The train car began to creak and groan, slowing, as telephone wires appeared alongside the tracks. The passengers around him began to collect their belongings and their luggage. The clarinetist put on his overcoat and picked up his case without even glancing at Alvar. The moment had passed. The train groaned and shuddered to a stop.
A porter opened the door and the smells of Stockholm hit them all: oil and exhaust, horse manure, people, machines—along with the deafening sounds. The never-ending roar of motors, the screeching trains, people talking, calls of baggage handlers and of those asking for assistance, people saying good-bye or calling out a happy greeting to an arrival. Somewhere in this mass of humanity, his great-aunt Hilda waited and had to be found, but how he would recognize her was another question entirely.
The clarinet player was stepping down off the train, about to disappear with his precious swing music forever. Alvar grabbed up his belongings as fast as he could and stumbled off the train through the crowd until he caught sight of him. He rushed over to put a hand on his shoulder—and then did not know what to say. The man turned to look at him with that familiar raised eyebrow.
“And?”
“Umm … Umm…”
Alvar swallowed and blushed, as badly as if he were trying to talk to a girl. All the words he’d tried to formulate vanished into thin air. The man laughed.
“We rehearse at 140 Åsö Street. Do you think you can run errands and lift speakers?”
Alvar nodded.
“Well, then.” The clarinet player reached out and heartily shook Alvar’s hand. “I’m Erling.”
Alvar could not hide his joy. His first day in Stockholm and Alvar was already a part of the swing music scene. Erling winked at him.
“But we don’t have cash to spare, so you’ll need to get your dough elsewhere.”
— CHAPTER 6 —
“Why were you so eager to get into swing?” Steffi asks.
“Well, you see … as you know, they had Gramophone Hour on the radio—no, no, of course you don’t know that. But they did. One hour of music every day, and everyone listened to that hour. Families would sit around their enormous radio sets to drink in the music they played.”
“And it was all jazz.”
Alvar laughs. “Some of it was jazz, but they had a great deal of classical music, too, not to mention accordion music! You’d have to suffer through Beethoven and Swedish dance music, like the schottische or the hambo, before you heard the opening notes of jitterbug. Then the grown-ups would sigh in dismay.” Alvar sighs heavily to demonstrate how the adults had done it.
Steffi smiles at the wrinkled old man who is sitting in a swivel chair in a retirement home and talking about grown-ups.
“But why are you so interested in jazz music?” Alvar asks.
“I like Povel Ramel more than anyone else.”
“Yes, he was as good as any of them.”
“He died before I knew anything about him.”
“Really?”
“I was seven and heard he’d died when my mother put on one of his records in his honor. And, well…”
“You were transfixed by jazz.” Alvar couldn’t help smiling.
“I liked his song about the coconut. But nowadays I like his songs ‘Grass Widower Blues’ and ‘The Mischievous Trumpet’ best.” Steffi thinks for a minute. “My dad doesn’t get it. He likes rock more than anything. Mamma gave me Povel’s record as long as I only played it in my room. That was just fine. Later, they gave me a CD player of my own.”
“I see,” Alvar says, glancing at his gramophone in the corner of the room. “In my day, a person could call himself lucky if he had his own gramophone.”
Steffi gets up and walks over to the gramophone. She thinks it looks really funny—just a big box with a large horn attached. She gently touches its shining surface and looks into the horn. It’s dusty.
“So this is a gramophone?”
“Yes, indeed, one of the best. I didn’t get it until later. In Björke, my family didn’t own a gramophone. We just listened to the radio. And at my aunt Hilda’s house, there seemed to be nothing but lace doilies everywhere.”
* * *
At Aunt Hilda’s house, there were lace doilies everywhere. Tiny, crocheted doilies greeted him the moment she opened the door to his new home. She hadn’t been hard to find while he quietly repeated 140 Åsö Street to himself so as not to forget the address where the jazz band rehearsed. He found his aunt at the train station exit where she’d told him to meet her. Aunt Hilda was seventy-four years old. Walking with her from the station to her place took much longer than if he’d just tried to find it on his own. And once they’d arrived, all the lace doilies caught his eye. They had been placed on every empty flat surface—and not just one, but four, five, six of them. He looked around to realize there was no radio. He kept repeating 140 Åsö Street to himself. He wouldn’t forgive himself if he forgot it.
