Wonderful Feels Like This

by Sara Lövestam

  Karin keeps looking at Steffi. Steffi can’t figure out why. Karin doesn’t say anything, but it is apparent that she’s touched.

  Alvar is in his room. He smiles widely when he sees her and she laughs out loud and exclaims, “Well! You are looking especially fine today! What a great hat!”

  He’s still grinning as he straightens his party hat over his tufts of hair. “I have one for you, too!”

  She obediently puts on a green, glittering party hat. Alvar asks her to put on “Honeysuckle Rose.”

  “The one with Ella.”

  Ella Fitzgerald fills the room with her do-do-be-do-le-do-le-do and the piano trills in playfully and then the bass and then the brass. Alvar nods contentedly. “Now that’s a great birthday song.”

  He puts two napkins on the table. He takes out two green marzipan pastries from a cardboard box.

  “Much better than birthday cake, I believe.”

  “Me, too.”

  He lifts his pastry and they say skål and best wishes. He giggles. “What a party! It’s as good as having a jazz club at a library!”

  She giggles, too, and takes a bite of the pastry.

  “I asked Karin to buy these for us,” Alvar says. “So, in a way, she’s wishing you a happy birthday, too. And a number of the other old folks in the building, the ones who remember that I told them you were having a birthday, they told me to tell you to have a happy birthday.”

  “That was sweet of them.”

  “Yes, most of them are a bit addled, of course, but they are sweet.”

  “Maybe not Svea. She’s not what I’d call sweet.”

  Alvar hums to himself as he sweeps some marzipan crumbs into his napkin. “Since today is your birthday, you can ask me to tell you a story. Isn’t that a good present?”

  “OK, then I want to hear about when you were in the studio with Povel Ramel.”

  “When was that?”

  “In 1946. Hjukström was on clarinet. Maybe you didn’t care because you’re so focused on the beautiful Anita. Hello? Don’t you remember?”

  Alvar nods and his party hat bobs up and down. “Of course I remember that. It was one of the best days of my life. But I can’t tell you about that yet. It’s too far ahead in the chronology. So wish for something else.”

  “Well … then I’d like to know what happened when you came home to Björke. Didn’t you go home for Christmas or something else? Did you go see your mother after you’d been missing her for so long?”

  “No, no, I can’t talk about that yet, either. Can you turn the record over?”

  Steffi turns Ella Fitzgerald over and sets the needle down in the groove.

  “So what do you want me to ask for, then?”

  “Maybe how it felt to play the Winter Palace? In 1945?”

  “All right. What was it like to play the Winter Palace in 1945?”

  “Well, let me tell you! It was not at all like playing Nalen!”

  * * *

  Playing the Winter Palace was nothing like playing Nalen. For example, jitterbug was forbidden.

  “That’s rotten,” he exclaimed to Erling.

  “Absolutely nuts,” Erling agreed. “Jitterbug and jazz go together, but these gorillas have no clue about jazz or jitterbug.”

  The gorillas in question were two tough bouncers. They were there to keep the Winter Palace clean. The first time Alvar had come to play, he was barely able to get through the door because he was so nervous that they thought he was drunk. Finally he was forced to use his Värmland dialect, the one he called the bumbling and innocent one, and now he used it whenever he had to pass by the bouncers.

  “I imagine they’d beat me to a pulp if I tried Söder slang,” he said, laughing, to Erling, who laughed roughly back.

  “Yeah, you speaking Söder slang!”

  “Still, it’s a fun place to play,” Alvar said in the purest Stockholm dialect possible. “I don’t think there’s an orchestra I’d rather play in than Lulle’s.”

  He shivered, thinking that at twenty, he could already say that. While he was wrestling his upright bass out of its case, he imagined how he it would be to mention this in passing to anyone who happened to walk by.

  Erling was humming with a jealous note. “Too bad Arne Domnérus never gets sick.”

  Alvar glanced at him and grunted. He knew Ellboj would never take Erling on clarinet into his band, even if Arne Domnérus were on his deathbed.

  But Erling was his friend and didn’t need to hear those kinds of truths from him.

