I'll Never Be Young Again

  ‘Let’s toss for it now,’ I said.

  He found a coin in his pocket.‘This is very serious, you know,’ smiled Jake, ‘a whole lot depends on this.’

  ‘Come on,’ I said, ‘call.’

  ‘No, you call.’

  ‘I’ll say “Heads”.’

  ‘Right.’

  He flicked the coin into the air and brought it down on his palm, covering the face of it with his hands.

  ‘What is it?’ I said.

  We looked. It was heads.

  ‘You’ve won,’ said Jake.

  I looked back again at the map. I saw Trondhjem on a big fjord to the north, some two hundred and forty kilometres perhaps, and then south there was Oslo, and Copenhagen where we had been. But there was another line south-east crossing the frontier into unknown territory, marked white on our Norwegian map. And because I thought it would be different, and because I guessed Jake would have chosen Trondhjem, and because I really did not care at all, I laid my finger on this line.

  ‘We’ll go to Stockholm,’ I said.

  So the whole of our future depended on this flick of the coin and the choice I had made.

  ‘Another city?’ said Jake.

  ‘Well, that’s what you wanted, isn’t it?’ I said.

  ‘For you.’ He put the map back in his pocket.

  ‘What would you have chosen?’ I asked.

  ‘Trondhjem, I expect.’

  ‘It’s too late now. Stockholm is where I take a pull on myself.’ We were silent a while.

  ‘I should have chosen the North Cape,’ he said suddenly.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s farther away, Dick.’

  ‘You wanted to get somewhere, I thought?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Not when I think selfishly.’

  ‘How do you think, then?’

  ‘I think of keeping away from cities and people, Dick, and staying out in the hills by ourselves.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t want you to grow up,’ he said. He laughed at me, but I did not understand. We went on walking along the road.

  9

  We came to Stockholm just as the sun was setting, with the dark spires standing out against the rose-coloured sky. The light of this spilled itself into the blue water, spanned by many bridges, and the square buildings like palaces gave back the reflection from their windows, casting a beam of light on to the wide streets, into the fluttering leaves of an avenue of trees, and on to the grey outline of the ships at anchor.

  There could never be a more beautiful city than this. It was cold, austere, belonging only to the water.

  Perhaps there were shops and traffic, and people passing one another in the streets, but I did not notice them. All I did was to lean over one of the bridges and watch the shadowed lights dancing in the water, this river itself framed by the group of buildings carved against the sky. Jake leant over the bridge beside me, and we said that this was like the Venice of our dreams; but here there was no picture postcard loveliness, no sweeping gondolas and pink palazzos bathing in a soft indolent air.

  Stockholm was a northern city, her beauty stark and frozen even in midsummer, the blue water like the pure caverns of a glacier; and across the bridge I could see a wide cobbled square, and a white palace, and a crimson tower like a splash of blood standing in definite clarity, with no mist of a spent day to wrap them in a vague obscurity.

  When the sun was gone they would be clearer than before, the bridges silver arches spanning a glittering lake, the buildings frosted carvings, motionless under a white sky.

  I thought there should be snow upon the ground, and the jingle of bells, and a fur-clad coachman whipping his horse, blowing upon his hands, but there was none of this, because the air was warm, and the stone of the bridge hot where the sun had been, and a flaxen-haired girl passed me, hatless, in a thin dress. Warmth should not have belonged to this white city and this white sky, yet it was part of it, part of the still atmosphere and the still water.

  There would be no darkness here, no diminution of light, and all through the night a cool whisper of a wind in the shivering trees, with the sky breathless and expectant, as though waiting for the dawn. I should never be weary here, I should never be at peace, for this was a place where restlessness would not be controlled, where some secret called to me, elusive round a hidden corner, where I must walk, and search, and wonder at something with no name.

