Юнас Юнассон - The Accidental Further Adventures of the Hundred-Year-Old Man

‘We’re not holding any séances with this new one, right?’ said Julius.

It was already night-time when Johnny Engvall arrived at Klipphällen Pension. There was no hearse parked outside; he was too late.

The manager of the pension, who had not, in fact, died at the séance table, was in the kitchen cooking a new batch of pea soup when she received a surprise visitor.

The Nazi made an effort not to scare the old woman too much. Before he squeezed what she knew out of her, he would try to get her to tell him voluntarily.

‘Good day to you!’ he said, hating himself for his pleasant tone.

‘Good day to you ,’ said Mrs Lundblad. ‘Are we looking for a place to spend the night?’

Pea soup was Johnny’s favourite. It was delicious, Swedish, and authentic. Especially with some mustard on the edge of the bowl, a piece of knäckebröd , and a big glass of milk.

‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘And perhaps even a bit of food?’

Mrs Lundblad invited him to the table. The soup was almost ready. As she set two places, she said she was happy to have company, for she’d had a perfectly horrible day, she would like her guest to know.

And she told him the tale. Johnny didn’t even have to ask.

Three horrid people – with a hearse! – had arrived the day before. Just a few hours before the young gentleman arrived they had invited her to a séance, offering her the chance to speak with her dead husband. It had all gone well, but when she happened to faint with the excitement those louts had taken off. It was so unchristian as to be beyond words.

Johnny really wanted to ask straight away whether she knew where they had gone, but something else took precedence.

‘A séance?’ he said. ‘Did you really speak with your husband, ma’am?’

‘Oh, yes. He’s happy up there in heaven, I now know. And imagine! He’s stopped smoking. My darling, clever Börje stopped smoking!’

For the second time, the Nazi was struck by the thought, as absurd as it was wonderful, that he might be able to contact Kenneth on the other side. This time it took longer to put out of his mind.

The soup was marvellous. And the old woman had probably been blonde before her hair turned white, which only made it that much better.

‘You’re a fantastic cook, I must say. Tell me, do you know where those horrible people went?’

No, of course the old woman didn’t know. She had been unconscious when they left.

‘I understand. Did they take anything? Did they leave anything?’

No, apparently they weren’t thieves. The only trace of them was a note left on the counter. She handed over a sheet of A4. It read:

Stockholm – no.

Gothenburg – hmm.

Malmö – yes.

Malmö!

That was where they were going.

‘Would the delightful gentleman like seconds?’ asked the old woman.

‘No, I wouldn’t, you old bitch,’ said Johnny Engvall, and left.

That last bit felt good.

‘And what has Trump done since last time?’ Julius started off the next day’s breakfast.

It was time to leave: a hundred and fifty kilometres to Malmö. Where they would stay once they arrived remained to be seen. One thing at a time. On that note, Julius thought if they got Allan’s news from the black tablet over with now, they might get out of there and to the point much quicker.

‘Glad you asked,’ said Allan. ‘And I’d thought we could skip that for today, considering the difficult situation we’re in. But, of course, a thing or two did happen while we were sleeping, or whatever you two were doing instead. I thought I heard something through the wall.’

‘Get to the point,’ said Sabine.

Right, Trump. He had appointed a new communications director, who immediately communicated that he intended to fire everyone around him, at which point he himself was dismissed.

‘Thanks for the update,’ said Julius, ‘so shall we—’

‘Hold on! I only told you that for context. They say the man behind the president’s fire-as-many-people-as-possible-in-as-little-time-as-possible strategy is our friend Bannon.’

‘Our friend who?’

‘Steve Bannon. The chief strategist. The surly red-faced man who met us at the airport in New York.’

‘Oh, that was his name. I didn’t know he’s the president’s chief strategist.’

‘Well, he’s not. Not any more.’

Malmö was getting closer and closer. Julius had dozed off in the passenger seat. Allan was snoozing in the coffin, always ready to play dead should the need arise. Sabine was alone with her thoughts. She wasn’t happy about starting a new business in Sweden, the country where they’d managed to rile a Nazi. A foreign country would be safer. But which one? It wasn’t enough just to make contact with someone on the other side: she would also need to understand what they said. Plus it was uncertain how economically viable this might be.

Which brought her back to her original thought.

Olekorinko. The witch doctor. Or mganga , in the local language. The man her mother Gertrud had spoken of so often. With a business model unlike any other.

In Africa.

Shit, shit, shit.

She’d sworn inaudibly. But Julius heard the silence and woke up. ‘What are you thinking about?’ he asked.

‘Nothing.’

She saw no other solution than to follow the path and the Facebook campaign Allan and Julius had already prepared, where Sabine’s abilities would be advertised as ‘Medium Esmeralda’, based in Malmö – six hundred kilometres from the angry Nazi in Stockholm, but just one bridge from the gigantic Copenhagen market.

It’s not easy to find a business location when you’re living under the radar. Or, for that matter, a place to live. Their solution was to expose Julius to a certain amount of risk: he was the only one of the group who didn’t appear in any registry of firms. There were empty rental apartments scattered around the area, among others a two-bedroom place in southern Rosengård for just over six thousand kronor per month, only seven kilometres from central Malmö. It wasn’t the most attractive part of the city, but for that very reason it was a good option for the friends. Buying a centrally located place for three or four million was, of course, out of the question.

Julius was dropped off outside the offices of the public housing authority (which, unlike the available apartment, was not in Rosengård) to express their interest.

And, to his surprise, he got a no .

‘We have rules,’ said the representative of the authority, a woman in her forties.

‘And what are those rules?’ asked Julius, who, as a rule, hated rules.

‘Well, as I understand it, you are unable to provide a current address or steady income, and that makes things difficult.’

Julius looked at her. ‘When it comes to a current address, that’s what I’m currently trying to obtain. I can’t exactly report myself as living in one of your apartments until I have access to it, can I?’

‘That’s true,’ said the woman. ‘But your age leads me to suspect that you may have lived somewhere else previously but that is not evident from the form you filled in and there are no hits when I search your name in the system.’

This country! Couldn’t anything be kept private? Was he even allowed to choose a toothpaste on his own? But he didn’t say this.

‘Young lady,’ he said instead. ‘As a diplomat in the service of the Department for Foreign Affairs, I have not had an address in Sweden since the Cuban Missile Crisis. I have struggled on many occasions with extreme homesickness. But never have I felt it as strongly as now, when a municipal authority turns its back on me in this manner.’