Chapter 11
On how everything temporarily worked out for the best
The Chinese girls, who had been responsible for the kitchen at Pelindaba, soon grew tired of blood pudding, Falu sausage and kn?ckebr?d, and they opened a cafeteria for themselves and everyone else living at Fredsgatan. Since they really could cook, Holger Two was happy to finance their operation with the pillow-sale profits.
At the same time, and on Nombeko’s initiative, Two managed to get the angry young woman to agree to taking over responsibility for the distribution, even if their negotiations were difficult at first. Not until the latter understood that she would be forced to illegally drive a truck with stolen licence plates did she become curious enough to hear more.
There were, of course, three megatons of reasons for the angry young woman not to draw the attentions of the police to Fredsgatan (even if she herself didn’t understand this). The licence plates on the otherwise unremarkable truck had already been stolen, so the truck couldn’t be traced back to Gnesta. But that didn’t mean its driver should be seventeen years old and without a licence. So she was instructed not to say anything, above all not her name, if she were pulled over.
The angry young woman didn’t think that she could manage to remain silent if faced with the police. She hated them far too much for that. So Holger Two suggested that she could sing a little tune instead; that would be sure to irritate them while also making sure that nothing was said.
When all was said and done, Two and the angry young woman had agreed that Celestine, should she be stopped by the police, would call herself édith Piaf, look a little crazy (Two thought she had it in her), and start singing ‘Non, je ne regrette rien.’ She would do no more than that before she got the chance to borrow a phone and call Holger. And their conversation could consist of the same melody; Holger would understand.
Holger Two stopped there, letting the angry young woman interpret this to mean that he would immediately come to her aid, when in reality he planned to spirit the bomb out of the warehouse while she was safely in custody.
The angry young woman liked what she heard.
‘God, it’ll be so cool to mess with the pigs. I hate Fascists,’ she said, promising to learn the lyrics to the French classic by heart.
She looked so full of expectation that Holger Two had to emphasize that being taken into custody by the police was not an end in itself. Rather the opposite: part of being a pillow deliverywoman was to try not to end up in jail.
The angry young woman nodded. She was no longer as pleased.
Did she understand?
‘Yes, for f*ck’s sake. I understand.’
At about the same time, Nombeko managed beyond expectations to get Holger One to think about something other than the crate in the warehouse. She had investigated the idea of enrolling him in classes to get a helicopter pilot certificate as a distraction. She could see no danger in it; the chances that he’d ever succeed in carrying out his so-called idea were infinitesimal.
The path to a certificate would take a normal student at least one year; that is to say, it would take this student almost four. This was a length of time that was likely to be more than sufficient for Nombeko, Two and the bomb.
Upon closer inspection, however, it turned out that One would have to be examined in aviation systems, flight safety, performance, flight planning, meteorology, navigation, operating procedures and aerodynamics – eight things that, in Nombeko’s opinion, he could not manage. Instead he would get tired of it in a few months, if he hadn’t already been kicked off the course by then.
Nombeko reconsidered. And Two helped her. They read employment ads in the newspapers for several days before they found something that might work.
All that was left to do was a small cosmetic operation. Or ‘forgery of documents’, as it is otherwise known. They had to get Two’s exceedingly unqualified brother to appear to be something else. Two drafted, cut, and pasted according to Nombeko’s instructions. When she was satisfied, she thanked him for his help, took the finished product under her arm, and went to find Holger One.
‘What if you went out and looked for a job?’ she said.
‘Ugh,’ said One.
But Nombeko hadn’t meant just any job. She explained that Helicopter Taxi Inc. in Bromma was looking for a customer service representative and jack-of-all-trades. If One were to get the job, he would both make contacts and learn a bit about how to fly a helicopter. When the time was right, he would be ready.
She said, without believing a word of it.
‘Brilliant!’ was Holger One’s opinion.
But how was Miss Nombeko thinking he would get the job? Well, the thing was that the library in Gnesta had just procured a new copy machine, one that made fantastic four-colour copies of anything one asked it to.
And then she showed him ready-made certificates of employment and strong recommendations in One’s (and for that matter Two’s) name. It had taken a good deal of fiddling and many torn-out pages from publications at KTH, the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. But on the whole, it looked impressive.
‘The Royal Institute of Technology?’ Holger One wondered.
Nombeko said none of what she was thinking. Instead she went on:
‘Here’s your degree from KTH, the royal department of engineering; you’re an engineer and you know a great deal about aircraft in general.’
‘I do?’
‘Here you have four years as an assistant air traffic controller at Sturup Airport outside Malm?. And here you have four years as a receptionist at Taxi Sk?ne.’
‘But I’ve never—’ One began, but he was immediately cut off.
‘Now go and apply for the job,’ said Nombeko. ‘Don’t think. Apply.’
