Open Grave: A Mystery (11 page)

Bubb was also seeking support from Sweden and inquired whether the associate professor had possibly taken some initiative, which of course he had not. He had been fully occupied with leaf raking, he thought about adding jokingly, but refrained.

He felt yesterday’s listlessness and now, having a bad conscience, he felt all the more anxious to end the conversation and digest the information. He felt he was being disloyal, most of all considering the activity that the colleagues in Germany were developing, that they were actually also fighting for his cause, albeit indirectly. It was a disruptive feeling, he did not want to feel like a traitor, he simply wanted peace and quiet, but was unable to say anything about his irresolution to Horst Bubb.

Instead he inquired about his wife’s health.

“Unchanged,” Bubb said curtly.

“I think the doorbell rang,” the associate professor said mendaciously. “It may be the media wanting a comment. Perhaps they’ve been contacted by—”

“Excellent,” Bubb exclaimed. “Let him have it! Don’t hesitate to stress your own contribution. Do that, Gregor, speak out.”

“Thanks, I’ll do that,” said the associate professor.

After hanging up the phone he remained standing awhile by the kitchen table, unable to sort his thoughts. The only feeling he could register for certain was discomfort. There was something in Horst Bubb’s voice that he could not come to terms with, a kind of shrill fervor, not magnificent, righteous revenge, but instead a petty revanschism, an attitude he was mortally tired of.

He understood that the cure this time too was coffee and then work in the garden. Yesterday’s rain had accelerated the falling of the leaves, and then there was the compost to tend to. And he should prepare the winter covering of the Gloire de Dijon, one of the most beautiful roses he knew of.

A sudden movement caused him to look out the window. A police car came slowly cruising up the street. It was a remarkable sight, one the associate professor could not recall ever having seen in the vicinity of the house. It slowed down in front of Bunde’s gate. Had he really called the police? thought the associate professor. The man whom the neighbor had seen “sneaking around” was a gardener and nothing else, that was quite clear. The associate professor had been able to study him yesterday—the gardener was industrious, as it was an effort to dig in the Uppland clay. Gregor knew that from his own experience.

But the car cruised farther and finally stopped in front of Ohler’s house. Two uniformed policemen got out. He positioned himself as close to the window as possible to see what was happening. The policemen walked slowly up the path toward the house. They gave an impression of being hesitant, as if they were not sure they had come to the right place. Or else they were simply impressed by the grand entryway—the flight of steps and floor in J
ä
mtland dark shale, four cream-white pillars, without exaggerated details, which held up a balcony with a pointed wrought-iron fence, and a wide, dark brown door in some type of foreign wood with a brass knocker.

The associate professor had to resist the desire to open the front door and peek out. Then he realized that he had a better view from the tower and hurried as best he could up the stairs.

Once there he could see the professor himself, standing on the lawn in front of the house. He was pointing toward the house and then down in the grass. The associate professor, who knew him well, saw immediately that he was worked up. His white hair was sticking up in all directions, his one hand once again was pointing toward the house while the other waved at the street with irritation.

One of the policemen leaned over and studied something in the grass that was impossible for the associate professor to make out.

The policeman returned to the car and came right back with what the associate professor perceived as a bag. The object of their interest was picked up and disappeared down into it.

The professor continued his expressive gestures and his energetic speech. One policeman took notes on a pad. The other, bag in hand, took the opportunity to look around. He disappeared around the side of the house and when he had made his rounds and come out at the opposite end his colleague put away his pad and then saluted.

The associate professor was astonished. Salute! The policemen lingered on the sidewalk a minute or two before they left the street. The visit had lasted about fifteen minutes.

But what was it about? The associate professor thought and speculated while he made his way down the stairs to the kitchen, to finally make himself a cup of coffee. What sort of thing was that on the grass? Had there perhaps been a break-in?

He realized that the only way to find out what it was all about was to ask Ohler, and that was unthinkable. Hope rested in Bunde, but asking him, and thereby openly showing his curiosity, was an almost equally unpleasant alternative.

Then it struck him that the housekeeper, Agnes, naturally knew what this was about. With a little luck perhaps he could nab her as she went past on the sidewalk.

He set out a cheese sandwich that he had made the night before and put in the refrigerator. He did not like doing too much in the morning. Perhaps it was an inheritance from his childhood, the thing with the sandwich.

Mostly his father had left for work by the time Gregor woke up. He went off on his bicycle already at five o’clock. If there was snow on the ground he skied through the forest.

His mother had gotten up earlier, heated coffee and made breakfast, and then also made a sandwich for Gregor. The mornings when he woke up early were the best, his parents quietly talking in the kitchen, careful not to waken him.

When he sat up on the kitchen bench his mother handed him the sandwich and a cup of milk, and they sat gathered around the kitchen table awhile. During the dark time of the year his father might turn up the wick on the kerosene lamp a little. If it was summer the birds chirped so invitingly, as they never would later in life.

*   *   *

The associate professor worshipped his
father, but on one point he had never relied on his father’s judgment, and that concerned politics. After growing up in a cottage in the shadow of an aristocratic estate, it seemed inconceivable to him, almost a parody, that there could be a society where everyone had equal value.

Take the old crone Hult, half crippled and completely crazy, or Hanna Bj
ö
rk in Sandbacken, who used to watch him when his parents went off by themselves somewhere, or the always filthy woodworker Kumlin, or for that matter Uncle Kalle in Selkn
ä
and the other workers on the Roslag line. Could they step forward as equal to the count, or to the manager, or even the inspector?

It spoke for itself, thought the teenage Gregor Johansson, that it was an irrational thought, more a fairy tale, like one of the tall tales his father liked to tell.

It never came to a conflict between father and son. Gregor listened to his expounding but never made any objections.

