The Best Intentions (12 page)

There are some good things to say about this eating place for students, alcoholic telegraph clerks, and incurable bachelors. Märta's food, though not all that great, is certainly plentiful. If required, it is possible to have, in secret, a schnapps before and a brandy after the meal. As medicine. Credit is also generous, not to say intrepid. The establishment is run good-heartedly on infinitesimal margins. There are better (much better) but also worse places in this city of learning. The Friday meatloaf is the tour de force of the house, though when it reappears in disguise on Tuesdays, it is as dicey as Russian roulette.

It is now the middle of August, about half past five in the afternoon. The dining rooms are almost empty. Beef stew and thickened fruit syrup are on the menu, served together with home-brewed, very weak beer. Outside it is still high summer and a general strike is underway. Inside it's dusk, ingrained cooking smells, indeterminate scents from the toilet, and pent-up dissolution.

The three theology students from Professor Sundelius's examination are sitting at a corner table in the farthest room. Henrik, confused and lethargic, is staying in town instead of going back home to his mother and Söderhamn. He is camping out on a wretched sofa at Justus Bark's lodgings, the latter keeping the wolf from the door by tending flower beds in the botanical gardens. His inadequate allowance is not due until the beginning of September. The future suicide, Baltsar, is always flush with money and is self-taught. He devotes his time between terms to the Chinese language as written in the seventh century, when the Empress Wu tse-t'ien persecuted and annihilated many of the most powerful T'ang dynasty.

The three men are downing quantities of thickened fruit syrup with skimmed milk. Miss Märta passes and asks kindly whether the stew was good. Polite mumbles. She stops as if wanting to say something, but changes her mind. Then she says it all the same.

Miss Märta:
I'm sorry to have to tell you, but I must raise my prices. It's the general strike. Everything has become so insanely expensive, you see, gentlemen, so my monthly rates must go up from the first of September. Twenty ore a meal, that is, thirty-five kronor a month, or thereabouts. I have no wish to reduce the quality. And then we must have it nice and warm in the winter. Perhaps I may offer you a brandy with your coffee.

Appeased mumbling. Miss Märta fetches four glasses, unlocks the sideboard, takes out a bottle, locks the cupboard up again, and sits down. The theologians have fetched their coffee. They toast one another, after which, silence.

Perhaps it should be mentioned that Miss Märta Lagerstam does not look as one might expect. She is a small, white-haired lady with dark eyes and a pale, fine-featured face. She has narrow shoulders, a thin body, and moves easily No one dares play hell with Miss Märta.

She lights a cigarette in a long holder and leans back, looking at her guests through the veil of smoke, her eyes half-closed. Miss Märta's helpers have begun clearing the tables — the big table in the middle room, and the small tables the few guests have now left. Miss Gustava is a fat, silent girl with a sorrowful gaze; Miss Petra, scarcely beautiful but friendly, is forty years old and a widow.

“Let's put the gramophone on,” says Miss Märta, ordering Gustava to fetch the machine and the records. Justus offers to help her. When they go into Miss Märta's cluttered room beyond the kitchen, the theologian at once begins to lick and pinch the melancholy, passive girl, pressing her against the wall, and is just about to pull down her drawers when,
without warning, Miss Petra comes in. She doesn't take much notice of the commotion by the stove but just says, “I'll take the records. You have to mind that they don't fall on the floor and get broken.” Justus loses interest, and Gustava tucks her big breast back inside her blouse.

Miss Märta has now stood them another brandy, the girls have sat down on the two chairs drawn up for them, and the theologians are smoking proffered cigars. Out of the red gullet of the gramophone comes Enrico Caruso's beseeching voice:
Principessa di morte! principessa di gelo! Dal tuo tragico cielo, scendi gin sulla terra!
The lamp has been pushed forward and glows sleepily through the tobacco smoke and brandy fumes.

Miss Märta looks at her guests with a maternal smile. “Now, isn't this nice? Aren't we having a nice time? This is how it should be. Such nice boys! Henrik shouldn't bite his nails, and that Baltsar, what can we do about him? He starts crying as soon as you look at him, though young Bark looks as if he'll be all right, now that he's down inside Gustava's bodice, though someone should see to it that he gets some new top teeth, poor boy.

