The Fly Trap (21 page)

Typically, the bidding started at the back. I turned around and tried to see who was bidding, but I was now so poorly located that I couldn’t possibly see anything in the crowd of people. Anyway, things were happening. The minimum was quickly surpassed. The bidding continued, now between a person way in the rear and someone on the telephone. The man holding that particular phone was speaking Italian. I watched tensely. Soon only the Italian on the phone was left. Going once. Going twice. Now wait just a minute, I thought, and waved my paddle. And then there was no going back. It was him or me. I mean, was I really going to let René’s Rembrandt leave the country? I just couldn’t let that happen. The Italian bid 20,000. I waved my paddle until he gave up. The hammer fell. The painting was mine!

…

I was now the owner of a copy of a Rembrandt forgery. A small one. Probably stolen. My pulse slowed rapidly, my mouth was dry, I felt a bit dizzy. I stayed in my seat, apathetic in a way, completely empty. The auctioneer’s monotone voice on the loudspeaker faded and disappeared. The items being sold did not interest me, nothing interested me anymore. I wasn’t even cold. I was feeling both nausea and the fear of an oncoming financial problem. Exhausted, I looked out through the tulle curtains in the window, sat there and listened to my own breathing while my gaze wandered over the grey mist and snow in Berzelii Park and on towards the buses and trams at the red lights on Nybroplan and, beyond it, the Royal Dramatic Theatre with its gold filigree, and Sibyllegatan, where the Malaise family lived when René was a child, a little way up the slope at number 21.

A memory popped up from somewhere, slowly, like a distant migratory bird in the sudden emptiness. A vague feeling drew closer, a repudiated question and doubt that was somehow associated with this very place and maybe with a play whose title I couldn’t remember but that told a story about the curse of poverty, and flight.

There was dialogue. And a singular fragrance.