Doris opens the glove compartment, gets out a green bottle and takes a pull at it. It smells like cognac. She passes the bottle over and I have a little sip myself.
‘Signe Rudin, the actress. Slapstick movies and other rubbish.’
‘Were you ever in a film with her?’
Doris laughs. ‘No, that was after my time.’
‘Why did you stop?’
‘I met Ludvig, I got pregnant, and then I started suffering from rheumatic pains. I couldn’t just bounce out of bed and pick up where I left off.’
‘How did you meet?’
‘Through girlfriends we had in common, at Feith’s Patisserie.’
‘No, I mean you and your dear husband.’
Doris takes another gulp and jams the bottle between her thighs. We turn into Sveavägen. The number 14 tram comes towards us, ploughing its way through the snow. She fishes out a cigarette from a pack of Camels.
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘He interests me.’
‘It was a few years after the war. Spring 1923. I really needed a big part to get my career going again.’
The matchstick snaps when she’s lighting the cigarette, and she gets out another. This time she has more success, and she blows a thin jet of smoke right at the windscreen.
‘I was working with Mauritz Stiller. He’d more or less promised me the main role in Gösta Berling’s Saga. He invited me and my brother for a dinner with Kreuger, on a ferry crossing. Ludvig was there. They knew each other from way back. Especially Ludvig and Mauritz.’
‘So you knew Ivar Kreuger, then?’
‘Of course!’ Slowly the car fills with smoke.
‘What was he like?’
‘Polite, urbane, considerate. Generous.’
‘I heard he was involved in a fair amount of shady dealings.’
‘I doubt it.’
‘How did your husband and Stiller know each other?’
Doris takes a deep drag and stares out into the night. ‘Don’t know.’
‘What happened at that dinner?’
She sighs.
At the junction of Sveavägen and Odengatan the passengers have had to get off the 51 bus. A policeman in the characteristic fur hat of the Traffic Division is directing a group of blokes pushing it up the hill. On the back of the vehicle is a promotional poster for milk, featuring a big smiling mouth with evenly shaped, white teeth. The wheels spin round, spattering sooty, slushy snow over the volunteers.
‘Mauritz and Ivar discussed the construction of yet one more picture house and other projects. My brother played at the edge of the water. Ludvig was mainly occupied with me. He was courting me.’
‘Why did you fall for him?’
‘Can we stop by a chemist?’
‘It’s gone ten o’clock. There are none open now!’
‘You can always ring the bell.’
‘We’re almost home. Do you have a prescription?’
‘It should be fine.’
‘Not without a prescription. Then what happened?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘After the crossing.’
‘Do you remember that accident, the big explosion in Ropsten?’
‘Sure.’ I don’t have any idea what she’s talking about.
‘Ludvig kept calling on me in the following days. We got engaged. On the same day that Mauritz told me the main part had gone to Greta Garbo instead of me, my father was killed in that accident.’ I hear Doris unscrewing the bottle top. ‘Three days later Ludvig proposed.’
‘Every cloud has a silver lining.’
I turn into Roslagsvägen. The back end of the car almost spins out of control. I accelerate out of the skid, and the car lurches. Doris puts her hand on the chrome-plated instrument panel.
‘I had my mother and younger siblings to think about.’
‘So you became pregnant almost straightaway, then?’
‘I could really do with some more Veronal. And I’ve run out of cigarettes.’
‘I can get you some cigarettes. Should I drop you off first?’
She nods. We pass the junk shop and Bruntell’s. She takes a pull at the bottle and stares straight ahead.
‘That fucking Greta Garbo.’
I glance at her. It’s the first time I’ve heard her swear.
Cautiously I slow down outside my house and Doris gets out. She holds the long black train of her evening dress as she goes inside.
I let the sixteen-cylinder engine throb for a moment before I release the clutch and softly pull away. For a moment I think about turning round and going to the cigarette boy outside Restaurant Monopol, but I keep going.
