Stories have been told about Joel before now. About him growing up in a little town in the north of Sweden. It’s the 1950s. Such a long time ago. But it seems very recent even so.

He grows up in a house with walls that creak in the very cold winters. It’s on the bank of a river with clean, clear water flowing to the sea he has never seen. He lives with his dad, Samuel, a lumberjack who doesn’t say much. Samuel used to be a sailor, and still longs to get away from the gloomy forests and return to the sea, but he can never bring himself to move. They live together in that house, Joel Gustafson and his father. And both of them dream, in their different ways, about Joel’s mum, Jenny, who simply vanished one day. Packed a suitcase and went away. She is out there some where, but she’s gone, she’s left Joel and his dad to look after each other. Nobody knows where she is.

The spruce forests are silent.

One night Joel sees a dog running through the cold winter darkness. Something has woken him up. He sits on a window seat, looks out and suddenly sees the dog. It’s trotting on silent paws, heading for some unknown destination. Joel sees it for a couple of seconds, and then it’s gone.

Joel can’t forget that dog. Where was it heading? Where did it come from? Where is Joel heading? He forms a secret society to look for the dog. Or perhaps it’s to find out who he himself really is. A secret society in which he is the only member. But the dog never returns. Joel never finds any tracks in the snow. It dawns on him in the end that the dog is heading for a distant, nameless star.

A dog on its way to somewhere beyond Orion. Heading for a constellation that maybe doesn’t even exist. That only exists inside Joel’s head.

The Winter of the Dog is a winter Joel will never forget. It’s then that he begins to understand that he’s himself, and nobody else. But he grows up, he grows older, he becomes thirteen. And he forgets about the dog. One day he’s run over by a bus. He experiences a miracle. He falls between the wheels of the bus and is not injured at all. He discovers the hard way that a miracle can be very difficult to understand. But he learns. And everything else has suddenly become much more important than that solitary dog.

To grow up is to wonder about things; to be grown up is to slowly forget the things you wondered about as a child. He has realized this. And he doesn’t want to become a grown-up like that.

He visits Gertrud, a young woman without a nose, more and more frequently. She lives alone in a strange house on the south side of the river, on the other side of the menacing railway bridge. He shares a lot of secrets with Gertrud. Lots of fun. But also sorrow and disappointment.

Joel let the roller blind run up very fast, so as to make a loud smacking noise.

It was like firing a cannon to salute the new day.

He stared out the window in surprise. The ground was all white. He had been fooled yet again.

Winter always came creeping up on you when you least expected it. Joel had decided last autumn that he would never allow that to happen again. Before going to bed, he would make up his mind whether or not it would start snowing during the night.

The problem was that you couldn’t hear it snowing. It was different with rain. Rain pattered onto the corrugated iron roof over the cycle rack outside the front door. When the sun shone you couldn’t hear that either, but the light changed. Wind was easiest of all. Sometimes when it was blowing really hard, it would whip into the walls so fiercely that it felt as if the house was about to take off.

But snow came creeping up on you. Snow was like an Indian. It moved silently and came when you least expected it.

Joel continued gazing out the window. So winter had arrived now. There was no getting away from it. And he’d been fooled again. Would it be a long, cold winter? The snow that had fallen now would stay the longest. Because it would be underneath all the snow that came later. The first to come was the last to thaw. And that would be at the end of April, or even the beginning of May.

By then Joel would be fourteen. He’d have grown almost half an inch. And lots of things that he knew nothing about now would have happened.

The snow had arrived.

And so it was New Year’s Eve. Even if it was still only November.

That was how it was for Joel. He had decided. New Year’s Eve would be when the first snow fell.

His very own New Year’s Eve. When the ground was white, that was when he would make his New Year’s resolutions. If he had any.

And he did. Lots.

It was cold on the floor. Joel fetched a pillow from his bed and put it under his feet. He could hear his dad clattering about in the kitchen with the coffeepot. Samuel didn’t like Joel standing on his pillow, so he would have to be ready to move away smartly from the window if the door suddenly opened behind him. But Samuel rarely came into Joel’s bedroom in the morning. There was a risk, but not much of one.

He watched a single snowflake slowly floating down to the ground, to be swallowed up by all the whiteness.

There was a lot to think about when you were thirteen years of age. More than when you were twelve. Not to mention when you were eleven.

He thought he had learnt two things since it had started snowing last autumn: Life became more complicated as time passed by. And winter always came creeping up on you when you least expected it.

Joel thought about the previous evening. It had still been autumn then. After dinner he had pulled on his boots, grabbed hold of his jacket and leapt downstairs in three jumps. As it was a Sunday evening, the night train heading south stopped at the local railway station. It was rare for anybody to go aboard. And even rarer for anybody to get off. But you never knew. Besides, Joel used to slip little secret letters into the postbox in the mail coach.

I have my eye on you. Signed J.

Always the same text. But he would write different names on the envelope, taken at random from his dad’s newspaper. He made up the addresses himself.

9 Miracle Street. Or 12 Blacksmith Lundberg’s Avenue.

Joel thought that there might be an address like that somewhere in the world. But as he also suspected that the post office had secret employees who spent all day and night tracing people who sent letters to invented addresses, he didn’t dare to use the names of towns that really existed. And so he would study the latest issue of Where When How in the school library. That was an annual that listed things that had happened the previous year. Right at the back was a list of all the towns and villages in Sweden. It told you which places had grown bigger and which ones had become smaller. The little town where Joel lived always grew smaller every year. That confirmed Joel’s suspicions. Nobody wanted to carry on living here. Nor did anybody want to move here. If things turned out really badly, he and Samuel would be the last two people in the place. He’d once tried to explain this to Samuel, but his dad only laughed.

“There’ll always be people living by the river,” he’d said.

“But does it have to be us?” Joel had asked.

Samuel didn’t respond to that. He just laughed again, put on his glasses and started reading his newspaper. But Joel had been able to check in Where When How that the towns he had written on his envelopes did not exist in Sweden. Neither Joelsville nor Sprucehampton.

He never stuck stamps on the envelopes. He drew them on instead. Old men with long noses. As the letters were fakes, he didn’t think it was right to use genuine postage stamps. And then he had to be careful when he slipped them into the postbox on the mail coach. Stationmaster Knif had sharp eyes, and was apt to flare up and lose his temper. But Joel hadn’t been found out so far. He’d written in his notebook that he had now sent eleven letters in all with the southbound express train.

Anyway, he’d posted his latest letter the previous night. When it was still only autumn. The frost had crackled under his bicycle tires. Steam had billowed out from his mouth as he rode up the hill to the station and became short of breath. It was the middle of November. It had often started snowing by then, but not this year. Winter was late. But now, yet again, the snow had come creeping up during the night.

Joel glanced at the alarm clock on a stool next to his bed. He had better get a move on if he was going to be in time for school. He was behind schedule already, as usual. He shuffled into the bathroom, got washed as quickly as possible, dressed and went to the kitchen.

Samuel was getting ready to leave for work. His dad, the sailor who had become a lumberjack. Joel had often wished it was the other way round. The lumberjack who’d become a sailor. Then they wouldn’t have lived here by the river, as far away from the sea as it was possible to get. Standing on a shelf was a model of an old sailing ship called Celestine. If things had been different, it would have been hanging on the wall of a cabin, being rocked by the gentle waves of the sea.

Joel sometimes thought about how impossible it was to understand grown-ups. They often had no idea what was best for them. They were always going on about how they wanted to do whatever they could to ensure that their children had a good life — but how could that be possible if they couldn’t even look after themselves properly?

All those years, since Jenny had left, Joel had been his own mother. He’d never had any difficulty knowing what was best for himself. But Samuel was a hopeless case. He always said that one day, soon, not just yet, but soon they would pack up and leave. But it never happened. And Joel had started to despair long ago.

Samuel was just like all other adults. He had no idea what was best for him. And now he was too old. Too old to learn, and too old to allow Joel to make the decisions.

Samuel finished his coffee and rinsed out his cup.

Now he’s going to tell me that I must get a move on, Joel thought.

“You’d better get a move on, or you’ll be late for school,” Samuel said.

Joel was kneeling down in front of a cupboard that contained everything from shoes to old newspapers. He was looking for his winter boots.

He knew that Samuel would now ask him if he’d heard.

“Did you hear what I said?” Samuel asked.

“Yes,” said Joel. “But I won’t be late. I’ll get there in time.”

Joel sat down in order to put his boots on. He gave them a good shaking first: mouse pooh fell out onto the floor. But no dead mice. There had been one in his left boot the previous winter. In the meantime Samuel was packing his rucksack. Some sandwiches, a bottle of milk and a thermos flask of coffee. Joel eyed him without making it obvious.

His dad was old. Even though he was only forty-one. But his back wasn’t as straight as it used to be. And his face was thinner.

In addition, he shaved less often, and more carelessly.

Joel didn’t like this. It was as if a cold wind had blown right through him. He didn’t want a dad with a hunched back and unshaven cheeks.

But he also thought about the New Year’s resolutions he would make that evening. His own secret New Year’s Eve that nobody else knew about.

It was something he’d been thinking about for ages. Evening after evening he’d gone cycling round the little town, without thinking of anything else.

He’d made up his mind that he was going to live until he was at least a hundred years old. That would mean that he’d live until the year 2045. It was such an incredibly long way away that it really meant he would live forever.

But Joel knew that if he was going to achieve that aim, he would have to start preparing himself even now. If he didn’t, he would end up with a back just as hunched as Samuel’s.

That was really the most important thing. More important than living to be a hundred. He didn’t want to have a hunched back.

He knew what he was going to do in order to ensure that. It was one of the New Year’s resolutions he would make that evening.

From tomorrow onwards, he would start toughening himself up. He had a plan, and he would carry it out once winter had established itself.

He was quite sure about it.

If you wanted to become really old, you had to toughen yourself up.

His train of thought was broken because Samuel was ready to leave for work. He put on his thick wooly hat, then turned round in the doorway and looked at Joel. Samuel often looked sad when he set off for work. That was something Joel didn’t like either. It could give him a stomachache. It was at moments like that when he found it impossible to understand what Samuel was thinking.

He might be thinking about Mummy Jenny, who had simply vanished all those years ago. That could make Samuel just as sad as Joel could be.

Or was he thinking about the sea, which he wasn’t going to get to see today either? Among all those pines and firs that he chopped down and trimmed?

“Don’t just sit there dreaming,” he said. “That will make you late for school.”

“I’m setting off as soon as I’ve got my boots on,” Joel said.

“It’s winter again now,” said Samuel with a sigh. “And you can bet your life that winter’s going to be long, and dark, and cold.”

“We could move away from here,” said Joel. “Tomorrow.”

“If only it was as easy as that,” said Samuel. “But it isn’t.”

Then he left. Joel could hear his footsteps on the stairs. The front door closed with a bang.

Joel fastened his boots. Put on his jacket, wooly hat and scarf. He couldn’t find his mittens. He would have to choose between looking for them, and arriving on time for school.

He chose to forget about his mittens. It wasn’t all that cold yet. Winter had only just begun.

He also decided not to take his bike. It could be good to test his boots. Kick up a bit of thin, powdery snow. But even as he started walking downstairs he could feel that they were starting to be too small. He needed a new pair. But how would he be able to convince Samuel of that? Boots were expensive.

“Being poor is expensive,” Samuel often said. Joel thought he almost understood what his dad meant.

He went out into the street. It was still dark. Only a narrow sliver of light oozed out over the spruce forests standing to attention around the little town.

School beckoned. Miss Nederström was bound to be there already. If he got a move on, he would arrive in time.

He kicked up a flurry of snow.

He was already thinking about the coming evening, when he would make his solemn New Year’s resolutions.

Winter had fooled him this year yet again.

But that didn’t really matter.

The important thing was that a new year had begun.

On the way home from school Joel bought some black pudding.

He was nearly always the one who had to do the shopping, as Samuel got back home so late from the forest. Joel did the cooking, the washing-up and the shopping day after day. But Samuel did the cleaning and washed all the clothes. He did that on Saturday evenings before they sat down to listen to the wireless.

Joel didn’t like shopping for food. At the grocer’s, Ehnströms Livs, he had to jostle with old women who could never make up their minds what they wanted to buy. If he was unlucky he might bump into the mother of one of his classmates. It was at moments like that he felt annoyed with his own mum, Jenny, who had gone away and left Joel and Samuel. Even if she didn’t want to stay with her family, she could at least have made sure they had all the food they would need. She could have filled the house up to the rafters with food. Then Joel wouldn’t have needed to keep running to the shops and coping with all those women.

The previous year, however, he had made a big change to the routine. He started shopping only every other day. In addition, he bought the same food for the same weekday every week. Anything to speed things up.

On Mondays they always had black pudding and potatoes. With lingonberries that he and Samuel would pick in the autumn and make into jam.

But this particular Monday, things were not the same as usual at Ehnström’s.

Joel noticed that the moment he entered the shop.

There was a new assistant. It was usually Mr. Ehnström himself, or his wife, Klara, who did the serving. Now there was a different woman behind the counter. She was much younger than most of the other women in the shop. Joel had never seen her before. That put him off slightly.

“Black pudding,” he said in a firm voice when it was his turn.

The girl behind the counter smiled.

“How much?” she asked.

“Enough for two people,” said Joel, his usual response.

“Just think — the lad lives alone with his dad and does all the housework himself,” said somebody behind his back.