“Aunt Hilda, do you know how to get to Åsö Street?”
Aunt Hilda stared at him as if he’d gotten the plague. Or was German.
“I’m sure you can’t have any business there, my boy,” she said firmly.
Since she was so adamant, Alvar decided to drop the subject. He would find his way there on his own. Instead he sat on the chair she indicated, declining her coffee substitute with the excuse that it made him nervous.
“But you do have a ration card for real coffee?”
“Pappa sent one for you, Aunt Hilda.”
At this, Aunt Hilda’s face lit up. The old woman’s chair felt so much more comfortable to him when she smiled. “I’m glad to have you here, my boy. You seem to be a young man with a bit more common sense than most.”
Alvar found it difficult to reply. He clasped his hands together to keep from drumming on the table.
“I hope I do, Aunt Hilda.”
* * *
He was given an old-fashioned kitchen bench with a lid that lifted up to reveal a bed to sleep on. Aunt Hilda took away half a dozen doilies from the top of the lid and Alvar opened it. Aunt Hilda handed him bedclothes and he made up the bed. She realized now how tall a young man he was, but there was nothing to be done about a bench designed for short female kitchen help. He would have to make do.
“You could sleep with your knees up,” Aunt Hilda said. “And as soon as you find work, I expect you to help with the rent.”
Alvar reassured her, and she finally left him alone in the kitchen. The room fell silent. Still, nighttime was not as quiet as back home in Björke. The Stockholm night in this building was a cacophony of sound: creaking beds, crying children, footsteps running up and down the stairs, people coming home late from bars, garbagemen getting up early to go to work.
Alvar snuggled as deep into the blanket as he could with his knees bent. Only this morning he had woken up a child in his parents’ home and tonight he was falling asleep as a young man in the big city, already an experienced train traveler, basically already a Stockholmer.
The thought made his heart swell and kept him from sleeping. Jazz cat, place to crash, cash, dough … all by itself his toe started to drum on the wooden side of the bed. The sounds outside had their own rhythm. It sounded like jazz.
* * *
When Steffi arrives home, everyone else has already eaten. She finds them all in front of the TV. Pappa wonders where she’s been and she says she was visiting a friend.
Julia looks at her in disbelief. “No, you didn’t.”
“Yes, I did! What do you know?”
“Nothing and I don’t care. Except I know you’re lying!”
Mamma sighs. “Stop it. Steffi, there’s food in the kitchen you can heat up. Julia, don’t you have some laundry you need to fold?”
There’s a celebrity dance competition on TV. Edvin is imitating them. He’s stomping around, jerking up his knees and flailing his arms over his head. Steffi goes on into the kitchen and finds some spaghetti and meatballs to heat up.
Julia creeps in behi
nd her like a shadow. “Why are you lying?”
“I was at a friend’s house. I told you.”
“All right, let’s say you were. What’s her name?”
Steffi turns her back on her sister and stares at the meat sauce bubbling in the microwave.
“Oh, it’s a he!” Julia exclaims.
Steffi doesn’t say anything, but Julia lets loose a high-pitched squeal. “A boy! I knew it! Or, actually, I didn’t!”
Steffi takes her food out of the microwave and pours a glass of milk.
“All right,” Julia says. “So you won’t say. But we’ll find out. We always find out. I bet it’s some music nerd at school, right?”
Steffi decides that the warmed-over spaghetti and meatballs taste pretty good, even if the sauce has leaked onto the plate. Björke lies silent and deserted outside their kitchen window. Somewhere else, someone must be starting to play jazz. Someone in Stockholm. Maybe even someone a little closer to home, Karlstad maybe.
“You know I’ll find out,” Julia says, and she bounces out of the kitchen.