  It seemed to me we crossed a hundred bridges, and we walked a hundred streets, we had food by a garden and an open window, we slept and we woke again. We left the carved buildings and went and lay under an avenue of trees, we travelled down the river and came upon a thousand islands all alike, jagged rocks set in a deep pool with the trees bowing their branches at the water’s edge. We bathed from one of these islands, slipping into ice-cold water under a hot sun, we watched the pale light flicker in the leaves, we saw the white sails of little yachts dance and shake their shadows on the stretch of water.

  We came back to Stockholm, cold and carved against the frosted sky; we went into a theatre where a girl sang, her eyes as blue as the water under the bridges; we came out again and stood in the cobbled square with a dance band playing from an hotel nearby, and there should have been darkness and stars, and the feeling of midnight, but there was nothing but the still river bathing in a white light. And I had not found my secret, nor did I know what it was that called to me.

  Once more we wandered by the waterside where the ships were anchored, ugly coal-fouled tramps, incongruous in their jewelled setting, their sides rusted, their grey decks blackened by smoke, and so to a street café, with the tables huddled close together, the smell of tobacco and the ring of glasses, the voices and the breath of sailors. We sat down in a corner and watched their faces, the broad square faces of Scandinavians. They seemed all alike, their pale eyes, their dull close-cropped heads, and suddenly there would rise from a group a great blond fellow with a golden beard, or a boy - a Dane, I think - with blue eyes and a pink skin like a girl.

  They were mostly Swedes here though, and Finns, bullet-headed and flat-faced, and it seemed wrong that the forests and the mountains, the snow and the rushing streams, should belong to them, who lived like animals cooped in the hot fo’c’sle of a dirty tramp steamer. We sat here, Jake and I watching the crowd, scarce talking to one another, and listened to their monotonous guttural voices, that neither rose nor fell, and the sudden chink of money, or a laugh, or the scraping back of a chair upon the floor.

  Outside the air was still and pure, and the sky was white and the water the same colour as the sky, but here there was a smell of drink and tobacco, heat and sweat over dirt, and it was good, this atmosphere of not thinking nor caring, and of men without women.

  Next to us there was a man who sat by himself, who turned his eyes upon us from time to time, but mostly he kept them fixed upon the door, as though he were waiting for someone.

  Sometimes he looked at the clock on the far wall above the bar, and he tapped his fingers on the table before him, then lit one cigarette, and then another, and still he glanced at us and back from us to the door.

  ‘What’s wrong with that chap?’ I said to Jake;‘have you noticed his hands and his eyes?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jake, ‘I’ve been keeping a watch on him for a quarter of an hour. He’s scared stiff. Don’t say anything, but keep your eye on that door.’

  I did not answer, but I shifted in my chair so that I could now see the man and the room, and the swing doors of the café without turning my head. My eyes dropped again on to the table, I began to lose myself in a train of thought, picturing the island where we had bathed that afternoon, and the white sails of the little boats dancing against the sun, and how it was that Stockholm should hold this café and that island, the two merging, making an impossible pattern, when Jake spoke again, his voice low, just in my ear.

  ‘Did you see that?’ he said.

/>   ‘What?’

  ‘Did you see how one by one they disappeared, with a glance at the clock, and now there remains no one but this fellow at the next table, the barman and ourselves.’ I looked up and saw that in five minutes, whilst I had been dreaming, the café had emptied, the room was silent and the smoke hung heavy in the air.

  ‘They’ve only cleared,’ I said, ‘it’s five to one. Maybe this place shuts at one.’

  ‘No,’ said Jake, ‘these places don’t shut.’

  ‘Well - what is it then?’

  ‘Wait - there’s something wrong.’

  I glanced at him and his head was thrown back, and he was smiling.

  ‘While you’ve been dreaming I’ve been looking at things,’ he said; ‘the barman went round to all the tables and cleared the glasses away. On each table he left a slip of white paper. When the crowd saw that, they laughed, or shrugged their shoulders, or didn’t say a word. But they all glanced at the clock, and they went - every one of ’em. Look here.’

  I saw that on our table too there was a slip of blank paper, which the man must have left when he cleared our glasses.

  ‘What does it mean?’ I asked.