  “You promised,” Erling said.

  “I promised to ask. I haven’t promised what they’re going to answer.”

  “You promised.” Erling mimicked him with a half-smile.

  Alvar got an A from the pianist and started to tune his bass.

  “The trio is going to rehearse at one P.M. tomorrow,” Erling said.

  “I can’t make it then.”

  “You can’t?”

  “I’ll be at the Flame with Arne and his guys.”

  Erling lifted an eyebrow as he spit on the floor. “All right, all right, I get it. Message loud and clear.”

  “You can come. They have some new Roy Eldridge records.”

  “Thanks, but I have records of my own at home.”

  “Roy Eldridge records?”

  Alvar didn’t get a reply. He was tuning his E string as Erling got up and walked away. Alvar watched his back and thought it was as thin as a stray cat’s.

  Maybe he should go to rehearsal after all.

  * * *

  Erling came back when the orchestra began to play. Alvar tried to catch his eye and give him an encouraging look, but Erling never looked at him. Instead, Erling began to dance wildly until the Winter Palace bouncers came up to him and lifted him, energetically kicking, by the elbows to carry him to the exit. Ingmar met him at the door, and they went on out into the night. Then Anita appeared from the other side of the dance floor, as if she’d been hiding all that time.

  When the last piece was over, she came up to the stage and leaned on it, her elbows on the edge. Arne looked at the trumpet player, Nisse, who shook his head.

  “Hello, Anita,” Alvar said, not able to hide his pride.

  “You were really swinging tonight,” Anita said.

  “Not like those grandpas at the Bal Palais, right?” Nisse said, with a wink.

  Anita looked at him with her head to one side. “One of these days, you’ll just be fussy old men while the young guys are playing real jazz. Have you ever thought of that?”

  Alvar laughed while he put his bass into its case. Nisse also seemed to be amused, and he came to the edge of the stage and squatted down.

  “Some of us are going to grab a bite at Fiffe’s place later. Want to come along?”

  “Give Fiffe my regrets. I’m going to go on home now, in the company of Mr. Alvar Svensson.”

  The guys behind Alvar laughed heartily. “Yep, good to have a muscular guy like Big Boy Svensson along if there’s trouble!”

  “He’ll scare off all the bad guys!”

  Big Boy was pleased.

  * * *

  “I’ve decided I need to find a job.”

  The evening was warm, although fall was in the air. A clear white moon was looking down on them as they walked slowly through the labyrinth of Stockholm’s old and new architecture.

  “I can’t be what my parents want me to be. So I think I’ll take the secretary course and earn my own living.”

  “And here I thought you were going to marry an old, rich banker,” Alvar teased her.

  “That’s what my parents think.”

  “He’d be blown away by your beauty along with your horseback riding skills and your secretarial independence.”

  “Be quiet!”

  “You’d be an asset to his business!”

  Anita laughed and gave him a pretend slap to the ear. “I told you to be quiet!”

  They turned onto King Street and a sudden blast of wind made them
pull their coats closer around themselves.

  Anita stumbled and tumbled into him so he almost lost his balance.

  “Oh!” he exclaimed stupidly.

  She laughed. “Better have a muscular guy like Big Boy Svensson in case of trouble! Right?”

  He blushed, but the weight of her body now leaning into his made it hard for him to think. They walked in silence for a minute.

  “But what do you think about me getting a job? Do you think I’ll make a good secretary?”

  “Wouldn’t you rather be a jazz pianist?”

  She smiled and looked up at the white moon. “Maybe, if it were easier. But you have to be tough.”

  “Like Erling?”

  She giggled, or perhaps snorted. “No, not like Erling.”

  Anita climbed up on the long wall along the road and stopped. They were almost the same height now, with her perhaps a few inches taller.

  “Then you’d be like Alice Babs, just on the piano.”

  “You’re so sweet.” She ran her gloved hand across his cheek. “Lots of people think even the boys shouldn’t be playing jazz. Have you ever thought how hard it would be as a girl to do the same? It would be really tough.”

  Alvar let the words sink in. He’d never thought other people, besides Ingmar, considered girls and jazz that way. As if it mattered if you were a girl, as long as you were good.

