The Historians Read online

  The archivist looked dejected. Jens softened.

  “I will find out. I promise.” He touched Daniel’s sleeve before turning to walk away. “I promise,” he said again over his shoulder and sensed more than saw his colleague shake his head.

  Günther didn’t share anything with anyone. It wasn’t a lack of trust, Jens thought, as much as the belief that he knew best. He simply thought himself better than the others in his department, and the other men in the government, for that matter.

  The door to the large meeting room opened and the head of the Foreign Affairs’ political department, Staffan Söderblom, exited, followed by the secretary to Prime Minister Hansson, Jon Olof Söderblom.

  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 b
een measured, just like the cattle you’d buy at market time.

  Taneli lined up behind the others. Raija pressed against his shin. She was a Lapphund with a keen little face and small bear ears. Her fur was long and fluffy, beige on the legs and ruff, the rest of her black. Her soft tail curled up over her back and Taneli would pull it through his hand. She was a good dog. Brave and willing to work hard. And she was his. By their huts, the adults were standing, watching, hands open, not speaking.

  The others said Stallo, the giant, had taken Javanna. But Taneli didn’t think so. They’d found her trap on a knoll by the river; the prey that had been caught in it glittered blue with frost. Of Javanna there had been no trace: her rucksack was gone; her skis, too. Stallo was not that neat. No, something else had happened to Javanna.

  Taneli’s mother had told him how excited his sister had been about his birth. Javanna had put her hands on their mother’s belly every time their mother would let her, and whispered truths into her stomach. Truths meant only for Taneli. Maybe this is why he could feel her and the others couldn’t. They were tied together by that belly button as if the umbilical cord had connected the two of them, rather than stretching between mother and child. “She is the one who chose your name,” his mother always said. “She said you had to be called Taneli.”

  Nihkko, one of the elders, had spoken with Taneli. “You have to stop,” he’d said. “You have to accept.”

  “She is not dead.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just know.”

  “Hearing her doesn’t mean she is not dead,” Nihkko had responded. “The dead speak.”

  Taneli shrugged. He knew what he knew.

  Nihkko had fallen silent, his face thoughtful. Then he said, “I wish she were alive, too. There were prophesies laid on her life. She was supposed to replace me. But it would be better now if she were not.”

  The way he said it sent shivers down Taneli’s spine. He hadn’t thought about it like that: hadn’t thought about what could be happening to her if she was somehow trapped and being held.

  “You!”

  The man pointed to Taneli with his pen. It was his turn. He walked close. The man positioned him beside the others. Taneli focused on the man’s beard. Reddish and neat, each hair seemed to have its place. Perhaps the man combed it with something. First, the man ran his fingertips over Taneli’s head, pressing to feel its shape. It was not an unpleasant feeling. Then he placed the set of tongs on Taneli’s head. He read out the number aloud for his friend to write in his book. He put his fingers between Taneli’s teeth and prised his jaws open to look inside. The fingers tasted bitter and left an oily feel in his mouth.

  He placed his knuckles under Taneli’s chin and tipped it up. He looked at Taneli but without seeing him.

  “He doesn’t look like the others,” he said, whereupon his friend approached them.

  “Not a clean racial type,” he added.

  The second man was also bearded, but his was sparse and straggly. His eyes were light blue, like water pouring from a cup. His eyes met Taneli’s and Taneli could feel his chest clench. There was nothing in this man’s eyes: no emotion, no spark, just a flat surface. This was what evil looked like, Taneli thought. The hair stood up on his arms.

  In the second man’s book were drawings of human heads. The men studied them and Taneli. Their eyes flicked back and forth between the sketches and Taneli.

  “You’re right,” the second man said. “Hybrid.”

  “Yes,” the first man said and narrowed his eyes at Taneli. “And more Swedish than Sami.”

  Taneli turned his gaze to him, anger rising. “But I don’t want to look like a Swede,” he said.

  He could feel his mother holding her breath over by their tent and pressing her fist against her chest. He knew his father would be rubbing his knuckle against his forehead and making a face, as if his head hurt him.

  The man who had measured Taneli ignored him. But the man with the light eyes held Taneli’s gaze and smiled. Taneli could feel himself going weak. There was something so utterly terrifying about this man.

  Before the two men walked away, the man with the light eyes kicked Raija in the side. He wasn’t looking at the dog, though. He was looking at Taneli.

  4.

