Shadows in the Twilight

by Mankell Henning

  'No,' said Joel. 'I want to learn to play the saxophone.'

  'Well I never!' said Kringström. 'Come in so that I can have a good look at you!'

  He stepped to one side and ushered Joel in.

  Joel knew that Kringström lived alone. He had been married and divorced lots of times. He had a reputation of being a womaniser, even though he was over fifty and nearly bald. It was even said that he'd had a relationship with the scary Eulalia Mörker.

  But now he lived alone again. Joel entered the flat and had the impression he was in a music shop. There were gramophone records everywhere. Mainly 78s in brown covers. But there were also some LPs and some little EPs. The walls were covered in shelves. Where there were no records, there were instrument cases. Joel followed Kringström into another room – and here was the room within a room. In the middle of the floor, like a ticket office. No windows. Just a door. Kringström removed a pile of records from a chair and invited Joel to sit down.

  Joel told him his name. He tried to be as polite as he possibly could.

  'The saxophone, eh?' said Kringström, scratching his nose. 'Why don't you want to learn how to play the guitar like everybody else?'

  'I think the saxophone sounds best,' said Joel. 'Almost like an organ.'

  Kringström nodded.

  'And you want me to teach you, is that it?' he asked.

  'Yes,' said Joel.

  Kringström sighed.

  'I don't have the time,' he said. 'But I think I'm the only person in this dump who can play the saxophone.'

  'We don't need to start right away,' said Joel. 'I don't think I can afford a saxophone yet.'

  Kringström flung out his arms.

  'You can borrow a saxophone from me,' he said. 'But I don't know if I can teach you, even though I play it myself.'

  Kringström reached down to pick up the shiny golden saxophone lying on the floor beside him.

  He handed it to Joel.

  'Blow!' he said. 'See if you can get a sound out of it!'

  Joel raised the mouthpiece to his lips and blew. All that came out was a hissing sound. He tried again, blew as hard as he could. Now there was a little squeak, as if somebody had stood on a cat's tail.

  Kringström shook his head.

  'Give it to me,' he said.

  And he played. The tune resounded round the room. The windowpanes rattled. Notes ran up and down, as if they were racing up and down stairs.

  Somebody banged loudly on one of the walls. Kringström stopped playing immediately.

  'They don't understand music,' he said sadly.

  'We could practise round at my place,' said Joel. 'The woman who lives below us is nearly deaf.'

  'I'll think it over,' said Kringström. 'We don't need to decide anything here and now.'

  Now came the crucial moment. Joel would have to ask the most important question.

  'Could I perhaps sit behind the orchestra and listen?' he asked. 'When the orchestra's performing?'

  'Of course you can,' said Kringström. 'But we shan't be performing until Saturday.'

  'Yes, at the Community Centre,' said Joel. 'Could I sit behind you and listen then?'

  Kringström smiled.

  'If you help us to carry the instruments in,' he said.

  'When do you want me to be there?' Joel asked. He could feel his face flushing. His plan had succeeded!

  'Come to the back door at half past seven,' said Kringström. 'But you'll have to go now. I must go back to Paradise.'

  Paradise? It was only when Kringström pointed at the little soundproof room that the penny dropped.

  'That's my Paradise,' said Kringström. 'In there, there's nothing but music. And me.'

  Joel cycled home. Geronimo Gustafson had carried out the first stage of the big plan. On Saturday he would capture the fort.

  He thought about Kringström and his Paradise.

  He pictures himself fixing posters in the display cabinet outside the Community Centre. Joel Gustafson's Orchestra will play at a dance . . .

  Now he's no longer wearing his baggy jacket. Now he's in a shiny silver blazer. And white shoes. He's beating time and directing the orchestra. Emblazoned on the side of the big bass drum it says 'JGO' in highly decorated letters. Joel Gustafson's Orchestra.

  For the rest of the evening he can't get out of his head what's going to happen on Saturday night.

  He goes to Samuel's room. His dad is reading the newspaper and listening to the sound of the sea on the radio.

  'Can you dance?' he asks.

  Samuel lowers the newspaper.

  'Of course I can dance,' he says in surprise. 'Can't everybody?'

  'I can't,' Joel says.

  'You'll learn before long,' says Samuel. 'Can't Eva-Lisa teach you?'

  'But you never dance,' says Joel.

