Swede Hollow

by Ola Larsmo

  “Gustaf is your husband?” the pastor quietly asked. Anna nodded. She took a few breaths and thought, I don’t know him. I don’t know who this young man is, except that his name is Anderson and he has a lovely Bible and he was probably born in the States. Then she said quickly, all in one breath, “I think she’s pregnant, she hasn’t said anything yet, but I can tell, and soon other people will see it too.”

  Pastor Anderson sat in silence for a moment. Then he tilted his head to one side, and she was afraid he might smile, but he didn’t.

  “I assume that your daughter isn’t yet married,” he said calmly.

  Anna shook her head.

  “Is there any fiancé in the picture?” he asked, now looking up at the deserted dais.

  She nodded and said, “He has a job working on the railroad.”

  The pastor sighed.

  “You and your family live in the Hollow, isn’t that right, Mrs. Klar? You’re neighbors with the Nilssons?”

  She nodded.

  “How would you feel if I asked Deaconess Stromberg to come and have a talk with your daughter one day this week? When your husband is at work.” And he added in a kindly tone of voice, “I want you to know this isn’t the first time this has happened, Mrs. Klar.”

  Anna was afraid he might touch her, put his hand on her shoulder or take her hand, so she moved away a bit. She was thinking that she needed to get out of this big, suffocating room, out to the street where the Nilssons were undoubtedly waiting for her, though they wouldn’t wait forever. She didn’t want to think about how it would be to walk home alone through the unfamiliar streets where she didn’t recognize a single face and all the words meant something else, even though she could probably find her way to the tunnel. The pastor sat there, young and silent, waiting for her to answer. She had to put an end to this.

  “Yes,” she said at last. “That would be good. That’s very kind of you. Elisabet works at the Johnson laundry from Wednesday to Saturday, but otherwise she’s home with me.”

  “And the Nilssons know where you live?” said Anderson. She nodded.

  “Then I’ll speak to the deaconess,” said Anderson, getting to his feet. Anna also stood up and followed him into the center aisle. She still didn’t dare look at him as she gave a brief curtsy. He merely smiled, nodded, and left.

  The padded church doors closed behind her with a sigh. All three Nilsson women were waiting for her on the front steps. Mrs. Nilsson and Lisbet looked at Anna as she came out of the church, while Kristina stood off to one side, with her eyes fixed on the street. Her lips were moving silently.

  “Was it good to speak to the pastor?” asked Mrs. Nilsson as they walked along Payne Avenue with her daughters following a few steps behind. Anna nodded and forced herself to say, “Yes, I suppose so.” Then neither of them spoke again as they walked toward Beaumont Street and the tunnel to go home. It was a comfortable silence. The weather was cool without being chilly. But the sky was covered by a shapeless, whitish haze without beginning or end; it arched overhead, enveloping them from all directions, no matter where they went. Anna didn’t dare look up but instead kept her gaze fixed on the pavement. She knew that when the pavement ended, they would soon be home.

  :: :: ::

  The old, all-too-familiar anger slid easily into place, the way a pane of glass fits into a finished window frame. Once again it separated Gustaf from the rest of the world. No matter where he turned, it was there. Everything looked the same, everything was familiar, yet there was a barrier between him and everyday life. He wanted to kill. He wanted Leonard Hammerberg to die. This was something messy and blurry that soiled everything around him—a blot, a smudge that prevented him from seeing clearly and that had to be rubbed away with a great deal of effort. Then maybe the world would return to the way it used to look. But he didn’t know whether that was even possible anymore. Leonard had ruined everything. The minute Gustaf thought about the matter, his pulse would start hammering in his temples. And it didn’t stop.

  On his way back from work, he walked in silence beside Jonathan. Mechanically he clenched and unclenched his fists, no longer aware of the usual ache in his arms or the dull pain in his back.