  Jake laughed softly. ‘It’s the notice to quit,’ he said.

  I looked towards the bar, and I saw the man gazing at us curiously, his arms folded, and then next us the scared fellow watching us too, his fingers tapping upon the table.

  ‘Do you want to go?’ said Jake.

  I listened to the silence, and the sound of my heart beating, and I knew I was excited, excited enough to be afraid.

  ‘No,’ I said, shaking my head,‘no, let’s stay and see this through.’ There was no sound, nobody spoke, and we went on sitting at the table.

  ‘Jake,’ I said softly, ‘try English on this fellow - ask him what’s going to happen.’

  Jake moved ever so slightly in his chair, his shoulder turned towards the man, yet keeping his eye on the door all the while. ‘You seem in trouble about something,’ he said; ‘can we do anything to help?’

  The man made no movement to show that he had heard. He did not turn at the sound of Jake’s voice. We knew then that he could not understand, that he had not even realized we were speaking to him, he thought we were talking amongst ourselves.

  The few words of Norwegian and Danish were no good to us, and Swedish was an unknown language. This fellow was a Swede.

  Jake got up, and taking the slip of white paper between his fingers he went to the next table and held it before the man’s eyes, pointing to the clock and to the door.

  The man shook his head and shrugged his shoulders, and then he began to speak very rapidly in a low hurried voice, spreading out his hands on the table, passing his tongue over his lips, and it seemed to me that he was in mortal terror of something, and he was trying to explain.

  He spoke in Swedish, and we did not understand.

  ‘What is it, Jake?’ I said.

  He made no answer, but he crossed the café to the bar and held the slip of paper before the fellow who waited there. This man did not speak, he only stared at Jake, and then quietly, as though Jake was not there, he went on polishing the dirty glasses. Jake came back to the table once more and sat down beside me.

  ‘Dick,’ he said, ‘I’ve an idea this place is a hang-out for settling a quarrel. See how close we are to the water? It would be easy enough after you’ve laid out a fellow - to drop him in there. It would look like a drunk - having tripped over his feet on the cobbled stones - and finding the river instead. The crowd who were here tonight knew the meaning of the slip of paper. They got it at a quarter to one - it’s now two minutes to. Whatever’s going to happen, Dick, is going to happen at one.’

  According to his theory, then, we had only two minutes longer. And still the barman polished his glasses, and still the other fellow tapped his fingers on the table.

  It was sinister, queer.

  ‘Why did the crowd clear?’ I asked.

  ‘It wasn’t their affair,’ said Jake; ‘they don’t want a mix-up. They’ll all be dumb, they won’t say anything. Besides, there’s the police to reckon with.’

  ‘Police?’

  ‘Yes. This sort of thing’s against the law, Dick. The bar-tender knows it, that’s why he didn’t take any notice of us. He’s not sure who we are. He’s not going to give the show away.’

  ‘What do we do, Jake?’

  ‘We sit here - and wait.’

  I did not see how anything could happen at a water-side café in Stockholm. There was no darkness here, no little mean streets and squalor; this was a cold white city, infinitely remote, there could not be hatred and murder under this light. Scarcely two hours ago we had been in a theatre, listening to a girl singing Swedish words to an American song, and we had come out and stood upon a bridge, and had heard a dance band playing from an hotel.

  I looked up and saw the hands of the clock pointed to one. Then the door of the café swung open, and four men came into the room, and walked, without looking to right or left of them, straight to the table next us, where the pale scared Swede was waiting.

  I felt my heart beating, loudly it seemed, like the ticking of a clock, and the palms of my hands were wet. I fumbled for a packet of cigarettes. The four men sat down at the table, and in the midst of them our first fellow looked like a fly in a web, a poor frightened thing overshadowed by his companions. He sat huddled in his seat, limp and unprotesting; he would make no effort to stand for himself, but would be blown swiftly - suddenly, as a flickering flame of a candle.

