“Of course,” Pia agreed. “Though first I meant to say thanks for this princely meal.”
“Just a simple banquet,” said Johansson modestly. “Necessary nourishment for our solitary earthly wandering.”
“I’m almost getting a little nervous,” she continued. “You’re not up to something, are you?”
“Not really,” said Johansson. “I simply wanted to ingratiate myself in general terms with the woman in my life.”
“You don’t need to borrow money?”
“Borrow money,” Johansson snorted. “A free man doesn’t borrow money.”
“Okay then,” said Pia. “Then I’ll take a double espresso with hot milk.”
“Good choice,” Johansson agreed. “Personally I was thinking about having a small cognac to help my digestion.”
“Not for me,” said Pia. “Considering tomorrow. There’s a lot to do after vacation.” But mostly because I’m a woman, she thought.
“Personally I was thinking about taking it very easy tomorrow,” said Johansson. I am the boss after all, he thought.
Tomorrow can wait, thought Johansson as he loaded up the espresso machine and poured a short one to help his digestion. I’m a fortunate man, and some days are better than others.
After dinner was over they sat on the couch in Johansson’s study. Johansson turned on the TV and looked at the late news. But everything was quiet, and given that his red cell phone had been silent the whole evening, his concluding message at the meeting had evidently done the trick. Not a peep about a prime minister assassinated long ago. In the midst of all this Pia fell asleep on the couch with her head on his lap. Without making a sound and while he stroked her forehead. You sleep like a child in any event, he thought. Motionless, soundless, now and then just a light trembling of the eyelids. Change of plans, and just as well considering all the food and wine, and what do I do now?
His wife solved the problem for him. Suddenly she sat up with a jerk, looked at the clock, and shook her head.
“Good Lord,” said Pia. “Already eleven. Now I’m going to bed. Don’t stay up too late. Tomorrow’s a work day.”
“I promise,” said Johansson. Tomorrow can wait, he thought, reaching for the TV guide.
First he sat surfing between the twelve or more movie channels to which he now had access. Most of the films he’d seen before, and the ones he hadn’t didn’t seem worth the trouble. Mostly a lot of nonsense about serial killers who had the good taste to stay away from his desk anyway, and in the midst of this he suddenly had an idea.
In the Palme room were binders, folders, and boxes that covered all the existing wall space and a good share of the floor. In Johansson’s large study there were books from floor to ceiling. Books about everything under the sun, assuming it was something that interested him. What didn’t interest him he would take up to the attic or give away. True, the Palme room was twice the size of Johansson’s study, but the difference in letters and words was less than that. Books, books, books…videocassettes, DVDs and CDs plus numerous good old-fashioned LPs. But mostly books, almost all books. Books he’d read and appreciated and could imagine reading again. Books he needed to learn about things and to be able to think better. Books he loved literally because their physical existence showed that for a long time he had become the master of his own life and that he had made the most of himself. All these books he’d missed so deeply while growing up on the farm outside Näsåker that the absence sometimes gnawed at his chest. But never a mountain he was forced to climb.
In Johansson’s childhood home there had been few books. The life they lived left little room for reading. In the parlor there was a bookcase with old Bibles, hymnbooks, farming guides, and the devotional tracts that were a natural part of the region’s cultural heritage and considered remarkable enough to have bound. But not much else.
In his father’s study-the farm office-there were thick catalogs for everything under the sun having to do with work. From manufacturers of tractors, farm and forest machinery, to sellers of guns and ammunition, fishing tackle, screws, nails, tar, paint and varnish, bolts and lumber, motor saws, tools, seed, breeding animals and other lighter goods that were part of life on the farm, and could be shipped through the postal service, paid for COD with the deal concluded by a handshake with the mail carrier.
In his older brothers’ room were numerous worn-out volumes of Rekord magazine, Se and Lektyr, carelessly stacked on their one rickety bookshelf. Besides very different publications in which a picture said more than a thousand words, and which they preferred to hide under their mattresses.
The latter publications were obviously lacking in his sister’s room. Instead there were Anne of Green Gables, Pollyanna, The Children from Frostmo Mountain, and everything else on the same theme that shaped little girls into conscientious young women and good mothers.
Not so for Johansson, who even as a little boy read as if he were possessed. Who somehow learned to read the year before he started grade school. Little Lars Martin, whose love of reading deeply worried his kindly father and was the reason that his older brothers teased him and gave him a licking whenever they caught him with a thick book without any pictures.
It started with crime. Ture Sventon, Agaton Sax, Master Detective Blomkvist, and Sherlock Holmes, the greatest of them all. He was forced to hide in toolsheds, carriage houses, and outhouses so he could harvest the fruits of such reading in peace. Not until he was big enough to defend himself could he visit his own room, his own reading lamp, and the relative lack of disturbance this calling required.
He continued with adventure in the most general terms, from another time and reality than his own, and for just that reason he could give his imagination free rein. All the adventures of Biggles, the solidarity of the three musketeers, and the solitude of Robinson Crusoe. Around the World in 80 Days and Gulliver’s Travels. He traveled in time and space, in free flight between reality and imagination, and as far away as the public library in Näsåker could issue the ticket. The happiest of all the journeys a person could undertake if anyone had thought to ask little Lars Martin.
When he was nine, his father put him in the car and took him on another journey, an eighteen-mile trip to the district doctor. High time, imminent danger, and his youngest son was wearing his eyes out reading books like a veritable madman. Because little Lars seemed completely normal in all other respects, his father couldn’t rule out that something in his head had gotten stuck. Like a gramophone record with a skip in it, if you were to ask a layman.
“So it’s not that he’s strange or anything,” his father, Evert, told the doctor, when he’d shut the door, leaving the little patient in the waiting room outside.
“No, it’s nothing like that if you ask me. He’s easy enough to deal with, likes fishing, and he’s a real crackerjack with the air rifle I gave him for Christmas. It’s this reading stuff. He’s in a conspiracy with the library lady down in the village and his teacher, and as soon as I take my eye off the kid he’s dragging home sacks of books that they pile on him. I’m worried his eyes are going straight to hell.”
The doctor investigated the matter. Shone a light in the eyes, ears, and nose of Lars Martin Johansson, nine years old. Squeezed him on the head and hit him on the knee with a little hammer, and so far all seemed well and good. Then the boy had to read the bottom line of letters on the chart on the wall. First with both eyes and then with his hand in front of first the left, then the right eye, and no big deal there.