The Lemon Table

  It had been an audacity on his part, some years back. Revolt against the tyranny of the bloody mirror. This side, that side. In forty years and more of going to the barber’s, the hairdresser’s and the Barnet Shop, he had always assented meekly, whether he recognized the back of his head or not. He would smile and nod, and seeing the nod reproduced in canted glass, would verbalize it into “Very nice” or “Much neater” or “Just the job” or “Thank you.” If they had clipped a swastika into his nape he would probably have pretended to approve. Then, one day, he thought, No, I don’t want to see the back. If the front’s OK, the back will be too. That wasn’t pretentious, was it? No, it was logical. He was rather proud of his initiative. Of course Kelly always forgot, but that didn’t matter. In fact, it was better, since it meant that his timid victory was repeated every time. Now, as she came towards him, her mind in Miami, the mirror dangling, he raised a hand, gave his regular indulgent smile, and said,

  “No.”

  The Story of Mats Israelson

  In front of the church, which contained a carved altar brought from Germany during the Thirty Years War, there stood a row of six horse stalls. Made from white fir cut and seasoned within a gull’s cry of the town’s crossroads, they were undecorated, even unnumbered. Yet their simplicity and apparent availability were deceptive. In the heads of those who rode to church, and also of those who walked, the stalls were numbered from left to right with the numbers one to six, and were reserved for the six most important men in the neighbourhood. A stranger who imagined he had the right to tie up his horse while enjoying the Brännvinsbord at the Centralhotellet would emerge to find his beast wandering down by the jetty, gazing out at the lake.

  Ownership of each individual stall was a matter of private election, either by deed of gift or by last will and testament. But whereas inside the church certain pews were reserved for certain families, from generation to generation, regardless of merit, outside, considerations of civic worth applied. A father might wish to hand on his stall to his eldest son, but if the boy did not show enough seriousness, the gift would reflect upon the father. When Halvar Berggren succumbed to akvavit, frivolity and atheism, and transferred ownership of the third stall to an itinerant knife-grinder, it was on Berggren, not the knife-grinder, that disapproval fell, and a more suitable appointment was made in exchange for a few riksdaler.

  There was no surprise when Anders Bodén was awarded the fourth stall. The general manager of the sawmill was noted for his industry, lack of frivolity, and devotion to his family. If he was not unduly devout, he was charitable. One autumn, when the shooting had been good, he had filled one of the sawpits with scrap timber, lain a metal grid across the top, and cooked a deer whose meat he distributed among his workmen. Though not born in the town, he took it upon himself to show others its sights; visitors would find themselves at his insistence climbing the klockstapel beside the church. Leaning one arm against the bell-block, Anders would point out the brickworks; beyond it, the deaf-and-dumb asylum; and just out of sight the statue marking the spot where Gustavus Vasa addressed the Dalecarlians in 1520. A hefty, bearded and enthusiastic man, he would even suggest a pilgrimage to the Hökberg, to view the stone recently placed there in memory of the jurist Johannes Stiernbock. In the distance, a steamboat tracked across the lake; below, complacent in its stall, his horse waited.

  Gossip said that Anders Bodén spent so long with visitors to the town because this delayed his return home; gossip repeated that the first time he had asked Gertrud to marry him, she had laughed in his beard, and only began to see his virtues after her own disappointment in love with the Markelius boy; gossip speculated that when Gertrud’s father had come to Anders and suggested he renew his wooing, negotiations had not been simple. The sawmill manager had previously been made to feel impertinent in approaching a woman as talented and artistic as Gertrud—who, after all, had once played piano duets with Sjögren. But the marriage had prospered as far as gossip could tell, even if she was known to call him a bore on public occasions. There were two children, and the specialist who delivered the second advised Mrs. Bodén against further pregnancy.

  When the pharmacist Axel Lindwall and his wife, Barbro, came to town, Anders Bodén took them up the klockstapel and offered to walk them to the Hökberg. On his return home, Gertrud asked why he was not wearing the club-button of the Swedish Tourists’ Union.

