Sleet: Selected Stories

by Stig Dagerman

  But it so happened that one week it was my turn to stay behind after school to air out the classroom, clean the chalkboard, and clap the erasers. And just as I was finishing up I was gripped by a sudden terrible desire to see what it looked like behind our bench. I was nearly overcome by disgust as I thought about the sight that awaited me, and several times I walked out into the hallway, whistling and turning around. To delay the decisive moment a little longer, I began to throw chalk, first trying to hit the teacher’s desk and then the fat Gustavus Adolphus who hung on the wall right behind it. Then I went around the room, lifting up the girls’ desktops and looking through their things. I was very curious, but also a little proud of myself, because I didn’t feel the need to steal anything.

  At last I knew it was time to get going, and even then I couldn’t resist the temptation. I practically threw the bench out from the wall and then stopped to listen for the dull groan of the landslide. But there wasn’t a single sound in that whole dark building. I got down on my knees and felt along the wall from one end of the bench to the other, at any moment expecting my hand to slide through something dark and horrible. But all I could feel was the naked wood. Not one single piece of our sandwiches was back there.

  Next morning at home I secretly filled another small bag full of salted meat. There were at least a dozen pieces, and during lunch I dropped them one at a time down behind the bench at different spots along the wall. Later on, after all the students had left, I was alone in the school. I was sitting in the classroom at the teacher’s desk, pretending it was the last day of class. I had already turned off the ceiling lights and was now just sitting there, smelling the graduation flowers that Inge and I usually picked in the woods in the spring.

  Then suddenly I heard quick footsteps in the hallway. At first I went stiff from fear because I thought I was doing something forbidden by sitting there in the teacher’s chair. But the steps ended outside the door, there in the hallway. Relieved, I got up and acted like I was erasing the blackboard, just in case someone walked in. That’s when I heard the lunch bench being moved, first scraping against the floor and then creaking as it was pushed back against the wall. I heard a few more steps, and then they stopped again — in front of the window, it seemed. But I could still hear the snowboots squeaking against the floor.

  I turned on the lights and ran to the door. A slice of light fell out into the hallway’s darkness, and directly in that small path of light I could see Sivert standing there. He was bent forward, greedily eating the salted meat and cucumber from his hands, with wild movements of his head, like when dogs tear at a piece of meat. And suddenly everything which had gathered up inside me during the winter — secret desires, suppressed thoughts, powerless knowledge, envy of experience, half-conscious guilt — all of it pressed violently against my core until I could not stop myself from crying out: “You goddamn thief! You goddamn thief! You goddamn thief!”

  I chased Sivert through the darkness of the hallway and out onto the steps, where he slipped and tumbled down into the snow. I was on top of him at once, driving my knees into his shoulders. Some of the boys who were still outside throwing snowballs against the school’s basement windows came trudging towards us.

  “He’s been stealing,” I shouted wildly. “He’s been stealing from me and Inge!”

  Together we turned his long, weak body onto its back. One boy sat firmly on his legs. He pulled the laces out of Sivert’s boots and tossed them in the snow. Another stretched back Sivert’s arms and sprinkled the powdery new-fallen snow onto his skin. Yet another dug in hard with his hands all over Sivert’s bare chest. As for myself, I unbuttoned his shirt and shoved snow down his back as far as I could get it. In no time his eyes were cemented shut by the snow and even his mouth was filled with it. But then suddenly, as if reacting to some secret signal, we all jumped up and left him alone. Excited, I ran back into the school, freezing but also hot. Scattered on the floor of the hallway were little pieces of salted meat and cucumber. As I jerked open one of the windows I could feel them in my hand, cold and froglike. With indescribable disgust, I flung them out in the snow.

  Then I went into the classroom, still hot, but still cold, too. There was some sort of earlier unknown tension still working inside me, and it made me feel as though I was slowly being torn apart. I roamed around the room, banging on all the desktops with my fist, wishing that I knew what to do next. But nothing more occurred to me than to sit at the biggest girl’s desk and write a dirty word on its underside with a piece of chalk.

  However, the judge within me must have been more than nine years old, because at last it told me what a coward I had been. Was it really stealing to take something we had rejected? Still defiant, but slowly coming undone, I turned off the lights and left. Outside, I saw Sivert’s shoelaces lying in a snowdrift. I put them in my pocket. I hurried on my way home so that I would not have to be alone with my judge for too long.

  A few minutes later I saw Sivert on the road ahead of me. He was kicking a piece of ice from one side of the road to the other. I hurried towards him.

  “Hi,” I said, tapping him on the shoulder.

  He crossed over to the left side of the road, looking down into the ditch as he walked along it. But I wanted to make things all right again, so I crossed over too and walked right beside him.

  “Would you like a sandwich, Sivert?” I asked him.

  Then he crossed over to the right side again, acting as if I wasn’t even there.

  “Would you like a sandwich?” I asked him again, even louder. But he wouldn’t answer me.

