Gregorius, p.1
Gregorius, page 1
Gregorius
Gregorius
Bengt Ohlsson
Translated from the Swedish by Silvester Mazzarella
with an afterword by Margaret Atwood
W. W. NORTON & COMPANY New York • London
Copyright © 2004, 2007 by Bengt Ohlsson
Translation copyright © by Silvester Mazzarella
Afterword copyright © by Margaret Atwood
All rights reserved
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10110
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ohlsson, Bengt, 1963–
[Gregorius. English]
Gregorius / Bengt Ohlsson; translated from the Swedish by Silvester
Mazzarella; with an afterword by Margaret Atwood.—1st American ed.
p. cm.
ISBN: 978-0-393-06992-1
I. Mazzarella, Silvester. II. Title.
PT9876.25.H562G7413 2008
839.73’74—dc22
2008001284
W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10110
www.wwnorton.com
W. W. Norton & Company Ltd., Castle House 75/76 Wells Street,
London W1T 3QT
To Helena
Thanks to Ingemar Glemme, Åke Abrahamsson,
Hans Isaksson, Håkan Johansson, the Schrenckh family,
Erik Satie and Ministry.
Contents
Begin Reading
Afterword
After the evening meal Helga says she’s thinking of going for a walk. Meanwhile Märit’s busy clearing the table. I think I see something change in Märit’s tired, yellowish face, like when a blind goes up.
And I wonder whether Helga’s planned the whole thing. Perhaps she knows I’ll think twice before asking her compromising questions with Märit in the room. Or perhaps she just suspects it.
I say I suppose that’s fine, since I’ll be busy planning the Confirmation class.
She nods and gets up. I’m desperate to stop her. I don’t know why.
‘My dear,’ I say.
‘Yes?’
But then, when she looks at me, I do understand why.
I want to see if she has that expression on her face this evening. That little smile with lips tensed till they’re almost white.
‘Mind where you go.’
She lifts her eyebrows.
‘It’s hot outside,’ I say. ‘Have you any idea how hot it is? On an evening like this everyone goes out, and they go out for the wrong reasons. I mean, not because they think it’ll be pleasant, but because it’s unbearable to stay indoors. On an evening like this, you know, the only people who stay in are those who for one reason or another can’t go out. Do you understand what I mean?’
She nods. I detect a thrill of fear in her eyes, as if she’s worried this will take a long time. Perhaps that’s the very reason I can’t bring myself to stop.
‘The sick and the old,’ I continue. ‘Sitting in their hovels, coughing themselves to death. Perhaps with festering wounds, and flies buzzing around their dirty bandages. There they sit, listening to the cheerful voices from the street, children laughing, hawkers going about with their carts and calling their wares. They hear life passing them by out there and curse their fate, that on an evening such as this they’re forced to sit there with a knee useless since birth or a foot that was crushed under a packing case…Or very small children, perhaps also sick. With stomach cramps perhaps, shrieking, whimpering, moaning, sweaty, filthy, with matted hair…’
She lowers her eyes, nods vigorously.
‘Do you understand?’ I say.
‘Yes,’ she whispers.
‘The streets are full of people who’ve fled from this inferno. All I ask is that you bear this in mind, and exercise a certain caution. That’s all.’
‘I shall. It was good of you to remind me.’
A few seconds’ silence. Märit’s hurried off with her rattling tray. My wife clings tightly to the arm of her chair, restlessly chafing its smooth surface with her thumbs. There’s that smile again. She gives a little nod and leaves the room. There’s a lively rustle from the fabric of her dress.
That little smile. Those tense lips. Why does that memory come back to me?
I sit still in front of the empty dining table, rubbing my knuckles against my temples with short slow movements as if to knead away the image that has surfaced from my memory, as if to press it back into the hidden places of the brain. But it is pointless. Just as with everything else I try to knead away. I can clearly see the monkey in front of me.
The square, Stortorget, many years ago: I saw a crowd and went over to them. There was some sort of travelling mob, gypsies presumably, I don’t remember. The little monkey had been dressed up in a sailor suit, complete with cap and everything. The gypsies had constructed a roundabout for it from an old cartwheel, with a little chair where it was sitting lashed fast while a gypsy made the wheel turn, round and round. The crowd shouted with delight every time the gypsy jerked the wheel. The monkey was terrified, looking about itself and pulling its lips apart so it looked as if it was laughing. From time to time, perhaps when the fear became more than it could bear, it would push its mouth forward, giving the crowd the impression that it was pouting seductively at them, and then their shouts of joy grew louder than ever, supplemented by coarse comments from a drunken shoemaker.
It was particularly heartrending to see how the monkey kept one hand pressed to its head to hold its sailor cap in place (hardly an action that would come naturally to a monkey, so the gypsies must have trained it to do so, using I can’t bear to think what methods).
That monkey’s smile, and perhaps its wandering eye too, has become my wife’s.
I go over and open the window. Wipe the sweat from my upper lip and lean out. When I hear quick light steps outside on the gravel I pull myself back in, because I don’t want her to think I’ve gone to the window to spy on her.