By the folk school I drive past a man in an elegant overcoat and decent boots. He’s holding onto the low crown of his hat, and he walks doubled up like an old miner in the stiff breeze. Just as I pass him he straightens his back. I stiffen. It’s Rickardsson, one of Ploman’s gangsters. There’s really nothing untoward about it; he lives somewhere around here with his wife and daughters and he likes to take an evening walk, but the look he gives me makes me tighten my grip on the steering wheel. I think about the shootings up in Vanadislunden and I realise that I have now got myself a bunch of powerful enemies.
I turn into Vallhallavägen. I try to shake off my disquiet, and put a cigar in my mouth.
On the corner of Frejgatan stands a chestnut mare with an empty cart. The driver stands beside the horse. He’s wearing a long coat and a scarf wrapped around his chest. His hands are buried in the horse’s coat, to keep the warmth.
The late-opening tobacco kiosk by Östermalm Grammar School on Karlavägen has run out of Camel. The falling snow is intensifying, flying under my hat, lodging in my eyebrows and lashes. I blink.
‘Something that’s like Camel, then?’
‘Carat? Almost sounds the same.’ The man behind the glass window is wearing a hat with earmuffs and keeps his hands tucked into his armpits, even though on the floor behind him there’s a little glowing metal radiator.
‘What about the taste?’
Someone sighs loudly behind me. I turn around. It’s an old bloke with a monocle hanging by a black silk ribbon across his chest. He’s wearing a grey cylindrical hat and a black overcoat with a fur-trimmed collar, his stick hooked over his right arm, a pair of gloves in his hand. I smile at him. He doesn’t like that; he seems to withdraw.
‘Stamboul. But it’s filterless. What about Arab? Arabs and camels?’
‘Stamboul will be fine.’
‘One?’
‘Fifty.’ I’m stamping my boots at the snow. I can no longer feel my toes.
‘Fifty Stamboul. That’ll be two seventy-five.’
I hurry back to the car with the cigarettes. The snow is blowing directly into my face and I’m cowering behind my hat like an amateur keeping up his guard.
When I look up for a moment to see where I’ve parked, I sense a familiar figure on the other side of the street. I stop. The wind almost sweeps off my hat.
It’s Leonard, the kid from Bellevueparken. He’s coming out of Gnistan Restaurant on the other side of the street and walking towards his black Mercedes. My heart skips a beat, then beats, then skips again.
‘Hey! Leonard!’
The broad lanes of Karlavägen are separated by an alley of bare trees with a pedestrian path in the middle. The wind catches my voice and tosses it back towards Karlaplan. My back groans as I bend down and scoop up a handful of cold powder snow. It seeps between my fingers as I try to form a snowball. Leonard is keeping one hand on his hat. As he moves along he puts a cigarette in his mouth. He doesn’t light it. He’s swaying slightly.
‘Wait, Leonard!’ I’m roaring as loudly as I can. By the time he finally sees me he’s reached his Mercedes. I take off my hat, and breathe a sigh of relief. He stares at me from the other side of the street. I break into a sweat.
He hops into his sports car, the engine rumbles to life and, before I know it, he’s sped off in a roaring cloud
of exhaust and snow crystals.
I’m already back at the Cadillac, but when I open the door, it rebounds with a dull thud against the snowbank along the verge and closes again. I punch the spare tyre hanging on the side of the car, then open the door again and squeeze through into the driver’s seat.
The spinning wheels pack the snow down until the tyres gain some traction. The power of the engine presses me back into the seat. After a U-turn at the roundabout on Karlaplan some twenty metres away, I’ll be on his tail.
I reach the roundabout at high speed. From the left comes a small, four-horse-power delivery van, but I squeeze ahead of it, spin the wheel to the right and apply the handbrake. The back wheels glide away from me, but then the brakes bite and send the entire vehicle into a spin. The headlights pass over the Christmas trees piled up under Karlavägen’s own line of trees, then over the sign on the roof of the delivery van, which announces a MASSIVE SALE OF WHITE GOODS, and then finally reflect against the corrugated iron of the shacks around the Pit.
I release the handbrake and pump the clutch up and down. Snow sprays in all directions. The car keeps spinning, passing the pool construction in the middle of the roundabout and, for a moment, facing a truck from Karlavägen. My eyes meet the driver’s. He has a potato nose and a big, bushy moustache. Before the beams of his headlights hit me square in the eye, I see him opening his mouth in a silent cry.
