It can’t end this way, I thought. I could sense him standing in the doorframe behind me, but I didn’t dare look that way. I could only manage to squeeze out a thought: that I couldn’t afford to lose him, that none of us could afford that. And then I imagined a way out. The answer was to get him out of his hole. It was my turn to liberate him. But to say something to him was out of the question. Words were just a web that I continually got tangled up in.
I had to move quickly, because Ekman had already opened the door and was waiting for me to follow him out. That’s probably what Lind was expecting too. To the great surprise of all of us I went on the offensive, stepping suddenly forward and taking Lind’s hand in mine, as if snapping it in a hungry beak. He’d have to be blind not to see how desperate I was for his forgiveness, for a chance to shake free of the guilt he’d burdened me with.
But he was blind, and that’s what was so excruciating. His eyes didn’t see me and his hand just sat there in my own, unresponsive, like a heavy stone. I could sense his blindness, and so much more, like how he reviled me for the guilt I bore. The hopelessness of the whole situation made me numb, and so I escaped through the open door, which slammed closed behind me.
Ekman meanwhile had pushed the button for the elevator, and it came gliding up like an animal trapped behind an ironwork fence. The light was on inside the elevator, with all its mirrors, but that didn’t matter anymore. It was better that way, just as it should be. It would be pointless and stupid to try and resist the facts. As the elevator went down, Ekman and I stood back in our own corners, as far from the other as possible. And the whole time Ekman was working up the courage to say something. When the elevator finally reached the ground floor he managed to spit it out:
“Must be he did see the chess set after all,” he said.
I just couldn’t take it anymore. Grabbing hold of his shoulders, I shook him like you would an apple tree. His eyes sank in and all the blood drained from his face like a corpse. I must have shaken loose something inside him, because all the life just seemed to run out of him. All that remained were the hopeless dread of an animal and the ruins of a face, of a friend’s face. I didn’t have the strength to bear it. I had to get outside, out in the snow.
But I didn’t go far. I stopped outside a little grocery store just a ways up the road and waited for Ekman to come out of Lind’s building. When he finally did I followed after him. It was extremely difficult to see him at times through the sheets of swirling snow but I placed my own steps in his footprints. I couldn’t bear to lose everything in one night. After a little while I began to call out his name, but he never stopped to wait for me. We just kept walking, on and on, two trains locked into the same tracks. It wouldn’t be possible to meet without colliding. There were people and voices around us in the snow, but we were still alone in the city, in all cities. As we got closer to his building, we both picked up our pace. But he must have seen someone preparing to come out through the entrance before I did, and so he managed to dart in suddenly past the door as it closed. I was stuck outside, and the entrance was locked for the night.
I walked up the front steps anyway and peered in through the window in the door. It was dark inside the entranceway so I didn’t see him at first. But when my eyes adjusted well enough to spot him, I could see that he was very near me, but with his back turned towards me. I got the impression that he was standing there in the dark, crying. But maybe that was because I felt like crying myself. The wind and swirling snow forced me right up against the glass. Inside he must have sensed my presence, because he turned around abruptly and faced me. And right then I felt like running, but I wasn’t able to. For an awfully long time we stood there facing each other, and there was a great deal more than just a pane of glass separating us.
I could see that he understood. We both understood. We would have a difficult time ahead of us, and it would be a long time before we could look each other in the eye again. And that barrier would always be there, far thicker than any glass. And each of us would carry around our own guilt. It would be our only friend for the rest of that winter.
Without my realizing it at first, the door pushed open just a little crack. Suddenly something was touching my frozen hand. I grabbed hold of it and then the door closed again with a dull thud. Ekman disappeared into the darkness, and I was alone now. I turned and trudged on heavy legs out into the whirling snow. Without even looking at it, I opened the pocket chess set as I made my way down the long street of Hornsgatan. And each time I passed a lamppost I let a piece fall into the snow. And with each piece that fell, I grew lonelier, because in that snow I was burying not only friends but warmth and flowers and music and the promises of summer, all the things that help a young person to endure.
