Free A summer with Kim Novak by Håkan Nesser

that’s exactly what he did, but he didn’t stop there. The florid Mulle bent double like a clubbed ox after that first punch, but then Berra lifted him up by the collar and gave him three or four more whacks before turning him around and bashing his head into the ground twice, with all his might.
    My stomach lurched each time Mulle’s head suffered a blow, and when it was done, I noticed a pall of silence had fallen over the fighters. Both Mulle’s companions and the handball players were frozen and staring, and when Super-Berra straightened up and gestured for his blazer, Atle Eriksson handed it over without a word. Then they turned their backs on Mulle and walked away.
    Solemnly. Like after a funeral. Edmund and I also slunk away. I felt ashamed for some reason and so did Edmund, I guess, because neither of us said anything until we’d left the park behind us and were unlocking our bikes.
    ‘Christ, that was grim,’ Edmund said and I thought I detected a slight tremble in his voice.
    ‘And unfair,’ I said. ‘Bloody unfair. You don’t hit a man when he’s down.’
    As we cycled back home through the woods, I thought about where Ewa Kaludis had been during the fight and if that was how you won over a woman like her.
    By being like Berra Albertsson?
    I remember that I shed silent tears as we trundled through the mild June night.
    Yes, it was the middle of the night, the rear wheel of Edmund’s bike chirred and I cried quietly without knowing why.

8
     
    On Sunday, my dad came to visit. He didn’t stay long because he’d got a lift from Ivar Bäck, who was supposed to help someone in Sjölycke with their TV antenna.
    We sat outside on the lawn for an hour anyway and ate the watery strawberries that he’d brought with him and we talked. But not much. My mother was relatively well, my father said. She was going in for another series of tests. It would take a few weeks. Perhaps a month.
    And then we’d see.
    With age comes wisdom.
    Henry offered to drive our father home in Killer when he went into town later that evening, but our father just shook his head.
    ‘I’ll go with Bäck,’ he said. ‘It’s simplest that way.’
    Afterward, Edmund asked what he meant by that. Why it was easier to go with Bäck.
    I shrugged.
    ‘He thinks Henry drives like a madman,’ I said. ‘He can barely stand being in a car with him.’
    When my father was on his way, I noticed that he hadn’t asked after Emmy Kaskel. Maybe Henry had told him after all.
    ‘Mate,’ said Edmund when he’d finished reading Colonel Darkin and the Golden Ewes. ‘This is really something. You’re going to be a millionaire.’
    I’d finished Colonel Darkin and the Golden Ewes before we went out to Gennesaret, and I’d brought it with me, along with a new notebook. For a rainy day, or if the fancy struck.
    The fancy struck, but it was impossible to keep the comic-drawing a secret from Edmund. After some deliberation, I’d left the notebook out with the other books half by chance, and it wasn’t long until Edmund spotted it. And it wasn’t much longer until he read it.
    ‘It isn’t any good,’ I said. ‘You don’t need to pretend.’
    ‘Not any good!’ said Edmund. ‘It’s the best bloody thing I’ve seen since Nan got her tits caught in the mangler!’
    This was a saying from Norrland and was meant to convey the highest praise and appreciation. I was suddenly so happy that I had a hard time hiding it.
    ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Sod off, you herring milt.’
    This was another saying from Norrland.
    My desire to draw certainly had something to do with what had happened on Saturday night at Lackaparken. I needed to draw and tell a story about a woman like Ewa Kaludis; the desire made me ache. Maybe I wanted to throw a few punches back—but in a cleaner way than in the fight between Super-Berra and Mulle. The day after, we’d started to discuss how Mulle might be feeling, but both Edmund and I got the chills when we thought about what