Down For the Count

WEDNESDAY 20 NOVEMBER
Our time is up.
A sound of knocking vibrates between the graffiti-covered
stone walls. The cowslip-blond youth, resting his head on my
hairy chest, flinches. Every fibre of his body’s musculature tenses
up. His nails dig into my ribs.
We’re lying naked on the fold-down metal bed on the longer
side of the cell. I push my head forward, hushing him, my boxer’s
nose buried deep in his tangled locks. He smells of sweat, sex
and ingrained dirt.
‘We still have a few minutes.’
His cloying, salty taste sticks to the roof of my mouth. I clear
my throat, then caress his hair and kiss his neck. It’s blotched
with scratched flea bites. I lie back again. The wood shavings in
the pillow crunch as I turn my head.
On the floor beside the bunk is a pile of three books. At the
bottom the New Testament, in the middle the Psalms and at the
top a thin pamphlet entitled In My Lone Hour. A wall-louse laboriously
clambers up the book spines. In the holding cell next to
ours, a fellow prisoner slowly whistles ‘Death of a Drinking Girl’,
although it’s forbidden.
‘Doughboy.’
He hardens against my thigh as I squeeze him in my arms,
although we only just finished.
‘I hope you haven’t played a trick on me now. For some it’s one
thing while you’re in here and something else on the outside.’
Doughboy shakes his head and makes a little sob. Again, I
press my nose into his hair. Oh, that boy! That fragrance of his
is beyond lies.
There’s more thumping on the door. Harder, this time. It’s
Wednesday 20 November, 1935, a year and a half to the day since
I entered through the heavy front gates.
I shift Doughboy’s head and climb out of the sheets. He sits
on the edge of the bed, covering his groin with his hands and
hanging his head: a wilting cowslip on a wiry stem. Two violet
bruises shine on his prison-pale body. Around his nipples, a few
blond hairs spread outward like rays of light.
I pull up the rough grey trousers, the shirt and the vest with
the blue and grey stripes. Doughboy shrugs his bony shoulders:
‘We’ll see each other again in a week. Time will go by quickly.
Even quicker for you on the outside.’
‘You remember what I’ve told you?’
‘I should come directly to you on Roslagsgatan. Over a funeral
parlour.’
‘Do you remember the house number?’
‘Forty-three.’
I nod. Beard stubble rasps under my fist as I rub my chin.
‘The screws will want you for the Home Guard but don’t listen
to that. Come straight to me. I have gas and wood stoves, an ice
cupboard too. Lundin, the bloke I’m renting it off, is not niggardly
about turning up the heating, and anyone in the house will tell
you that. It’s not big, but at least it’s bigger than this cell and it’ll
do for the both of us.’
‘You’ve said that a thousand times.’
I do up the wooden buttons of my uniform jacket. Doughboy
looks up as the lock rattles and the door opens. Jönsson stands
there, he’s an evil-eyed day-shift screw with a black full-length
beard divided into two forks, hanging over his chest. He’s not
tall but his girth almost fills the doorway from side to side.
The emblem on his uniform cap glitters in the frail morning
light.
‘Damn it, Kvist! Never before have I had to yank someone out
of their cell when they’re being released.’
‘I paid for a full half-hour.’
‘You’ve overshot that bastard half-hour by a mile. Move it!
The director’s waiting.’
I fumble with my clothes. Kneeling while putting on my
prison-issue shoes, I rest my fist on the bed.
Doughboy quickly runs his hands over the scars on the back
of my hand. My gaze runs into his eyes of pale blue. The same
colour as my own.
‘If you’re released at the same time as others, don’t throw
your lot in with them, they’re only after your money. Just make
sure you come home to me in Sibirien, and I’ll make sure
you’re well taken care of. You remember the house number
now?’
‘Forty-three.’
‘Maybe I’d better meet you here instead.’
‘No need. I’ll find it.’
‘No, it’s probably better. Let’s leave it like that. I’ll wait for
you outside the gates at lunchtime in seven days’ time. Twelve
o’clock. I’ll bring the suit.’