Joel whipped round. It was a big, fat woman; her face was sweaty. She was the mother of one of the girls in Joel’s class. At that moment he hated both the mother and the daughter. It was his classmate who had blabbed about Joel’s not having a mother, of course. And then, naturally, this fatty stands here sweating and tells the new shop assistant something that has nothing to do with her.

Joel could feel himself blushing. He always did when he was angry.

“Isn’t he a little marvel?” said the fat woman.

Joel hoped she would explode and die on the spot.

The girl behind the counter smiled. But she made no comment. She served the black pudding. Joel paid. All the time he was afraid the fat woman standing behind him and nudging him in the back with her fat belly would say something else about him.

But she didn’t.

When Joel emerged into the street, he was still embarrassed. He didn’t want to go shopping anymore. He didn’t want to be his own mother. But he did want revenge. Needless to say, the fat woman hadn’t dropped dead as he’d hoped. It was as he had always said: grown-ups just didn’t know what was best for them.

He crossed the street and stood between two lamp-posts where it was murky. His hands were cold because he didn’t have his mittens with him. He stuffed the paper bag containing the black pudding inside his jacket. He should really hurry up now. Dinner ought to be ready by the time Samuel got home. Besides, it was New Year’s Eve. He had a lot to prepare before going out that evening.

But he couldn’t forget that fat woman who had put him to shame in front of the new shop assistant.

He wondered who the girl was. Could it be Ehnström’s daughter? When Joel was handed the black pudding and he paid for it, he’d looked surreptitiously at her. She was younger than he’d first thought. About twenty-five, he’d have said. Although he was bad at guessing people’s ages. He sometimes thought that Miss Nederström was ninety, but somebody had told him, to his great surprise, that she wasn’t even fifty.

There was something else about the new shop assistant that had made him curious. She sounded different when she talked. She wasn’t a local. Although he couldn’t be certain, he thought she probably came from Stockholm. The previous summer, a traveling circus had come to town. As usual, Joel had helped to erect the fence and carry chairs in order to get a free ticket. He’d run an errand for one of the circus workers, and bought some coffee. The worker came from Stockholm, and spoke a very distinctive dialect. The new shop assistant at the grocer’s spoke in a similar way. As far as he could tell.

His train of thought was broken when the fat woman came out of the shop. Joel gritted his teeth and hoped as hard as he could that she would slip on the steps and kill herself. But she didn’t, of course. It was only innocent people who slipped and got hurt. Really bad criminals never did. Nor did fat women who talked about things that didn’t concern them.

Joel saw her hang her shopping bag on the handle of a kick sledge. He thought it looked like a Walker on runners. It was painted brown, and there were fancy upturned points at the front of the runners, which was a bit unusual.

Joel memorized what the sledge looked like. He knew where the woman lived. On one of his evening expeditions through the town, he would pee all over it.

He watched her disappear round the corner. She still hadn’t burst. Joel hurried home. He felt cold. His hands were white. He thought about the new shop assistant at Ehnström’s.

He wasn’t quite sure exactly what he thought.

Before Joel went to the churchyard, he had another important task to complete.

He had made a resolution the year before, but hadn’t carried it out. Now he had just one hour left in which to do it.

New Year’s resolutions were not things to be taken lightly. It seemed to Joel that a New Year’s resolution unkept might turn out to be a New Year’s threat. Time was up at midnight. The sands of time had run out. Just as in that hourglass Samuel had bought years ago in some foreign port or other, in a dimly lit little shop smelling of spices.

Joel had kept putting off carrying out this resolution for a whole year. That was something typical of him that he didn’t much like. He could promise too much. Promise himself, and others as well. He had promised the man in the bicycle shop to call in and pay for a puncture repair the same afternoon it had happened. But he’d forgotten. He’d promised Samuel to collect something from the ironmonger’s, and he’d forgotten that as well. And it was something Samuel needed for his work in the forest.

Another thing about this resolution was that he regretted having made it. He’d been too hasty. But it seemed to him that New Year’s resolutions simply could not be ignored. You had a whole year in which to do what you’d promised yourself to do. But no more. And now there was only one hour left.

He hurried through the silent little town without making a sound.

There was no traffic, no noise at all. Everything was different at night. Shadows and streetlamps. The white snow.

And Joel running through the streets like a man possessed. Now he had come to the Grand Hotel. He turned off to the left, and then to the right. The clock in the church tower was lit up. A quarter past eleven. He passed over the big forecourt in front of the bank and forced his way through the broken fence at the back of the hardware store. Then it was just a question of continuing straight ahead, towards the red-painted, timber-built fire station with the tall tower where the hoses were hung up.

He was taking the same route he took every morning.

He was going to school in the middle of the night.

When he entered the playground he suddenly thought he could hear the bell ringing. There were voices on all sides. Just like it always sounded during the breaks. He even thought he could hear his own voice. That was something he’d rather not listen to. He’d once heard his own voice on Mr. Waltin’s tape recorder. Waltin was the editor of the local newspaper, and Joel used to work as a newspaper delivery boy. If Mr. Waltin was in a good mood and you were lucky, he would record your voice and let you listen to it. Joel had been lucky. But he didn’t like the sound of his own voice. He spoke through his nose. And his voice was shrill.

But needless to say, he was only imagining all those voices on the playground. He was the only one there. And he was in a hurry.

The worst thing was that he was frightened of what he was going to do. If he was caught breaking into school in the middle of the night, he hoped the earth would open and swallow him up. He would be in trouble for the rest of his life. He preferred not even to think about how Samuel would react.

How on earth could he have made that idiotic New Year’s resolution? How could he have been so stupid?

He had been a little kid then. This year such a thought would never have entered his head.

But there was nothing he could do about it. New Year’s resolutions could think. They kept track of who had promised what.

He crouched up against the wall of the school and listened. He could hear a car in the far distance. But it didn’t come any closer. Soon everything was just as still as before.

Joel had made preparations earlier in the day. At the end of the last lesson, he’d stayed behind in the classroom and when everybody had left, he’d carefully released the catch on one of the windows. He’d jammed a piece of folded paper in the crack at the bottom of the window, so that it wouldn’t blow open if a wind got up. He hoped the caretaker hadn’t noticed anything. If he had, Joel was in deep trouble.

He ran across the schoolyard to the shedlike building that contained his classroom, took off his mittens and tried the window.

He could move it. The paper was still there. Nobody had noticed that the catch wasn’t fastened.

He suddenly gave a start and whipped round. He thought he’d heard something behind him. But there was nothing there. Everything was quiet.

He opened the window and heaved himself up. He had to strain as hard as he could to get high enough to scramble inside.

It was a strange feeling, being in his classroom late at night. The light from the streetlamps cast a ghostly glow over the empty desks. There was still a smell of wet clothes. He sat down at his desk. Put his hand up. Then he went up to the teacher’s desk. He tripped over a satchel that somebody had forgotten. The clatter echoed in the silence. He stood still and held his breath. But there was nobody there to hear anything. Everybody was asleep. Apart from the lost soul by the name of Joel Gustafson.

He sat down at Miss Nederström’s desk, and looked down at all the pupils’ desks in front of him. He looked at his own place.

“Joel Gustafson hasn’t been listening to what I said, as usual,” he said in an appropriately loud voice.

He stood up and walked to his own desk. Sat down, then stood up again.

“Go and sit on the outhouse roof, Miss Nederström, and don’t bother to come down again,” he replied.

Then he wished he hadn’t. Perhaps there was somebody who could hear him after all? Or a tape recorder hidden somewhere?

Besides, time was nearly up. It must be at least a quarter to twelve. Now he had only fifteen minutes left. He went to the harmonium to the left of the teacher’s desk, crouched down by the pedals and groped around with his hand until he located the bellows. He unhooked the connection at the back, then pressed the pedals. No air came.

Tomorrow morning, when Miss Nederström started to play the morning hymn, there wouldn’t be a sound. And she wouldn’t be able to understand for the life of her what had happened. Nobody would understand it. Apart from Joel.

He clambered out the window again, put the folded piece of paper back in place and closed the window. It squeaked slightly.

At that very moment the church clock started to strike. Three booms. A quarter to twelve. Fifteen minutes to midnight. It had been a close shave, but he’d made it.

The last of last year’s New Year’s resolutions had been kept. Now he could start thinking about this year’s.

He’d left his rucksack in the shadow of the wall. He put it back on, smoothed down the snow under the window so that his footsteps couldn’t be seen, and hurried away.

When Joel woke up next morning, he felt ill. He was hot and sweaty. And he had a sore throat. Samuel came to his room and wondered why he was still in bed.

“I feel awful,” said Joel. “I have a sore throat.”

Samuel felt his forehead.

“You seem to have a bit of a temperature,” he said. “I think you ought to stay at home today.”

That was exactly what Joel had hoped to hear. He was really ill. Many a time he’d woken up and wished he’d been ill. Mornings when the last thing he’d wanted to do was to go to school. But needless to say, he’d been unable to find anything at all wrong with himself, no matter how much he’d squeezed and poked at his body.

“Will you be all right on your own?” Samuel asked.

Joel wondered what Samuel would have done if he’d said no. Would he have stayed at home and not gone to work? He couldn’t have done that. Samuel didn’t earn much money. They couldn’t afford for him to miss a single day’s work in the forest.

“I’ll manage OK,” said Joel. “I’m only a little bit ill.”

“Wrap something warm round your neck,” Samuel said. “And I think we’d better lay the cat fur over your feet.”

Joel smiled. There was no cat fur. But there was a little Arabian carpet that Samuel had bought ages ago in some Mediterranean port or other. It was no bigger than a door-mat. But when Joel was a little lad, Samuel had told him stories about its magical properties. If you laid it over your feet when you were ill, you would be cured straightaway. In those days Joel had believed it was true. But he didn’t any longer.

Even so, he was pleased that Samuel went to fetch the little mat and placed it over the bottom of the bed. Even if it didn’t have any magical properties, at least it made your feet warm.

“Drink plenty of water,” Samuel said. “Do you want me to open the blind?”

Yes, Joel did. And the roller blind was raised.

Samuel set off for work.

Joel lay in his bed, listening to the silence. Nothing could make as much noise as a silent room. There was a creaking in the walls, and a swishing from the water pipes.

He swallowed several times, as a sort of test. It hurt. But not all that much.

He thought about what had happened last night. The New Year’s resolutions he’d made, which had been witnessed by all those dead people.

The fact that he’d dropped his mitten in front of Lars Olson’s gravestone didn’t mean a thing. Even if Lars Olson had died at the age of fourteen, Joel’s name was Joel and not Lars Olson. Joel had made a solemn resolution to the effect that he would toughen himself up and live to be a hundred. The year that would eventually be carved on his gravestone was 2045.

Joel was aware that lots of people would no doubt think it was a childish resolution. Lots of people who didn’t understand.

OK, maybe I am childish, Joel thought. But I don’t know what I ought to do in order not to be. To be different.

He went to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water. He put it at the side of his alarm clock. It would soon be time for the first lesson to start.

And then he remembered. The harmonium! He’d forgotten all about it.

He felt a pain in his stomach. The moment Miss Nederström started to pedal and no sound emerged from the organ, she would know that it was Joel who was responsible. Joel Gustafson, who wasn’t sitting at his desk.

Oh, hell! Joel thought. Why did I have to be ill today of all days?

Then he tried to think it through, totally calm. He had left no traces. Nobody could know that he’d been responsible. The bellows could have become disconnected as a result of normal wear and tear.

Joel tried to convince himself that maybe it wasn’t all that bad. He also hoped that he wasn’t the only one to feel ill that morning.

He felt tired. And as Samuel had said, he had a bit of a temperature.

He pulled the covers up to his chin.

He was soon fast asleep.

Miss Nederström looked at Joel.

It was the following day. When Joel was feeling fit again.

But the look she gave him didn’t suggest that she had discovered a secret. She simply asked him if he’d been ill. And he said he had. They had already sung the morning hymn by then. Joel had held his breath when Miss Nederström sat down at the harmonium and started pedaling. If the sound that emerged was not musical notes, he would faint. He grabbed hold of the desk with both hands. As if he’d been in a boat as a big wave was approaching. His classmate Eva-Lisa, the Greyhound, was standing beside him, grinning. But there was no way she could know. She usually grinned at anything slightly different. Joel grabbing tight hold of his desk was enough for that.

But Miss Nederström showed no sign of suspecting him. That was the main thing. So Joel’s secret visit to his classroom would remain a mystery. Unless he himself decided to reveal what had happened. Perhaps on his ninetieth birthday, in 2035. But Miss Nederström would already be dead by then. Lying in the churchyard under a heavy stone, just like Lars Olson.

Then the school day began. And it began well. The first lesson was geography, and that had always been Joel’s best subject. Especially if Miss Nederström talked about far-distant countries and people. But that day it was about Scandinavia. That wasn’t as enjoyable. Even so, Joel listened carefully. It always seemed to him that Miss Nederström also bucked up when they had geography.

That morning he was suddenly struck by the amazing thought that she had once been young as well. Had sat at a school desk just like Joel. And perhaps she had thought that geography was her favorite subject.

That was one of the hardest things for Joel to cope with. Imagining old people being the same age as he was. And that applied not least to Samuel. Joel had some times looked at pictures of Samuel as a boy about the same age as himself. He could see that it was Samuel. But it was hard. It somehow seemed to be somebody else he was looking at. When Joel looked at those pictures of Samuel, he wondered how he was going to change as he grew up. What would he see in the mirror in fifty years’ time? Not to mention a hundred? He imagined himself going to the photographer’s in 2044, the year before he might be going to die. An old man with a long white beard. But without a hunched back. That was something he was never going to get, as long as he lived. He had made up his mind about that. That New Year’s resolution would last for the whole of his life, and be repeated every year.

