Part 8 (1/2)

Anita?

Well, yes. That was something else. They were seeing one another.

His stomach was churning. He tried to suppress the feeling by going into the living room to look at the s.h.i.+p.

The model of a three-masted schooner took up approximately a quarter of the floor surface, but appeared to take up even more s.p.a.ce because it had been placed right in the middle of the room, and wherever you wanted to go in the apartment, you had to walk around it.

Joel caressed the miraculously smooth surfaces and felt the usual reverence for that life, that era. His stomach settled and he was able to breathe deeply and with a sense of relief. It had taken him a few years to realise it was probably this reverence that had made him start building the s.h.i.+p. He never felt sorrow. Others who had seen his model did. First of all amazement, reverence. And then sorrow. Or perhaps it was envy, who can say?

He knew the exact number of matchsticks. Eighty-seven thousand eight hundred and sixty-three. He calculated that it would take approximately another twenty-three thousand to finish it. In the beginning he had been able to place fifty matches in one session. These days he worked more slowly, less frequently. He was afraid of finis.h.i.+ng it, because what would he do then? Put it in the water?

The idea was as ridiculous as it was obvious. The ribs and planks were made with microscopic precision. It wasn't a question of just snapping the heads off the matches and gluing them in place. No, every match was carefully cut to the perfect shape with a miniature electric band saw, then fixed in place with waterproof epoxy resin. The hull was completely watertight and would be able to float.

The first obstacle when it came to launching the s.h.i.+p was that it was far too wide to fit through the door of the apartment. This was a conscious decision; he had chosen this scale to eliminate any impression that the s.h.i.+p could have been brought into the apartment. He wanted people to see and appreciate that it was built here.

However, the balcony window was an option.

Yes. He would have to send for a crane when the time came. Or the fire brigade, perhaps. 'h.e.l.lo, I have a s.h.i.+p that needs to go in the water right away! Come quickly!'

So no launch, then.

The other obstacle was that he didn't know a thing about s.h.i.+ps. If he put the schooner in the water he wouldn't have a clue how to set the sails to stop it heading off towards the end of the world. He had immersed himself in the details of constructing this particular model, certainly, but he knew nothing about sailing.

What really impressed new visitors-the woman who came to read the electricity meter, the man who fitted new kitchen cupboards-when they had got over their initial amazement at the size of the model, was the precision. There wasn't one incorrect angle, not one discordant relations.h.i.+p between two details. This was partly thanks to those who had built the original s.h.i.+p, bringing together the practical and the beautiful, but visitors saw only Joel's work.

It might have been his imagination, but he thought the woman who came to read the meter might have been interested in him. Not that kind of interest, necessarily, but the fact that he had built the s.h.i.+p gave Joel an air of dignity, sincerity and...yes, reliability. He had done something with his time. He had a.s.sembled his hours, his years into a creation that was something more than himself, something greater.

When he walked out onto the balcony, the feeling in his stomach returned. He tried to dismiss it as hunger, and succeeded so well that he actually did feel hungry. He couldn't be bothered cooking anything, so he pulled on his jacket and got in the lift, intending to go down to the square for a pizza. He stopped on the ground floor and rang Anita's doorbell to see if she wanted to go with him.

The nameplate on the door said 'Andersson'. No one answered. They had joked about the fact that they wouldn't need new nameplates if they got married. They lived just about as far from one another as possible within the same building. Anita was on the ground floor, right-hand side, Joel on the top floor, left-hand side; joking apart, they were quite happy with the situation.

Joel went out, pa.s.sing the swimming pool where the windows were still boarded up with black planks of wood after the terrible events twenty years earlier. Two children had been killed and one had been kidnapped by some lunatic who thought he was a vampire. Neither the perpetrator nor the kidnapped child had ever been found.

As he walked beneath an oak tree that formed a gateway leading to the carpark, something hit his head and he looked up. A couple of giggling children were perched among its branches. He recognised their faces; they lived in his block.