  'Do you want me to dance here in the kitchen?' asks Samuel, with a laugh.

  The next question comes tumbling out of Joel's mouth, without his having thought about it in advance.

  'What about Mummy Jenny?' he says. 'Did you dance with her? Did you dance together?'

  'I suppose we did,' Samuel says. Joel can see a shadow of unrest settling over his face.

  He wishes he hadn't asked the question. Where did it come from? It simply jumped out, as if it had been hiding inside there and waiting for Joel to open his mouth.

  The unrest fades away. Samuel is back to normal.

  'Maybe we should,' he says. 'Maybe I should invite Sara to go dancing with me? Kringström's orchestra is supposed to be pretty good.'

  Joel goes stiff.

  Why can he never learn not to keep shooting off his mouth? Just think, if Samuel gets it into his head to take Sara to the dance at the Community Centre on Saturday night?

  'Kringström's orchestra is pretty awful,' he says.

  'Have you heard them?' asks Samuel in surprise.

  'Everybody says so,' says Joel. 'They are the worst orchestra in Sweden.'

  'I've heard the opposite,' says Samuel. 'Maybe I should go and hear them, and see who's right?'

  'You'll regret it if you do,' Joel insists.

  Samuel puts down his newspaper and eyes him intently.

  'You seem to know an awful lot about Kringström's orchestra,' he says. 'But isn't it a bit early for you to start thinking about going out dancing?'

  He ruffles Joel's hair, and returns to his newspaper.

  Joel goes to his room and breathes a sigh of relief.

  That was a close shave, he thinks. Geronimo Gustafson's big plan very nearly collapsed in ruins. Samuel came close to making up his mind to take Sara to the dance at the Community Centre.

  Now Geronimo can breathe a sigh of relief. There's nothing in the way any longer.

  But he is wrong, Joel Geronimo Gustafson. When Saturday comes round and Samuel has made porridge and they are having breakfast together, he suddenly puts down his spoon and looks at Joel and says:

  'That was a very good suggestion you came up with.'

  Joel doesn't know what his dad is talking about. He hasn't made any suggestions, as far as he knows.

  'Sara and I are going to shake a leg at the Community Centre tonight,' says Samuel.

  Joel can't believe his ears.

  But it's true. And in a strange way, it's Joel who set it up.

  He stares down at his porridge in the same way as he'd stared down at his desk top a few days ago.

  What is he going to do now?

  Would he never be able to do his good deed? Is he going to have to drag this Miracle around like a millstone for the rest of his life?

  When he finishes eating he goes to his room. Samuel is doing the washing-up, humming away all the time.

  How is Joel going to solve this problem?

  What is he going to do now?

  Geronimo Gustafson. What on earth are you going to do now?

  10

  General Custer, Joel thought.

  Or Geronimo. Or both of them together. They wouldn't have coped
with this. Not even together!

  Once it had dawned on him that Samuel and Sara really had made up their minds to go dancing to Kringström's orchestra that night, Joel felt that all was lost. The good deed he had spent so much time and effort organising and was on the point of achieving, would never happen now.

  He was back where he'd started. Just like when he took a wrong turning in Simon Windstorm's maze. The good deed was something he'd never be able to find his way out of. He'd have to keep pressing on with attempts to do a good deed until he was so old that he couldn't even stand up any more.

  He sat in his room, swearing. He muttered all the swearwords he could think of. And he invented several new ones. All the time, Samuel was bustling around in the kitchen, humming tunes. He filled the big zinc bathtub with hot water. Then he shouted for Joel to come and scrub his back for him. Joel would have preferred to hit Samuel on the head with the brush instead. Why did Samuel have to choose tonight of all nights to go out dancing with Sara? Why not next Saturday? Why not every Saturday apart from this one?

  Why couldn't grown-ups ever understand when it wasn't acceptable for them to go out dancing?

  Joel scrubbed and Samuel grunted. If the brush had been impregnated with a sleeping potion, Samuel would have fallen asleep on the spot and not woken up until tomorrow. Joel would pay Kringström and his orchestra and he would rent the whole of the Community Centre for tomorrow night so that Sara and Samuel could dance together then. But not tonight! Alas, the brush was not poisoned and Samuel continued humming. He stood in the middle of the floor in a pool of water, shaving.

  'We'll have dinner together at Sara's place this evening,' he said contentedly. 'Then we'll go dancing. You can stay in her flat and listen to the radio if you like.'

