When the Snow Fell

  Joel gave a start. He had almost dreamt his way into slumber. He jumped out of bed and went to the window. But there was nobody there by the streetlamp. Certainly not a naked woman.

  Joel went back to bed. Suppressed all thoughts about Gertrud.

  Tomorrow he would find out who this new shop assistant was. She must have a name. She must live somewhere.

  She must have her transparent veils hanging up on a coat hanger somewhere or other.

  Perhaps on a coat hanger made of gold.

  Needless to say, next morning Joel overslept. Samuel had to give him a good shaking and more or less lift him out of bed in order to wake him up.

  “You’ll be late for school if you don’t get a move on.”

  “I’ll manage.”

  He got washed and dressed, and sat down at the kitchen table with a glass of milk and a few sandwiches. He wasn’t really hungry. But if he didn’t eat now, he’d be hungry even before they’d finished singing the morning hymn.

  “There’s a funny smell in the kitchen,” Samuel said out of the blue.

  “Yes, it smells of herring,” said Joel.

  “No, it smells of perfume,” said Samuel. “You’d almost be tempted to think there’d been a woman here last night, paying a secret visit.”

  Then he smiled. Joel could feel himself blushing. Had Samuel noticed that Gertrud had been here after all? Despite the fact that he’d been snoring all the time?

  Joel waited anxiously for what was going to come next. Samuel could sometimes fly into a terrible temper. Often when you least expected it. But this time he just kept on smiling. And said nothing more. Just got ready for work, said goodbye and left.

  Joel remained seated at the table. Gertrud always smelled of perfume. Joel was so used to it that he didn’t even think about it.

  What had Samuel meant? Had he noticed what had gone on?

  Joel sat thinking about what would have been the right thing for him to say. He sat there so long that he was late for school, of course. Miss Nederström looked reproachfully at him when he entered the classroom. Otto was smirking, as usual. Joel hoped angrily that no woman would ever dance in transparent veils in front of him.

  “If you go on like this I’ll have to have a word with your dad,” said Miss Nederström. “You arrive late far too often.”

  Joel said nothing, merely walked to his desk and sat down.

  “Why are you late?”

  “I overslept.”

  “Haven’t you got an alarm clock?”

  “It’s broken.”

  “But surely your dad wakes you up?”

  “He overslept as well.”

  The class giggled. Joel felt as if he’d painted himself into a corner. If he was asked just one more question, he would explode. This time he wouldn’t merely throw a glass at the wall. This time he’d throw the whole world at Miss Nederström’s face. But she didn’t say anything more. The lesson continued.

  It was math. And Joel kept getting his sums wrong. That was because he was spending all the time planning the expedition he would launch that same evening. When Ehnströms Livs closed, Joel would be lurking in the shadows, waiting for her.

  He occasionally glanced at the Greyhound. She always got her sums right. He tried to get at least a third of the answers right by copying down what she had written.

  On Wednesday evenings Samuel generally had dinner round at Sara’s place. And then he would spend the night there. Sara was Samuel’s girlfriend, and she worked at Ludde’s bar in the center of town, just behind the Community Center. The atmosphere inside there was heavy with clouds of smoke, the smell of wet wool and old rubber boots. Early on, soon after Samuel had first met Sara, Joel had had problems with her. He’d been afraid she would take Samuel away from him. First of all Mummy Jenny had taken herself away from Joel. And now it looked like Sara was taking Samuel away as well.

  But things were better now. Not least because Samuel seldom drank so much that he got drunk and started scrubbing the kitchen floor in the middle of the night. If there was anything Joel was afraid of, it was finding Samuel drunk. He was always worried about that possibility. Always prepared for the worst. But it hardly ever happened nowadays. And that had to be thanks to Sara.

  The fact that it was Wednesday suited Joel down to the ground. He’d be able to sit at the kitchen table and work out his plans for the evening. He didn’t need to prepare a proper dinner, but could get away with boiling a couple of eggs and making some sandwiches.

  Ehnström’s grocery shop closed at six. So he would have to be in place by then at the latest.

  It was now a quarter past five. He’d need to leave in half an hour. He could feel the tension. Shadowing somebody who didn’t know that you were there—that was about as good as it got for Joel.

  A few years ago, he’d spent nearly all his time shadowing other people. He’d followed the vicar and the pharmacist, and even Stationmaster Knif. The only person he’d never tailed was Miss Nederström. But then, she never went out, apart from when she went to and fro between school and the house she lived in. Nobody had ever noticed Joel trailing them. He didn’t know why following people was so exciting. Could it be because it meant that he was in charge of the situation? Time just flashed past.

  Time for him to leave now. He laced up his boots and set off. At five minutes to six he was standing in the shadows on the opposite side of the street. He could see through the display window that there were still a few people in the shop. Then they left, one after another. The roller blind was pulled down inside the entrance door. Closed. Joel waited. Now he started to worry that she might not even be there tonight.

  But then she emerged through the back door.

  It was the new shop assistant, no doubt about it.

  He waited until she had turned the corner by the furniture shop.

  Then he started following her.

  The adventure had begun.

  — EIGHT —

  Joel sneaked round the street corner.