Every month, always on a Sunday, collectors came from the various farms in the parish with the subscription, the membership fee, for the union. His father was treasurer in the division in Rasbo.

The board of the division also gathered regularly in the cottage, all of them young or middle-aged men, often serious, but just as often a little exhilarated. A certain optimism prevailed after the difficulties and setbacks of the pioneer years. A labor government was in power, there was talk that the old farm worker system would soon go to the grave, there was talk about statutory vacation and much else. Books started showing up, other than hymnals and collections of sermons, in rural workers’ homes. Victories great and small that were commented on in the little cottage. It was harvest time.

As a young boy Gregor had in an unconscious way shared their joy and faith in the future, as a kind of extension of the warmth and goodness he felt in his childhood home. But equality and equal worth, Gregor Johansson had never believed in that, neither then nor later. He would have liked to, but distrust was set so deep in him that he never let himself be engaged to participate in a political discussion or even vote in an election.

On one point, however, he had a definite opinion: He was a republican and despised everything that had to do with the royal family. The newspapers’ writings about the princesses, the queen’s plastic surgeries, and the blunders that every now and then popped out of the king’s mouth, or whatever it was that concerned the court, tired him out.

Once he had even written a letter to the editor with a republican angle. It was not published, however. Since then he did not subscribe to the local newspaper.

On the other hand he listened to the radio, always P1, and so too this morning. It was a news broadcast and in the first segment the associate professor already got wind for his antiroyalist sails. The monarch let it be known, in one of his attacks of inarticulate outspokenness, that wolves were copulating and thereby there were more of them in the Swedish forests. The king thought this was a problem, that is, he really wanted to shoot some. Or, well, what did he really want to say?

That he was some kind of honorary member of the World Wide Fund for Nature, whose mission was to protect endangered species, did not seem to worry him.

Gregor Johansson sneered to himself at the breakfast table. Sometimes it was easy to be a republican. But the sneer froze on his lips when, through some kind of unconscious and highly undesired association, he happened to connect the king with Ohler. From whose hand would the professor receive the Nobel Prize, if not Carl XVI Gustaf’s?

The associate professor moaned. He was reminded of Bubb’s exhortations that he should act and he felt tempted for a moment to immediately get to work, but then sank back in a kind of lethargic indifference, the defensive wall he had so laboriously constructed for his own peace of mind. He would not fight for a cause lost in advance. He was an old man, a wise old man, he convinced himself.

The coffee cup clattered against the saucer as he got up to clear the table and right then the doorbell rang. “Bunde” was his first thought, and strangely enough he became a little energized. Maybe it was the prospect of hearing a little gossip about the visit by the police that made him leave the kitchen with light steps to answer the door.

To his great surprise it was the gardener who was standing on the front stoop. He was smiling broadly, and his cheeks were rosy, which contributed to his active look. He began with an apology for disturbing.

“Absolutely no problem,” the associate professor assured him, becoming immediately favorably disposed toward the stranger.

“I couldn’t help noticing the beech tree,” said the man, making a vague gesture with one hand, “and now, you see, I’m laying an acid soil flower bed and—”

“So you need beech leaves,” the associate professor continued.

The man laughed and nodded.

“Beech leaves are first-rate goods, you know,” he said.

The associate professor smiled.

“One moment then, I’ll put on my … if you don’t … then we can…”

The associate professor suddenly became eager at the prospect of taking a turn in his garden with the enthusiastic and obviously experienced landscaper. The man seemed to read his mind and assured him that it would be interesting to look a little closer at the garden.

It took more than an hour to inspect the over fifteen hundred square meter lot. Every now and then they stopped, made comments, and exchanged experiences.

“Oh, a witch alder!” the visitor exclaimed, when they came to the back side of the house. “I saw it from a distance but didn’t realize what it was. What a magnificent specimen, what divine autumn color!”

The associate professor felt almost intoxicated. He caressed the deeply bloodred leaves with a loving motion, incapable of adding anything. He was filled with a deep gratitude that the man had pulled him from the kitchen table and his gloomy thoughts about the Nobel Prize and the royal family. He felt as if they were two good friends who had known each other for decades.

The visitor was very tactful besides. He generously overlooked a few less successful arrangements. To start with, the associate professor was ashamed of the obvious deficiencies, grateful that his yellow perennial bed was not in bloom and showing its peculiar mixture of pale and bright, but as he realized that the man’s opinions focused on the successful parts of the garden his discomfort subsided.

It was hard for the associate professor to handle this natural friendliness and rare feeling of affinity. How could he repay it? Could he invite him in for a cup of coffee? Or perhaps even better, dig up a plant as a present to the man?

“Perhaps you would be interested in a witch alder,” the associate professor suggested. “I mean, for the bed you’re working on. It thrives in a slightly acid soil.”

“Maybe so. Definitely a few white azaleas. I have a weakness for white.”

“Yes, you need something that brightens things up.”

So it continued a good while, a garden fanatic’s ping-pong, while they slowly wandered back to the entry side, where they remained standing.

“You didn’t by chance see the police earlier?” the associate professor broke the silence.

“Yes, and I meant to ask what they were doing here.”

“They were at Ohler’s,” said the associate professor. “They picked up something from the ground and left.”

“What was it?”

“An object,” the associate professor answered crossly, who despised imprecise information.

“A stone,” said the man, and his whole face was smiling.

“Stone?”

“Perhaps from an excavation,” said the man in a gentle tone. “So it’s okay if I fill a few trash bags with leaves?”

“Yes, sure … of course,” said the associate professor, surprised by the sudden shift in subject.

The man extended his hand.

“Very nice,” he said in a hearty voice.

The associate professor took his hand, but the thought that he wanted to offer the visitor something meant that he could not get out even the most trivial phrase. It was only when the man was standing by the gate that he found his tongue.