Swede Hollow

by Ola Larsmo

  The lobby was lit with electric bulbs inside lamps that looked like flowers. Farther in she saw a stairwell and tall doors with glass panes. Just inside the front door an elderly man wearing a uniform sat in a wooden cage. He looked up from his newspaper when she came in, eyeing her up and down before he said, “May I help you, Miss?”

  “I came here to hear about a cleaning job,” she managed to say. “At the Shelby law offices.”

  “I haven’t heard anything about that,” the man said. “In any case, it’s too late in the day. If you want to get ahead, you need to show up early. So, off you go.”

  He sat there giving her a stern look as she backed her way out the door.

  She took up position farther down Fourth Street, not yet willing to give up. The wind was blowing from the north, and the street slowly filled with people hurrying along with their heads down, many carrying paper parcels as they went home from work. The tall double doors of the Phoenix Building opened and a group of young women came out. They were chatting and laughing and holding on to their hats in the wintry gusts before they went their separate ways. Three of them paused to exchange a few words in the shelter of the doorway before setting off into the wind. Ellen couldn’t hear what they said as they stood with their heads close together, but the hatred that surged without warning inside her, heated and fierce, sharpened her awareness of every detail of their clothing. Short jackets with white blouses underneath. Dark skirts that reached to their ankles, proper winter coats, and modern high-button shoes made for winter weather. Two of them wore identical round hats that were clearly held in place with hat pins or the wind would have taken them at once. Their too-red lips moved soundlessly as they filled the air with superfluous words that were dispersed long before they reached Ellen. No one paid her any attention as she stood there, motionless, in the doorway and out of reach of the snowy gusts, rubbing together the glass balls in her pocket. She felt rather than heard how the clinking of glass traveled up her hand and arm. And yet it soon drowned out all the sounds from the street.

  When she got off the streetcar at the intersection of Seventh Street and Maria Avenue, she thought at first she’d go home on this winter evening. But she remained standing all alone on the platform long after the streetcar disappeared down the hill in one last shower of blue sparks. In her mind there wasn’t a sound to be heard. Then she started off in the opposite direction, the way Liz usually went at the end of the workday.

  She knew that Liz rented a room not far from the factory, and she knew it was somewhere on Maria Avenue, but she didn’t have the address. The neighborhood consisted of two-story wooden buildings. In some of the windows electric lights were on behind the curtains, but others were dark. The street was nearly deserted. The wind had subsided, and calm had returned, but by now most people were probably sitting down to supper.

  Ellen had come around a corner near Maple Street and was on her way toward Seventh Street to head for home when off in the distance she caught sight of a familiar figure coming out the front door of a building and down the steps. It was Mangini. He headed along the street without looking back, rounded a corner, and was gone. She was certain it was him, even though she knew he lived farther up toward Minnehaha. She walked around the block again, wanting to make sure that he wasn’t coming back. Then she quickly walked up the same steps and knocked as hard as she dared on the frosted pane of the front door.

  The door opened a crack and an older woman with gray hair pinned up stared at her without saying a word.

  “I’m looking for Liz,” said Ellen briskly. “Is she home?”

  The woman shook her head.

  “I’ve told her she can’t be receiving her customers here at all hours,” said the woman in a thin, rasping voice that made Ellen think of a crow. “There’s too much running in and out as it is.”

  “This’ll only take a minute. I’ll be quick about it,” she said.

  The landlady opened the door enough for Ellen to slip inside the stairwell. The foyer was paneled in dark wood, and a thick, oxblood red carpet covered the floor. The only light came from a sconce at the very end of the hall; otherwise it was very dark. Ellen couldn’t see the woman’s face.

  “Her last customer just left,” said the landlady. “I’ve told her it’s too late for visitors. It doesn’t look good.”

  “Is Liz here?” Ellen asked.

  “She went out to get something. You can’t stay here, Miss. You’ll have to wait in her room. But there has to be an end to all this coming and going.”

  She turned and nodded toward the closest wooden door on the other side of the threshold. Ellen went in, hearing the door close behind her.

  The atmosphere in the small room told her she’d found the right place. It had the same air of acerbic cleanliness that she associated with Liz, yet it was also stuffy and closed in. A faint white light from a lamppost on the other side of the street slanted in through the only window.

  She stood stock still in the middle of the room as her eyes got used to the dim light. She gave a start when her gaze fell on what she at first thought was a human shape in the corner, as if someone was crouched down, observing her. But when she looked closer, it turned out to be a mannequin without legs sitting on the floor. Overhead came the sound of someone walking across creaking floorboards.

  Then Ellen caught sight of the white cardboard box. It was on a big round table next to the window, in the midst of measuring tapes and spools of thread. She went over, cautiously lifted the lid, and stuck her hand inside to stroke the dark cloth of the short, folded jacket.

  “Leave that alone,” said Liz from the door. She spoke quietly, but in a sharp and commanding tone of voice. Embarrassed, Ellen took a step back from the table and clasped her hands in front of her.

