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

house in Yxhult was a mess. During the years Allan had been in Professor Lundborg’s care, the tiles had blown off the roof and lay scattered on the ground, the outdoor toilet had fallen over, and one of the kitchen windows was flapping in the wind.
    Allan peed in the open air, since there was no longer a lavatory in working order. Then he went in and sat in his dusty kitchen. He left the window open. He was hungry but resisted the urge to check the larder; it wouldn’t improve his mood, he was sure.
    He was sure it wouldn’t improve his mood.
    He had grown up here, but home had never felt as distant as it did at that moment. Was it time to cut his ties with the past and move on? Most definitely.
    Allan got out several sticks of dynamite and set about a familiar task, before packing his bike trailer with the few valuables he owned. At dusk on 3rd June 1929, he took off. The dynamite exploded as it was meant to exactly thirty minutes later. The little house was blown to bits and the neighbour’s cow had another miscarriage.
    An hour later, Allan was behind bars at the police station in Flen, eating dinner while being yelled at by Superintendent Krook. The Flen police had just acquired a police car and it hadn’t taken long to catch the man who had blown his own house to bits and pieces.
    This time, the offence was more obvious.
    ‘Negligent destruction,’ said Superintendent Krook authoritatively.
    ‘Could you pass me the bread?’ Allan asked.
    No, Superintendent Krook could not. He could, however, dress down his poor assistant who had weakly complied withthe wishes of the delinquent when he had requested an evening meal. In the meantime, Allan finished his dinner and then let himself be taken to the cells.
    ‘You don’t happen to have today’s paper?’ Allan asked. ‘Something to read before bed, that is.’
    Superintendent Krook replied by turning off the ceiling light and slamming the door. The next morning, the first thing he did was phone ‘that loony bin’ in Uppsala to tell them to come and get Allan Karlsson.
    But Bernhard Lundborg’s colleagues turned a deaf ear. Karlsson’s treatment was complete, and now they had others to castrate and analyse. If only the police superintendent knew how many people the nation must be saved from: Jews and gypsies and Negroes and imbeciles and others. The fact that Mr Karlsson had blown his own house to bits did not qualify him for a new journey to Uppsala. Aren’t you allowed to do what you want with your own house? We live in a free country, don’t we?
    Police Superintendent Krook hung up. He could make no headway with these big city types. He regretted that he had not let Karlsson bike away the previous evening.
    And that is why Allan Karlsson, after a morning of negotiations, was back on his bicycle with the trailer in tow. This time he had food for three days in neat packets, and double blankets to keep him warm if the weather turned cool. He waved goodbye to Superintendent Krook, who didn’t wave back, and then turned north, because that direction seemed to Allan to be as good as any.
    By afternoon, the road had taken him to Hälleforsnäs, and that was far enough for one day. Allan stopped beside a grassy slope, spread out a blanket and opened one of his food packets. While he chewed away at a slice of syrupy bread with salami, he studied the industrial premises that he’d happened to choose for his picnic site. Outside the factory was a heap of cannon pipes from the foundry. Perhaps the people who made cannons could use someone to make sure that they went off when they were meant to go off. There was no point in biking as far away from Yxhult as possible. Hälleforsnäs would do as well as anywhere else. If there was work to be had, that is.
    Allan’s assumption that the presence of cannon pipes might mean work for him was perhaps a little naive. Nevertheless it turned out to be exactly right. After a short talk with the director, during which Allan omitted details of certain recent life events, he secured employment as an ignition specialist.
    ‘I am going to like it here,’ thought Allan.
    The manufacture of cannons was at a low point at the foundry in Hälleforsnäs, and the orders continued to decline. The minister of defence, in the aftermath of the First World War, had reduced the funds available to the military, while King Gustaf V sat in the palace gnashing his teeth. The defence minister, a man with an analytic bent, realised with