I sit down on the leather-covered chair by the window, facing the room so that if she does glance up she won’t see me and I won’t see her either, and I think about the muddled tirade I’ve just fired off at her, about all the people running out into the streets because for one reason or another it’s unbearable indoors.
I might also have mentioned all the women who’ve grown tired of their husbands and have ventured out in search of new adventures.
Now that the footsteps outside have crunched away in the direction of Badstugatan and been absorbed into the general noise of clatter and shouts and clip-clops, I can look out.
I see a young family, a wood-carrier called Lagerström and his young wife with their two children, a boy of about five and a girl I’ve just recently christened Svea.
They are slowly crossing the churchyard. Fru Lagerström is saying something and clearly hoping her husband will agree; he’s walking with his hands behind his back, and every so often he looks at her to encourage her to continue.
Suddenly she notices me up in the window and abruptly falls silent. Herr Lagerström follows her gaze; they nod to me and I nod back, and I realise as I do so that I have automatically assumed a pensive, elevated expression, as if deep in thought about some sermon I’m planning.
The young couple’s conversation is over, and Herr Lagerström is pointing towards a corner of the churchyard. His earnest listening expression has changed to one of appreciation and optimism, as if he’s praising some new building or waxing lyrical over some beauty of nature.
I wonder when Fru Lagerström will go on with the story she was telling. If she ever does.
Perhaps her husband really has seen something that delights him. It’s not long since they moved here, from some hole in Västergötland.
I remember the first time I met him; there was something about him that made me uncertain. He was carrying an entirely unnecessary letter of introduction from the firm that employed him. The gaze of his cornflower-blue eyes was steady, his handshake was a trifle too firm, and he repeated several times in his stolid dialect that he’d be happy to help if I ever had a problem, or if I ‘needed a strong pair of fists’, as he put it. The corners of his mouth were black with snuff and he cleared his throat at regular intervals, as if to imprint himself on my memory, and there was nothing about him to suggest shyness or a sense of inferiority. He looked at me as he might at an ordinary farm labourer. I’m sure this didn’t imply disrespect or contempt, just that he looked on all men–farm labourers and pastors, boozers and barons–with the same honest blue eyes.
There are men like that, convinced they’re destined for something great and important. What’s unusual about them is they can see this greatness and significance in everything, even merely carrying logs in order to earn a living and be able to care for one’s wife and two children.
Sometimes I think this attribute or view of life, or whatever one might call it, is the most important thing of all, and that people of this kind are capable of going as far in life as anyone can. I’m sure that if they chose this wood-carrier to be king or prime minister, he’d have a cup of coffee, sort all the tasks before him into separate piles and then deal with his tasks one by one, and it would be obvious to him that if there was anything he didn’t understand it was up to him to ask other people for advice, and this realisation wouldn’t embarrass him in the least.
You could take it for granted he’d do his job brilliantly and be remembered as a great prime minister.
Now the Lagerströms are out of sight. Other families are bound to appear soon.
Suddenly my heart gives a double beat. Blood rushes to my face. I hurry over to the big mirror. Look for a sign. I don’t know what.
A definite double beat. The sensation resonates through my body in a strange and disagreeable way. Like when a stone lands in a mirror-smooth lake causing strong ripples at first and then progressively weaker ones.
I stand resting my hands on the chest of drawers, fingertips on Aunt Anna’s lace cloth. The figure before me in the mirror, red as a lobster, looks like a squashed insect on the high white walls.
I must start keeping a diary, and I must keep it accurately so I can know whether this double beat is coming more frequently now. I want to be able to fish out a piece of paper when I am sitting with Dr Glas and tell him exactly when the double beat happened. Perhaps he’ll repeat the date and time of day aloud to himself as he makes an entry in his own notebook…
Or perhaps that would seem strange. I might catch an amused glint in the doctor’s eye, as if to say: Well, well, Pastor, are you really so monstrously afraid of death?
Yes indeed. That’s a thought that would cause him a great deal of pleasure.
I swallow. I become unpleasantly aware that the movement is spreading through all the loose hanging folds of creased skin on my throat. Like a curtain rising.
Or falling.
I’m on tenterhooks. Sometimes the next double beat comes after only a few minutes. It can happen at any time.
It’s as if an animal was waking inside my ribcage. I usually think of a mink. I don’t know why. A mink that has long been hibernating. Now it has woken and is frisking about with its little feet. Feet with sharp claws. It isn’t malicious. It doesn’t have a soul as we do, or the same kind of consciousness.
The mink has woken and doesn’t understand why it should lie there, shut inside my ribcage. That’s what makes it kick so violently. The horrible thing is, it doesn’t understand how badly it could injure me. It just wants to get out at any price.
So it struggles and scratches. Its movements spread through my body like a heavy, painful pulse.
It can come back at any time.
I search for signs of change. Is my face going back to its normal colour? Is my breathing quieter? I have a detached clinical eye.
