“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 summarized 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 bloodred 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 characterizes 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 defense 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 apartment 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 Västervik 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 realized 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.”