Time passed quickly. When they started the day with geography, it was as if the whole school day braced itself and then shot off over a surface of smooth, shiny ice. Even the boring religious studies lesson could have the occasional exciting moment. This particular time Miss Nederström talked about John the Baptist, who’d had his head cut off and placed on a plate. And Salome danced and was given the head as a reward. Miss Nederström told them that Salome had been very beautiful, and had danced wearing transparent veils. Joel reckoned that must mean she had been more or less naked. Or transparent through and through. The Greyhound giggled. Joel assumed that must mean he was right.

He sat watching the Greyhound without her noticing. She had started to change. Developed breasts. Joel often found it hard not to take hold of her. Especially her breasts. Sometimes, when he leaned over to reach something, he tried to brush against her. But she was on her guard. Not only could the Greyhound run faster than anybody else, she could also growl and show her teeth.

Joel started dreaming. About the new shop assistant at the grocer’s, dancing behind the counter, dressed in transparent veils. But the fat old ladies didn’t see a thing. It was only Joel who noticed what was happening. Then Ehnström himself appeared behind the counter. On a tray that usually held strings of sausages was a head. Still the fat old ladies didn’t see a thing. Only Joel knew what was going on. The head looked like that of Stationmaster Knif, and was still wearing his uniform cap.

He still hadn’t stopped dreaming when school was over for the day. Somebody asked if he wanted to go and play in the horse dealer’s paddock. There might be enough snow to make a slide. Joel would have loved to go, but he said no even so. There was something he had to do that couldn’t wait.

Joel stayed in the playground until the Greyhound had gone home. The person he was going to visit lived in the same block of flats as she did. He didn’t want her to know that he was going there. She would only start gossiping about it, and she was as good at gossiping as she was at running.

Joel walked up the hill towards the place where the musician and womanizer Kringström lived. Kringström was the person he was going to visit. He was bald and fat and had his own orchestra. Joel had been to see him the previous year. He’d wanted to learn to play the saxophone. He could still recall how Kringström had stared at him, with his glasses pushed up onto his forehead, surprised to hear that Joel didn’t want to play the guitar like everybody else.

But now Joel had changed his mind. That was why he was on the way to Kringström’s flat.

A rock idol had to be able to play the guitar.

He continued up the hill. There was no sign of the Greyhound. He couldn’t see her anywhere ahead of him.

He still wasn’t quite sure what he was going to do, become a rock idol or a trailer salesman. Presumably being a rock idol was more fun. Prancing round a stage with a guitar in your hands. Singing “Hound Dog” into a microphone. And in front of the stage a cheering and whooping mass of people, most of them girls who were dying to pull off your clothes or handfuls of hair.

But there again, he imagined it would be hard going, never being left in peace. Always having to be photographed. Never having time to sit back on his bed, dreaming.

He wondered if a rock idol would ever have time to act like a child again. That worried him. He’d have difficulty coping with that.

Selling trailers was different altogether. It was actually Samuel who’d put the idea into his head. They’d been having dinner in the kitchen. Fried herring, Joel could still recall. He’d ventured to ask Samuel if they’d ever be able to afford a motorcar.

“I doubt it,” Samuel had said. “But you might be able to hit upon a way of earning lots of money.”

Joel hadn’t risen to the bait.

“I suppose you earned a lot of money when you were a sailor?”

“No way!” said Samuel. “But we used to spend a lot of time at sea, where there was nothing to spend our money on. So we’d saved a fair bit by the time we came back ashore.”

Joel could see that as his dad said that, he started thinking about Jenny. He’d met Joel’s mother while he was a sailor. Samuel’s face clouded over. It seemed as if Joel’s dad was floating away into the clouds. Maybe he looked a bit angry as well. Joel sometimes wondered if Samuel also hated Mummy Jenny — because she’d put him to shame by running away.

Joel changed the subject. He went back to what they’d started with. Money. How could you best earn a lot of money.

“Tell me who earns lots of money,” he said.

“Trailer salesmen,” said Samuel.

Joel was surprised by the reply. But Samuel went on to say:

“Ten years from now, every Swede will have a trailer to hitch onto the back of their car. Trailer salesmen are going to get rich.”

But we won’t be buying a trailer, Joel thought. Or at least, if we do, Samuel and I will have to become horses and pull it.

What’s the point of having a trailer if you can’t afford a car?

As usual at such moments, Joel felt very angry. His anger was always lurking in the background, to emerge whenever he thought about how little money they had. He and Samuel were poverty-stricken. Despite the fact that there were supposed to be no poor people in Sweden anymore. But then his anger was transformed into a guilty conscience. Samuel toiled and slaved for all he was worth. He couldn’t possibly try harder than he did.

After that conversation in the kitchen Joel spent ages thinking over what Samuel had said. That was how they would be able to afford a car. If Joel sold enough trailers, they’d be able to afford it. They wouldn’t have to pull the trailer themselves.

But it was only now, when he’d made his New Year’s resolution, that he started to think seriously about the matter. He’d have to make up his mind. Rock idol or trailer salesman. It would be a difficult choice to make.

There were lots of difficulties. But obviously, the main one was that Joel still wasn’t even fourteen. Perhaps there was a law saying that anybody who wasn’t allowed to ride a moped wasn’t allowed to sell trailers either. Perhaps also there was an age limit for rock idols. How old had Elvis been when he first started? Joel decided to ask Kringström. If anybody knew, he ought to. Even if everybody knew that he hated rock ’n’ roll, and preferred to play something slow and relaxed like a foxtrot.

Joel had reached the top of the hill. There was the block of flats that Kringström lived in. Still no sign of the Greyhound. Joel noted that Kringström’s big black van was parked outside the front door. That meant he was at home. Nobody had ever seen Kringström walking through the streets if he could avoid it. If he had to go anywhere, he always took the van. There was a corner shop over the road from his front door. Kringström even went there by van.

Joel walked up the stairs and rang the doorbell. Kringström answered it. As usual, he had his glasses pushed up onto his forehead.

“You were the one who said he wanted to learn how to play the saxophone,” he said, and was obviously offended. “But nothing came of it.”

Joel had prepared an answer.

“The dentist said that I shouldn’t play wind instruments.”

There wasn’t a jot of truth in that, of course. There was nothing wrong with Joel’s teeth. But Kringström seemed to believe him. It hadn’t been difficult for Joel to lie. There were different kinds of lies: white lies and black ones. And then some that Joel thought were gray. This was a gray lie. It didn’t affect anybody, and it solved the problem. And it also closed down unnecessary conversation even before it had started.

“I want to learn how to play the guitar instead,” Joel said.

“I thought as much,” said Kringström. “That’s what I thought a year ago.”

Kringström let him in. Joel remembered the flat from last year. It was like stepping into a music shop that somebody lived in. There were records everywhere. Mainly 78 rps. But some new LPs had arrived since Joel had been there before. Kringström slumped down into a shabby old armchair and pointed to the other chair. That was for Joel to sit on. As far as he could see, there were no other chairs in the flat, apart from a Windsor-style chair in the kitchen. But on the other hand, there was an apparently infinite number of music stands scattered over the flat in every conceivable place. There was even one in the bathroom. Kringström evidently liked to practice new music all the time. Even when he was on the lavatory.

“What did you say your name was?” Kringström asked.

“Joel Gustafson.”

Kringström looked surprised. So he’d forgotten.

“And you want to learn to play the guitar?”

“I’ve been thinking about a career as a rock idol.”

Kringström stared at him in astonishment.

“You mean to say you regard that screeching and whining as a career?”

“All Elvis Presley does is sing.”

Kringström gestured impatiently with one hand.

“Don’t talk to me about that man,” he said. “He ruins young people’s taste for music.”

Joel realized it would be best not to protest. He didn’t want to risk Kringström’s throwing him out. The most important thing was learning to play the guitar.

“So you want to be a rock idol,” said Kringström in disgust. “And what had you thought of calling yourself?”

“Snow Elvis,” said Joel without hesitation.

“Good Lord,” said Kringström, shaking his head.

“But first and foremost, I want to learn to play the guitar,” Joel said.

“I’ll think about it,” said Kringström. “Come back in a few days’ time when I’ve had time to think about it.”

Kringström had other things to do now. Joel left the flat and went back down the hill. At least the worst was over now. With a bit of luck Kringström wouldn’t turn him down. Before too long Joel would also be able to winkle out of him all the secrets you needed to know in order to become a rock idol. Not least how old Elvis Presley had been when he’d made his debut.

He speeded up as he walked down the hill. There was something else he wanted to do before going home to prepare dinner. He wanted to call in at Ehnströms Livs to make sure that the new shop assistant was still there. That she hadn’t simply been something he’d dreamt about.

As usual there were lots of old women jostling with each other inside the shop. But it didn’t matter today, as Joel wasn’t going to buy anything.

She was still there. And now that he observed her from a distance, he could see that she was beautiful. He could very well imagine her dancing in transparent veils. He could feel his body becoming excited at the thought. All the strange things going on inside him that he still hadn’t managed to work out. Sooner or later he’d have to talk to Samuel about it. Even if he wasn’t at all sure that his dad would be able to give him any answers.

But the shop assistant was still there. He still didn’t know what she was called. But he’d find out. And where she lived as well.

One of the fat women bumped into him.

“Mind what you’re doing,” she said angrily. “Do you have to stand right behind me?”

“You’re nothing but a Hound Dog,” said Joel cheekily.

Then he marched out of the shop.

He hurried home. It had been a good day. He’d done everything he’d planned to do.

The very next day he would start shadowing Ehnström’s new shop assistant.

But before that he had another important thing to do.

He must meet Gertrud. The young woman who lived on the other side of the river. And didn’t have a nose.

He would go and see her that very same evening.

The railway bridge loomed ahead of Joel.

It was lurking there like a petrified dinosaur. The moonlight glistened in the enormous iron arches.

Not so long ago Joel had tried to climb up one of the arches and gotten stuck. In the end, Samuel had come to the rescue.

Joel shuddered at the thought. If he’d fallen, he would no longer be alive. He’d be like Lars Olson. A skeleton six feet down in the cold earth, with a stone over his head. Joel Gustafson. Died at the age of eleven.

He was on his way over the bridge to Gertrud’s house. He both wanted and didn’t want to think about death. If you thought about it, it was like beckoning it to come. You shouldn’t fondle death like you stroked a cat. You should be as wary of it as of a lion in the jungle. But at the same time, the thoughts insisted on forcing their way into his mind. It was difficult to keep them out.

Joel had decided that death was more difficult to understand than life — which was complicated enough. It wasn’t possible to imagine yourself as nothing. To think that you could no longer think.

And moreover, you’d be dead for such a long time. That was the hardest thing of all. Lars Olson had already been dead for twenty years. That was longer than Joel had been alive. But there were lots of people who’d been dead for hundreds of years.

If only you didn’t need to be dead for so long, Joel thought as he contemplated the railway bridge.

Then it might have been tolerable.

He looked up at the moon. It was seven o’clock. He’d had dinner with Samuel. Now he was on his way to Gertrud’s. It was several weeks since he’d seen her last.

He braced himself and started running over the bridge. It was easier to get up speed if he imagined that he was being chased. There were lots of possible pursuers he could think of.

He imagined a cavalry of fat old women riding behind him on horseback, wielding their carrier bags like swords and clubs.

He came to the abutment on the other side of the river. The fat old women disappeared from his mind. He turned onto a little road that followed the river to the left, and came to Gertrud’s house in its overgrown garden. It contained a rowan tree and some currant bushes. Her windows were lit up. She was at home.

Joel got his breath back before pulling the leather strap hanging outside the door. A music box started playing inside the hall. That was the signal they had agreed on. Then he heard Gertrud shouting for him to come in.

Joel didn’t know how many times he’d visited Gertrud’s house, but it was a lot. The first time was that unfortunate night when he and Ture had dug up a frozen anthill and thrown it through her kitchen window. But that was a long time ago. Ture didn’t live here anymore. Gertrud and Joel had become friends. Not all the time. They had fallen out the previous year, when Joel had tried to find a husband for Gertrud. But that was all over now. All done and dusted.

Gertrud was a remarkable person. It wasn’t simply that she didn’t have a nose. Only a hole in her face that she hid behind a handkerchief. Or a red clown’s nose when she was in the mood. She had lost her nose as a result of an operation that had gone wrong. Now she lived by herself in this house on the other side of the river from Joel. She had turned thirty, and sometimes told Joel she was beginning to feel old.

Gertrud was like no other person Joel knew. He knew that people used to talk about her behind her back. About her wearing strange clothes that she made herself. About her having a stuffed hare in a birdcage and a toy train in an aquarium. But most of all about her saying whatever came into her head, and what she thought about things. Despite the fact that it was usually exactly the opposite of what other people thought.

But it seemed to Joel that Gertrud was a difficult person. He sometimes thought that whatever she did, she went too far. Joel was always scared of not being like everybody else. What he did and thought when he was on his own was one thing. But when you were with other people you shouldn’t draw attention to yourself.

Gertrud was the best friend he had.

He wasn’t really happy about that. He would have preferred to have a different best friend. One who had a nose, at least.

But that was the way it was. And Gertrud always listened to what he had to say. She didn’t laugh at him — not in a malicious way in any case — when he said something silly. Which he thought he did far too often.

This evening Joel had decided to tell Gertrud about his New Year’s resolutions.

