Underneath these are letters. He flips through them like a deck of cards. There are three kinds of handwriting because there are three kinds of letters. Some begin with “Dear Knut and Son!” and end with “Mama Alma.” Some start with “Dear Alma,” and close with “Truly yours, Knut.” Finally, there are some that start with “Dear Mama” and far down the page is always “Bengt.” He reads through the letters meticulously, and he is no longer trembling. Because it can’t be wrong to read your own letters.
With the other key, he unlocks the bookcase. His index finger glides slowly from book spine to book spine and abruptly stops at three books that he knows very well. They are his own textbooks. They were probably sitting out in the room at one time, and the father put them away without saying anything. They are very dusty, so he wipes off the dust and switches them with three other books.
After all the excitement he is very tired, so he lies in bed for a while and smokes. When the sun starts shining in his eyes, he pulls the shades down halfway. He falls asleep at once. And he has a dream as he sleeps. It’s a very strange dream. He dreams about a foot. He is holding the foot in his hands, and it is very hot. It is also very beautiful and bare, too. He slowly raises it to his mouth and kisses it. It isn’t until then that he notices the foot is dead, dead yet burning. Then someone screams from another room.
But no one has screamed. He was merely awakened by the ringing telephone. With it still sounding like a scream, he unlocks his door and rushes to answer it. He is tremendously relieved to have been woken up and relieved that it was a woman calling. It’s his fiancée. She is worried and asks him how he is doing. He asks why she is upset. She admits that she has been worried about him for a long time but that she doesn’t really know why. One time she dreamt that something happened to him. Then he asks what, but she doesn’t know. Or she doesn’t want to say. Then she says something that surprises him.
Bengt, she says, I care so much for you.
She has never said that over the telephone before. He asks her why she is saying it now, but she cannot answer. Then he suddenly notices how warm his body is and how hot his cheeks are. A soft, warm wave of desire is now surging through him.
I have to see you, he says; I have to see you tonight. I have to see you at your place.
And it’s true. He has to. Then she surprises him again.
Yes, she whispers, come!
He has never been allowed to come before, and she has never wanted to go to him when he was alone. She said she didn’t want to, because of his mother. And now that his mother is dead she says she doesn’t want to, because his mother is dead. When he asked if he could come to her, she said that she’s a roomer and that it’s never quiet there. Someone will be knocking on the wall if you so much as move, so you’re never really alone there either. When he then suggested they get a hotel room, she started crying. She didn’t tell him why. But after speculating about it, he never suggested it again. There were a few times when they lay next to each other in the grass at Djurgården or Gärdet. But then after a while they always started to get cold and they got up again. And somebody always comes along, even when they think they have the place to themselves. Besides, grass is always wet for people in love. So he had to wash his own handkerchiefs, like Hemingway’s sick bullfighter. But since his mother’s death, he just throws them away.
After all of that, he is tremendously surprised when she says yes.
When he hangs up, he has already forgotten about the dream. He has also forgotten to take the keys out of the desk and bookcase locks. He is simply happy and aroused. Since it’s almost five o’clock and the father will be home soon, the son puts a pan on the stove to warm up yesterday’s peas. Then he washes two soup plates and two spoons under the faucet. As he’s about to put the bottle away, he finds the father’s wallet on the table. He immediately grabs it and starts rummaging through the compartments. It happens so fast that his emotions can’t keep up. There’s nothing unusual in the wallet except for a yellow ticket stub that has a phone number on the back of it. It’s clearly a number from Södermalm since it starts with four-zero. Then he hears the black dog barking on the stairs. Sometimes the father takes the dog to work with him in the mornings. Because the barking startles him, he drops the wallet on the table. He thought about writing the number down. Instead, he stuffs the stub inside his pocket.
Over soup, the father asks him how his classes went. The son tells him they went well, but he doesn’t tell him any stories. Instead, he tells him that he’ll be at Berit’s tonight. The father is very happy to hear this, almost as happy as when he hears a funny story. He doesn’t really understand why he is so happy. But since the shot glasses are still on the table, he pours them both a shot. As he pours, he notices that the bottle has gotten lighter. Because fathers with grown sons always know how much is in a bottle when they put it away.
When the son reaches the street, he is giddy and in high spirits. He’s also a little drunk and doesn’t feel the wind. And he thinks it’s brighter than it really is. When he turns the corner, he buys a newspaper. There’s no streetcar in sight, and as impatient as he is, he cannot stand still. So he crosses the street and continues walking a bit in the opposite direction. When he still doesn’t see a streetcar, he goes into a café. He sits by the window and orders a coffee. The streetcar finally comes after he’s been sitting for a while. Suddenly, he feels like he’s in no hurry at all. This surprises him, but he accepts it because he is used to trusting his instinct. He smokes a few cigarettes and begins to read the paper. After reading for a little while, he sees the father and the dog walking on the other side of the street. They walk right past a beerhouse, but after walking a few yards, the father seems to change his mind, turns around, and goes inside.
The son moves his table toward the wall because the father has also sat in front of a window. He is sitting there and reading, but the dog is not visible.