  Laura

  Stockholm’s central train station was full of people hurrying to catch their trains. Rush hour. Laura walked in the opposite direction. People bumped into her. She felt dizzy. She kept seeing Britta’s body before her. She might be sick again. She had failed her best friend; the one person on earth she loved the most. During their time at university, Laura had grown to hope she and her friends would stay together after their studies and live in a big house like bohemians. She must have mentioned it to Britta, for she remembered Britta’s curt answer: “You’re not being realistic. Now is now. Who knows what will happen?” And Britta had been right. Matti had gone back to Finland and enlisted in the army, Karl-Henrik was in Norway, having, from what she understood, joined the resistance. Like Norway, Denmark was occupied, and so Erik had remained in Stockholm. Laura had taken the job in Stockholm and Britta . . .

  In the main hall, under the curved glass roof, there was a queue for the platforms. “Excuse me,” Laura said. “Excuse me.”

  She wanted to scream for people to move. Instead, she caught the eye of a policeman, black uniform, white hat.

  Focus on your breath, she thought. Look at your feet. One step. One more.

  The train ride back had been dreadful. Laura had felt nauseous. Dark yellow grass from last year still clung to the fields outside the window beyond the reflection of her white face, birch trees like dirty stripes against the gray spruce forest, all of it shouting of death and loss. Waves of realization that Britta was gone hit against her; each breaking her down.

  She had planned to go home, but now she couldn’t face being on her own. There was her father’s house in Djursholm, but he was at work. She walked out of the train station, followed Vasagatan to the water and then continued alongside Värtan strait toward the King’s Garden and her workplace. Only now did she notice the heavy sky. A storm was on its way. How was it possible that Britta was gone, and, in the world, things would simply continue as normal? Nothing could be normal again.

  She opened the heavy wooden door to her place of work and her shoes made hollow taps on the reception area’s marble floor. In her office, the brightness and the noise assaulted her. She remained standing in front of the door.

  “There you are,” Jacob Wallenberg said. “We’ve had a message from the Germans. Could you please take a look?” He leaned back and narrowed his eyes. “You’re pale.”

  This was his strength. He didn’t miss anything, never forgot a face, never failed to take that extra look, always had time for a conversation. That and, of course, his ability to keep everything in his head: every line in a dialogue, each number.

  “A university friend of mine died,” she said. My best friend, she wanted to say. My only friend.

  “I’m sorry. What happened?”

  “She was murdered. Shot.”

  “Really? Do they know by whom?”

  She shook her head.

  “She was still a student in Uppsala?”

  Laura nodded. “Doing her doctorate.”

  “Was she involved in the riots?”

  “No.”

  “Any involvement with student groups? Or people from other countries?”

  She looked up. Wallenberg was studying her, a frown above his deep-set eyes. Did he think this had to do with the war?

  “Not that I know of,” she said.

  “What was her name?” he asked.

  “Britta Hallberg.”

  “Hopefully they’ll have the time to investigate. With this war ongoing, priorities are skewed.”

  SHE SAT AT her desk until late afternoon without accomplishing anything. When her colleagues put on their jackets and grabbed their bags, she was startled. She, too, rose and put on h
er coat. She’d take the tram to her father’s house. Anything but the empty apartment. The sky was still dark. The air heavy, not yet having had its release.

  “Look who’s here.” Her father’s eyes shone with contentment when he saw her.

  “Look indeed,” her grandfather said and beamed.

  It had always only been the three of them, plus an army of servants and a governess. Laura’s mother had left when she was little. She had no memories of her. Not a face, not a smell. Nothing. Her father didn’t want to discuss her.

  In her mind, Britta was there, asking, “Why haven’t you gone to find her?” Mouth half-open, eyes on Laura’s lips, interested in the response.

  “She’s a flapper,” Laura had responded, using words she must have picked up from someone. She could hear how small-minded she sounded and felt furious with herself. There was also the usual hitch in her chest: bottled-up tears making themselves known.

  Britta laughed. “So? I would probably have been one, too, if I’d been born ten years earlier.”

  “She left us.” Laura cut her off. It was the one thing she didn’t want to discuss with Britta.

  More than anything, growing up, she had wanted a mother. She had looked at her friends’ mothers and coveted the soft hands, the compassionate eyes. She assumed her mother looked like her. With her blond straight hair, her gray eyes, the cool expression on her face and the bump on her nose her father said made her look aristocratic, Laura did not have her father’s more Mediterranean features. She used to imagine being out and about and coming face to face with her mother—both understanding immediately who the other one was. But it hadn’t happened and there had been no attempt at contact. No, her mother had abandoned them. She had no mother.

  “Emphasis on ‘us,’” Britta had said and nodded. “It’s for their sake you’re not trying. For the sake of your father and your grandfather.”

  It was true that it could have been considered betrayal. “Why would you even be thinking about her?” her father had asked when she was younger, eyebrows knotted. “You never knew her. How could she possibly matter to you?”