Wonderful Feels Like This

by Sara Lövestam

  Steffi puts Louis Armstrong back into the sleeve and watches Alvar put the record with the handwritten label down in its place. He putters with the screw, and then replaces the needle with one he’s found in a drawer, before he sets the new needle with great care onto the record. It begins with a lot of crackling.

  Then there’s a piano, a jazzy intro behind more crackling. Steffi tries to catch Alvar’s eyes, but he’s closed them and he’s far away. After the intro, the bass comes in, and although it’s strange, she knows that this bass player is the same Alvar who’d played with the Karlstad Jazz Club. Steffi leans back in her chair and closes her eyes just like Alvar. She’s not ready for it when his voice starts—an obvious Värmland accent singing “There’s something else in the air” in English—right through all the crackling. She can’t help starting to laugh.

  “But that’s you!”

  Alvar opens his eyes. “Yes, I’m not the greatest jazz singer in the world,” he says with a giggle. “But I could wail … now wait.”

  The song is coming to an end. After the last chord, a woman’s voice speaks. “I think we don’t have to do it again.”

  Alvar smiles. He’s leaning his cheek on his wrinkled hand and just lets the needle rasp on the inner track until Steffi removes it.

  “That was Anita, wasn’t it? The woman who said that?”

  Alvar moves his head in a way that is hard to interpret. “I’ll have to tell you more some other time. Now I have to sleep and dream a beautiful dream.”

  Steffi is about to leave him with his beautiful dream when he calls to her.

  “Steffi! It’s a good thing that you’re following the music of your own time. That Avishai Cohen, he’s pretty darn good on the bass.”

  Steffi feels warm inside.

  “You are, too,” she says.

  “Thank you. But nobody is ever going to be as good on the bass as one Steffi Herrera! Am I right?”

  She nods in agreement and takes in his words.

  Nobody.

  — CHAPTER 25 —

  “What a coincidence,” Karro says. “I just pooped a long string of shit that looked exactly like you.”

  Sanja giggles hysterically. Jenny and another girl who had been walking away stop to take in the action.

  “Just like you, it’s shit brown,” Karro adds, spurred on by having an audience. “Then it was slimy and bent, so I couldn’t help assisting it with you.”

  Steffi meets Karro’s eyes. They’re filled with laughter, high on adrenaline and her debasing statement.

  Steffi has to choose between keeping her mouth shut and responding. Part of her wants to say that Karro looks just like a pimple she’d popped this morning, but she sees problems with that strategy, one of which is introducing the topic of her pimples.

  “Associate,” she says.

  “Excuse me, piece of shit, are you talking to me?”

  Sanja is laughing so hard she has to bend over, repeating “excuse me, piece of shit” until even Jenny is giggling.

  “When you were sitting on the toilet, you weren’t assisting, you were associating. At the very least you should learn how to speak properly!”

  Steffi could add that Karro can’t even write a proper e-mail message, but then Hepcat’s identity would be revealed.

  Karro doesn’t move a muscle. “I’m not the one who has to learn Swedish. You should go back to Cuba and eat bananas.”

  Steffi was born in the maternity ward in Torsby, but knows that facts don’t mean anything in Björke School. Her eyes have begun to burn, no matter how much she tries to hold back the tears.

  * * *

  “I didn’t know what to say,” she tells Alvar.

  Alvar is lying down on his bed because he’s tired, but he didn’t ask to be left alone.

  Steffi gets up and runs her fingers along the cardboard covers of all the records on the shelf. They’re rough against her fingertips, which have started to get soft since her bass had been broken.

  “First of all, it was idiotic, saying I should go back to Cuba just because she couldn’t say the word associate properly. But I don’t know … I get so … I know I shouldn’t take it so hard and stuff, but when she starts in on my pappa…”

  Alvar is silent. At first Steffi thinks he’s begun to doze, but when she looks at him, his eyes are open and he’s chewing on the inside of his cheek.

