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By Root 225 0

invited to lecture about him throughout Europe. I am interviewed more or less every day by journalists from all over the world, and am invited to attend Stieg’s film premières on every corner of the Continent. Sometimes I attend these events, but at other times I turn them down. It feels almost as if, in a most bizarre fashion, I have become an ambassador for Stieg. But I do it willingly and must admit that I feel very happy to have him in my orbit in this way. It’s not how I would have wanted things to turn out. I would have preferred to continue sitting in a basement office with my friend, and to carry on producing a journal with a less than adequate budget. But I can’t turn the clock back. Stieg has left my life as a living person. Every time I meet somebody who has become a little happier after having read one of his novels, though, I also become a little happier. In that way he is always present. And it is a presence full of memories that nobody can take away from me.

10

Successes and setbacks

A memory. Stieg in the bar at Södra Teatern one very pleasant June evening in 2003. He orders a double whisky, a group of revellers breaks into song, people are crowded together in the cramped space, the place is buzzing with carefree voices, meaningful looks are exchanged. The terrace door is open, letting a modicum of cool air into the smoke-filled bar. Stieg lights a cigarette and inhales deeply, then takes a swig of whisky. His constant companion, the black rucksack, is slung over his left shoulder.

I am surprised to note that he seems to have abandoned his classical “neutral” hairstyle. His hair has been cut shorter than usual. And he has acquired sideburns. The new haircut suits him. Makes him look younger. Which is more than one can say for his baggy white T-shirt. Presumably it is a present given to him as a souvenir of a lecture he delivered to some idealistic organization or other somewhere in Sweden. And his jumper has a big red stain.

Stieg is in an exceptionally good mood and waves a greeting to several people who pass by. Standing on his right is a bearded man by the name of Anders, known to everybody as Anders the Trotskyist. He has a baby in his arms. I know Anders. He is one of the organizers of this multicultural evening.

I’m standing in the doorway to the terrace when I catch sight of Stieg. Just as he takes out his pack of cigarettes and a lighter I tap him on the shoulder. He seems pleased to see me.

“This is a fun evening,” he says. “Did you know that Anders and I have known each other ever since the Vietnam demonstrations?”

I shake my head, but am not especially surprised. He orders a glass of red wine and stands there looking at the lovely little baby.

“Here we have a future warrior,” he says.

“You always look so young, Stieg,” says Anders.

The woman crime novelist is also here this evening. Stieg turns round and catches sight of her. Her first book was published a month or two previously. Even I know how much Stieg helped her to produce her final text.

Her face lights up the moment she sees him.

Mourning involves being haunted by images that take possession of you when you least expect it. It is often impossible to understand why you remember things in such detail, almost as if you were in the same place at the time they happened. You see everything so clearly, inhale the smells and hear the voices.

How you manage to fit together these fragments of memory is probably the basis for mourning. It’s a healing process. Why do I recall that evening at the theatre in Söder in such minute detail? I don’t know.

Perhaps because I bumped into that woman crime novelist only the other day. I didn’t like the fact that her body language often showed that she thought she was a better writer than Stieg. But I no longer hold that against her. After his death she wrote in her blog about how much he had meant to her. She even explained how he had gone through her manuscripts chapter by chapter, sentence by sentence, and helped her.

It was round about the time of that multicultural evening at Södra Teatern