Alvar wrote them down in the notebook Åkesson had given him for shopping. The three qualities. The four pickup lines. Rules for how long it would take before calling a girl on the phone, rules for taking your time. Three days. A hard-and-fast rule. Then an address where Alvar could buy Brylcreem, even if you could get some at every other barbershop.
“Come on,” Erling said before Alvar had to leave. “Just listen to this one. It’s Barney Bigard.”
Alvar stopped dreaming of Anita’s soft hands and stopped running through bass lines in his head. Instead, he repeated the pickup lines over and over until he fell asleep dreaming of an insinuating intonation. It had to sound natural.
* * *
Alvar decided to attempt to seduce Anita on a wonderful June day.
Erling’s trio had a gig at Solis. It would be Alvar’s first attempt at being a bass player in public. They had to play schottisches and fox-trots, but the owner had decided to let them play “I Got Rhythm” as well. “You know how the young people are,” Erling had said, with a confidence-inspiring smile. “They’re crazy about Gershwin.”
Alvar was now a real musician in Stockholm. The words seemed too big to fit and he had to keep repeating them inside his head to make sure they were true. He was still repeating them as he took his spot on Solis’s tiny stage, holding tightly to his borrowed bass. Erling took the spotlight in front. Ingmar sat down at the piano in a completely self-assured manner.
Alvar couldn’t remember much of their performance afterward. He remembered he’d made a mistake during “I Got Rhythm,” but he’d found his place right away, so quickly that maybe nobody noticed.
Or maybe everyone noticed. Ingmar told him he’d played well. He couldn’t see Anita. Maybe she’d gone home? Erling walked over, holding two bottles of pilsner, one for Alvar. “Wonderful! Absolutely wonderful! Don’t you think so?”
Erling was saying this to Ingmar, who nodded. Where was Anita? Alvar gripped his pilsner, and he couldn’t decide whether to drink it (as Erling would want) or not (as his mother would want).
“You recovered nicely in that piece,” Anita’s voice whispered in his ear.
He almost dropped the bottle.
* * *
The trouble with trying to seduce Anita was that she made him feel everything but nonchalant.
“Are you all right?” she asked, putting a hand on his shoulder.
This did not help him feel more nonchalant.
“Ijustwanttotakeawalk,” he forced out while trying to keep a deep voice. “Gottacheckthebass.” He walked through the restaurant and stopped in front of the stage.
At a table beside him, two guests were arguing about whose turn it was to pay the next round. Not his concern. He was now a musician, a musician in Stockholm.
A voice came through the cigarette smoke.
“You played very well,” said the owner’s wife, a tall woman of around forty.
He looked at her and wondered if she made him feel nonchalant. He squinted like Erling had shown him and smirked. “If the ladies were pleased, I’m pleased, too,” he said, without blinking.
He was ready.
* * *
He was not ready. His hands, though they’d become steadier as he’d been learning to swing and do the Charleston, were now just as shaky and sweaty as they’d been the first time he’d gone to Nalen. Still, it was now or never. The guests at Solis had been going home, two by two or in groups, and now just the owners and Erling’s trio were on the terrace. Erling had a girl on his knee, and Ingmar was talking to the owners about the war.
The United States had just declared war on Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania. It seemed as if Germany and the Axis were losing ground.
“I think the Axis are losing, and for Norway’s sake, I sure hope so,” Ingmar declared. “Still, keep in mind that the Germans are strong. I don’t think they’ll be scared by an attack. Things might escalate further.”
People would talk about the war all the time, in spite of the government’s urging that “a Swede keeps quiet.” The war was always present in all the rationing affecting daily life, and as time went by, it was on everyone’s mind. The war was like a bear in the woods: people assumed Sweden would not be attacked, but the possibility kept them on edge.
Except for this moment, on a terrace after a successful gig. Alvar’s thoughts were far from the war and Ingmar’s comments on the state of the conflict in Europe seemed almost meaningless compared to the immediacy of this summer night.
