Jonas Jonasson - The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden

‘And that’s why the monarchy must be eradicated?’ said Henrietta. ‘With cunning and patience? How do you mean to use the cunning and patience?’

What she thought – but didn’t say – was that neither patience nor cunning had historically been salient traits of her husband’s.

Well, when it came to patience, Ingmar realized that even if he and Henrietta had created a child as recently as the day before, it would take several months before the kid arrived and, thereafter, years before Holger was old enough to take over from his father.

‘Take over what?’ Henrietta wondered.

‘The battle, my dear Henrietta. The battle.’

Ingmar had had plenty of time to think while he hitchhiked through Europe. It wouldn’t be easy to eradicate the monarchy. It was something of a lifelong project. Or even more than that. That was where Holger came in. Because if Ingmar died before the battle was won, his son would step in.

‘Why Holger in particular?’ Henrietta wondered, among all the other things she was still wondering.

Well, the boy could be called whatever he wanted, really; the battle was more important than the name. But it would be impractical not to call him something . At first Ingmar had considered Wilhelm after the famous author and republican Vilhelm Moberg, but then he had realized that one of the king’s sons had the same name, with the addition of ‘Prince and Duke of Södermanland’.

Instead he had gone through other names, from A onwards, and when he got to H , while biking from Malmö to Lund, he happened to think of that Salvationist he had got to know just the day before. The soldier’s name was Holger, and he certainly did have a good heart, even if he was careless with the amount of air in his tyres. The honesty and decency Holger had shown him was really something, and Ingmar couldn’t think of a single nobleman on Earth with that name. Holger was precisely as far from the book of nobility as the situation demanded.

With that, Henrietta got just about the whole picture: Sweden’s leading monarchist would from now on devote his life to bringing the royal family crashing down. He intended to follow this vocation to the grave, and before then he would make sure that his descendants were ready when the time came. All in all, this made him both cunning and patient.

‘Not descendants,’ said Ingmar. ‘Descendant. His name will be Holger.’

* * *

As it turned out, however, Holger was nowhere near as eager as his father. During the next fourteen years, Ingmar ended up spending his time on essentially two things:

1 Reading everything he could get his hands on about infertility, and

2 Comprehensive and unconventional defamation of the king as a phenomenon and as a person.

In addition to this, he did not neglect his work as a clerk of the lowest possible rank at the Södertälje Post Office any more than to the extent that his boss could put up with; thus he avoided being fired.

Once he had gone through the entire city library in Södertälje, Ingmar regularly took the train back and forth to Stockholm, to the Royal Library. A hell of a name, but they had books to spare there.

Ingmar learned all that was worth knowing about ovulation problems, chromosomal abnormalities and dysfunctional sperm. As he dug deeper into the archive, he also took in information of more dubious scientific merit.

So, for example, on certain days he would walk around the house naked from the waist down between the time he got home from work (usually fifteen minutes before his shift was over) until it was time to go to bed. This way he kept his scrotum cool and, according to what Ingmar had read, this was good for the motility of his sperm.

‘Can you stir the soup while I hang up the laundry, Ingmar?’ Henrietta might say.

‘No, my scrotum would be too close to the stove,’ Ingmar answered.

Henrietta still loved her husband because he was so full of life, but she needed to balance things out with an extra John Silver now and then. And one more. And, incidentally, yet another one that time Ingmar was trying to be nice by going to the grocery store to buy cream – naked down below out of sheer forgetfulness.

Otherwise he was more crazy than he was forgetful. For example, he had learned when to expect Henrietta’s periods. This way he could take off during those futile days in order to make life miserable for his head of state. Which he did indeed, in big ways and small.

Among other things, he managed to honour His Majesty on the king’s ninetieth birthday on 16 June 1948, by unfurling a thirty-yard-wide banner that read DIE, YOU OLD GOAT, DIE! over Kungsgatan and the king’s motorcade at just the right moment. By this point, Gustaf V’s sight was very poor, but a blind person practically could have seen what the banner said. According to the next day’s Dagens Nyheter , the king had said that ‘The guilty party shall be arrested and brought to me!’

So now he wanted to see Ingmar.

After his success on Kungsgatan, Ingmar lay relatively low until October 1950, when he hired a young and unsuspecting tenor from the Stockholm Opera to sing ‘Bye, Bye, Baby’ outside the window of Drottningholm Palace, where Gustaf V lay on his deathbed. The tenor took a licking from the group of people keeping vigil outside, while Ingmar, who was familiar with the surrounding shrubbery, managed to get away. The battered tenor wrote him an angry letter in which he demanded not only the fee of two hundred kronor as previously agreed, but also five hundred kronor for pain and suffering. But because Ingmar had hired the tenor under a fake name and an even faker address, the demand went nowhere except to the Lövsta rubbish dump, where the site manager read it, crumpled it up, and threw it into Incinerator Number Two.

In 1955, Ingmar followed the new king’s royal tour around the country without managing to cause any problems at all. He was near despair, and he decided that he had to be bolder and not settle for just opinion building. For the king’s fat arse was more secure on the throne than ever.

‘Can’t you let it go now?’ said Henrietta.

‘You’re being negative again, my darling. I’ve heard that it takes positive thinking to become pregnant. By the way, I also read that you shouldn’t drink mercury – it’s harmful to an early pregnancy.’

‘Mercury?’ said Henrietta. ‘Why on earth would I drink mercury?’

‘That’s what I’m saying! And you can’t have soy in your food.’

‘Soy? What’s that?’

‘I don’t know. But don’t put it in your food.’

In August 1960, Ingmar had a new pregnancy idea; once again it was something he’d read. It was just that it was a bit embarrassing to bring up with Henrietta.

‘Um, if you stand on your head while we . . . do it . . . then it’s easier for the sperm to . . .’

‘On my head?’

Henrietta asked her husband if he was nuts, and she realized that the thought had actually occurred to her. But by all means. Nothing would come of it anyway. She had become resigned.

What was even more surprising was that the bizarre position made the whole thing more pleasant than it had been in a long time. The adventure was full of delighted cries from both parties. Once she discovered that Ingmar hadn’t fallen asleep right away, Henrietta went so far as to make a suggestion:

‘That wasn’t half bad, darling. Should we try once more?’

Ingmar surprised himself by still being awake. He considered what Henrietta had just said, and replied, ‘Yes, what the heck.’

Whether it was the first time that night or the next time was impossible to know, but after thirteen infertile years, Henrietta was finally pregnant.

‘Holger, my Holger, you’re on your way!’ Ingmar hollered at her belly when she told him.