The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared (26 page)

Mao could forgive Mr Karlsson for that, but he said that Karlsson should not have too high hopes for the future because communism was meeting with success everywhere and it would not be long before the entire world was conquered.

Allan asked where the gentlemen thought communism would take the longest to make its entry — preferably a place where
the sun shone, where the beaches were white, and where you could fill your glass with something other than green banana liquor.

‘I think I need a holiday,’ said Allan. ‘I’ve never had one.’

Mao Tse-tung, Kim Il Sung and Marshal Meretskov
discussed
the matter among themselves. Cuba popped up as a possibility, and the gentlemen concluded that you could hardly imagine somewhere more capitalist. Allan thanked them for the tip, but said that the Caribbean was awfully far away; besides he had just realised that he had neither money nor passport, so he must lower his ambitions somewhat.

As for money and passport, Mr Karlsson would not need to worry. Mao Tse-tung promised to give Allan and his friend false papers so that they could go anywhere they wanted. He would also provide them with a pile of dollars, because he had an excess of them. It was money that President Truman had sent to the Kuomintang and that the Kuomintang in its haste had abandoned during their flight to Taiwan. But it was true that the Caribbean was on the other side of the globe, so perhaps it wouldn’t be a bad idea to think of other options.

While the three arch-communists continued their creative discussion about where somebody who was allergic to their ideology ought to go for a holiday, Allan silently thanked Harry Truman for the financial aid.

The Philippines cropped up as a suggestion, but were
considered
too unstable in political terms. Finally, Mao suggested Bali. Allan had grumbled about Indonesian banana liquor and that had led Mao to think about Indonesia. And it wasn’t communist either, even though communism was lurking in the bushes, there as everywhere else, with the possible exception of Cuba. But they would have access to more than banana liquor in Bali, Chairman Mao was sure of that.

‘Bali it is,’ said Allan. ‘Are you coming, Herbert?’

Herbert Einstein had slowly accustomed himself to the fact that he was going to live a little bit longer, and he nodded
dejectedly
. Yes, he would come along, what else could he do? 

The fugitives and the presumed dead managed successfully to keep themselves out of sight at Bellringer Farm. The farm lay 200 metres from the main road, and from that angle the
farmhouse
and the barn concealed the farmyard from view. This created a free zone for Sonya. She could have a little walk between the barn and the small wood behind the farm.

Life on the farm was generally quite enjoyable. Benny
regularly
dressed Pike’s wounds and administered a sensible and limited amount of medicine. Buster liked the open views of the Västgöta plain, and Sonya liked it anywhere as long as she didn’t go hungry and as long as her benefactor and feeder – The Beauty – was there with a friendly word now and then. Recently, the old guy had joined them too and the elephant thought that made things even better.

For Benny and The Beauty, the sun was always shining
whatever
the weather, and if they hadn’t been on the run from the Law, they would probably have got married right away. Once you’ve reached a certain age, it is easier to sense when
everything
feels exactly right.

At the same time, Benny and Bosse became better brothers to each other. When Benny had managed to make Bosse
understand
that he was a grown-up even though he drank fruit juice instead of vodka, things went much more smoothly. And Bosse was impressed by everything that Benny knew. Perhaps it hadn’t been quite so dumb or such a waste of time to go to university? It was almost as if his little brother had become a big brother, and that actually felt really good, Bosse thought.

Allan didn’t make much of a fuss about anything. He sat in his hammock all day long, although the weather had become
more as it usually was in Sweden in May. Sometimes Pike sat down near him for a little chat.

During one of these conversations, it transpired that they had a shared image of what nirvana was. Both of them thought that this perfect and absolute harmony was to be found in a beach chair under a parasol in a sunny and warm climate where the staff served chilled drinks of various sorts. Allan told Pike what a delightful time he had had on the island of Bali once upon a time, when he was vacationing with money he had got from Mao Tse-tung.

But when it came to what should be in the glasses, Allan and Pike differed. The centenarian wanted vodka cola or possibly vodka grape. On more festive occasions, he preferred vodka straight up. Pike Gerdin, on the other hand, liked more colourful liquids — best of all something orange turning into a golden yellow a bit like a sunset. And there had to be a little parasol in the middle. Allan wondered what on earth Pike wanted with a parasol in his glass. You couldn’t drink it. Pike answered that while Allan had been out and seen the world, and certainly knew a lot more about this and that than a simple ex-con from Stockholm, this was something Allan didn’t have a clue about.

