Karin Alvtegen - Shadow

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.

Sixty-three years later he still didn’t know whether he had done the right thing. He had followed his conviction, but with the years his perspective had changed. A nagging guilt had become his companion, constantly driving him forward. No matter how much fame he acquired, it would never sink in. He could stand and look at his books and all his fine prizes, but he had never been able to feel any pride. They were and remained mere mileposts that he needed to surpass.

And all his life he had felt uneasy every time he was unlucky enough to meet an engineer.

Young people believed there was a goal in life. He had believed it himself; on that particular day he had believed it, believed it blindly, when in spite of his parents’ annihilating disappointment he had set off to write his book. And he had written his book. And he had become an author. And he had realised that life was an infinite journey. The redemptive goal had always turned out to be a new starting point by the time he managed to get there. It wasn’t possible to reach any goal. Only an end. And when he finally arrived, much like before, so many things had forever been left too late.

He woke up when it was suddenly silent and realised that he’d fallen asleep for a moment. With a rustling sound Jan-Erik was folding up the newspaper.

‘I have to get going now. I’ll swing by the house and see if I can find a picture of Gerda Persson. She died about a week ago and they want one for the funeral.’

All of a sudden he was wide-awake. His eyes flew open. The name had taken him straight into the nooks and crannies of his mind.

‘I thought I’d see if I could find something. You probably know if there’s something in your office, don’t you? Maybe in the cupboard where you saved everything over the years?’

He was having heart palpitations. Gerda was gone and he ought to feel grateful. Evidently she had remained loyal to the end. Now there was only one person left who could obliterate his life’s work. If he was still alive. As long as Axel had been able to talk it would have been both of them dragged through the mud if the truth had come out. But since the stroke not a day had passed without his thinking of that man’s name and what he might be capable of doing.

And then there was the cupboard in his office, where things were kept that nobody must see. He had begun to clean it out shortly before he had the stroke, suddenly aware of the insanity of keeping those things. Perhaps his unconscious had been warning him that time was growing short. But he hadn’t finished. He wondered whether the rubbish bag was still there or whether Jan-Erik had thrown it out by now. He hoped so. Even more he hoped that Torgny Wennberg was dead. The Devil himself in human form. If only these two wishes were fulfilled, the name Axel Ragnerfeldt would for ever be allowed to retain its radiance.