  “Because I am not a member.”

  “They ought to make you an honourary one,” she replied.

  Anders had learnt to deal with his wife’s sarcasm by means of pedantry, by answering her questions as if they meant no more than the words they contained. This tended to annoy her further, but for him it was a necessary protection.

  “They seem an agreeable couple,” he said, matter-offactly.

  “You like everybody.”

  “No, my love, I do not think that is true.” He meant, for instance, that at the present moment he did not like her.

  “You are more discriminating about logs than about members of the human race.”

  “Logs, my love, are very different from one another.”

  THE ARRIVAL of the Lindwalls in the town caused no special interest. Those who sought Axel Lindwall’s professional advice found all they could hope for in a pharmacist: someone slow and serious, who flatteringly regarded all complaints as life-threatening, while at the same time judging them curable. He was a short, flaxen-haired man; gossip wagered he would run to fat. Mrs. Lindwall was less remarked upon, being neither menacingly pretty nor contemptibly plain, neither vulgar nor soignée in dress, neither pushy nor reclusive in manner. She was just a new wife, and therefore one who should wait her turn. As incomers, the Lindwalls kept to themselves, which was proper, while regularly attending church, which was also proper. Gossip said that when Axel first handed Barbro into the rowing boat they acquired that summer, she had asked him, anxiously, “You are sure, Axel, that there are no sharks in the lake?” But gossip, in its honesty, could not be certain that Mrs. Lindwall was not making a joke.

  ONCE A FORTNIGHT, on a Tuesday, Anders Bodén would take the steamboat up the lake to inspect the seasoning sheds. He was standing at the rail by the first-class cabin when he became aware of a presence beside him.

  “Mrs. Lindwall.” As he spoke, his wife’s words came into his head. “She’s got less chin on her than a squirrel.” Embarrassed, he looked across at the shoreline and said, “That’s the brickworks.”

  “Yes.”

  A moment later, “And the deaf-and-dumb asylum.”

  “Yes.”

  “Of course.” He realized he had already pointed them out to her from the klockstapel.

  She was wearing a straw boater with a blue ribbon.

  TWO WEEKS later she was on the steamer again. She had a sister who lived just beyond Rättvik. He tried to make himself interesting to her. He asked if she and her husband had yet visited the cellar where Gustavus Vasa had been concealed from his Danish pursuers. He explained about the forest, the way its colours and textures changed with the seasons, and how, even from the boat, he could tell the manner in which it was being worked, whereas someone else would merely see a mass of trees. She followed his pointing arm politely; it was perhaps true that in profile her chin was just a little underhung, and the tip of her nose strangely mobile. He realized that he had never developed a way of talking to women, and that up to now it had never bothered him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “My wife maintains that I should be wearing the club-button of the Swedish Tourists’ Union.”

  “I like a man to tell me what he knows,” replied Mrs. Lindwall.

  Her words confused him. Were they a criticism of Gertrud, an encouragement to him, or a mere statement of fact?

  AT SUPPER THAT EVENING his wife said, “What do you talk to Mrs. Lindwall about?”

  He did not know what to reply, or rather how to reply. But as usual he took refuge in the simplest meaning of the words, and pretended no surprise at the
question. “The forest. I was explaining about the forest.”

  “And was she interested? In the forest, I mean.”

  “She grew up in the city. She had not seen so many trees until she came to this region.”

  “Well,” said Gertrud, “there are an awful lot of trees in a forest, aren’t there, Anders?”

  He wanted to say: she was more interested in the forest than you have ever been. He wanted to say: you are unkind about her looks. He wanted to say: who saw me talking to her? He said none of this.

  Over the next fortnight, he found himself reflecting that Barbro was a name with a lovely weight to it, and softer-sounding than . . . other names. He thought also that a blue ribbon round a straw hat made his heart cheerful.

  On the Tuesday morning, as he was leaving, Gertrud said, “Give my regards to little Mrs. Lindwall.”