  The four men pressed closer to him, their faces near to his, and one of them began to speak in a quiet, monotonous voice, and it seemed as though his tones were persuasive, as though he were suggesting that our fellow must see reason, and he smiled ever and again, showing a row of gold teeth, and a slow, false smile.

  The scared fellow shook his head, he uttered one or two words, broken they sounded, and unfinished, and then he gazed up at these men who surrounded him to watch for the expressions in their eyes, and his face was grey like one who expects sentence of death. For perhaps two minutes there was silence and no movement, and then with one accord they all turned in their seats and looked at us.

  I felt the question in their eyes, the wonder and the doubt, the mute wave of antagonism borne towards us. We went on smoking our cigarettes and the man with the gold teeth and the false smile spoke to us, but it was in Swedish, and we did not understand. He called out to the bar-tender, hovering behind his glasses, and the fellow shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. Once more the man with the gold teeth spoke, an order this time, for it was sharp and decisive, and the bar-tender crossed the café and shot the bolt into the door, and then turned without a word and climbed the rickety staircase to the landing overhead. We heard him open the door of some room, and then he must have gone inside, for he closed it, and there was no sound from him again. We were alone now, with the four men and the little scared fellow huddled in his chair, he glancing towards us like an animal in pain, showing the whites of his eyes.

  The man with gold teeth spoke to Jake, no longer smiling, pointing to the bolted door, and Jake shook his head.

  They all rose slowly from the table, forming themselves in a group, one of them laying his hand on the shoulder of the frightened Swede.

  I looked at Jake, and he looked at me, and I saw him smile and straighten himself in his chair. And it seemed to me that the walls of the café dropped away and the grey light was changed, and we were standing in a circus tent with the hot sun streaming through a slit in the tent. There was a ring, and a crowd of men pushing their way up to the ropes, shouting and laughing, and Jake stood stripped with his arms folded, and this same smile upon his lips.

  The air was hot, and there was a smell of sawdust, and trampled grass, worn leather gloves, and the warm hungry flesh of animals in a close cage.

  A bell rang, and Jake moved across the ring towards me . . .

  But in that flash we were ba
ck in the café again, and Jake was at my side, and the four men stood around their table staring at us.

  Then I knew that there was going to be a fight, and I was glad, and I was not afraid.

  The four men spread a little distance from one another, and came closer, and hemmed us in.

  Suddenly the one with gold teeth pressed forward, but Jake was waiting for him, and I heard the crack of his naked fist on the man’s jaw, and his head swing back. Then there was a shout, and a cry of pain and a table fell over, and I saw one of the men coming towards me, and I hit him, but he caught me somewhere above my eye and I went crashing down on to the floor, dragging a leg of a chair with my hands. I felt the blood run down into my mouth, and the pain of the blow throbbed like the crack of a whip and I remember thinking to myself: ‘I must not give in - I must not give in,’ so I rose unsteadily from the ground, where I had fallen, the hatred strong in my soul for the man who had hit me, and I saw him reaching for a chair to swing above his head, but I ducked and threw myself against him, my head in his stomach, and we went down again - this time he was beneath me, his fingers fumbling for my throat. I hit him again and again, smashing into his face, and I heard him whimper, and he struggled under me.

  I lifted my head and saw two fellows trying to get Jake, but he shook himself clear of them, and knocked one backwards across a table, and he called out to me: ‘You all right, Dick?’ and he was still smiling, and his hair was falling over his face.

  The chap with the gold teeth was crouching with his back to me, and swiftly his hand went to his pocket, and there was a flash of steel and ‘Look out, Jake,’ I cried, and Jake leapt aside, his arm over his face, while the knife whistled through the air and quivered against the wall behind him, two inches above his head.

  I rose to my feet and swung into this man who had thrown the knife and missed, and he was taken unawares, and dropped like a stone, both of my fists smashing into his two eyes. And it was good to know that he was hurt, it was good to feel his mouth soft and bleeding under my hands, and I heard myself laughing, with the breath shaken from me in sobs, while a pain hammered under my ribs, and this is all right, I thought, this is all right.