  There she was, up ahead. She’d crossed over the street and was walking along the opposite pavement. Joel waited until she had almost reached the derelict plot where the watchmaker’s shop had been until it burnt down. Then he set off after her. She’d stopped at the kiosk. He couldn’t see what she bought there. Joel was about to start following her again but he stopped dead. Samuel was coming towards him on the other side of the street. On his way to Sara’s. Joel darted onto the derelict site and crouched down behind a pile of charred roof beams. He watched Samuel pass by. Now I’ll never find her, he thought angrily. He hurried back into the street. There was nobody standing at the kiosk. He stopped at the window and took off one of his mittens. It was Old Man Rudin who was serving. He was the one who used to sell Otto the magazines that weren’t on display, but hidden away on a shelf under the counter.

  “That woman who was here a couple of minutes ago dropped one of her mittens,” Joel said.

  “Leave it here,” said Rudin. “No doubt she’ll come back for it.”

  “But I want to have a word with her,” said Joel. “Which direction did she go in?”

  “I didn’t see,” said Rudin.

  Joel left. There were three possible ways she could have gone. If he ran, he might just have a chance of seeing her. He picked the biggest street, the one leading to the church. And his luck was in. He caught a glimpse of her as she turned the corner by the old pharmacy.

  He breathed a sigh of relief.

  That had been close. You could always trust your parents to make a mess of things. Perhaps there were advantages in Mummy Jenny’s disappearance after all. At the very least, he didn’t have two problems to deal with. He had enough on his plate with Samuel.

  She was heading for the buildings on the hill down to the river. So that was where she lived. Unless she lived out at Svensvallen, but that was several miles away. Or she might have a room at Rank’s boardinghouse right on the edge of town. There were no other possibilities.

&nb
sp; She stopped at the middle one of the three blocks of apartments, and went in through the front door. Joel kept his eye on the front of the building. After a couple of minutes a light went on in a second-floor window. So that was where she lived. Joel tried to work out what that implied. She might be lodging with somebody, but goodness only knows who. Or else she had her own apartment.

  But as she hadn’t rented a room in the boardinghouse, she must have come here to stay. She wasn’t just working at Ehnström’s shop for a couple of weeks.

  Joel waited. He stamped his feet and jumped up and down so as not to be too cold. But his boots really were much too small for him. He’d have to have a word with Samuel, or his feet would be worn away.

  Then he crossed the street and went in through the front door. He decided that if anybody came and asked what he was doing there, he would tell them he was looking for somebody called Sverker.

  Just inside the front door was a board with the names of all the tenants. But there was a gap against one of the second-floor flats to the left. And that was where the light had gone on. Didn’t she have a name? Or was it a secret? Joel decided it must be because she’d only just moved in. If there was a doorman or a caretaker or whatever, he wouldn’t have had time to insert the name yet. Down at the bottom of the board was a row of unused letters for making the names by pressing them into the little holes on the surface of the board. Joel was very tempted to pick out some and press in a name: Salome.

  But he didn’t. Which was no doubt sensible of him. Instead he walked up the stairs. To make sure that nobody thought he was sneaking around, he trod down hard with his boots on each step. When he came to the second floor, he saw that there was a bit of paper with a name on the door to the left. He leaned forward in order to read it.

  Mattsson, it said, written in red.

  There was something else. In small letters, down at the bottom. The lighting was bad on the staircase. But he made it out in the end. It said: Ehnström’s Grocery Store.

  At that very moment the door opened. Joel gave a start and took a step backwards. Without his noticing, one of his bootlaces had come undone. He somehow stood on it, stumbled and fell to the floor.

  It was her, all right, standing over him. But she wasn’t wearing transparent veils. She had on a checked overall. And she was holding a sweeping brush.

  “I thought you weren’t going to come until to morrow,” she said, sounding surprised.

  In the midst of his confusion it struck Joel that he’d been right: she certainly spoke with a Stockholm accent.

  He scrambled to his feet. What the hell do I do now? he wondered. I hadn’t planned for this.

  “I said Thursday,” she said. “It’s only Wednesday today.”

  Joel tried to work out what on earth she was talking about. Was he supposed to have come tomorrow instead?

  She suddenly burst out laughing. Joel stared at her red lips and white teeth.

  “Why do you look so scared? And where’s the catalog you were supposed to bring, with all the Christmas magazines?”

  Sometimes, especially when he was in a corner, Joel had the ability to think quickly. He could sometimes surprise himself. He realized that she was mistaking him for somebody else. Somebody who was due to come the next day and show her a catalog with lots of Christmas magazines.

  “I must have mixed up the day,” Joel said.

  “Where’s the catalog?”

  “It’s downstairs.”

  Now he’d painted himself into a corner again. What if she asked him to fetch it? Then what would he do?

  “Didn’t Ehnström tell you my name?”

  “I’ve forgotten it,” he mumbled.

  She looked at him and frowned.

  “Ehnström said that Digby was sixteen. You can’t be more than fourteen.”

  “Digby’s my brother,” said Joel.

  “Your brother?”

  “Digby’s my brother, and he’s ill.”

  “What’s your name, then?”

