_There Are Things I Want You to Know_ About Stieg Larsson and Me - Eva Gabrielsson [39]
THAT EVENING, Eleanor dropped Erland and me off at the apartment. Everything there seemed uncanny. Half of Stieg’s last meal was still sitting on the table: a dried-up hot dog and a chocolate drink bought at the newsstand. Erland didn’t want to go to bed; he kept repeating that it wasn’t normal, that children shouldn’t go before their parents. He was also talking about the death notice that would have to be written, trying to think which papers might report Stieg’s death, and wondering who would come to the funeral. He was in shock, too. It was unbearable. Fortunately, Eleanor called with an offer to come stay the night at the apartment, which I accepted with relief. Erland slept in Stieg’s office, Eleanor took the living room settee, and I was in our bedroom. The bed was still unmade.
Wednesday, November 10
AT 7:00 a.m., my sister Britt arrived from Gothenburg on the first train. Erland was pacing in the living room, composing and recomposing a death notice aloud, constantly asking us what sounded best. I was rigid: silent, staring, I felt ready to explode. Realizing that she had to get Erland out of there, Britt set off with him to walk to Expo, taking with her Stieg’s backpack and computer, which I’d brought home from the hospital the night before. The backpack also contained Stieg’s agenda, desperately needed at that day’s editorial meeting at the magazine.
All afternoon, the phone and doorbell kept ringing as people called and dropped by, bringing flowers. The apartment filled up with so many bouquets that their perfume grew cloying, oppressive, and I felt as if I were in a cemetery. Friends gathered around the large table in the living room, where coffee, fruit, and cakes were laid out. Now and then someone would persuade me to take a sip or swallow a bite of something…. I was like a robot.
The crowd talked in hushed voices and spoke gently to me. They were there, and I was grateful. One dear friend arrived with a crate full of food, and after collapsing into my arms, she said the most levelheaded thing I would hear all day: “Thank God he died that way and wasn’t murdered like you always feared. Just think how terrible it would have been, on top of everything, to have to hate someone all the rest of your life!” And that was true.
When Erland returned with Britt, he was surprised to see so many people. Not knowing anyone, he stayed on the sidelines, and that evening he went home to Umea. Joakim, Stieg’s brother, did not call me.
THE PREVIOUS evening, while I’d been waiting for Erland out in front of the hospital as the gang from Expo was gathering, I’d heard Richard say, “It’s all over now, Expo‘s finished!” Expo finished? So Stieg had fought for years for nothing? Expo just couldn’t disappear as well. No way. I was bewildered, desperate. Richard was Stieg’s immediate successor: if he backed out, everything would fall apart. I phoned Mikael Ekman, a good friend and one of the stalwarts of Expo.
“Richard seems to be giving up. That’s not an option. Expo mustn’t fold. Or Stieg will have worked himself to death for nothing! You have to do something.”
“I’ll be there tomorrow.”
SO EXPO revved up again on the afternoon of November 10 with a historic meeting. Everyone who had collaborated at any time on the magazine, even just once, showed up spontaneously. There was such a crowd that they ran out of chairs, so people were standing and leaning all along the walls. Mikael ran the meeting, standing in the center of it all to relay the information from Stieg’s agenda: the dates for future meetings and lectures, the deadlines for the various articles. Monika sat in a chair next to Mikael with a box of paper tissues on her lap, passing them up to him as needed because as he talked, tears kept streaming down his cheeks. Then everyone found a spot somewhere in the office to set