‘I think actually I have some idea. But you see the kind of questions this man is asking.’
‘And I think he deserves an answer.’
Humlin collected himself and looked at the man who had still not seated himself. He was tensed like an angry wrestler.
‘I don’t get paid by the word. As a general rule poets get paid very little for their work.’
‘I’m glad to hear it.’
The woman who had asked about charity got up and thumped her cane into the floor.
‘I think it is indefensible and rude to ask Mr Humlin about these sorts of financial matters. We are here in order to discuss his poetry in a calm and civilised manner.’
Another one of the men in the front row got up. Humlin had noticed him earlier since he had been nodding off most of the time. Once he got to his feet he swayed and had to take another step to balance himself. He was clearly intoxicated.
‘I don’t know what that old bitch is talking about.’
‘How do you mean?’ Humlin said helplessly.
‘Isn’t this a free country? Why can’t we ask what we want? It’s all the same to me anyway. I’m with my pal Åkesson here. I’ve never heard worse shit in my whole life.’
A flash went off. Humlin hadn’t seen them, but at some point during the reading a local reporter and a photographer had sneaked into the auditorium. This is going to be a scandal, Humlin thought desperately, picturing the headlines in the national papers. As with other writers, there was a place inside himself where he doubted his own talents, a place where he was nothing more than a literary charlatan. Humlin was about to plead with the photographer not to take any more pictures when Åkesson unexpectedly came to his aid.
‘Who gave you permission to take my picture?’ he screamed. ‘Just because I’ve done time doesn’t mean I don’t have human rights.’
The photographer tried to ward him off but now all the men from the front row gathered around him. The librarian tried to calm everyone down as most of the audience started filing out of the auditorium before a fight broke out. Humlin was dumbstruck. He had never in his life imagined that his poetry would lead to the kind of tumult he now saw playing out before his eyes.
But the chaos dissolved as quickly as it had begun. Suddenly Humlin was alone in the big room. He could still hear agitated voices in the corridor outside. Then he realised someone else had stayed behind in the room as well. It was a young dark-skinned woman from the immigrant group. She was alone in the sea of chairs and she had raised one arm. The most striking thing about her was her smile. Humlin had never seen a smile like it before. It was as if she gave off light.
‘Did you want to ask me something?’ he asked.
‘Have you ever written about anyone like me?’
Are there no straightforward questions any more? Humlin thought.
‘I don’t think I know exactly what you’re getting at.’
The girl spoke with an accent but her Swedish was clear.
‘I mean people who have come here. We who were not born here.’
‘It has always been my view that poetry is about crossing borders,’ Humlin said, but he heard how hollow it sounded.
The young woman got to her feet.
‘Thank you for answering my question.’
‘I am happy to answer more.’
‘I have no other questions for you.’
‘May I ask you something?’ Humlin asked.
‘I have not written any poems.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Tea-Bag.’
‘Tea-Bag?’
‘Tea-Bag.’
‘Where do you come from?’
She continued to smile but did not answer this last question. Humlin watched her as she slipped out into the corridor where angry voices could still be heard.
*
Humlin left the auditorium by a back door and left Mölndal in the taxi that had been waiting for him. He had not signed a single book and had not said goodbye to the librarians. He leaned back in his seat and looked out the window. They drove past a frozen lake that glinted in the headlights. Humlin shivered. Then his thoughts returned to the young woman in the auditorium with the beautiful smile. Her I think I would be able to write a poem about, he thought. But nothing is very certain any more.
4
WHEN JESPER HUMLIN woke up the following morning in his hotel in central Gothenburg he suddenly came to think of his old friend Pelle Törnblom who lived in a suburb called Stensgården. Pelle Törnblom was a one-time sailor who had finally returned to land and started a community boxing club. They had seen a lot of each other when they were young. Pelle Törnblom had also nourished literary ambitions for a short while. Over the years they had kept in sporadic contact with phone calls and postcards. Humlin tried to recall when they had last seen each other. The only thing he was sure of was that Törnblom had been working on a barge at the time, directing timber transports along the coast of northern Sweden.
Humlin decided to look for Törnblom’s telephone number after breakfast. First he nervously checked the morning paper but found nothing about last night’s events. That calmed him for the moment, though he feared the scandal was simply being held over for a day. He thought about having a word with the librarian whose brilliant idea it had been to invite a bunch of ex-cons to his poetry reading, but knew there was nothing to say. She had genuinely worked to draw in a group of people who were not usually exposed to the world of books.
The cell phone rang. It was Olof Lundin. Humlin did not want to talk to him.
‘Olof here. Where are you?’
Once upon a time people asked you how you were, Humlin thought. Now they ask you where you are.
‘This connection is bad. I can’t hear you.’
‘Where are you?’
‘This connection is bad. I’m in Gothenburg. I don’t want to talk to you.’
‘What are you doing in Gothenburg?’
‘You arranged two readings for me here.’
‘I’d forgotten about that. The library?’
‘Yesterday I was in Mölndal and tonight I’m going out to a place called Stensgården.’
