He had to end the conversation because his name was called on the intercom system. Recently, it had become a habit of his to wait until the last minute to board, just to get his name read aloud and thereby enjoy the small buzz of attention it garnered him.
The train pulled out of the station. Humlin decided to mull over the conversation with Lundin until he reached Södertälje, at which point he had to start thinking about tonight’s reading. He had been planning to do this first thing, but the visit to his mother’s last night had made that impossible.
His phone rang. It was Andrea.
‘Where are you?’ she demanded.
‘On my way to Gothenburg. Have you forgotten about my reading?’
‘I haven’t forgotten about it since you never told me about it in the first place.’
Humlin sensed that she might be right. He decided against having an argument he was bound to lose.
‘We’ll talk when I get back.’
‘When I see you I want to talk about reality, not your poetry.’
Andrea ended the conversation abruptly, as she often did. Humlin kept thinking about what Lundin had said. He grew more and more agitated.
When the train left Södertälje, however, he forced all thoughts of crime novels out of his head and thought about the evening ahead. He liked jetting about the country and speaking about his work. Leander had once — after an especially inebriated dinner — accused him of being nothing more than a vain impresario. Humlin especially enjoyed speaking at libraries and adult education settings. He was more sceptical of high schools and plain fearful of any school at a lower level. This evening in Gothenburg promised to be to his liking. A civilised evening at the library with a focused audience of upper-middle-aged women who clapped heartily and never asked difficult questions.
He decided which poems he would read and which version of his journey to authorship he would present. He had tried a variety of different stories over the years and had finally settled on three accounts that he could choose between at will. The first of these was the closest to the truth. He talked about his sheltered upbringing and the frightening fact that he had never felt the need to rebel in adolescence. He had done well in school, never joined any radical factions nor travelled too adventurously. It usually took him about twenty minutes to talk about this abnormal normality.
The second version of his life was mostly lies. It consisted of a far more colourful youth and since his old classmates sometimes turned up in the audience, he had made sure to only claim such experiences as would be impossible to verify.
The third story was about a long and uncertain path to becoming a writer. In this account he claimed to have written his first novel at the age of eight but that he had burned it when he published his first real book. This version came the closest to describing the man he wished he had been. But he would never have admitted that any of these things he said about himself were not true.
The train arrived on time. He took a taxi to the Mölndal library and was greeted by a young librarian.
‘So is anyone coming to see me tonight?’
‘All of our tickets are gone. We’re expecting one hundred and fifty people.’
‘Whoever said the Swedish Folk Movement was dead?’ Humlin said with fitting humility. ‘One hundred and fifty people are coming to listen to a simple poet on a dark and cold night in February.’
‘There are some groups coming.’
‘What kind of groups?’
‘I don’t know. The other librarian should know.’
Later Humlin would regret the fact that he never took the time to seek out the other librarian and ask her about these groups. He assumed they were a book club or perhaps a retired persons’ association. But when he stepped up to the lectern at seven o’clock he saw a group of people that reminded him neither of retirees nor of book lovers. In the usual audience of beaming older women he noticed some people he couldn’t quite place.
In the front row there were a group of middle-aged men who did not look like the kind of audience members he usually saw, neither in their clothing nor their looks. Many had long hair and pierced ears and wore leather jackets and jeans, often torn over the knees. Humlin immediately grew more guarded. He also noticed a group of dark-skinned women sitting together. Immigrants, or so-called New Swedes, were not a usual part of his following, apart from a Chinese man who lived in Haparanda and who often sent him long letters with complicated and altogether incomprehensible analyses of his poems. Nonetheless there was an immigrant group here in this library in Mölndal listening to him.