At the top of Katarinavägen, under the last lamppost on the street, the wind took the final black rook from my hand and carried it down over the harbor at Stadsgårn. The sky must have cleared a bit by then, because far below me, down at the water’s edge, I recall that I could make out the black smokestacks of some boats swallowing the snow. And that’s when I cocked my arm and threw the case down into the depths of that scene. The wind caught it, and with the driven snow it sailed off toward Slussen. And then the bells began to toll around the city, ten or eleven or something.
I walked home knowing what it was like to lose everything, even a set of pocket chess. But what it might be like to win everything, now that was something I couldn’t yet begin to fathom.
Where’s My Icelandic Sweater?
Well, what do you know? So I see I get the treatment today. Can see that as soon as we pull into the station. Greeted like a town worthy! Ulrik, he’s waiting by the station house in his greased-leather boots and best hat — the one with the widest brim — looking out over the tracks in his usual gloomy way. The grieving band and black bow tie just complete the picture as the horse leans down behind him and grazes in the flower bed. So I get to ride in the buggy, do I? That’s something I haven’t done since I was a kid. Guess I really am getting the full treatment, all on account of the old man dying. Otherwise I’d be hoofing it out to the farm like always, no matter if the mud’s so deep it swallows your feet whole. The only exception being Mamma’s funeral, of course.
That’s good old Ulrik for you! Can’t come over and meet you climbing down off the train, even if he sees you got your arms full with a wreath and a satchel full of brännvin. Suppose I could have sent the wreath on ahead of me, but you can never be sure how that’ll turn out. Look what happened to Mamma’s wreath, for Christ’s sake! Goddamn railway folks made such a mess of that there wasn’t any way to set it straight before the funeral. My goddamn eyes got shamed right out of their sockets, I’ll tell you that — me stuck there fussing around with the ribbons just before the service to try and hide the wreck of all them mutilated flowers. Not like it would’ve done me a damn bit of good to take it up with the railway folks. All them bastards do is pass the buck right back to you and leave you standing there like a clod.
So anyways, I finally get a proper nod from Ulrik — or Ultrick, like I used to call him when we was kids. He raises two fingers to the brim of his hat and flashes a mouthful of teeth like a regular hayseed. What do you expect? And then all of a sudden I’ve got the tin knocker at my elbow, three sheets to the wind like always, trying to get me to stop and jaw with him. He can probably make out what’s in my bag from the outlines of the bottles. “Sympathies,” he says. “For the old man. Happened quick, awful quick. Saw him just the day before and he was merry as a man can be.” It wasn’t a secret of the crown or anything that the old man was fond of the bottle in his later years, but that don’t mean you need to declare it to everybody within earshot at the station. Wonder if he’s been invited to the funeral dinner. I’m sure he and the old man polished off their fair share of bottles together, ’specially lately, but that don’t mean he should be invited on that account.
Cripes! Now the grieving band’s hanging all crooked on my arm. I already l
ost my first one, out drunk one Saturday night. Didn’t notice it was gone till I got home. Not really like you grieve with your clothes anyway, but to lose it like that, out on a binge, makes a man feel pretty low, even if it was a month after we buried her. But my woman, she keeps buying them a size too big. Either that or I’m just getting too spindly for them. Who the hell knows? Makes me look like some kind of hick, the way it keeps slipping down like that.
And Ulrik, what’s he do when I come up to him? He don’t put out his hand, even when I set down the bag so I can shake it. And he don’t utter a word, even when I greet him not just once but twice! Always the mule, Ultrick, broody and bound up in himself.
“Why don’t you take the wreath, brother?” I say with a friendly pat on the shoulder.
We’re family, after all, so what’s the point of getting off on the wrong foot when there’s no need. Sure enough, the wreath box fits in nice right under the seat. But the satchel I hold onto myself. Ulrik clicks his tongue and that dumb-ass horse Blenda lumbers around slow and lazy with a bouquet of the stationmaster’s flowers disappearing into her jaws.