  'No,' said Joel.

  'Why not?' wondered Samuel. 'Sara's a very good cook. Much better than you and me.'

  'I don't want to,' said Joel.

  Samuel grew angry. Or perhaps irritated. Joel wasn't quite sure of the difference.

  'Just this once you'll do as I say!' said Samuel.

  'No,' said Joel and emptied the bathtub by pouring bucket after bucket of dirty water down the sink.

  'What are you going to eat, then?' asked Samuel.

  I shall starve, Joel thought.

  But he didn't say that, of course.

  'I'll make my own dinner,' he said instead. 'You said I was good at looking after myself. You did say that, didn't you?'

  'Perhaps I did,' said Samuel. 'I just don't understand why you're making yourself so difficult to get along with.'

  Joel said nothing.

  Neither did Samuel.

  Another kind of silence, Joel thought. Different from the one in the forest or in the Underworld.

  At six o'clock Joel knotted Samuel's tie for him.

  'Are you sure you don't want to come?' Samuel asked again.

  'I prefer to stay at home,' said Joel.

  'Please yourself, then,' said Samuel, and left. Joel didn't bother to stand in the window and wave. He went straight to his room. He lay down on his bed and pulled the covers over his head. An hour and a half from now he was due at the back door of the Community Centre. That's what had been arranged. But it would be impossible now.

  He sat straight up in bed.

  'Oh, hell!' he yelled at nobody in particular. Then he lay down again with the covers over his head.

  Why does everything go wrong? he wondered. You do the right thing. But it goes wrong even so.

  Why is life so difficult?

  He got out of bed. Lying there with the covers over his head didn't help. He checked the kitchen clock. 17 minutes past six. The clock didn't have a second hand, so he tried to count sixty seconds. But the clock showed 18 minutes past six when he'd only got as far as 49. He was counting too slowly.

  I give up, he thought. The Caviar Man and Gertrud will have to manage without me. If there is a God, he'll have to do without a thank you for his Miracle. He can send the police after me for all I care. I, Joel Gustafson, couldn't care less about that.

  But at that very moment, he had an idea. He would disguise himself. Surely he could dress up so that nobody would recognise him? He'd be able to hide behind the fat drummer, Holmström. He was the fattest man in town. The fattest drummer in the world.

  He looked at the clock again. 24 minutes past six. He cursed for not having made up his mind sooner.

  Joella, he thought. I can dress up as a girl. I can tell Kringström that unfortunately my brother is ill, but I'd also like to learn to play the saxophone . . .

  No, that's not possible, he thought immediately. I can't wear Mummy Jenny's dress. And there isn't anything else.

  He checked the clock again. Nearly half past six.

  When ten past seven came round, he still hadn't thought of a good way of disguising himself. He would have to go now. Yet again he'd decided to stay at home, but the moment he'd pulled the covers over his head, he'd bounced back up again. He would have to go! He took Samuel's hat from the wardrobe, the one he'd bought in Hull. He pulled it down over his eyes. Then he took Samuel's spare pair of reading glasses and let them hang down over his nose. That was all. He raced down the stairs and out into the chilly evening air. It will soon be winter, he thought. It will snow before long.

  He ran so fast that he got a stitch. He had to pause and catch his breath. Then he set off running again. As the church clock chimed twice, he arrived at the Community Centre. Kringström's big Ford had backed into the courtyard. The members of the orchestra were already busy unloading their instruments. The fattest drummer in the world was carrying the big bass drum in front of him, looking as if he had an extra stomach. The double bass player was perched on the car roof, untying the rope round his instrument case. Joel knew that his name was Ross – but was that his first name or his surname? Just then Kringström came out of the back door with the Community Centre manager, Mr Engman. Joel stopped dead when he heard that they were quarrelling.

  'Of course we have to have a bulb that works in our dressing room,' growled Kringström. 'Do you expect us to get changed in the pitch black? Are we supposed to drink our coffee in darkness during the interval?'

  'You don't drink coffee,' said Engman testily. 'You drink vodka and whisky. And then you are all so drunk, you can hardly hold your instruments.'

  'Take that back here and now,' roared Kringström. 'If not, you can find yourself another orchestra.'

  The quarrel ended as quickly as it had begun. Engman vanished through the back door, muttering away to himself.

  Joel stepped forward.