  He suddenly wanted to say, “And what if I fall in love with her?” Instead, he replied, “I shall if I see her.”

  ON THE STEAMER, he barely managed the normal slow civilities. Before they had cast off, he began telling her what he knew. About timber, how it is grown, transported, hewn. He explained about bastard sawing and quarter sawing. He explained about the three parts of the trunk: pith, heart-wood and sap-wood. In trees which have arrived at maturity, the heart-wood is in the largest proportion, and the sap-wood is firm and elastic. “A tree is like a man,” he said. “It takes three score years and ten to arrive at maturity, and is useless after a hundred.”

  He told her how once, at Bergsforsen, where an iron bridge spans the rapids, he had watched four hundred men at work, catching the logs as they emerged from the river, and arranging them in the sorteringsbommar according to the distinctive marks of their owners. He explained to her, like a man of the world, the different systems of marking. Swedish timber is stencilled in red letters, with inferior wood marked in blue. Norwegian timber is stencilled in blue at both ends with the shipper’s initials. Prussian timber is scribed in the sides near the middle. Russian timber is dry-stamped or hammer-marked on the ends. Canadian timber is stencilled in black and white. American timber is marked with red chalk on the sides.

  “Have you seen all this?” she asked. He admitted that he had not yet examined North American timber; he had only read about it.

  “So each man knows his own log?” she asked.

  “Of course. Otherwise a man might steal another’s log.” He could not tell if she was laughing at him—indeed, at the whole world of men.

  Suddenly there was a flash from the shoreline. She looked away from it, back at him, and in full face the singularities of her profile were brought into harmony: her little chin pushed her lips into prominence, the tip of her nose, her open, grey-blue eyes . . . it was beyond description, beyond even admiration. He felt clever to guess the question in her eyes.

  “There is a belvedere. Probably someone with a spy-glass. We are under surveillance.” But he lost confidence as he pronounced the last word. It sounded like something another man might say.

  “Why?”

  He did not know what to reply. He looked away to the shoreline, where the belvedere flashed again. Embarrassed, he told her the story of Mats Israelson, but he told it in the wrong order, and too quickly, and she did not appear interested. She did not even seem to realize that it was true.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, as if aware of his disappointment. “I have little imagination. I am only interested in what really happens. Legends seem to me . . . silly. We have too many of them in our country. Axel scolds me for having this opinion. He says I am not showing honour to my country. He says that people will take me for a modern woman. But it is not that either. It is that I have little imagination.”

  Anders found this sudden speech calming. It was as if she were giving him guidance. Still looking across at the shore, he told her about a visit he had once made to the copper-mine at Falun. He told her only the things that really happened. He told her that it was the greatest copper-mine in the world after those of Lake Superior; that it had been worked since the thirteenth century; that the entrances were close to a vast subsidence in the ground, known as Stöten, which had occurred at the end of the seventeenth century; that the deepest shaft was 1,300 feet; that nowadays the annual yield was about 400 tons of copper, beside small amounts of silver and gold; that it cost two riksdaler for admission; that gunshots were extra.

  “Gunshots are extra?”

  “Yes.”

  “What are the gunshots for?”

  “To awaken the echoes.”

  He told her that visitors usually telephoned ahead to the mine from Falun to announce their arrival; that they were given miner’s attire and accompanied by a miner; that on the descent the steps were lit by torches; that it cost two riksdaler. He had told her that already. Her eyebrows, he noticed, were strongly marked, and darker than the hair on her head.

  She said, “I would like to visit Falun.”

  THAT EVENING, he could tell Gertrud was in a temper. Eventually, she said, “A wife has a right to a husband’s discretion when he arranges a rendezvous with his mistress.” Each noun rang like a dead clunk from the klockstapel.

  He merely looked at her. She continued, “At least I should be grateful for your naïveté. Other men would at least wait until the steamer was out of sight of the jetty before starting their canoodling.”

  “You are deluded,” he said.

  “If my father were less of a businessman,” she replied, “he would shoot you.”

