I get the cigar going. Anyway the lass can probably hardly speak Swedish any more, and my English is not what it once was. I inhale deeply and blow a half-kilo plume of smoke into the driver’s cabin. A pitch-black draught horse clatters to a stop next to the hearse, pulling large flatbed cart. The driver is standing on his board, pulling at the reins; the bit tightens, stretching the horse’s mouth right back to its flat molars. She puts her ears back but obeys good-naturedly. Her body heat hangs like smoke over her back.
‘Although Emma could probably translate for her at a pinch.’
I have another puff, then another. The almost empty tram passes and clangs its bell before the next stop. A telegram delivery boy, with his yellow free-tram pass between his teeth, disembarks with an agile leap while the tram is still moving, landing with both feet on the pavement before he runs off. The driver slaps the reins over the horse’s back and I release the clutch.
I’m home in five minutes. I park outside the undertaker’s, where Lundin is standing, polishing the shop window with an old sock and some turpentine. I wedge the cigar in my mouth and touch the brim of my hat.
Lundin smiles under his moustache: ‘Briskly done. Whatever you lack in other departments, brother, at least you know how to dig in.’
‘I do what I can.’
‘Busy hands have no time for tomfoolery.’
‘Oh really, how do you mean?’
‘Well… You need help with the lad?’
‘Hold the door open.’
Just as I open one of the back doors of the hearse, there’s a high-pitched scream from the neighbouring house, some ten metres away. A yard cat puffs up its fur, the widow Lind on the other side of the pavement stops and removes a short cigar from her mouth, and a little girl with a greasy sandwich paper in her hand freezes to the spot.
The door of number 41 is thrown open and the Jewel comes streaming out into the street with nothing on her feet except her socks. Her hair is on end and her mascara’s running down her cheeks. She throws her shawl on the dirty pavement, stretches up her arms at the sky, then doubles over for yet another piercing scream.
The door opens again, and behind her comes her square-shaped knot of a bloke. His eyes are bloodshot; he’s in his shirtsleeves. He scrabbles for the shawl and throws it over her as if catching a bird with a net. His rough arms envelop her waist. She stamps the ground and screams again. The bloke looks around and then picks her up and carries her back to the door. She wriggles in his arms.
Lundin removes his hat: ‘Nothing for it but to knock up another white coffin.’
‘Think so?’
‘The child was frail from the very start.’
I inhale deeply and remember that time when Ida almost died from a cough when she was small. She had a close shave that time, and a few other times too, but the girl overcame it and struggled to her feet on the ninth count every time. I shudder with unease and push the memories back down into the darkness.
Lundin holds open the door to the undertaker’s as I pick up the dead boy and haul him into the cool-room. By the time I come back, the funeral director has already poured coffee and a couple of morning drams in the kitchen at the back. He takes a sip of java and sucks the moisture out of his moustache.
‘Our little ship’s boy is buried tomorrow afternoon. North Chapel. Until then you’re off duty, brother.’
I take the dram standing up to medicate against the hangover, swilling the glass in front of my second waistcoat button.
‘I have a few things to get on with. Did you know that shrew who showed up yesterday was Beda’s daughter? I’m inviting her for lunch.’
‘Watch yourself with sparky women, remember how it went last time. That film star?’
‘What the hell does that have to do with it?’
‘Mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me.’
‘That stupid old saw! What about us, we take our bloody breakfast together every day.’
‘Unless you happen to be locked up.’
Lundin fills my glass with export-quality vodka and sits down on a kitchen chair with a grimace of pain. He gets out the accounts book from his pocket and slaps its binding a few times against his emaciated legs before thudding it on the table. With a snuff-dyed finger he finds my name under the letter ‘K’ and makes a couple of notes.
He hums to himself and looks up: ‘Widow Lind’s cigar shop is up for sale.’
‘She mentioned as much.’
‘How much?’
‘Don’t remember.’
I dig out my notebook from my inside pocket and give it to him. Somewhere in an apartment above, a couple of penetrating, off-key notes blast out from a brass instrument. It sounds like someone flung two wildcats into a bass tuba and left them to it.
‘Are you listening?’
‘What did you say?’
‘I was wondering if these figures can be right. Twelve hundred including stock. Two hundred profit per day?’
‘That’s what the widow said.’
‘The only figures you keep a careful eye on are the ones in your alcohol ration book.’
‘It seems that people don’t find me very convincing.’
‘Perhaps they would if you stopped getting pickled all the time?’
‘The numbers are right. I noted them down.’
‘You don’t have a nose for business, I always said that.’
I look up at the ceiling and knock back the second vodka. Lundin writes down a few numbers in his notebook and taps the end of his pen against the table, sweat glistening on his knotted brow.
‘Twenty per cent of your profit until you’ve paid off your debt. And ten per cent from then on. So you don’t have to rough up impoverished folk from dawn till dusk and end up back in a penal institution.’
My heart quickens. The horrible cacophony from upstairs finishes as abruptly as it started.
