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July 1 - July 3, 2022
Malmköping is not what you’d call a bustling town, and this sunny weekday morning was no exception. Allan hadn’t met a living soul since he had suddenly decided not to show up at his own hundredth birthday party.
it was important to steal electricity in moderation if you wanted to keep taking advantage of the perk for a long time.
“You can’t imagine what the Russian alphabet looks like. It’s no wonder people are illiterate.”
Allan’s great interest in world events did not include any interest in trying to change them.
The mayor, however, had gone home, and turned off his phone. In his opinion, only harm would come from being involved in the disappearance of an ungrateful geriatric.
“Allan may be old, but he is also one hell of a rascal and he damned well does exactly what he feels like.”
higher price from consumers. The only problem with the Boss’s partner was that his conscience wasn’t sufficiently flexible.
With the help of a machete and an angry shout of “Gimme the cash or else!” in an instant and to his own surprise, he had become forty-one thousand crowns richer. Why slave away with imports when you could earn such nice money for almost no work at all?
He had gotten the job at the foundry three years earlier with some interpreting help from a Catholic priest and, may God forgive him, a made-up story about having worked with explosives back home in Spain, when in actual fact he had mainly picked tomatoes.
Revenge is not a good thing, Allan warned him. Revenge is like politics: one thing always leads to another until bad has become worse, and worse has become worst.
When, ten years earlier, Allan had applied for a job as an ignition specialist at the foundry in Hälleforsnäs, he had chosen to exclude from his résumé the fact that he had been in an asylum for four years, after which he had blown up his own house. Perhaps that was precisely why the job interview went so well.
On the other side of the globe, in Washington D.C., President Harry Truman had problems of his own. Election time was coming up, and it was important for him to make his policies clear. And that meant deciding what they were. The biggest strategic question was how much he would be prepared to support the Negroes in the South.
You had to maintain a fine balance between seeming modern and not seeming too soft. That was how you maintained your support in the opinion polls.
Allan admitted that the difference between madness and genius was subtle, and that he couldn’t with certainty say which it was in this case, but that he had his suspicions.
People could do what they wanted, but Allan considered that in general it was quite unnecessary to be grumpy if you had the chance not to.
Allan had nothing against working for two. But he soon introduced a rule: Herbert wasn’t allowed to complain about how miserable his life was. Allan had already understood that to be the case, and there was nothing wrong with his memory. To keep on saying the same thing over and over again thus served no purpose.
John 8:7. Don’t forget that tomorrow morning, Chief Inspector, Bosse called out in a sudden burst of inspiration. In the Bible, John 8:7.
When the chief inspector had reached his hotel the previous evening, he looked up John 8:7 in the Gideon Bible in his room. This had been followed by a couple of hours of Bible reading in a corner of the hotel bar,
The chapter in question was about the woman who committed adultery and whom the Pharisees had taken before Jesus to place him in a dilemma. If according to Jesus the woman should not be stoned for her crime, then Jesus was rejecting Moses (the Book of Leviticus). If, on the other hand, Jesus was on the same side as Moses, then he would be battling with the Romans who had the monopoly on the death sentence.
The Pharisees thought that they had the Master cornered. But Jesus was Jesus and after thinking it over he said: —Let he who is without sin cast the first stone!
Finally, only Jesus and the woman remained. —Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you? —No one, she answered. —Then neither do I condemn you, Jesus declared. Go now and sin no more.
Sometimes your mouth seems to go its own way while your brain stands still,
when people started talking politics then he stopped listening. It sort of happened by itself.
But then everything got more difficult. And even more difficult. And in the end, Nixon had to do what no other American president had done before. He had to resign.