  “Joel.”

  “And you’ve come instead of him? But on the wrong day?”

  “Digby had a fever and was rambling. He said Wednesday when he should have said Thursday.”

  “Is he very ill?”

  “He’s dislocated his knee.”

  “Does that give you a fever?”

  “It can do up here in the north.”

  She shook her head.

  “You’ll have to come back tomorrow. I don’t have time today.”

  “OK,” said Joel. “I’ll come back tomorrow.”

  She closed the door and was gone. Sweat was pouring off Joel. He retied his bootlace. He was about to start walking downstairs when he heard music coming from inside the flat. He pressed his ear to the door.

  There was no mistake about it. It was Elvis Presley.

  “Heartbreak Hotel.”

  Joel went down the stairs. But what he’d have preferred to do was to go back up, ring the doorbell and then embrace her when she answered. He felt all tingly at the very thought.

  When he came out into the street, he turned to look up at her window. But she wasn’t standing there looking at him.

  He went straight home. The first tune he’d learn when Kringström had taught him to play the guitar was “Heartbreak Hotel.”

  It was echoing in his ears as he bounced home.

  He had the delightful feeling that he’d turned into a ball. Back there in her flat she was no doubt wandering around in transparent veils, listening to Elvis.

  It was all too good to be true.

  And Samuel was at Sara’s. That was also good. Joel could be in peace. When he’d taken off his outdoor clothes and hurled his boots at the wall to punish them for being too small, he flopped down in Samuel’s armchair and switched on the wireless. He put Samuel’s pipe into his mouth and sucked at it. Pipe tobacco smelled good. But once, when he’d lit the pipe and inhaled the smoke, he’d felt sick. Lots of times he’d bought just one John Silver cigarette and tried smoking properly, but it tasted awful. He wondered what was wrong with him. Why couldn’t he smoke like Otto, for instance? That would have to be one of his New Year’s resolutions next year. To learn how to smoke properly.

  He sucked at the empty pipe. The radio was playing classical music, Ludwig van Beethoven. But what Joel heard was “Heartbreak Hotel.” “Heartbreak Hotel” with Elvis van Presley.

  “Herbert’s Hotel” with Joel van Gustafson.

  What was going on? Ehnström had evidently arranged for somebody to visit her the next day to sell her some Christmas magazines. A boy. Unfortunately not Joel. But somebody by the name of Digby who from now on was Joel’s elder brother. He didn’t know how many boys in town were selling Christmas magazines, but there must be at least twenty of them. Most of them were around his age. He’d sold Christmas magazines himself last year, but this year he’d forgotten to tell the bookshop that he would be interested in doing it again. Somehow or other he’d have to borrow the catalog from whichever boy it was who was due to visit the new shop assistant.

  Joel would wait there again tomorrow night. He’d have to think up a good excuse. And he’d have to raid his tin box, where he kept the money he’d saved. Always assuming there was anything left.

  Joel put down the pipe and went to his room. He’d got the tin box from Samuel when he was a very little boy. Once upon a time it had contained cigars. It seemed to Joel that, after all those years, the smell of cigars still lingered. Nowadays he kept it under his bed. That was where he saved his money, when he had any. Which wasn’t very often. He also used it to keep some attractive postage stamps from far distant lands that Samuel had visited when he was a sailor. He fetched the tin box and opened it. Just as he’d thought. Hardly any money left. Three kronor. He wasn’t sure that would be enough to buy him the right to sell Christmas magazines to Ehnström’s new shop assistant. That was a worry. But then it struck him that of course, he could opt not to make any money from selling any magazines to her. He could
do the job for nothing.

  He put the tin back under his bed. He felt sure that he’d solved the problem.

  He went over to the window.

  When it was dark it wasn’t easy to see if it was cloudy or not. He went back to the kitchen and checked the thermometer outside the window. Plus one. Neither too warm nor too cold.

  So, tonight was when he would start toughening up.

  The person who was destined to sell Christmas magazines to a woman wearing transparent veils couldn’t be just any Tom, Dick or Harry.

  Samuel wasn’t there, so he couldn’t notice anything. If the alarm clock went off early enough, he could hide the bed away before Samuel got back home.

  Joel hadn’t yet made up his mind if he was going to tell Samuel about his plans to toughen himself up. There was a risk that his dad wouldn’t understand, and would forbid him to sleep outside in the garden. But there again, Samuel was impressed by strength. He often talked about how strong he’d been as a young man. And about people he’d met who had achieved impressive feats of endurance. Perhaps Joel might be able to persuade Samuel to join him in sleeping out in the open now and then? Maybe that would do something towards correcting his dad’s hunched back?

  Joel sat down in Samuel’s armchair. On the wireless, somebody was droning on and on about something or other. Joel tried to listen to what the man was saying in his squeaky voice. It had something to do with cows. Cows and milking machines. Joel started to fiddle with the tuning knob. Crackling sounds came from lots of different foreign stations, but sometimes he could hear a voice that was loud and clear. Occasionally he could hear music, and wondered what country it was coming from.

  It was like traveling, he’d often thought. Without needing to get up from your armchair. You just twiddled a knob, and off you went.