But maybe not all three. He was still a bit doubtful as to whether he should tell her about Ehnström’s new shop assistant. The one who had already started dancing inside Joel’s head, wearing nothing but transparent veils. Joel wasn’t really sure how she would react. That was the only thing he and Gertrud had never talked about. Other women.

Gertrud was sitting curled up on her orange-colored sofa, reading the Bible. Joel had never really understood what it meant, being religious. All that stuff about God was something he only thought about now and again. Strangely enough, it was usually when he didn’t have any money. As if that were God’s fault. Not having a krona for a cinema ticket.

But just now his New Year’s resolutions were more important.

Gertrud put down her Bible. Today she had a checked handkerchief over the hole where her nose had once been. She had rolled it up into a ball and pressed it into the hole.

“I thought you’d forgotten all about me,” she said. “I haven’t seen you for ages.”

“There’s so much to do for school,” Joel said.

Which was nearly true. But not quite. A few weeks had gone by without his giving Gertrud a single thought.

“But anyway, here you are,” she went on. “And that means, of course, that you have something on your mind. Is that right?”

Joel nodded. Then he told her about his New Year’s resolutions. She listened, with her head on one side and her chin resting on her hand, as usual.

For the moment Joel didn’t say anything about Ehnström’s new shop assistant.

“Is there an age limit?” he asked. “For being a rock idol? Or a trailer salesman?”

“It might be possible to be too old,” she said, “but hardly too young.”

“How old was Elvis when he started singing?” Joel asked. He knew that Gertrud liked Elvis Presley. They had sometimes listened to his records together, and tried to work out what the words meant. It was often difficult. It seemed as if the songs weren’t really about anything at all.

“I expect Elvis started singing when he was rocking around inside his mother’s stomach.”

Joel wasn’t at all pleased by that answer. It was far too vague.

“But what about later? After he’d been born?”

“I expect he’s been singing for the whole of his life.”

Joel realized that Gertrud didn’t have a better answer to give him. So he moved on to trailers. He explained how that was really Samuel’s idea.

“It could well be true,” she said. “But I don’t think it sounds like a lot of fun, wandering around a big parking lot crammed full of trailers on display. And trying to sell them. Where are you going to get the money to buy them?”

“I’m not going to buy them. I’m going to sell them.”

“But you’ve got to have something to sell, surely? And before you can sell it, you have to buy it.”

Joel hadn’t thought of that. Presumably nobody was going to give him any trailers on the strength of his paying for them later?

That settled it. He didn’t need to hesitate anymore.

He would become a rock idol. He told Gertrud how he’d already been to see Kringström. First he would learn to play the guitar, and then he’d start practicing singing.

“I didn’t know you were a good singer,” she said tentatively.

“Elvis isn’t a good singer,” Joel declared. “But he sings very loud.”

She nodded hesitantly.

“But surely, he does sing quite well, doesn’t he?”

“But most of all, very loud.”

Joel didn’t want to go into that any further. Not just now, at least. When he’d learnt to play the guitar and practiced a few songs, she could listen.

She asked if he would like some juice. He would. They went together into her big kitchen. A strange thing about this house was that it had two kitchens, even though it wasn’t very big. But that was the way Gertrud wanted it. Just like the way she slept in different beds.

One kitchen was for when she was only a bit hungry. The big one was for when she threw a party and had visitors.

Joel watched her pouring out the juice. He thought that Gertrud could be very pretty. If only she had a nose. And wore proper clothes. Like everybody else. Instead of all those peculiar skirts she made herself.

Joel suddenly found himself seeing only her nose that didn’t exist. And all her strange clothes.

He didn’t know where the feeling came from, but now he thought she was revolting.

She handed him the glass of juice. He took it.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“I can see that something’s bothering you.”

“Don’t talk such garbage!”

Now it hit him even more strongly. The feeling that Gertrud was revolting. And was a person who could see right through him. Read his thoughts. What did they call somebody like that? A witch, that was what she was. But without the long nose. Gertrud was even worse. She didn’t have a nose at all.

Then everything went very quickly. He flung the glass of juice at the wall. It shattered and the juice splashed all over Gertrud’s clothes. Some of it even landed on the handkerchief she had stuffed into the hole where her nose should have been. But Joel didn’t see that. He’d already turned on his heel, left the kitchen, grabbed his jacket and boots and carried them out into the garden. He had palpitations and didn’t know what had come over him. He struggled and cursed as he tried to fasten his boots. All the time he kept looking round. But Gertrud didn’t come after him. When he’d finished tying his laces the sweat was pouring off him. He ran off as fast as he could. Not until he’d reached the middle of the railway bridge did he pause to catch his breath. Steam was coming out of his mouth. His sweat was starting to freeze and made him feel cold. He was trembling. But the main problem was inside him. What had he done? Why had he hurled that glass of juice at the wall? He’d gone to visit Gertrud, who was his friend. He’d wanted her to answer some of the questions that were bothering him. But when she’d asked him a question he’d thrown a glass at her wall.

He regretted it now. He was still out of breath. And very cold. The sweat was pricking at his skin like needles underneath his sweater. He stared down into the black water. There was no ice yet, but the water had started to thicken.

I’ll jump, he thought. I can’t handle this. I can’t see Gertrud ever again. Why did I do that?

But he didn’t jump. He remembered that Gertrud had once tried to commit suicide. In this same river. And she really did have a reason, not having a nose.

It seemed to him that he ought to go back to her place right away. She couldn’t have understood what had happened either. But maybe she could explain it for him. Explain what he had done.

But he didn’t go back. He was far too cowardly for that. He shouted up into the sky.

“Because I’m too much of a coward. Joel Gustafson’s a lily-livered coward.”

Then he walked home. He was so cold, he was shivering. His teeth were chattering.

It had never happened before.

Gertrud had never stood by that streetlamp before. Neither by day nor, like now, at night. When Joel first saw her, he thought she was a mirage. Something that could be seen, but didn’t really exist. But she was still there, moving slightly, until she came within range of the streetlamp. Now she was very clear. Joel stood with his face pressed up against the cold windowpane. It was Gertud, all right. And she was gazing up at his window. But he knew that she couldn’t possibly know that he was there. The room was in darkness. He could see her. But she couldn’t see him.

There was something frightening about her standing out there in the night. Joel had the feeling that he was looking at the last person left alive in the world. This must be what the doomsday that Miss Nederström kept going on about looked like. The last person alive was standing underneath a streetlamp, late at night in an insignificant little northern Swedish town.

Joel couldn’t imagine greater loneliness than this.

Then it was clear to him that he would have to go down and fetch her. No human being could be allowed to be as lonely as she seemed to be. He put on a pair of pants, and a sweater over his pajamas, and forced his bare feet into a pair of Wellingtons in the kitchen. Samuel was asleep. He was snoring loudly.

When Joel emerged into the street he suddenly felt embarrassed. But it was too late now. She had already seen him come out of the front door. He couldn’t turn back now, or pretend that he hadn’t seen her.

They were standing on opposite sides of the street. Everything was silent. Nothing but night and the starry sky. Joel could feel the cold sneaking down into his boots. He walked hesitantly across the street, more or less forcing himself to move.

“Why are you standing here?” he asked.

“You threw a glass at my kitchen wall,” said Gertrud. “These things happen, I’ve done it myself. But I didn’t understand why. That’s why I’ve come here.”

“I’d nearly fallen asleep,” Joel said.

Why did he say that? Couldn’t he have thought of something better?

But what he said next made him even more surprised.

“Let’s go up to the flat,” he said. “I don’t have any socks on. It’s cold.”

Things were getting worse and worse.

He couldn’t take her up to the flat with him. What would happen if Samuel woke up? But there again, it was too late. He couldn’t take it back now.

“Maybe you’ve got to get back home?” asked Joel tentatively.

“I’ve got all the time in the world,” she said. “Besides, I’ve never seen what your home is like.”

“We’d better be as quiet as possible. So that we don’t wake Samuel up.”

They were inside the house now.

“Which steps creak?” she asked.

“The fourth, fifth and twelfth,” Joel told her.

They entered the flat without making a sound. It was the first time Joel had ever had a visitor in the middle of the night.

“It smells good,” she whispered as they stood in the kitchen.

“It smells of fried herring,” said Joel.

Samuel snored. They went into Joel’s room and closed the door. He placed his finger over his lips.

“Sound carries in here,” he said.

“Old houses have good ears,” she said, sitting down on his bed.

Joel felt uneasy. He didn’t want Samuel to wake up. To come into his room and find Gertrud there.

Now those thoughts started coming back again.

He could see her nose that didn’t exist.

He had been visited by a nose that didn’t exist.

He’d have preferred it to be Ehnström’s new shop assistant visiting him. Sitting there on his bed. Sitting there wearing ordinary clothes, and speaking with a Stockholm accent.

But it was Gertrud who’d turned up.

It seemed as if she could read his thoughts again.

“Why did you throw that glass?” she asked.

Joel looked down and stared at his feet. He could see that his left foot was dirtier than his right one. It was always the same. And he didn’t understand why. How could feet attract different amounts of muck?

“I don’t know,” he muttered. “I didn’t mean to.”

“Of course you meant to,” she said. “Why else would you start throwing glasses around?”

Joel was still staring at his feet. He hadn’t the slightest idea what to say. He couldn’t possibly tell her that he suddenly found her revolting. That all he could see was the nose she didn’t have on her face.

When he glanced up at her, he could see that her expression was very worried. A beam of light from the moon was illuminating her face. He had a guilty conscience.

“It was nothing,” he mumbled.

Now he could look at her again. She looked him in the eye.

“I think you’re growing up,” she said.

That was something Joel was pleased to hear. That he was growing up. But there again, there was something in her tone of voice that worried him. What did she mean by saying that just now?

That was the kind of thing that grown-ups often did. Joel knew that he would have to learn — the most important thing was often not what was said.

But when it was said.

“There’s nobody as childish as I am,” he said.

She shook her head.

“You’re growing up,” she said again. “And before long, one of these days, you’ll have forgotten that I exist. You might even fail to greet me when we meet in the street. Or you’ll cross over to the other side.”

Joel stared at her in astonishment.

“Why shouldn’t I greet you?”

“Because you’re embarrassed.”

“What should I be embarrassed about?”

She replied by asking a question.

“Why did you throw that glass at the wall?”

If Joel had been holding a glass at that moment, he’d have hurled it at the wall. He wouldn’t have cared less if he’d woken Samuel up.

Her questions made him angry. He was angry because she was right.

Even so, he shook his head.

“I didn’t mean to,” he said. “Why were you standing out there in the street? I might not have seen you.”

“In that case I’d have thrown a snowball at your window. You’ve shown me before which is your bedroom window.”

“That wouldn’t have been a good idea,” Joel said. “Samuel would have woken up. And he doesn’t like me having girls in my room at this time of night.”

If he could, he’d have bitten his tongue off. He could hear how stupid it sounded. Even if he hadn’t even started playing forfeits yet. Now she would expose him for what he was.

But she didn’t. She said nothing.

Instead she stood up so quickly that Joel gave a start.

“Anyway, now I know why you threw that glass at my kitchen wall,” she said.

“But I haven’t answered that question. All I’ve said is that I didn’t mean to.”

“That’s enough for me,” she said. “I’m going home now. And shouldn’t you get some sleep?”

Joel tiptoed after her into the hall. Gertrud really knew how to move without making the slightest sound. He stood in the doorway and heard that she’d remembered which steps to avoid. She didn’t leave a single creak behind.

He watched her from his window. Just like that dog, she materialized in the light from the streetlamp, then vanished. At that very moment he thought that she was less repulsive. At the same time, it seemed that something had changed forever that evening. But Joel couldn’t work out what it was.

It was as if something was missing. Something that used to be there. But it had been replaced by something else. And he didn’t know what it was.

He undressed and snuggled down into bed. He felt very tired.

He thought about Gertud, walking home through the night. She would have reached the railway bridge by now. But he had the feeling that somebody was coming towards her from the other direction. Somebody who passed Gertrud in the middle of the bridge. Somebody Gertrud hadn’t noticed. At first he wasn’t sure who it was. But then he knew. It was Ehnström’s new shop assistant. And she was naked underneath trans parent veils. Despite the fact that it was the middle of the night, and winter was nearly here, and it was freezing cold.

Joel gave a start. He had almost dreamt his way into slumber. He jumped out of bed and went to the window. But there was nobody there by the streetlamp. Certainly not a naked woman.

Joel went back to bed. Suppressed all thoughts about Gertrud.

Tomorrow he would find out who this new shop assistant was. She must have a name. She must live somewhere.

She must have her transparent veils hanging up on a coat hanger somewhere or other.

Perhaps on a coat hanger made of gold.

Joel sneaked round the street corner.

There she was, up ahead. She’d crossed over the street and was walking along the opposite pavement. Joel waited until she had almost reached the derelict plot where the watchmaker’s shop had been until it burnt down. Then he set off after her. She’d stopped at the kiosk. He couldn’t see what she bought there. Joel was about to start following her again but he stopped dead. Samuel was coming towards him on the other side of the street. On his way to Sara’s. Joel darted onto the derelict site and crouched down behind a pile of charred roof beams. He watched Samuel pass by. Now I’ll never find her, he thought angrily. He hurried back into the street. There was nobody standing at the kiosk. He stopped at the window and took off one of his mittens. It was Old Man Rudin who was serving. He was the one who used to sell Otto the magazines that weren’t on display, but hidden away on a shelf under the counter.