  “Then your father should be grateful that the husband of Mrs. Alfredsson who runs the konditori behind the church in Rättvik is also just such a businessman.” It was too long a sentence, he felt, but it did its work.

  That night, Anders Bodén lined up all the insults he had received from his wife and stacked them as neat as any wood-pile. If this is what she is capable of believing, he thought, then this is what is capable of happening. Except that Anders Bodén did not want a mistress, he did not want some woman in a pastry-shop to whom he would give presents and about whom he would boast in rooms where men smoked small cigars together. He thought: of course, now I see, the fact is, I have been in love with her since we first met on the steamboat. I would not have come to it so soon had not Gertrud helped me there. I never imagined her sarcasm had any use; but this time it did.

  FOR THE NEXT two weeks, he did not allow himself to dream. He did not need to dream because everything was now clear and real and decided. He went about his work and in free moments thought about how she had not attended to the story of Mats Israelson. She had assumed it was a legend. He had told it badly, he knew. And so he began practising, like a schoolboy learning a poem. He would tell it her again, and this time she would know, simply from the way he told it, that it was true. It did not take very long. But it was important that he learn to narrate it just as he had narrated the visit to the mine.

  In 1719, he began, with some fear that the distant date might bore her, but also convinced that it gave the story authenticity. In 1719, he began, standing on the dock waiting for the return steamer, a body was discovered in the copper-mine of Falun. The body, he continued, watching the shoreline, was that of a young man, Mats Israelson, who had perished in the mines forty-nine years previously. The body, he informed the gulls which were raucously inspecting the boat, was in a state of perfect preservation. The reason for this, he explained in some detail to the belvedere, to the deaf-and-dumb asylum, to the brickworks, was that the fumes of the copper vitriol had inhibited decomposition. They knew that the body was that of Mats Israelson, he murmured to the dockhand on the jetty catching the thrown rope, because it was identified by an aged crone who had once known him. Forty-nine years earlier, he concluded, this time under his breath, in hot sleeplessness as his wife growled gently beside him and a wind flapped the curtain, forty-nine years earlier, when Mats Israelson had disappeared, that old woman, then as young as him, had been his betrothed.

  He remembered the way she had been facing h
im, her hand on the rail so that her wedding ring was not concealed, and had said, simply, “I would like to visit Falun.” He imagined other women saying to him, “I long for Stockholm.” Or, “At nights I dream of Venice.” They would be challenging women in city furs, and they would not be interested in any response except cap-doffing awe. But she had said, “I would like to visit Falun,” and the simplicity of it had made him unable to answer. He practised saying, with equal simplicity, “I shall take you there.”

  He convinced himself that if he were to tell the story of Mats Israelson correctly, it would make her say once more, “I would like to visit Falun.” And then he would reply, “I shall take you there.” And everything would be decided. So he worked at the story until he had it in a form that would please her: simple, hard, true. He would tell it her ten minutes after they cast off, at what he already thought of as their place, by the rail outside the first-class cabin.

  He ran through the story one final time as he reached the jetty. It was the first Tuesday in the month of June. You had to be precise about dates. 1719 to begin with. And to end with: the first Tuesday of June in this Year of Our Lord 1898. The sky was bright, the lake was pure, the gulls were discreet, the forest on the hillside behind the town was full of trees that were as straight and honest as a man. She did not come.

  GOSSIP NOTED that Mrs. Lindwall had not kept her rendezvous with Anders Bodén. Gossip suggested there had been a quarrel. Gossip counter-suggested that they had decided on concealment. Gossip wondered if a sawmill manager lucky enough to be married to a woman who owned a piano imported from Germany would really allow his eye to stray to the unexceptional wife of the pharmacist. Gossip replied that Anders Bodén had always been an oaf with sawdust in his hair, and that he was merely seeking out a woman of his own class, as oafs are wont to do. Gossip added that marital relations had not been resumed in the Bodén household since the birth of their second child. Gossip briefly wondered if gossip had invented the whole story, but gossip decided that the worst interpretation of events was usually the safest and, in the end, the truest.