  “I don’t want to try to tough it out,” Anita explained. “I just want to be free.”

  In her eyes he saw what she meant. He saw someone who lived differently, who thought differently, who came from somewhere very different.

  “I want you to be free, too.”

  He heard how banal that sounded, but she put her hands on his shoulders and leaned her forehead on his.

  “If everyone were like you, I would happily play at the Winter Palace. If I got the chance.”

  Her forehead was cool on his but still warm in another way. The tips of their noses touched. She was talking quietly for his ears alone.

  “But in my home … I would like to have a piano … and I’d play piano for my family … all the children … and grandchildren.” She giggled. “Can you imagine a grandmother playing jazz music?”

  Perhaps the September air was making him brave. Or the darkness around them, the streetlights fighting against the foggy darkness with their round balls of light.

  “Yes,” he said. “I’d want to listen.”

  The tip of her nose slowly turned aside and the blond hair on her upper lip tickled him slightly and he felt them as warmth right before Anita kissed him. He’d always fantasized kissing her when they were on a park bench or a dance floor and that she’d be turning her face up to his and he’d be bending over her, but now she was up on the wall, at his height. She bent down to him.

  * * *

  The record is over. Alvar’s gaze is in the distance again. Steffi removes Ella Fitzgerald and puts on Alice Babs. Alice Babs doesn’t sound as tough as she must have had to be.

  “I think Alice Babs was the free one,” she says.

  Alvar picks up a crumb from his napkin and pops it into his mouth. “Yes, I thought so, too, but that girl had to endure some really hard stuff. Anita knew that. Some people made fun of us boys, too, but nobody called us names like ‘loose woman.’”

  “Who called her that? Ingmar?”

  “No, not him. Eric somebody … the manager of music rights company. I forgot the name … he said Alice Babs should be smacked on the rear and sent home. At least, that’s what he wrote in the newspaper.”

  Steffi lets the information sink in as she turns the record cover over to see if there’s a picture of Alice Babs. There isn’t one, of course.

  “Well, I don’t want just to play for my grandkids. Well, if I have any and they want to listen to me … but I want to write my own songs and have them be recorded and everything. Don’t you think Anita wanted that?”

  Alvar sighs deeply and sucks in his upper lip. “Yes, yes, I think a part of Anita, a large part, would have liked to play the Winter Palace, or even be recorded in a real record studio.”

  “Were you a couple then?”

  Alvar looks at her with his old eyes. Alvar—he’s so serious, she thinks.

  “You know … she was a girl from a good family, and Ingmar came from the same place. I was just a country boy.”

  “But she kissed you.”

  “Yes, she did,” Alvar said. His voice was slow. “It was a wonderful evening. One of the best evenings of my life.”

  * * *

  Her family was waiting for her at home. They’d have sparkling cider and a birthday cake.

  Steffi puts on her jacket and winds up the gramophone so that Alvar can hear the entire record if he wants to.

  “Something is bothering me,” he says, sitting on the bed.

  “What?”

  “You said you want to write your own songs and all the rest.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, I was wondering,” he says. “How can you do it if you don’t have one of these?” He lifts up the blanket and grins at her, a real big grin.

  Steffi is about to say something, but she’s lost her breath. She’s looking at a four-string Fender bass guitar.

  — CHAPTER 27 —

  This is a bass worthy of a hepcat. Retro brown and bone white with a sound that the poor decapitated one could never have made.

  Only one month remains in the semester. Steffi will never take her Fender to school. Every day when she comes home, she goes into her room and puts the strap of her new Fender around her neck and plays the old songs like those by Ellington and Domnérus and Povel Ramel with Alice Babs. She plays along with Sonya Hedenbratt and wails along with her: “Feet on the ground but a heart full of blues.” She plays along with Avishai, Malheiros, Ndegeocello, and all the other new bassists, the ones Simon in Stockholm calls the new funk movement. And she looks at herself in her Hepcat hat while she plays her bass. She wonders how she’d look in a suit, a white suit.