“That woman who was here a couple of minutes ago dropped one of her mittens,” Joel said.

“Leave it here,” said Rudin. “No doubt she’ll come back for it.”

“But I want to have a word with her,” said Joel. “Which direction did she go in?”

“I didn’t see,” said Rudin.

Joel left. There were three possible ways she could have gone. If he ran, he might just have a chance of seeing her. He picked the biggest street, the one leading to the church. And his luck was in. He caught a glimpse of her as she turned the corner by the old pharmacy.

He breathed a sigh of relief.

That had been close. You could always trust your parents to make a mess of things. Perhaps there were advantages in Mummy Jenny’s disappearance after all. At the very least, he didn’t have two problems to deal with. He had enough on his plate with Samuel.

She was heading for the buildings on the hill down to the river. So that was where she lived. Unless she lived out at Svensvallen, but that was several miles away. Or she might have a room at Rank’s boardinghouse right on the edge of town. There were no other possibilities.

She stopped at the middle one of the three blocks of apartments, and went in through the front door. Joel kept his eye on the front of the building. After a couple of minutes a light went on in a second-floor window. So that was where she lived. Joel tried to work out what that implied. She might be lodging with somebody, but goodness only knows who. Or else she had her own apartment.

But as she hadn’t rented a room in the boardinghouse, she must have come here to stay. She wasn’t just working at Ehnström’s shop for a couple of weeks.

Joel waited. He stamped his feet and jumped up and down so as not to be too cold. But his boots really were much too small for him. He’d have to have a word with Samuel, or his feet would be worn away.

Then he crossed the street and went in through the front door. He decided that if anybody came and asked what he was doing there, he would tell them he was looking for somebody called Sverker.

Just inside the front door was a board with the names of all the tenants. But there was a gap against one of the second-floor flats to the left. And that was where the light had gone on. Didn’t she have a name? Or was it a secret? Joel decided it must be because she’d only just moved in. If there was a doorman or a caretaker or whatever, he wouldn’t have had time to insert the name yet. Down at the bottom of the board was a row of unused letters for making the names by pressing them into the little holes on the surface of the board. Joel was very tempted to pick out some and press in a name: Salome.

But he didn’t. Which was no doubt sensible of him. Instead he walked up the stairs. To make sure that nobody thought he was sneaking around, he trod down hard with his boots on each step. When he came to the second floor, he saw that there was a bit of paper with a name on the door to the left. He leaned forward in order to read it.

Mattsson, it said, written in red.

There was something else. In small letters, down at the bottom. The lighting was bad on the staircase. But he made it out in the end. It said: Ehnström’s Grocery Store.

At that very moment the door opened. Joel gave a start and took a step backwards. Without his noticing, one of his bootlaces had come undone. He somehow stood on it, stumbled and fell to the floor.

It was her, all right, standing over him. But she wasn’t wearing transparent veils. She had on a checked overall. And she was holding a sweeping brush.

“I thought you weren’t going to come until to morrow,” she said, sounding surprised.

In the midst of his confusion it struck Joel that he’d been right: she certainly spoke with a Stockholm accent.

He scrambled to his feet. What the hell do I do now? he wondered. I hadn’t planned for this.

“I said Thursday,” she said. “It’s only Wednesday today.”

Joel tried to work out what on earth she was talking about. Was he supposed to have come tomorrow instead?

She suddenly burst out laughing. Joel stared at her red lips and white teeth.

“Why do you look so scared? And where’s the catalog you were supposed to bring, with all the Christmas magazines?”

Sometimes, especially when he was in a corner, Joel had the ability to think quickly. He could sometimes surprise himself. He realized that she was mistaking him for somebody else. Somebody who was due to come the next day and show her a catalog with lots of Christmas magazines.

“I must have mixed up the day,” Joel said.

“Where’s the catalog?”

“It’s downstairs.”

Now he’d painted himself into a corner again. What if she asked him to fetch it? Then what would he do?

“Didn’t Ehnström tell you my name?”

“I’ve forgotten it,” he mumbled.

She looked at him and frowned.

“Ehnström said that Digby was sixteen. You can’t be more than fourteen.”

“Digby’s my brother,” said Joel.

“Your brother?”

“Digby’s my brother, and he’s ill.”

“What’s your name, then?”

“Joel.”

“And you’ve come instead of him? But on the wrong day?”

“Digby had a fever and was rambling. He said Wednesday when he should have said Thursday.”

“Is he very ill?”

“He’s dislocated his knee.”

“Does that give you a fever?”

“It can do up here in the north.”

She shook her head.

“You’ll have to come back tomorrow. I don’t have time today.”

“OK,” said Joel. “I’ll come back tomorrow.”

She closed the door and was gone. Sweat was pouring off Joel. He retied his bootlace. He was about to start walking downstairs when he heard music coming from inside the flat. He pressed his ear to the door.

There was no mistake about it. It was Elvis Presley.

“Heartbreak Hotel.”

Joel went down the stairs. But what he’d have preferred to do was to go back up, ring the doorbell and then embrace her when she answered. He felt all tingly at the very thought.

When he came out into the street, he turned to look up at her window. But she wasn’t standing there looking at him.

He went straight home. The first tune he’d learn when Kringström had taught him to play the guitar was “Heartbreak Hotel.”

It was echoing in his ears as he bounced home.

He had the delightful feeling that he’d turned into a ball. Back there in her flat she was no doubt wandering around in transparent veils, listening to Elvis.

It was all too good to be true.

And Samuel was at Sara’s. That was also good. Joel could be in peace. When he’d taken off his outdoor clothes and hurled his boots at the wall to punish them for being too small, he flopped down in Samuel’s armchair and switched on the wireless. He put Samuel’s pipe into his mouth and sucked at it. Pipe tobacco smelled good. But once, when he’d lit the pipe and inhaled the smoke, he’d felt sick. Lots of times he’d bought just one John Silver cigarette and tried smoking properly, but it tasted awful. He wondered what was wrong with him. Why couldn’t he smoke like Otto, for instance? That would have to be one of his New Year’s resolutions next year. To learn how to smoke properly.

He sucked at the empty pipe. The radio was playing classical music, Ludwig van Beethoven. But what Joel heard was “Heartbreak Hotel.” “Heartbreak Hotel” with Elvis van Presley.

“Herbert’s Hotel” with Joel van Gustafson.

What was going on? Ehnström had evidently arranged for somebody to visit her the next day to sell her some Christmas magazines. A boy. Unfortunately not Joel. But somebody by the name of Digby who from now on was Joel’s elder brother. He didn’t know how many boys in town were selling Christmas magazines, but there must be at least twenty of them. Most of them were around his age. He’d sold Christmas magazines himself last year, but this year he’d forgotten to tell the bookshop that he would be interested in doing it again. Somehow or other he’d have to borrow the catalog from whichever boy it was who was due to visit the new shop assistant.

Joel would wait there again tomorrow night. He’d have to think up a good excuse. And he’d have to raid his tin box, where he kept the money he’d saved. Always assuming there was anything left.

Joel put down the pipe and went to his room. He’d got the tin box from Samuel when he was a very little boy. Once upon a time it had contained cigars. It seemed to Joel that, after all those years, the smell of cigars still lingered. Nowadays he kept it under his bed. That was where he saved his money, when he had any. Which wasn’t very often. He also used it to keep some attractive postage stamps from far distant lands that Samuel had visited when he was a sailor. He fetched the tin box and opened it. Just as he’d thought. Hardly any money left. Three kronor. He wasn’t sure that would be enough to buy him the right to sell Christmas magazines to Ehnström’s new shop assistant. That was a worry. But then it struck him that of course, he could opt not to make any money from selling any magazines to her. He could do the job for nothing.

He put the tin back under his bed. He felt sure that he’d solved the problem.

He went over to the window.

When it was dark it wasn’t easy to see if it was cloudy or not. He went back to the kitchen and checked the thermometer outside the window. Plus one. Neither too warm nor too cold.

So, tonight was when he would start toughening up.

The person who was destined to sell Christmas magazines to a woman wearing transparent veils couldn’t be just any Tom, Dick or Harry.

Samuel wasn’t there, so he couldn’t notice anything. If the alarm clock went off early enough, he could hide the bed away before Samuel got back home.

Joel hadn’t yet made up his mind if he was going to tell Samuel about his plans to toughen himself up. There was a risk that his dad wouldn’t understand, and would forbid him to sleep outside in the garden. But there again, Samuel was impressed by strength. He often talked about how strong he’d been as a young man. And about people he’d met who had achieved impressive feats of endurance. Perhaps Joel might be able to persuade Samuel to join him in sleeping out in the open now and then? Maybe that would do something towards correcting his dad’s hunched back?

Joel sat down in Samuel’s armchair. On the wireless, somebody was droning on and on about something or other. Joel tried to listen to what the man was saying in his squeaky voice. It had something to do with cows. Cows and milking machines. Joel started to fiddle with the tuning knob. Crackling sounds came from lots of different foreign stations, but sometimes he could hear a voice that was loud and clear. Occasionally he could hear music, and wondered what country it was coming from.

It was like traveling, he’d often thought. Without needing to get up from your armchair. You just twiddled a knob, and off you went.

He soon got tired of it all, and came back to the man talking about cows. He was still at it. Joel yawned. He had trouble keeping his eyes open. But it was still too early to go outside and go to bed.

He managed to keep awake until eleven o’clock. Then he put on several layers of clothes and packed his alarm clock into a wooly sock. Now he was ready. He was sure he’d fall asleep the moment he’d carried the bed out from the woodshed and snuggled down into it.

When he emerged into the garden, carrying his rolled-up mattress and all the bedclothes, it felt colder than he’d expected. No doubt that was because he was very tired. He opened the shed door and dragged out the bed. Some of the springs were broken, but that couldn’t be helped. That could be a part of the toughening-up process.

He’d decided to place the bed behind the woodshed. Nobody would be able to see him there. But there again, it wasn’t completely dark — the streetlamp penetrated that far.

He got everything ready, checked that the alarm clock stuffed into a sock was properly set, then crept down under the covers. He had his wooly hat on his head, and a woolen scarf wrapped round his face.

It felt cold when he’d settled down in bed. It was very odd, lying there and staring up at the night sky.

He could feel sleep creeping up on him. It felt less cold, now that he’d pulled the thick quilt over his head.

Before long he was fast asleep.

And the snow started to fall.

Joel dreamt that he was cold.

It was a strange dream. He was standing by the stove, stirring a saucepan. The stove was hot. So hot that he’d unbuttoned his shirt right down to his stomach so as not to sweat. But he was cold even so. He stirred and stirred, unfastened even more buttons, and sweat was pouring off him. But nevertheless, he was so cold that he was shivering.

Then he woke up. At first he didn’t know where he was. It was his usual quilt that he’d pulled up over his head. But it was cold all around him. He tried to curl up even more. Then he noticed he was all stiff. And wet.

Then he remembered. He sat bolt upright.

The bed was almost entirely covered in snow. The brown quilt had a layer of fresh white snow. And the newly fallen snow had found its way into his bed and melted. He was so cold that he felt sick. He started to panic. Had he frozen to death? He jumped out of bed. His body was creaking. He started jumping up and down and flailing his arms about. Then he packed up the bedclothes and the wooly sock with the alarm clock. He left the bed where it was. He didn’t bother about the creaking steps on the stairs. Once he was inside the flat he flung all the stuff he’d carried up with him into a heap on the floor, and sat down next to the radiator.

He couldn’t remember ever having experienced any thing so blissful.

The heat spread through his body. His hands softened up.

He fell asleep, sitting there by the radiator. He didn’t know how long he slept. When he woke up he was still so tired that he could hardly open his eyes. Nevertheless, he forced himself to stand up, take off his boots and the rest of his clothes and put his pajamas on. He carried the mattress and the bedclothes into his room and put them on the bed. Everything was still wet. He took the alarm clock with him and snuggled down into Samuel’s bed. It smelled of Samuel. It ought to have been the salty smell of the sea, but in fact it smelled of pine resin and forest.

Otto peered suspiciously at Joel.

Joel tried to peer threateningly back at him. The catalog Otto was carrying under his arm was for Christmas magazines. There was no doubt about that.

So Otto was Digby.

Digby, Piggy, Pigmy. Of course it would have to be him. It was bound to be him.

“What are you doing here?” asked Otto.

Joel didn’t like his tone of voice. It was shrill. And Otto was speaking too loudly.

“I want to talk to you,” said Joel.

“Talk, then!”

“I am.”

Silence. Otto was still peering at him. Joel got ready to defend himself.

“You’ve got something I want to buy,” he said.

Otto’s curiosity was instantly aroused. He had nothing against earning a bit of money by doing a deal. He took a step closer to Joel.

“What?”

“The woman you’re going to sell Christmas magazines to in this block of flats is a relative of mine,” Joel said. “I thought I might give her a surprise.”

Otto became suspicious again.

“But she’s from Stockholm. You haven’t got any relatives there, surely?”

Joel was ready for that.

“She’s a cousin of my dad’s stepbrother.”

Otto hesitated. Joel’s reply had been quick and firm. And in addition, a cousin of a father’s stepbrother was sufficiently complicated to make it impossible to work out on the spot what it really meant. It could just as easily be true as not.

“Surely you know what a cousin of a stepbrother is?” said Joel.

“Of course I do.”

“I thought you might let me sell her the Christmas magazines. You’d still get all the money she’ll pay for them. Plus three kronor in cash.”

“I want five,” said Otto promptly.

