Clinch

by Martin Holmén

  The back wheels spin as the car lurches into Storgatan. As we pass by the Apothecary Stork, Doris looks up. By Schröder’s bakery, twenty metres on, she touches my thigh. Gently I apply the brakes and park by the black, barred windows of the pawn shop. I get out my pocket watch. It’s ten past eleven.

  ‘Wait here.’

  Her make-up is intact. A little light under the fascia panel comes on, and a cold wind sweeps into the car when she opens the door and gets out with the fur coats in her arms. I follow her in the rear-view mirror as she shuffles around the snowbank by the police station on the corner of Skeppargatan. I light a Meteor. The snow is piled so high that she can only been seen from the waist up. She rings the doorbell, then tugs at the door. She walks back out onto the pavement and looks up at the façade. I start the car.

  Suddenly she slips and disappears behind the snow. She’s wearing the wrong shoes, of course. Standing up again, she flings her furs on the ground, and stands there with a stooped back, covering her eyes. At long last she bends down, picks up her furs and comes back.

  ‘Do not smoke cigars in my car!’ She sits next to me with the furs in her lap. One of them gets caught in the door, so it can’t be closed. She swears and tugs at her coats. I roll down my window a fraction and flick away my Meteor.

  ‘Closed?’

  She shrugs. ‘Drive to the Italian Club.’

  The Azzurra Cave: the nightclub on Grev Magnigatan only opens at midnight, if it’s open at all in the middle of the week. I’ve been there a few times although it’s actually a members-only club.

  ‘It’s not open for an hour yet.’

  ‘Drive me to Kommendörsgatan, then!’

  ‘I’d like to remind you I’m not your driver, whatever you may tell your girlfriends.’

  I have a good mind to put her across my knee and spank her until she’s covered in blue stripes, but instead I start the car. There’s not much else to do. I peer at her. I suppose every ship must have its ballast, however fine she may look.

  The engine spins to life. I release the clutch and the wheels spin a couple of turns before gaining some traction. We travel in silence. By Östermalm square we meet the grey snow-plough tram, chugging through a cloud of fine powder snow. Soon after I almost run over a warmly dressed bloke taking his fox terrier for a walk. It’s impossible to see the yellow-striped pedestrian crossings in this weather.

  When I turn into Kommendörsgatan we go into a heavy skid. The car thrashes along. I accelerate out of it. Doris doesn’t react at all. She points at an anonymous iron door, hardly even visible behind all the snow.

  ‘Here.’

  I stop. She opens the car door. It gets stuck in the compacted bank of snow. With much effort she squeezes out of the opening. She puts her head inside again.

  ‘Come with me.’

  ‘I can’t park here.’

  ‘With this car you can.’

  I shrug and do as I’m told. As soon as the car door closes behind me I have a cigar in my mouth. The cold nips at my skin. The house is a big brick thing. A row of balconies in cast iron, bunched one on the other, split the façade into two sections. Most of the windows are dark but a big crystal chandelier is lit on the first floor. Elegant streets, these.

  Doris slips up to the modest door. It’s half a stair down. She roots around in her handbag as she carefully goes down the steps. I puff some life into the cigar and look around. These are not my home haunts. Doris knocks on the door and immediately a little viewing slit opens in it. Doris holds up a card. At least two locks rattle, and then the door is opened.

  A passage steeped in gloom leads into the cellar. The corridor is draped in heavy red fabrics, and the ceiling is painted in the same colour. The cement floor is covered with an elongated Oriental rug. Beside the door is a three-legged stool in some light-coloured wood. Jazz can be heard from the cellar.

  A short man in a blue double-breasted suit receives us. His collar is perfectly fitted around his neck. A pistol bulges disquietingly under his pinstripes. His eyebrows join in the middle. If what I learned at sea is correct, this means he will die from drowning.

  ‘Who’s the thug?’

  ‘He’s with me. He’s okay.’ Doris removes her hat and pats her hair.

  ‘I have to search him.’

  I stretch out my arms and the little bloke pats me down through my layers of clothes. Doris looks utterly bored. She rests one of her heels against the wall and inserts a Stamboul in her gold cigarette holder, while her handbag sways from the crook of her arm. Her hat is wedged between her body and her other arm.