I lunge at the accelerator and turn the wheel. The engine roars like a wounded bear. For a moment the truck is up on two wheels, and while I am accelerating north in the right-hand lane, a deafening din erupts, when dozens of milk churns fall to the ground.
Quickly I work my way up the gears. Because there are many more vehicles in the left lane on Karlavägen, I keep to the right, where the number of oncoming cars are few. The grammar school whizzes by, a Ford veers ahead of me and hurtles into the snow drift that borders the road on both sides. I’m gaining on Leonard. If I put my nose against the windscreen, I can see the tail end of his black sports car far ahead.
The shop signs in the corner of my eye get ever hazier as my speed picks up. The Swedish-American Tailor’s Firm, Karlavägen Art Materials, Lindgren’s Lighting Oil & Home Furnishings Shop, the tobacconist, the piano tuner. I pass Siewertz’s Patisserie and floor the accelerator. The engine growls in protest. The bare alley of trees along the pedestrian path in the middle seems to be on the move, the trees walking along with their arms joined. My fingers cramp around the steering wheel. The Pharmacy Elefanten flies past. From Humlegården a police car quickly approaches on my side of the road. It’s time to change lanes. It should be possible to do it in two steps.
My heart is bouncing like a ball in my chest. Where Sturegatan crosses Karlavägen, I press down on the clutch and swerve to the left before I wedge the car onto the pedestrian path on my right by once again stamping on the accelerator.
Snow is spouting all around the car. The American speedometer quickly rises beyond the sixty mark again. The snow crystals clamber over the split windscreen but the speed of the oncoming wind forces them to the sides. The police car sounds its horn at length as it surges past. When I get to Floragatan I repeat the manoeuvre and end up in the appropriate lane.
Leonard is only about twenty metres ahead of me. The street lies empty between us.
‘Now I’ll show you!’
We pass Humlegården. He increases his speed but I stay with him. Far behind us I hear the police car in pursuit. I press the needle past seventy miles per hour.
On the roof of the Soviet Legation the red flag droops in the snowfall. Inside the welter of shacks and lean-tos in the Mire, a couple of weary campfires are gleaming. I gain a few more metres on Leonard. We draw close to the crossroads with Odensgatan. He doesn’t slow down. I keep my hand on the horn.
A woman in a grey coat and shawl appears from behind one of the snowbanks, pushing a wicker pram. I step on the brake. Leonard speeds up.
The woman shoves the pram forwards and throws herself back into the snow. The black car misses her by a hair’s breadth. I hold my breath. My heart is close to blowing up inside. Doris’s car makes slow revolutions as it glides sideways along the street. I’m surrounded by white snow. The whole car is vibrating. I throw my arm over the seat and turn my head. The back-end misses the pram by a half-metre or so. The car lunges to a stop. There’s a smell of singed brake pads. The gauges in the chrome instrument panel have gone back to zero. My breath shivers with agitation.
There’s no sign of the black sports car. The police sirens cut through the woman’s piercing scream. She can’t stop. Her shawl is still on the snowbank like an old fishing net on a bone-white beach. Through the side window I see the red emergency lights approaching through the snowfall some hundred metres or so away. I turn the wheel, change down and press the accelerator. I want to go home.
Despite detours and extra circuits of the streets at home in Sibirien, I get home in five minutes. I sit for a while in the dark stairwell to catch my breath. I think about the woman with the pram. The elastic snaps when I open my wallet, get out the photograph and angle it to catch the faint light of the streetlight outside. The crackled picture is like a glittering grey mosaic. I push back my hat.
Lundin’s sign is creaking in the wind.
‘Little Ida,’ I hear myself muttering. I slide my thumb across the photograph and put it back. I stand up and climb the stairs, massaging the bridge of my nose. I’ve got a hell of a headache.
I go inside. The hall is also dark. Dixie comes hurtling along. Her claws scrape against my knees. She whines and yaps. There’s a smell of coffee and tobacco. I let my overcoat fall to the floor in a heap.