Joel knew now he was going to be successful. Otto didn’t care about Christmas magazines or cousins or stepbrothers anymore. He was interested in the money. Nothing else.

“Five is too much. Besides, you know I’m good at selling Christmas magazines. I’ll sell at least one more than you would have done.”

Otto said nothing. Last year Joel had sold more Christmas magazines than almost everybody else in town. Otto knew that what Joel said was true.

“I want five,” he said again.

“You’ll get three,” said Joel. “Tomorrow.”

“I want the money now.”

“Tomorrow.”

“Now.”

Joel pretended to think it over.

“Tomorrow,” he said again.

“Now.”

It was crunch time.

“Give me the catalog. I’ll give you three kronor.”

“Now.”

“Yes. Now.”

Otto handed over the catalog. Joel handed over the three coins. The duel was over. Joel had defeated his opponent. He could put his invisible pistol back into its holster.

“It’ll probably take quite a while,” said Joel. “I’ll return the catalog at school tomorrow.”

Otto became suspicious again.

“You’re not thinking of selling to anybody else as well, I hope?”

“No, only to my cousin.”

“But you said she was the cousin of your father’s step-brother.”

“That means she’s my cousin as well. Don’t you know anything?”

Otto didn’t answer. That’s one way in which he and I are alike, Joel thought. Neither of us likes being wrong.

Joel had got the catalog. Otto had put the money in his pocket.

“There’s something fishy about this,” he said. “Why should you want to give me three kronor, just so that you can surprise your cousin?”

“I got the money from my dad,” said Joel. “He’s the one who wants me to surprise her.”

Joel knew that if you said something that wasn’t really true, it had to be nearly true. Otherwise nobody would believe anything you said.

“I want the catalog back tomorrow morning,” said Otto. “And if you don’t sell her any magazines, I want three more kronor.”

“I’ll sell some all right,” said Joel.

Otto walked away. Joel breathed a sigh of relief. It hadn’t been easy, but he’d succeeded.

He went in through the front door and up the stairs. When he came to her door, he ran his hand over his hair, making sure it was standing straight up. Joel had a crew cut, and it was important that his hair stand straight up. The only problem was that he had a cowlick right at the front, over his forehead. There, his hair spread out like a fan. Samuel didn’t have a cowlick like that, so he must have inherited it from his mum, Jenny.

A fan over his forehead.

There were a few moments in life when Joel was glad that Mummy Jenny had disappeared. There were a few things he’d like to give her a piece of his mind about.

He was feeling nervous. He wondered if this Mattsson woman was another one like Gertrud, who could read his thoughts. What if, when she opened the door, she was wearing transparent veils with nothing on underneath? What would he do then? Pretend he hadn’t noticed? Go into her flat, ask her to leaf through the catalog and choose whatever magazines she wanted to order? Or would he do what Samuel used to say?

“Soon you’ll be old enough to start taking the girls in your arms.”

What did he mean by that? Should Joel lift her up?

Samuel was never any good at explaining what he meant.

It got even more difficult when Joel thought of what else Samuel used to say.

“Make sure they don’t get pregnant. You’ll be arrested if they do.”

Sometimes Joel had the feeling that he knew how it all happened. But deep down he had a nagging worry that he didn’t really know anything at all. Then he would be afraid that everybody else, and especially Otto, knew all about what he ought to know. But there were other times when he suspected that Otto knew just as little as he did. Otto was all talk. He still hadn’t grasped why human beings had two ears but only one tongue.

It was because they should listen more and speak less.

Joel kept on stroking away at his hair. But he couldn’t wait any longer. He would have to take a step out into the unknown. It was just too bad that, needless to say, he badly needed a pee.

He rang the bell. There was no music to be heard from inside the flat this time.

The door opened, and there she was before his very eyes.

Salome Mattsson.

But she was not covered in transparent veils. She was wearing long trousers and a striped blouse.

“At least you’re punctual,” she said.

She let him into the hall. Joel felt lost and didn’t know what to do next. Was it here in the hall that he was supposed to lift her up? Or should he ask her to put her veils on?

“Take your boots off,” she said. “You’ll make a mess of my clean floor if you don’t.”

Joel sat down on a little stool and started undoing his laces. When he took off his left boot he saw that he had a big hole in his woolen sock.

I’d better leave, he thought. I can’t let her see me with holes in my socks.

“What’s keeping you?” she shouted from inside the living room. “There’s a program I want to listen to on the radio starting soon.”

Joel removed the other boot as fast as he could, and tried to fold the hole in his sock underneath his foot. When he walked he looked as if he were limping. He ran his hand one last time through his hair. Then he went into the living room. She was sitting in an armchair with her legs tucked underneath her, smoking. Joel could smell perfume, but not the one that Gertrud used. There wasn’t a lot of furniture in the flat. She gave him a smile. Not friendly, but not unfriendly either.

“How long are you going to stand there looking like a fish out of water? Let me have the catalog while you’re wondering where to sit. What was your name again?”

“Joel,” said Joel.

“How’s Digby?”

“He still has a high temperature, but his shoulder’s not so painful.”

She looked at him in surprise.

“I thought you said it was his knee that hurt?”

“His knee and his shoulder as well,” said Joel quickly.

She shook her head and started looking through the catalog. Joel sat down on the edge of a chair. He really did need to go for a pee now.

She leafed through the catalog. Joel sat watching her. She certainly was very beautiful.

Even before she’d got halfway through, he’d made up his mind that this was the woman he was going to marry.

“Which one of these is really good?” she asked.

Joel hadn’t even had time to open the catalog, never mind read it. He tried to think back to the year when he’d sold Christmas magazines.

“Maybe The Girls’ Own Christmas Book,” he suggested tentatively.

She snorted.

“That’s for little kids.”

Joel had nothing else to suggest. He waited, unable to take his eyes off her. Now he so needed a pee that he had to cross his legs and press as hard as he could.

“You’ve got a hole in your sock,” she said out of the blue.

Damn, Joel thought. She’s noticed.

“You’d better tell your mum to mend it for you,” she said.

“I will,” said Joel.

She closed the catalog and yawned.

“I’ll take a copy of The Family Christmas Magazine,” she said. “Klara can have it as a Christmas present.”

Joel reached out to take the catalog, and produced a pencil.

“So, I’ll have to make a note of the name,” he said.

“Klara Ehnström.”

Joel was confused.

“If it’s you who’s placing the order, yours is the name I have to make a note of,” he said.

“Sonja Mattsson,” she said. “Svensvallsvägen 19. Will that do?”

“That’ll be fine.”

So she wasn’t called Salome. But Sonja wasn’t all that different. It started with the same letter.

Joel was feeling less nervous now. If only he didn’t need a pee so urgently.

“Are you from Stockholm?” he asked.

“I hope you can hear that from the way I speak,” she said.

“Have you moved here, then?”

“I needed to get away for a while. And the Ehnströms are relations of ours. But I don’t know how long I’ll stay here. It depends.”

“Depends on what?”

She had lit another cigarette.

“You’re a real Nosey Parker, aren’t you?”

Joel blushed. He felt as if he was going to wet his pants at any moment. If he didn’t leave this very second, there could be a catastrophe.

“I have to go now,” he said, standing up. “Do you like Elvis?”

“Is there anybody who doesn’t?”

“I’ve thought about becoming a rock idol,” said Joel. “I’ve just started practicing.”

She burst out laughing. Joel couldn’t work out if it was malicious or not.

“Then you’ll have to come and perform for me,” she said.

“Yes,” said Joel. “When I’ve finished practicing.”

Then he rushed out into the hall and started pulling on his boots. He couldn’t keep control of his bladder for much longer. She was standing in the doorway to the living room, watching him.

As he was putting on his jacket, Joel noticed that one of his mittens was in danger of falling out of his pocket. That gave him an idea. She had withdrawn into the living room in order to stub out her cigarette. Joel took out the mitten and hid it behind some wooly hats lying on the shelf. Now he had an excuse to come back again. And when he did, he would make sure he didn’t need a pee.

“Pass on greetings to Digby,” she said. “I hope he’s soon better.”

“He will be, don’t worry,” said Joel.

He opened the door. Then he turned round.

“I’d like to learn how to speak with a Stockholm accent,” he said.

“You wouldn’t be able to do that,” she said.

“I can do anything,” said Joel. Then he closed the door and raced down the stairs with the catalog in his hand. He came out into the street and pressed himself close to the wall.

There were times when having a pee was the most satisfactory thing in life.

Joel made some coffee.

He hated everything to do with strong drink, especially the Swedish version of spiced vodka, called brännvin. He had no need to make any New Year’s resolutions concerning brännvin: he would never start drinking it. It was enough to see what it did to Samuel.

Joel used to find bottles hidden away all over the house, labeled “Absolutely pure brännvin.” He found them hidden in the firewood bin, and in the case of apples they had tucked away in the pantry, for eating in the winter. He’d even found a bottle once in the cupboard where they kept sheets and pillowcases.

He’d read somewhere that the great Indian chieftain Geronimo used to call brännvin “firewater,” but Joel knew what it really was.

Spirits turned Samuel into a shipwrecked sailor.

The drink took the boat away from a sailor.

And Samuel was and would always be a sailor, even though he worked in the forests nowadays, chopping down trees.

Joel made the coffee very strong. He knew that would help to sober Samuel up. Meanwhile, Samuel was lolling about at the kitchen table. He must have fallen down in the street somewhere. One of his pants legs was wet and dirty. Joel didn’t want to ask where his dad had been. When Samuel was on a drinking spree he would go to the homes of other men in town who spent all their time being washed up like driftwood on a beach, like shipwrecked sailors.

Joel still had a stomachache, but it felt better now that he’d found Samuel. His biggest fear was always that Samuel would fall into a snowdrift one of these days and doze off to sleep.

Despite the amount of spirits that Samuel had drunk over the years, he had never learnt how to cope with it.

Joel wanted to know what had happened. Why had Samuel started drinking just now? When he’d been keeping off the booze for so long?

But first Samuel must drink his coffee. Joel poured out a cup and put it on the table in front of his father. He’d put three sugar lumps in it.

Samuel’s eyes were very red. Joel sat down at the table opposite him. It was the spirits glowing red in Samuel’s eyes. The firewater had burnt, and all that was left of it was a glow deep down in Samuel’s eyes.

“I’m very sorry about this,” said Samuel.

“So am I,” said Joel testily.

Samuel slurped at his coffee. He was holding the cup in both hands. Joel waited until he’d put it down again.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“Nothing,” said Samuel.

Joel didn’t ask anymore. He knew that Samuel would tell him what had happened sooner or later. It might be soon, or it might take time. But sooner or later, when the spirits had begun to leave his body, he would say what was wrong.

Meanwhile Joel sat at the table, daydreaming. He thought about Sonja Mattsson and the way she sat with her legs tucked underneath her. If he didn’t have Samuel to run around after and take responsibility for, he could move in with her. He would be able to practice there on the guitar he hoped to borrow from Simon Windstorm. Her flat smelled of perfume, not of wet wool.

“It’s Sara,” Samuel said all of a sudden.

“What’s the matter with Sara?”

“She doesn’t want to anymore.”

Joel still didn’t understand what had happened. Samuel raised his head, which seemed to be attached very loosely to his body. Like a leaf clinging to a tree in autumn. A leaf that was about to fall off.

“She met me when I came home from the forest,” said Samuel. “And she said she’d been thinking. And that it was probably best if we stopped seeing each other.”

So she’s broken it off, Joel thought.

That was the explanation. But he still didn’t understand. Samuel had always said how well they got on together. How they laughed a lot. And he spent the night with her once a week.

“Didn’t she explain why?” Joel asked.

Samuel shook his head. He’ll start crying in a minute, Joel thought.

At that very moment Samuel burst out crying. It cut through Joel like a knife. This was the worst and the most difficult thing. Samuel drifting ashore like a shipwrecked sailor was one thing. But when he started crying, it was like having to deal with a drowning man.

What Joel wanted to do more than anything else was to start crying himself. But he didn’t, of course. He stood up and walked round the table. Patted Samuel on the head.

When Samuel cried, it sounded as if he was squeaking. He was trying to say something, but the words jumped out of his mouth in a chaotic jumble. Joel gathered he was trying to explain why Sara wanted to break off the relationship, but he couldn’t understand what his father was saying.

Afterwards everything was very silent.

Samuel sat staring at his coffee cup. It occurred to Joel that Sara had now done the same as Mummy Jenny. She’d deserted Samuel.

“Has she gone away?” Joel asked. “Did she also pack a bag and vanish?”

“She’s still here,” Samuel said. “Why should she want to leave here? It’s only me she doesn’t want to see anymore.”

Joel helped Samuel to go to bed. Took off his shoes and pulled a blanket over him. Then he sat in the kitchen and waited until he was sure that Samuel really had fallen asleep. By this time Joel was so tired that he didn’t bother to get undressed either, but just lay down on top of the bed. Pulled the quilt over his head. Listened to Samuel’s snores rumbling in through the wall.

Joel woke up with a start.

He had dozed off at the kitchen table while he’d been waiting for Samuel. He didn’t know what time it was. But he could hear footsteps on the stairs. It could only be Samuel. He stood up. Would Samuel be sober or not?

The door opened. Joel felt himself sinking down into his relief like getting into a warm bath. Samuel’s eyes were not red. He wasn’t swaying from side to side. He was late home, but he hadn’t been drinking.

“Are you still up?” he asked in surprise.

Joel wondered how stupid Samuel could get. Did he really think Joel would have gone to bed and fallen asleep before Samuel came home? He felt the need to make that clear.

