“The most exciting thing about his life was that he died,” Sammy said.
“Are you done?” Ottosson asked.
Fredriksson nodded.
“With regard to Andersson we haven’t managed to find very much,” Berglund said, “but tomorrow we will probably be able to present the exciting details.”
“Sammy,” Ottosson said.
Sammy Nilsson’s account of the two farmers’ involvement in the Federation of Farmers was also not particularly dramatic. Both of them had been members but in different divisions. There was nothing to suggest that they had bumped into one another on such occasions.
“What about the threatening letter at Andersson’s house?” Lindell asked.
“Everything points to him being the author. The handwriting matches that on his own papers, but it will be checked into more thoroughly.”
The conference room fell silent. Ottosson gave Lindell a look and started to sum up the main points but noticed that his colleagues’ concentration was failing. Everything had been said and they were experienced enough to know what had to be done.
They broke up convinced that their working day would be long. Lindell gathered up her notes and exchanged a few words with the director of KUT before she went back to her office.
Fourteen
The knee-length grass swayed as if a giant hand was stroking it. Laura Hindersten thought there was something comforting about the movement. It was as if the wind in a gentle gesture took leave of what was left of the summer.
A rotted apple landed with a thud on what had once been a gravel path but was now woven through with weeds. The path led to an oval sitting area, paved in slate and surrounded by some gangly roses that Laura’s mother had planted. Laura could still remember the name of the rose: Orange Sensation. She remembered where and when they had bought them. It was at the nursery on Norbyvägen and Laura had just turned ten. Laura thought the talkative gardener was a distant relative because he used the same words as her mother and because the ends of his sentences disappeared and were replaced by a gesture or an expressive face, exactly like her grandfather’s.
He took them to an earth cellar on the edge of the nursery where they were greeted by the smell of raw earth. The roses were arranged on shelves, packed into bundles and with tiny pale shoots coming up from the stems. He carefully chose a bundle, cut the string, and inspected each rose one at a time. He saw poorly but compensated for this with touch and stroked the stems with his fingers. He put roses with shrivelled branches to one side.
“Those are B-quality,” he explained, “and that isn’t what you want.”
Laura got the impression that he was treating her mother very well. Few people were as polite to her as this old gardener.
“Is the young miss also interested in roses?”
Laura nodded. The man smiled at her. It seemed as if he enjoyed lingering in the earth cellar. He read the different names of the roses bundled on the groaning shelves. There was Poulsen rose, Alain, Nina Weibull, Peace, and many others.
“The Poulsen I only keep because…”
He smiled again and nodded.
“Well, you know, memories…”
She had watched the garden passively for an hour. She was so cold she was shivering but could not bring herself to go inside the house.
If someone had entered the garden and discovered her pressed up against the French windows, with the grocery bags at her feet, then Laura would have given the impression of a person without hope. Her inability to cross the threshold had imparted a strange stiffness to her pale face. Her gaze moved restlessly as if it was searching for a place to rest. The movement in the grass and the sound of the falling apple had of course not spurred her to open the terrace door and step into the warmth but it did wake her from her paralysis. She pulled her right hand across her face while the left one felt for the door handle behind her back.
Right here, a very long time ago on a warm summer’s day, was where her father and mother had stood. For once very close to each other, perhaps even hand in hand for a moment, in the no-man’s-land between her father’s domain-the house-and her mother’s, which was the garden.
The terrace door had been completely open. There was a great deal of traffic between the bushes and the trees, where small birds flew around with food in their beaks. The day before she had found a dead baby bird by the mock-orange bush and buried it behind the compost.
Laura had been sitting at the foot of the apple tree playing with a new gift. Happy voices had come from the house. The toy was uninteresting. It was the voices that meant something. She had fled out into the garden but not so far that she couldn’t hear the exhilarated guests’ avid conversation and the volleys of laughter that echoed like frightening bursts of thunder.
Her parents looked at her and smiled. Ulrik Hindersten was dressed in a dark suit and her mother wore a green dress with white lace around the neck. Laura thought they looked like a bride and groom.
“Dinner will be ready soon,” her mother said.
They went back in and Laura tried to understand why they had walked out onto the terrace together, so close to each other and apparently enjoying each other’s company.
Laura stared out over the garden and could see herself sitting under the apple tree. That was the day everything started. The previous conflicts between her and her father were nothing but outpost skirmishes compared to the drawn-out war that came after, a war that went on for over twenty years.
She finally opened the door and stepped over the bags in the dining room. The heavy chairs and table, the candelabra on the massive tabletop had been there that time. She sat down, letting her gaze go from chair to chair and called to mind, as her father must also have done many times, the different guests and their placement at the table. She even recalled the scent of perfume and food and the young student’s sweat.
All books and folders were gone, the curtains pulled back, and the light created a whole new room. On the table there was a white linen tablecloth and it was laid with the china that was usually stored in the oak sideboard.
Laura was called in but remained standing in the doorway. Mrs. Simonsson, who Laura saw for the last time at her mother’s funeral, was bringing out dishes and tureens. She wore a little apron and a white cap. Laura couldn’t help but laugh.
The adults were already seated. An older man whom Laura recognized from her father’s workplace was the one who talked most frequently and loudly. The women on both sides of him listened attentively.
Ulrik Hindersten asked for their attention and said he hoped the food would please them. He concluded his brief remarks by saying a few words in Latin-Laura thought they came from Livius, an author from whose work Ulrik Hindersten would often read aloud in the evenings. Many people around the table laughed.
It was the twentieth of July, Petrarch’s birthday, a day that was always celebrated in this house. But this time it was a twofold celebration. Over the summer a rumor had started and stubbornly grown stronger: that this fall the long-awaited recognition of Ulrik Hindersten’s scholarly contribution would finally be forthcoming. He was going to be appointed to the professorial chair.
Many of his colleagues were assembled at the table but also several acquaintances from the neighborhood, not the most immediate neighbors but two couples who lived farther down the street. There was also a literature expert from Stockholm among the guests and some older men who spoke Italian.
It was a real party. There was an abundance of food, made by Mrs. Simonsson from Tobo, one of the few of Alice Hindersten’s childhood friends with whom she was still in contact. Mrs. Simonsson would come two, three times a year and clean the house. Always before Christmas, but also in the spring and in September. Sometimes her husband came along, a quiet man who Laura was afraid of, mostly on account of his enormous hands. He performed minor repairs around the house, fixed gutters, re-caulked the windows, and oiled squeaky doors. One time Laura had seen him kill a stray cat that Ulrik Hindersten found annoying. First Simons-son had lured the cat over with some herring, then he twisted the cat’s neck without a word and buried it in a corner of the garden.