“Put the bag away,” Ulrik says, just like you’d expect.
But me, I can’t help thinking of what happened when we buried Mamma. Our little brother Tage wanted to show us all what he was made of. So he grabbed my satchel and then THONK! He whacked it right into the gatepost, breaking two of the bottles. I had to set out in the middle of a scorcher of a Saturday trying to scare up a little replacement brännvin for the funeral dinner. This time the bag stays right with me.
It’s warm back here at home. Makes you wonder if they haven’t seen rain. Turns out, sure enough, they haven’t had a drop in a month.
“Hell of a nice October you got out of the bargain,” I can’t help remarking to Ulrik.
“The cards got sent out a bit late,” Ulrik says. “But I figure you must’ve got yours OK.”
The cards. We’re coming up on the bank, and the doctor’s office, and the café that’s got its own mini-golf course. That’s where Frida worked. She was a good one, that gal. Used to be I could come in through the back door and get my drinks and food for free, as long as it lasted, anyway. Yesiree, romancing that gal saved me a pretty penny.
“So you got it OK, I figure,” Ulrik asks me. Or says to me is more like it. He’s really just covering his ass.
Yeah, sure. The card. The death notice. “It worked out in the end,” I tell him. “You probably should have sent it sooner, but it worked out all the same, I suppose.” He never was much for words, Ulrik. Wouldn’t put a pencil to paper if there was any way around it.
So last Sunday the notice just arrives out of nowhere. I’ve been in Solvalla all day at the horse track, winning a hundred and fifty crowns in the bargain. And how often does that happen? So I figure I can be forgiven for tipping a few pints in honor of the occasion. But soon as I get in the door at home I can see the letter sitting on top of the electric meter right where my woman put it. And her, she hovers there to see how I’m gonna take the news. Like when Mamma died. Only then we got a real letter first from my little sister Lena, who’s in the sanitorium now, so that didn’t come like such a shock. I open the letter and I read it. Then I read it again. Takes quite a while before it really sinks in. It don’t feel right to get a death notice like that when you ain’t really sober, and of course my woman can’t help pointing that out. But I got a ready-enough answer to that.
“The old man was plenty friendly with the bottle himself,” I tell her. “And how do we know he didn’t have a few in him when he gave up the ghost?”
But still, the whole thing feels kind of low and shifty, like when we buried Mamma. I mean after I went out to borrow some brännvin for the funeral dinner. By the time I got back that evening I was pickled pretty in happy sauce, and next day it took everything I had to keep from spilling my breakfast during the funeral.
“Well, you got the clothes you need, all right,” my woman said. “Except the arm band, seeing you lost that out on one of your benders.”
I’m telling you, I’ll never hear the end of that, not till the day I die.
Well, looky there! I can see it now with my own eyes. The part-time sheriff’s deputy had the roof blown clear off his house. That’s what folks say happened anyway. Right now he’s sitting out in his yard puffing away on his pipe as he scours some papers in his hand. Got himself a nice little lounging chair too since last time I was home. Probably reading through the outstanding warrants looking for a likely culprit to pin his roof problems on. Now there’s a bastard thinks his shit don’t stink, believe me. But the town justice, he’s even worse.
A car passes us on the road, a brand-new Chevy. I point out the make and model to my brother, but him, he’s never heard of a Chevy, much less a Chevrolet.
“It’s a shame about Lena,” he says. “I mean that she don’t get to come home or anything for the funeral.”
