The Shadow Girls by Henning Mankell Read Free Book Online

he would neverhave admitted that any of these things he said about himself were not true.
    *
    The train arrived on time. He took a taxi to the Mölndal library and was greeted by a young librarian.
    ‘So is anyone coming to see me tonight?’
    ‘All of our tickets are gone. We’re expecting one hundred and fifty people.’
    ‘Whoever said the Swedish Folk Movement was dead?’ Humlin said with fitting humility. ‘One hundred and fifty people are coming to listen to a simple poet on a dark and cold night in February.’
    ‘There are some groups coming.’
    ‘What kind of groups?’
    ‘I don’t know. The other librarian should know.’
    Later Humlin would regret the fact that he never took the time to seek out the other librarian and ask her about these groups. He assumed they were a book club or perhaps a retired persons’ association. But when he stepped up to the lectern at seven o’clock he saw a group of people that reminded him neither of retirees nor of book lovers. In the usual audience of beaming older women he noticed some people he couldn’t quite place.
    In the front row there were a group of middle-aged men who did not look like the kind of audience members he usually saw, neither in their clothing nor their looks. Many had long hair and pierced ears and wore leather jackets and jeans, often torn over the knees. Humlin immediately grew more guarded. He also noticed a group of dark-skinned women sitting together. Immigrants, or so-called New Swedes, were not a usual part of his following, apartfrom a Chinese man who lived in Haparanda and who often sent him long letters with complicated and altogether incomprehensible analyses of his poems. Nonetheless there was an immigrant group here in this library in Mölndal listening to him.
    Jesper Humlin drew a deep breath and launched into his lecture, the one that was closest to the truth and took twenty-one minutes. Afterwards he read a few poems from his latest collection that he thought would go over best. The whole time he was speaking he kept a surreptitious eye on the men in the front row. They listened attentively and he began to think with increasing satisfaction that he seemed in fact to have reached a new reading public. But the atmosphere in the room changed when he started reading his poems. One of the men in the front row shifted restlessly and started rocking back and forth in his chair as he sighed audibly. Humlin started to sweat. He skipped a whole stanza in the poem he was reading out of sheer nervousness, making the already challenging poem completely incomprehensible.
    When he finished the poem, he looked up to find the men in the front row staring at him. None of them clapped. Humlin leafed through his book and hastily decided to change his approach and only read a few more of the shortest poems. At the same time his mind was ever more desperately trying to figure out who these men with their leather jackets and torn jeans could possibly be. The other unusual group, the immigrants, were staring at him impassively. They clapped dutifully but without enthusiasm. Humlin had the distinct impression that it was all going to hell, but without really being able to say why. He had never experienced a reading quite like this one.
    He finished the final poem and wiped the sweat from his brow. He looked up at the people he considered his
normal
public andreceived their enthusiastic applause. The men in the front row were staring at him with what he now saw were glazed eyes. He lay aside his book and smiled, trying to hide his fear.
    ‘I am happy to take any questions that you may have. After that there will be a short time for book signing.’
    A woman put up her hand and asked him to define his usage of the word
charity
. She felt it was a concept that underpinned the whole collection. Humlin thought he heard a low growl from the front row. He started to sweat again.
    ‘Charity, in my opinion, is simply a more beautiful word for kindness.’
    The