The Secret Life of Mr Roos Page 4

  As he crossed the Oktober footbridge over Kymlinge river, he noticed to his dismay that he was whistling.

  I’ve got to calm down, thought Ante Valdemar Roos. Make sure I keep a low profile. Lie doggo. What is it they say these days – eat crow? No, that can’t be right.

  It was all the same to him, anyway, and haste was a concept the good Lord hadn’t seen fit to create. He put his face into neutral and turned his steps heavily for home.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Walter Wrigman the next morning, pushing his glasses up onto his bald head. ‘What the hell are you saying?’

  ‘I quit,’ said Valdemar. ‘I’ve had enough.’

  Walter Wrigman’s jaws ground on empty for a few moments, but no words emerged from his mouth. His glasses slipped back down and landed with a smack on the bridge of his nose, where there was a deep, mauvish notch expressly for that purpose.

  ‘I’m handing in my notice,’ elaborated Valdemar. ‘I’d like to leave right away, if that’s all right, but I could stay another week if you think it’s necessary. No need for any severance payment.’

  ‘What . . . what are you going to do?’ asked Walter Wrigman, his voice squeaky with surprise.

  ‘I’ve got a few plans,’ said Valdemar.

  ‘How long have you been considering this?’

  ‘A while,’ said Valdemar. ‘I should have thought Tapanen could take over my responsibilities.’

  ‘It’s a very awkward time,’ said Wrigman.

  ‘I wouldn’t say so,’ said Valdemar. ‘We haven’t got many orders in the book. I suppose you’ll have to appoint somebody younger in due course.’

  ‘Well I’ll be damned,’ said Wrigman.

  ‘I don’t want cake or flowers or any of that crap,’ said Valdemar. ‘I thought I’d stick around this afternoon and pack up my stuff, if that’s all right with you.’

  ‘Well I’ll be damned,’ Wrigman said again.

  You’re no bloody charmer yourself, thought Valdemar, extending his hand.

  ‘Thanks for the past twenty-eight years. It could have been worse.’

  Walter Wrigman shook his head but did not take the outstretched hand. He just sat there in silence, chewing his lower lip.

  ‘Go to hell,’ he said eventually.

  Thought as much, Ante Valdemar Roos observed to himself. You bastard.

  Before leaving Wrigman’s Electrical for the last time, he took his car and went up to his lunchtime glade in the woods. He switched off his engine, wound down the side window and reclined the back of his seat.

  He surveyed the scene. The fields, the stony, juniper-clad slope, the edge of the forest. The light was different now, it was nearly five in the afternoon, and he realized he had never seen it at this time before. He had always been here in the middle of the day, between twelve and one, and it suddenly seemed to him to be a different place entirely.

  The spruces weren’t in sunlight as they usually were, the field had a deeper hue and the junipers looked almost black.

  That’s how it is, thought Ante Valdemar Roos. Time and space only intersect at the same point once a day. An hour one way or the other means a completely new intersection, that’s just the way it is.

  Yes, that’s how it works, this relationship between time and objects, he continued his philosophical train of thought. The world about us and the thing that cuts clean across it. So there’s no need to move for life to change around you, life takes care of that all by itself. All you have to do is sit there on the spot. That’s the fact of the matter.

  And he realized that this truth in some obscure way – which he still didn’t fully understand, but one day would – was bound up with what his father had said in the forest.

  Life never gets any better than this.

  That day and that moment which quite possibly hadn’t happened at all.

  As he stepped through the door he could immediately tell that both his stepdaughters were at home.

  Their rooms were off the hall, one on either side; both had left their doors ajar, and from Signe’s side boomed a kind of music he had an idea might be called techno. It sounded like something electronic that had got stuck in spite of its sluggish tempo; she played it loud because that was how it was meant to be; they had discussed the finer points of this on more than one occasion. From Wilma’s room came gales of laughter from some kind of talk show. Like Lennart Hyland’s classic show but louder and more vulgar, in Valdemar’s opinion. Body weight and incest and a whole lot more besides.