And so this friendly bickering on the theme of nirvana went on for a while. One of them was about twice as old as the other, and the other about twice as big as the first, but they got along pretty well.

As the days and then weeks passed, journalists found it harder to keep the story alive – the story, that is, about the suspected triple murderer and his henchmen. After only a day or two, TV and the national and local newspapers had stopped reporting, according to the old-fashioned and easily defensible standpoint that if you didn’t have anything to say, you said nothing.

The evening papers, the Swedish tabloids, held out longer. If you had nothing to say, you could always interview somebody who didn’t realise that he too had nothing to say.
The Express
toyed with the idea of using Tarot cards to help them home in on Allan’s whereabouts, but dropped it. That was enough about Allan Karlsson. Go and nose out the next piece of shit… as one said in the trade. If nothing else was available, you could run an article on the latest miracle diet. That always worked.

So the media were letting the mystery of the centenarian disappear into oblivion – with one exception. In the local paper, there were a number of reports about various items related to Allan Karlsson’s disappearance, like, for example, that the ticket office at the bus station had now been fitted with a
security
door as protection against future attacks. And that Director Alice at the Old People’s Home had decided that Allan Karlsson had forfeited the right to his room and it would be allocated to someone else, someone who ‘was more appreciative of the care and warmth of the staff’.

In every article, however, there was a short recap of the events that the police believed were a result of Allan Karlsson climbing out of his window at the Old People’s Home.

The local paper happened to have a dinosaur of a publisher (cum editor-in-chief), a man with the hopelessly outdated
attitude
that a citizen is innocent until the opposite is proven. So the paper was careful about which people in the drama they identified by name. Allan Karlsson was indeed Allan Karlsson, but Julius Jonsson was the ‘67-year-old’ and Benny Ljungberg was the ‘hot-dog-stand proprietor’.

This in turn led an angry gentleman to phone Chief Inspector Aronsson at his office. The man said he had a tip about the missing Allan Karlsson, the man suspected of murder.

Chief Inspector Aronsson said that a tip was just what he needed.

Well, the man had read all the articles in the local paper and thought very carefully about what had happened. While he didn’t have as much information as the chief inspector, it seemed to him that the police hadn’t checked up properly on the foreigner.

‘And I am certain that is where you will find the real villain,’ said the man.

‘Foreigner?’ said Chief Inspector Aronsson.

‘Yes, I don’t know whether he is called Ibrahim or Muhammed, because the newspaper, always call him the “
hot-dog
-stand proprietor”, as if we don’t know that he is a Turk or an Arab. No Swede would open a hot-dog stand. That would only work if you’re a foreigner and don’t pay any taxes.’

‘My,’ said Aronsson. ‘That was a lot all at once. But you can be a Turk and a Muslim at the same time, or for that matter an Arab and a Muslim, in fact that is quite likely.’

‘So he’s a Turk
and
a Muslim! Even worse! Then check his background thoroughly! And his damned family’s. He’ll have one hundred relatives here, and they’ll all be living on welfare.’

‘Not a hundred,’ said the chief inspector. ‘The only relative he has is actually a brother…’

And that was when an idea started to germinate in Chief Inspector Aronsson’s brain. A few weeks earlier Aronsson had ordered an inquiry into the families of Allan Karlsson, Julius Jonsson and Benny Ljungberg. The inquiry had been to see if a female, preferably with red hair, sister or cousin or a child or grandchild happened to be living in Småland. This was before they had identified Gunilla Björklund. The results had been meagre. Just one name had turned up, and at the time it didn’t seem the slightest bit relevant, but now? Benny Ljungberg had a brother who lived just outside Falköping. Was that where they were all holed up? The chief inspector’s thoughts were interrupted by the anonymous informant.

‘And where does the brother have his hot-dog stand? How much tax does he pay? This mass immigration has to stop!’

Aronsson said that he was grateful for the man’s tips even though the hot-dog-stand proprietor in this case was called Ljungberg and was utterly Swedish. Whether or not Ljungberg was Muslim, Aronsson couldn’t say. Nor did it interest him.

