‘Why is this box here? Are you moving?’
‘Where would I move?’
‘What is in this box?’
‘That’s none of your business.’
‘Does it have to be right here so people trip over it when they come to visit?’
‘If you’re going to be like this all evening perhaps it would be better for you to come back another time.’
Humlin sighed, took off his coat and followed her into the rest of the apartment, which reminded him of an overstocked antique store. Here his mother had squirrelled away everything that she had ever come across. Humlin could still remember fights his parents had had about things Märta had refused to get rid of. His father had been a quiet man, an accountant who had treated his children with a mixture of surprise and general goodwill. For the most part he had been a silent partner to his energetic wife, apart from those times when he found his desk or his side of the bed covered with newspapers that his wife refused to throw away. Then he would have a violent outburst of temper that could last for days. But it always ended the same way, the newspapers or the knick-knacks remained in the apartment and he fled back into silence. In contrast, Humlin could not remember a single occasion when his mother had been silent. She was possessed by a deep-seated need to always make herself heard. If she was in the kitchen she banged her pots, if she was on the balcony cleaning the rugs she beat them so the blows echoed in the courtyard.
Humlin had often thought that the unwritten book closest to his heart was the one about his parents. His father, Justus Humlin, had devoted his youth to the hammer throw. He had grown up in Blekinge, in a village close to Ronneby. He had trained with his homemade hammer behind the family farmhouse. Once he had thrown it so far that it would have set a Nordic record under controlled circumstances. Unfortunately, he was only accompanied by his two younger sisters. They measured his throw with an old tape measure. The Nordic record at that time was held by Ossian Skiöld and measured 53.77. Justus Humlin measured his throw four times and came up with 56.44, 56.40, 56.42 and 56.41. He beat the Nordic record by over two metres. Later, when he started competing regionally, he never managed to throw the hammer past fifty metres. But he insisted until he died that he had once thrown it further than anyone else in Scandinavia.
Märta Humlin had never been interested in sport. Her world had been that of culture. She had grown up in Stockholm, the only child of a successful and well-to-do surgeon. Her dream had been to become an artist, but she had not been talented enough. Furious, she had turned to the dramatic arts and started a theatre with the financial help of her father. There she created some scandalous performances which involved her dragging herself across the stage in an almost completely transparent nightdress. Later she had owned a gallery, then she turned to music. Lastly she had been involved in the film business.
She was seventy and newly widowed when she realised she had never seriously thought of dancing, at which point, with her usual verve, she founded a dance company. There was no dancer younger than sixty-five in her troupe. Märta Humlin had reached for almost everything in life but almost nothing stayed in her restless grip.
Jesper had been the youngest of four and had seen his siblings leave home as quickly as they had been able. At twenty he informed his mother that his turn had come. When Jesper woke the following morning he couldn’t move. His mother had tied him to the bed. It took him a whole day to talk her into letting him go. First she had forced him to promise to come and see her three times a week for the rest of her life.
Humlin lifted a box of skating laces from his chair and sat down. Märta Humlin went into the kitchen and returned with a bottle of wine and two glasses.
‘I don’t want any, thanks.’
‘And why not?’
‘I’ve already had a bottle this evening.’
‘And with whom, might I ask?’
‘Viktor Leander.’
‘I have no idea who that is.’
Humlin was shocked. He stared at his mother who was in the process of filling his glass to the brim. He was bound to spill some when he lifted it, which would give her yet another reason to chastise him.
‘But you’ve been to a number of his readings.’
‘Well, I certainly don’t remember him. I’m almost ninety years old. My memory is not what it once was.’
As long as she doesn’t start to cry, Humlin thought. I don’t have it in me to go through her emotional blackmail tonight.
‘Why do you pour me wine when I say I don’t want any?’
‘Isn’t it good enough for you?’
‘It’s not about the wine. What I’m saying is that I’ve already had all the wine I could want tonight.’
‘You don’t have to come over and see me if you don’t want to.’
Here it comes, Humlin thought.
‘I’m used to being alone.’