* * *
Mamma, Pappa, and Edvin are still in the living room in front of the TV. A member of the jury discusses the performance with a dance couple. A blond woman is smiling from ear to ear. Her partner is a soccer player Steffi recognizes.
“What impresses me is that you actually paused in the middle of a tango. Not everybody dares to stand still like that.”
Edvin stands up on the sofa, his arms held stiffly to his sides. “Look at me! Look how still I can stand!”
Steffi goes past them into her room. She puts on the oldest Povel Ramel song she has. It’s from 1942, the same year that Alvar traveled to Stockholm. Perhaps this very song had been played during Gramophone Hour. It’s mostly a piano accompanying Povel’s singing, but there’s a clarinet near the end, and she can hear the bass walk in her head. She thinks about taking out her bass guitar but decides not to. Alvar didn’t have any instrument to play when he lay in bed that first night in Stockholm and felt jazz move through his whole body. She lies down on her bed. Sometimes you just need to feel how much you really want to play something.
— CHAPTER 7 —
Class 9B’s homeroom teacher, Semlan, is standing in front of the class trying to explain the value of choosing the right gymnasium for their upper-level studies. Half of the class had already decided to attend a Karlstad vocational high school to learn vehicle technology, forestry, or day care. They spend the time in a not very quiet discussion of an Internet incident involving nude pictures and someone’s older brother. The others are paying more than normal attention to Semlan, because their parents told them this was an important decision.
Steffi isn’t like the rest of them, though. That becomes clear as Semlan is showing the class where to click on their computer screens to find a list of upper-level schools with nationwide acceptance plans.
“Do you know what this means?” she asks, and then answers her own question. “These schools will take students from throughout Sweden. You can apply to Gothenburg, Umeå, Stockholm.…”
Steffi realizes this is her way out, and so her choice of gymnasium is more important than to most of the kids in class 9B. She feels the rush of blood to her head as she clicks on the site. Everyone else is clicking, too, even the ones who have already chosen their schools.
She clicks Nationwide Acceptance. Then Liberal Arts. In Stockholm, there are fourteen gymnasier, upper-level high schools, with nationwide acceptance that take music students. Fourteen! In Björke, there’s just a single grocery and a hot dog stand.
Many of these schools have their own Web pages. Steffi clicks on one after another and opens many windows. One of the schools has mixed social sciences and the arts. It wants to form a creative and positive climate. Another school is called the music gymnasium. It’s for students who want to become professional musicians. All of the pupils in their promotional photos look like kids who would be immediately bullied by Karro and Sonja. Steffi decides right away that this is where she wants to go. Stockholm is drawing her to it like the tuning peg pulls on its string, the way it pulled Alvar seventy years ago.
* * *
“I’m going to go to Stockholm,” Steffi informs Alvar.
It’s an hour later and they’re listening to “Wonderful Doesn’t Last.” Alvar’s record has only two songs, one on each side. Once the song is over, they play it from the beginning again. The record crackles like an old fire.
“So, when are you leaving?”
“I mean I will go to Stockholm. I want to study at the music school there.”
“So in the bloom of your youth, you plan to move to Stockholm.”
“Yep, in the middle of my youth.”
Alvar nods as he considers this information. “Then you’re going to go to Åsö Street.”
“Like you did.”
“Like I did, even though Aunt Hilda had strictly forbidden it.”
* * *
Even though Aunt Hilda had strictly forbidden it, Alvar decided that the first thing he wanted to do was find 140 Åsö Street. Despite the ache in his legs from being curled up all night, it was the first thought he had the moment he opened his eyes on his first morning in Stockholm.
Aunt Hilda had already made him some porridge but told him not to get used to being pampered. She was just showing him the way she wanted it done so he’d know how to, in case he needed to make it for her someday. Alvar already realized how Aunt Hilda had imagined his days in Stockholm, but he decided not to protest.
“As I mentioned, I have my father’s coffee ration coupons from Björke. Do you think they’re valid here in Stockholm?”
He could almost picture the saliva collect in the old woman’s mouth. She seemed to chew the air as she handled the ration coupons.