And he’s right. It is a shame. There’s always been something extra special about our little sister Lena. Nothing like Ultrick, with all his mulish brooding, nor anything like our big sister Lydia, who went and got so high and mighty and stuck-up after she settled down with that radio dealer in town — running around on the weekend in national costume, joining the Women’s Volunteer Defense Corps. My own sister, for Christ’s sake! I know she looks down on me. Can never forget the hell she raised when we buried Mamma on account of my little misstep that morning. “How did I ever end up with such an ass for a brother?” she said right to my face. Far as I’m concerned I’d be just fine not seeing her. Our little sister Lena, though — she’s cut from another cloth. For one, she’s more like me. Not afraid to open her mouth. And there ain’t a stuck-up hair on her body. She would never look down her nose at you. Never! And here she gets hit by TB, working for that son of a bitch Lundbohm, just ’cause he’s too cheap to keep a fire in the hearth. Housekeeping for that sorry slob, I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemies.
The Chevy is heading back our way. Must have gone down to The Tourist’s Haven and turned around. People come here all the way from Stockholm to get bleary-eyed at The Tourist’s Haven. Wonder if I should slip out for a bit tonight. Then again, I don’t want a repeat of the night before Mamma’s funeral. All that got me was a storm of abuse, with nothing but screaming and regrets afterwards. The Chevy slows right down as it gets near us, but not because Blenda is spooked. That horse served in the regiment, hauling cannon for the corporals. Ulrik stops the buggy and the car does the same, idling right next to us for a few seconds. And then who do you think rolls down the window and sticks his head out? Doughboy Holmgren — that’s who! He’s a little balder than he was at Mamma’s funeral, but that happy nose of his is just the same. A little redder maybe, but that might just be from the sun. Might be.
“I’m real sorry about your loss,” Doughboy says, though he don’t look it. “That’s too bad about your old man…. If you got any time on your hands tonight come on over for a little spell. It ain’t every day we get you back this way, Knut, my boy.”
“No, not since my Mamma passed,” I say, trying to look kind of solemn.
It ain’t so damned easy with all the pictures racing through my head of the good times I’ve had with Doughboy over the years. All the brännvin I’ve knocked back with him would be enough in a pinch to keep me good and limber for half a year.
“Well, we’ll have to see,” I say. “We’ll just have to see.”
I don’t want to sound too eager with Ulrik right here at my elbow. Him, he lets go with a loud click of his tongue and cracks the buggy whip so hard the horse lurches and jerks us forward at one hell of a clip. But the satchel is sitting tight between my knees, so there’s no worries there. The Chevy meanwhile drops into gear, and Doughboy, he moves on.
“Nice car,” I say and I’m just a little curious to know how he come up with the money for it. Last time I saw him he borrowed a five-crown note off me to buy back his woman’s shoes from the pawnbroker. She
hadn’t left the house for three days, that girl, or so he told me then. Who the hell knows? Talks a lot, Doughboy. Otherwise he’s OK.
“First he cleaned up on that football pool,” says Ulrik. “And then he hit the lottery. Figure it’s just a matter of time before he drinks himself to death.”
Sounds jealous to me. Good old Ulrik, the same jealous mule he’s always been. He sits there at my elbow flicking the buggy whip, and Blenda bobs and clops down toward The Tourist’s Haven in her usual lazy way. When we get alongside the pub, there’s some brewery trucks parked out front, unloading their deliveries.
“Got any beer at home?” I ask Ulrik. “If not, let’s pick up a case.”
But him, he just cracks the whip like a wild man when I say that and gives that horse some proper inspiration. In no time flat we’re moving out on the bridge at a good clip.
“Can’t you think of nothing else?” he hollers at me. “With your own dad dead! Beer and brännvin. Is that the only thing that fits in your head?”
I could have answered him, alright. Could have helped him recollect who it was that sent the old man money for dipping tobacco for eight long years, or how many of Mamma’s dresses come to her second hand from my woman. So I’d say my head’s got plenty of room for other stuff, and always has, thank you very much! If I wanted to go that way with it, I could bring all this up easy enough. Plus I was only trying to think of all them guests at the funeral dinner. That’s why I thought we should pick up some beer. I’ll never forget how it was after we buried Mamma. How there was nothing left to drink there at the end of the dinner but water. And who had to bear the shame of that? Ulrik and me, of course! I could bring all this up easy enough if I had a mind to.
Sleet: Selected Stories Page 15