  During the past week it had snowed off and on, leaving a thin layer of snow on the slope down toward the Irish sector. The wind had blown snow into the corners of the brick wall below the viaduct up toward Seventh Street and formed a drift two feet high that was already coated with soot. Gustaf went over to the snowdrift and fell to his knees. He stuck his hands and arms as deep as he could into the crusty snow, feeling the icy surface tearing at his wrists as the cold seeped through his jacket and shirtsleeves. Then he screamed at the brick wall’s contorted patterns of stone and soot until there was no air left in his lungs. He grabbed handfuls of snow to rub over his face, as if that might wash him clean. The snow was greasy and smelled of sulfur, but the cold woke him. Ice water dripped from his face, leaving dark streaks in the white snow he’d dug up. And all hope of anything else was sullied and dashed, broken and trickling away.

  Suddenly Jonathan stood next to him, yanking him to his feet. “Gustaf Klar, goddamit!” Jonathan never swore. Gustaf stood there, motionless, pressing his face against the brick wall until he could be sure that he could hide all emotion. Then he turned around.

  “I don’t know what to do,” he said. “Tell me what to do.”

  “You’re not going to kill anybody,” said Jonathan. “You’re talking too much about that. Wasn’t that how all your problems started in the past?”

  Jonathan turned and disappeared into the darkness of the tunnel. He was tired of waiting. A moment later Gustaf followed. They walked in silence, listening to the echo of their own footsteps and the dripping water from the tunnel ceiling. Gustaf held out his hand to catch a few drops. Black water. When they emerged on the other side, he took a few steps away from the embankment and picked up from the ground a handful of cleaner snow to rub over his face until he had left only a tiny lump of ice, which he then pressed to the back of his neck in order to prevent the anger from drawing him into its white darkness. Ice water ran down his back.

  “It’s bad enough having one person to visit up in Stillwater,” said Jonathan as they stepped away from the tunnel into the twilight. “Have you thought about that? What would Anna and the girls do?”

  Gustaf felt another stab of pain when Lundgren mentioned the “girls,” and he turned his face away, trying not to cry. Jonathan went on, speaking in a low voice that nonetheless reverberated off the stone walls.

  “As I see it, Klar, whenever anything happens, you seem to think it’s the first time that anyone in the whole world has ever landed in trouble. Maybe you should consider this instead: no matter what, there’s going to be another mouth to feed. Either you take on the responsibility yourself, or else you crack down on Hammerberg and find out whether he’s man enough or not. But if you kill him, then not just one but two people who are responsible for supporting your family will disappear. You’d realize that if you weren’t behaving like such a damn fool.”

  Gustaf listened to Jonathan as he walked along with his head bowed, and he thought, If there was more space in the world, then there’d be room for that sort of wisdom. But at the moment the world felt so closed in that he could hardly breathe, and something simply had to be eliminated. His anger was like a living beast inside him, twisting and turning and refusing to ease up until it was released out into the world and could do what it was demanding to do. After that happened, he’d see what was left.

  “I have something else to say,” Jonathan went on as they walked along on either side of the railroad tracks. “Inga is also going to have a baby,” he said. “You can’t tell from looking at her yet, but she’s due about the same time as Elisabet. Or maybe a little later.”

  They stopped as Jonathan continued talking.

  “And soon every single one of us is going to be needed. You have your family, and we have ours, but if we’re all going to stay
afloat, we can’t have any more disasters. And everyone has to do their part. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Gustaf nodded, mostly just to reassure his friend. They started walking again. He knew he ought to say something, offer his congratulations, say something soothing about how it was bound to turn out all right. But he couldn’t muster those sorts of words. He found only an empty space when he searched for what to say. Again he was clenching and unclenching his fists as he walked along, hunched forward, as if preparing to run. And everywhere he looked he saw a smudge of dirt at the edge of his vision; it was something he’d never be able escape if he didn’t rub it away once and for all, the way he might use the sleeve of his jacket to wipe off the spot left by a smashed fly on the windowpane.