Then the son gets up and goes over to the telephone at the counter to call his fiancée and tell her that it will be a while before he can come. But when he lifts the receiver, something strange happens: he hears the scrap of paper rustling inside his breast pocket. He takes it out and, on a whim, dials the mysterious number. He listens for a while, but nobody answers. Then it occurs to him that somewhere in some room somebody knows it’s him calling. That’s why no one is picking up. When he sits down again, he sees the father is still sitting, too. So he sits for a little while longer – actually, for a long time. The father leaves at nine.
At that time, it isn’t dark yet but still twilight. A few cars have turned on their headlights. Some streetcars, too. A long streetcar, so long that it doesn’t look like it will end, comes clanging by. After it passes, he sees the father running down the street as if it were raining. And it isn’t raining when the son leaves the café, but he still marches briskly down the street. When the father and the dog disappear behind a corner, the son moves faster, even though it still isn’t raining. When he turns the corner, the father and the dog are gone. Directly on the corner is a tall entrance of a building. He hastily opens the gate and listens, but the building is completely silent. Then he suddenly hears the barking of a dog, not from inside the building but still very close.
A small movie theater called the Lantern is next to the building. And above the entrance there are three lights – white, red, and green – enclosed within a blue lantern. At night there are always a lot of young men smoking outside as well as bareheaded young girls who are eager to laugh. Whenever the picture is over, the attendant with a limp turns off the three lights in the lantern. Then he comes out to lock the double doors and the emergency exit, and then he fastens three large padlocks around the closures of the display case. Lastly, he closes the wrought-iron gate on the street and locks it. Long after the film has ended, the boys and girls are still there. They are loudest and laugh the most right before they leave. In the mornings the display window has been found broken three times already, but no one has ever stole
n a photograph. And every morning the ground behind the gate is littered with cigarette butts.
The son goes inside this cinema. The floor slants down toward the box office. A worn red carpet stretches from the box office to the wide doors of the auditorium. He stands still on the carpet and looks around, but the father has disappeared. And no dog is barking. Because he thinks the cashier is looking at him, he buys a ticket to avoid looking silly. He is nervous and forgets a krona on the green rubber mat at the register. When she calls him back, he can scarcely resist looking at her. She smiles at him, and as he picks up the krona, he smiles back at her. Ever since his mother’s death, he thinks all women who smile at him look like her. All assistants, waitresses, and women on stairs. And almost all of them have the same dress as she did. The cashier’s dress is red. And there is a large telephone next to her.
The auditorium smells like a cellar. In fact, it used to be one a long time ago, and the smell has never left. He sits at the very back, even though the usher tells him he can sit wherever he wants. And whenever someone comes in, he covers his face with his hands. But by the time the newsreel begins, the father still hasn’t come. There are eight of them in the theater, excluding him, and they are all sitting in front of him. There is a draft along the floor, and it’s terribly cold. What is more, this is a theater where it always rains in the newsreels, and he has already seen the main feature.
When he leaves the auditorium, he immediately looks back at the cashier to see whether she notices that he is leaving just as the film is starting. But the booth is empty and the light is out. Then he finds the small panel door to the lavatory. He opens it very quietly and looks inside. It’s also empty.
As he hurries up the slanted aisle that smells like a cellar and paint, he realizes that he’s in a hurry. His anxiety has subsided and his desire has returned. In the taxi he thinks about his fiancée’s smooth arms, and when he places his hands on his hips, it is her hips he feels. As the cab drives through an intersection, he sees a girl in a red billowing dress waiting for a streetcar. He has been with a girl before. She had a red coat, but underneath it she had a blue dress and underneath that a white slip. It was in September during his military service. They went into the woods after just one dance and had to search a long time before they found a dry place. Afterward, his knees still got wet, and he ended up with a bad cold. A month later, he saw the girl on the main road in the rain. He saluted her, but she didn’t recognize him.
When he reaches the front of the fiancée’s building, she is already holding the door open for him. She has been waiting by the window for a long time. At first, she is surprised when he arrives in a taxi. Then she starts imagining things. But she almost always imagines things. She has warmed up some tea on the Meta cooker three times, and three times it has turned cold. They sit down in separate chairs in her chilly room. On one side of the room, someone is learning to play the banjo. On the other side, some men are playing cards, and their bids can be heard clearly through the wall. He suddenly falls to his knees before the fiancée’s chair and starts rubbing his brow against her knees. He notices they are harder than he imagined. The fiancée puts her arms around his neck. Then he feels that her arms are hard, too. He has never noticed this before.
After tea, he pulls her over to the sofa with him. It’s an old rented sofa with a tall, carved wooden frame. Hanging over the frame is a blue tapestry with white writing: “A woman is a flower. Pick her gently.” But when he sits on the sofa, the frame falls down on him, hitting his back.
We can’t sit on the sofa, the fiancée whispers, because the back always falls down, and I can’t fix it.
Then he lifts up the frame.
If we can’t be on the sofa, then we can just lie on the floor, he whispers as he pulls his fiancée’s black dress up high above the knee.
