Kurdo Baksi: Stieg Larsson, My Friend

I was unable to lift my gaze and see exactly where the voice came from. The ground was shifting under my feet. Everything was so improbable. What was I doing there? What had really happened? I wanted to stand up and tell her she couldn’t do this. She couldn’t simply appear and say something like that. You can say farewell to your friend now . It seemed so cruel, so final.

For me there is a life before and a life after that sentence.

It was that sentence which robbed me of my friend in a concrete, brutal and naked way.

It is so absurd. My first thought was how we were soon going to celebrate, after the event, Stieg’s fiftieth birthday. Fragments of memories staggered through my mind. I saw him before me on New Year’s Eve, 2000, at the home of a colleague somewhere in southern Stockholm, not far from Expo ’s first office. Then the two of us on the balcony of his home. We were smoking cigarettes, drinking whisky and talking. What were we talking about? What on earth were we talking about? Then our first joint press conference, when he dealt with all the journalists and photographers with his inimitable charm.

I realized that I was crying. I had lost my mentor, and my best discussion partner – but most of all I had lost my unconditional friend. My big brother.

Eva arrived. Naturally, she was heartbroken. We embraced. Shortly afterwards Erland arrived from Umeå. By then it was 9.00 p.m. Still nobody had gone in to say farewell to Stieg.

I was the first to enter the final room Stieg occupied on this earth. He was lying on the bed. He was nicely dressed. He was wearing his glasses. His black and white tie was in place. His eyes were shut. I couldn’t grasp that this man had left us.

There was a little stool at the side of the bed. Should I sit there? I walked hesitantly towards Stieg. I clasped my hands together and listened to my own voice.

“Stieg, you are leaving your nearest and dearest very early in life. I want to thank you for all the good times we had together. And for all the difficult ones. I hope I have never hurt you, ever.”

Over and over again I had to wipe away tears with the back of my hand.

I was not as strong as I had thought. I left Stieg with slow, stumbling steps.

The others went in to say their farewells. Some went in alone, others in small groups. The last person to say farewell to Stieg was Eva.

Deep down inside me I could hear Stieg’s voice repeating the last words he ever said: “I’m fifty, damn it!”

His last words which I didn’t actually hear myself. Nevertheless, I could hear them echoing inside me. This was the end of his fifty-year-long journey. A journey that began in Skelleftehamn and continued through his childhood in Bjursele and Sandbacka, and his youth in Umeå, with a few excursions to Eritrea, Morocco, Algeria, Gibraltar, Grenada.

A journey that came to an end one chilly November night at St Göran’s Hospital in Stockholm.

No. November is not a month to be relied upon. But, I thought, the considerate Stieg Larsson no doubt had a good reason for leaving when he did. As he almost always had. As usual, I realized that I trusted him, no matter what happened. It could quite simply be, I thought to myself, that his mother, Vivianne, his grandfather Severin and his grandmother Tekla had been kept waiting for him far too long.

Yes, I know, Stieg, it may be a naive thought, but as I write these words I think that despite everything, one of these days we can win peace. We can. All of us. I hope so.

Sleep well, Stieg.

This is not a blind tribute to a friend. Everybody who met Stieg Larsson will have their own picture of him. The same applies to those who were close to him.

For more than ten years Stieg and I met almost every day. I was with him during his most difficult times, and I was present and able to share in his successes and happiness.

Despite the fact that he was eleven years older than I, we were colleagues and friends. You could almost say that we were each other’s boss. Stieg was the most unassuming person I have ever met, and the unconditional friendship he gave me is irreplaceable.

As his enormous success as a novelist grows, there is a danger that his single-minded fight does not receive the attention it deserves. That fight was such an important part of him, both as a person and as a writer. My hope is that to some extent this book has succeeded in describing it.

It is only now, after almost five years of mourning, that I have been able to summon up enough courage to write about my friend and colleague. This book is my picture of Stieg Larsson.

In conclusion I would like to thank Håkan Bravinger and Eva Gedin at Norstedts for all their help and advice.

Kurdo Baksi

September 2009