The Black Path by Åsa Larsson

already thinking of selling. He didn’t say a word about how much he’d actually earned, not to anyone. Went outside. Stood under a street lamp with his face turned up to the falling snow. The certainty. The feeling. I’m going to be rich. This is my thing.
    And as a bonus he’s become friends with Diddi. Diddi, who stops beneath the monitor, checks the prices and chats a little, sometimes sits next to Mauri in lectures.
    Sometimes they go out on the town. Mauri takes twenty-five percent of Diddi’s profits; he doesn’t do anything for nothing.
    He’s no fool either. He knows it’s money that gives him his entry ticket into the Other World.
    So what, he says. For him, money is the ticket. For another person it’s their face, for another their charm, for yet another it’s their name. You have to have a ticket of some kind, and any ticket can be lost. It’s a matter of holding on to what you’ve found.
    There are rules. Unspoken rules. For example: it’s Diddi who gets in touch with Mauri, Diddi who rings and asks Mauri if he fancies going out. It isn’t acceptable to do things the other way round; it would never occur to Mauri to take the liberty of ringing Diddi.
    So Mauri waits for Diddi to call. There are voices inside him. They talk about a different circle of acquaintances that Diddi has, a circle to which Mauri is not admitted. Beautiful people. Cool parties. Diddi calls Mauri when he has nothing else on. Something like jealousy stirs inside Mauri. He sometimes thinks he’ll stop trading for Diddi. The next minute he defends himself by telling himself that he’s making money out of Diddi, it’s a mutual exploitation.
    He tries to study. And when he can’t manage either that or share dealing, he plays cards with Håkan and Mattias. Thinks that Diddi’s bound to call. Runs to his room when the phone rings, but it’s nearly always the room next door where one of the girls lives.
    And when Diddi calls, Mauri says yes. Every time, he thinks he’s going to say no next time. Pretend to be busy.
    Another rule is that Diddi chooses the company. It’s absolutely out of the question for Mauri to take somebody along, Håkan or Mattias for example. Not that he’d want to anyway. There’s no friendship there, no solidarity or whatever the hell it’s supposed to be. They’re outsiders, that’s all they have in common. But not any longer.
    And Mauri and Diddi get completely pissed. Wide awake and high on cocaine. He sometimes wakes up in the morning without the slightest idea of how or when he got home. He’s got slips and tickets in his pockets, stamps on his hands, all clues as to how the journey went. From the pub to Caféet to a club to a late-night party to some girls.
    And he’s allowed to screw the less attractive friends of the prettiest girls. And that’s absolutely fine, and so much more than Håkan and Mattias bloody get.
    Six months pass. Mauri knows that Diddi has a sister, but he’s never met her.
     

     
    Nobody can shrug their shoulders like Diddi. They fail an exam, both of them. Mauri turns his anger inward, it chafes and eats away at him inside. A voice tells him he’s worthless, that he’s just a fraud, that he’ll soon slip over the edge and fall down into the world that’s really meant for him.
    Diddi swears too, but then he turns his failure outward, it’s the invigilator, the examiner, the guy who was sitting in front of him farting silently…it’s everybody’s fault except his. And he only broods about it for a little while. Then his usual insouciance returns.
    It’s a while before Mauri realizes Diddi isn’t rich. He’s always thought that upper-class guys, especially those from the nobility, have plenty of money. But that’s not the case. When Diddi gets to know Mauri he’s managing on virtually nothing, just the contributory element of his student finances. He lives in an apartment in Östermalm, but it belongs to some relative. His shirts have come from his