Page 11 of The Living and the Dead

Ardelius had discreetly, almost silently, risen from the chair. He turned to Sander again and gave him a quick wink, as though from now on the two of them shared a secret.

7

“What was it called again?”

“The law school at Stockholm University is called Juridicum. That’s the place to go, if you want to major in law.”

Amajorat university, as opposed to atrackin high school. Tracks were narrow and meandering, could fade away at any time. A major was something greater, more robust. Someone who was accepted into a major must be special, Sander imagined.

Killian shaped his mouth to sayJuridicum,and although he had just heard it out loud twice, he seemed to waver on its pronunciation.

“Cool,” he said, going back to the cord and the generator.

“I haven’t made up my mind. I’m going to spend some time thinking about it. Applications aren’t due until after New Year’s and then we’ll see if I get in.”

“I’m sure you will.”

“You could come, too, if you want. The two of us could go. Maybe you don’t want to go to college, I get that, but it’sStockholm. There would for sure be a job for you there too. Tons of jobs. And good bars and clubs. Girls. I mean, you should see the ones in the catalog he gave me, I’ll show you.”

That didn’t come out the way he’d meant it to. Sander had planned it just as he planned everything; words and strategies were fingers that could pick apart tricky knots. But this time he spoke toofast and stumbled over syllables, perhaps because he was nervous or unsure if what he was saying was true.

“Yeah,” Killian said, as though he wasn’t particularly interested, or simply didn’t want to let on that the idea bummed him out. “Maybe.”

He looked around with an odd expression on his face.

“Look, you know how getting out of here is, like, your dream? Isn’t it?”

“Part of it, anyway.”

“This is mine.”

“What is?”

“Building a home of my own, kind of. Maybe with more rooms than this, when I can afford it. A bigger beer bunker.” He chuckled, but quickly grew serious again. “Getting a job somewhere nearby. Having a family. Cars to tinker with and all that. I like it here. I don’t need much else.”

“That’s because you’ve never thought about it.”

“But I . You talk about leaving all the time, which means I’ve thought about it too…but I don’t think it’s for me.”

Sander didn’t know what to say to that. The cabin they’d built suddenly seemed like a monument of sorts, a symbol of what he would be leaving behind.

“Okay.” Killian stood up. “Let’s test it out. Turn on the switch.”

They had installed it a few weeks ago. The button was in the right spot, just a little crooked. Sander pressed it. The lightbulb flickered and crackled, but then a loud bang came from behind the cabin. The generator.

“Shit. Maybe it is broken after all.”

Killian went out to see what had gone wrong. The cold winter night swept in, and Sander shivered.

—

A few dozen miles from the coast, just where the Nissan River curves away to reveal all the beauty Halland has to offer. That’s where youwill find little Skavböke, and all the kids had turned eighteen that year, all but Filip. The days still passed as unnoticed as before. The farmers struggled on, cars left homes in the morning and returned at dusk, children played soccer on the gravel road and went ice-skating on the lake; they watched the combines during the harvest, how they moved across the field toward a deep forest and clear sky.

But a change was drawing near: the ’90s were almost over. So much had changed in this country, their parents said, that some days it barely felt familiar anymore. Hard to know what it meant to live in Sweden nowadays, what it meant to be Swedish. The greater world had come whooshing in, and there were signs of it everywhere. Stores were given new names when the old ones failed, names that you’d only ever seen on TV before. These days, capital moved faster than ever and wherever it went it left ruins in its wake. So said a politician onTV.

There were winners and losers, and it was clear that Skavböke was the latter, but exactly how this had happened was difficult to figure. The whole country was supposed to thrive. The politicians said this too. But jobs that used to demand workers’ hands had long since been done by machines, and soon computers would take over.

Maybe there was no limit to how superfluous humans could become.