  He was the only one who could save me from the shame of what I had done — a shame which, at the time, I believed would last forever. And in despair that he would not help me, when he was the only one who could, I hung onto him heavily, pouring everything that was in me out over him, hoping somehow that he would finally push me away and scream “Go to hell!” — so that in the end I might at least have the chance to say to myself, “Well, I wanted to set things right. But he told me to go to hell.”

  But Sivert did nothing. He simply let me hang there on him, spitting out all the abuses I could think of. So then I threw him down in the snow at the edge of the road, hoping that I might be able to say, “Well, I wanted to square things with him. But then he hit me!” But Sivert willingly let himself be thrown down into the snow drift. I jumped on him, pounding and hitting him wherever I could, panting above his closed eyes.

  “You lousy thief! You goddamn animal killer! You lousy goddamn thief-animal killer!

  And yet, all of this seemed to be happening to somebody else. I was so nearly out of my mind with tense despair that I just left Sivert lying there, and I ran and ran. In front of the church I suddenly began to cry. And I must have cried the whole way home, because I couldn’t see anything. I could tell the farmers were driving their manure sleds out into the fields from the smell and from the clanging of the bells, which flew like blue birds out over the expansive plains of twilight. And because it was that time of year, I also knew that the woods were releasing their small clouds of white winter mist. Yet the very next day the miller’s children told me how they had been standing next to father’s big maple tree, and how they had asked me to go home with them to play “people drowning” in the giant wheat bin. But then they said I just walked right on by, as if I didn’t even see them. And the simple truth was, I did not.

  The Games of Night

  Sometimes at night as his mother cries in her room, and only a clattering of unfamiliar footsteps echoes in the stairwell, Håkan plays a little game to keep from crying himself. He pretends he’s invisible and that he can wish himself wherever he wants merely by thinking about it. On these nights there’s really only one place to wish himself to, and so suddenly he’s there. He’s not sure how it all happens. He knows only that he’s standing in a room. Just what the room looks like, it’s hard to say, because he doesn’t have eyes for those things. But the air is filled with cigarette and pipe s
moke, and men laugh out abruptly, horribly, for no reason at all. Women also sit there at the table, speaking words that make no sense. Sometimes they lean forward and break into fits of laughter which are every bit as terrifying. These things cut through Håkan like knives, but he’s glad to be here just the same. All of these people are sitting around a table with too many bottles spread out in front of them, and as soon as a glass is emptied, a hand unscrews the cap of another bottle and fills that glass again.

  Still invisible, Håkan gets down on his hands and knees and crawls beneath the table without drawing anyone’s attention. In his hand he holds an invisible drill. Without wasting a second, he places the drill bit against the wood and begins to bore up through the bottom of the table. In no time at all he has drilled straight through the table top. But he does not stop at this. He continues to drill, right through the bottom of a bottle, and then he watches as a nice, steady stream of vodka runs out through the hole. Beneath the table he recognizes his father’s shoes, and for a moment he cannot bear to think what might happen if he should suddenly became visible again. But then, with a rush of delight, he hears his father’s voice.

  “There’s no more booze!”

  Another voice joins in: “I’ll be damned, you’re right!”

  And then they all get up to leave.

  Håkan follows his father down the stairs. And when they reach the street, he leads him — although Håkan’s father doesn’t know it — straight to a taxi stand. Håkan whispers their address to the driver and for the whole trip he stands outside on the running board, holding tight to the door, making sure they actually go in the right direction. When they are only a few blocks from home Håkan wishes himself back. Again he’s in the kitchen, lying on the daybed, listening to the sound of the car as it pulls to a stop on the street below. But then only when he hears it start up again and drive off does he realize it wasn’t the right car. This one had stopped in front of the building next door, not at his. And so the right car must still be on its way. Maybe it got held up in a traffic jam at a nearby intersection. Maybe it stopped to help someone who got knocked off their bike. Yes, of course, there are a good many things that can happen to a car.

  Yet at last along comes a car which appears to be the right one. A few buildings down from Håkan’s it begins to slow down, rolling past the building next door, stopping with a little squeak at exactly the right entrance. A door opens. It slams shut again. Someone whistles as he jingles the change in his pocket. Håkan’s father usually never whistles. But you can never be too sure about these kinds of things. Why shouldn’t he suddenly take up whistling? The car starts up, it turns at the corner, and then it’s very quiet again on the street. Håkan strains with his ears, listening intently for the familiar sounds in the stairwell. But he never hears the door slam the way it does after someone has entered the hall, he never hears the little clicking sound from the light switch when it’s flipped on, he never hears the dull muffled thud of footfalls growing steadily louder on the steps.

  And so Håkan thinks: Why did I leave him so early? I could have stayed with him all the way to the door since we were so close, anyway. Now he’s just standing down there, of course. He’s lost his keys and can’t get in. Maybe he’ll get angry now. Maybe he’ll just leave and not come back till early tomorrow morning, when the door is open. And of course he can’t whistle. Because if he could, he’d certainly whistle up to me or mom to throw down the key.