  He’s thorough. He smells of Triumf aftershave. I’m a head taller than him.

  ‘Okay.’ He nods for us to move on down the passage. I jog along behind Doris. Our steps are muted by the thick rug. Her heels make her bottom swing irritably from side to side. Her garters are visible under the thin white fabric of her dress, first on the right side, then on the left.

  If this is an unlicensed drinking place, it’s the most exclusive one I’ve ever been in. It has to be Ma’s place. She and her sons are running things up here in Östermalm. It’s been that way ever since the Reaper rigged up Old Man’s car with a couple of Nobel’s dynamite sticks.

  The passage bends abruptly and yet another iron door with a spy hatch appears. Now I hear the high-pitched tones of a trumpet. Doris thumps the door hard. Music wells out of the hatch and the door opens just as the trumpet once again shreds the melody with its sharpness. I take a step back.

  ‘Welcome!’ The girl in front of us smiles, tilting her head. She has sequins on her dress. Doris pushes past her. The girl keeps smiling.

  Variously coloured lights whirr about like chaff in a barn. Patches of red chase yellow, blue and green. They play catch over the thick rugs, speed around between the small, round tables, sparkle off the hostess’s sequin dress, hit the mirror and the bottles behind the long bar counter and lose themselves across the little dance floor, where a few people seem to have lost track of each other in the confusion of lights and music. On the tables and along the bar, paraffin lights glimmer. In a corner of the large premises, an entire jazz quintet with a double bass is crowded onto a small stage.

  Someone gives me a slap on my upper arm. On reflex, I shield my chin behind my shoulder, quickly duck and move forwards and resurface on Doris’s left side. She moves her lips and gesticulates. I lower my hands and nod. The girl with the sequined dress tucks her arm into mine and pats my hand as if I were an old pauper from the workhouse.

  Doris makes off towards some booths with sofas and tables. The hostess ushers me to the bar. The club is half filled. The quintet stops abruptly and there’s scattered applause. Behind the bar is a battery of colourful, curvaceous bottles. Over the mirror is a row of portrait photographs of former heroes of the ring. I recognise the yanks, HP, and some others too. The drummer whisks up a new, slow, suggestive melody. A bartender entirely dressed in white, with cotton gloves on his hands, leans towards the hostess.

  ‘Give him one on the house!’ The hostess nods at me and disappears into the throng.

  Soon there’s a tall, slim glass on the bar counter. A little pink paper parasol is attached to a toothpick. Carefully I pick it up. By sliding a little paper cylinder up and down along the toothpick, one can open and close the parasol. I do so many times before I lift the glass to my mouth. Its yellow contents taste mainly of lemon.

  I light the cigar, which has been left to go out and droop in my mouth. I turn my back to the bottles and rest my elbows on the counter for a while.

  On one side of me is a bloke in a tailcoat and a crooked shirt-front. He’s sitting on his tails. On the other side of me stands a youth in a large beret, a city suit, plus fours and plucked eyebrows. He looks like Leonard. Between his long fingers he holds a slim cigarette, which gives off a thin sliver of smoke that wraps itself around the rising dark grey from my cigar.

  A few couples are slowly floating around on the dance floor. Despite the darkness, I can
make out that some of the girls with red lips and mascara around their eyes are actually boys, dressed in spangled crinoline. One of them has a tiara in his hair. I lean over towards the youth at my side.

  ‘Do you know a boy called Leonard?’

  He shakes his head. I show him the little parasol and how one can open and close it. He gives me an uninterested glance.

  I turn to the counter, and the bartender leans across.

  ‘You want a job?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘A girl, then? Or maybe a boy?’

  I shake my head again and drain what’s left of the fruit squash. I’m just about to ask him about Zetterberg when Doris taps me on the shoulder. She tucks her arm under mine and drags me towards the exit. On our way we bump into a transvestite in evening dress, whose chest hair wells out of his cleavage. In the short summer nights of Humlegården he’s known as Snuff-Josefin. He nods at me. Doris doesn’t notice.

