Clinch

by Martin Holmén

  By the time I’ve come back into the kitchen with her shoes, Doris has straightened up. My knees click as I squat by her feet. Her silk stocking is soft in my hand as I slowly roll it up. I fumble with the eyelets before finally managing to fix the stockings over her thighs. Doris takes my hand and guides it up between her legs. I feel her pubic hairs through the flimsy fabric of her panties.

  ‘Harry…?’

  ‘Not now. We need to get you home.’

  ‘I don’t care about myself. We can do it the way you like it. Any way you like,’ she drawls. I grunt and put the white, high-heeled shoes on her feet. She sobs and draws breath. ‘My earring. I can’t possibly go home without my earring.’

  I look up. She’s tugging at her earlobe. Her fake eyelash flutters.

  ‘You’ve already got half your belongings here as it is. It’ll be fine.’

  ‘Out of the question. Ludvig would know something was up.’

  I sigh and manage to do up the ankle straps with their tiny buckles. Doris’s breathing rattles as she struggles for air again. I stand up and walk out of the room. The green earring is between the pillows in the bed. I put it in my pocket.

  I go out into the hall and put on my overcoat and hat while Dixie is jumping around my legs. I bend down, throw Doris’s coat over my shoulder and thread the loop of Dixie’s leash over my wrist.

  When I come into the kitchen again, Doris has almost fallen asleep over the table. I poke her and she slowly lifts her head. One of her fake eyelashes is still hanging loose.

  ‘Hold still a second,’ I say, and pull it off between my thumb and forefinger. She doesn’t react.

  I slide one arm under her knees and the other around her back. She puts her arms around my neck while I carry her out of the flat and down the stairs. Resting her face against my chest, she sighs with satisfaction, like a child.

  ‘You’re a headstrong bloke, Harry,’ she whispers hoarsely once we’re in the street. ‘That’s what made me give in to you at first. You didn’t give up when I played hard to get; you kept chasing me.’ She sighs again. She must have me confused with someone else.

  I get the car door open. Dixie jumps in and curls up below the passenger seat. I heave Doris in and drape the coat over her. There’s a cold draught. When I close the car door I notice a big patch of saliva and lipstick on my white shirt piece.

  Doris sobs all the way to Karlaplan, but she starts coming out of it as we turn off Narvavägen on the roundabout. She gets out a cigarette. We’ve hardly met a soul on the way, but when we turn into Linnégatan by the garrison building, we pass a Norwegian pony harnessed to an unused cart. The creamy yellow animal stands immobile in the cold under a streetlamp as though it were sleeping. There’s no sign of a driver. The scene fills me with disquiet.

  ‘I hope Bengta makes a better job of the Christmas food this year.’

  I’m startled by the sudden sound of Doris’s slovenly voice. I stare at her, sitting there staring out of her window. Her reflection is bright when she lights her cigarette.

  ‘Bengta?’

  ‘The maid.’

  ‘Didn’t you say you always go away for Christmas?’

  I turn into Strandvägen. We pass the red-brick monstrosity of the English Church, with the slanted gravestones scattered across its churchyard.

  ‘I didn’t go with them last year. I was ill, you see. Here it is.’

  Doris points to a big dark villa rearing up behind a high white wall exactly where Nobelgatan and Strandvägen meet. I veer off towards the waters of Djurgårdsbrunnsviken, so we can come around at the front.

  ‘You can park in the street.’

  I slow down. The white wall looks as if it’s just been re-painted. Quietly we glide past a pair of cast-iron gates. On each of the gates is a lit-up golden numeral: a two and a one. I peer through the bars. I remember walking past this house on the way to the World Exhibition a few years ago and wondering who lived here.

  From the gates there’s a path leading up to the front steps. It has not been properly cleared of snow, and it’s bordered by lit lanterns, which make the surrounding crusted snow glitter at regular intervals. Four Greek columns around the main entrance hold up a terrace. The four-storey house is steeped in darkness. The small mullioned windows are entirely surrounded by Virginia creepers.

  I stop behind an elegant company car, a Rolls Royce, some three or four metres to the left of the gates. When the sound of the powerful engine dies, the compartment is filled with silence. Doris crushes her cigarette in the ashtray but remains seated. Between the trees along the water’s edge one can make out the snow-covered ice of Djurgårdsbrunnsviken. Cut spruce branches have been thrown down in the snow to define the edges of the ice rink, but it’s been a few days since someone last cleared the snow.

