Sleet: Selected Stories

by Stig Dagerman

  At night, all waking thoughts revolve around one thing, one moment. And even Håkan’s deepest sleep is much too fragile to block that one thing out. True, he hasn’t heard the car pull up out front. He hasn’t heard the click of the light switch or the steps in the stairwell. But the key that slides into the keyhole also pokes a hole in Håkan’s sleep. In an instant he’s awake, stricken deep by a flash of delight tingling hot from his toes to his scalp. But the delight disappears nearly as fast as it comes, withdrawing into a cloud of uncertainties.

  And so now Håkan plays a little game, another game, that begins every time he wakes up like this. He pretends that his father has hustled through the hallway, that he has come to a halt right between the kitchen and the bedroom, so that both Håkan and his mother will hear him as he speaks up loudly: “There was a guy at work that fell off a scaffold, and I had to take him to the hospital. I’ve been sitting there all night and I couldn’t call because they didn’t have a telephone,” or: “Can you believe it? We just won the lottery! And I’ve been holding out all night just to keep you in suspense!” or: “You’ll never guess what happened! The boss gave me a speedboat today! Can you believe it? I’ve been testing her out, and tomorrow morning we’ll be going for a spin, all three of us. What do you think of that?”

  But in reality everything goes much slower. And what’s more, there are never any surprises. His father can’t find the light switch in the hall. Finally he gives up and hits a hanger, knocking it to the floor. He swears at the hanger and tries to pick it up. But instead he tips over a bag that had been leaning against the wall. Eventually he gives up on that, too, and tries to find a hook for his coat. But the coat slips off anyway and falls to the floor with a soft thud. Then he props himself against the wall and stumbles into the bathroom, just a few feet away. He opens the door and lets it stay open. He turns on the light. And as he’s done so many times before, Håkan lies completely motionless on his daybed, listening to the splashes on the floor. His father then turns off the light, bangs into the door and swears. As he walks into the bedroom the drawn curtain makes a rattling noise, as if it wanted to bite.

  Then all is completely silent. His father stands there in the room without saying a word. There is a weak squeaking that comes from his shoes, and his breath is heavy, irregular. But these things make it all seem even more unbearably silent. And in this silence another flash strikes Håkan, hatred burning through him. He grabs the knife handle so tight that the palm of his hand hurts, and yet he does not feel the pain.

  But the silence lasts only a moment.

  His father begins to undress himself — jacket, vest. He throws his clothes on a chair. Leaning back against a cabinet, he lets his shoes fall to the floor. His tie flutters. Then he takes a few steps further into the room, towards the bed, and stands there completely still as he winds up the alarm clock. Then all is silent again, as terribly silent as before. Only the ticking of the clock gnaws at the silence like a rat. The drunken, gnawing tick of the clock.

  And then it happens — that thing which silence merely awaits. His mother makes a desperate move on the bed and screams flow from her mouth like blood.

  “You bastard! You bastard! You bastard! Bastard-bastard-bastard!” she screams until her voice dies out and all is quiet again. Only the clock gnaws and gnaws, and the hand gripping the knife is absolutely drenched in sweat. The anguish in the kitchen is so intense that it cannot be endured without a weapon. But then at last Håkan’s terrible fear exhausts him so thoroughly that he races head-first back into sleep without the slightest resistance. Far into the night he wakes for a moment. Through the open door he hears how the bed creaks, how a soft murmur fills the room. He doesn’t know exactly what these sounds mean. He knows only that they are two safe sounds, sounds that tell him the pain has ended for the night. Yet the knife is still clenched in his hand, and so now, only now, does he loosen his grip and push it away, filled with a heated desire for himself. And as he crosses the threshold of sleep one last time, Håkan plays the last game of the night, the one that gives him final peace.

  Final — and yet here there is still no end. As the hands of the clock approach six in the afternoon, Håkan’s mother comes into the kitchen where he sits at the table doing his homework. She takes his book away from him and pulls him up from the bench with one hand.