  “Those small insults,” he says after a while. “They’re not really so small. Every society has this kind of curse. Even big cities have people like that, people who are driven to find someone to pick on.…”

  His voice disappears into a sigh, a sigh so deep that she has to answer it. “They’re not picking on me because my dad is Cuban. The thing is, they just hate me.”

  Alvar grimaces.

  “It’s not that they just hate you,” he says with sudden strength. He sits up to lean on his elbow. “It’s not just that at all. Hating someone for no reason … no real reason at all. They have to be … unbearably unhappy, the people who do this. And everyone else just observes and doesn’t interfere; we just watch.…”

  He’s rambling on just like the old ladies on the other side of the hallway. But it warms her heart to see him angry over what Karro has said, and Steffi hasn’t even told Alvar the part about how Karro compared her to her own poop. Alvar is actually trembling.

  “You’re not just observing,” she says. “You’re here.”

  He sits up all the way. His blue eyes are looking at her, filled with heartbreak.

  “You have to understand how in love I was with Anita.”

  “What?”

  “You have to understand … you have to realize how much I needed her and I was just twenty-one.”

  “Alvar, what are you talking about?” She wants to tell him to pull himself together, but she doesn’t. He looks as thin and fluffy as a baby bird, and whatever he wants to tell her, he really wants to tell her. He sighs and looks at the air, or at something that is not Steffi.

  “So much was going on, in those days. I thought about Värmland, I did, but … especially when the war was over … there I was in Stockholm thinking about Värmland.”

  * * *

  When the war ended, Alvar was at Erling’s place. One of Erling’s girls, the one called Hedvig, was also there, and the three of them so filled the studio apartment that there was hardly room for Erling’s radio. They were all sitting and staring at it intensely, as if it might come to life and start to dance. Their hearts were beating as hard as Alvar’s.

  “Now!” the girl said, glancing at the clock.

  “Shh!” Erling said.

  The newscaster raised his voice: “Now our prime minister is going to speak. Per Albin Hansson.”

  Erling’s mouth had fallen slightly open and the girl was biting her lip. Alvar started to wonder if Anita was also listening to the radio at that moment, sitting in her mother’s fine living room. He was sure his mamma and pappa were listening up in Värmland.

  “My dear listeners. I am sure the news that the war is over in our part of the world does not come as a surprise. We have been waiting for this moment and yet it still fills us with inexpressible joy.”

  Alvar felt it. A roar came from a window on the other side of the street, and then another one, and then all of Bonde Street was filled with jubilation, from the large families at Sofia on one end to the Kino Movie Theater on the other. Alvar was breathing heavily. The giddiness from the knowledge that the war was over made him light-headed, and he felt he had to move and get outside.

  Alvar flew through the streets. They were filled with people and he had to zigzag on his bike between families with children and old men. Spring was everywhere in the air, even in the smoke from the printer’s, and there was peace in Europe. And Mamma—it hit him like a wave to the stomach, so intense was his joy that he almost fell over—Mamma no longer had to worry about German soldiers and their Norwegian girlfriends. As he turned into King Street, he heard people singing the Norwegian national
anthem and he let go of the handlebars and joined the song, his arms raised in the sign for victory. The street was filled with people as far as the eye could see. Homemade confetti whirled down from the windows as if the skies themselves were releasing it. Someone had written PEACE on a large piece of cardboard. Others waved the various Scandinavian flags, Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish, and as soon as someone started to cheer, twenty others joined. Norway’s national anthem changed to the Danish national anthem, and although Alvar didn’t know all the words, he sang along as best he could.

  Anita was at the corner of Birger Jarl Street. In the almost supernatural atmosphere that had sent confetti from the heavens, it was perfectly natural that she would see him at once. Her usually serious expression had changed to a huge smile. A ripped-up receipt floated onto her face and she laughed as she shook it off.

  “Did you hear the news on the radio?” she asked as he got off his bike to stand beside her.

  “Yes, Erling, Hedvig, and I heard it at his place.”

