A summer with Kim Novak Read Free Page A

place, it’s likely that my parents wouldn’t have held on to Gennesaret. For some reason, they never seemed to like it out there.
    It wasn’t cosy. Maybe that was it. Or maybe it was because my mother never learned how to swim. The lake was deep. In parts. Certainly beyond our neck of land.
    Whatever the case, that May I had a hard time picturing how the summer would unfold. Or how things would be with Henry and Emmy. I couldn’t think about Emmy without picturing her breasts. Covered by clothing, but still. And I couldn’t picture her breasts without getting a boner. It was what it was.
    The thought of what my brother would get up to with Emmy Kaskel wasn’t easy to cope with either. Gennesaret wasn’t a big house.
    And on top of all that, there was Edmund. I had no idea how things would play out.
    But sod it, I thought. Only time will tell.
    Ewa Kaludis began work at Stava School on a Thursday. We’d just had double woodwork and I’d comprehensively ruined the magazine rack I’d been working on for the past seven months. Our carpentry teacher Gustav wasn’t happy about it, but it felt good. Whether it was sewing or woodwork, I didn’t like arts and crafts; they never turned out quite the way you thought they would, and they always took bloody ages.
    As usual, I was hanging out around the bike shed together with Benny and Arse-Enok, waiting for the end of break, when she appeared on the street.
    I’d like to say that I saw her first, but both Benny and Arse-Enok are equally sure that they did. It doesn’t really matter; the point is that she arrived. I realized she must have passed the football pitch first, because within a few seconds the girls’ side was chock-a-block with people gawking. Swarms of filthy football players.
    ‘Bloody hell,’ said Benny. His mouth was so wide open that it looked as if he was at the dentist waiting for Dr. Slaktarsson to start drilling.
    ‘It’s Kim Novak,’ said Arse-Enok.
    As for me, I said nothing. Under normal circumstances, I wasn’t one to comment for the sake of it, but at this moment I was dumbstruck. It was like in a film. But better. The woman who came roaring in on her moped really did look like Kim Novak. Big wheat-blond hair, tied back with a foxy red hairband. Dark, foxy sunglasses and a full, foxy mouth that made me weak in the knees. She wore slim black slacks, a thin black top that hugged her breasts and a red-and-black-checked Swanson shirt, unbuttoned and billowing in the wind.
    ‘Holy bloody hell, what a fox,’ said Balthazar Lindblom.
    ‘It’s a Puch,’ said Arse-Enok. ‘Bloody hell, Kim Novak is rolling in to our schoolyard on a Puch. Kiss me, stupid. ’
    With that, Arse-Enok fainted. He suffered from some sort of mild epilepsy that knocked him out on occasion. It came as no surprise that this proved to be too much for him.
    Kim Novak switched off the Puch. She straddled it for a moment with her feet on the gravel, smiling and taking in the 108 students standing as still as statues in the playground. Then she climbed off, elegantly flipped out the kick-stand, took a flat briefcase from the rack, and marched right through the petrified crowd and into the school.
    When she was out of sight, I noticed Edmund was standing beside me. Nearly shoulder to shoulder, though he was a bit taller.
    When he spoke, his voice was thick with emotion.
    ‘That’s what I call a mature woman.’
    I nodded, thinking of his dad’s girlie mags. I reckoned he knew what he was talking about.
    Within two hours, we’d got to the bottom of it. Those who kept to the football-side of the school had long known that Bertil ‘Berra’ Albertsson was moving to town; we might have worked it out as well if we’d given some thought to what we’d read in the local news. Berra was a handball legend who had competed in over 150 international matches. It was said that his shots were so hard that goalies died when they were hit in the head. After twelve seasons in the