‘Kristoffer here.’
‘Hello, it’s Marianne again. You know, it occurred to me that a Torgny Wennberg RSVP’d for the funeral. I thought that if he knew Gerda Persson, then maybe he knows more, and you might want to contact him. I don’t have his number, and I can’t get online right now, but maybe you could check it out yourself. There can’t be too many people with that name.’
‘Torgny Wennberg?’
‘Yes.’
‘With a W or a V?
‘I can’t check right now but I’m pretty sure it’s a W.’
‘Okay. And he’s coming to the funeral, you said?’
‘Yes, at least he said he was.’
‘I’ll check it out then. Thanks for calling.’
Torgny Wennberg. He added the name to the address book in his mobile so he wouldn’t forget it. Now he had those palpitations again. The feeling of wanting both to know and yet not know.
He had reached the new graves. Many of the dead resting here were children. Several graves were decorated with toys, pretty shells, teddy bears and small heart-shaped stones. There were almost always candles burning.
Eternally loved.
Words that appeared again and again. The endless care with which they looked after their beloved children’s graves. The thought of his own parents. How deep their pain and despair must have been if the only possibility remaining to them was to abandon him.
A cold wind swept over the cemetery and made the dry leaves whirl around. He pulled his duffel coat tight at the neck and decided to head for home. There he heated up a vegetarian lasagne in the microwave and sat down in front of the computer. With his dinner beside the keyboard he began to search. There was no turning back now; the door was ajar and he would never forgive himself if he missed the chance to step inside. He started with Torgny Wennberg. His name produced 313 hits. He clicked on the first one and was taken to the Workers’ Movement Archive. The heading was From our collections – Torgny Wennberg (b. 1928), forgotten proletarian writer. He skimmed through the text.
Torgny Wennberg was born in Finspång, Östergötland county. His father was a metalworker. Wennberg began as a metalworker at the age of 14. Early on he began to write stories. In 1951 he debuted as a writer with the novel It Will Pass. The next year he moved to Stockholm.
Torgny Wennberg is best known for his novels about the metalworkers in Östergötland. Keep the Fire Burning is considered one of his best works, published in 1961. Wennberg has also written several plays for the stage and radio. At First It Hurts was his last proletarian novel; later books can instead be characterised as relationship novels. His last novel, The Wind Whispers Your Name, was published in 1975 and portrays a man’s downfall after a love affair. Wennberg has published a total of twelve prose books and eight plays.
Kristoffer printed out the page. He went to another search engine, typed in the name and got a hit. There was a Torgny Wennberg living in Hantverkargatan. Kristoffer wrote down the phone number. He went back to Google and searched for Axel Ragnerfeldt. The name produced 1,000,230 hits. He hopped from page to page, reading a little here and there. He already knew much of the information. He had read all his books, some of them in school and the rest on his own. He added Gerda Persson to the search box but got nothing. Deleted Axel Ragnerfeldt and searched only for Gerda Persson and got 205 hits. It was impossible to tell which of them might be about the Gerda he was looking for. For the next hour he read selected pages about Axel Ragnerfeldt. Most of the hits led him to publishers and booksellers all around the world; there were also student projects and theses, but very few gave any clues to his private life. His wife Alice Ragnerfeldt was also a writer, and he spent a while reading about her books. Her last book was published in 1958, but from what he understood she was still alive. Many of the links were about the foundation that was established in Axel Ragnerfeldt’s name. He read about a children’s home in Chile and several clinics in Africa.
A true survivor.
The food on Kristoffer’s plate had grown cold. He went to the kitchen and put it in the microwave. Standing at the sink he shovelled down the last of the food then rinsed the plate. He wondered whether Axel Ragnerfeldt would come to the funeral. Whether he would have a chance to meet the great icon. Jesper would be green with envy. He pondered over whether to invite Jesper, but rejected the thought at once. Even though it would be his first funeral, and the occasion was definitely out of the ordinary, he would rather suffer through it alone. As he usually did. The alternative was to tell Jesper the whole story, but his sense of shame felt like a barrier. The truth would put him in an unbearably vulnerable position, increasing the distance that Jesper had already created between them. It would prove once and for all that Jesper was his superior.
Because his parents had chosen to keep him.
Kristoffer went back to his computer. Jan-Erik Ragnerfeldt produced 768 hits. Most of them were information about lectures. Jan-Erik Ragnerfeldt will speak about his famous father and his writings. A lecture the very next day at 7 p.m. at the Västerås Theatre. He leaned back in his chair and read the information again. Not that far away. It would be easier to meet him there in person than to pick up the phone and ring. He glanced at the dark windows. He wasn’t sure he could handle letting all his questions pile up and then ask them for the first time at the funeral. It would be better to get a general sense of him and be a bit prepared. He had no idea how Jan-Erik would react.
15
One more and then he would go home. He ought to have gone a long time ago, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to leave. Nor had he called home to let them know he’d be late, and he’d ignored the mobile ringing in his pocket. In his other pocket was Annika’s death certificate, and several times he had taken it out to read. Trying to convince himself that he hadn’t missed something, a word or innuendo that might give him an explanation.
Why did you do it? How the hell could you leave me here alone?
You’d already left. We had no idea where you were. You were the one who left me.
The woman behind the bar served him what he ordered. Maybe he was just imagining the contempt in her eyes; maybe his own opinion simply mirrored in her gaze. He’d already had too much to drink. There was a roaring in his ears, and the contours of everything around him kept blurring and then slowly returning to their original state. He asked for a glass of water and heard himself slurring.
They had never fought the way he understood other siblings did. There had never been enough space for that. They had been forced to form a united front against everything that was unpredictable – Axel when he turned his back on them and Alice who would sometimes get angry and other times beg for more love than they were capable of giving. He couldn’t comprehend how his mother had managed for all those years to keep the suicide a secret. Why she had never said a word about it. Not even when he finally returned from the States, more than six months after it happened. Back when he found himself a run-down bedsit and wanted to manage on his own and she kept popping up at his place of refuge, always unwelcome. Sometimes drunk, sometimes sober. Always begging for his affection. The bitterness about Axel that she dumped on him in an attempt to turn him into her ally. He had hated her tears. He wanted to be left alone, to cut all ties and have a chance to start his own life. To be honest, he probably hadn’t made the proper sort of effort. Nor had he turned down the money she would foist on him, since his visits to the in-crowd hangouts cost a good deal. But he had mixed in the right circles, and there was always somebody willing to pay the bill. His surname had an astonishing way of making new contacts. Doors were opened, queues vanished. The letters of his name were a guarantee of Jan-Erik’s splendid qualities. Not everyone had a father who had won the Nobel Prize for Literature.