The sun had made an attempt to set, but it was June, where it would not be gone for long, so it just floated along the horizon, making the sky around it blush.
“It’s so pretty,” Anita said with a sigh.
Was she speaking to herself or to him?
“So purdy,” Alvar repeated. Then he realized this was not romantic. He could have hit himself.
But Anita giggled.
Alvar swallowed. He had nothing to swallow, unfortunately, as his mouth was as dry as his palms were damp, but at least he managed not to cough. He took a deep breath as quietly as he could. “Shall we look at the sunset from over here?”
He pointed at a spot farther along the iron fence. The June air brushed past the sweat on his upper lip. Anita got up, leaped up, as if she’d been waiting for this.
“I liked the way you played this evening,” she said as they reached the fence.
She wasn’t looking at him but at the clouds meeting the setting sun, turning orange and pink. She looked like a girl ready for romance. She was with him.
He launched into a line. “Was that cannon fire, or is my heart pounding?”
Anita turned away from the horizon and stared at him in confusion.
Alvar’s heart skipped a beat. What had he done wrong? Erling had told him that nothing could go wrong, not if you said it the right way! Complete idiots could use Erling’s pickup lines! He grinned involuntarily, but he hoped it looked charming. He ran his hand through his hair the way Erling had shown him and peeked at Anita nervously.
Anita burst out laughing. She couldn’t stop. She grabbed the iron railing so as not to fall over. The entire Stockholm night was tinged with her mirth.
Alvar was crestfallen.
“Erling!” she called out. “Erling! Did you teach Alvar this line? My heart is pounding like … no, wait, how did it go?”
Alvar had a choice. He could stand there in his humiliation or he could smile. He chose to smile. He turned toward the others on the terrace, laughed with Anita, laughed with Erling, who repeated his pickup line with a grin and made them all laugh, even the owners. Alvar laughed until his cheeks ached, and only the setting sun saw how he suffered inside. In the distance, it dipped below the horizon, leaving only its halo to light up the night air.
— CHAPTER 15 —
Mamma is standing next to Steffi, but Steffi pretends she’s by herself, just her and the train, and not just for two days but for an eternity. The skies are gray in Björke. Mamma is carrying the bag with the linens and Steffi is carrying the most important things: her bass and a plastic bag.
She keeps the plastic bag shut as long as they’re taking the local train. They pass one small town after another with station names on lacquered wooden signs. At some stations, the stop sign has been lowered and a few people get on. At other stations, the platforms pass by as gray and fleeting as the clouds.
Mamma says she’s happy she could get a few days off and accompany Steffi. She’s sad that she’s not home as much as Pappa is, and already Julia and Steffi are so big. “Soon you’ll be all grown up,” she says. “It goes so fast.”
Steffi is just listening with one ear. She’s not sure time goes by all that fast. “For you, maybe,” she says when her mother stops speaking and looks at her. “You’re forty-six and one year is one forty-sixth of your life. One year for me is like three for you. Imagine three years!”
Mamma looks at her with a half smile. “If you decide to quit music, you can always be a mathematician,�
�� she says.
Steffi replies immediately. “I will never quit music.”
“I only meant if.”
“Do you want me to quit? Just because I’m not like Julia?”
It comes out too fast for her to stop it. She didn’t mean to sound so spiteful. She really didn’t.
Her mother looks puzzled. “Julia? How could she ever be a mathematician?”
Steffi laughs. Of course, Julia would never be a mathematician.
Mamma laughs, too, and seems relieved. “Well, she could be if she wanted,” she says a few seconds later. “I mean, she’s not … she just has other interests, is all I’m saying.”
“Boys and makeup.”
Mamma smiles in agreement and keeps smiling until she starts thinking of something else and her smile fades. “And what about you?”
“Me?”
“Yes, I mean … boys and makeup … and … well…”
Steffi doesn’t understand the question. Her mother is starting to blush. “What are you getting at?”