‘I can manage without it.’
I stand up. Doughboy stares intensely at the wall behind me,
as if he’s found something new and interesting among the usual
graffiti. The screw takes a few steps into the cell and grasps my
arm. I twist out of his grip, then nod at him. He turns around
and walks out onto the top gallery.
‘A promise is a promise and I’ve promised you a suit, have I
not? In exactly a week. Twelve o’clock outside the gates. Time will
pass quickly, you’ll see.’
I run my hand through Doughboy’s mop of hair, and a second
later I’m following Jönsson through the door, away from my
love and out onto the suicide gallery. A wave of giddiness hits
me, I put my right hand on the railing. It’s about six, or eight,
metres down to the hard concrete floor. Despite all the hours
spent up in the rigging during my years at sea, I have never
got used to heights, even after all the woodpeckers’ eggs I had
as a child. If it hadn’t been for them I’m not sure what would
have become of me, probably I wouldn’t even be able to stand
on a chair.
The yellow door slams between me and Doughboy, and Jönsson
rattles his keys. There’s a clicking sound as the bolt shoots into
the lock.
We start moving along the row of cell doors, with me leading
the way. Behind each and every one of them sits a scrap of
humanity, steeped in loneliness, too weak or proud to fit into the
machinery of society.
At every step the screw thumps his baton against his thigh.
The keys rattle on his ring. A weary November sunlight only just
penetrates the large skylight above us. It’s spitting rain.
‘Grey inside, and grey outside too,’ I mutter.
Our steps echo desolately on the spiral stairs leading down
to ground level. There’s a smell of root mash, tarred rope and
leather. Jönsson’s big belly is rumbling. I hurry my steps and we
walk into the large round central hall, all while the taste of the
youth slowly withers in my gob.
‘Bloody lucky you were banged up, Kvist, otherwise you’d
probably have been accused of murder about a month ago.’
The screw laughs. I don’t understand what he’s driving at, I
shuffle on.
We emerge into the light rain and walk down the imposing
manorial steps, skirting the prison buildings, built from stone
the dirty yellow of a lion’s mane, past the old wool-making house,
the kitchens and the sickbay, towards the main guard post. I put
my hands in my trouser pockets and start whistling an old Ernst
Rolf tune.
The air is loaded with a scent of hops. In the distance I hear
the sounds of the city, more intense than usual, like a demonstration
at Gärdet on Workers’ Day, the 1st of May, or outside a
football ground on the evening of a match.
A rush of wind drives the raindrops under the brim of my cap,
and I look down. The wet gravel mutes the sound of our steps.
Jönsson overtakes me, his broad arse seems about to burst out
of his uniform trousers. He’s breathing heavily.
A guard in the inside courtyard follows us with his eyes. He
purses his mouth when I give him a sunny smile, and turns his
back on us. Since our little altercation last winter he rarely
smiles back. He still has a few teeth missing at the front. It cost
me a week in dark solitary. For a moment I toy with a thought:
if I give the fatty in front of me a workout, it might put back
my release by a week, and then I’ll get out at the same time
as Doughboy.
We press on through another gate and reach the outermost
area, where the screws are armed with revolvers and rifles. The
heavy reception door creaks when Jönsson opens it. I lift my cap
and smooth down my hair before I put it back on. The swine have
left it to grow for three months, without the regulatory cut. It will
take another year at least to tame it and get my usual hairstyle
back. Damned way to treat a grown man!
I follow Jönsson into the reception to meet the director, a
middle-aged bloke with a handle-bar moustache. He’s wearing
a uniform. As we walk in, he’s waiting next to his desk with his
hands clasped across his back. He gestures at his helmet.
On the dark-panelled walls hang rows of portraits of his predecessors,
also the rules and by-laws that have held sway over my life
between half-past five in the morning and ten at night for the last
year and a half. My clothes and personal effects have been placed
on a bench. The director sits at his desk and clears his throat.
‘Prisoner 420, Harry Kvist, I presume?’