  “Go to your father,” she says as she drags him through the hallway. She places herself behind him to block a retreat. “Go to your father and tell him I said he’s to give you the money.”

  The days are worse than the nights. The games of the night are much better than those of the day. At night you can become invisible and dash across rooftops to where you are needed. In daylight you cannot become invisible. In daylight things do not happen so fast. In daylight the games are not so fun. Håkan comes out of the doorway and he’s not even the least bit invisible. The janitor’s boy tugs at his coat. He wants Håkan to play marbles. But Håkan knows that his mother is standing above in the window. And he knows that she will keep her eye on him until he disappears around the corner. So this is why he tears himself away without saying a word and then runs off as if someone were chasing him. But as soon as he has rounded the corner he walks as slowly as he can, first counting the concrete slabs of the sidewalk and then the drops of spit that mark them. The janitor’s boy catches up with him. But Håkan will not answer him, because you cannot say you’re out looking for your father because he hasn’t come home yet with the paycheck. At last the janitor’s boy gives up and with each slow step Håkan finds himself getting even nearer to that place where he dreads to go. He pretends he’s getting further and further away from it. Yet still, this isn’t true.

  At first he passes right by the bar, brushing so close to the bouncer that the man mutters something after him. He turns off into a little side street and stands across from the building where his father’s workshop is. After a while he goes through a gate and into the storage yard, pretending his father is still there. He pretends his father has hidden himself somewhere behind the barrels or sacks, waiting for Håkan to come and seek him out. Håkan lifts the lids of the paint barrels one by one, and each time he is equally surprised that his father is not sitting inside, all scrunched up. When he has searched the yard for half an hour he is finally convinced that his father has not hidden himself there after all, and so he returns.

  Next to the bar is a china store and watchmaker’s shop. Håkan stands for a while and peeks in through the window. He tries to count the dogs, first the ceramic ones in the window and then the ones he can barely make out if he shades his eyes and searches along the shelves and counters farther inside. The watchmaker comes up and pulls down the bars of the window. Yet through the small slits Håkan can still see the watches that lie inside, ticking. He can also see the correct time on the clock, and he decides that the second hand will go around ten times before he finally goes in.

  As the bouncer stands there arguing with a fellow who is trying to show him something in a magazine, Håkan steals into the bar. Without wasting a moment he runs up to the right table, not wanting too many people to notice him. His father doesn’t see him at first, but one of the other painters nods to Håkan and says:

  “Hey, your kid’s here!”

  Håkan’s father pulls him up onto his knee. He brushes his razor stubble against the boy’s cheek. Håkan tries to avoid looking directly at him. But still, he’s fascinated with the red streaks that permeate his eyes.

  “What do you want, boy?” his father asks him. But the tongue is soft and flabby in his mouth and he must say the same thing over a couple of times before he’s finally satisfied with it.

  “I came for the money.”

  Håkan’s father slowly places him on the floor and then leans back, laughing so loudly that his friends have to quiet him down. As he laughs he takes the change purse from his pocket, fumbling with the rubber band around it. For a long time he searches in the bottom until he finds his shiniest one crown piece
.

  “Here you go, Håkan,” he says. “Go on, boy. Go and buy yourself some candy.”

  The other workers will not be outdone, and so Håkan also gets a crown from each of them. Overwhelmed by shame and confusion, he holds the money in his hand while he makes his way out through the tables. As he dashes out past the bouncer, he’s terribly afraid that someone will see him and talk about him at school, saying, “I saw Håkan coming out of a bar last night.” But he pauses anyway, just outside the watchmaker’s window, and while the second hand nibbles its way around the clock ten more times he stands there pressed against the bars, knowing that he will have to play his games again tonight. And of the two people he plays these games for, he cannot decide whom he hates the most.