  He dodged through the crossfire and reached the living room. Here, too, the television was on, but no one was watching so he retrieved the remote from the floor and switched it off.

  Alice was in red tracksuit bottoms, lying on a yellow rubber mat in the bedroom, doing sit-ups. She put him vaguely in mind of a tortoise that had ended up on its back and was trying to lever itself up with its back legs. Unsuccessfully. He saw she had earphones in and didn’t try to engage her in conversation. In the kitchen there was a pile of ingredients that were presumably destined for a wok: vegetable stir-fry with chicken and rice, he surmised. He wondered for a moment whether to start chopping, but decided to await further instructions.

  So he sat down at the computer instead. It was on; clearly one or both of the girls had been chatrooming this Friday evening, or skyping or facebooking or whatever it was, because a message with a border of red hearts was flashing at him from the screen – I’ve got the hots for you, sweetie pie, you’re so cute!!! – and he was pretty sure it wasn’t for him. He closed five or six programs and opened his email. He had no new messages, that made it ten days now, and he momentarily asked himself why he’d bothered getting an email address. Maybe he could ask to get some of that spam everybody talked about? Signe came into the room behind his back.

  ‘I need five hundred kronor.’

  ‘What for?’ replied Valdemar.

  ‘I’m going out tonight and I’m broke.’

  ‘You’d better stay at home then,’ suggested Valdemar.

  ‘What the hell is up with you?’ said Signe. ‘Are you crazy?’

  He took out his wallet and handed her a five hundred kronor note. ‘What happened to your wages?’

  ‘I’ve left that stupid boutique.’

  Aha, thought Valdemar. You didn’t last more than a month there, either.

  ‘So you’re looking for another job at the moment?’

  She pulled a face.

  ‘Will I see you at Prince tonight?’

  She tucked the banknote inside her bra and left him. He switched off the computer and decided to take a shower.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with Signe,’ said Alice four hours later, when the house had subsided into relative calm. Both daughters had gone out, and the only sound came from the dishwasher and the washing machine, grumbling away in their usual keys from their usual places. ‘It’s just her age.’

  Högerberg next door, too, helping his six-year-old with her piano practice, he noted. That was something else he could hear. Shouldn’t six-year-olds be asleep by this time? he wondered. Alice was on the sofa, browsing through a book on GI foods, whatever they were. He was in one of the two armchairs, doing his best to stay awake while he waited for the start of the film they’d decided to watch. The programme guide described it as an American action comedy. TV3, so he wondered how many commercial breaks there would be, but realized he would never know the answer, because his aim was to nod off as soon as the wretched thing started.

  ‘You’re right there,’ he said, the second before he would have forgotten what they were talking about. ‘I expect she just needs a bloke and a job.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ said Alice. ‘A bloke and a job?’

  ‘Well,’ said Valdemar, ‘I suppose I mean more or less that . . . a bloke and a job. A job, at any rate.’

  ‘It isn’t easy being young these days,’ said Alice.

  ‘It’s never been easier to live today than in the whole history of the world,’ sa
id Valdemar. ‘Not in this country, anyway.’

  ‘I don’t know what’s got into you,’ said Alice. ‘The girls say the same thing. You’ve got so snotty recently. Wilma told me today she barely recognized you.’

  ‘She said that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But I’ve always been like this,’ said Valdemar with a sigh. ‘I’m just a grumpy old man. That’s what we’re like.’

  ‘It’s nothing to laugh about, Valdemar.’

  ‘I’m not laughing.’

  ‘They’re at a sensitive age, Valdemar.’

  ‘I thought they were different ages?’

  ‘It’s time for the film now. Can you put the TV on and stop being so mean, Valdemar?’

  ‘Sorry, Alice love, I honestly wasn’t trying to be.’

  ‘Well forget that now and put the telly on so we don’t miss the beginning. And help me eat up this chocolate, it really isn’t very nice.’

