Stieg Larsson, My Friend - Kurdo Baksi [51]
That in itself should be sufficient to explain why November is a month that makes you grit your teeth. I am one of many who sort of retire into themselves and become that little bit more grumpy and miserable.
I was planning a seminar that Stieg and I would be leading on 9 November. It was the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Jewish pogrom carried out by German Nazis during the night of 9–10 November, 1938. It is important to remember that event, because in many ways it was the occasion when the world passed the point of no return. Jewish shops and synagogues were destroyed, about twenty thousand Jews were rounded up, and many of them were never heard of again. The world was confronted by a moment of destiny and did nothing about it.
That is why Stieg and I were keen to arrange a seminar every year on that date. As I was sitting in my office, putting the finishing touches to arrangements for the evening, Stieg turned up. I have spoken to the people who were present and they have told me in detail what happened. His old friend Jim from Grenada was waiting for him outside. There was some administrative matter Jim needed help with and Stieg had promised to see what he could do.
“You don’t look too good,” was the first thing Jim had said.
Stieg shrugged and said, “Come on, let’s take the lift.”
They discovered that the lift wasn’t working. They began trudging laboriously up the seven flights of stairs. Stieg wasn’t exactly in peak condition, but now he was breathing even more heavily than usual. When they finally reached the Expo editorial offices, he could hardly breathe.
As soon as his old colleague Per saw how pale Stieg was, he decided to call an ambulance. But before anybody could get to the telephone Stieg had collapsed on to the shoulder of a new member of the Expo staff, Monika. A few seconds later he slumped to the floor. His heart was still beating.
The ambulance arrived quickly and Stieg was lifted on to a stretcher. The first thing they did was to fix an oxygen mask over his face. The crew worked quickly and efficiently – it was obvious they assumed Stieg had suffered a heart attack. Per travelled with him in the ambulance, which headed for St Göran’s Hospital. The ambulance men asked Per how old Stieg was. At which point Stieg lifted up the mask and bawled out, “I’m fifty, damn it!”
I was still in my office when Richard Slätt, Expo’s assistant editorin-chief, phoned.
“Stieg is ill,” he said. “He’s on his way to St Göran’s Hospital. No doubt he won’t be able to come to the seminar this evening.”
I didn’t realize the implications of that telephone call. Like everybody else who receives that kind of message, I tried to assess Richard’s tone of voice. He seemed quite calm and collected, which reassured me. I was well aware of course that Stieg would never choose to go to hospital of his own volition, but on the other hand, both of us had needed to go for check-ups in the recent past. No big deal. I did wonder about a heart attack; I have to say that only a couple of days previously I had read an article with the ominous headline “Men between fifty and sixty run the biggest risk of dying from a heart attack”.
But it had never occurred to me that this might apply to Stieg. Yes, he worked under pressure all the time; yes, he had all the characteristic symptoms. But even so, he still looked like an overgrown schoolboy.
Besides, it wasn’t so long ago that, feeling a bit down after yet another hospital visit, I had jokingly suggested that he should