Germany, but his wife’s death came very conveniently for the associate professor. He was sent as a replacement and got to receive much personal evidence of his German colleagues’ appreciation. One of them he still kept in contact with. To him he could be completely frank. The conversations and correspondence with Horst Bubb were the valve where the excess steam, when the pressure got too high, could be let out.

Horst had also called early in the morning, something which nowadays otherwise happened only on the associate professor’s birthday, and tried to cheer him up. The German, who had worked with Ferguson for fifteen years at the Max Planck Institute, understood the associate professor’s feelings very well.

They happened to talk about Ferguson in particular, now retired and living in Vermont, according to Horst very aggrieved. The associate professor got the idea that his friend, by apportioning the bitterness to several researchers involved and in that way diluting it, wanted to alleviate the associate professor’s disappointment.

His colleague had also mentioned something about an article that might possibly appear in an influential newspaper with a quiet but very clear criticism of the selection of prize winners. According to Horst this was being initiated by a certain Wolfgang Schimmel, an influential doctor from Munich, who intended to gather a number of significant names behind him.

The associate professor, despite his own frustration, strangely enough remained unresponsive to all this talk about the injustice that was now being committed. He was already tired of it all and wished that the festivities on the tenth of December would be over, the articles cease, and Ohler become a name, not for the day, but instead one in the line of prize winners, who after a few years only the chief mourners would remember.

Ohler was no Einstein, Bohr, or Curie, who would write themselves into scientific history, so let all this go away, he thought in his tower.

‘Let it go away, let us die,’ he mumbled.

The lemon tree in front of him responded at that very moment by dropping a leaf.

FOUR

Right before twelve the associate professor’s doorbell rang, an event if not sensational, then still very unusual. Most recently it concerned a security alarm salesman.

The associate professor was in the kitchen making his usual lunch: a couple of fried eggs, a few slices of pickle, and an open-faced cheese sandwich. The menu had looked like this ever since retirement.

The first ring was followed by another, more drawn out and sharper in tone.

The associate professor was in a quandary: should he finish frying the eggs or move the pan to the side to go and answer the door? In his confusion he did neither. He remained standing with the spatula in his hand, while the eggs were transformed into inedible, dry flakes in the pan.

He thought later, as he disposed of the scraps, that it was like an illustration of municipal politics in Uppsala: While those in charge in other municipalities held discussions, made decisions and then implemented them, Uppsala’s politicians remained standing with spatula in hand, year after year.

When the frying pan started to smoke he came to his senses, turned off the burner, took off his apron, and hurried out to the hall.

The associate professor peeked out through the peephole: Torben Bunde. He looked impatient, staring intensely at the door. The associate professor felt as if he was the one being looked at, not the other way around. His neighbour raised his hand and another ring resounded through the house. Now that he knew who the visitor was, he experienced it as even more insistent.

He knows I’m home, the associate professor thought, it’s just as well to take the bull by the horns. He unhooked the security chain and opened the door.

‘Is this how it’s going to be now?’

Torben Bunde, PhD was dressed in something that the associate professor thought was called a smoking jacket, at least back in the day when smoking was done in a fashionable manner.

His face bright red, he pointed with a diffuse motion in the direction of his own house and stamped one foot on the stone paving.

‘What do you mean?’

Bunde waved his arm.

‘A man,’ he panted, ‘a man sneaking around with an axe in his hand.’

‘On your lot?’

It was a strange feeling, talking to Bunde like this. Not because the associate professor had problems setting aside formalities with people, but it felt wrong somehow.

‘I didn’t see that well, if it was on mine or yours, or’ – Bunde clearly experienced this unexpected neighbourly contact and extended conversation as equally strange, because he hesitated suddenly – ‘or if it was on Lundström’s, or whatever his name is, the new person.’

Alexander Lundquist had moved in five years ago and was therefore observed with a certain scepticism. No one knew exactly what he did for a living, but there was talk about some kind of publishing activity. Bunde, whose property bordered the newcomer’s, had cautiously let the surroundings know that it probably concerned pornography.