The man said that he thought he detected something offensive in the chief inspector’s answer and that it showed clear signs of socialism.

‘There are a lot of people who think like me; we are growing in numbers. You’ll see in the elections next year.’

Chief Inspector Aronsson told the anonymous man to piss off, and hung up.

Aronsson phoned Prosecutor Ranelid to tell him that early the next day he intended, with the permission of the prosecutor, to go to Västergötland to follow up a new tip in the case of the centenarian and his companions. (Aronsson didn’t think he needed to tell the prosecutor that he had known about the
existence
of Benny Ljungberg’s brother for several weeks.) Prosecutor Ranelid wished Aronsson good luck.

It was almost 5 p.m. and the prosecutor was tidying up for the day while whistling silently to himself. Should he write a book about the case?
The Greatest Victory of Justice
. Would that be the right title? Too pretentious?
The Great Victory of Justice
. Better. And more humble. It fitted the writer’s character perfectly.

Mao Tse-tung provided Allan and Herbert with false British passports. Their journey took them by aeroplane from Shenyang, via Shanghai, Hong Kong and Malaysia. Soon, the former
Gulag-escapees
were sitting under a parasol on a white beach just a few metres from the Indian Ocean.

It would all have been perfect if only the well-meaning waitress didn’t constantly get everything wrong. Whatever Allan and Herbert ordered to drink, they got something different — if they got anything at all, sometimes the waitress lost her way altogether on the beach. The last straw for Allan was when he ordered a vodka and Coca-Cola (‘a bit more vodka than cola’) and got – Pisang Ambon, a vibrantly green banana liquor.

‘Enough is enough,’ said Allan and was going to complain to the hotel manager and ask for a new waitress.

‘Over my dead body!’ said Herbert. ‘She is absolutely charming!’

The waitress was called Ni Wayan Laksmi; she was thirty-two years old and should have been married off long ago. She looked nice, but wasn’t from a fine family, didn’t have any money, and on top of that it was known that she was about as intelligent as a
kodok
, Balinese for frog. So Ni Wayan Laksmi had been left over when boys chose girls and girls chose boys on the island (in so far as they had a choice).

It hadn’t really bothered her very much, because she had always felt rather uncomfortable in male company, and in female company, in any company at all, in fact. Up until now! There was something really special about one of the two new white men at the hotel. His name was Herbert and it was as if… they had something in common. He must be at least thirty years
older than her, but she didn’t think that mattered, because she was… in love! And her feelings were reciprocated. Herbert had never before met anybody who was anywhere near as slow-witted as he himself was.

When Ni Wayan Laksmi turned fifteen, her father had given her a language book, the idea being that his daughter would use it to learn Dutch, because Indonesia was at that time a Dutch colony. After four years of struggle with the book, a Dutchman came to visit. Ni Wayan Laksmi dared for the first time to try out the Dutch that had been so difficult to learn, and was told that what she was speaking was German. Her father, who wasn’t terribly bright himself, had given her the wrong book.

Now, thirteen years later, that unfortunate circumstance had unexpectedly useful results, because Ni Wayan Laksmi and Herbert could speak to each other and declare their love.

Next Herbert asked for half of the pile of dollars that Mao Tse-tung had given to Allan, after which he sought out Ni Wayan Laksmi’s father and asked for the hand of his eldest daughter. Her father thought he was being made fun of. Here was a foreigner, a white man with his pockets full of money, who was asking for the hand of by far the most stupid of his daughters. The fact that he even knocked on the door was a sensation. Ni Wayan Laksmi’s family belonged to the Sudra caste, the lowest of the four castes on Bali.

‘Are you sure this is the right house?’ asked the father. ‘And is it my eldest daughter you mean?’

Herbert Einstein replied that although he usually muddled things up, on this particular occasion he was quite certain he was right.

Two weeks later, they were married, after Herbert had
converted
to… some religion the name of which he had forgotten.
But it was quite a fun one, with elephant heads and that sort of thing.

Over this period Herbert had tried to learn the name of his new wife, but in the end he gave up.

‘Darling,’ he said. ‘I can’t remember your name. Would you be very sorry if I call you Amanda instead?’

‘Not at all, dear Herbert. Amanda sounds nice. But why Amanda?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Herbert. ‘Do you have a better idea?’

