The years up to retirement were marked by great indifference. The excitement and enthusiasm had disappeared. He was running on idle.
A lecture trip to Göttingen, Hamburg, and Berlin was the only occasion when he got to experience some of the sweetness of victory. It was intended for Ohler to travel to Germany, but his wife’s death came very conveniently for the associate professor. He was sent as a replacement and got to receive much personal evidence of his German colleagues’ appreciation. One of them he still kept in contact with. To him he could be completely frank. The conversations and correspondence with Horst Bubb were the valve where the excess steam, when the pressure got too high, could be let out.
Horst had also called early in the morning, something which nowadays otherwise happened only on the associate professor’s birthday, and tried to cheer him up. The German, who had worked with Ferguson for fifteen years at the Max Planck Institute, understood the associate professor’s feelings very well.
They happened to talk about Ferguson in particular, now retired and living in Vermont, according to Horst very aggrieved. The associate professor got the idea that his friend, by apportioning the bitterness to several researchers involved and in that way diluting it, wanted to alleviate the associate professor’s disappointment.
His colleague had also mentioned something about an article that might possibly appear in an influential newspaper with a quiet but very clear criticism of the selection of prize winners. According to Horst this was being initiated by a certain Wolfgang Schimmel, an influential doctor from Munich, who intended to gather a number of significant names behind him.
The associate professor, despite his own frustration, strangely enough remained unresponsive to all this talk about the injustice that was now being committed. He was already tired of it all and wished that the festivities on the tenth of December would be over, the articles cease, and Ohler become a name, not for the day, but instead one in the line of prize winners, who after a few years only the chief mourners would remember.
Ohler was no Einstein, Bohr, or Curie, who would write themselves into scientific history, so let all this go away, he thought in his tower.
“Let it go away, let us die,” he mumbled.
The lemon tree in front of him responded at that very moment by dropping a leaf.
Four
Right before twelve the associate professor’s doorbell rang, an event if not sensational, then still very unusual. Most recently it concerned a security alarm salesman.
The associate professor was in the kitchen making his usual lunch: a couple of fried eggs, a few slices of pickle, and an open-faced cheese sandwich. The menu had looked like this ever since retirement.
The first ring was followed by another, more drawn out and sharper in tone.
The associate professor was in a quandary: should he finish frying the eggs or move the pan to the side to go and answer the door? In his confusion he did neither. He remained standing with the spatula in his hand, while the eggs were transformed into inedible, dry flakes in the pan.
He thought later, as he disposed of the scraps, that it was like an illustration of municipal politics in Uppsala: While those in charge in other municipalities held discussions, made decisions and then implemented them, Uppsala’s politicians remained standing with spatula in hand, year after year.
When the frying pan started to smoke he came to his senses, turned off the burner, took off his apron, and hurried out to the hall.
The associate professor peeked out through the peephole: Torben Bunde. He looked impatient, staring intensely at the door. The associate professor felt as if he was the one being looked at, not the other way around. His neighbor raised his hand and another ring resounded through the house. Now that he knew who the visitor was, he experienced it as even more insistent.
He knows I’m home, the associate professor thought, it’s just as well to take the bull by the horns. He unhooked the security chain and opened the door.
“Is this how it’s going to be now?”
Torben Bunde, Ph.D. was dressed in something that the associate professor thought was called a smoking jacket, at least back in the day when smoking was done in a fashionable manner.
His face bright red, he pointed with a diffuse motion in the direction of his own house and stamped one foot on the stone paving.
“What do you mean?”
Bunde waved his arm.
“A man,” he panted, “a man sneaking around with an ax in his hand.”
“On your lot?”
It was a strange feeling, talking to Bunde like this. Not because the associate professor had problems setting aside formalities with people, but it felt wrong somehow.
“I didn’t see that well, if it was on mine or yours, or”-Bunde clearly experienced this unexpected neighborly contact and extended conversation as equally strange, because he hesitated suddenly-“or if it was on Lundström’s, or whatever his name is, the new person.”
Alexander Lundquist had moved in five years ago and was therefore observed with a certain skepticism. No one knew exactly what he did for a living, but there was talk about some kind of publishing activity. Bunde, whose property bordered the newcomer’s, had cautiously let the surroundings know that it probably concerned pornography.
“I see,” said the associate professor, uncertain how he should tackle the situation.
“Is this how it’s going to be now,” Bunde repeated, “with a lot of running around in the bushes, photographers and other riffraff, those kinds of paparazzi?”
“Photographers don’t usually carry axes. Perhaps it was someone working on Lundquist’s yard?”
“That! His yard mostly looks like a communal garbage dump.”
Everything that had to do with municipal operations, including recycling stations, Bunde called “communal.”
“All the more reason to hire someone,” the associate professor replied.
He was finding an unexpected enjoyment in the conversation.
“I definitely think he mentioned something about that.”
“Have the two of you talked?”
“Just in passing,” said the associate professor.
“Yes?”
“Perhaps it was Lundquist himself you saw?”
“Very unlikely,” Bunde said with a sneer. “He’s never appeared in the yard before.”
The associate professor had to agree.
“This man, you didn’t go up and ask what he was doing?”
Bunde shook his head.
“I don’t believe there will be ‘running around’ as you say. Have you gone over to congratulate?”
“No, I want to wait,” said Bunde doggedly.
“Perhaps we should take up a collection for a little flower arrangement? I mean, those of us here on the street.”
Bunde stared at the associate professor.
“I think I smell something burning,” he said.
“I’ll never be a cook,” the associate professor said, smiling.
Bunde turned on his heels and almost ran toward the gate, which he had left open. It was such an unusual sight for the associate professor that he did not catch the neighbor’s parting words.
“Close the gate behind you!” he shouted.
He observed the neighbor striding away. Bunde’s hair was sticking out like a scraggly white broom from the back of his head. The sight reminded the associate professor of the only children’s book he owned. In it a magician was depicted who at the end of the tale was put to flight by angry people. He wanted to recall that the magician had conjured away something valuable to a poor man in the village. Could it be a cow?
It must have been a cow. Otherwise he probably would not have gotten the book as a Christmas present. His father had been called the “Indian” at home in Rasbo.
The associate professor walked along the stone-paved walk, and to push away the memories flaring up from childhood and youth he let his eyes sweep over the yard, observed that the Öland stone ought to be reset, noted that the moss in the lawn had conquered even more ground, especially in the shadow of the privet hedge, and that the autumn crocus had never been so abundant and beautiful.