‘I see,’ said the associate professor, uncertain how he should tackle the situation.

‘Is this how it’s going to be now,’ Bunde repeated, ‘with a lot of running around in the bushes, photographers and other riffraff, those kinds of paparazzi?’

‘Photographers don’t usually carry axes. Perhaps it was someone working on Lundquist’s yard?’

‘That! His yard mostly looks like a communal garbage dump.’

Everything that had to do with municipal operations, including recycling stations, Bunde called ‘communal.’

‘All the more reason to hire someone,’ the associate professor replied.

He was finding an unexpected enjoyment in the conversation.

‘I definitely think he mentioned something about that.’

‘Have the two of you talked?’

‘Just in passing,’ said the associate professor.

‘Yes?’

‘Perhaps it was Lundquist himself you saw?’

‘Very unlikely,’ Bunde said with a sneer. ‘He’s never appeared in the yard before.’

The associate professor had to agree.

‘This man, you didn’t go up and ask what he was doing?’

Bunde shook his head.

‘I don’t believe there will be “running around” as you say. Have you gone over to congratulate?’

‘No, I want to wait,’ said Bunde doggedly.

‘Perhaps we should take up a collection for a little flower arrangement? I mean, those of us here on the street.’

Bunde stared at the associate professor.

‘I think I smell something burning,’ he said.

‘I’ll never be a cook,’ the associate professor said, smiling.

Bunde turned on his heels and almost ran towards the gate, which he had left open. It was such an unusual sight for the associate professor that he did not catch the neighbour’s parting words.

‘Close the gate behind you!’ he shouted.

He observed the neighbour striding away. Bunde’s hair was sticking out like a scraggly white broom from the back of his head. The sight reminded the associate professor of the only children’s book he owned. In it a magician was depicted who at the end of the tale was put to flight by angry people. He wanted to recall that the magician had conjured away something valuable to a poor man in the village. Could it be a cow?

It must have been a cow. Otherwise he probably would not have got the book as a Christmas present. His father had been called the ‘Indian’ at home in Rasbo.

The associate professor walked along the stone-paved walk, and to push away the memories flaring up from childhood and youth he let his eyes sweep over the yard, observed that the Oland stone ought to be reset, noted that the moss in the lawn had conquered even more ground, especially in the shadow of the privet hedge, and that the autumn crocus had never been so abundant and beautiful.

While he slowly shut the gate he thought again about the conversation with Ohler. Had the professor been sincere in his intentions when he came over? Perhaps he truly wanted to share the honour? Could it be the case that he had let his many years of disappointment cloud his judgement, that he had not understood that the professor had gradually changed character?

In yesterday evening’s news broadcasts, which the associate professor followed on a couple of channels, the professor had repeated his preaching that the honour was not his alone. He had even mentioned Ferguson, which before, during his active period, would have been completely inconceivable.

It was during the last years before retirement that the associate professor’s bitterness had grown; it was when forty years of work suddenly was perceived as worthless. To now come up with flattering remarks changed nothing.

He went up the stairs to the tower. The last bit, very steep, was becoming increasingly troublesome.

A pale October sun bathed the plants in a conciliatory glow. He let his hand run across the two-metre-long leaves of the multistemmed dracaena in a careful caress. Against all the green in the tower it shone blood-red. He dampened a rag and wiped off all the old dust so that the contrast stood out even stronger.

In the corner of his eye he thought he perceived a movement between the apple trees on Lundquist’s lot. A branch swayed. The Katja tree’s fruits shone like little lanterns.

The associate professor removed his glasses and wiped off the lenses with the rag, put the glasses on again and scanned the neighbour’s lot. But now everything was quiet.

Must have been a blackbird, he thought. Lundquist never bothered to harvest fruit and berries, so the birds would feast far into autumn. At Christmas the waxwings came and pecked their way into Ribstons.