  I glance at Doris, who’s staring at the coat in her lap. I get out, walk round the car, and open her door. Dixie jumps out onto the ice-covered pavement, twitching her cropped ears. I offer Doris my hand, and she gets out laboriously. She puts on her coat and I give her Dixie’s leash. Doris straightens her back with a sigh, sooty black rings of mascara standing out around her eyes. She pats her hair.

  ‘See you on Christmas Day, Harry. Take care of yourself till then.’ She leans in towards me and misses my mouth.

  I peer up at the dark house while fishing for a Meteor in my pocket. ‘It’s only a couple of days.’

  Doris nods, turns around and heads for the gates, swaying slightly as she goes. Dixie whines and slides along behind her for a metre or so, before getting up on all fours. Doris’s right heel abruptly folds inwards when she steps on a patch of ice. She mutters indistinctly and continues through the gate while scratching her shoulder.

  I look around. The spiky auras of the stars are shredding the black December night. Across the ice, I see the radiant lights of Sirishov, where Wallenberg lives, in the darkness. The imposing house is even bigger than the Steiner’s place. Wallenberg and Steiner could more or less call out to each other across the water if they wanted to. I don’t read the business pages very attentively, but for some reason I don’t think either of the finance magnates would want to do that.

  I have probably a two-hour walk ahead of me through the dead city. I take a few steps and glance up at the house again. Then I recoil.

  On the top floor, a dark figure is standing in a dimly lit room. He’s a short, squat bloke, his outline hazily defined by the light behind him. His face is faintly illuminated when he draws on a cigar. He seems to be looking directly at me. I think he’s smiling.

  I put my Meteor in my mouth and look down at my shirt, while fumbling with the buttons of my jacket and overcoat. Doris’s lipstick gleams over my chest like the bull’s eye of a marksman’s target.

  It’s about ten o’clock at night a few days later, and it’s been some time since the snow was last brushed off the statue of Berzelius in the little park in front of Bern’s Club. By Nybroplan, the pavilion with Aerotransport’s travel agency has been closed. On the quays of Strandvägen, the bent silhouettes of the cranes lean over the ice. This is where the Roslag skiffs usually reverse in stern first to unload firewood. The snow has stopped falling for a while, and the sky is clear and starry.

  It’s the day before Christmas. In the famous song, this was the spot where the guardsman and the Stockholm maid first met, but that must have been in summer. Now the park lies deserted. When the bugle sounds in a few hours and the sentries stop the sailors from going back to Skeppsholmen and the garrisons have closed for the night, the whole place will be crawling with recruits looking for somewhere to spend the night. Not for nothing is the pontoon linking Berzelii Park with Skeppsholmen known as the Last Hope. Probably Zetterberg used to hang around here a good deal.

  I sit on my bicycle between Mille’s granite sculpture of playing bears by the east entrance to the park wearing an oversized beret, long johns, baggy trousers with an elastic waistband, a singlet, a shirt and a knitted tennis jumper under my sports blazer and
overcoat. And still I’m cold.

  A bloke in a top hat in a group heading towards Bern’s stops and asks for a light. His cigar smells more expensive than my own. Although there’s a lull now, it’s been snowing heavily all day. I counted six snowmen as I cycled through the park earlier. Under Tornberg’s clock, at the front of the Royal National Theatre, a well-dressed gentleman paces back and forth, rubbing his hands together. In the distance is a green urinal with a glass ceiling. It’s of the French model, with walls that do not quite reach the ground. A couple of plain-clothes goons, public decency officers, have been circling the urinal since I arrived fifteen minutes ago. They walk up to it at regular intervals, get down on all fours and look under the wall. They almost always work in pairs: recruits from the Svea Life Guards, horse guardsmen from K1 and the boys from the Marine Corps are rarely cooperative.