“Come over here and sit by me, Mr. Bergman! Why do you bite your nails? You shouldn't do that when you've got such nice hands. Well, what have you got to say for yourself? How do you get on with the ladies? Spoiled, of course, and courted. Picking and choosing. Now listen to me, young man. Don't look so terrified. I won't eat you. That's right!”

Justus Bark and Miss Gustava have lost their balance and fallen to the floor with a lot of long-winded and soundless giggling. They help each other to their feet, the girl's knot of hair now undone. Miss Marta leans across the table and changes the record. Now it is from
Die Fledermaus,
the party at the palace of the bored, lecherous old Prince Orlofsky. The choir sings caressingly beneath the scratching of the needle:
Brüderlein, Brüdelein und Schwesterlein Du, Du, Du, immerzu. Erst ein Kuss, dann ein Du . . .

Baltsar postpones his suicide for a few more hours and rests his narrow white forehead on Miss Petra's curvaceous shoulder and expertly caressing hand. Miss Märta turns her lips, her well-formed sensual lips with their two small transverse wrinkles, toward Henrik's lips and kisses him fleetingly at least three times. “Christ Almighty,” says Justus Bark suddenly. “I've got a letter for Henrik! It came this afternoon when I was at home freshening up. Sorry about the delay, but we were so occupied.”

Justus pulls a crumpled envelope out of his top pocket and hands
it over to Henrik, who focuses on it: the handwriting is unquestionably Anna's. It is undoubtedly a letter from Anna! Anna has written a letter to him! Anna has written!

He takes the letter very carefully, excusing himself with more confusion than courtesy, and tumbles out onto Dragarbrunnsgatan, now deserted in the rosy light of the setting sun. From the nearby shunting yards he can hear a puffing shunting engine and the clanging of train cars striking the buffers. He trots up Bävern Alley toward the river, then sinks down on a bench and reads the short and affectionately formal letter, in which, in a few lines at the end, Anna's mother has invited him to visit the family.

Ernst has been given a camera with a delayed action release as a birthday present, and a family photograph is to be arranged. (The photograph actually exists, though it is from a somewhat later period, probably the summer of 1912, but it fits better into this context, and anyhow this isn't a documentary.) After breakfast, the clan reassembles in the little meadow at the edge of the forest. It is a warm, sunny day, and everyone is in light clothes. Well, then . . . two chairs have been taken out. On one sits the traffic superintendent with his cane and breakfast cigar. If you look carefully with a magnifying glass, you can see that his calm, handsome face is distorted with pain and sleeplessness. Next to her husband sits Karin Åkerblom. There is no doubt whatsoever which of the two is the head of the household. The plump little person radiates authority and possibly smiling sarcasm. She has a stately summer hat on her well-tended hair, a kind of seal on her authority, clear eyes looking straight at the camera, and a small double chin. She has got herself into position to be photographed, but a few seconds later, she gets up full of vitality to issue orders. The older sons with their wives are grouped around the parents. Carl is standing alone, in profile, looking to the right, pretending he isn't there. Gustav and Martha's girls are laughing, and so are blurred. They have hunched up their shoulders and are holding each other around the waist, wearing blouses with sailor collars and calflength skirts. Nearer the camera, on the left in the photograph, Anna is sitting on the grass. For some reason, not hard to guess, she is looking very grave, her gaze open and ingenuous, her lips slightly parted — so many stolen, passionate kisses. Behind Karin, kneeling, are Ernst and Henrik, both in student caps, neat jackets, collars, and ties. It is quite clear that Henrik has been invited to the traffic superintendent's summer residence as a friend of their son's and not as a
possible fiance for their daughter. Slightly in the background, but quite visible, are Miss Lisen and Miss Siri, a dignified pair in dazzling white aprons and serious expressions.

Fourteen people, summer, August 1909. No more than a second. Go into the photograph and recreate the following seconds and minutes! Go into the photograph as you want to so badly! Why you want to so badly is hard to make out. Perhaps it's to provide some somewhat tardy redress to that gangling young man at Ernst's side. The one with the handsome, naked, uncertain face.

