“A couple of the other history students.”
There was a sheen on Andreas’s forehead. His face was ashen.
“What is going on?” she asked sharply.
“What do you mean?” He picked a book up from the bedside table, bounced it in his hand as if to feel its weight, put it back.
“Why on earth would Britta tell you to call me if something happened to her?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Rubbish.”
“She’d hardly confide in me now, would she?”
He was telling her he knew she had no time for him. Letting her be right. But he wouldn’t meet her gaze.
“It’s probably nothing,” Laura said, once they were back on the pavement outside the student dorm, but now she didn’t like it. “You’ve tried school, the library and her friends . . .” There were bars, she thought. Restaurants. Clubs. But it was early in the day. They would be closed. Before, they would have gathered in Laura’s flat, but that was long gone. “We could try the Historical Society,” she said. “See if they’ve seen her.”
He nodded, hands thrust in his pockets.
They crossed the lawn leading up to the main university building. Spring had arrived in Uppsala. The grass was a thick green. Blue hyacinths were growing in the flower beds. The trees were abounding with small, bright green shoots. There was a scent of wet earth and new grass. Some students lay on the lawn despite the gray weather, reading. They had spread out their jackets; the ground would still be a damp cold. Any day now, the restaurants would move their tables outside. They’d be buzzing with people laughing and debating. There would be the beat of drums and brassy notes of jazz trumpets coming from the dance palace they called Little Perdition. You’d want to stay, to dwell. But, for now, there was still a bitter wind. She wrapped her arms around herself and picked up her pace.
The small square that held the enormous red cathedral also hosted Holy Trinity Church, the archbishop’s residence, the former main university building, Gustavianum, with its round green ball on top of the copper roof, and the Dekanhouse, where the State Institute for Racial Biology had its offices. All that history weighing in on a quadrangle of cobblestones. The Historical Society having its headquarters here felt right.
She traced the black twin spires of the cathedral with her gaze. She missed it—the five of them—and her eyes prickled. Oh, to have one more of those student days, go to dinner, drink too much and then amble home arm in arm through the streets singing silly student songs. To hear Britta’s hoarse laughter, Erik swearing. To flirt with Matti. To poke at Karl-Henrik for being serious and hating everybody. For things to be easy, for any division to be unthinkable. She shouldn’t be here with Andreas; she should be here with them. But university was in the past. And, since the war came closer to home, so were her friends.
The yellow Ekman’s House that lodged the Historical Society lay opposite Holy Trinity Church. It looked smaller than she remembered it. It was the gray weather. The house, too, was folding in on itself for protection. The Society held regular meetings both during the day and at night; lectures, debates. This was also where Professor Lindahl had held his nachspiele, light evening meals with selected students, in the vault of the Historical Society, after the meetings.
She walked up the stairs, turned the handle, but the doors were locked. There were no notices for upcoming meetings on the silver board. She shrugged and took a step down.
“There was one thing,” Andreas blurted out.
She waited.
“Before the riots . . . Before Easter. Britta met with a man named Lindholm. He’s the leader of the Svensk socialistisk samling, the Swedish Nazi SSS.”
Laura knew of Sven Olov Lindholm. She remembered his grinning face from the news reports earlier that week as he stood on the Uppsala mound with a Nazi salute while the police cut down protestors with sabres. It had been all over the news both in Sweden and abroad: the press describing the police as “Nazi-friendly.”
“Did she get caught up in the riots?”
“No, she spent Easter in Stockholm. Didn’t get back until after. This happened before she left.”
Stockholm. Britta had been in Stockholm without getting in touch.
“Why would she have met with him?”
“I don’t know. But I saw them at Kafé Centrum. They didn’t seem unfriendly.”
“Never,” Laura said.
Britta was not a Nazi sympathiser. She could perhaps be deemed immoral when it came to her own life, but when it came to human rights and justice, she was the most moral person Laura knew. She’d remained friends with Andreas, for heaven’s sake.
Andreas’s eyes were large. “I’m only telling you what I saw. They were having coffee. Then she told me she was going to Stockholm for a few days. She came back Tuesday and called me to arrange to meet for dinner yesterday. I was going to ask her about Lindholm.”
Before she could probe him further, the caretaker of Ekman’s House arrived.
Laura tried her best smile.
The thin, gray-haired man scowled. Did he remember having to clean up after her and the others after their nachspiele?
“I wonder if you might let us in?” she asked.
“Why?”
She didn’t want to tell him about Britta. It seemed ridiculous now; what would Britta be doing alone in a locked building? “I forgot a book here. In the large meeting hall upstairs.” She hoped he didn’t keep track of who was a student and who had left the program.
He grimaced again but unlocked the doors. Laura looked at Andreas, signaling him to follow. In the hallway, she paused. It smelled of cold stone. The vault where they had used to have their nachspiele lay at the end of the corridor near the back. A few steps down, and there it would be: white stone walls, a single dark wooden table. Candles in iron holders along the walls and the rusty chandelier above the table provided the lighting and threw the arch of the room into a dusky warmth. She would bet the room still echoed with their laughter.
She felt the usual tingle of excitement.
She could envision them now, the cellar room full of smoke, the debates getting more heated as the evening went on. Lectures taught them history and methods to study. The nachspiele had been about playing with knowledge, debating under the supervision of the most brilliant mind Laura had ever met, that anyone of them had ever met. “Most students will be contented with the lectures,” Professor Lindahl had said in his soft voice when he first invited her to the meals. “I think of such students as able artisans. We need able artisans; there is nothing wrong with being one. But other students need . . . more.”
The delight of being part of those needing more! Her stomach still swooped at the thought.
Of course, the other history teachers had not liked the nachspiele, calling them “unorthodox,” even “dangerous.” Especially one: Professor Falk. He had tried to get the headmaster to shut them down. But the headmaster hadn’t wanted to vex Professor Lindahl and thus they had continued.
Who had taken their places at the nachspiele now that they were gone? She hadn’t thought to ask Britta.
The caretaker indicated the stairs. She walked up the stone steps to the room where the Historical Society meetings took place. The windowless space was gloomy. Back then, they’d never noticed. Professor Lindahl had stood at the front, his blond hair glowing white in the dimness. All eyes on him, the students’ burning with admiration. The other lecturers’ faces, sullen. Professor Lindahl was a legend. Rumor had it that he knew the prime minister had lied about the state of the Swedish defense program by counting the number of times his eyes blinked during the speech. People said he was called in to advise the Swedish government and that its members feared him as much as they revered him. He’d been responsible for the removal of more than one minister from his post. He’d been involved in instating a few as well. Yes, Professor Lindahl was special. There had been a lot of jealousy among the faculty.