Wonderful Feels Like This

by Sara Lövestam

  * * *

  Alvar has been thinking about Anita a lot the past few weeks. Whenever Steffi goes back home, he’s back in Stockholm and he’s dancing through the streets with Anita again. They respond when older people tell them that the jiggerbug is destroying the young. He with his youthful energy, Anita with her lively arguments. They’ve gone to Gröna Lund amusement park with his song—the one he wrote about the air and the girl. At Gröna Lund, there’s a recording studio open, called Your Own Voice. Anita spurs him on. She tells him it’s good. She refuses to sing it. “You sing as well as anyone,” she tells him. When he says she should play the piano, she blushes with delight.

  They stand in a long line in front of the Your Own Voice recording studio. In front of them is an overly lively man who prattles incessantly on how surprised his wife will be when she listens to his voice. “As if she can’t hear it already!” a person in the crowd calls out. Everyone laughs. The man has red, freckled ears. Two finches are hopping on the roof of the booth. The air is sweet from the scent of cotton candy. Alvar is tall and strong and Anita’s hand in his makes him feel ten feet tall. As a song reaches them from the stage, he takes a few Charleston steps and Anita laughs and does the same. They dance the Charleston waiting in line for Your Own Voice and the people around them begin to clap in time to the music. When they finally get their chance to record in the booth, Anita is praised for her swinging piano playing. The man recording them tells her that she’s “a cooler version of Alice Babs.” Anita lights up at the praise. She’s happy about it for the rest of the day, and the rest of the week.

  She dabs his nose with cotton candy and laughs.

  * * *

  He wants to tell all this to Steffi. It’s important that he doesn’t forget. His bursting heart tells him that someone will have to remember Anita.

  But when Steffi shows up, she wants to talk only about Svea. “So, I’ve been thinking,” she says. “When Svea screams ‘bastard child’—why does she do it?”

  Alvar would much rather talk about Anita, but Steffi is serious and wants to know what he thinks. “It’s not strange at all,” he says. “Since that’s how people treated her.”

  It makes him feel bad just to say it. Who knows what kind of a person Svea would have become if he’d taken her out of that cabin in the woods? Or just told her mother the truth about what was going on?

  “Yes, yes, I know,” Steffi says impatiently. “But why does she say these things now? Do you think it makes her feel better? Or … why?”

  Alvar tries to shake away his bad conscience and give Steffi a clear answer. “It’s projection,” he says. “A way to wipe the dirt from her mind.”

  “So when she calls other people names, deep down it means that’s how she sees herself, and want others to feel it, too?”

  “I don’t think she even knows why she does it anymore. I believe she’s afraid. She has dementia and she’s afraid and feels totally out of control over even her own life. The most spiteful people are ones who are actually trying to defend themselves from their own reflection.”

  “Pappa says that, too.” She’s silent for a moment and then picks up his magnifying glass. “It’s strange how you can know all this, about why people act the way they do, and still take it personally.”

  He doesn’t know if she’s still talking about Svea or about somebody else.

  “What about the kids in school?” he tries. “The ones who are mean to you. Any chance they’re from the Storfors family?”

  She shakes her head. She’s looking at the tracks on Thore Jederby’s “Boogie-Woogie” with the magnifying glass.

  “So, perhaps they’re from the Färne family?”

  She looks up from the record. “Karro’s last name is Färne.”

  “Karolina Färne. She’s related to little Knut Färne.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Well, he’s not so little anymore. Today he must be … well … over sixty, I imagine. He also lived in a cabin in the woods. They were neighbors to the Storfors. Knut was born nine months after the Zoo Circus had played in Torsby.”

  He thinks back. It’s difficult to relate all the intertwined links going back in time.

  “He seems a likely victim of Svea. She felt helpless, so she took it out on him.”

  Steffi picks up the magnifying glass again. It’s heavy and has a metal edge. Over sixty, she thinks, counting backward. This is like a game of dominoes. One person calls another a “bastard child” and that person calls the next one the same and so on and so on—from pinching a toddler to spitting in people’s math books.

