Secrets. Everywhere, secrets.
“I didn’t know there was a meeting planned between our offices,” Jens said.
“A brotherly conversation,” Staffan said. “Well,” he nodded to his brother, “see you later.” With that, he walked toward his office.
Jon Olof remained, sinking his heels into the thick red carpet, his hands clasped behind his back. “It must be hard,” he said to Jens.
No love lost between the two. Jon Olof, son of the Archbishop, was an upper-class snob pretending to be a friend of the workers; blond curls, scheming eyes under the nonchalant eyebrows. Jens saw him as a liar and a cheat. As for Jon Olof’s brother, Staffan was the minister’s chosen right hand, despite Jens being Günther’s secretary. The strength of their relationship was no secret.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Jens now said to Jon Olov.
Jon Olof smirked. “I mean, there’s a lot going on now in Foreign Affairs. Hard to keep track of everything, and everyone, right?”
Jens shrugged. “I feel differently.”
“I thought I might see if Günther is in?” Jon Olov said, as if to prove a point.
“He’s out,” Jens said. “Won’t be in until tomorrow.” Fact was, he had no idea where Günther was.
Jon Olov smiled. “I see. I thought Staffan said he was on his way in. Well, poster boy. See you around.”
As Jens got into his office, Kristina rang to remind him of the dinner that same night. “It’s important,” she said, meaning important for his career, for him, for them.
“I’ll be there.”
“Don’t be late.”
He sat down to sort the mail but had no peace and rose again.
For a while, he stood by the window that overlooked Gustav Adolf’s Square, empty since personal driving had been forbidden. He looked at the majestic neoclassical Royal Swedish Opera behind the equestrian statue of King Gustav II Adolf; at the Norrbo bridge of arched stone stretched over the Lilla Värtan strait. On the wide sky over Stockholm, the heavy clouds were darkening purple. It might begin to rain. At least this winter hadn’t been as cold as the previous few. He wished he could open the window to hear flowing water, and wind, but that was forbidden for safety reasons.
Jens had arrived at the ministry too late to have any impact. Too late to become close to Christian Günther. “You won’t change that,” Jens’s father, the schoolteacher, had said to him, when he was considering saying yes to the minister’s request to become his secretary. “Staffan Söderblom and Christian Günther have history together. You’ll always be second. Can you handle that?”
No, Jens, the achiever, could not handle that, but he had thought it would change. He would change it. He was well educated, experienced, smart, and he had achieved this on his own without the correct family background. In fact, he had never been second best. Ever. And he had liked Christian Günther. He could see them becoming close. He’d been certain he could make it happen.
So far, he’d been wrong. He’d left a high-paying job at a company where they had loved him to become nothing more than an administrator. Worse, the more he tried, the more Christian Günther seemed to make a point of ignoring him.
Jens returned to his desk. There was an oil painting on the wall opposite, an older man, gold chain over his fat belly, deep frown, scowl, beaked nose. He seemed to stare directly at Jens whenever Jens sat down. Judging him. Not enough. Not enough. He hated the bloody thing. It was likely some masterpiece, but surely he could get rid of it? He’d ask the administrative staff if he could have it exchanged for a landscape. He sighed, turned on the radio, and began sorting through the letters. His father might have been right. How much time did you give a new challenge before you surrendered? Ridiculous. He wouldn’t give up. He never had.
The last envelope was thick. Like all the others, it had been opened, the content checked and then taped up again. A botch job. It was addressed to Jens, not the minister. The handwriting was hasty, it swept across the paper. He opened it.
Inside was a lengthy typed document.
Nordic Relations Through the Ages—Denmark, Norway and Sweden on a New Path, by Britta Hallberg. Jens hesitated, thinking he recognized the author’s name, but he couldn’t think where from.
He flicked through, read headlines such as Objectives, Introduction, Sources. A thesis. Sent to him by mistake, perhaps? But it had been addressed to him personally. He turned to the Contents page:
Introduction
Objectives and Demarcations
History: The Scandinavian Unions
The Reich
The 1800s: A New Way
The 1900s: A New Threat
Behind the Scenes of the Three Kings’ Meeting in 1914
Outcome from the Three Kings’ Meeting in 1939
The Three Kings . . . Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. Jens liked the title and the table of contents. It sounded interesting. The kind of thing that, once upon a time, he would have devoured, keen to perhaps discover a new way of thinking. But he did not have time to read any longer. And it was unfinished: no conclusion. He threw the document into the garbage bin underneath his desk.
On the radio, they debated whether Ulven, the Swedish submarine that had sunk during an exercise mid-April, should be salvaged, were they to find it. They had talked about nothing else since it happened. Radio presenter Sven Jerring’s steady, measured voice summarized the pros and the cons. The crew was dead. Trying to locate the submarine, they had found mines—German mines on Swedish territory. It was likely that the vessel had hit one of those. They hadn’t yet been able to pinpoint the location of the submarine. Poor men, Jens thought, waiting in the deep for a salvation that never came.
The man in the painting on the wall opposite glowered at him, face full of disgust. Jens sighed.
Stirred by some vague feeling of sadness for the waste and the futility, he changed his mind, pushed back his chair and bent to pick the thesis up from the garbage bin. He put it in his desk drawer. Then shut it with a bang.
3.
Blackåsen Mountain
Where have you been?” his mother demanded. There were red spots on her cheeks. Since Taneli’s older sister went missing, his mother had grown thinner and more gnarled. One hundred days since his sister vanished. One hundred days that his mother cried and that he himself walked around with an abyss inside his chest. Each day, he teetered on the edge of that abyss, tried his best not to fall in. For the first two cycles of the moon they hadn’t stopped searching; all of them had been out each day, tracking, calling, spreading their circles wider and wider. By the third cycle of the moon, only Taneli remained. The others held their gazes low around him, certain his sister was dead. She wasn’t. Couldn’t be.
His mother grabbed his arm and pulled him along with her. Raija, Taneli’s dog, followed close.
Two white men were by their fireplace. They were dressed in gray jackets and trousers. They wore hats and vests. The buttons on their shirts shimmered. The other children were already lining up. One man, red-haired and bearded, was measuring them one by one while his companion made notes in a book. The man who was doing the measuring opened their mouths, peered inside, squeezed their bones. He then placed a set of tongs on their heads and read the number back to his colleague. It was not the first time they’d been measured, just like the cattle you’d buy at market time.