Doris is leaning against the draining board. She’s changed into a white, toga-like evening dress, with white heels. As usual she’s wearing false eyelashes, and her absinthe-green nail varnish matches her earrings. Behind her lie two of her fur coats. She’s holding a coffee cup.
‘I could only get Stamboul.’
I hand over the cigarettes and she gives me her empty coffee cup in return.
‘Everyone has a telephone nowadays.’
‘My social circle is not so very big.’
‘Why don’t you have one?’
‘Lundin’s telephone does me fine, I’ve told you a thousand times.’
I put the coffee cup on the draining board. The cigarette butts in the sink are sooty black at one end and crimson red at the other. In the yard, the door of the potato cellar slams again. I wriggle out of my jacket.
‘Don’t get undressed.’ She picks up the fur coats and presses them into my arms. ‘I’m in pain. I need my medicine.’ She picks up a half-full bottle of cognac. Lundin bangs his broom against the ceiling as she walks out of the kitchen.
‘Have you taken Dixie for her walk?’
The Husqvarna is still in pieces on the newspaper on the kitchen table.
‘It’s urgent!’ She turns around and puts one hand on her hip. Lundin has another go with the broom. I swagger along behind her with the fur coats held like two overgrown cats – by the scruff of their necks. She throws the door open and walks on ahead down the stairs. I hang up the furs in the hall and get back into my overcoat. By the time I’m walking out into the falling snow, she’s already sitting in the passenger seat of her Cadillac.
I walk round to the driver’s side and open the door. Doris lights a cigarette as I’m getting in. The seat hasn’t even had time to go cold. She’s staring fixedly straight ahead.
‘The furs.’
‘Furs?’
‘Yes, you idiot! The furs!’
I feel a sizzle of anger, but rather than clocking her one, I slam the car door. I go up and fetch the damned furs, walk back down again, throw them at her, then get in.
‘And now?’
‘The pawnshop on Storgatan.’
I check my watch. ‘It’s almost eleven.’
‘I know the owners. They live in the flat above. They won’t say no to Persian and seal musquash
.’
‘Doris. It’s almost eleven.’
‘Harry, if you had a telephone we wouldn’t need to have this conversation.’
The engine spins to life and we drive off. Doris knocks back a mouthful straight from the bottle, lights a new cigarette from the old one and blows a smoke ring. It hovers between us like an empty speech bubble.
There’s no point reasoning with a drunk. I remember what a balancing act it is from the years when I looked a little too deep into the bottle myself. It’s all about finding the right balance between various beverages and staying on your feet for as long as possible, before collapsing on one or the other side of the tightrope. Maybe it’s possible to have a couple of good hours per day. Whatever side you fall on, it’s going to hurt. The problem is, there’s no choice. You have to find your way back up that damned rope. Without exceptions.
It’s snowing less now. I drive down Sveavägen with the windscreen wipers switched on. In front of me, a Central Garage tow truck is pulling a Volvo home. I have trouble finding any purchase in the curve as I turn into Hamngatan. The rear-end flexes with the soft suspension. Doris keeps one of her hands on the instrument panel and looks out of the side window. Maybe she’s crying. I daren’t look.
Nybroviken ice rink lies there gleaming, silent and deserted in the night. As we pass the National Theatre and drive into Strandvägen, I notice a police car in my rear-view mirror. We go past Kreuger’s old house and I pick up speed. Most likely the goons on Karlavägen have stopped and put out a call for our Cadillac, but it seems unlikely that it’s gone out to the other cars yet, and probably they didn’t get our registration plates. We follow the road for a while to the east.
‘You can’t build a city on islands and peninsulas.’
‘What do you mean?’ I peer into my mirror. Because the police car doesn’t seem to want to veer off, I turn into Torstenssonsgatan.
‘Sometimes I think it’s sinking right into the water. So slowly that we don’t even notice,’ Doris whispers hoarsely.
‘A rotten city,’ I say.
Doris lights a new cigarette from the old. She looks down at her hands. She puts her cigarette in her mouth and spins her wedding ring on her finger. I can see her skin shining all white, like a scar, underneath. I drive past the post office and check that the police car is no longer following us.
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