The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared

that so much that it moved in.
    It was a tiger-striped farmyard cat, a male, who was given the name Molotov, not after the minister but after the cocktail. Molotov didn’t say very much, but he was extremely intelligent and fantastic at listening. If Allan had something to say, he only had to call the cat and he always came skipping along, unless he was occupied with catching mice (Molotov knew what was important). The cat jumped up into Allan’s lap, made himself comfortable and made a sign with his ears to show that Allan could now say what he had to say. If Allan simultaneously scratched Molotov on the back of his head, and on his neck, there was no limit to how long the chat could last.
    And when Allan got some chickens, it was enough to tell Molotov one single time that he shouldn’t go running after them, for the cat to nod and understand. The fact that he ignored what Allan said and ran after the chickens till he didn’t find it fun any more, that was another matter. What could you expect? He was a cat after all.
    Allan thought that nobody was craftier than Molotov, not even the fox that was always sneaking around the chicken cooplooking for gaps in the netting. The fox also had designs on the cat, but Molotov was much too quick for that.
     
    More years were added to those that Allan had already collected. And every month the pension money arrived from the authorities without Allan doing anything in return. With that money, Allan bought cheese, sausage and potatoes and now and then a sack of sugar. In addition, he paid for the subscription to the local paper, and he paid the electricity bill whenever it appeared.
    But there was still money left over every month, and what good was that? Allan once attempted to send the excess back to the authorities in an envelope, but after a while an official came to Allan’s cottage and informed him that you couldn’t do that. So Allan got his money back, and had to promise to stop arguing with the authorities.
    Allan and Molotov had a good life together. Every day, weather allowing, they went for a little bike ride along the gravel roads in the area. Allan pedalled, while Molotov sat in the basket and enjoyed the wind and the speed.
    The little family lived a pleasant and regular life. And this went on until one day it turned out that not only Allan but also Molotov had got older. Suddenly, the fox caught up with the cat, and that was just as surprising for the fox and the cat as it was sad for Allan.
    Allan was more sad than he had ever been earlier in his life, and the sorrow soon turned to anger. The old explosives expert stood there on his veranda with tears in his eyes and called out into the winter night:
    ‘If it’s war you want, it’s war you’ll get, you damned fox!’
    For the first and only time in his life, Allan was angry. And it wasn’t dispelled with vodka, a drive (without a driver’s licence) in his car or an extra long bike ride. Revenge was a poor thingto live for, Allan knew that. Nevertheless, just now that was precisely what he had on the agenda.
    Allan set an explosive charge beside the chicken coop, to go off when the fox got hungry next time and stretched its nose a little too far into the chickens’ domain. But in his anger, Allan forgot that right next to the chicken coop was where he stored all his dynamite.
    Thus it was that at dusk on the third day after Molotov’s ascent to heaven, an explosion was heard in that part of Södermanland, the like of which hadn’t been heard since the late 1920s.
    The fox was blown into little bits, just like Allan’s chickens, his chicken coop and wood-shed. But the explosion took the barn and cottage too. Allan was sitting in his armchair when it happened, and he flew up in the air in the armchair and landed in a snowdrift outside his potato cellar. He sat there looking around him with an astonished expression on his face, before finally saying:
    ‘That was the end of the fox.’
    By now, Allan was ninety-nine years old and he felt so knocked about that he stayed where he was. But it wasn’t hard for the ambulance, police and fire brigade to find their way to him, because the flames reached high into the sky. And when they had made sure that the geriatric in the armchair in the snowdrift beside his own potato cellar was uninjured, it was time for social services to be called in.
    In less than an hour, social worker Henrik Söder was by his side. Allan was still sitting in his armchair, but the