The Princess of Burundi - Kjell Eriksson [54]
“Born in Eriksberg,” he said. “When it was still out in the country. My dad built a house there in the forties. He worked at Ekeby.”
Pettersson nodded.
“He handled the furnace out there, and Mom stayed home and took care of the kids. Dad worked a lot of nights and slept during the day.”
“There you go. Are you sure you don’t want any coffee?”
“No, thanks. Tell me more about John.”
“I think he was damned bitter about losing his job. He said something once, something about feeling worthless. It was kind of his thing, welding. He had inherited Albin’s attention to detail. A person has to find a place where they fit in, that’s all. Don’t you think?”
“That’s probably right,” Berglund said. “Did you see each other regularly?”
“Not really. Sometimes at Obs. I like to go down there and have a bite to eat and talk to the other guys. A few times we met up and had a coffee. I think he liked to talk to me. He liked to talk, period.”
That’s strange, Berglund thought. This is the first time I’ve heard someone describe John as talkative.
“But I could tell he was sitting on something.”
“What was it?”
“Well, he had those fish. You know about that. I got the impression he was cooking something up with those fish, so to speak. He was incredibly active in some kind of organization. Turns out there are organizations for anything you can think of.”
“And what can you cook up when it comes to fish? Start up a shop, is that what you mean?”
“I don’t know. Just something to do with that fish tank. He must have been nursing a dream.”
“But he didn’t say anything specifically about what that would be?”
“No, nothing straight out, nothing more than that something was going on.”
“When you met, did you ever talk about how things were at home?”
“Not a lot. He was close to the kid. Maybe you know someone called Sandberg who worked at Ekeby. He also worked the furnace, I think. A fat little guy, short-tempered.”
Berglund laughed.
“Everyone who worked the furnace was short-tempered. I thought that was part of the job description.”
Their eyes met and both men smiled.
“He must have been dead for forty years,” Pettersson said. “But he knew my dad.”
“What was the state of John’s finances?”
“I don’t think he was in dire straits. He was always well dressed, and so on.”
“Did he drink?”
Pettersson shook his head.
“What a way to go,” he said. “Everyone putting your life under the microscope. What if we paid that kind of attention to people while they were alive?”
Berglund stayed until shortly before ten. Pettersson followed him to the door but then turned as Berglund was putting his coat on and went back to the kitchen. Berglund heard the radio come on in the middle of a religious program, a brief evening meditation.
“I like to hear the news rundown before I go to bed.”
Pettersson came back out into the hall.
“Then I like to read a little,” he said while Berglund was doing up the laces of his boots.
“That’s serious footwear,” he said approvingly. “I’m a member of Association of Retired Persons and we meet once a month and talk about books.”
“What are you reading right now?”
“A book about the black plague, actually. But there’s something I’ve come to think of: How are things with Lennart now, the brother?”
“Well,” Berglund said uncertainly. “He is what he is.”
“No improvement then. He was always of a different caliber. I remember the grief he caused Albin and Aina though he did work a few years at Diös. It ended with him underneath some prefab material, or perhaps he fell from a scaffolding, I can’t remember. He was always poorly after that.”
“Albin fell off a roof,” Berglund said.
“Typical. It was a job for the rich folk on the other side of the river.”
“Thanks for the beer,” Berglund said.
“Thank you,” Pettersson said and shook Berglund’s outstretched hand. “Feel free to look me up again. Maybe we can sort out that question of why people who work the furnace get so short-tempered.”
Berglund started walking home—barely one kilometer away—rather slowly. It was here in Almtuna it all started,