“Well, you … it … you know, of course, you can talk to me and Pappa about anything you need to know, right?”
It’s not a bad theory. Steffi likes it. She nods and looks out the window. The station house at Kil is a colossus in red brick. There’s one more station before they reach Karlstad.
They have seats eighteen and twenty-two, across from each other, and they are no longer on the local train. The rails vibrate beneath them. Mamma asks if she wants to play cards, but Steffi shakes her head. She takes out her mp3 player and then Mamma takes out a book. She lifts one of Steffi’s headphones.
“Just tell me if you need anything.”
Steffi nods.
Arne Domnérus is wailing on the saxophone. She’d thought yesterday that his music would fit her trip to Stockholm. She plays air bass guitar, finding a nice bass walking line that would fit.
Red and brown houses. Fields. Trees. Barns falling apart. Forest. She sees her own face in the window when they pass the dark green forests, and it disappears in the white spaces between the forests.
After a while, she bends down and takes out her hat from the plastic bag. She’s tired of playing air bass. Mamma is deep inside her book. It has a blackish brown background, red letters and blood on the cover.
Steffi thinks that her mother doesn’t see as she puts her round hat on her head and watches her reflection go past. Her reflection shows a brilliant musician. A jazz-crazy girl of her own unique kind, one nobody at Björke School had ever met. She breathes on the window and then traces letters: S. H. H.
For Steffi. Herrera. Hepcat.
* * *
They’re staying with one of her grandfather’s army pals while in Stockholm. He’s a seventy-year-old man with a fifty-year-old wife and a dog. Both the wife and the dog are blond and fluffy. The man is bald and his first name is Göran. Steffi had met them once before when Mamma had turned forty and they’d had a big party. Steffi had been a little kid. She knows the first thing they’ll mention is how much she’s grown.
“Oh, Stephanie, look at you! A real young lady!” the wife says.
Steffi bites back a sarcastic reply and just says hello instead. She answers Göran’s question about being almost done with ninth grade and choosing a gymnasium. She says she feels fine about it. They have coffee and sandwiches and, afterward, Steffi asks to be excused so she can make a few calls.
Alvar answers at once.
“I suppose you haven’t had time to look up 140 Åsö Street yet,” he says.
“Not yet.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he says, laughing. “It’s just an address, when you get right down to it.”
“If I get a chance, I’ll make sure to go past it. And I’ll take a picture, like I promised.”
“The most important thing is that your audition goes well. How are you getting ready for it?”
“Playing the piece through. Thinking of the emotion behind it. Like you said.”
“And?”
“And trying to think of something else.”
“It’s not the easiest thing, but it’s the best thing to do. Did I tell you when Thore Ehrling came to listen to our trio?”
“Just a bit.”
“It was 1943 and I had been practicing for twenty-four hours straight.”
* * *
It was 1943 and Alvar had been practicing for twenty-four hours straight. He’d told Aunt Hilda that he was going to get a load of coffee from America for Åkesson. Sometimes he wondered if she had figured out that he did more than just run errands for the grocer, but as long as he was generously helping out with the rent, Aunt Hilda didn’t say anything. And she didn’t seem to suspect that his activities outside the Vasa Stan quarter could be in any way connected to jazz music. She would certainly have reacted if she had.
* * *
“Wait a minute … weren’t you going to tell me what happened with Anita?”
“What do you mean?”
“What happened after you were all standing on the terrace and she was laughing at you while the sun set?”
“Yes, well, she was a part of everything that happened, even in 1943. Once the sun set, it had set and everything was the way it always had been. Erling set me to rights, though. He told me all the stuff he’d taught me, the Brylcreem and the pickup lines, they were for normal girls, simple, young girls. A girl like Anita was beyond me. I would never get her, so I shouldn’t even try.”
“Just as I told you. There’s a pecking order.”
“So I decided to lick my wounds and be a real expert on the bass. So now we’ve come to that day when Erling’s trio was going to play at the Avalon.”