  Later, as he slowly turns the corner, Håkan meets his mother’s gaze from ten yards above. And so he walks as slowly as he dares up to the building’s entrance. Next to the entrance is a wood shop and for a moment he musters the courage to pause and kneel there, staring down at an old man who is picking up coal in a black bucket. By the time the old man has finished, his mother is standing behind him. She pulls him up and takes hold of his chin in order to fix on his eyes.

  “What did he say?” she asks. “Or did you lose your nerve again?”

  “He said he’ll come at once,” Håkan whispers back.

  “And what about the money?”

  “Close your eyes,” Håkan says, and here he plays the last game of the day.

  When his mother closes her eyes, Håkan slowly reaches out and slips the four crowns into her outstretched hand, and then he turns and sprints down the street on feet that slip on the stones because they’re so afraid. A growing cry follows him along the walls of the houses, but it doesn’t stop him. On the contrary, it makes him run even faster.

  Men of Character

  Foresters wear puttees, green or gray. This one never went anywhere without his rifle, just as he never went anywhere without being in a great hurry. When he came through the village he was always in a half-sprint, the dust stirring up above his ankles. Everyone greeted him, but he greeted none, perhaps because he was always in such a desperate rush that he had no time to notice those who slowed down and stepped out of the way when they saw him coming. Sometimes they would move right to the edge of the ditch by the side of the road and follow him with their eyes. To these bystanders it looked as though he was being led by a dog on a long leash, a big invisible dog to which he secretly whistled through his ever-pursed lips, against which he set his own hurried pace. And his attention appeared to be so thoroughly engaged by the movement of this phantom hound that it could not be distracted by anything else. When he passed them, the villagers never laughed, nor even smiled, but they would nudge one another from time to time, as if to remind themselves of the association they all shared in the shape of that strange invisible dog.

  As he sprang up the concrete front steps of Cederblom’s Grocery, the forester startled a small group of women who stood at the top, offering each other snuff. In their sudden alarm, they jumped out of his way as he entered the store. Inside he unslung his rifle and stood there firmly with his feet spread wide on the newly scrubbed floorboards, weighing the weapon by the shoulder strap until he found its perfect point of balance. Only then did he step forward to the counter, and all of the eyes staring at him in curious bewilderment now slunk hastily off in other directions. The rifle butt came to rest firmly on the floor, the barrel sticking up an inch or two above the counter’s edge, and the two girls attending to customers suddenly looked nervous, even frightened, as they filled their customers’ paper bags and cartons at the counter.

  When the forester’s turn came, he handed one of the girls a typewritten list. Not even when he was told that something or other was out of stock would he bother to speak. He would simply shake his head in displeasure and shrug his shoulders, as if to free himself of the annoyance. The forester always bought the same things, provisions for his excursions into the woods — canned goods, hard bread, goat’s cheese, oranges, coffee, condensed cream — and other essentially masculine things normally associated with strength, solitude and superiority — puttees, boot-grease of a particular brand, expensive pipe tobacco, the finest pipe cleaners, flasks for field use, and flints for his cigarette lighter.

  When at last his goods were set before him on the counter, he would shove them down into his pack himself, the very abruptness of his movements making any assistance from the shopgirl impossible. No one in the village had ever heard him ask for help, just as no one had ever heard him say thank you. No one had ever seen his match blow out in the wind when he stopped to light his pipe, nor had anyone ever heard him swear because a stone had crept into his shoe. The forester was plagued by none of those things that made other people feel ridiculous, nothing that could be laughed or even smiled at. But the villagers were patient.

  One day the forester came into the store and bought a woman’s head-scarf. On this day he left his rifle and backpack at home. Nor was he wearing his gloves as usual. The villagers were rather surprised to see how small his hands were — so small and white, almost like a woman’s. The cigarette that he was smoking also looked ridiculously small in the middle of his big, red face. From the moment he entered Cederblom’s, he was acting out of the ordinary. Instead of immediately approaching the counter he went over to a little glass case just to the left of the entrance. Inside were the sorts of things that people usually paused and snickered at, but never bought: cheap necklaces, gaudy bathing caps, imitation gold bracelets, trinkets, brilliantly colored silk bath robes, cigarette holders, earrings. What good would any of these things be to him out in the middle of the woods? Leaning over this museum of urban vanity, the forester stood for a good while ardently puffing on his cigarette, without ever taking it from his mouth. Finally it occurred to one of the shopgirls that she should go over and offer her assistance.