  Leonard was clearly keeping his distance. No one had seen him in the Hollow for several weeks, though he apparently was still going to work. Jonathan had reluctantly made inquiries of the other brakemen at the railroad yard, and they had all seen Leonard. He’d worked his normal shifts to North Dakota and back, but whenever he came in, he’d ask for other available assignments and then leave on the next train, without taking any time off. Leonard’s mother was dead, and their house at the very bottom of the Hollow now remained dark at night. Leonard was not there, even though he wouldn’t be stupid enough to turn on a light if he did venture home. All indications were that he was constantly on the move, seen only during those brief times when he came into the rail yard before leaving again. If anyone wanted to get hold of him, they would keep an eye out for his train—provided they knew which train he was on—and then grab him before he hopped on the next one. “He’ll probably get worn out eventually,” said Gustaf. “And then I’ll grab him.” Jonathan merely gave him a long, disapproving look.

  A lot of the workers at the rail yard knew full well why Gustaf was after Leonard, and they were unwilling to intervene. But it became almost a sport, trying to guess where Leonard had gone. One day he was onboard a freight train headed for Sioux Falls; the next day he was traveling to Ellendale. What no one dared say out loud was that one day he might not come back. Elisabet knew as little of his whereabouts as anyone else. She avoided her father as much as she could, and at home they never spoke. She would leave for her shifts at the Johnson laundry on Seventh Street and come back with her face flushed bright red. It was impossible to tell whether this was because she’d been crying or because of the damp and heat in the stifling room where she worked all day with twenty other girls. As Inga said, she probably wouldn’t be able to continue until “full term.” The deaconess from the First Swedish Baptist Church had come to visit several times, speaking at great length while Elisabet mostly sat in silence with her head bowed. The deaconess persistently urged her to ask Leonard to join them next time, “to see if the whole situation might be worked out.” But Leonard was still nowhere to be found.

  “You’re the one he’s scared of,” Jonathan told Gustaf, who took this to mean that his friend thought he was making matters worse. But even if he’d been able to rein himself in, that wouldn’t make Leonard come back. And there was no chance of talking to him when he kept traveling in wide arcs across half the Midwest.

  Finally Inga asked Jonathan to speak to his work colleagues at the Great Northern, but without telling Gustaf. They would send a message to Leonard via the railroad workers who were headed in the same direction. The message would then move like an echo from train to train and station to station, even to the remote locations of wooden train platforms next to grain elevators way out on the prairie, manned only by a single laborer or station worker. Eventually somebody would get hold of Leonard. The message was simply this: they wanted to talk to him, and Elisabet was doing well. That was all.

  No one knew where the message ended up reaching him, but at long last Leonard came home. He appeared one evening in early December, coming down the stairs from Seventh Street with his usual sailcloth bag slung over his shoulder. He made no attempt to hide. First he dropped off his bag at the little shack belonging to his deceased mother. Then he slowly walked up the hill, and everybody saw him coming even though it was pitch-dark outside. He might have been on his way to Inga’s house, but as he passed the Klar home on the slope, Gustaf came rushing out the door in his shirtsleeves and took up position in the middle of the path. There the two men stood, eyeing each other without saying a word. Elisabet also came dashing out of the house and ran barefoot through the snow up to Inga’s place, where she pounded her fist on the front door. By the time Jonathan ran down the path, Gustaf had already shoved Leonard against the wall of the house and had a hand around the man’s neck, though not in a stranglehold. Leonard’s arms hung limply at his sides, with his palms open. They stood there motionless, both of them breathing hard, as if it took an inordinate amount of effort just to keep still. After determining that neither of them had a knife, Jonathan put a hand on each man’s chest and forced them apart. All three stood silently in the moonlight. Gustaf and Leonard were both shivering. Then Jonathan prodded them up the path to his house, where they all went inside, closing the door behind them.

  For the next hour everyone far and wide could hear men’s voices bellowing, and at least once something slammed against a wall, making the faint light in the window disappear for a moment, as if the candle had been knocked over and had to be relit. After that, calm was restored. Finally Gustaf Klar came out and trudged home. For safety’s sake, Leonard spent the night with Inga and Jonathan.

