December 10, 2004
I WOKE up very early that morning. When I try to remember that day and the ones that followed, I can find only scraps of memories lost in a fog. I wrote nothing down in my diary; it was as if I hadn’t been there. The burial service in a small chapel was only for relatives and close friends, whereas the commemoration was a more formal, public event.
It was a lovely December day, sunny, without any snow. The breeze was gentle and mild. Police were discreetly stationed everywhere. In Sweden, the law requires that the dates and hours of funerals be made available to the public online. We were afraid that right-wing extremists might disrupt the ceremony, so the funeral director and the Expo staff did their best to provide adequate security.
Erland flew in with his companion, and Joakim came with his wife Maj and their two children. When they saw the fifty or so guests at the chapel service they were astonished, having thought that only people close to Stieg and me would attend. I explained that they were right—that everyone there was a close friend, and that a great many of our friends were even missing because not all of them could come, especially not from abroad.
The commemoration would be held in central Stockholm at the headquarters of the Workers’ Educational Association. I’d chosen eighteen speakers who would talk about Stieg, including Graeme Atkinson from Searchlight and Mikael Ekman from Expo.
Since I was supposed to speak as well, I’d tried to write out a little speech the day before, but the words hadn’t come. Yet I had to say something. So I’d decided to show how tender and affectionate Stieg was by reading the letter he’d written me in 1977 from his hospital bed in Addis Ababa, where he had almost died. He’d told me how much he loved me and that when he returned, he wanted us to build a new life together. But I couldn’t find that letter. I spent the entire afternoon searching the whole apartment, until late that evening, after going through every closet, I found a big cardboard box in one of our storerooms, and inside it was a small box crammed full of letters. On one manila envelope was written, “To be opened only after my death. Stieg Larsson.”
The envelope contained two letters dated February 9, 1977, when Stieg was twenty-two, in Stockholm en route to Africa. This may seem difficult to believe, but I really had never seen this envelope before. Stieg had left it with his belongings at the house of the friend with whom he’d stayed in Stockholm, before his departure. Ever since then, the box had tagged along with us on all of our moves, and Stieg had probably forgotten about it.
My finding the envelope this way was so extraordinary that I looked up to heaven and said Thank you to Stieg. I do not believe in a life after death, but do feel there is a spiritual dimension to some things that happen. When two people have lived together for so long, each one becomes a part of the other. Sometimes I imagine Stieg relaxing in my heart, in a hammock, smiling and giving me a little wave. And we’ve never had a hammock! But that’s how I see him now, lazy and carefree at last.
THE FIRST letter, labeled “Will,” was meant for his parents. He asked them to leave me all of his possessions and his personal writings, plus everything that had to do with politics. His science fiction books, however, were to be given to my brother. Stieg had signed his will, but without witnesses. The second letter was addressed to me.
I read some passages from it during the commemoration.
Stockholm, February 9, 1977
Eva, my love,
It’s over. One way or another, everything comes to an end. It’s all over some day. That’s perhaps one of the most fascinating truths we know about the entire universe. The stars die, the galaxies die, the planets die. And people die too. I’ve never been a believer, but the day I became interested in astronomy, I think I put aside all that was left of my fear of death. I’d realized that in comparison to the universe, a human being, a single human being, me … is infinitely small. Well, I’m not writing this letter to deliver a profound religious or philosophical lecture. I’m writing it to tell you “farewell.” I was just talking to you on the phone. I can still hear the sound of your voice. I imagine you, before my eyes … a beautiful image, a lovely memory I will keep until the end. At this very moment, reading this letter, you know that I am dead.
There are things I want you to know. As I leave for Africa, I’m aware of what’s waiting for me. I even have the feeling that this trip could bring about my death, but it’s something that I have to experience, in spite of everything. I wasn’t born to sit in an armchair. I’m not like that. Correction: I wasn’t like that … I’m not going to Africa just as a journalist, I’m going above all on a political mission, and that’s why I think this trip might lead to my death.