  As quietly as possible Håkan clambers over the edge of the ever-creaking daybed. And in the darkness he stumbles into the kitchen table. Every muscle stiffens as he stands completely still on the cold linoleum floor. But his mother’s sobbing is loud and steady, like the breath of a sleeper, so she hasn’t heard a thing. He moves on toward the window and gently pulls the shade to the side, peeking out. No life stirs on the street, but across the way, just above the doorway of another building, a light suddenly comes on. And at the same time a light appears in the stairwell. Yes, the light above Håkan’s door works exactly the same way.

  After a while Håkan begins to get cold and so he silently creeps back to his bed. To make sure he doesn’t knock against the table again, he stretches his hands out in front of him, running them along the edge of the counter. His fingertips suddenly feel something cold, something sharp. For a moment he allows his fingers to run up and down the object, searching, until they grasp around a wooden handle. It’s a carving knife. When he climbs back into bed, he is still holding the knife. He slips under the blanket, pressing it close to his side. And then he is invisible again.

  Immediately Håkan is back in that same room, standing in the doorway. He looks on at the men and women who hold his father captive. And he now realizes the only way his father can get free is if he, himself, rescues him — just like the Vikings did it when they rescued missionaries who were tied to stakes, about to be cooked by cannibals.

  And so Håkan sneaks forward with his invisible knife and sinks it deep into the back of the fat man sitting next to his father. The fat man dies and Håkan starts to make his way around the table. One by one his victims slide down out of their chairs without ever really having the chance to know what hit them. When his father is free Håkan leads him down the long stairs, walking slowly, cautiously. Since there are no cars in sight, they walk across the street and board a trolley. Håkan arranges it so that his father can get a seat. But he’s worried the conductor might notice how his father has been drinking a little. And he hopes his father doesn’t use bad language around the conductor, or suddenly laugh out loud when there’s nothing there to laugh at.

  As the distant wheels of the last trolley round a faraway corner, they carry a relentless song to Håkan in his kitchen bedroom. He has left the trolley and is now lying again on the daybed. His mother has stopped crying since he left, and this is the first thing he notices. Suddenly the shade in her room flies up to the ceiling with a dreadful bang, and when the echo from that bang trails off his mother opens the window. Håkan wishes that he could hop out of bed, run into her room, and cry out to her. If he could, he’d tell her to close the window, pull down the shade and go back to bed in peace, because now he’s finally coming.

  “He’s on the trolley,” he’d say. “I put him there myself!”

  But Håkan knows it wouldn’t do any good. She wouldn’t believe him. She has no idea what he does for her when they’re alone at night, when she thinks he’s sleeping. She doesn’t know a thing about the trips he sets out on, the adventures he throws himself into for her sake.

  When the trolley stops around the corner, Håkan is up again, standing by the window, peeking out through the space between the shade and the window frame. The first people who come around the corner are two young men who must have jumped off while the trolley was still moving. They are joking around, boxing with each other playfully. Håkan recognizes them as the boys who live in the new house up the street. He can hear the distant chatter from some of the other people who have gotten off the car. When the trolley rattles across Håkan’s street, the headlights clear a path of darkness before it, and small groups of people briefly appear and then scatter back into the darkness in various directions. A man with unsteady steps walks directly toward the entrance to Håkan’s building. With his hat in his hand, he looks like a beggar. But this man is not Håkan’s father. It’s just the janitor who lives in their building.

  Yet still Håkan stands and waits. He knows there are enough things around the corner that can hold up a trolley passenger. There are many different shop windows, for instance, like the one at the shoe store. His father may be standing there right now, perhaps picking out a new pair of shoes for himself before he goes home. And the fruit store has a big window, too, with interesting hand-painted signs. Folks usually stop there to look at these signs, because they have such funny little people drawn on them. The fruit store also has a vending machine that’s always stealing people’s money. It’s very likely Håkan’s father has just put a coin in it to buy h
im some cough drops, and now he can’t get the slot open, of course.

  While Håkan stands by the window waiting for his father to tear himself away from the vending machine, his mother suddenly comes out of her room and passes the kitchen. Since she is barefoot, Håkan hadn’t heard anything at first. But she couldn’t have seen him because she moves right on toward the doorway. As his mother looks for something among the coats, Håkan lets go of the shade and stands absolutely still in the total darkness. It must have been a handkerchief she was looking for, because after a short while she blows her nose and heads back to her room. Although she’s barefoot, Håkan notices how she walks very softly, so as not to wake him. When she enters the room she immediately shuts the window and draws the shade with a quick, hard pull. Then she throws herself down on the bed, and the sobbing starts all over again. It’s as if she can’t sob when she’s not in a lying position — either that or she has to start sobbing the moment she lies down.

  Håkan looks out at the street one more time and sees that it’s entirely empty except for a woman allowing herself to be caressed by a sailor in the doorway just across the street. So he creeps back to his bed. The sound of the linoleum squeaking under his feet startles him, and he wonders, just for a moment, whether he might have dropped something. He is terribly tired now, and sleep begins to rush over him like a fine mist. As he moves through this mist he catches the sound of steps lumbering on the stairs. But they go in the wrong direction, starting upstairs and then heading downward. As soon as he gets under the blanket, he’s pulled down reluctantly, but swiftly, into the waters of sleep. And as the last waves break over his head, they are as soft as sobs.