Ni Wayan Laksmi didn’t, so from that moment on she was Amanda Einstein.

Herbert and Amanda bought a house in the village of Sanur, not far from the hotel and beach where Allan spent his days. Amanda stopped waitressing; she thought it was just as well to give her notice – she would be fired some day anyway because she never did anything right. Now they just had to decide what to do for the future.

Just like Herbert, Amanda muddled everything up that could be muddled up. Left became right, up became down, here became there… So she never had any education. The very least it demanded was that you could regularly find your way to school.

But now Amanda and Herbert had an awful lot of dollars and so everything would certainly sort itself out. Amanda was admittedly terribly unintelligent, she explained to her husband, but she wasn’t stupid!

And then she told Herbert that in Indonesia everything was for sale, and so anyone who had money could get anything he wanted. Herbert didn’t really understand what his wife meant, and Amanda knew what it was like not being able to
understand
, so instead of explaining it further, she said:

‘Dear Herbert, tell me something that you would like for yourself.’

‘Do you mean… like being able to drive a car?’

‘Yes, exactly!’ said Amanda.

And then she excused herself, she had some things to do. But she would be back before the evening meal.

Three hours later, she was home again. She had with her a newly issued driver’s licence in Herbert’s name. But that wasn’t all. She also had a diploma that showed that Herbert was a certified driving instructor and a receipt showing that she had just bought the local driving school and given it a new name: Einstein’s School for Driving.

This was all fantastic, Herbert thought, but… it didn’t make him a better driver, did it? Well, yes, in a way it did, Amanda explained. Now he had a position. Now he would decide what was good driving and what wasn’t. Life worked in such a way that right was not necessarily right, but rather what the person in charge said was right.

Herbert’s face lit up: he got it!

Einstein’s School for Driving soon became a successful company. Almost everyone on the island in need of a driver’s licence wanted to be taught by the nice white man. And Herbert rapidly grew in this role. He gave all the theory lessons himself, and in a friendly yet authoritative manner explained that it was important not to drive too fast because then you might crash. And you shouldn’t drive too slowly either, because then you obstructed traffic. The teacher seemed to know what he was talking about.

After six months, the island’s two other driving schools closed for lack of customers, and now Herbert had a monopoly. He told Allan about this during one of his weekly visits to the beach.

‘I’m proud of you, Herbert,’ said Allan. ‘That you of all people got involved in driving instruction! And here where they drive on the left…’

‘Drive on the left?’ said Herbert. ‘Do they drive on the left in Indonesia?’

Amanda had been busy too. First, she had acquired a proper education, and now she had a degree in economics. It had taken a few weeks and had cost quite a lot, but in the end she had the certificate in her hand. Top grades too, from one of the better universities in Java.

And with a university degree behind her, she had gone for a long walk along the beach at Kuta and thought hard. What could she do here in life that would bring good fortune to her family? Even with her degree in economics it was still rather hard to count. But perhaps she should… could she possibly? Yes, I’ll damn well do it, Amanda Einstein thought.

‘I’ll go into politics!’

Amanda Einstein founded the Liberal Democratic Freedom Party (she thought the three words liberal, democracy and freedom sounded good together). She immediately had 6,000 imaginary members all of whom thought she should stand for election as governor in the autumn. The sitting governor would be standing down for reasons of age, and before Amanda had her idea there was only one likely candidate to take over. Now there were two. One of them was a man of the Pedana caste, the other was a woman of the Sudra caste. The result of the election was preordained, to Amanda’s disadvantage. If it wasn’t for the fact that she had a pile of dollars.

Herbert had nothing against his beloved going into politics, but he knew that Allan disliked politics in general and after his years in the Gulag disliked communism in particular.

‘Are we going to become communists?’ he asked uneasily.

No, Amanda didn’t think they would. That word wasn’t in the party name. But if Herbert really wanted to become communist, they could probably add it.

‘The Liberal Democratic Communist Freedom Party,’ said Amanda and felt how the name rolled off her tongue. A bit long perhaps, but it could work.

But that wasn’t what Herbert meant. Quite the opposite, he thought. The less their party could devote itself to politics, the better.