This is the first time I’ve written to you knowing exactly what to say: I love you, I love you, love you, love you. I want you to know that. I want you to know that I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone. I want you to know I mean that seriously. I want you to remember me but not grieve for me. If I truly mean something to you, and I know that I do, you will probably suffer when you learn I am dead. But if I really mean something to you, don’t suffer, I don’t want that. Don’t forget me, but go on living. Live your life. Pain will fade with time, even if that’s hard to imagine right now. Live in peace, my dearest love; live, love, hate, and keep fighting.…
I had a lot of faults, I know, but some good qualities as well, I hope. But you, Eva, you inspired such love in me that I was never able to express it to you.…
Straighten up, square your shoulders, hold your head high. Okay? Take care of yourself, Eva. Go have a cup of coffee. It’s over. Thank you for the beautiful times we had. You made me very happy. Adieu.
I kiss you goodbye, Eva.
From Stieg, with love.
I still don’t know how I managed to read his letter in front of all those people. I never looked up at anyone, but later I was told that many in the audience wept as they listened.
AFTER THE commemoration, at around five o’clock, I went home to prepare some soup so that Stieg’s family and mine could gather quietly for a moment after that dark day. The Larssons stayed at the hall awhile to have coffee with all of our friends and colleagues from Expo. Later, at the apartment, Joakim reproached me for having refused to let Norstedts pay for the ceremony, but I disagreed: Stieg was my partner, so it was up to me to handle things. That evening was the second and last time Joakim was ever in our home.
Having spent all his early childhood with his maternal grandparents, Stieg had inherited some of their possessions, but his brother Joakim had no mementos of them and asked for a few things to remember them by. I found a small blue wooden box with traditional painted decorations, which his grandmother had used as her sewing kit, and another box, of bronze, that had come from Korea and belonged to his grandfather. Joakim took both boxes when he and his family went home to Umeå at the end of the afternoon. Erland and Gun stayed in Stockholm to attend a gathering I’d organized for seven o’clock at the Södra Theater bar, to raise a glass and share memories of Stieg with our friends, families, and even people from Norstedts. All the while, Erland kept saying that he didn’t want any part of Stieg’s estate.
A FEW days later, Stieg was buried. Our friends were there.
On the morning of December 22, I took an important step. I had a black ceramic burial urn, modeled on a Viking artifact and made on the island of Gotland by a professional potter, Eva-Marie Kothe, and into it I placed all that I had lost: our love, our affection, and our dreams. A snapshot in which, lying on a rock, Stieg gazes at me, smiling. Another one, taken in Önnesmark in front of a cabin, up in Västerbotten: he’s gently cradling against his chest a baby hare found in the rhubarb patch. (He loved animals, especially baby ones.) And another picture, the most beautiful one and my favorite: handsome, tanned, seductive, he’s looking at me through the camera lens, cigarette in hand, at ease, as if waiting for something. Finally, a portrait in which, leaning backward, he squints into the sunlight. I also added the sketch of our cabin we’d prepared during that last summer. The final sketch, and the best one, which he’d asked to look at just once more before I sent it off to the factory that specialized in green construction. He’d pulled up a chair, sat down next to me, and we’d had fun imagining how we were going to furnish our “little writing cottage.” He was transformed: warm, tender, relaxed, happy about this new future that promised to be more intimate and serene. He’d come back to me as he used to be, and for me, it was like falling in love all over again.
Then I added to that black urn some phone numbers of rooms for rent in the archipelago that I’d written down so he could take a week’s vacation and keep working, without being bothered, on the fourth volume of the Millennium saga or correcting the proofs of the first three. I would often find him chuckling to himself on the living room settee: “You’ll never guess what Lisbeth is cooking up!” Then he’d start writing, adjusting some detail he’d asked me to check in my documentation files.
I placed the ceramic vessel full of our lives on a shelf. And behind it I slipped a few sheets of handmade paper I’d bought at Kvarnbyn in Mölndal, outside Gothenburg. On a blue sheet I’d written down what I had lost, and on a yellow one, what I wanted now: “To survive another year.”