  But the goons don’t seem willing to give up on this one. In Humlegården there are more pissoirs and they’re warmer too. I throw my leg over the bike and start pedalling, still with the cigar in my mouth. The pistol jangles against my ribs with every push of the pedal. I think about Doris at home, just a few hundred metres away, busy with Christmas preparations. It’s a relief to be rid of her for a few days. I’m doing a couple of jobs for Wernersson and, as usual, I’m having Christmas luncheon with Lundin. When we see each other again, she may be in better spirits and also willing to do without the syringe.

  It doesn’t take long. By the side of the telephone booth, a short distance in under the bare trees, I can make out the urinal on the corner between Humlegårdsgatan and Sturegatan. I smile to myself. I have many happy memories from here. The snow billows around me as I apply the brakes.

  Really it’s more of a rank-smelling wooden house than a urinal. The frozen, gold-glittering spike of water in the gutter has been perforated at various points by jets of body-warm urine. Bill posters have been put up on the ceiling, all slightly wonky. They’re so old that it’s no longer possible to read what’s written on them. The messages on the walls, carved with knives, are easier to decipher. Here, swastikas sit alongside spiteful remarks and pick-up lines. One of them says, I fornicate better with my thing than the King.

  I’m on my way out when I run into Göteborgs-Olga.

  ‘Oh, Kvisten!’

  Göteborgs-Olga is wearing an overcoat with a broad belt that’s done up a touch too tight. His hair spills out from under his hat and almost reaches his collar. Like nearly all park queens, he uses a female nickname. He tells everyone that he works at the theatre, but as far as I know he’s nothing more than an unpaid prompter.

  ‘Wasn’t exactly yesterday!’ He pushes the flat of his hand into my chest.

  ‘Olga!’ I stop. ‘You old bitch!’

  ‘Bitch yourself!’ Olga points his finger at me and throws back his head, laughing so hard that he drops his hat.

  I bend down and pick it up. I’ve missed this place.

  ‘Oh, Kvisten, always such a gentleman!’ Olga smiles and opens his eyes wide while he puts the hat back on his head. ‘Tell me now! Why are you loitering here in midwinter?’

  ‘I’m looking for a bloke. By name of Zetterberg.’

  ‘Oh it’s always like that! Bloke looking for a bloke and the girl has to go home on her own!’ Olga puts his fists on his hips and struts about a bit in the snow in front of the urinal. In the background, a man who seems in a hurry suddenly stops as he’s making his way into the park, and turns around.

  ‘Have you ever met someone called Zetterberg? One of his eyes is a different colour from the other. Elegant type, bit of a snob, between thirty and forty. A large signet ring of gold.’

  ‘Elegant, you say? You know what? In that case I’d rather do without!’

  ‘Well, I’ll make a loop round the park and ask about.’ I squeeze his arm.

  ‘Oh but do let me come with!’ Olga puts his arms around me. ‘I can show you Humlan in her winter clothes.’ He whispers into my ear: ‘I know all her hiding places, every nook and cranny! Come, let me be your Virgil!’

  He tugs at my arm and I push him away. I don’t know who Virgil might be, but I assume that Olga prefers it in the Greek manner. I doff my cap by way of a farewell, and stroll off into the park.

  I walk round Humlegården for about half an hour, seeking information. I wander between the Royal Library and the gentlemen’s toilets, up around Linné’s statue and down the sheer, icy slopes of Klara Hill where the kids have compacted the snow with their sledges. On spring evenings, bluebells and crocuses fill the slopes and there are considerably more friends about. But in spite of all, I do run into the odd acquaintance. The hoar frost lies thick on the branches of the trees. There’s not a sod anywhere who’s heard of someone called Zetterberg.

  ‘I was here the day before yesterday. I got offered a job by the kid in the bar,’ I say when the spy hatch in the door on Kommendörsgatan slides open.

  The lock rattles and I am let into the warmth. The short gangster on the other side of the door has changed suit to a black thing with wide lapels.

  ‘I have to search you.’

  ‘I have a pistol.’

  I open my blazer. The gangster nods. He puts on a pair of leather gloves before he pulls it out.

  ‘Pretty holster.’ He grins at my home-made effort with the braces. I hold out my arms and he starts patting me down. It’s quite a drawn-out process, given the amount of clothes I’m wearing.

  ‘Why don’t you use that if you can’t reach?’ I point at the little three-legged stool behind the door. He doesn’t seem to find it very amusing, but nonetheless he nods down the passage.

