• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 554 0

or other extermination camps. I supplied dates, the numbers of prisoners and of those who perished—all information I had dug up that morning. Then, returning to a picture of Stieg as a baby with his grandfather, I revealed that Stieg had told me Severin Bostrom had been imprisoned in Storsien, but had miraculously survived to continue the voyage of his life and take care of a little boy who had loved him as his father. Stieg’s deep political engagement sprang from his childhood, from such experiences as listening to his grandfather talk about what had happened on Kristallnacht.

I went on to speak about the foundation I wanted to create in memory of Stieg. The idea was to award a prize every year to honor a militant journalist or photographer. I showed one of Stieg’s favorite portraits, the photo I’d taken of him from a low angle, in which he’s leaning back in the sunlight, squinting and smiling—at me. Beneath the photo, I’d added something taken from an editorial for the December 1997 issue of Expo, which never appeared: “We know that what we do is necessary….”

Finally, I concluded by explaining that Expo had almost died back in those days, that there’d been no more private funding to keep it afloat and the editorial staff had been exhausted. I hoped everyone now understood why Stieg had used the word “necessary.”

I WAS pleased to have been able to carry on throughout that terrible day. To have been able, surrounded by the warmth of our friends, to speak calmly, without being overwhelmed by grief.

This November 9 has been a day not of mourning, but of great spirituality.

Wednesday, November 23

A NEW letter from Erland and Joakim’s lawyer. He asks me to sign the enclosed joint agreement regarding the division of the estate, in which it is stipulated that their half of the apartment will be given to me in exchange for my handing Stieg’s computer over to them.

In the accompanying letter, the lawyer points out that the Larssons—as well as various people at Norstedts—are unhappy at not having been invited to the gathering commemorating the anniversary of Stieg’s death. He mentions my speech, which, they feel, focused only on Stieg’s life as a writer.

What a complete misunderstanding of Stieg’s commitments! That evening was always a part of Stieg’s life. It would have been trivial and unimaginable for Stieg or any other speaker that night to have talked about anything other than the monstrous events of that Night of Broken Glass in 1938. Those who see Stieg solely as an author of crime fiction have never truly known him.

Friday, November 25

AT AROUND seven thirty, the delivery from Ikea was waiting for me at home. Beds, mattresses, sheets, pillowcases, and duvet covers … all there!

Went straight back out to buy the caster wheels for the beds in a store in Fridhemsplan, on Kungsholmen. Not the ones I’d planned on, since the holes turned out to be too near the edge, but similar ones, gray, instead of the taller, more slender ones of black wood that I had envisioned.

Saturday, November 26

I WENT to fetch my drill at a friend’s house. To drill the holes, I have to clamp the feet in the workbench vise and use a 3.5 mm bit and 4 mm screws. I quickly realized I’d have to gauge the measurements with a longer screw I found in a drawer. I began attaching the feet to the first bed frame, which I installed in the “new” room. Mattress, duvet and pillowcases, satin sheets in black, white, gray, and ocher checks. I rolled the daybed over near the window and settled onto it with cushions at my back to watch Lake Malaren flow quietly below through the Hammarby Canal. I sat there, in silence and tranquility, for a long while.

I put together and finished the second daybed and set it at an angle along the wall, facing the first one. Perfect. Now I have a room that matches my new life. An office for work, a living room where my guests can relax after dinner, and a guest room for friends passing through. I arranged Stieg’s books on teak shelves near the window.

And then I slept there. Slept very well. All those books around me