They discussed how to finance their campaign. According to Amanda, they wouldn’t have a lot of dollars left when the campaign was over, because it was expensive to win. What did Herbert think?

Herbert replied that he was certain that Amanda was the one in the family who best understood that matter. There wasn’t much competition, admittedly.

‘Great,’ said Amanda. ‘Then we’ll use one third of our capital for my election campaign, one third for bribes for the heads of the election districts, one third for muddying the reputation of the main opponent, and then we’ll keep one third to live on if things don’t work out. What do you think?’

Herbert scratched his nose and didn’t think anything at all. But he did tell Allan about Amanda’s plans and Allan sighed at the thought that somebody who couldn’t distinguish between banana liquor and vodka now believed she could become governor. But so what, they had started off with a bundle of dollars from Mao Tse-tung, and there was more than enough left of Allan’s half. So he promised Herbert and Amanda that he would give them some more after the election. But after that he didn’t want to hear of any more projects concerning things that Herbert and Amanda didn’t understand.

Herbert thanked him for the offer. Allan was a very kind man, that much was clear.

However, Allan’s help was not needed. The governor’s election was a complete success for Amanda. She won with more than eighty per cent of the votes, and her opponent got twenty-two per cent. The opponent thought that the total of more than one hundred per cent indicated the election wasn’t fair, but the court soon dismissed his complaint and threatened him with serious consequences if he continued to defame the governor-elect, Mrs Einstein. Just before the court announcement, Amanda had happened to meet the court’s chairman for a cup of tea.

While Amanda Einstein slowly but surely took over the island, and her husband Herbert taught people to drive (without sitting behind the wheel himself more than absolutely necessary), Allan sat in his lounge chair beside the sea with a suitable drink in his hand. Since Amanda had given up waitressing, he now (most of the time) got served exactly what he asked for.

Apart from sitting where he sat and drinking what he drank, Allan thumbed through the international newspapers he had ordered, ate when he got hungry, and had a nap in his room when his head felt too fuzzy.

Days became weeks, weeks became months, months became years – and Allan never tired of being on holiday. And after fifteen years he still had a lot of dollars left. That was partly because there had been a pile of dollars to start with, but also because Amanda and Herbert Einstein had for some time owned the hotel he was staying in, and they immediately made Allan the only non-paying guest.

Allan was now sixty-three years old and still didn’t move around more than necessary, while Amanda went from strength to strength in her political career. She was popular with the masses, as could be seen from the regular opinion polls carried out by the local Statistics Institute owned and run by one of
her sisters. Besides, Bali was ranked by the human rights
organisations
as the least corrupt region in the country. That, in turn, was because Amanda had bribed the entire investigating committee.

Nevertheless, the campaign against corruption was one of the three things that characterized Amanda’s work as governor. She even introduced anti-corruption lessons in all of Bali’s schools. One headmaster in Denpasar had first protested – in his opinion the whole thing could have the opposite effect. But then Amanda made him chairman of the school board instead, with twice as big a salary, and that took care of him.

The second thing was Amanda’s struggle against communism. Before the election she had organized the banning of the local communist party, which was on the way to becoming too big for her own good. This helped her get through the election with a much smaller budget than she would otherwise have needed.

The third thing that contributed to Amanda’s success was Herbert and Allan. Through them, she discovered that it was by no means 30°C all year round in large parts of the rest of the world. In what they called Europe it was particularly chilly, and most of all in the far north where Allan came from. So she stimulated the development of tourism by granting building permission for luxury hotels on land she had just bought herself.

Otherwise, she looked after her nearest and dearest as best she could. Father, mother, sisters, uncles, aunts and cousins soon all had central and lucrative positions in Balinese society. This led to Amanda being re-elected as governor no less than twice. The second time, the number of votes and voters even tallied.

Over the years, Amanda had also given birth to two sons: first Allan Einstein (Herbert had Allan to thank for almost
everything
), followed by Mao Einstein (in honour of that useful pile of dollars).

But one day everything fell apart. It started when Gunung Agung, the 3,000 metre high volcano erupted. The immediate consequence for Allan, seventy kilometres away, was that the smoke blocked the sun. For others, it was worse. Thousands of people died, and even more had to flee from the island. Bali’s hitherto popular governor didn’t make any decisions worth the name. She didn’t even realise she had a number of decisions to make.