  They stared at each other through the dim light without speaking. Then Liz, still wearing her coat, struck a match and lit the oil lamp next to the unmade bed. Her shadow climbed the wall and then shrank as she turned up the wick.

  “You’ll have to tell me what you’re doing here, Ellen,” said Liz in that same curt, rapid-fire tone. “I don’t like people sneaking around me.”

  “I came here to talk to you,” replied Ellen, ashamed to hear how her voice quavered. “About that.” She pointed at the box on the table.

  They sat down. Ellen took a seat on the room’s only chair, while Liz perched on the edge of the bed. At work they had their prescribed way of talking and they knew what few words were needed. Right now they were in uncharted territory.

  “I’ve always thought you’re so talented, Liz. It must be nice to be able to do such fine stitching that it looks machine-made. And to be able to cut out the patterns yourself.”

  She saw the older woman smile, though with no sign of joy. It was merely a slight tug at the corners of her mouth.

  “Yes, it helps a bit,” said Liz. “But it’s not going to make me rich.” She was breathing shallowly as she sat there, weighing each word she said, apparently uncertain how to go on. All of a sudden—and in an entirely different tone of voice from what Ellen would have ever associated with Liz at the Klinkenfuer factory—she began talking about her sister who was in a tuberculosis sanatorium in St. Peter, way out on the prairie. And how the two sisters were the only ones left in the family, and it was expensive.

  “She’s living with people who aren’t quite right in the head,” Liz said. “But there’s nothing wrong with her. Except for her lungs.”

  Ellen didn’t know why Liz had chosen to tell her all this. But she heard herself talking about Carl, about his cough and how he’d withered away in a matter of weeks. This was the first time she’d talked to anybody about his death. And yet he’d died three years ago.

  They sat there for a while, wrapped in the yellow glow of the lamp, without speaking.

  “Is there something you want from me?” asked Liz at last, her voice now completely steady.

  Ellen took out the page she’d ripped from the English-language newspaper, p
laced it on the table, and smoothed it out. Liz picked up the page and held it to the light. In the glow of the lamp she looked much older, with lines etched around her mouth and at the corners of her eyes. Her lips moved silently as she read the announcement Ellen had pointed out: Unmarried women 18–20 years old. Typist wanted. Proficiency in English and Swedish. Apply in person to the Shelby law offices.

  “How clever of them,” said Liz. “They want folks who speak Swedish, but they put the job announcement in the American paper so they know that anyone who applies will speak both languages properly.”

  Liz handed the page back to Ellen.

  “I know what you’ve been up to at the factory in the evenings,” she said. Before Ellen could say anything, Liz waved her hand dismissively, as if to say, You don’t have to say anything.

  “You’ve been keeping an eye on me, and I’ve done the same with you. And sometimes those black smudges on your hands have made me a little worried about the cloth.”

  “Mangini?” said Ellen.

  “He doesn’t know. I would have heard if he did. And old Al doesn’t see too good anymore, so he doesn’t notice everything going on around him. But the question is whether your typing is good enough.”

  “I’ve gotten real fast on the typewriter,” Ellen said. “It’s like a competition I’ve been having with myself. And I hardly make any mistakes anymore.”

  Liz gave her a long look.

  “I know you learn fast when you want to,” she said. “But there are other things you need to be able to handle. You have to have good posture and hold your fingers correctly when you’re typing. You can’t answer back. You have to sit on your chair, obedient as a dog, all day long, with your back perfectly straight. I’ve heard the typist girls complain, and I happen to know what sort of temperament you have. Could you do all that? And manage to stay calm?”

  “That’s not the problem,” Ellen said. “You can’t know whether you’re any good at something until you try. It was the same with starting at Klinkenfuer’s. But at least you have to try.”

  She turned to look behind her and pointed at the box on the table.

  Liz nodded.

  “I’ve gone over there and seen those girls,” said Ellen. “They pay a lot of attention to how they look.” She paused for a moment and then added all in one breath, “I have a little money put aside. Not much. But I can pay you if you’ll let me borrow that suit. Just for a day. While I make a try. You’ll get it back the very same evening.”

  “And what am I supposed to tell the girl who asked me to sew those clothes?”

  Ellen couldn’t see Liz’s expression but she could tell by her tone of voice that she found the idea amusing.

  “Maybe you could tell her you need a little more time. Or that the fire at the factory has delayed things.”

  “So, just for tomorrow?”

  Ellen nodded without replying, her eyes lowered. Liz got up and stepped behind her. Without raising her head, Ellen watched the white cardboard box land on her lap. Cautiously she wrapped her hands around the edges. Her heart was beating very fast.

  “I think you may need better shoes on your feet too,” said Liz, as she poked her head inside a cupboard. “In this kind of weather.”

  When Ellen looked up, Liz was holding a pair of sturdy women’s shoes in her hand. She handed them over with a wide smile on her thin lips. Ellen felt the flush of embarrassment on her face, and she hoped it wasn’t visible in the lamp light. When she’d stood alone in this room, her first impulse had been to grab the box and leave before Liz came back from her errands.