“How could I possibly go to bed when you were out on a spree?”

“It depends what you mean by on a spree,” said Samuel. “I’ve been at Sara’s place, trying to talk some sense into her.”

Joel waited eagerly for what came next, but Samuel didn’t say anything more. Joel wondered, a bit uncomfortably, if Sara had said anything about his going there as well. He didn’t know how Samuel would react. He didn’t usually like it if anybody stuck their nose into his business. That was one of the things he and Joel had in common.

Samuel hung up his jacket and kicked off his boots.

“What time is it?” Joel wondered.

“It must be turned midnight,” said Samuel. “We’d both better get to bed if we’re going to be able to cope with tomorrow.”

Samuel seemed less miserable than yesterday.

“How did it go?” Joel asked tentatively.

Samuel shrugged.

“She thinks we’re not suitable for each other,” he said. “Maybe she’s right. But I don’t understand why.”

Joel said nothing. Sara had evidently not mentioned that he’d been to see her. If she had, Samuel would have said so by now. Joel had got away with it.

“We didn’t sit shouting at each other,” said Samuel. “I had dinner, and we spoke calmly and sensibly. But I suppose that’s that. We’re on our own again, you and me.”

That’s how it’s been all the time, Joel thought. You’ve had Sara to go home to. I haven’t.

Samuel yawned.

“We can talk more about this tomorrow,” he said. “We’d better get to bed now. We can have the food you’ve prepared for tomorrow’s dinner.”

They carried the pots and pans to the pantry; then Joel had a quick wash and snuggled down into bed.

Anyway, it was a relief. That Samuel wasn’t drunk again.

There was nothing worse than that. Nothing at all.

The next day Joel turned up at school on time, at last.

It had snowed during the night. The school caretaker had started making a skating rink on the big expanse of gravel next to the playground. Winter had really set in now. Otto and Joel glared at each other during the breaks, but both the headmaster and Miss Nederström were keeping a close eye on them.

During one of the breaks the Greyhound came up to talk to Joel. That made him suspicious straightaway. She’d never done that before.

“No doubt you’ve told everybody that I’m going to learn to play the guitar,” he said accusingly.

“I haven’t said a word,” she said. “I don’t spread gossip.”

Joel knew that wasn’t true. Nobody ran around spreading as much gossip as the Greyhound. Joel thought that might be because she could run so fast. She was a gossip runner.

But now he wasn’t so sure. Maybe it was true after all? But if so, he didn’t understand why.

As soon as school was over he hurried home to fetch the guitar. On the way he called in at Ehnström’s shop to buy potatoes and butter. He ran his hand through his hair before going in, but he was out of luck. It was Ehnström himself behind the counter. He could see Sonja in the storeroom, and tried to draw out his purchases for as long as possible. But the old ladies were jostling him from behind. He would have to wait until the next day before greeting her.

When he got to the block of flats where Kringström lived he was soaked in sweat. He had to pause and recover his breath before going up the stairs. The black van used by the orchestra was parked outside. Today there was no risk of Kringström having gone to Brunflo.

Kringström opened the door with a clarinet in his hand. Music could be heard in the background.

“‘Siam Blues,’” said Kringström. “Come on in.”

Then he stood in the hall playing to the record while Joel was taking off his outdoor clothes. Halfway through he changed from the clarinet to a big bass saxophone. Joel listened in fascination. Kringström really could play.

Joel looked at the man’s hands. His fingers were short and stubby, but even so he could reach all the keys he needed to press.

The music came to an end. Kringström put down the saxophone. They had come into the biggest room, where all the music stands were. Joel sat on the floor and took the guitar out of its case. Kringström picked it up and examined it carefully. Joel worried in case it wasn’t good enough.

“Where have you got this from?” Kringström asked.

“I’ve borrowed it,” said Joel.

“It’s a fine old guitar,” said Kringström. “They don’t make them like this anymore. If they did they’d be worth many thousands of kronor.”

The very thought made Joel feel dizzy. Simon had had that guitar hanging on his wall for as long as Joel had known him. No doubt he had no idea that it was so valuable.

“But the strings are in poor condition,” said Kringström. “We’d better start by changing them.”

“I haven’t got any others,” said Joel.

Kringström shrugged.

“But I have. If you lead an orchestra you need to be equipped like a car repair shop. Spare parts for all the instruments.”

He produced a new set of strings. Joel watched him removing the old ones and fixing the new ones. Then Kringström nodded towards the piano.

“Give me a C,” he said.

Joel didn’t know where to find a C. He was forced to ask.

“The white key that comes immediately before two black ones,” said Kringström, sounding only a little bit annoyed.

Joel prodded at a C.

“You don’t need to belt it as hard as that,” said Kringström.

Joel tapped the key once more. More gently this time. And Kringström tuned the guitar.

Then he handed it to Joel, and they started to practice.

After an hour Joel had a pain in his fingers and his back and his wrists. He didn’t see how he’d ever be able to learn. Even if he could it would take so long that he’d be in the churchyard before he could play a single Elvis song. Kringström pulled at Joel’s fingers, told him to bend his wrist more and to press harder. The strings cut into the tips of Joel’s fingers.

“You’ll learn eventually,” said Kringström when the hour was up. “But it will take time.”

He told Joel what he ought to practice before the next time they met.

“I haven’t time for more than two lessons a week,” said Kringström. “And now we must decide how you’re going to pay.”

A shudder ran down Joel’s spine.

Did Kringström want paying? He’d thought Kringström did this kind of thing because it was fun.

Kringström noticed Joel’s panic. His face broke into a large smile. Joel had never seen anything like it before. Kringström looking happy.

“You can help me to clean,” he said. “I don’t want money. But you can dust down the records and music stands. And wash up when necessary. Do you know how to wash up?”

“Yes,” said Joel. “And I can clean as well.”

“Boys can’t usually do that kind of thing,” said Kringström.

“But I can,” said Joel.

Kringström nodded.

“That’s settled, then. You needn’t bother today. We’ll start next time. One hour with the guitar, then one hour with the dishcloth and duster.”

Joel put his guitar back in its case and got ready to leave. By then Kringström had already put on a new record and started playing. This time he had taken up position behind a big double bass. Joel stood in the doorway, watching. Listening. Kringström played away and seemed to have forgotten already that Joel was there.

As Joel emerged through the front door, the Greyhound appeared from behind the corner. Joel had the impression that she’d been lying in wait for him. He was on his guard immediately. What did she want now?

“Can you play yet?” she asked.

“You know full well that it takes time,” said Joel. “With your wrists and your fingers and all that. How many notes do you think have to be learnt?”

Joel set off walking. She accompanied him. There’s something she wants, Joel thought. But I’m not going to ask her what.

They walked down the hill in silence. Now and then she would run for a few feet, circling round Joel. She really was like a dog. She couldn’t keep still.

“Why didn’t you tell the truth?” she asked without warning.

Joel stopped. What did she mean?

“Why didn’t you say that you didn’t go to school because your dad was drunk?”

Joel stared at her.

“He wasn’t at all.”

“What was he, then?”

“He was ill.”

Joel could feel his cheeks burning. Nobody had permission to say that his dad was drunk. Even if it was true. And how did the Greyhound know about it anyway?

“If you’d told the truth you needn’t have been in detention. And you didn’t need to say it in front of the class. You could have waited until one of the breaks.”

“My dad was ill,” said Joel, and set off walking again. The Greyhound followed him remorselessly.

Joel stopped again.

“How do you know about it?” he asked. “Did you see him?”

“I just know,” she said, continuing to circle round Joel.

There could only be one explanation, Joel thought. The Greyhound gossips more than anybody else in town, but that must also mean that she knows more than anybody else. The gossip has to come from somewhere, even for her.

Joel started walking again. Faster now.

“He doesn’t drink very often,” Joel said. “Less and less, in fact.”

They had come to the bottom of the hill. Joel thought the Greyhound would turn round now and run back home. But she didn’t. She carried on walking by his side.

Joel was less suspicious now. The Greyhound hadn’t spat out her comments as she usually did. It was almost as if he’d started to enjoy walking along in her company. Quite apart from the fact that she could run faster than anybody else, she was rather pretty. And not stupid. Joel could think of much worse company than her.

They had come as far as the Community Center. Joel hadn’t the slightest idea where the thought came from — all too often he spoke first and thought later. This was one of those occasions.

The poster in the case outside the entrance, advertising the film being shown that week, didn’t look especially exciting. A man and a woman in old-fashioned clothes stood with their arms around each other, staring in horror at something that couldn’t possibly be guessed. Joel assumed it was a love story. But nevertheless, as it was for adults only, there might be something exciting in the film.

“Would you like to go to the pictures?” he asked, pointing at the poster.

“It’s adults only,” said the Greyhound.

“I know how to get in even so,” said Joel. “Without paying as well.”

“I don’t believe that for a moment,” she said.

But Joel could see that she was interested already.

“Do you want to go to the pictures or don’t you?” he asked.

“I do.”

“But you must promise not to tell anybody how I get in.”

“I promise.”

“If you tell anybody, everybody will start doing what I do. And Engman will find out. Then it won’t be possible anymore.”

Engman was the cinema caretaker. So far he hadn’t found out that Joel knew a way of getting in without paying, no matter if the film was adults only or not. He’d discovered how to do it during the many evenings he’d been out in the streets looking for the dog that was heading for a distant star. Ture had been with him the first time. But since Ture moved away, Joel had always been on his own. And now here he was inviting the Greyhound to come with him. He didn’t understand it himself.

The film began at half past seven. There was only one showing. Joel pointed to a car repair shop on the other side of the street.

“You must be there by a quarter past seven,” he said. “And don’t say a word to anybody.”

She promised. Then she ran off home. Joel stood watching her, racing along the street like a flash of lightning.

For a brief moment Joel tried to imagine the Greyhound dressed in transparent veils. With nothing on underneath. But the thought horrified him.

Then he set off home. It was high time he started to make dinner.

The Greyhound giggled.

Now they were kissing again on the screen. Men and women, kissing each other. Some were kissing furtively, others openly, behind doors and sitting on horses. Long kisses and short kisses.

The Greyhound continued giggling.

Joel sat thinking about Sonja Mattsson in the seats down below. And about the unknown man who was holding her hand.

It was as if the film was really about Joel. Even if he wasn’t kissing anybody. A woman engaged to a captain in the U.S. cavalry was meeting another man in secret. That was what the film was about. Joel had gathered that much. He realized that he was overwhelmed with jealousy. He was the one who ought to have been sitting downstairs beside Sonja Mattsson. Not somebody else, some totally unknown person.

But there again, he had nothing against sitting here upstairs next to the Greyhound. When he thought about the possibility of changing places with the unknown man down below, that wasn’t a good idea either.

Joel leaned forward over the rail. Sonja was still holding the unknown man’s hand.

“What are you looking at?” whispered the Greyhound.

“I don’t want to end up walking with a stoop,” Joel hissed back. “I have to keep stretching.”

He tried to concentrate on what was happening on the screen. There was still lots of kissing going on. He wondered if he ought to take hold of the Greyhound’s hand. But he was unsure of how she would react. Would she start screaming? Would she hit him? He decided it was best not to try it.

The film was boring. There were groans and moans and creaking noises down below in the stalls. The only one sitting absolutely still and staring at all the people kissing everybody else was the Greyhound. Joel thought it might be an idea to take the opportunity of kissing the Greyhound. He didn’t know how to do it, but perhaps she wouldn’t notice that. She’d just think it was a part of the film. If he did it really quickly.

Without another thought he leaned towards her, took hold of her shoulders and pressed his lips against her.

He could feel her lips against his. They tasted sweet. Then he drew back. But she didn’t scream. She didn’t giggle either. Joel thought she didn’t even look annoyed. Even if it was hard to see her face properly in the darkness.

“What are you doing, are you out of your mind? Stop it,” said the Greyhound.

“Come on, it was no big deal,” said Joel, who still hadn’t understood what he’d done.

“You can’t,” said the Greyhound.

“Can’t what?”

“Kiss. Watch the film and learn.”

“You can teach me, if you’re so good at it.”

“Yes, I can. But not now.”

Joel tried to concentrate on the film again. Had the Greyhound really meant what she said? That she could teach him how to kiss? Perhaps the Greyhound knew about all the things that Otto used to talk about? Knew properly?

He looked sideways at her. She was watching what was going on in the film, but she noticed immediately that he was looking at her.

“Stop it,” she said angrily.

Joel looked away immediately. Now she sounded annoyed. He would have to be careful to avoid making her change her mind.

Joel started thinking about Sonja Mattsson again. Who was this man she had come to the cinema with? Was he also somebody who had moved here from Stockholm?

He’d better not come up here and take hold of the Greyhound’s hand.

Thoughts were racing around inside his head. All at once there was so much to keep a check on.

On the screen they were still riding horses, burning down beautiful big white houses and kissing behind doors. Joel was now really interested. He tried hard to see how they did it.

He’d realized that one thing was very important: you had to close your eyes while kissing.

Maybe that was something he could teach the Greyhound. So that he didn’t give the impression of being completely ignorant.

Joel suddenly had the impression that the film was approaching its end. This was always a snag with going to the cinema without paying: you never got to see the end. You had to be outside when Engman switched the lights on. Otherwise there could be trouble.

“We’ll have to go now,” he said to the Greyhound.

“Can’t we see the end?”

“I’m afraid not. Engman puts the lights on as soon as the film’s over and so we have to be gone by then.”