  “Who’s Hedvig?”

  “Another one of Erling’s girls.”

  She smiled again. “Five years ago, peace didn’t mean much to me.”

  “I wonder whether Mamma is crying. I’m sure she’s crying.”

  “I’m sure she’ll be crying the entire day,” Anita agreed.

  Alvar could stand like this in Anita’s smile forever. They would smile at each other, arms covered in goose bumps, just because there was peace; Anita would talk about his mother as if she knew her; and they’d always be surrounded by cheers of joy and waving flags.

  Then it happened. A huge Norwegian flag fell across his head and blocked his view of Anita while everything turned red, white, and blue. As the flag swept onward in its triumphal journey, Anita emerged, standing right in front of him. She put her hands to his cheeks, pulled him close, and then kissed him on the lips. Then she laughed.

  “For peace.”

  For peace.

  * * *

  He flew through Östermalm, Norrmalm, Kungsholmen, rode the wrong way, slid into a fine pile of gravel, ripped a marvelous hole in his pants, got a wonderful puncture, which he fixed joyfully and easily. He ran up all the stairs and lifted Aunt Hilda to the ceiling.

  She looked at him in fear, so he put her back down and petted her wrinkled cheek. He smiled at her and thought she might have resembled his own mother when she was young, and therefore she had once been beautiful.

  “Peace has been declared in Europe!”

  “Well, then maybe we’ll be able to get real coffee again!”

  He laughed out loud and one corner of her mouth turned up into a smile. “May I call my parents?”

  Later he could never remember all the details of the telephone call. He thought his father had picked up the phone; he had a vague memory of a laughing male voice and his mother’s warm dialect, but it was all mixed together. The thing he remembered most clearly from that day was the fact that Anita had kissed him. Such wonderful excitement; how he would have loved to declare this wonderful news in his call. If he had called from Aunt Hilda’s—he couldn’t remember if she’d actually had a telephone. Maybe he’d called from a box in the street?

  He had called, hadn’t he?

  * * *

  “Hello?”

  Steffi was waving a hand in front of his face. She’s looking at him and brings his focus back to the room with its institutional curtains. Her backpack is on the floor, and he comes back to what was happening now, history being written today and tomorrow.

  “There is nothing whatsoever ugly about you,” he says.

  She looks at him questioningly with her dark brown eyes and a face that still retains a child’s quality. Of course it would not matter what a decrepit old man says.

  “Those bullies are wrong about you,” he says anyway.

  “I know.”

  He can see in her eyes that she knows this but doesn’t yet feel it. He wants to pick her up as if she were four years old. He feels he’s been holding on to these words for a long time.

  “They just want someone to pick on, you see, because they don’t feel so good about themselves. Every single word against you is a word they actually want to use about themselves. They’re small people.”

  He uses his thumb and forefinger to make a very small space and he peers at Steffi through it. “This small.”

  She nods and says, “I know. There are small people and big people. A small person hopes that another small person will just disappear. A big person hopes that the small person will grow up and become big.”

  This girl warms his heart. She looks indifferent on the outside, but inside there’s so much going on.

  “Wise words. Who told them to you?”

  “Pappa. But he said it in a different way. He can’t always use good syntax, but simple words … they’re easy to say.”

  Yes, he understood that.

  “I imagine sometimes you just want to punch them.”

  “Yes. Or, sometimes, I want to punch myself.”

  He feels as if gravity has grown stronger when he hears her say that. As if his entire mind had gotten heavier. He wants to disagree, but he’s tried to explain away others’ emotions before and knows it doesn’t work. “I imagine you would have to feel that way sometimes.”

  Perhaps she’s disappointed. Perhaps she’s just blinking.

  “But that’s not any kind of real revenge,” he continues.

  He’s tired. The fifteen-year-old, the four-year-old, the evil people, the good people who don’t do anything, as when Steffi’s classmates keep quiet, everything that happened to Svea, the peace in 1945, the kiss on the corner of King Street and Birger Jarl Street, which he can still feel deep inside, and did Aunt Hilda have a telephone or not? There’s so much to think about when you reach the age of eighty-nine.