“It was 1943 and you’d just been practicing for twenty-four hours in a row.”
“That’s right.”
* * *
It was 1943 and although Alvar had practiced for the past twenty-four hours, he had a bad feeling about it. Erling’s Trio was going to play at the Avalon. Thore Ehrling was looking for new talent, and this was the chance of a lifetime. He kept telling himself this, but it didn’t sink in, and their turn was coming closer and closer.
Erling and Ingmar talked easily about a topic that had been important to all of them that spring: taking care of shoes. Erling was saying that the best way to take care of them was to take Brylcreem and regular shoe polish, half and half, and rub it into the entire shoe, including the sole. Ingmar had run across a kind of galoshes that were thinner and better looking than earlier models, so they could work for a wider range of occasions. The entire conversation—shoe rationing and the unpopular wooden soles—made Alvar think that both Erling and Ingmar were convinced everything would go well.
Alvar kept running his bass lines through his head over and over again, tried to find the right emotion, press through. When his turn came, the walking bass wound around his legs and whirled through his head into a mixture of unclear rhythms and melodies without any meaning.
And then: Thore Ehrling.
There were some names that came up more often than others when you tried to count who really mattered. Topsy, of course, the owner of Nalen, with his crazy ideas and dangerous flair. Gösta Törner, Lulle Ellboj, Seymour Österwall—all excellent musicians with bands at Nalen, Gröna Lund, The Winter Palace. Thore Ehrling. His name had been thrown about in Erling’s jazz quarter on Bonde Street, always with great respect.
Thore Ehrling was now the orchestra conductor at Skansen, the large park at the eastern end of the city. Now here he was, in person, standing at the back of the hall. He was younger than Alvar had imagined, but advanced in musician years.
Alvar couldn’t for the life of him remember how “Indiana” began. It came back as soon as the pianist hit the first chord. Concentrate, Alvar! You’ve done this all night long! Just come in on the right note, on the F.
Thore Ehrling was watching him from the other side of the hall. Alvar could sense it. Thore Ehrling was watching him. Not Erling, not Ingmar. He had this.
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Alvar made his entrance on G, even though he knew it was supposed to be F. Then the whole thing was off, even though he was able to save some of it, but whenever he felt happy it was going well, he lost the feeling and hit the wrong note again. He never had played so badly in his entire life.
Thore Ehrling stopped him at the entrance. He was kind, but fair, like a god. Alvar’s cheeks burned.
“I imagine you usually play better than that.”
Alvar nodded unhappily. “I came in on the wrong note.”
“Have you ever studied music? Learned harmony?”
“No, I’m self-taught.”
“Good for you. You have talent. You’re young. Don’t be so hard on yourself because you messed up this round.”
Alvar knew that he missed his one and only chance. It would never come around again.
“You’re talented, all right, but you will have to learn that if you want to play in a good band, you have to come in on the right note every single time. Get some tips from someone with more experience.”
The words floated past Alvar and faded away. Just like his chance of a lifetime.
* * *
“I might as well give up now,” he told Anita a few hours later.
He’d ridden his bike across town with some letters from the former bassist on Djurgården—part of his way to earn his bass—and he’d exchanged ration coupons for syrup at Åkesson’s supplier in Norrmalm. He no longer cared if they laughed at his Värmland dialect. By now, he knew the streets of Stockholm better than most.
“Don’t be stupid.”
“I’m sure of it. He said I didn’t have a chance.”
“Did he really say that?”
She had a way of bending her head and looking at him from below, catching his eyes in hers and smiling slightly. He couldn’t resist it—his heart lightened every time.
“No. All he said was I had to get it right every time I played.”
“And?”
“And that I’m talented.” He said this with extra surliness just to see her smile.
She laughed. “What can I do to cheer you up?”
Was there a glimmer in her eye, the kind girls gave to boys? It almost seemed so. He was eighteen now.
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