  She’d discovered that she needed to change streetcars only once, at the post office, so she sat drowsily near the streetcar’s heater for the second, longer part of the trip. Then she awoke with a start and stumbled off at the corner of Fourth and Marquette. It was almost seven o’clock and lights were already on in the windows of the Phoenix Building that belonged to the Shelby law offices.

  She was about to step through the door when she remembered the stern watchman in the foyer. She paused and looked down at the coat she was wearing over the clothes she’d borrowed from Liz. It was the same threadbare, washed-out brown coat she’d had on yesterday. Hesitantly she stepped into the alleyway next to the building. In the dark she could only make out a pile of boards that had been left over from some construction job. She took off her coat and folded it into a parcel. Then she lifted up the top pieces of wood and wedged her coat underneath where it felt dryer. Shivering, with only the short jacket offering any protection against the cold, she went back to Fourth Street, stepping into the January wind. The high-button shoes Liz had given her were too big. She had on two pairs of socks, but she was still a bit unsteady on her feet and afraid it would show.

  The watchman hardly gave her a glance when she came in. She started to say something about Shelby’s, but he merely grunted and motioned her toward the stairwell without a word. After climbing a few steps she started to get some warmth back in her fingers, which was the important thing. But her stomach was still icy with apprehension.

  She almost turned around to leave the minute she entered what looked like an outer waiting room. At least fifteen girls were sitting there in a row against the wall. Most of them were older than she was. The room felt hot and the air had a faintly unpleasant smell. What made her decide to go inside and take one of the last remaining chairs was the silence. No one looked at anyone else. So I guess I’m as invisible as all the others, thought Ellen.

  She noticed that several of the girls had brought along a newspaper they were leafing through, and she regretted not having anything to read. But then she looked at the girl sitting across from her, who was probably in her early twenties, and she saw that her hand was shaking and she seemed to be reading the same page over and over. Others kept their eyes fixed on their laps or stared vacantly straight ahead, as if the room were empty. After a while Ellen began studying the clothes the others were wearing, noting that some of them wore skirts and blouses that fit much better. Others had on jackets that were worn shiny at the elbows and had frayed sleeves. The girl across from her with the trembling hands had ink stains on her fingers that she hadn’t managed to scrub clean. Ellen told herself that she didn’t stick out—she was neither the finest nor the worst dressed of the lot.

  The waiting room got hotter, and she was worried about soiling Liz’s outfit. The clothes didn’t really belong to Liz either. They belonged to some nameless girl in an office somewhere downtown. She felt a solitary drop of sweat run down her back, and she leaned forward so it wouldn’t soak into her blouse. She whispered in Swedish to the girl sitting next to her, wanting to know how long they would have to wait. The girl, blond and slender with her hair pulled back in a knot so tightly that it seemed to stretch the skin as thin as paper over her shiny forehead, merely looked at Ellen with big, frightened, pale eyes and hissed, “Shhh!” And once again they all sat in silence.

  Suddenly a door opened to the inner office. A man wearing a dark suit appeared in the doorway and scanned the waiting room. He didn’t speak, merely pointed at the two girls sitting closest. They got up and followed him inside. Then the door closed. Ellen sat on her chair, her back straight, and tried through sheer force of will to stop herself from sweating. Gradually she lost all sense of time.

  At regular intervals the door would open and the girls would be ushered in, two by two. In the distance Ellen could hear the clatter of typewriters, but it was impossible to know whether she was hearing the other girls taking typing tests or whether that was the usual sound in an office like Shelby’s. The thin, nervous girl sitting next to her was motioned inside. She got up and, hunching forward, silently moved toward the door. She looked like an animal that swiftly vanishes in the grass beyond the light from a doorway that suddenly opens at night. The girl’s fear made Ellen feel calm.

  Finally she was the only girl left. The door opened one last time, and the man in the suit appeared, tall and dark, with a mustache, roun
d spectacles, and a center part in his hair. He motioned to Ellen to follow him. She stood up and went into the next room, which was long and narrow. At the far end was a single window that showed a uniformly gray winter sky and the nearby rooftops with gray smoke rising straight up like cats’ tails from the chimneys. She realized it must have gotten even colder outside, but she had no idea what time it was. She was clearly the last girl to be interviewed today.

  Sitting on a swivel chair was a younger man with unruly brown hair. He wore a light-colored suit. He got up and came over to them. Ellen noticed that his complexion looked unhealthy, with deep pits that were visible when he turned toward the light from the window.

  “Your name, Miss?” he said in English. She introduced herself as Ellen Klar from St. Paul and then curtsied.

  The tall, dark man said behind her in Swedish, “And how long have you been working as a typist, Miss Klar?”

  She turned around and replied in Swedish, “A year and a half. My father has a shoemaker shop, and I take care of the paperwork.”

  “Does he have any employees?” asked the younger man, continuing in English.

  “Three,” she said in the same language. “But they come and go.”

  She realized they were testing her ability to jump from one language to the other, but she wasn’t nervous yet.

  The young man with the pitted face came closer. He smelled strongly of aftershave. He pointed at the other, Swedish-speaking man who was still standing at the door with an impassive expression.