‘How does it feel to win the Nobel Prize after having been praised to the heavens for this book?’
Axel didn’t move. Then he took in a deep breath, the kind you take before a dive. For several seconds he held it, then let it go; his body fell forward and he leaned his forehead against his typewriter. Torgny stood quite still and watched the facade crumble.
‘Where is she?’
Minutes passed. Long minutes. Axel looked as if it was taking all his concentration to stay in his chair. Then he began to gasp for words, but stopped as soon as anything was about to cross his lips.
‘You have to help me, Torgny.’
‘Tell me where she is.’
With difficulty Axel managed to straighten up, and the face Torgny saw was that of a stranger.
‘I don’t know, I swear. She said something about going back to Poland. Torgny, please, you have to understand, I was completely desperate.’
He was begging, with despair in his eyes. Torgny was shocked at what he saw. Axel Ragnerfeldt, obsequiously asking for his sympathy. He couldn’t say a word. What he saw made him sick. He looked at the book in his hands, let the pages riffle through his fingers. All those letters, all those words, that taken together described the worst hell a human being can endure. The conditions in a concentration camp described in a way that no one but the person who had endured them could describe. Written down in anguish in order to silence the demons. Axel Ragnerfeldt had plundered and robbed everything from her. He had stolen her thoughts, raped her soul.
‘She sent the manuscript to me and said I could do whatever I liked with it.’
Torgny erupted.
‘She was ill, damn it! You knew that! Do you know how long she struggled over this novel?’
‘She didn’t want to have anything to do with it, she said. She was going back to Poland to start a new life. She wanted to forget everything that had happened, she said, and…’
Axel’s shoulders drooped and he looked down at his lap. With the fingers of his right hand he began twisting his wedding ring.
‘I hadn’t been able to write anything for several years, not a thing, and I was completely desperate. My publisher was hassling me, the bank was putting on the pressure, I had no money to pay the mortgage, I scarcely had enough left to put food on the table. I couldn’t wring a single line out of myself, I simply couldn’t write at all any more, it was all gone. I had just decided to tell Alice that we would have to sell the house. I was going round here preparing myself, and just then my parents rang and told me that my sister had died, that she’d had a heart attack. I hadn’t seen her in almost thirty years. I could hear what a hard time they were having trying to ask me, but at last they managed to get it out. They wondered whether I could take care of the funeral expenses, and I… I couldn’t tell them the truth, admit that I was broke. Admit that I had failed.’
He hid his face in his hands and for a moment Torgny thought he was crying.
‘I began searching through the cupboard to see whether I could find some old pieces I’d written, and that’s when I found it. It was just lying there and I… She’d told me I could do whatever I wanted with it. I know it was wrong, but just then I couldn’t see any other way out.’
‘Nobel fucking Prize winner Axel Ragnerfeldt! Jesus Christ! How the hell can you live with yourself?’
Torgny spat out the words, the contempt searing his tongue.
Axel sat huddled on the chair staring into space. The man Torgny saw was someone he had never met before.
‘You must have known that you’d be exposed, that I would read it eventually.’
‘She said you hadn’t read it. That nobody had read it.’
Torgny was speechless. For years he had sat at her side and encouraged her, persuading her to fight on when she wanted to give up. He had commented on every sentence; with eyes wide he had been amazed at her talent and tried to convince her of the greatness of what she’d written.
Hadn’t read it!
‘I took a chance. Just then I thought that nothing could get any worse. If I’d known that there would be such a fuss about it… Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine it would be like this. I just wanted to buy a little time so I could finish writing what I was working on.’
He looked at Torgny but turned away when he didn’t find the sympathy he sought.
‘Don’t you think that I’ve regretted it? How do you think it feels to me? You know me that well at least. The whole thing has been like one long nightmare.’
Axel got up and walked over to the window.
‘I wish I could undo it, Torgny. More than anything I wish that I could, but I can’t.’
There was silence in the room. A sound from the hall outside made Axel turn round. He went to the door and opened it, but no one was there. When he assured himself that nobody was listening he went back and sat down.
‘I know that I don’t have the right to ask you to keep quiet about this, Torgny, but I’d do anything.’
Torgny snorted.
‘I’ll give you half the prize money.’
The proposal amazed Torgny. A little boy who was caught cheating on a test. With a little more skulduggery he thought he would be released. Torgny’s temples were throbbing. The blood wanted to burst out of his veins. The man he had reluctantly admired, whom he had always looked up to, despite his antipathy, was now grovelling before him like the little worm he was. His moral integrity, his strength of character. The whole time the opposite had been kept hidden underneath, eclipsed by his exceptional achievements.
‘She told me I could use it.’
Quietly, a final attempt to persuade him.
Torgny looked at Axel. The person he saw was the man who had won Halina’s love, who with his dazzling reputation had driven a wedge between Torgny and Halina.
‘When did she say that?’
Axel gave him a furtive glance.
‘It was in the letter she sent with the manuscript.’
‘Come on, Axel. You said you never saw her.’
‘She sent it in the mail.’
‘So where’s the letter now? Can I see it?’
‘I threw it away.’
‘Right. Why the hell would you think that I’d ever believe a word you say? What happened in Västerås, anyway? Suddenly Halina’s version sounds a lot more believable than yours.’
Axel didn’t answer.
Torgny closed his eyes.
Axel and Halina. Fucking in secret behind his back. His hands lying there on the desk, hands that had greedily explored her body. And Halina had willingly let it happen.
Axel had cheated him out of everything that had been his. Everything that had belonged to him and Halina, that had taken them years to nurture and polish, that they had learnt from each other’s pleasure. The man who now sat there behind the desk, lying, had stripped them of their most intimate secrets.
He saw Halina’s face, her lips parted, the tip of her tongue, her mouth closing around Axel’s swollen cock; the glint in her eyes, the way she moved her hips, the sound she made when he thrust inside her.
If that had happened he would have to kill him.
‘Take off your trousers.’
Axel stared at him.
‘What?’
‘Take off your trousers, I said!’
‘Are you crazy?’
‘You have a birthmark there somewhere, don’t you?’
Axel closed his eyes.
‘Halina described it to me to make me believe her. She even drew it on a piece of paper to convince me.’
During those last days. When all that remained was to hurt him.
‘Do you remember what I said there in the woodshed? That I would kill you if I found out you had lied?’
Nothing more needed to be said. He could read the truth in Axel’s face.
‘You fucking pig!’
‘It was only that one time in Västerås. I beg you to forgive me, Torgny. She said that you weren’t a couple, that you were just friends. If I’d known she was lying I would never have touched her.’