‘Where is that?’
‘You should know since you set it up. I can’t keep talking. And anyway, I can hardly hear you.’
‘Why can’t you talk now? Did I wake you up?’
‘I’m awake, I just can’t hear you very well.’
‘You can hear me fine. Kudos for your performance in Mölndal, by the way.’
Humlin drew his breath in sharply.
‘How do you know about that? You didn’t even know where I was.’
‘Now you seem to hear fine.’
‘The connection got better.’
‘The librarian called me. She was very pleased.’
‘How can she be pleased? There was almost a fight.’
‘It’s not very common for a poetry reading to lead to such violent reactions. I’ve been calling the evening papers trying to get them to include it in tonight’s issue.’
Humlin almost dropped the phone.
‘What have you done?’
‘I talked to the evening papers.’
‘I don’t want anything in the evening papers!’ Humlin yelled. ‘There were just a bunch of drunk men who spewed forth about my poetry. They wanted to know what I make per word.’
‘An interesting question.’
‘You think so, do you?’
‘I can work it out for you, if you like.’
‘Why would I want to know that? Should I start writing longer poems? I don’t want you to speak to any papers, in fact, I forbid you to.’
‘Sorry, it’s getting harder to hear you.’
‘I said, I don’t want to see anything about this in the papers!’
‘Call me back and try to get a better connection. I must get back to the evening papers.’
He hung up. Humlin stared furiously at the phone. When he tried calling back he was told that L
undin was in a meeting and would not be reachable until the afternoon. Humlin lay down on the bed and decided he would change publishers. He didn’t want anything more to do with Lundin. As a kind of revenge he spent an hour thinking out the basic plot of a crime novel, although he promised himself he would never actually write it.
*
In the late afternoon as the rain had begun to drizzle down over Gothenburg, Humlin took a taxi to Stensgården. It was a depressingly generic city suburb with rows of concrete apartment buildings laid out like blocks. He got out on the windy main square of Stensgården where the library lay wedged in between McDonald’s and the government-owned wine store. Once again his taxi driver had been an African man, and once again he had found the address without any problems. The sign for the library was broken and the front door was covered in graffiti. Humlin went in search of the librarian in charge who turned out to be almost identical to the woman at Mölndal library. He asked with obvious trepidation if she had invited any special groups to the reading.
‘What kind of groups?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps you’ve been doing a community outreach of some kind to bring in a new clientele to the library.’
‘And what kind of people are we talking about?’
‘I don’t know. I was just asking.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I should warn you that we are not expecting very many people tonight. At best I think we’ll have ten.’
Humlin looked at her with horror.
‘Ten people?’
‘We normally only get that many for poets. If we have a writer of crime fiction we naturally draw a larger crowd.’
‘How many more?’
‘Last time we had a hundred and fifty-seven people.’
Humlin had no more questions. He placed his overnight bag in the librarian’s office and left. Once he was back out in the deserted main square he tried to call Lundin again. This time he was there.
‘I hope you didn’t talk to any media people.’
‘Of course I did, but unfortunately they didn’t seem very interested.’
Humlin felt a huge weight lift from his chest.
‘So there will be no story?’
‘Probably not. But I’m not going to give up just yet.’
‘I want you to give up.’
‘Have you given any more thought to your crime novel?’
‘No.’
‘You should. Let me know when you have a title.’
‘I’m a poet. I don’t write detective fiction.’
‘Let me know when you think of a title.’
Humlin put the phone back in his pocket, pulled his coat more tightly around his body and started wandering across the square. After a few steps he realised that there was something different about this place. At first he didn’t know what it was, then he understood that it was the people. It was as if he had suddenly crossed over an invisible line into a foreign country. The people he saw on the street were different in colouring, dress and posture.
It struck him that he had never spent any time in this other new Sweden that was emerging, the ghetto-like city suburbs where every immigrant or refugee ended up. It also struck him again with fearful clarity that only ten people were coming to his reading tonight. What did his poetry possibly have to say to these people?
He walked around the square until he got too cold. He went into a cafe with Arabic music playing over the loudspeakers and looked for Pelle Törnblom’s phone number. He found it under ‘Törnblom’s Boxing Club’. Then he turned to the dark-skinned girl behind the counter and asked her if she knew where the boxing club was located.
‘On the other side of the church.’
Humlin did not recall having seen a church. The girl walked over to the fogged-up window and pointed it out to him, then returned to her magazine.
Humlin finished his coffee and walked over to the church and the ramshackle industrial building where a small sign on the door read ‘Pelle Törnblom’s Boxing Club’. Humlin hesitated before ringing the bell. Why was he looking him up after all these years? What would they have to say to each other? He decided to go back to the library, but at that moment the door opened. It was Törnblom. Humlin saw at once that he had gained weight. Earlier he had kept himself fit. Now he had a large belly and a red face. The shirt under his leather jacket strained across the middle. Törnblom nodded in recognition.
‘We’re coming to see you tonight,’ he said with a smile.
‘Who’s we?’
‘Amanda and I.’