  When we come out of the club the temperature has fallen to ten below. The car has survived without any bangs or scrapes, although it is parked almost in the middle of the lane. I don’t make a note of the address but I try to remember the house and the cast-iron balconies. Doris hums the last song the jazz quintet was playing.

  ‘My rheumatism always gets worse in the winter,’ she says, as I drive along Karlavägen for the second time that evening.

  ‘We live on the wrong side of the world.’

  ‘We often go somewhere warm over the Christmas holiday, me and my family, but not this year. Ludvig has too much going on, he says.’

  I grunt. The street lies deserted and I turn on the full beam by pressing a button above the horn. There’s not a skid mark left from the crazy car chase on Karlavägen just a few hours ago.

  I shouldn’t have clocked Leonard in Bellevueparken. That must be why he cleared off as if he had a fire up his butt. I don’t even know why I decked him.

  We don’t talk much on the way home to Sibirien. Only when we turn back into Roslagsgatan do I notice that Doris no longer has her furs.

  Dixie has been walked. She lies contentedly at my feet. The flat is quiet, apart from a blazing wood fire in the hearth. We’re sitting at the kitchen table. I’ve taken off my jacket and shirt. I blow at the Husqvarna’s recoil spring and thread a page of rolled-up newspaper through it.

  Doris is busy with her own things. She opens a little bottle of brown liquid and holds it under her nose. She lets a drop fall on her finger, and puts it in her mouth. She smiles. Her long fake eyelashes flutter.

  Dixie spins around and lies on her other side, across my feet. Her body warmth feels good against my socks. Doris gets out a little case of dark wood from her handbag on the table. Inside is a cylinder and a plunger in glass and steel, as well as two needles embedded in purple silk. She gets it all out and goes to rinse it in water.

  ‘Do you have any spirit?’

  ‘In the cupboard. I’ll have one myself.’

  I nod her in the right direction. The cupboard doors slam. She opens the bottle and fills two schnapps glasses with Kron. I put the recoil spring down and pick up the silver-grey pistol muzzle. I tear another page out of yesterday’s newspaper. There’s a snap when I open the lid of the gun oil.

  Doris gives me one of the glasses and sits back down opposite me.

  I knock back the drink. Doris dips one of the needles in her glass of schnapps. She removes her shoes, stands up and unclips one of her stockings, then sits down to roll it off. Dixie gets up and shuffles out of the kitchen.

  The top of Doris’s foot is flecked with little purple scars.

  ‘This is strong stuff.’ She sits at the table and sucks some of the contents of the bottle into the syringe. ‘I’ll pass out for ten minutes but it’s not dangerous.’

  ‘As long as you know what you’re doing.’

  Doris holds the syringe up against the lamp and slowly presses the air out. The glass makes a deadened sound when she flicks it with her nail. She pushes back the chair and puts up her bruised foot, gives the pin-pricked skin on top of her foot a good rub, then taps it gently to get the blood going. After dipping her forefinger in the schnapps glass and rubbing it into a spot just below her ankle, she injects herself and the skin sags for a moment under the downward pressure of the needle before it goes in.

  ‘Damn!’

  She retracts the needle, again puts the tip of the needle against her skin and jabs it in. This time she hits it right. She tenses her lips and draws a few drops of blood into the cylinder before slowly injecting the contents into herself.

  She rolls up her stocking halfway and puts her shoe back on. Her lips open. She exhales and straightens her back, still with the syringe in her hand. The stocking hangs like boot lining under her knee. For a moment she looks as if she wants to say something. Whatever it is, it remains unsaid.

  She may as well have walked smack-dab into my right-handed punch. First her head falls hard backwards and then bounces against her breast. The empty syringe rolls away over the table. She takes a long breath.

  Dixie’s claws come rattling across the floor; she lies down under Doris’s chair. Meanwhile, Doris’s arms hang down limply. I hold my breath for as long as she does. When at last she exhales, I reach across the table, take her schnapps glass, knock back its contents, then stand up and walk round the table. Dixie is growling under the chair. I reach down and Dixie sniffs my hand and then licks it. I lift Doris’s face up and give her a little shake. Her eyes are half closed, a thread of saliva hangs from her mouth. I wipe it off with my hand.