  “So, if those kids hadn’t called Svea a whore child,” she says, “Karro might not be running around spitting on people’s books.”

  Alvar sucks his lip. “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride,” he says. “But sometimes … I wish I had intervened on Svea’s behalf. I never even told her mother in Stockholm how she was being treated. I didn’t want her mother to feel even worse than she already did.” He’s rubbing his forehead and looking out the window. “I was stupid,” he says.

  He’s looking so sad. He’s not even grimacing. His cheeks are drawn down and puffy.

  Steffi looks at him through the magnifying glass. He’s an upside-down version of himself. “But it really wasn’t your fault,” she says.

  “But I was here,” he said. “Or, at least my body was here.”

  * * *

  His body was in Björke. His body put on boots and walked across deep green moss through the forest, inhaling the scent of the woods. The tree trunks around him were silent.

  “Look at that!” his father exclaimed time and time again. “No trees like this in Stockholm! We’ll cut this one down in two years. Are you looking at it?”

  Anita would never recognize him if she saw him like this. The cap he was wearing, for starters.

  “Aren’t you looking at it?” his father repeated. He threw his arm up toward the high branches. “My grandfather planted this tree so we’d have something to harvest seventy years later.”

  He was boasting to Alvar. Alvar stood with his hands down at his sides and tried to look impressed. Sure, it was hep to have a great-grandparent who planted these enormous spruce trees with his own two hands. He wondered whether Anita would be impressed. He wondered if Duke Ellington had released a new record.

  “We’ll be back in time for Gramophone Hour, won’t we?” he asked.

  “Look over there,” his father said. “On the other side of the ridge. Trees never grow well there. There’s something wrong with the soil.”

  Alvar did his best to feel a connection to the trees and the soil beneath his feet. He felt he was standing back in his own childhood; he felt he was sinking, in his boots, into all the dark green moss the train to Stockholm had once liberated him from. This evening he’d listen to Gramophone Hour on the radio, and in another universe Lulle Ellboj would be rounding up his band members to tune their instruments.

  “That’s the way it is,” his father, Inge, continued. “Some trees grow better in one place and not at all in others. That’s just the way it is.”

  His father’s words seemed to carry two meanings, so Alvar had to look at him to see if his father was winking, as if his father was criticizing him, as if he were the bad soil, the soil that could not understand the trees like his brothers did.

  But Inge Svensson had already plodded on. He had started to talk about the woodpeckers.

  His mother was the one who recognized that only her son’s body was in Björke. They’d all finished dinner, but Alvar was still in the kitchen with his guitar. His guitar fit in with the sounds of pots and dishes being cleaned.

  “So, you can go with them tomorrow and you can stay overnight, all three of you,” his mother was chattering on while the sounds of pots and dinnerware continued. Clink, clank, the brush against the pot, the porcelain against the sink.

  It wasn’t exactly a brass section, but he could hear the rhythm of a fox-trot in it. A few wor
ds came to him, a new song lyric. He played the bass line on his guitar. I am so blue, so blue without you. You are free, so free, like a melody.

  “That will be good, won’t it?” his mother asked him.

  Alvar could hear Anita’s voice singing over his bass line. Her voice would carry great emotion, even if it didn’t always hit the note. So free, like a melody.

  He hoped she’d found freedom. He hoped she’d found a job as a secretary and had gotten rid of that violent idiot Ingmar. Her voice was in his mind. I can’t take it. I want to be free. Her giggles, her bubbly voice, her way of making fun of his lyrics, quite rightly, actually. I am so blue, you are you, I am I, like a pie.…

  “Alvar?”

  Alvar jumped. His mother had come from the sink and all the pots to put a damp hand on his shoulder.

  “Where are you?”

  He looked up into her eyes. They were like his; they even shared the same color. “I’m right here.”

  She shook her head. She sat down on a kitchen stool in front of him. “Your body is here. But where are you?”