  He asked in a friendly but somewhat embarrassed tone if he could see some cloths, and the girl, misunderstanding him, began to spread embroidered table cloths and linens out over the lid of the case.

  “Not like that,” the forester said, spitting out his cigarette and crushing it under the toe of his boot. “The kind that goes on your head.”

  The girl obviously didn’t realize that the “cloth” was intended for a woman.

  “To keep warm?” she asked him. She could vaguely remember having seen people with toothaches wearing white cloths tied around their heads.

  The forester looked down into the glass case as if into an aquarium until at last he saw what he was looking for. He walked around the case, which extended far out into the room, and pulled out a drawer filled with scarves. He picked up the first one he saw and after holding it up to look through the blotchy red transparent silk he asked the girl in rapid low syllables to wrap it up for him.

  Afterwards he stood for a few moments on the steps outside trying to light a cigarette in the rain. Through the display window the girl saw him hurry past with his lips closed around the cigarette like a vice. Just before the bend in the road he stopped suddenly, took one of his delicate hands from his pocket and held it out in the rain, as if he were about to taste it. But he continued on again presently and was soon out of sight, even from the farthest of the store windows. It was odd, though. Very odd.

  That night nearly everyone in the village knew about the forester’s scarf. Many were still discussing it long after the lights had been turned down and they lay awaiting sleep in their kitchen beds with a cat curled up on the blankets, the low tones of their conversation interrupted only occasionally by the sound of a car passing out on the road.

  The next morning, as usual, the schoolteacher’s wife rode up to Cederblom’s on her bicycle. Her name was Alice. Though raised in the city, she was the daughter of a farmer from a neighboring parish. It was a clear day, the weather was warming up after the rain, and the door of the store stood wide open. As she was stepping across the threshold, Alice suddenly turned and ran ba
ck to her bike, as if she had forgotten to do something. She fiddled with the lock for a moment and then stuffed something into her handbag. When she came back up the steps her head was bare, but by the time she approached the counter she realized it was too late. A small group of women stood nearby fingering a roll of fabric, and they followed her all the way across the room with their eyes. She knew then that they had probably seen her wearing the forester’s scarf, had seen and understood the weakness that compelled her to hide it in her handbag. And because of this, the bag grew so heavy in her hands that she was barely able to lift it up. The shopgirl’s expression made it heavier yet. When it came time for her to place her order, Alice’s face flushed a deep red. Suddenly she couldn’t remember a single thing she meant to buy. But since she did not wish to acknowledge her alarm, not even to herself, she asked for a number of unnecessary things, whatever happened to pop into her head at the moment, including a pair of cuff links.

  “That was stupid,” she thought to herself as soon as she asked for them, doubly stupid with all of these other women standing right there. And when the shopkeeper opened her bag to help her with the items, she hated him, for there in front of everyone he pulled out the scarf, set it on the counter, and remarked with poison in his mouth: “It would be a shame to put all of these heavy things on top of such a pretty little scarf.”

  The forester rented an upstairs corner room in the teacher’s house. By midday he and the teacher’s wife were entangled in a net of speculation and suspicion. It was a wide net, still set at a distance, but with so many hands eagerly clutching it, their chances for escape were growing slim.

  Of course, the talk of children is never worth heeding. Even so, children can be dangerous since they don’t have the tact to hold back the truth. The next day during lunch break the teacher was sitting at his desk in the classroom. Through the half-open door he could hear one girl chasing another through the hallway and he was just about to go out and tell them to stop it when the first girl was overtaken. Apparently unaware that he was still inside, the girls stopped abruptly just outside the classroom door.