“Well, these come from the state and not the province of Värmland. Take them and go left once you leave the building. Walk past the first large gray building and you will arrive at Sankt Erik Street, where there is a grocer. If they don’t take the coupons right away, just tell them your aunt Hilda sent you.”
“Should I look for work right away, too?”
Aunt Hilda seemed to already taste real coffee, weighing the price of coffee against the amount of money she had. She nodded sternly. “Yes, I believe that would be best.”
“I’ll ask at all the shops. Maybe they need an errand boy. If one says no, I’ll just go to the next.”
“Make sure you stay on the north side of Stockholm, Vasastan or Östermalm.”
Aunt Hilda then gave a short lecture on the loose morals, low education levels, and lack of culture south of the Old City in Södermalm. Södermalm, Alvar noted silently as he picked up his cap and scarf. Aunt Hilda inspected him before he left.
“Keep to the shops and make sure you pronounce everything properly and say the vowels like your teachers taught in school. You have to speak like people here in the capital if you want people to understand you. Be home in time for dinner and don’t forget the coffee.”
* * *
The grocer had named his shop after himself. Åkesson’s Grocery.
Alvar was greeted by Åkesson himself, who studied Alvar’s coffee coupons and ration card. “Björke is not exactly next door.”
“It’s in Värmland.”
“Yes, I can tell by your accent. So they’ve run out of coffee in Värmland?”
Alvar was trying to tell if the man was joking or not. The grocer’s gruff expression didn’t change.
“No … no … you see, I just moved to Stockholm, so I brought the coupons with me.”
He did his best to pronounce each word like a radio announcer but wasn’t completely successful.
Åkesson smiled slightly and shook his head. “Just pulling your leg, my boy. Do you have a name?”
“Alvar Svensson.”
“Of course, of course. Young Mr. Svensson, first name Alvar, you must be over twenty-one, I assume, and have your own ration card?”
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p; “I’m also supposed to send greetings from my aunt, the widow Hilda on Torsgatan.”
Åkesson now smiled widely for the first time and slipped one of the coupons into his box beneath the counter. “Give her my best, will you?” he said, handing Alvar the valuable package of 250 grams of coffee.
Alvar sighed in relief. “And there’s one more thing.”
“We don’t have any chocolate.”
“No, no, not that. I was just wondering if you … sir … need an errand boy.”
“And you’re putting yourself up for the job, are you?”
Alvar straightened to his full height. “Why not?”
“As far as I can tell, you’ve just gotten off the train from the middle of nowhere in Värmland. How could you be an errand boy if you don’t know the city?”
“I learn fast.”
A small bell jingled behind Alvar, and another customer walked in. Soon there’d be more and Åkesson would want him to move along.
“Think of one errand,” Alvar said. “Just one. I’ll show you how fast I can be. I’ll check back tomorrow morning.”
Åkesson laughed. “That’s the spirit! Until tomorrow, then.”
Alvar and Åkesson shook hands. Alvar hoped his handshake showed convincing strength.
“Until tomorrow. I won’t disappoint you!”
* * *
Asking Åkesson where he could find 140 Åsö Street was out of the question. Instead, Alvar waved down the first pedestrian he saw on the street, a woman, who shook her head and kept walking as fast as she could. A few other people also ignored him until he met a young man, who seemed just a little younger than he was, who stopped his bike.
“Åsö Street? That’s over in Söder. You’ll have a long walk.”
“You mean Södermalm?”
“You know any other Söder?” The boy gave him a long, somewhat confused, look before he jumped back on his bike and pedaled off.
All the boys seemed to have bikes like his, sturdy with large baskets attached to the handlebars. The longer Alvar walked through the enormous city, the more he began to understand what everyone needed the bikes for. After a while, he noticed a change in his surroundings. The buildings stood closer together and the people wore less expensive clothes. Only the wooden sidewalks had not changed. He stopped another errand boy—there were more of them here. The boy jeered when Alvar asked if he’d reached Södermalm.
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