  Alvar has reached the age of ninety and it’s been almost half a century since his mother had passed away. He still remembers her scent, her face, the way she studied him that evening. He remembers all that much more clearly than what he had for lunch yesterday.

  * * *

  “That evening,” he says to the teenage girl in his room, “that evening I showed her the difference between having rhythm and having drive. And she tried to understand me.”

  Steffi had taken out her phone. She’s pecking at it with a finger, but he keeps talking, he keeps telling her the story anyway. He’s talking to the walls, and for the part of Steffi’s ears that might still be listening.

  “She didn’t understand me until I got to Anita. And told her about Ingmar.”

  Steffi looks up. “What did she say?”

  His heart is warm in his sunken chest. To think you could remember words said so many decades ago. To think you could remember exactly how they were spoken.

  “She said: ‘Listen, Alvar, and think carefully about what I’m saying. Did you move home because you were homesick? Or did you just want to run away and hide?’”

  — CHAPTER 32 —

  The sun was shining through the cold Stockholm air as Alvar stepped off the train. It was the seventeenth of February, 1947, and he was a musician returning to town. He was definitely a homeless musician, but at least he’d had the presence of mind to take a copy of the Stockholm phone book to Björke. He had called everyone he knew until the saxophone player Gunnar Liljebäck had finally agreed to let him sleep on the floor in his apartment until he found a place to live.

  Here was Gunnar, stepping out of the crowd to help Alvar with his suitcases and his upright bass. Casper Hjukström was with him. Alvar peered discreetly around behind them to see if Anita was there. She’d said she might meet him at the station. Anita had been happy when he’d called to let her know he was coming back. Alvar was absolutely certain she’d been happy.

  “Hey there, guys!” he exclaimed as they thumped him on the back in greeting. “Casper, are you on Gunnar’s floor, too?”

  Casper laughed out loud. “We need a bass player,” he said. “We’ve got a studio session on Wednesday, but Thore won’t be back in Stockholm for two more weeks.” He added, “You’re going to like this gig!” He picked up one of Alvar’s suitcases. “We’re backing up Alice Babs!”

  * * *

  By the time he’d spent his third evening on the mattress on Gunnar’s kitchen floor, Alvar’s heart was beginning to ache. He’d had no chance to talk to Anita, that wonderful vision. It’s all or nothing, he’d written to her in a letter. He’d decided to tell her: “I have loved you from the day you saved me from the doorman at 140 Åsö Street.”

  She’d smile, and she’d understand what he meant when he’d go down on one knee. Her eyes would shine.

  Three days later, he’d changed his mind. A new idea had come to him as he wrestled his bass up the stairs to the recording studio: he’d sing for her. He even knew the song he’d choose and he’d sing it softly into her ear once they were alone. All of me. Why don’t you take all of me?

  She’d understand before he’d even go down on one knee, and her eyes would shine.

  * * *

  The atmosphere in the studio was calm, almost subdued. Usually there were more people around, running up and down the stairs and having opinions about the recording sessions. But this was a Sunday. Outside the windows, fluffy snowflakes were drifting down and collecting on the windowsills.

  It wasn’t the first time Alvar had played with big names. He’d played with them at the Winter Palace and at Nalen and in the parks the past few summers. Still, it was different to be standing in a recording studio surrounded by walls, snow, and a hungover city, listening to Alice Babs’s every whisper. He heard Casper Hjukström warming up with scales over in a corner. He listened as Miss Babs began to quietly sing to Charles Norman’s accompaniment on the piano as the studio techs were getting everything in order.

  He should have been overwhelmed with sheer adoration. If his seventeen-year-old self could have seen what he was doing today with all these musicians in a recording studio, he would have burst. But that’s how it goes with such moments in your life. You can’t know until you’re in them how you’re going to feel.

  The next time Casper took a break, Alvar called out to him. “Casper! Wasn’t Anita going to be here?”

  Casper shrugged. He didn’t know.

  “She does know we’re here today, right?” Alvar insisted.