  When she logs in to The Place, she still has her bass on her knees. The unreal Karro has written to Hepcat. Hepcat and Karro have absurd conversations about Karlstad, poetry, and imagined offenses at school, such as Karro’s belief that her closest friend has betrayed her.

  From: Karro N

  To: Hepcat

  God, I can’t stand it. Like my best friend Sanja, she can be so mean. For example, yesterday we were putting on our makeup and she said I have SMALL EYES. What? Anybody can just look at me and see what kind of eyes I have. Or what do U think? U saw my pictures. (I posted two new ones, btw.) Plus, my pretend dad is supposed to work from home the next four weeks and we argue ALL THE TIME because he’s so disgusting. Soon I’ll move to Karlstad and move in w/ U. U’d like that, right?? Ha-ha!

  From: Hepcat

  To: Karro N

  Nice of you to call me God. Sorry that your friend doesn’t realize you have really, really big eyes, but nice that your spelling’s getting better.

  I’ve heard worse things than having “small eyes” (I don’t know how things are in your innocent country school, but here in the city they use words like slut and whore to put down girls. So tasteless if you ask me.) It sounds worse to have to fight pretend dads. But you can’t come to Karlstad, because then I’d have to tell you where I live.

  P.S. Seriously, looking at your picture, your eyes are enormous. Almost scary.

  Steffi reads over the message she just sent and decides that the words are not those of a big person. She probably should write and ask why Karro’s pretend father is so disgusting. Perhaps she should care, even if she and Karro are enemies.

  Instead, she picks up her clarinet, without slipping out of her bass strap, to search for a note she’s been feeling inside the whole day. Happy when she finds it, she puts her amp on reverb so both instruments sound at the same time. She’s starting to understand the clarinet. Maybe not like Erling did, and definitely not like Arne Domnérus, but she’s starting to … feel it.


  * * *

  Steffi has brought that horrible clarinet. Alvar grimaces at it as if it were a scruffy dog or a three-legged table certain it can stand. He thinks he should have added a clarinet to the shopping list he’d given Karin when he sent her to run his errands in Karlstad.

  Steffi is putting it together quickly and shoves the parts as close together as possible so there won’t be a gap. She plays a note for him. “And I need an E as the bottom note of the chord. Can you hum an E?”

  Alvar tries to hum a low E, but that ends up with both of them laughing. He loves listening to her laugh. It’s a rough laugh and reminds him of Erling.

  She pulls out that phone and pokes it. On the minuscule screen there’s an even more minuscule keyboard, and as he touches it, it makes a plink sound. It’s very entertaining.

  “I’d like to see Charles Norman on this thing.”

  “But, come on, hum an E for me!”

  He obeys the teenage girl frowning in concentration, sitting on the floor. He touches the smooth screen to hit an E. Her clarinet drowns it out completely and she grimaces.

  “Well, you can imagine it, can’t you?”

  His fingers feel energetic, even impatient.

  “It’s not going to work,” he says. “If you open my closet door there … no, the other door … we’ll be able to make some decent progress.”

  He enjoys her expression when she discovers his upright bass behind the door. She bravely wrestles it out of the closet and into the space on the floor between the gramophone and the armchair.

  “I hope I can tune it,” he says. “It’s been standing around for months.”

  Perhaps for years. It hasn’t really been years, has it?

  It’s irritating that his fingers feel so stiff. As if they were old twigs compared to how supple they used to be back in the day. He can’t be as quick as he used to be, either, but his feeling for the instrument is still there, and he feels no pain as long as he’s playing. Two things strike him while he plays with Steffi joining in on clarinet, as she’s trying things out and trying to imitate what they’ve been listening to.

  “Can you try B-flat?” she asks, and immediately he knows that she has real talent.

  If they can’t see this at that school of hers, then they are idiots. This clarinet is in the worst possible condition and she’s been trying to play it for only a few months, but she’s getting syncopation, sevenths, and that indefinable swing out of it. She’s laughing and then she’s blowing until she’s red in the face and then she calls out: “Again!” and he thinks that if the people she meets in Stockholm are not idiots, he’s going to lose her to the big city.