We, The Infected

In gkmoberg1's fan fiction Det var en gång två barn, Oskar is having trouble with co-travellers on the train. I'm fine with that, but…

Some older railway coaches that were still in use in 1980 had small compartments with two sofas facing each other, with walls between the compartments and towards the corridor along the coach. There was a sliding door and windows between the corridor and each compartment, with curtains that could be drawn to increase the privacy. It is quite apparent that Oskar travelled in such a compartment, and that he was alone there at the time the conductor passed by. He might have been alone later as well, when the train approached Karlstad after sunset. Thus, Eli could have had climbed out of the trunk in complete privacy, especially considering the aforementioned curtains...

Klick the image for a larger version.




The trunk with Eli inside would have been at one of the the upper bagage racks, almost 2 metres above the floor. Oskar would have needed help to get the trunk there, even if it wasn't "as heavy as it looked".

Because of the movie and the power that visualizations have in setting up one's thinking, I've only ever imagined the train to be as we see it at the end of the film: an open seat bench, with Kåre keeping watch over the large box on the floor in front of him . This diagram and picture establishes a new scene. This is very exciting to consider, particularly for us foreigners who try to figure out this book and everything about it from afar. Now we can visualize a closed compartment type of seating. Eli is hiding in the steamer trunk that has somehow been lifted into place well above the floor.

Of course questions leap to mind.

- Why, then, did they not use such a setup in the movie?

- With the steamer trunk placed on the shelf at the top of the picture, would there be enough room for Eli to climb out? Would it be possible to raise the lid far enough before it struck the ceiling or roof of the carriage?

I've wondered at times how Oskar got the truck onto the train. One scenario is that he and Eli simply carry it on ad then Eli climbs in. The problem with that is the timing. As metoo has shown in explanations elsewhere, the train would not have left Stockholm until the noontime hours. Unless the Stockholm loading platforms are a subterranean later (ala Grand Central in NYC), Eli would have had to get into the trunk and avoid sunlight hours earlier. In the story I posted I resolved this by having Oskar enlist the help of some foreign travelers. A bunch of foreign university students would be likely not to know the local news ("Hey, aren't you the missing kid?") of the day and would likely be willing to help a child with an obviously heavy trunk and awkward set of additional boxes or bags.

I would think the reason they did not use the small compartment in the movie was that it would be virtually impossible to shoot the scene in that crammed space.

About space above the shelf, that's a good question.

Here's a picture from a different type of coach, with a different interior but based on the same basic structure.
As is obvious, the space above the racks is quite high towards the middle of the coach. It should be sufficient for the trunk to open.


I subscribe to the idea that Oskar got help from a co-passenger to get the trunk onto the train and up on the luggage rack. However, part of some of the platforms at Stockholm Central Station are indeed under a building, and thus shielded from direct sunlight. I have toyed with the idea that Eli helped Oskar with the trunk, and climbed into it only after it had been placed on the luggage rack.

About Oskar being in risk of recognition, I think this might not be so. Stefan Larsson, for one, did not recognise Oskar at the train. I would think this is quite plausible, on the grounds that the identity of Oskar might not have been revealed to the news media already in the morning of the 13th. The police would plausibly have preferred to keep such information to themselves, since the investigation had just started.

There is also a slight possibility that the police didn't understand that Oskar had disappeared until sometime during the 13th. It very much depends on what Oskar's mother did when he didn't return back home. Earlier that night she had learnt that Oskar had ran from his father a few days earlier, and then spent the night at an undisclosed place. What would she think now? That he had ran off to that place again? Where, then, would Oskar be? At a schoolmates home, perhaps? She would likely have a list of all of Oskar's classmates, and maybe she would eventually start calling them. Or maybe not, if she waited too long. She would not want to wake up strangers to ask for her son. But she might not want to call the police either. What would they be able to do, if Oskar was at the home of some classmate? So maybe she just sat alone through the night in anguish, unable to act.

The boys at the pool would have wanted to get home ASAP, and on their way they would have found Mr Ávila in the dressing room. If he was still unconscious they would likely have though that he was dead, and left him there. If he instead was awakening, some boys might have stayed behind to help him. Those boys might have called for help from Mr Ávila's office. Otherwise, the police would have eventually been called by the boys' parents.

Upon arriving, the police would have found either Mr Ávila alone, or with some of the boys. They would also have found the shredded corpses of Jimmy and Jonny. I think it would be quite likely that the fact that Oskar had disappeared might go unnoticed by the police quite long, since if not all, at least several of the boys would already have have left for home when the police arrived.

Thus, if Oskar's mother didn't call about Oskar, the police might not have learnt about his disappearance until the 13th, when they had interviewed some of the boys. However, if they knew about it, they still might not have wanted to disclose it to the media before interviewing the witnesses, i.e. the boys.

All in all, I think it's rather likely that Oskar didn't appear in the news until the 14th.

I also think that probably one of the passengers helped Oskar. I think that Oskar's mom would have waited until the next day to realize Oskar was missing. Maybe she goes to see if Oskar is staying with Erik. I am thinking until the 16th she would have learned about him been gone.

To give you some feeling for Swedish railways of the 1980s, I've looked up a video made by a Swedish trainspotter in 1988. In the video you will see several passenger trains pass by. At the time Swedish coaches still were painted brown and the locomotives orange, like they would have been in 1981. Nowadays the colouring is different.

The movie is shot in Nässjö, a small town situated on the main railroad between Stockholm and Malmö. Thus, I have passed Nässjö many times while travelling from my whereabouts in southern Sweden to Stockholm. I have, however, never found any reason to step off there...

Thanks. Nice video.

While I was looking for a YouTube video showing Karlstad C, I found this time lapse video showing the ride Karlstad - Stockholm C as seen from the driver's cabin. Towards the very end you can see that the train passes under part of the railway station. Since the train arrives at one of these tracks, it would leave from there, too (on a different track, though). Thus, Eli would have been able to help Oskar carry the trunk onto the train and lift it in place even at midday, provided that the coach was staying inside the covered portion of the track.
At 6.30, the train is just about to enter Stockholm C. If you run it from there at reduced speed, you will be able to see the inside of the covered portion I wrote about earlier.

metoo wrote:While I was looking for a YouTube video showing Karlstad C, I found this time lapse video showing the ride Karlstad - Stockholm C as seen from the driver's cabin. Towards the very end you can see that the train passes under part of the railway station. Since the train arrives at one of these tracks, it would leave from there, too (on a different track, though). Thus, Eli would have been able to help Oskar carry the trunk onto the train and lift it in place even at midday, provided that the coach was staying inside the covered portion of the track.

At 6.30, the train is just about to enter Stockholm C. If you run it from there at reduced speed, you will be able to see the inside of the covered portion I wrote about earlier.

Here's a NYC train video from 1971.

Nice videos.
Then it depends on the time that the train will get there.

Great detective work metoo!

So if we go with the idea that Eli and Oskar were able to find a sheltered train platform in Stockholm, that might well explain their choice of going to Karlstad. After all, why Karlstad? The explanation then is simply that it was a Stockholm-Karlstad train that was the first good opportunity - where that would be defined as a train departing such that its arrival will be after dark. Were they to have picked too early a train, they would arrive during daylight and this would mean Oskar would have to navigate the deboarding steps by himself. .. I'm sure I'm something like the 100th person to have worked this out.