  “Bass player! Can you take your place?” announced a voice from the control booth.

  “That’s Big Boy Svensson,” a younger man said.

  “Big Boy Svensson, could you stand on the tape mark over there?”

  There were four spots of tape on the floor. Alvar put himself and his bass on the right one. Casper stood between him and Alice Babs, who was frowning in concentration, while Charles Norman and the piano were in the usual place in front of the drummer, who was the farthest from the microphone.

  “Take it from the top!” one of the oldest techs said from the booth.

  Watching Alice Babs take the microphone was seeing a professional at work. Alvar had read that she was just a year older than he was, but she’d been a film star when he was still a country boy of seventeen. She kept an eye on the techs to see if she needed to stand closer to or farther back from the microphone and yet she sang with great feeling, as if they’d already begun to record.

  Casper was doing the same with his clarinet. Alvar was glad he didn’t have to move his bass around. His music stand was filled with scribbled sheets of music: holds and harmonies, breaks and solos, all in his crooked handwriting. Educated musicians like Ingmar would laugh at his improvised notation, but one bandleader had told Alvar that he scribbled in his music the way the great Satchmo had before he recorded his songs. “Nice of him to say that,” Anita had wryly commented afterward to make Alvar wonder if the bandleader had just made it all up. Anita was a sharp one. Sharp and nice all at the same time. Hardly anyone was like her.

  “Keep playing,” the tech said while he shifted the musicians with their instruments around the studio. “Take it from the top, Mister Norman! Hey, Pelle, does this sound better?”

  The kid in the control booth gave a thumbs-up. The older tech made a few more adjustments before he was satisfied. Alvar kept studying his handwritten notes and then it came to him that he should have written his letter to Anita on a typewriter.

  “Alvar!” Charles said and winked at him. “Time to swing!”

  And so they played a last run-through before it was time to record. Alvar was eternally grateful to Charles Norman for those words bringing him out of his thoughts and onto one of the first recordings ever made of Sweden’s greatest jazz musicians. He felt the vibration of the rhythms in his bones with Alice Babs, film star, right in front of him the whole time, Charle
s playing behind him on the piano, and the most modern microphone in the world hanging from the ceiling. They played perfectly; hit the notes “on the spot,” as Erling would have said.

  “All right, then, we’ll record,” the studio tech said. “Everyone ready? Three, two, one…”

  When the drummer hit the next-to-the-last beat Alvar was still completely caught up in the music they’d all just been creating. With the last beat, he caught a movement through the window and he craned his neck to see. The blood rushed right to his heart, because wasn’t that Anita herself coming down the hill? He didn’t care how charmingly Alice Babs was smiling or how the drummer, content with how they’d performed, asked him for his telephone number. He didn’t care that he’d just played with Norman on the piano and Hjukström on the clarinet. The girl on the way outside the window, this wonderful apparition, went by the name Anita Bergner.

  She was laughing as she came through the door. She was covered in freshly fallen snow. Alvar helped her brush it off and proudly introduced her to the other musicians who hadn’t yet met her. He had the letter in his coat pocket and his coat called to him from its place on the coatrack. He would pull out the letter and read it to her. Then he’d ask his question. No, first he’d ask and then he’d pull out the letter.

  “Oh, what are you thinking about, Alvar?” she asked. She laughed at his confused expression. “Weren’t you listening? Charles was just inviting us all out for a bite to eat.”

  Alvar nodded, thought, tried to think. “Later. Let’s take a walk first, shall we?”

  “In this snowstorm?”

  Anita was looking at him quizzically, but then she nodded and wrapped her scarf back around her neck. “He’s a country boy,” she said, winking at the others. “The weather never bothers him!”

  He let them laugh at him because he had the best woman of all holding his hand. She held it naturally and tightly as they walked down the stairs. He was hers and she already knew this.

  Still, he found it impossible to get the words out. Anita was talking about Charles Norman, jazz, the snow, her boss, her work as a secretary. She’d had her job for a month and a half.