His lectures were over. Never again would he stand on a stage and feel the flood of applause. Never again would he see the respectful glances when he mentioned his surname. From here on he would carry the name like a disfigurement. He would never get his literature prize from the Nordic Council. Louise would never regret that she’d left him.
Everything would be taken from him.
Kristoffer grabbed the letter out of Jan-Erik’s hand. After a last glance down into the hole he started walking towards the gate.
‘Wait a minute!’
Kristoffer kept walking.
‘Really, wait a minute, can’t we talk?’
Jan-Erik was blameless, yet he was the one who would be forced to endure the punishment.
‘I’ll give you money. Three hundred and fifty thousand kronor. Danish.’
Kristoffer stopped short and turned round. Jan-Erik couldn’t make out his expression, but the tiny hope that had glimmered was extinguished when he heard Kristoffer’s reply.
‘Fuck you!’
Then he kept walking towards the gate, with the white threat fluttering in his hand. Outside that gate Gerda’s words would spread like pollen.
Jan-Erik didn’t have time to think. Not when he bent down and his hand gripped the handle of the shovel. Not when his legs began to run to catch up. Not even when he stood a few metres from the gate and looked at the motionless body on the gravel path. The only thing he felt was surprise. The light of the street-lamp fell on the hands holding the shovel, and he was amazed that they were his. They had obeyed instinct, an instinct as old as humankind – the readiness to kill in order to protect what is ours.
Somewhere inside him he had unknowingly carried that ability.
During all those years when he had fought for what little he’d been able to achieve.
A life in the shadow of the man so admired.
For that little bit he had shown himself capable of killing.
The hole was already dug. The ground had been broken by those who had gone before.
Thirty-one years later it had fallen to the next generation to transform the place into a family plot.
33
Lovely is the earth, lovely is God’s Heaven,
beautiful the pilgrimage of souls.
Through the fair realms of the earth
we march unto paradise with song.
Marianne Folkesson sat alone on the church pew with a hymnbook in her hands. She knew the hymn by heart, she had sung it at so many funerals. The magnificent tones of the organ resounded between the stone walls where there was nothing to muffle the sound. Nothing but herself, the pastor, the cantor and the funeral director. No Kristoffer Sandeblom, no one from the Ragnerfeldt family, no Torgny Wennberg.
Gerda Persson would go to her eternal rest as alone as she seemed to have lived her life.
Epochs may come, epochs may fade away,
generations follow one by one.
Never muted is the tone from Heaven
in the soul’s joyful pilgrim song.
She looked at the white casket, decorated with red roses as Jan-Erik Ragnerfeldt had suggested. It was not an extravagant flower arrangement, but as usual the florist had done a fine job. The blood-red colour framed by green gave dignity to the scene and alleviated her feeling of failure.
Just before the church bells began to toll and the doors were closed, she had stood on the church steps and called Kristoffer Sandeblom. No one had answered. She wondered whether it was the letter from Gerda that had made him change his mind, if that was why he had decided not to attend. Her curiosity about what the letter had said, whether it contained the explanation of the will, had remained with her since she had posted it.
Disappointed that no one had shown up, she took her place at the front of the church and nodded to the young pastor. Sadly there was no reason to wait any longer.
Souls rejoice, the Saviour is come.
Peace on Earth the Lord has proclaimed.
The tones of the organ slowly died out. The pastor went up and stood next to the casket.
‘In the name of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.’
She heard the cantor moving about in the choir. The sound was amplified in all the emptiness and blunted her sorrow. In front of her the pastor unfolded the paper she had sent him. Some brief information about Gerda. She had written down the little she knew but hoped that he could still come up with a suitable eulogy. She had done what was expected and perhaps a little more besides, but still it didn’t feel adequate.
The pastor raised his eyes from the paper and began to speak.
‘We are gathered here today to say farewell to Gerda Anna Persson, who left us on the fourth of October, 2006. A long life has ended, and much has happened in the world during her lifetime. Ninety-two years have passed since 1914 when Gerda was born in Borgholm on the island of Öland. After six years in school, at the age of thirteen she went into service as a housemaid with a family in Kalmar. Four years later she moved to Stockholm, and here she would remain. For all those years since then she worked as a housekeeper for various families in and around Stockholm. She remained longest with the renowned author Axel Ragnerfeldt and his family, where she worked until she retired in 1981.’
He lowered the paper and put it in between the pages of the Bible he held in his hand. Marianne fingered the rose she would place on Gerda’s casket and hoped that the pastor intended to say something more. That he would make an effort for Gerda’s sake. She was just about to give up hope when he looked out over the deserted pews and began to speak as if every seat in the church were full.
‘When we imagine Gerda’s life, it is easy to resort to platitudes. I must admit that I did so myself when I was faced with this task. According to the standards of our day, we find at first glance nothing enviable, nothing we would wish for ourselves or our children; on the contrary, Gerda’s life appears monotonous and quite arduous. But what do we actually know about a human life? About the things that happened every day. About sorrows and joys. About the dreams she had and those that were fulfilled. We know little about Gerda, except that she now belongs to those who in the end found the answer to the eternal mystery of life. Let us then ask the question: can she teach us anything here today, by reminding us of the transience of life?’
Marianne leaned back. He had understood and shared her desire to honour Gerda at the last opportunity that remained.
‘Nowadays people often talk about happiness. Books are written about it, courses are taught on it, and some of us even try to buy it. Feeling happy has become a right, and we chase after it, convinced that once we have found it we will also find the solution to all our problems. Not being happy has come to be equated with failure. But what is happiness, after all? Is it possible to be happy each waking minute, day after day, year in and year out? Is it actually something worth striving for? For how can we conceive of our happiness if we have never experienced any pain? Sometimes I think that today we have trouble finding happiness because of our deep fear of suffering. Perhaps we have forgotten the lessons that can be learned from our own darkness. Is it not there that we must go sometimes in order eventually to distinguish the light from the stars? To understand how the happiness we so assiduously pursue actually feels? A life without sorrow is a symphony without bass notes. Is there anyone who can truthfully claim that he is always happy? I have never met such a person. On the other hand, I have met apparently happy people who said that they were content. I looked up the word in the National Encyclopaedia, and it describes the feeling of having obtained or achieved what can reasonably be desired. And when I read that, I thought that perhaps we have gone astray in our pursuit of happiness, that what we should actually be seeking is the ability to feel content. Something has made us believe that it is the rapture of the moment and the ecstatic rush of the senses that leads to happiness, but perhaps it is instead the courage to settle down and dare to be satisfied with what we have.’