The Accidental Further Adventures of the Hundred-Year-Old Man. Jonas Jonasson
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tended to have a third glass, too, before bedtime.
The evening’s first was empty and the other well on its way when Julius’s senses expanded enough for him to notice that he wasn’t alone in the bar. Three chairs away sat a middle-aged Asian man, also with arak in hand.
‘Cheers,’ Julius said, raising his glass.
The man smiled in response, whereupon both turned bottoms up and grimaced.
‘Now things are starting to look up,’ said the man, whose eyes were as full of tears as Julius’s.
‘First or second?’ Julius asked.
‘Second,’ said the man.
‘Same here.’
Julius and the man moved closer and each decided to have a third glass of the same.
They chatted for a while before the man chose to introduce himself. ‘Simran Aryabhat Chakrabarty Gopaldas,’ he said. ‘It’s a pleasure!’
Julius looked at the man who had just said his name. And had enough arak in his body to say what he was thinking. ‘Surely no one could have a name like that.’
Yes, one could. Especially if one was of Indian origin. Simran Etc. Etc. had ended up in Indonesia after an unfortunate incident with the daughter of a far-too-unsympathetic man.
Julius nodded. Dads of daughters could be more unsympathetic than most. But was that any reason to possess a name that took an entire morning to say?
The man, who was named what he was named, turned out to have a pragmatic attitude toward the significance of his own identity. Or perhaps he just had a sense of humour. ‘What do you think I should be called instead?’
Julius liked the exiled Indian. But if they were going to become friends, all those names in a row just wouldn’t do. He had to seize this opportunity. ‘Gustav Svensson,’ he said. ‘That’s a proper name, rolls off the tongue, easy to remember.’
The man said he’d never had trouble remembering Simran Aryabhat Chakrabarty Gopaldas either, but he agreed that Gustav Svensson sounded pleasant. ‘Swedish, isn’t it?’ he asked.
Yes. Julius nodded again. Couldn’t get much more Swedish than that.
And there and then, his new business idea began to take root.
* * *
Julius Jonsson and Simran Something truly hit it off as the third glass of arak took hold. Before the night was over they had decided to meet again. Same place, same time, the next night. In addition, Julius had decided that the man with the impossible name would henceforth be called Gustav Svensson. Simran Aryabhat Chakrabarty Gopaldas thought that was just as well. The name he’d had so far hadn’t brought him an overabundance of luck.
The old men went on in the same vein for several nights in a row. The Indian grew used to his new alias. He liked it.
He’d checked into the hotel under his previous name on the day the two had met, and he continued to stay there while he and Julius laid plans for their future partnership. When the hotel manager informed him, at increasing volume, that he wanted payment for the Indian guest’s stay, Gustav told Julius that he intended to depart from the place permanently. Without paying. And without announcing his intentions. The management would never understand, after all, that Gustav couldn’t be held responsible for Simran’s bill.
But Julius understood. When was Gustav planning to depart?
‘Preferably in the next fifteen minutes.’
Julius understood this too. But he didn’t want to lose his new friend, so he sent the man off with the phone Allan had given him. ‘Here’s something so you can be reached. I’ll call you from my room. Now go. Take the way through the kitchen. That’s what I would do.’
Gustav followed Julius’s advice and was gone. Later that evening, the hotel manager appeared after wandering around for at least an hour in pursuit of the now-vanished Indian guest.
Julius and Allan observed the sunset from the shore, each in a comfortable chair and with an accompanying drink. The manager apologized for the intrusion. But he had a question. ‘Mr Jonsson, is there any chance you have seen our guest Simran Aryabhat Chakrabarty Gopaldas? I’ve noticed the two of you spending some time together here at our establishment in recent days.’
‘Simran who?’ said Julius.
* * *
Thenceforth, Gustav Svensson and Julius Jonsson had to meet somewhere other than the hotel when the time came to talk business. The manager couldn’t exactly lay the blame for his vanished guest at Jonsson’s feet, but that didn’t stop him aiming a slightly raised level of suspicion at the Swedish gentlemen. In their case, there was considerably more money at stake. Thus far they had always paid up, but currently the bill was larger than usual and it seemed advisable to proceed with caution.
Jonsson and Svensson’s meetings were instead held in a filthy bar in central Denpasar. Gustav turned out to be almost as much a petty thief as Julius. Back home in India, he had spent many years living large by renting cars, switching their engines and returning them. It often took the rental agency several months to discover that the vehicle in question had become seven years older, and by then it was impossible to say which of several hundred renters was the guilty party. Unless it was someone on the staff.
In those days, fancy cars had become part of Gustav’s daily life. As a result he noticed that the nicer the car, the greater the potential to attract a beautiful girl. This equation got him into trouble more than once. To such an extent, most recently, that he had found it best to leave the automotive industry, the girl and all of India behind, since the girl had become pregnant. Her father had turned out to be both a Member of Parliament and a military man, and when Gustav, for strategic reasons, had asked for the girl’s hand in marriage, the father responded by threatening to send the seventh infantry after him.
‘What a grumpy bastard,’ Julius said. ‘Couldn’t he think of what was best for his daughter?’
Gustav agreed. A complicating factor was that the father had just noticed that his six-cylinder BMW had become a four-cylinder while he was on a business trip to Singapore.
‘And he blamed you?’
‘Yes. With no evidence.’
‘Were you innocent?’
‘That’s beside the point.’
In conclusion, Gustav said it felt right that Simran Aryabhat Chakrabarty Gopaldas was no more.
‘But it’s too bad he didn’t have time to settle up with the hotel. Cheers to you, my friend.’
* * *
Some time after their initial, cheerful meeting at the bar, Julius Jonsson and his new partner Gustav Svensson, with the help of a substantial amount of the money that remained in the suitcase, took over an asparagus farm in the mountains. Julius held the reins, Gustav was the site manager, and a great number of impoverished Balinese people bent their backs in the fields.
With the help of previous contacts in Sweden, Julius and his new partner now exported ‘Gustav Svensson’s locally grown asparagus’ in lovely bunches tied with blue-and-yellow ribbon. Nowhere did Julius or the man who had, until recently, been named something else claim that the asparagus was Swedish. The only thing Swedish about it was the price, and the name of the Indian grower. Unlike the Peru project, this wasn’t as illegal as Julius would have preferred, but you couldn’t have it all. Furthermore, he and Gustav succeeded in establishing a supplementary, and shadier, line of business. Swedish asparagus had such a good international reputation that Gustav’s Balinese variety could be shipped to Sweden, transferred into different boxes, and exported to a series of luxury hotels around the world. In Bali, for example. High-profile hotels there had their international reputations to consider, and it was worth every single extra rupiah it cost to avoid serving guests the bland, locally grown variety.
Allan