  “I usually think I’m going to show them,” she says. “They’ll just stand there in amazement … like this … they will just be amazed!”

  She’s opening her eyes wide in a theatrical way as she says this. He giggles and she smiles. She’s balancing, he thinks. Balancing between wanting to punch them or punch herself. She’s in a terrible state of balance.

  His thoughts clear up after she’s gone. He now thinks about subject after subject more slowly, at his own speed. He puts on Stan Getz’s “Ack Värmeland” on the gramophone and puts his thoughts in order. Anita. Peace. The four-year-old Svea. The fifteen-year-old Steffi. All the steps in between. His conscience. The boy he used to be.

  When he presses the button to summon the nurse, she comes immediately and looks for him in the bed. She’s surprised to find him sitting in his armchair.

  “I just wanted to make sure the alarm button worked,” he says with a smile, and the nurse sighs in relief and shakes her head.

  “But now that you’re here,” he says, making sure he doesn’t draw her into a discussion on Stan Getz’s wonderfully nonrespectful treatment of Värmland harmonies—the nurses usually didn’t like those kind of discussions—“I actually have a request.”

  The nurse always has a great deal to do and he’s aware of this—he can see it in the pulsing vein in her neck—but he forces her to listen to his words until she just has to say yes. He already knows that only one kind of person comes to work in retirement homes—angels.

  — CHAPTER 26 —

  The next morning when Steffi wakes up, she is sixteen years old. She looks at herself in the mirror and tries to find the sixteen-year-old in there. Does she resemble the fifteen-year-old, the one in ninth grade at Björke School who had come home from gym class last February in soaking socks? No.

  When Steffi gets to school, she’s a whore’s daughter and an Indian. Sanja has started up this thing about her being an Indian. Class 9B really enjoys Sanja’s creativity.

  “So what’s your Indian name, then?” Karro smiles, with dancing eyes, right in front of Steffi. “Whores with Wolves?”

  “Horny Buffalo,” Sanja adds.

&n
bsp; “Pops Pimples with Teeth,” Leo says.

  Karro explodes in laughter. “How does she do it?” she shrieks. “How the hell, Leo?”

  “Indian magic,” Hannes says.

  He’s standing next to Leo. Once Hannes and Steffi had played like professional musicians in the music room. He looks at Steffi as he says this, but not right at her, more like at her shoes.

  “Yeeees!” Karro grins. “Indian magic! I was wondering how she could be such a slut without anyone wanting to sleep with her!”

  Steffi has often wondered this herself, but she doesn’t say anything.

  * * *

  In the classroom, they all sing “Happy Birthday to You” to her. Since they are in social studies, they sing in the most beautiful way possible. Sanja’s honestly beautiful voice creeps under Steffi’s skin like a germ.

  Afterward, Bengt asks her how her project is going, and she says she’s getting near the end.

  “I’m writing about how they celebrated after they heard on the radio that the war was over. In Stockholm there was, like, a party in the streets. People were throwing confetti from their windows.”

  “What was happening in Värmland?”

  “Oh … they were listening to the radio and were happy and … I don’t know that much about what was happening here. My source was in Stockholm then.”

  Bengt nods. “If you have time, find another source, just for the sake of local interest. And it would be good if you could add something about the Norwegians under Quisling and the German influence on Norwegian-Swedish relations.”

  “OK.”

  “But what I’ve read so far seems fine. Although your writing style is still too informal.”

  “OK.”

  * * *

  When Steffi gets to Sunshine Home, she’s met by the woman whose mouth hangs open and the other one who chews on her cheek walking toward her. Between them, the strict nurse, the one Alvar told her was named Karin, has the arms of the two women, helping them slowly along the hallway.

  “Hello, Steffi,” she says.

  “Hi,” Steffi replies.

  “Hi! Hi!” says the woman chewing her cheek.