  He pressed the button and sank deeper into his armchair. Glad she’s started talking again, he thought. Because that was how it was: it didn’t matter what she said, as long as she didn’t punish him with silence. He yawned, felt stirrings of heartburn from the stir-fry and wondered if he could be bothered to get up for a glass of water.

  But it was after ten and fatigue overcame him before they were even halfway to the first advert break.

  If you wanted to count optimistically you could say Ante Valdemar Roos had one good friend.

  His name was Espen Lund, he was the same age as Valdemar and he worked as an estate agent for Lindgren, Larsson & Lund on Vårgårdavägen in Kymlinge.

  Espen Lund was a bachelor and they’d known each other since upper secondary. They didn’t meet socially any more, not since Valdemar had gone and married Alice, but there had been a period between Lisen and Alice – fifteen or twenty years, in fact – when they had quite a lot to do with each other. Mainly sessions in the pub, but also a few trips to football matches and trotting races. Espen was an inveterate sports fan, both as a spectator and a betting man. He could name all the male gold medal winners from the Melbourne summer Olympics onwards, and had always laughed at Valdemar’s ridiculous three-line system – but that wasn’t why Valdemar rang his number on the Sunday night.

  He had waited until he was alone in the flat. Alice and Wilma had just gone off to the Zeta to see a Hugh Grant film. Valdemar loathed Hugh Grant. Signe, meanwhile, was exhibiting all the signs of having found a new boyfriend on Saturday night and there’d been no word of her for twenty-four hours.

  ‘Can I trust you?’ said Valdemar.

  ‘No,’ said Aspen Lund. ‘I’d sell my own granny for a tin of snus.’

  That was a typical Espen Lund joke. Or Valdemar hoped so, at any rate. Espen generally said the exact opposite of what was expected of him – in his private life, that was, not his professional one, where he was always obliged to say exactly what was expected of him. He claimed that this dull fact explained the phenomenon. If you said it was nice weather, Espen Lund would retort that he was fed up with all this damn rain and wind. If you said he was looking well, he would spin you some tale of just having been diagnosed with a brain tumour and given two months to live.

  ‘I could do with your help,’ explained Valdemar.

  ‘That’s bad luck for you,’ said Espen.

  ‘I want it dealt with smoothly and no one else is to know.’

  There was the sound of coughing on the line and Valdemar could hear Espen lighting a cigarette as an antidote. ‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘Let’s hear it.’

  Good, thought Valdemar. We’re past the joking stage.

  ‘I’m hunting for a new house.’

  ‘Thinking of getting divorced?’

  ‘Of course not. But I need a little house where I can go to keep out of the way . . . for a project.’

  That last bit came to him out of thin air. Project? he thought. Well, why not? That could mean any damn thing at all. Even sitting on a chair and observing changes in space and time.

  ‘What sort of thing did you have in mind?’ said Espen Lund.

  ‘A place out in the woods,’ said Valdemar. ‘As far off the beaten track as possible. But not too far from town.’

  ‘How far from town exactly?’ asked Espen.

  ‘Twenty kilometres maybe,’ said Valdemar. ‘No more than thirty, I’d say.’

  ‘Size?’ said Espen.

  Valdemar thought about it. ‘Small,’ he said. ‘I only need some little shack. A crofter’s cottage or something along those lines. No home comforts required, though I wouldn’t object to electricity and water.

  ‘Mains drainage?’ asked Espen.

  ‘Wouldn’t hurt.’

  ‘Price bracket?’

  Valdemar could hear him starting to chew on something. A throat pastille, probably. Espen Lund got through two boxes a day on average.

  ‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘I’ll pay whatever it costs. But nothing too exorbitant, of course.’

  ‘Have you come into some money?’

  ‘I had a bit put by,’ said Valdemar. ‘But it’s important, see, that Alice doesn’t find out about this. Or anybody else. Is there a way of making sure of that?’

  ‘The purchase has to be formally registered in the normal way,’ said Espen. ‘But that’s all, there’s no need to advertise the fact. Oh, and you’ll eventually have to declare it on your tax return, of course.’

