looked for her during the graduation ceremony, had hoped to sit near her, but he had realized too late that she had skipped that part. To absolutely no purpose, Peter had suffered through four hours of ‘Take the ring… Take the hat… Farewell,’ painfully struggling against drowsiness as a soporific number of strangers proudly wed themselves to Knowledge.
But then the evening came. He saw her at once in the sea of buzzing people in party clothes. Vera had hatched like a butterfly when she took off her dark coat and revealed her slim arms and a shimmering, dark green, full-length dress. Boredom and drowsiness disappeared. Perhaps it wouldn’t be such a bad evening after all?
He followed her at a distance. The messy bohemian hairstyle exposed her small, protruding, slightly pointed ears. At the sides, her dark hair was pinned up with white flowers, while other curls fell untamed between her girlish shoulder blades. Vera found Cissi in the crowd, took a small flat-bread canapé and a glass of champagne spiked with cloudberry liquor. Cissi looked good this evening, Peter noted as he helped himself to food further down the buffet. She had done something unusual with her red hair, and she was wearing a gold dress befitting a film star.
Like most of the other young men in the room, Peter was in a black suit and tie. It was that or white tie and tails for the men. When Peter saw Sturesson and Sparre on the other side of the hors d’oeuvre buffet, chatting with other men, he thought of a gaggle of penguins whose only defining features were their different sizes and forms. Sparre was the tall, slightly stooped, darkly sharp-eyed one. Åke Sturesson was the greying, irascible terrier. He didn’t know the others. Peter’s gaze fastened on the small, round, reclining man with spiky strands of hair behind his ears – there was something vaguely familiar about him.
Åke caught sight of Peter and waved him over; he was in the middle of an enthusiastic toast, ‘…and the making of history. Cheers to a ground-breaking research project on Future Welfare and Prosperity!’ Sturesson carefully looked all the penguins, and finally Peter as well, in the eye before taking a swallow of the cloudberry champagne. This was followed by a similar round of small nods in the direction of each individual in turn.
Peter felt like a zoologist observing the strange behavior of an exotic bird, and a small smile crossed his face as he thought of Kalle. Then Sturesson spoke again, in English.
‘And this, gentlemen, is young Peter Stavenius, the only son of Lennart Stavenius, the famous entrepreneur in the travel… yes, yes.’ He broke off when the men nodded. The round one with the plumes of hair offered him a meaty hand.
‘Morley, Anthony Morley.’
Sturesson started listing all of Morley’s accomplishments. Peter nodded, but realized with embarrassment that the obviously world-renowned academic probably seemed familiar to him only because he had seen that kind of Antarctic seabird in some animated film. Sturesson continued in English for Morley’s benefit.
‘I’m actually an old friend of the family. Lennart and I were at Stockholm’s School of Economics, class of ’76!’
Peter suddenly realized that Åke Sturesson had actually visited them at home in Stockholm about 10 years ago. When we were still a family, popped into Peter’s head.
Sturesson continued absentmindedly: ‘Yes, I almost forgot, we have the girls too. Come, come.’ He took his gaggle of penguins with him, over to Cissi and Vera, who had now been joined by Lilian, the department secretary. Peter’s eyes were drawn like a magnet to Vera. She was not good-looking in a way he could handle, like Cissi and so many others this evening. She was beautiful in an important and disquieting way. Different, like a mythical being. When he moved towards her, he suddenly felt that she reminded him of someone or something that he had been attracted to since he was a teenager.
The mythical being looked serious when they formally shook hands. Her handshake was pleasurable and the memory of the cool, strong softness remained in his hand. Perhaps she’s cold? He smothered a sudden impulse to keep hold of her and warm her up.
16
Vera sat at the banquet with a linen napkin on her lap. She was nervously expectant. Next to her sat Anthony Morley – a corpulent Brit in late middle age who was introduced to her as ‘an authority in the science of economics’. An expert in something so super interesting! Her respectful shyness had restrained her, through the appetizer, through the reindeer fillet with chanterelle and aquavit sauce, through the wild raspberry sorbet. But now she drew a deep breath.
‘So, what do you think about prosperity in the future?’ she asked.
He looked at her with watery eyes. She glimpsed a flushed, red neck behind his bow-tie and wondered how many refills had made their way down his throat into that impressive belly.
The intrusive examination was transformed into an expression of delight and he whispered: ‘What future do you have in mind… Are you talking about later tonight?’
The thick wedding ring shone on his chubby hand when he gestured as if to make a toast.
Just then, the banquet hall filled with the sounds of a spirited sing-along: ‘O jerum, jerum, jerum! O, quae mutatio rerum!’ Everyone suddenly seemed to know exactly what they were supposed to do during this peculiarly choreographed ritual. Prim Lilian, who sat diagonally across from Vera, caught her eye and whispered instructions: ‘Bang on the table!’
People were rosy-cheeked and jumped cheerfully up on their chairs when it was their faculty’s turn to do so. Peter, who had unexpectedly showed up on the welfare project, had clearly done this before. Cissi had not, Vera realized when she saw how uncertainly her friend stood up with the law faculty. Morley blinked at her in confusion and, when it was their turn and Vera was about to climb carefully up on her chair, he suddenly roared. He half-stood and clumsily tried to wrap his arms around her legs.
‘Oh, wait a minute…’
For a second, Vera feared for her bad knee, but he missed her and collapsed into a black-and-white heap on the floor. As the other table burst into song again, Lilian gestured to Vera to meet her under the table. Hidden under the tablecloth, she met the waiting secretary face to face. Lilian spoke quietly: ‘How is he?’
Vera looked at Morley, who was still lying on the floor, happily mumbling to himself.
‘Pretty well, I think. Although he’s…’ she said and made a little grimace.
‘Discretion, Miss Lundberg. Never embarrass a professor! I’ll come around and we can… prop him up.’
Lilian was on her way around the table before Vera could say another word. She looked out from under the table and saw only shoes. Now everyone was standing on their chairs singing at the top of their lungs.
‘So brothers, close our circle fast, to fend for joy and glory!’
Alone under the table, Vera wondered what she had got herself into.
Vera and Cissi stood along the wall, close to the stage that had been specially erected on the window side of the dance floor’s dark parquet for the fall festival. As 20 or so big-band musicians in peppermint-striped pants climbed up on the stage, Vera asked: ‘So, is Peter Stavenius part of the project?’
‘Yes!’ said Cissi enthusiastically. ‘And thanks to him we got extra money for it!’ Cissi swept her brocade shawl over