  ‘I’ll give you the shooter back when you’re coming out.’

  The smoky premises are darker than before, and there are considerably more people both on the dance floor and in the bar. I step inside just as the jazz orchestra finishes a number to a round of applause.

  ‘What an entrance!’ The same hostess is here as when Doris and I visited. She smiles.

  I remove a couple of layers of clothes and hang them up on one of many hangers by the entrance, then draw a comb through my hair. The hostess tucks her arm into mine and leads me across the dance floor. A trumpet player has been added to the jazz quartet. He takes the microphone and says a few words in English. He speaks a little too fast for me to keep up.

  The drummer counts them in and quickly starts whisking up the beat. One by one the instruments fall in, people on the dance floor start moving their hips. Finally the trumpet player breaks in with a long, plaintive note, and some of the dancers hold their hands in the air and start shaking them.

  A bloke in a dinner jacket and spiked hair dances onto the floor. He’s pretending to play the trumpet with an empty bottle of champagne. The hostess’s smile intensifies, and she takes a few sharp Charleston steps back and forth. I hang in there as she dances.

  At the bar is a gang of young men in dinner jackets and girls with red-painted lips and evening dresses in various colours and styles. They all have glittering paper hats on their heads. The trumpet player sings a few lines.

  ‘And so we’re here!’ The hostess makes a little twirling pirouette under my arm, fires off a last smile and leaves me at the bar. I hop up on the high stool and put my boots on the foot rail. The lady next to me is wearing a pair of gentleman’s tails and smoking through a long cigarette holder. Under her veiled hat is a blonde, short-cropped head of hair. In her earlobes are round green stones.

  With his white cotton gloves, the short bartender looks like the cartoon mouse in Stockholms Dagblad. I make a sweeping gesture at the shelves of drinks, and he nods. I can smell perfume, sweat and dope, a treacherous smoking blend that I once tried in French Morocco.

  A young, spindly man with his dark hair in an unimpeachable, slicked-back hairstyle stands at the bar looking lonely. I get my fruit squash. This time it’s red and it costs ten kronor. I can’t stay here for long.

  ‘Hey, kid,’ I say to the bartender. ‘I didn’t get a parasol.’<
br />
  ‘We’ve run out.’

  ‘Okay. Do you know someone called Zetterberg?’

  ‘Sure, if you stay he’ll be along later.’ The kid smiles.

  ‘Young man, well dressed, one eye a different colour from the other?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Gold tooth and a signet ring?’

  ‘That I don’t know.’

  ‘Hasn’t been here for a while?’

  ‘Now you say it, yeah that’s true, but sooner or later he’ll turn up, you’ll see.’

  The bartender makes eye contact with someone and seems about to walk off. I grab his wrist.

  ‘Does he socialise with anyone who’s here tonight?’

  ‘Don’t you cause any trouble now.’

  ‘There’s not going to be any trouble.’

  ‘We don’t gossip about our guests and they don’t gossip about us.’

  I let go of him and follow him with my eyes. I wonder how much he knows. I can’t afford to sit here all night, and if I’m going to beat the truth out of him I’ll have to wait outside in the cold. The youth at the bar finally gives me the eye. I raise my glass and smile at him. The squash tastes a little less of squash than when I last sipped it.

  This must have been Zetterberg’s home pitch. For once my intuition seems to be right. I spin round on the bar stool. In a corner sits a young man with black mascara round his eyes, a white shirt, bow-tie, and a red silk smoking jacket over his clothes. Sure enough he’s smoking, also biting his nails. On the dance floors, one of the stripling transvestites is hysterically waving his arms above his head while spinning round on his high heels.

  Who did Zetterberg see socially? My eyes sweep across the room. What if he saw something or someone he should not have seen in a place like this, and demanded a lot of dough to keep his mouth shut? Maybe that was why he got an axe in the head? I spin towards the bar again and knock back my drink.

  I’m halfway through my second glass when the boy with the slicked-back hair comes forwards. He moves languidly, a cigarette in his right hand and his other inserted into the left pocket of the buttoned-up jacket. I spin around. My legs are wide apart and my boots rest on the circular rail of the stool. One of my elbows is leaning against the bar. I smile. I can’t afford another drink. Not for myself and even less for him.