  ‘I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it,’ said Valdemar.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Espen. ‘Tell me, is there a woman in the picture?’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Valdemar. ‘I’m too old for women.’

  ‘Don’t say that. Have you got Internet access?’

  ‘Yes. Why do you ask?’

  ‘You can go onto our website and have a look for yourself. Everything’s on there and I think there might be a couple of properties of interest. Smart idea to buy in the autumn, too, it’s a hell of a lot cheaper.’

  ‘Yeah, that doesn’t surprise me.’

  ‘Well you have a browse on the web and if you find anything you can give me a ring. Then we’ll go out and take a look. Or maybe you’d rather go on your own? How does that sound?’

  ‘Great,’ said Valdemar. ‘And not a word. Behave yourself.’

  ‘Nothing could be further from my mind,’ said Espen Lund. He gave him the website address, and then they ended the call.

  Once in bed he found it hard to sleep.

  Alice was lying on her back beside him, breathing in her usual slightly laboured way. She had mastered the difficult art of falling asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow. Valdemar, on the other hand, found it easy enough to drop off almost anywhere – and at any time of day – but when it came to the crunch, when he finally got under the covers and put out the light after a long and futile day, he quite often found himself having trouble.

  Like a cork that wants to sink but can’t, he would think, because that was more or less how it felt. Sleep was down there in the depths, a good invigorating sleep, but up on the bright and wakeful surface, Ante Valdemar Roos floated around at a loss.

  On this particular evening he had every excuse, of course. Tomorrow would be the first day of the rest of his life, just as that daft sticker had said back in, when was it now, the eighties? The rest of my life, he thought. How would all those days turn out? He remembered Alexander Mutti, their stoical philosophy teacher in upper secondary, trying to hammer his golden rule into their long-haired heads.

  You are the only one who can create meaning in your life. If you put the decisions in other people’s hands, that’s still your decision.

  Espen? he unexpectedly found himself thinking. Has he got his life in his own hands?

  Maybe, maybe not. Going to the pub, watching football, losing money on gambling. Reading Hemingway, because he did that, too, the same books year out and year in. Trekking round showing houses and flats to pernickety prospective buyers forty to fifty hours a week.

  Was that worth ha
ving?

  Possibly to Espen, in spite of everything, thought Valdemar. To him, but not to me.

  So what do I want to do?

  What the devil is it you want to wring out of your remaining years here on earth, Ante Valdemar Roos?

  The question spooked him a bit, he had to admit. Or perhaps it was the answer that was causing this pressure in his chest.

  Because there was no answer. Or none that sounded remotely sane, anyway.

  I want to sit on a chair outside my house in the forest and look about me. Maybe take a walk now and then. Go inside if it gets cold.

  Light a fire.

  Could that be the point of it all? But how the hell would it look if everybody just sat on chairs gawping around and then lighting a fire?

  Oh well, thought Valdemar, that’s not my problem. I’m definitely not like other people, but I hope all the same that I have a hint of goodness to me, somewhere deep inside.

  Just a few grains.

  He didn’t know where that bit about goodness had popped up from, but after this summing up of the situation it only took a few minutes for him to fall into a deep and merciful sleep.

  5

  Monday started with a few light showers; both Alice and Wilma had their jackets on as they left the building and trudged off, but by the time Valdemar crossed the street to the parking area at the back of Lily’s Bakery, the sky had stabilized. A uniformly pale-grey paste stretched from horizon to horizon, the temperature seemed to be around the twenty mark and he was pretty sure he wouldn’t need the thick jumper he’d brought with him in his bag.

  It didn’t look as though there would be any more rain, either, and the mild breeze was blowing lightly from the south-west. As he unlocked the car he felt that flutter run through him again, like the one that had hit him as he came out of the bank and made him want to dance in the square. Something’s happened to me, he thought. What were they called, those plants whose seeds could only start to grow after an all-consuming forest fire? Pyrophytes, wasn’t that the name?

  Well I’m a pyrophyte, a human one, thought Ante Valdemar Roos, that’s where the problem lies. I only wake up every hundred years or so.