Then suddenly it’s clinical no longer.
I’m just standing there staring at an old man scared out of his wits. A bizarre apparition. There’s nothing at all familiar or domesticated in his features.
Clearly I’m watching an organism in a state of disintegration. Hair beginning to turn grey and fall out. Skin beginning to shrivel and sag.
Another image brings me up short: if the man in the mirror was a flower, it would merely be a matter of time before the gardener would stop, frown, put down his watering-can, and bend to nip it off: a withering growth beyond saving. That’s how it is with nature. New flowers need to grow and they’re going to need light and space.
My nightmare is that this is precisely what Helga’s realised. She’s noticed what’s happening to this once magnificent plant, once a source of pride and confidence to her, a plant she admired for its luxuriant splendour when it stood a little higher than all the others. But now everything points one way, the plant’s dying and at any moment the gardener will bend down, pull it up by the roots and casually throw it on the compost heap, so she must try to escape before she’s contaminated by its decay.
She must escape from me in accordance with this implacable law of nature. In order to survive.
So here I am, in a world where everything I believe in, everything I hold dear, is collapsing and will be trampled into the mud by dirty hoofs.
A world where the only thing that matters is survival. A world where concepts like conscience, consideration and affection rattle emptily, and I’m struck by the bleak insight that these concepts are merely something we’ve hit on to make bearable this vale of tears. A comforting sweet to suck during our long journey to the black empty grave. Nothing more than that.
A world where humanity hardly ranks above the insects, and my wife’s trying to escape me by rushing out into the din of Stockholm to find a fitter mate to couple with.
Look at the bright red face, look at the pathetic attempt to comb hair across the shiny crown of his head, look at the bloodshot whites of the anxious, restless eyes. Almost like the monkey on the roundabout.
I must go out. I should be working, but what’s the point.
That much I have learned. I’ve often been sitting at my desk and woken as from a trance to look at the clock and see how much time has passed. How long I’ve been away. How long my thoughts have been wandering the lanes a few metres behind her like a mute attendant, quivering with dread and curiosity in equal measure. Who is he? Perhaps he’s there, in a doorway near Järntorget. Perhaps he’ll give a low whistle to attract her attention. And her mute follower, fascinated, will lean forward to detect a feverish gleam in her eyes. He’ll see her red lips open in an involuntary smile. She’ll slow down and her body will give an involuntary jerk as if someone’s trying to stop her and get her to turn around, but her feet will draw her irresistibly towards the man.
No, I’ve got to go out.
I go down the back stairs so no one will see me. I don’t want to have to explain myself to Märit or Sivert or anyone else.
At the same time I realise I’m only making things worse. If anyone comes looking for me…I can hear voices. The exact cadence of the words. No, the last time I saw him was up in the salon…Ah, then he must have gone out by the back way. I wonder why he should choose to go out by the back? And so the gossip starts.
When I come out into the street I slow down. Clasp my hands behind my back and look straight ahead. Now and then I notice people nodding to me, curtseying or raising their hats. But if I have a sufficiently resolute expression on my face no one will stop me with their troubles. I know that from experience.
It’s oppressively hot. The sun’s still broiling over the rooftops. It’ll be a little while yet before it goes down. People are keeping to the shady side of the street. There’s hardly any wind. Clothes have been hung out to dry in backyards; stockings and shirts droop motionless on their lines.
I’m already beginning to regret this adventure.
Perhaps I have a more sensitive sense of smell than other people. In this kind of weather it’s as if someone’s spread a cloth over us, just above the treetops, pressing every stench and miasma down to earth, cramming it all into a broth festering with bacteria.
The stink from long-unemptied privies wafts into the butcher’s, where animal corpses hang in rows and little clouds of flies are busy vomiting and laying eggs on the meat and whatever else they do. Sweat and dust from passers-by, a puff of cheap perfume, puddles of horse-piss in the gutters and a dustbin, brimful, outside an alehouse…All a filthy, infected mixture. There’s no escape.
Still I go on. There’s always a possibility–however small–that I may run into her.
That, of course, is why I’m here. The hope–and fear–that we may end up in a situation where masks will fall and everything will be revealed.
‘Excuse me, Pastor?’
A man’s voice on my right. A woman’s voice trying to hush him.
I walk straight on. But I know I should have stopped, if only to fix my eyes on him. It’s perfectly acceptable to look determined and sunk deep in your own thoughts. Especially if you’re a priest. But you mustn’t overdo it, or your parishioners will think you’re behaving oddly.
Really, I’m not well suited to being a priest. I wonder if I’d have chosen the same profession if I’d been able to peer into the future when I was twenty. If I’d been able to go for a walk then, wearing the clothes of the man of nearly sixty that I am now, if I’d been able to experience this torment of hearing lively conversations die away when people catch sight of me, and tittle-tattle start as soon as I’m only a few steps further on when they think I’m out of earshot…How horribly well I’ve learned to recognise that combination of vowels: ‘eeoo…’ with an ‘s’ at the end. ‘Eeoo…s’.