He is very aroused and he is breathing very heavily. They knock a chair down as they tumble to the floor. The linoleum creaks beneath the fiancée’s body. He is on his knees and when he shifts his gaze from her breasts to her face, he can see she is afraid. But even though she’s afraid, she still wants it. She has never wanted it before. She is ugly when she is afraid, but this makes her eyes very beautiful. And her fear doesn’t frighten him but it makes him cold – strong and cold. He picks up the fallen chair and sits down on it. When the fiancée gets up, she grabs on to the sofa. Then the frame falls down again. All of a sudden he bursts into laughter. He can’t help it, nor can he check his laughter. He thinks he’s laughing about the sofa, and when he stops laughing, he thinks the fiancée is crying. But she isn’t crying. She is standing in front of his chair and breathing very heavily, as if she had been running. And he is astonished, almost shocked, when she screams.
You can’t! she screams and clenches her fists.
I can’t what? he says calmly. He thinks he isn’t supposed to laugh.
Go, the fiancée whispers.
Then the banjo player stops playing and bangs against the wall. The card players knock, too. Then one of them bids three hearts. And although she is pale, she still walks him out. She tries to kiss him through the crack of the door but only manages to grab his hand, which is cold. Hers is cold, too. Through the window, she watches him as he waits on the street for a taxi. She hopes that a taxi won’t come, but one does. She doesn’t close the window until much later. Then it occurs to her that she could have made up the bed on the sofa.
As the car starts to slow down in front of the gate, he asks the driver to keep going. He doesn’t want the father to see him coming home in a taxi. Whoever is poor is always ashamed to be seen in a taxi. And should he be alone, he will sit in the middle, so that no one will see him. When he finally gets out of the taxi, it is stopped very close to the cinema. Since it’s hardly out of the way, he walks up to it and looks at the posters – just as the lights go out. The red light goes out first, then the green and white lights at the same time. The attendant appears with his padlock. After the gate is closed, he stands around smoking for a while. And since it’s so late, some girls are smoking, too. One of the remaining girls is looking at him. Her coat is unbuttoned, and underneath it she is wearing a red dress. But she’s too young to look like his mother. When she pulls up her sleeve to look at the time, he sees that she has very spindly arms. He flicks his cigarette through the bars of the gate and leaves.
As soon as he enters the apartment, the telephone rings. And because the light isn’t on, he is afraid. So he turns it on before he answers. It’s his fiancée. She is crying yet manages to speak every now and then. She says that she’s so worried about him that she can’t sleep. He is listening, but he doesn’t feel anything. Nevertheless, he promises her they will go for a walk the following evening. Behind her crying, he can hear the banjo player strumming his evening entertainment.
When he hangs up, he suddenly finds the ticket stub between his fingers. And for the hell of it, he dials the number. When nobody answers, he feels both relieved and disappointed. Then, while stuffing it back in his pocket, he suddenly remembers with terrifying clarity that he has forgotten the keys in the locks. So he dashes into the other room and turns on the light, but the keyholes are empty. And the shelf in the closet is empty, too. When he steps into the closet, the door suddenly slams shut behind him and he is filled with maddening terror. Then, with clenched fists, he beats the door open. It was only the wind, since one of the windows is open and swinging to and fro. He closes it, but he doesn’t pull down the shades. Instead, he draws the ones in the kitchen. The bottle is still on the table. There are just a few drops left at the bottom, but when he empties it, he feels a little warm.
In bed, he lays his pillow against his chest. Pillows are great for the lonely. From a pillow, he can make two soft thighs. He can also make a soft arm that wraps around his body. No one has as soft an arm as a pillow. Nor such a warm arm, since he can make it as warm as he wants. The arm makes him warm. It also makes him less lonesome. He sleeps dreamlessly throughout the night.
At six the following evening he meets his fiancée on the Räntmästare steps. She wants to go to Djurgården, where they can dance at Nöjesfältet and then go home from there. She mentions that she has fixed the sofa.
Which sofa? he asks.
Then he takes her arm and they walk up to Södermalm. They walk up Götgatan and do some window-shopping. The fiancée is so upset that she hardly sees a single display. At the top of the hill, she is out of breath and says they should turn around. Then he tells her that he doesn’t have enough money to go to Djurgården, but if she wants, they can go to the cinema. When they reach the Lantern, she says it’s a bad theater. They have been to it once before, and it was cold then. Besides, the films are always so worn out. Moreover, they only play bad films. They look at the posters for a bit. He thinks she is taking too long. When they go inside, she mentions that they have already seen the film. He gets upset and says that she has a bad memory.
She buys the tickets because he doesn’t have any money with him. But he stands next to her at the box office. When the cashier tears the tickets from the block, she looks at him and smiles. She recognizes him. He smiles back at her because she looks like his mother. She’s old enough. Yet she isn’t that old. She has a red dress with short sleeves and a little blue spot above her elbow, as though someone has pinched her. Even though it’s too early to go inside, he takes the fiancée’s arm and they proceed to the entrance. As the attendant tears their tickets, he looks back at the box office to see if the cashier thinks they’re silly for going in so early. But she is merely sitting there, gazing out at the street. He is relieved yet disappointed at the same time.
A Moth to a Flame Page 8