‘Who is Amanda?’
‘My wife. My fourth and last wife.’
‘Then that brings us to twelve people. The librarian is expecting ten.’
Törnblom invited him in. They walked up a narrow staircase and entered a room that smelled of old sweat. There was a boxing ring in the middle of the room. Weights and other tools for strength training were lined up along the walls. Humlin instinctively looked around for something that resembled Lundin’s rowing machine.
‘Thursdays are my day off,’ Törnblom said. ‘Otherwise this place would be full of kids.’
Törnblom escorted him to a small office in the back where they sat down. Törnblom seemed to take the measure of him.
‘Why are you so tanned?’ he asked.
‘I’ve been travelling.’
‘It doesn’t look natural.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s too even. It looks like you keep it up in a solarium.’
Humlin was now convinced he had made a mistake in looking up his old friend.
‘I’ve been out travelling in tropical places. It makes you tan.’
Törnblom shrugged.
‘You look like you’ve gained weight,’ Humlin said as a counter-attack.
‘I’m married for the fourth and last time now. I can let myself go.’
‘What about your health?’
‘I’m only this heavy in the winter. I lose weight in the summer.’
‘Tell me more about this Amanda.’
‘She’s from Turkey, although to be precise it is more like Iran. But her father was born in Pakistan. He lives in Canada now.’
‘So she’s an immigrant?’
‘She was born in Sweden. Whatever that makes her.’
‘I saw a lot of immigrants around here as I was wandering around the square.’
‘It’s probably only me and the alcoholics that hang out in front of the liquor store who are what you would call ethnic Swedes. Everyone in my boxing club has another nationality. I’ve counted nineteen different ones so far.’
‘I can’t imagine I’ll see many of them at the reading tonight,’ Humlin said, and noticed to his surprise that the thought disappointed him.
‘You’ll meet them later,’ Törnblom said cheerfully, and reached for a coffee maker that had been sitting high up on a shelf.
‘After the reading?’
‘I couldn’t convince anyone to come to the library, but they’re all coming to the party afterward.’
‘What party is this?’
‘The party we’re throwing for you. It’ll be here.’
Humlin felt a new wave of anxiety wash over him.
‘No one said anything to me about a party.’
‘Of course not. It was going to be a surprise.’
‘Unfortunately I’m not going to be able to attend. I just have enough time after the reading to catch the last flight out for Stockholm.’
‘Then why don’t you leave tomorrow?’
Humlin saw Andrea’s face in his mind’s eye.
‘I can’t. Andrea will go crazy.’
‘Who is Andrea?’
‘She’s the woman I guess I share my life with.’
‘Are you married?’
‘No. We don’t even live together.’
‘Call her and tell her you need to stay overnight. She’ll understand.’
‘No, she won’t. You don’t know Andrea.’
/> ‘Not even one night?’
‘I can’t do it,’ Humlin said.
‘Everyone will be very disappointed if we cancel the party. All the kids were looking forward to it. They’ve never met a famous bestselling author before.’
‘I’m not a bestselling author. And I’m not even particularly famous.’
Pelle Törnblom had managed to get the coffee maker to work. He offered Humlin a cup, but the poet turned him down.
‘I didn’t think someone like you would have it in you to disappoint a group of young immigrant kids. Some of their parents are coming too.’
Humlin gave up. He tried to imagine how he would explain staying overnight to Andrea, but realised there was no way in which it would not be turned against him.
‘Some gypsies are coming to play music,’ Törnblom said encouragingly.
Humlin didn’t answer. Instead his gaze fastened on an old poster advertising a match between Eddie Machen and Ingemar Johansson.
*
Thirteen people came to the reading, since one of the janitors working in the building came in at the end of his shift. They could have been as many as seventeen, since a group of drunk men who had been hanging around outside the liquor store wanted to come in and warm up. Humlin, who still had not worked up the nerve to call Andrea, stared glumly out over his audience. But when the drunks from outside tumbled into the room he collected himself and said he refused to read his poetry to people who were clearly intoxicated and only interested in getting warm.
Right before he was about to start, Törnblom and his wife entered the room. Humlin immediately fell in love with her. She had a beautiful face, with deep-set eyes. During his reading he directed his inner attentions towards her, reading his poems for her and no one else. The rest of the audience consisted mainly of the retired, among them a man whose breath rattled worryingly in his chest. In Humlin’s mind the breathing came to sound like stormy waves smashing up against a rocky shore. After the reading there were no questions. Törnblom smiled and Humlin grew suspicious. He looks down on me, he thought. When we were younger the literature we had in mind was of a completely different sort. We were going to write deadly critiques of oppressive regimes. I ended up in the world of poetry, he in a barge and then a boxing club.
While the librarian was presenting Humlin with a small bouquet of flowers for his troubles – among the smallest he had ever received – he decided he would leave through a back door and take a taxi straight to the airport. He realised this would likely make any future contact with Törnblom impossible. But he was genuinely afraid of Andrea’s reaction. When the room was almost empty Pelle Törnblom and his wife approached him.