So he did. And sure enough, he got the job.
Holger was satisfied. He hadn’t kidnapped the king with a helicopter, and he still didn’t have a helicopter certificate, an aircraft, or an idea. But he worked next to a helicopter (or three), he was learning, he got free lessons now and then from the taxi pilots, and he was – completely in line with Nombeko’s plan – keeping his muddled dream alive.
When he began his duties, he also moved into a roomy studio apartment in Blackeberg, which was several lengthy stone-throws away from Bromma. The gaze of Holger Two’s simple-minded brother had been drawn away from the bomb for the foreseeable future. It would have been optimal if his possibly even more simple-minded girlfriend had gone with him, but she had exchanged the energy issue (where all known forms of energy were evil) for women’s liberation. She considered this to include the right, as a woman, to drive a truck before one was old enough to get a licence and to carry more pillows at one time than any man could. So she remained in the condemned building and kept at her wage slavery; she and her beloved Holger commuted to see each other.
The potter’s general condition was also among the things that seemed to be going well for the time being. Nombeko noticed that he grew less tense every time they met. And that it also helped him to have someone to talk to about the threat from the CIA. She was happy to help, because it was as interesting to listen to him as it had once been to hear Thabo’s tales of his many grand exploits in Africa. According to the potter, the American intelligence agency was pretty much everywhere. Nombeko learned that the new automatic taxi dispatch systems all over the country were produced in San Francisco. The potter thought that said it all. But calling around from a telephone booth had taught him that at least one company had refused to fall into line with the American intelligence agency. Borl?nge Taxi was still sticking to manual service.
‘That might be good to know, Miss Nombeko, if you’re travelling anywhere in the future.’
Unlike many other things he said, the potter got away with this stupid remark, since Nombeko didn’t know where Borl?nge was in relation to Gnesta.
So the old Vietnam deserter was deeply mentally unstable and full of delusions. But he was also completely exceptional when it came to creating beauty out of clay and porcelain, with glazes in various shades of napalm yellow. This was what he sold at marketplaces here and there. Every time he needed money, he took the bus or Borl?nge Taxi to the marketplace in question. He never took the train, because everyone knew that the CIA and Swedish Railways were hand in hand. With him he brought two cumbersome suitcases full of his collection. And then he would sell out of everything in a few hours, because he charged shamefully low prices. Any time he travelled by Borl?nge Taxi, his trip always involved a loss. Taxi trips of 130 miles were not free, after all. Debit, credit and his own talent were among the many things the potter didn’t understand.
* * *
After some time, Nombeko spoke passable Swedish with the Holgers and Celestine, Wu Chinese with the girls, and English with the American potter. And she borrowed so much literature from the library in Gnesta that she had to decline, in Celestine’s name, a position on the board of the Gnesta Literary Society (GLS).
She spent as much of the rest of her time as possible with the comparatively normal Holger Two. She assisted him with the bookkeeping for the pillow company and suggested efficiency improvements in purchasing, sales and delivery. Two was happy for the help, but it took until the early summer of 1988 before he realized that she could count. That is: count.
It happened one beautiful June morning. When Holger arrived in the warehouse, Nombeko welcomed him by saying, ‘Eighty-four thousand four hundred and eighty.’
‘And good morning to you,’ said Holger. ‘What did you say?’
It so happened that he had been running around cursing because the burned-out entrepreneur had upped and died before he had completed a proper handover of the company. For example, it was impossible to know the extent of the pillow stock.
But now Nombeko was placing four pieces of paper in his hands. What she had been doing while Holger was lolling in bed was to pace off the area, measure the volume of one pillow, and calculate the correct number based on that.
Holger looked at the top piece of paper and didn’t understand a thing. Nombeko said that wasn’t so strange: one had to look at the equation as a whole.
‘Look here,’ she said, turning the page.
‘Shadow E?’ said Holger Two, for lack of anything better to say.
‘Yes, I measured the volume of the loft while the sun was out.’
And she turned the page again.
‘Who’s the stick man?’ said Holger Two, still for lack of anything better.
‘That’s me,’ said Nombeko. ‘A bit white in the face, but otherwise quite accurate, if I do say so myself. Ever since the engineer was kind enough to supply me with a passport, I have known how tall I am. So all I had to do was measure my shadow in relation to the loft. After all, the sun stays admirably low in this country. I don’t know what I would have done at the equator. Or if it had been raining.’
When Holger still didn’t understand, Nombeko tried a different tactic.
‘It’s very simple,’ she said, and she was just about to turn the page again when Holger interrupted.
‘No, it’s not. Did you count the pillows on the crate?’
‘Yes. All fifteen of them.’
‘And the one on the bed in your room?’
‘I forgot that one.’