Open Grave: A Mystery (3 page)

“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 U.S. 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 realized 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 toward 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 favorite 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 southeast 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 luster. 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 realized a chain of thought had broken.

He could imagine it that way. He visualized 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 colors. 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 systemization 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 theater?

Three

Associate
Professor
Johansson’s house was
equipped with a four-meter-high glassed-in tower, where he cultivated his sun-loving plants. In the winter the thermostat made sure that the temperature was favorable 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 neighbors. 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
Ö
sterv
å
la 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 paralyzed. Obviously it was there and then the news reached him that his neighbor 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 neighbor—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 unfavorable. 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 neighbor had raised his eyes toward 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 sidewalk 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 emphasized “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 maneuver 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.