The door behind him was opened, but there was no knock this time. His eyelids refused to obey his command and remained as they were, a shield against the glaring sunshine. Only when he sensed the wheelchair moving and he ended up in the shade did they open, and he saw that it was Jan-Erik who had come.
‘Hi, Pappa.’
Once again he felt the towel wipe his chin, where the drool still ran; the itching was driving him crazy. Jan-Erik’s hand was tentative, not firm like that of the attendants. It revealed that his son was just as uncomfortable in this situation as he was, that he experienced it as equally unnatural.
‘Would you like to lie down for a while? They said you’d been sitting up all morning.’
With all his strength he concentrated and finally managed to lift his little finger.
‘Okay, I’ll just go and fetch someone to help me.’
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jan-Erik disappear. He realised he ought to be grateful, surely his son’s visit was out of duty and not of his own free will, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to feel grateful. He had never really understood his son, and to be honest he wasn’t even sure that he liked him. His total lack of ambition. Born with every opportunity served up on a platter, yet he had never made use of a single one. Only hopped about half-heartedly without purpose or goal, without ever taking the helm. Axel himself had been born without any opportunities at all, but his parents’ toil and his own indomitable will had propelled him forward. Against all odds. He remembered the shame he felt when he failed the scholarship exam, and his parents’ disappointment. His mother and father, whose motto was ‘Never give up’, had not let themselves be deterred. Over the next eight years they had endured constant hardship to finance his studies to become a graduate of the secondary school, all to open the doors to the Royal Technical College where the final goal hovered like a mirage: his degree in civil engin eering. No sacrifice had been too great. Both his parents had two jobs, saving every krona to be able to afford the tuition fees. Axel himself had spent every waking moment fulfilling their ambitions, trying to convince himself that those ambitions were his as well. But the school had been a foreign environment in which he slowly changed. Pupils from his social background were rare, and to get along in that setting he was forced to adapt. Here conflicts were not solved with fists like in the back courtyards; here it was always language that brought superiority. Unlike his own environment, the goal was to distinguish himself, to believe seriously that he was somebody. Difficulties arose when he had to switch back and function in his own neighbourhood, where the old rules applied.
His transformation led him farther and farther away from his origins, and also from his parents who had fought so doggedly for his cause. His language changed, his thoughts ventured outside their traditional realms. At home, where everything was done for his benefit, he felt more and more alone. He sensed that he was cherished not so much for who he was, but for what he would someday become. He began to regard himself as a project and not as a member of the family. His sister’s bitter envy and the weight of his parents’ expectations were sometimes so oppressive he could hardly breathe.
In his third year he was already having trouble with mathematics. Words fell into place of their own accord, but he found no logic in numbers; they refused to yield up their secrets to him. He got the highest marks on all assignments in Swedish class, while he barely passed his maths exams. It was during the same period that his father had been called up; the country was being mobilised after the Germans had occupied Denmark and Norway. The lack of his father’s income brought the family to their knees. Not only was there food rationing; in poor homes there was a lack of everything. He remembered the endless queuing in shops with empty shelves. The cold nights. How there was never enough wood, and how the dampness ate into the fabrics. How he and his sister went out in the evenings to try and find something to put in the stove. The blackout curtains, the frenetic voice on the radio and the terror that Hitler would come.
He concealed his failed maths exam, made sure the results were never seen by his eager parents, and when it was time to choose a major subject he was forced for the first time to go behind their backs. The scientific path with mathematics as a major focus was the one that would open the way to the Royal Technical College. Instead he selected the humanistic linguistic path, and thus the anticipated door was secretly closed.
Jan-Erik came back again with an attendant. Together they lifted Axel onto the bed. He felt the relief as the pain gave way and his body was straightened out on the soft bedding. The head of the bed was raised and some pillows were arranged behind him. Then came the constantly recurring question.
‘Is that comfortable?’
No, he wanted to scream. No, it’s not comfortable. I want you to bring me all the sedatives you have in this ward and pump them into my bloodstream so that I can go to sleep once and for all. But he could only lift his little finger and assure them that everything was fine.
Jan-Erik sat down in the visitor’s chair, and the attendant left. His son usually brought along the day’s paper and read aloud to him, and he had done so this time as well. Axel didn’t understand why he had to be kept informed. How could anyone believe that he had the slightest interest in the world he had already left behind? He had to be kept company, and this was Jan-Erik’s brave attempt. Their relationship was not constructed in such a way that the power balance would tolerate a shift. He couldn’t explain his antipathy, why he had never felt close to his son. There was something about his compliant gaze, the fact that he never demanded his rights. Never burned so strongly for something that he dared take up a fight. And on the rare occasion he had tried, he had been so wrong. As if he had no concept of what was best for him.
Jan-Erik’s voice droned on through the endless columns, and Axel returned to his own thoughts.
It was during the final year before graduation that the conflict inside him had erupted in earnest. A consuming anxiety about having to tell his parents that their engineering dreams would remain nothing but dreams. But also about the other matter that was becoming stronger and stronger. He knew that he had a talent, and the years of study had confirmed his brilliance. His lack of aptitude for mathematics had left room for another quality: he was drawn irresistibly to language, like a moth to the light. The temptation was irresistible. He could feel the stories jostling about inside him, waiting to be given life. But writing was not a real profession, it was a dissolute hobby that one might take up in free moments. There was every reason to be suspicious of literature that did not lead to concrete knowledge. He knew that his parents would never understand, and with each day that brought him closer to the conversation he would have to have with them, his fear grew.
It had been on the day of his final examination. They were sitting in the room next to the kitchen where in honour of the day they were going to have their coffee, watched over only by Hjalmar Branting. No guests had been invited; you shouldn’t believe that you were somebody even though your son against all odds had just passed his final exam. But real coffee would be served, not that substitute they’d got used to during the wartime rationing. They were all dressed up, his parents beaming with pride and his sister joining them, although in silent protest. With excruciating clarity he recalled how something in their eyes was extinguished when he told them about his decision. The fact that there would never be a civil engineer in the family, but rather a writer. His sister’s spontaneous guffaw. His father’s slap that silenced her. On that day he passed the fork in the road and went on to meet his calling.