  Inga freely told anyone who would listen that it was good for Leonard to keep away until “things” calmed down. Other people in the Hollow didn’t hesitate to call him cowardly, though not to his face. But later in the week Inga went with Leonard to the Swedish Lutheran Church to have a talk with Pastor Sandstrom. That was the church where Leonard was registered, and they wanted to find out how the pastor felt about marrying a couple when the bride was already in her fifth month. As Inga said, without a trace of irony, maybe he ought to consider that it was better late than never.

  For his part, Sandstrom explained that naturally there were certain rules regarding such a situation. A conversation to determine penance was required, along with assurances of one sort and another. Leonard, and Elisabet as well, would have to beg forgiveness from the congregation, though he hurried to add that this could be done before him alone, as he was the pastor of the church. He did expect them do so on their knees, and he tried to stress that all of this was customary and reasonable, yet he found it hard to be stern and authoritative while Inga had her eyes fixed on him.

  :: :: ::

  The decision had been growing so slowly that Ellen wasn’t sure when it went from daydream to an actual plan, until she realized that she’d marked the date in her mind when she would take a little outing in town. Every evening she continued to read carefully all the job announcements in both the Swedish and English-language newspapers that she was able to find. But now she’d also taken note of where the various workplaces were located and how to get there.

  On a Monday at the end of January, a small fire broke out at the Klinkenfuer factory. The second floor filled with gray smoke that poured up the stairwell, and they all rushed out to the courtyard, blindly coughing. There they stood for an hour, shivering in the cold, while Mangini and several other men ran up and down the stairs with fire extinguishers and buckets. The men spoke to each other in brusque, agitated voices, but they didn’t seem particularly worried. “It wasn’t anything serious,” said Mangini. He explained that a bearing in one of the big, belt-driven sewing machines had snapped and sprayed sparks into all the textile dust and chaff that were lying around. Then he went back inside. Liz stood apart from the others, holding her white cardboard box under one arm. The first thing she’d grabbed was the sewing she did after work hours, and now she stood there in silence. Without saying a word, she made it clear that she didn’t want to talk to anybody, presumably to keep her little secret to herself. Ellen thought she was being standoffish for no reason, since it w
asn’t as if she didn’t know. But Liz was and always would be careful about keeping to herself.

  Finally Mangini returned. He smelled of smoke, and his shirtsleeves were covered with soot. At first he spoke for a long time in Italian, and Ellen saw how the other girls began protesting at what he was saying, but one by one they gave in. Slowly they moved away, heading for the street. Then he came over to Liz and Ellen.

  “Tomorrow we’ll be closed,” he said in English. “Maybe Wednesday too, but be here in the morning. We’ll have to wait and see. The old belt-driven machine burned up, and we’ll also have to replace part of the floor.”

  Liz nodded and got ready to leave. Ellen lingered for a moment.

  “So there’s no work tomorrow?” she said to the foreman. “And maybe not on Wednesday either? What about later in the week?”

  “How would I know?” he said, throwing out his arms. His black hair was standing on end. “At least things didn’t get any worse. I heard that last year in a sewing factory in New York folks died from smoke inhalation.” This he said in a curt tone of voice, signaling that the conversation was over. Then he went back through the soot-darkened entrance and up the stairs.

  In her apron pocket Ellen had two of the little glass balls and a few coins. Without taking out the money she counted a dollar and twenty-five cents. Then she headed for Margaret Street. Instead of turning off toward the Hollow, she walked along Seventh Street in the opposite direction, toward the streetcar stop.

  The Shelby law offices were in a seven-story building on Fourth Street in downtown Minneapolis. Since Ellen wasn’t sure about where the streetcar lines went, she’d ended up transferring twice before she found the address. At first she thought the whole building was all one office, but when she got closer to the big entryway she saw the row of brass plates that stated that the Shelby law offices were on floors four, five, and six. There was also a sign for the NORTH AMERICAN TELEGRAPH COMPANY and for the H. W. WHITE INVESTMENT CO. Above the door it said in gold letters a foot and a half tall, PHOENIX BUILDING. She walked past, reading the signs without stopping. None of them was in Swedish. Then she paused on the other side of the street without knowing what to do next. She walked past again, this time venturing up to the big doors. She opened them and went inside.