His voice is hoarse, as if after a night of schnapps-drinking
and singing. The floorboards creak as Jönsson shifts his weight
to the other leg.
‘Yes, that’s him all right.’
The director’s tongue emerges at the left corner of his mouth.
He continues leafing through the papers in front of him on
the desk.
‘Do you not have the common sense to take off your cap when
you’re talking to me?’
‘Not today.’
The director recoils and continues looking through the papers.
‘This is Kvist’s third internment. For intimidation, this time.
And a serious assault involving an alcoholic beverages delivery
man and his son.’
‘Just get the papers in order.’
The director looks up, I see his eyes grow intense: ‘What can
you mean?’
‘Just that I’ve heard the lecture before.’
The director leans back in his chair, the armrests made of
cherry wood or mahogany, and puts his hands together on his
belly. He looks amused now. Again his tongue flicks over his lips.
‘Six times in this term we had to put you in solitary and dark
confinement; on a couple of occasions there was even talk of
having you transferred to an institution for the mentally ill.’
‘As I said, get on with it!’
‘Kvist, you should show some humility.’
‘You can’t throw me in the cellars now, or threaten me with
more beatings, so just bloody well get this over with and let me
get out of here!’
The gruff, schnapps-tinged voice of the director is silenced.
Behind me, Jönsson coughs gently. There’s a gleam in the director’s
eye.
‘Well, at least you’ve behaved yourself these last six months.
As I understand it, this may be ascribed in some way to a certain
Gusten Lindwall, serving a six-month sentence for bread-thieving?’
I shut my mouth. The director rises and walks round the desk.
He hands the screw a fountain pen and a form.
‘Jönsson will have to conclude this. I need time to get changed
for the inauguration.’
‘Yes, sir!’
Jönsson takes over. The director picks up a blue envelope from
his desk and gives it to me.
‘Just short of a hundred kronor, that’s what you’ve earned. I
suppose we’ll be seeing each other soon, I just hope it won’t be
too soon. A queer like you, Kvist, has a detrimental influence on
the other prisoners.’
Involuntarily I clench my fists. A vein in my forehead starts
to throb.
‘For a year and a half I’ve slaved for your profit, that much is
true.’
The director smiles brightly and gives Jönsson a nod before
he leaves the warders’ office through an adjoining door.
‘Right then,’ says Jönsson, walking up to the table with his
form. ‘You can get undressed.’
I do as I’m told while the screw goes through my clothes and
belongings, ticking them off on the form and loudly pronouncing:
‘Outdoor clothes: a black three-piece suit in light wool, labelled
Herzog, a white shirt, a grey necktie with silver stripes, braces,
singlet and elasticated underpants. A pair of shoes labelled J.J.
Brandt of size 41, also a black hat with a narrow brim, labelled
Paul U. Bergström, size 57. It’s all there.’
‘It seems so, yes.’
‘That wasn’t a question. Other loose items: Under the hatband,
a razor blade. A notebook and address book, an aniline pen. A
Viking pocket watch with a gold chain, two cigars of the brand
Meteor in a cigar case of wine-red leather embossed with the
name of L. Steiner, a penknife, a comb, a bunch of keys, a box
of matches, and a wallet containing six kronor and seventy öre,
various receipts, and a photograph of a young girl. Sign here at
the bottom of the page.’
I would be stark naked were it not for the prison-issue underpants.
My skin is covered in goose bumps. Jönsson’s face is heavily
flushed after all his reading. He catches his breath. I take the
pen he holds out, and draw my scrawl at the bottom of the form.
I put on my own clothes while Jönsson watches. The trousers
have become a few sizes too large, but anything is more elegant
than the prison uniform. I fish out one of the dry Meteors from
the cigar case and drill a hole in the end with the nib of the fountain
pen. I may be as poor as a church mouse, but at least I have
a cigar case that used to belong to a millionaire. My belongings
drop into my pockets with a rattling sound.
‘If you hurry up you’ll make it in time for the inauguration.’
I look up. ‘What inauguration?’
‘West Bridge. The official opening’s today.’