'Sorry, granddad. It was an accident.'

Joel considered scooping up a handful of acorns and throwing them back, for fun. Couldn't be bothered. Instead he said, 'I don't think it was an accident, but I forgive you anyway.'

The joke, if it was a joke, went over the children's heads. They looked at one another and giggled again, more because he'd said something weird than because it was funny.

He carried on. Another acorn came whizzing down, but missed his head and bounced away in front of him. A thought along the lines of Young people today. No respect began to take shape, and he cut it off before it managed to develop into a rant. That's the way miserable old farts think. He didn't want to be a miserable old fart. His bitterness towards life had bloomed in all its black glory when he was between twenty-eight and thirty-two, approximately. Since then the flowers of bitterness had withered. He was neither happy nor sad, neither disappointed nor contented. He stuck one match to another and went on living.

At the pizzeria he had a marinara and a beer. The feeling of unease had left him as soon as he walked out of the apartment block, and had been replaced by his current sense of stillness. A few regulars were sitting at a table filling in their coupons for the harness races. He knew their names, they knew his. Nothing more.

It was just after seven. He thought about ringing La.s.se to ask if he fancied going to the movies, but when he checked the ads in a paper someone had left behind, there was nothing he wanted to see that he hadn't already seen. Besides, La.s.se had said he was working overtime almost every evening at the moment. Some building project in Hammarbyhamnen that was running behind.

Not much on TV either. Perhaps he would go to the movies on his own. No. He knocked back the last of the beer and belched quietly. He hadn't really wanted to go to the cinema when he locked up the ironmonger's, it was just that now he didn't want to go back to the apartment. To the problem. He closed his eyes and tried to see. Couldn't catch it.

'Joel!'

He opened his eyes. Berra, one of the regulars, had turned around on his chair and was looking at him.

'Are you sitting there dreaming?'

'No, I just...' Joel spread his hands in a gesture that might mean anything.

'Give me a number.'

'Err...twenty-seven.'

Berra shook his head. 'They're not running that many horses yet. We can't agree here, so you have to decide.'

'What are the alternatives.'

'Doesn't matter. Just give me a number.'

'Five, then.'

Berra looked down at the papers in his hand and raised his eyebrows.

'Five?'

'Yes?'

The others at the table were guffawing. Berra scratched his head, looking as if someone had just come up with incontrovertible proof that two and two made five. He looked sceptically at Joel.

'But that's Black Riddle. Definitely...long odds, if I can put it that way.' Berra pursed his lips, made his decision and turned back to the others. 'OK, let's fill it in.'

The others protested, but Berra stuck to his guns, and since they couldn't agree anyway, Black Riddle it was. Joel heard something about 'Three hundred kronor straight down the toilet' and 'Better hedge our bets'. He placed his knife and fork neatly on the plate, stood up and held out a hundred-kronor note to Berra.

'Can I join in?'

Berra looked at the note, at Joel, at the others. Joel folded the note between his fingers so that it wouldn't look threatening. 'If I'm sabotaging the system, I can at least make a contribution.'

'No,' said Berra, and the others shook their heads in agreement. 'We were only joking. If you want to join in that's fine, but you don't have to feel...'

Joel moved the note closer, and Berra took it. 'But in that case we'll hedge our bets on a couple more, because Black Riddle...well, you know.'

'No,' said Joel. 'I'm in if you don't hedge your bets.'

Berra looked at the others, who shrugged. It didn't make any difference, after all; they wouldn't have been able to hedge their bets anyway without Joel's fresh capital. Berra waved the hundred-kronor note at the coupon. 'So what shall we put it on, then?'

'You know better than me.'

Berra nodded and a new discussion began. When Joel had pulled on his jacket, Berra pointed at the lines and said, 'Don't you want a copy?'

'No. Let me know if I win anything.'

'There's not much chance of that with Black Riddle, but...sure.'