When the family portrait has been taken, the traffic superintendent, with the aid of a cane and gently supporting hands, is guided to the open loggia facing the sun and the view. The old gentleman is put into a special chair with an adjustable back and armrest and a green check rug. He is given a cushion behind his back, a stool under his feet; a wicker table is brought forward for the day's mail, yesterday's newspaper, a glass of mineral water with a few drops of brandy in it, and a pair of field binoculars. With her own fair hands, Mrs. Karin spreads a rug over his knees, kisses him on the forehead just as she does every other morning, before she herself sets about her day's multifarious exercising of power.

“You wanted to speak to young Bergman? He's waiting in the dining room. Shall I ask him to come here, or do you want to read your mail and your newspaper first?” says Mrs. Karin urgently. “No, no, let him come,” mumbles Johan Åkerblom. “It was actually you who wanted to speak to the boy. I don't know what to say.” “Of
course
you do,” retorts Mrs. Karin, without smiling, and goes to fetch Henrik.

He is invited to sit in a basket chair of indefinite form, neither stool, nor chair, nor armchair. The traffic superintendent smiles slightly apologetically as if to say: Don't look so terrified, my young friend, things aren't that bad. Instead he asks if Henrik would like to smoke, a cigar, a cigarillo, or perhaps a cigar-cigarette? Oh, he wouldn't? Of course. Of course you can smoke your pipe. Is that English tobacco? Yes, of course. English pipe tobacco is the best. The French is so harsh. Johan Åkerblom takes a sip of his brandy-colored mineral water and puffs at his cigar.

Johan Åkerblom:
If you use the binoculars, you can see the station building down there just beyond the curve of the tracks. If you look carefully, you can see the siding. I usually amuse myself by checking arrivals and departures, you see, Mr. Bergman. I have a timetable here for express trains, passenger trains, and freight trains. I can watch and compare. It's an old man's little amusement for someone who's spent
his whole professional life with railway lines and locomotives. I remember when I was a little boy, I kept insisting until I was allowed to go and watch the trains at the railway station — we lived in Hedemora at the time. There's nothing more beautiful than those new engines the Germans have started making: “F 17,” or whatever they're called. Well (
clears his throat
), perhaps you're not particularly interested in locomotives, Mr. Bergman?

Henrik
(
disoriented
): I've never thought about railroad engines in that way.

Johan Åkerblom:
No, no, of course not. How are your studies going, by the way?

Henrik:
I can manage what I'm interested in. What I don't understand is less easy.

Johan Åkerblom:
Yes, yes. Fancy there being so much to learn to become a priest. One wouldn't have thought so.

Henrik:
What do you mean, sir?

Johan Åkerblom:
Well, what do I mean? One thinks perhaps, seen from a noninvolved, lay point of view, that being a priest is more of a matter of talent. One has to be — what is it called now? — a fisher of men, a fisher of souls.

Henrik:
One has to have convictions first and foremost.

Johan Åkerblom:
What kind of convictions?

Henrik:
One has to be convinced that God exists and that Jesus Christ is His son.

Johan Åkerblom:
And
that
is your conviction, Mr. Bergman?

Henrik:
If I were equipped with a sharper mind, then perhaps I would call my convictions into question. The really brilliant religious talents always have their periods of terrible doubt. I sometimes wish I could be a doubter, but that's not so. I'm fairly childish. I have a childish view of faith.

Johan Åkerblom:
Then you're not afraid of death, Mr. Bergman? For instance?

Henrik:
No, I'm not afraid, but I prefer to shy away from it.

Johan Åkerblom:
Then do you believe man is resurrected into eternal life?

Henrik:
Yes, I'm quite convinced of that.

Johan Åkerblom:
Well I'll be damned! And the forgiveness of sins? And the Sacrament? The blood of Jesus to thee given? And punishments? Hell? You believe in some kind of hell, whatever it'll look like?

Henrik:
One can't say I believe in this and this, but I don't believe in that.

Johan Åkerblom:
No, no, naturally not.

Henrik:
Archimedes said, give me a fixed point and I shall move the earth. For me the Sacrament is the fixed point. That's how, through Christ, God came to an agreement with Man. That was how the world was changed. From its very foundations and through and through.