A flash went off. Humlin hadn’t seen them, but at some point during the reading a local reporter and a photographer had sneaked into the auditorium. This is going to be a scandal, Humlin thought desperately, picturing the headlines in the national papers. As with other writers, there was a place inside himself where he doubted his own talents, a place where he was nothing more than a literary charlatan. Humlin was about to plead with the photographer not to take any more pictures when Åkesson unexpectedly came to his aid.
‘Who gave you permission to take my picture?’ he screamed. ‘Just because I’ve done time doesn’t mean I don’t have human rights.’
The photographer tried to ward him off but now all the men from the front row gathered around him. The librarian tried to calm everyone down as most of the audience started filing out of the auditorium before a fight broke out. Humlin was dumbstruck. He had never in his life imagined that his poetry would lead to the kind of tumult he now saw playing out before his eyes.
But the chaos dissolved as quickly as it had begun. Suddenly Humlin was alone in the big room. He could still hear agitated voices in the corridor outside. Then he realised someone else had stayed behind in the room as well. It was a young dark-skinned woman from the immigrant group. She was alone in the sea of chairs and she had raised one arm. The most striking thing about her was her smile. Humlin had never seen a smile like it before. It was as if she gave off light.
‘Did you want to ask me something?’ he asked.
‘Have you ever written about anyone like me?’
Are there no straightforward questions any more? Humlin thought.
‘I don’t think I know exactly what you’re getting at.’
The girl spoke with an accent but her Swedish was clear.
‘I mean people who have come here. We who were not born here.’
‘It has always been my view that poetry is about crossing borders,’ Humlin said, but he heard how hollow it sounded.
The young woman got to her feet.
‘Thank you for answering my question.’
‘I am happy to answer more.’
‘I have no other questions for you.’
‘May I ask you something?’ Humlin asked.
‘I have not written any poems.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Tea-Bag.’
‘Tea-Bag?’
‘Tea-Bag.’
‘Where do you come from?’
She continued to smile but did not answer this last question. Humlin watched her as she slipped out into the corridor where angry voices could still be heard.
Humlin left the auditorium by a back door and left Mölndal in the taxi that had been waiting for him. He had not signed a single book and had not said goodbye to the librarians. He leaned back in his seat and looked out the window. They drove past a frozen lake that glinted in the headlights. Humlin shivered. Then his thoughts returned to the young woman in the auditorium with the beautiful smile. Her I think I would be able to write a poem about, he thought. But nothing is very certain any more.
When Jesper Humlin woke up the following morning in his hotel in central Gothenburg he suddenly came to think of his old friend Pelle Törnblom who lived in a suburb called Stensgården. Pelle Törnblom was a one-time sailor who had finally returned to land and started a community boxing club. They had seen a lot of each other when they were young. Pelle Törnblom had also nourished literary ambitions for a short while. Over the years they had kept in sporadic contact with phone calls and postcards. Humlin tried to recall when they had last seen each other. The only thing he was sure of was that Törnblom had been working on a barge at the time, directing timber transports along the coast of northern Sweden.
Humlin decided to look for Törnblom’s telephone number after breakfast. First he nervously checked the morning paper but found nothing about last night’s events. That calmed him for the moment, though he feared the scandal was simply being held over for a day. He thought about having a word with the librarian whose brilliant idea it had been to invite a bunch of ex-cons to his poetry reading, but knew there was nothing to say. She had genuinely worked to draw in a group of people who were not usually exposed to the world of books.
The cell phone rang. It was Olof Lundin. Humlin did not want to talk to him.
‘Olof here. Where are you?’
Once upon a time people asked you how you were, Humlin thought. Now they ask you where you are.
‘This connection is bad. I can’t hear you.’
‘Where are you?’
‘This connection is bad. I’m in Gothenburg. I don’t want to talk to you.’
‘What are you doing in Gothenburg?’
‘You arranged two readings for me here.’
‘I’d forgotten about that. The library?’
‘Yesterday I was in Mölndal and tonight I’m going out to a place called Stensgården.’
‘Where is that?’
‘You should know since you set it up. I can’t keep talking. And anyway, I can hardly hear you.’
‘Why can’t you talk now? Did I wake you up?’
‘I’m awake, I just can’t hear you very well.’
‘You can hear me fine. Kudos for your performance in Mölndal, by the way.’
Humlin drew his breath in sharply.