‘It seems your neighbour, the occultist, bought himself a trumpet. When does the widow need the money by?’
‘Wednesday morning.’
‘No time today. How about you drive me to the bank on Monday and then we’ll arrange the financing? I have to go in anyway, to sort out Rickardsson and his damned ten per cent cut.’
I stare at him as if I’ve seen a ghost. Without any expression on his face, he refills my glass for the third time in five minutes: ‘Cheers to a decent business proposition! Now that you’ve come up in the world you have to stop drinking like a bloody fish.’
My head is reeling with all this news, and the schnapps too. I stumble up the flight of stairs to my flat, leaning heavily on the smooth-worn banister. Dixie spins around me, whining, but I push her off with my foot and hang up my coat and hat.
I stop in front of the hall mirror and stare at myself, mouth agape. The colour of my bruise ranges from dark purple to yellow. I get out a comb and try to arrange my stubble as best as I can. Then I clear my throat: ‘Kvist, cigar shop proprietor. My friends call me Kvisten.’
I put away my comb and take out the bullet I dug out of Beda’s wall last night instead. It’s relatively undamaged, the shape and colour of an old blueberry. Possibly a 2.2. I hold it up so that it covers my right iris in the mirror. With a grin at my reflection I tuck it away in my trouser pocket. The cork mat creaks under my shoes as I go over to the oak desk and sit in the easy chair. When I pull out the big desk drawer it jams, and I have to rock it back and forth to get it open.
My scarred hands dive in and pull out a thick pile of letters, naval logbooks, testimonials and match summaries from Boxing Monthly! magazine, which I could never bring myself to throw away. There’s also a bit of green cloth that I used to soak in sugar water and let Ida suck on – those were the Saturdays when I couldn’t afford to give her anything better.
I find the three American letters that were posted almost twelve years ago. The last of them was posted from Arvilla, Grand Forks, North Dakota. My heart judders and my palms
start to sweat. I don’t have the strength to read it again; instead I just tear out a sheet of lined paper from my notebook and wet my pen against my tongue. I notice myself trembling with a sort of excitement as I scratch the words onto the paper:
Sibirien, Friday 22 November in the year 1935.
Dear daughter, this letter is written by my own hand. The way things stand now I have my own cigar shop and so I hope in future I will be able to send you a bit of money now and then. I have seven decent suits and can wear a new one every day if I like. A man thinks of his loved one’s even if it might not seem that way. Take care of your mother, she is a first class woman. If you cant read this letter you should ask her to read it to you.
PS. I am inclosing a photograph.
I read through the letter and put it in an envelope. Not a single spelling mistake. If I get a move on I can get down to Bruntell with the Kodak before the lunchtime rush.
I change into a clean white shirt and my Sunday suit from Herzog’s Tailors. I spend an age dithering over whether to wear a waistcoat, seeing how I look with and without, but in the end I decide to simply button up the jacket to the very top.
With the letter in my inside coat pocket and Dixie’s lead wrapped around my wrist, I shuffle down the stairs and go into Lundin’s. I find him in the kitchen stooped over the classifieds in Stockholms-Tidningen. The coffee cups and schnapps glasses are still on the table. On the gas hob, a dented copper lid is rattling on a saucepan that occasionally gives off little puffs of steam. On the draining board is a keg of herring, ready to be cut up and fried.
‘You have to put some make-up on my bruise.’
I notice that I’m slurring my words. Lundin gazes up at me with a giddy gaze and coughs. Outside in the yard, there’s a racket when some snotty Friday truant climbs up on the dustbins to scale the fence into the next-door yard.
‘Have to, do I? Why do people always expect to get something for free these days?’
‘Bruntell’s taking my portrait.’
Lundin points at the newspaper on the table.
‘Listen to this, for example: “Girl asking those of better means for a little help with her teeth. Replies to Poor.”’
‘You’re drunk.’
‘Or this one: “Is there some humane person who wants to help two young people from going under? We lack even the basic necessities, don’t have enough food to get us through the day, in fact we have nothing except the love we have for each other. We need help.” Yes, so they do for all I know. But at least they can afford to pay for the advertisement.’
Lundin looks up from the newspaper with shiny, red-rimmed eyes: ‘The make-up for the corpses is costly. I only use powder imported from France.’
‘Put it in the book.’
The undertaker taps his snuff tin against the table a few times before he stands up with a sigh: ‘Take a seat, then, you miscreant! I’ll see to it that you’re fairer than Queen Nefertiti.’
Losing his footing, he grips the edge of the table with bony fingers, his rangy body shaking for a moment, and I worry he’s about to have an attack of his falling sickness. But he stays upright, and I let out a sigh of relief: I won’t have to see him thrashing on the floor, foaming at the mouth like a hound of hell.
He straightens the lapels of his jacket and disappears into the kitchen. I sit on one of the wooden chairs, tipping it against the wall. The occultist next door to my flat starts tormenting his trumpet again, but after a few blasts he rounds off the performance with a prolonged, braying note. Dixie, who has placed herself under my chair, looks around in confusion.