  ‘The best china,’ she slurs with a dark, dragging voice. I bend down and slide my arms under her knees and around her back. The white silk of her dress is soft against my hands. ‘And my best little brother.’ My back protests when I pick her up, despite the fact that she hardly weighs anything. Dixie follows as I carry her mistress over to the sleeping alcove.

  ‘It’s itching. It’s itching so terribly. Can you scratch me, Father?’ Her voice is still unnaturally deep. I start shivering.

  I lay her on the bed and prop up her head with the down pillow. She’s breathing calmly. Dixie jumps up and lies at the foot of the bed. I check my pocket watch. Ten minutes, she said.

  I’ve just put the Husqvarna together and checked that it works by cocking it, when I hear Dixie’s claws against the cork mat. Doris’s heels give off an irregular sound as she staggers about in there. It reminds me of the endless nights spent tapping the walls between the cells at Långholmen. She kicks off her shoes. I hear them striking the wall with a couple of dull thuds.

  Soon she comes slowly into the kitchen again. She’s swaying alarmingly, and her eyes are glazed. I put my pistol down on the table and stand up in the nick of time. I catch her when she trips on the rag rug. Her body is limp and pliant. She laughs emptily. I heave her onto the chair and push it tight up against the table.

  ‘Harry, you bastard.’ Her voice is still as dark. Her head rolls languidly from side to side, like a boxer when the neck muscles have stopped working, just before he goes down. She grabs the big conch shell in the window. It smashes against the floor.

  Her head stops. The fake eyelashes on the left side have come away and hang drunkenly. She’s lost one of her absinthe-green earrings. Her pupils are as small as one of the needle pricks in her foot.

  ‘You bastard. I think you’ve given me crabs.’

  Before I have time to react I’m staring into the black barrel of the Husqvarna. It points all over the place but it’s not the first time she’s held a pistol. My fingers, gripping the edge of the table, turn white. I wish I hadn’t sat down. She’s slow. I’m quick, but I’m not as quick as I used to be.

  ‘Doris, for Christ’s sake! Let’s calm things down. There’s a bullet in the chamber.’

  She makes a hollow laugh. ‘You like your pistol, don’t you!’

  ‘Christ’s sake, Doris!’

  ‘Lucky for you… I don’t… share a bed… with my husband.’

 
The sentence ends up too long and she makes a mess of it. The weight of the pistol makes her hand start shaking. I sigh and close my eyes, thinking about my daughter, Ida. I think about Lundin, Beda and the vicar, Gabrielsson. I think about Dixie. I think about my Ida.

  There’s a gentle click when Doris cocks the trigger. I still have my eyes closed. My fingers firmly clutch the edge of the table. Every little muscle in my body is tensed up. Thoughts are racing through my mind: I wonder if she has finally understood who I am. Maybe it dawned on her at the bar earlier that evening.

  I wait. She doesn’t squeeze the trigger. I drum up enough courage to start breathing again.

  At long last I open my eyes when the Husqvarna slams onto the table. Her chin drops limply onto her breast, her hair gives a sudden shake, and her arms dangle from her shoulder sockets. I snatch up the pistol, release the cock with my thumb and flick the safety catch.

  ‘It’ll be such a long time till we see each other again. I don’t want to leave you, Harry. Not tonight,’ she slurs into the cleavage of her white evening dress.

  I put the Husqvarna in my lap. Doris manages to lift her arm and put her hand in front of me on the table. I stare at her bony fingers and green nail varnish.

  ‘You have to get on with your Christmas preparations at home. And what would your husband say?’

  ‘Ludvig? He’s nothing to be concerned about. Nothing at all.’

  ‘Well you can’t stay here. I also have things to do. I’ll drive you home.’

  I stand up and take a stiff pull of the schnapps bottle. Doris lays both her arms on the table and buries her face in them. Dixie fusses along behind me while I’m collecting Doris’s clothes, which I leave by the door. I clip the leather leash to Dixie’s collar, the one with the red stones. She stands on her hind legs and waits, her front paws on the door.