Shadow Read Online Free Page A

message.’
    The applause was spontaneous as always. He had opened himself up and made things personal, made the audience believe that they were all basically the same, like one big family. But he was not finished.
    ‘My motivation for coming here tonight is to continue to spread this message. So let us follow in my father’s footsteps and make Joseph Schultz our example.’
    He gave her a searching glance and everything was in place. He was pleased to hear that her applause was different from the others’. A bit slower, a bit more considered, a bit more you’re fantastic, but don’t think you can get what you want. Precisely the signal that proved he could get exactly what he wanted. He smiled to himself at his success.
    It was time for questions. The lights came up in the hall and he could finally see his audience. The unidentifiable sea suddenly became faces, and he retreated to his place behind the podium. He closed his eyes and tried to enjoy the moment. The one moment that remained before his father would recapture everyone’s attention. Liberated from the nursing home where he physically resided, his spirit would sweep into the room and obliterate the evening’s performance.
    Axel Ragnerfeldt, who had reached the level of success that most parents wish for their children.
    An older man at the back of the hall held up his hand and Jan-Erik granted him the floor. Don’t point like a woman. Use your whole hand.
    ‘I’d like to ask about the book Shadow. ’
    The man spoke with an accent. The novel he wanted to ask about had resulted in the Nobel Prize. It was the one Jan-Erik got the most questions about; the last book in a series of literary triumphs that had finally convinced the Swedish Academy. In the year 2000 the novel’s main character Simone had been voted the twentieth century’s best literary portrait of a woman, in stiff competition with Vilhelm Moberg’s Kristina in The Emigrants.
    ‘As everyone knows, countless articles have been written about the book, but I’m fascinated that he could make the story so true to life. I was fourteen when I was released from Buchenwald. For someone like me who experienced a concentration camp it’s hard to understand how a person who was never a prisoner could describe it so precisely. Your father must have done a huge amount of research, since the book is full of so many facts that match reality. I’d just like to ask how he went about this.’
    Jan-Erik smiled. The answer was actually short and simple. I have no idea. But he couldn’t say that. It took a bit more to satisfy the public interest.
    ‘My father was very private about his work methods and never shared them with anyone. Nor has he ever talked about his research or where his ideas actually came from. My father called his writing time “a condition in which he found himself” when the words simply came to him; he considered himself merely a recipient.’
    That may have been true but it offered no real explanation. He had always wondered the same thing himself.
    More questions followed. None of them was out of the ordinary. During the entire session he avoided her eyes, wanting her to have to wonder for a while, afraid that she had lost him. But the whole time he was conscious of her presence. At the edge of his field of vision he noticed every movement.
       
    He always concluded by reading aloud, knowing that their similar voices were the best way to dupe people. The lightswent down and the picture of his father in the background faded away. The little reading lamp on the podium was the only light required onstage. He often read the same passage. He had studied his father’s recording and learned his inton ation and rhythm. Now and then he raised his eyes and looked at her over the rim of his reading glasses. Outside these events he always wore contact lenses, but glasses made him look more like the original.
    He knew the final sentences by heart. He had read them so many times, and now he