Lundin returns with a brightly coloured make-up box. He opens it and makes his selection from brushes, pots of colour and powder. The pipes sigh when someone makes use of the water closet in the corridor.
‘Last year I painted a driver from the brewery, who’d been kicked in the face by his horse. If I managed to make him presentable, I should be able to handle your mug.’
Squinting, he leans up close to my face. I feel his heavy breathing; the smell of schnapps, coffee and throat lozenges.
‘But there’s not much can be done about your nose, and your scars will have to stay where they are. Close your eyes.’
Lundin applies some sort of salve to my eyelids. It stings my skin. Maybe they use different face-paints for stiffs than for poor bastards still walking around on their own two legs.
‘Did you know that Beda sent Petrus to school for two years?’
‘I don’t expect she got much benefit from it. Keep still now.’
A brush dabs my sore skin. A scent of roses seeps into my battered nose.
‘The Asplunden Institute for Deaf Mutes or something like that. That was more or less everything there was in the Parish Register.’
‘Let go of what’s in the past, damn it. You’re going to be a bloody till rat now. You want some colour on your lips as well?’
I run my hand across my Sunday-best trousers and feel the hard, round contours of the pistol bullet in my pocket.
‘A promise is a promise.’
‘Handsome as a prince on a black Arab steed with a gold bit and a silver saddle.’
Lundin’s American timepiece strikes half past ten. I rise and go through the dimly lit vestibule to the undertaker’s, where there’s a mirror. Dixie limps along behind me; the lead drags along the floor behind her. She runs her nose over the floorboards and manages to walk right into the urn with the sad-looking palm in it, by the front desk. She lowers herself onto her rump and wags her tail half-heartedly. That animal’s about to drink herself to death, mark my words.
I take one of Lundin’s tearful-relative tissues from the box on the desk, fold it into a triangle, then tuck it in my breast pocket. After adjusting my tie I scrutinise myself in the mirror. Not bad at all. The skin under my eye is whiter than the rest of my face but it probably won’t show in the photograph.
Outside, the grey clouds have mopped up the sparse sunlight of this morning. With Dixie in tow I cross Roslagsgatan and head south towards Bruntell’s. Further down I see a couple of navvies from the tram company, checking the rails between the cobbles. One of them thumps the right-hand track with a mallet, and a ringing sound travels along the rail.
In Bruntell’s shop window is a handwritten sign: JEWS AND HALF-JEWS BARRED. The deuce knows what he and his kind have against them. They’ve never done me any harm, and the only one I know sews the best damned suits in town.
Inside the shop, the ladies are lined up behind the counter, their aprons bunched up around their stomachs like sad, limp sails. The proper lunch rush hasn’t quite started. I tie Dixie’s lead to a lamp post.
Inside the shop, there’s a jumble of conflicting smells: herring, roasted coffee, lip snuff, cleaning agents and cured pork in a net at 2.75 kronor per kilo. On the other side of the counter are shelves and little drawers of everything from horseshoe tacks to gift items. From the ceiling, a couple of pairs of boots are hanging by their straps.
Bruntell himself is on duty between the scales and the till. In front of him, the large customer ledger weighs heavily on the counter. His eyes are red, and there’s a crumpled white cap on his head. Just behind his jawbone, on his emaciated neck, is a little sticking-plaster. A wedding band gleams on his skinny left hand. His wife is usually found sitting somewhere in the back of the shop, gluing the bottoms of the grocery bags.
‘Still having trouble with that shaky left hand, are we?’
I nod at his plaster. Bruntell makes a wheezing sound. I think he’s laughing.
‘Th-that was a nice party the other night. P-plenty of folks booked themselves in to have p-pictures taken.’
I count out the money and put it on the counter.
‘I was going to ask you about Beda…’
‘A s-sad story. I always thought a b-b-bit of excitement would be good for business, but it s-seems not.’
‘Did you see them when they came to pick up Petrus?’
‘No, I was here.’
<
br /> ‘Did any of your customers see them?’
‘N-n-not as far as I heard. Apart from Ström, that is. He spoke to one of them the d-day after.’
I push my hat back with my finger and look around the shop: ‘Say, I’d like my portrait taken.’
Bruntell squints at me.
‘I h-have a few pictures left on the roll before it needs developing.’
‘Splendid.’
‘Y-y-you can have them by the weekend, but it’ll c-cost you.’ Bruntell wheezes again. That sod is even meaner than Lundin.
‘Whose names do you have in that book there? There must be a few of them that don’t pay up.’
‘Ho-how do you mean?’
‘Who owes you the most?’
‘That would be O-o-olsson a few d-doors up, but he is sick with TB.’
‘Who else?’
‘The Lapp woman.’
I nod and get out my notebook.
‘I was thinking we could take that portrait outside the cigar shop. I’ll keep my hat on.’
Just before lunch, Dixie and I stroll the short distance down to the corner where Standards is. There’s still no rain, but it’s cold, and I wrap the coat tightly around myself. I should have put on my long johns.
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