He could see even in the darkness that she was far from pleased. He started to worry that she no longer wanted to teach him how to kiss.

Joel stood up.

“It’ll be finished in a minute,” he said. “I think we have to go.”

“What’s the point of going to the pictures if you can’t see how the film ends?” she said.

“All the endings are the same,” said Joel. “You can work it out for yourself.”

They went back the same way as they’d come in. Just as they were passing the back of the screen the film ended. But they managed to get out through the basement door before Engman switched the lights on.

They stood outside in the dark. Joel waited until all the people who had seen the film had gone their various ways. But he didn’t see Sonja Mattsson and the unknown man. They must have gone off in the opposite direction, out of sight from where he was standing. He waited until Engman had closed the doors with a bang before starting to move away himself. They left the back courtyard and emerged into the street.

“It wasn’t much of a film,” said Joel.

Needless to say, the Greyhound thought it was good. He ought to have expected that.

“It was pretty good, surely you could see that?”

Joel held his ground, even though he had begun to wonder.

“There wasn’t enough action,” he said. “They just stood around, talking.”

“What’s wrong with that? Besides, they were speaking English.”

Joel couldn’t think of any more reasons why he thought the film was no good.

“I’ve seen better films,” he said lamely.

They started walking. But not in the direction of Joel’s house, nor hers. Without Joel understanding why, he suddenly wondered if Lars Olson, lying dead in the churchyard, would have thought the film was any good or not.

They stopped in front of the shoe shop windows.

“I’m going to get a new pair of boots,” said Joel.

“Provided your dad doesn’t drink up the money first,” said the Greyhound.

Joel stared at her. He thought he ought to hit her. Or rub snow all over her.

Then he saw that she regretted having said that. She put her hand over her mouth.

“I didn’t mean it.”

“Why did you say it, then?”

“I don’t know.”

They continued walking. Joel felt more sad than angry. If he was angry, it was with Samuel. Who didn’t know how to behave.

“I have to say the film was really pretty bad,” said the Greyhound.

“I’ve seen worse,” said Joel.

Joel kept on walking by her side, and waiting. He hadn’t forgotten what she said about Samuel, but he was waiting for her to start teaching him. They walked past the bank and the pharmacy and the Highways Department yard with all the excavators and road graders. Eventually Joel couldn’t hold back any longer.

“Aren’t you going to teach me, then?” he asked.

The Greyhound giggled.

“Here? Out in the street?”

“Why not?”

“It’s too cold.”

“I’ve seen films in which people stand at the North Pole and kiss each other.”

“Why don’t you go there, then?”

“Where shall we go?”

She didn’t reply. Joel could see that she was trying to make up her mind. He realized that it was best to say nothing, and wait.

“There’ll be nobody in at my place tomorrow night,” she said. “So you can come round. But if you mention it to anybody, I’ll tell everybody that your dad’s a drunkard.”

Joel was about to reply, but then he realized that she’d vanished. In a flash. There was no point in trying to catch up with her.

He started walking home. He was already looking forward to tomorrow night. That feeling was there again, he wasn’t at all sure what it was. It would be hard to wait. He sometimes wished days could simply be whisked away. That two evenings could follow one after the other, with nothing in between.

He stopped dead.

I’m me and nobody else, he thought. What happens to me happens only to me.

It was only a few nights since the first snow had crept up on him without a sound. Then he’d made his New Year resolutions. He’d already tried sleeping out in the snow. And he’d borrowed a guitar worth a lot of money from Simon Windstorm. Kringström had started giving him lessons. Sonja Mattsson had allowed him into her flat. And now the Greyhound was going to teach him how to kiss.

Life was strange. For long periods nothing at all happened. And then everything happened all at once. Like an avalanche.

He started bouncing again. Bouncing along the street like a ball. He would eventually find out who had been holding Sonja Mattsson’s hand. But first, the Greyhound would teach him how to kiss. And then he would no doubt persuade Sonja Mattsson to put on some transparent veils with nothing at all underneath.

He came to the house where he lived, and continued bouncing up the stairs.

And then he was overwhelmed by another avalanche.

An avalanche that was black and cold and made his stomach ache.

Samuel wasn’t at home. He’d vanished again.

That could only mean one thing. He hadn’t been able to resist. He’d gone out drinking again.

Joel smashed his fists down onto the kitchen table. He was so furious that he burst into tears. He didn’t want Samuel for his father anymore. He wanted to be rid of him. He would put an ad in the local paper.

Inadequate father available for collection. N.B. — Free!

Or perhaps there were special rubbish dumps where you could dispose of inadequate parents? Where they could mix with others just as useless as they were?

Joel slumped down on the kitchen floor. Samuel had gone out again. And even if Joel had decided to wash his hands of him, he knew that before long he’d be obliged to go out looking for his dad.

He spoils everything for me, Joel thought. If I’m only a little bit cheerful, then of course he feels the need to go out and drink himself silly. I ought to go to bed out there in the snow and toughen myself up. Or practice the guitar. Instead, I have to go out looking for Samuel. It’s not fair.

Joel stayed sitting there on the floor for ages. He wasn’t furious anymore, just sad and tired. His stomach hurt. Samuel was there inside him, biting and chewing away. He stood up, went to Samuel’s room and sat down on his chair. The newspaper was lying on the floor, his pipe on top of the wireless. Joel hadn’t taken his boots off. Big pools of dirty water formed on the floor. But he didn’t bother about that.

Mutiny on the Bounty was lying open next to the wireless. Joel leaned forward and reached for it. He noticed that somebody had underlined a few lines in pencil. It could only have been Samuel. Didn’t he realize that you could be barred from borrowing library books if you drew or wrote in them? Who would it be who was banned? Him, of course. Joel. Not Samuel. Samuel would get away with it. Because he didn’t know what he was doing when he was out drinking.

Joel read what his dad had underlined. Quickly at first, but then more slowly.

“Pitcairn Island, the island to which the mutineers, led by Fletcher, managed to get to, exists in reality. Even today descendants of the mutineers still live on the island.”

Joel put the book down. Why had Samuel chosen to underline those very words? Joel had never heard anything about Samuel having visited that island when he was a sailor.

Joel went to fetch Samuel’s big atlas of the world and all the deep oceans. Then he started looking. It took him ages. But in the end he found Pitcairn Island. A little dot in the middle of a boundless ocean. A totally isolated little dot far away from everything.

That’s where Samuel ought to have gone, Joel thought. He might not have mutinied on a ship, but he has mutinied against me. He’s left me all alone in a dinghy. He’s gone away to Pitcairn Island...

Joel suddenly started thinking. Was it possible that he was right? That Samuel had indeed had that idea? Of running away to Pitcairn Island? Just like Mummy Jenny had done all those years ago. Packed her bag and run away.

Joel knew there was only one thing to do. Look for him and ask.

The hardest part was the last bit.

Taking tight hold of the handle until your knuckles turned white, opening the door and entering the oozing cloud of smoke. Joel could think of nothing worse. And now he was here again. To drag Samuel home.

His hope was that Samuel hadn’t yet had time to become completely drunk. If he was, he could be difficult. Might ask Joel to wait outside while he took a few more swigs from the bottle. Try to delay things for as long as possible.

Joel counted to three, then opened the door. Four pairs of bloodshot eyes turned to look at him in apathetic surprise. Joel knew them all. Samuel had been to their place many times before. One of them was called the Crow, because of his big, pointed nose. The two other men in the room were brothers, known as the Goblins. They looked like a pair of shaggy dogs. Both of them used to be lumberjacks. Nowadays they got by doing odd jobs for a day or two when they needed money.

“Have you come?” asked Samuel in surprise.

Joel noticed to his relief that Samuel wasn’t yet so drunk that he wouldn’t be able to stand up.

“Let’s go home now,” Joel said. “It’s getting late.”

Samuel nodded. Joel often had the impression that in fact, Samuel was glad his son had come to fetch him. He never drank to make himself happy. Possibly in order to be less sad.

“Stay for a bit longer,” said the Crow, trying to take hold of Joel’s arm. But Joel pushed him away. He’d been through that before.

Samuel rose unsteadily to his feet. Then he pulled himself together.

Joel had already turned and left the room. He didn’t want to stay in that smoky atmosphere a second longer than necessary.

On the way home Samuel didn’t say a single word. Neither did Joel. Samuel occasionally stumbled, but Joel never needed to grab hold of him to prevent him from falling down.

Joel tried to imagine that the man walking by his side was the captain of the Bounty. But no matter how hard he tried, it was Samuel. And his back seemed more hunched than ever.

When they got home Samuel slumped down onto one of the kitchen chairs.

“I couldn’t help it,” he said. “That business with Sara was not good.”

Joel didn’t bother to respond. He had enough trouble trying to take Samuel’s boots off.

“It won’t happen again,” Samuel said.

Joel still didn’t say anything, but by now he’d managed to get his father’s boots off.

Samuel started to make coffee. That was a good sign, Joel knew that. It meant his dad wanted to be sober. Meanwhile Joel went to fetch the book in which Samuel had done the underlining. He sat down at the table and watched Samuel standing by the stove, waiting for the coffee to be ready.

Samuel sat down opposite him. He stank of spirits. Joel thought he looked like an animal that had forgotten to shave. If there had been any animals that shaved, of course.

Samuel drank his coffee. Joel knew his father had a guilty conscience, but he had no hesitation in exploiting it. Samuel deserved to pay for causing so much trouble all the time.

“Have you any money left for my boots?” he asked.

Samuel nodded.

“It’s in the bureau.”

Samuel sometimes told lies when he had a really guilty conscience, but on this occasion Joel believed him. That made everything so much easier. At least he hadn’t managed to drink up Joel’s boots.

Joel had survived the black avalanche yet again.

“Why have you made underlinings in this book?” he asked. “Don’t you know that it’s forbidden to write any thing in books borrowed from the library?”

“I only wrote in pencil,” said Samuel defensively. “It can be erased. But there was something I wanted to show you.”

“I’ve already read it,” said Joel. “About Pitcairn Island. And the mutineers who still live there.”

“We ought to go there one of these days,” said Samuel, and his bloodshot eyes took on a dreamy look. “Just you and me.”

“Shall we row there?” wondered Joel. “Or shall we float there on a few logs?”

Samuel didn’t seem to hear.

“We ought to go there,” he said again. “Perhaps we could live there for a few years?”

“Is there a school there?”

Samuel still didn’t hear him. He was sinking deeper and deeper into his dreams.

“Maybe it’s time to move away from here,” he said slowly. “Get away from all this snow and seek out some warm sand instead.”

Joel wanted to believe that Samuel really meant what he said. But he didn’t dare. He didn’t want to be disappointed again. Like so many times before.

Samuel would stay in this house by the river and continue cutting down trees in the forest. Perhaps he would one day succeed in cutting down a path all the way to the sea. But Joel couldn’t afford to wait all that time. If he really was going to get to Pitcairn Island, he would have to arrange it himself. Samuel would have to carry on traveling in his dreams. No doubt they would never make the journey together. Joel couldn’t enter into Samuel’s dream. And Samuel wouldn’t be able to travel in reality.

That was the way it was. Joel could see it all clearly before him now.

He couldn’t afford to be childish any longer.

First the Greyhound would teach him how to kiss. Then he would become a rock idol and get away from the winter and this dump of a little town and all the snow that fell silently during the night. He would leave enough money for Samuel, but he would have to arrange the journey to Pitcairn Island on his own. Possibly with somebody else.

Sonja Mattsson, perhaps.

Or the Greyhound?

Or maybe somebody else, but he didn’t yet know who.

“I’m going to bed now,” Joel said.

Samuel nodded.

“We both need to get some sleep,” he said. “I’ll stay at home tomorrow night. I promise.”

Hmm, we’ll see, Joel thought. But I’ll have gone round to the Greyhound’s then. So I won’t be going out looking for you.

But he knew that he would do so, if it was necessary. That was the way it was.

When Joel got home he went to the woodshed and sat down on the bed that was inside there. The cold steel springs hurt, but he sat there even so. He even lay down, and thought that he might as well carry on lying there until he had frozen to death.

Eventually he went into the house and up the stairs. He didn’t really care if Samuel was at home or if he’d gone wandering off again. But in fact Samuel was in bed, asleep. The bedside light was still on. Mutiny on the Bounty was lying at the side of the bed. Joel switched the light off. Then he went to his own room and undressed. He crept between the sheets and pulled the covers over his head. Forced himself to stop thinking about what had happened.

Next to his ear he could hear a mouse gnawing away inside the wall. If he’d been able to, Joel would have liked to crawl into the wall and take up residence there. He would never come out again. He would live inside that wall until he was a hundred years old and didn’t need to live any longer.

He curled up. Kept thoughts from entering his head. And went to sleep.

It had never happened before.

That Miss Nederström had been round to Joel’s house to see him. But the following day, a Sunday, when Joel was still asleep in bed, there was a knock on the door. Samuel was sitting at the kitchen table, patching a pair of pants. He knew who Miss Nederström was because he had seen her at end-of-term meetings.

“What has Joel done now?” he asked in horror when he opened the door and saw who it was.

“Is he in?” asked Miss Nederström.

“He’s asleep,” said Samuel. “He must have come home pretty late last night. He spends too much time gallivanting about when he should be in bed. I keep telling him. But it’s beyond me, what he was doing out in that storm.”

Miss Nederström had come into the kitchen.

“So you haven’t yet spoken to your son, Mr. Gustafson?”

“I’ll wake him up right away,” said Samuel, trying to appear angry with Joel.

She put her hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t wake him up. He needs to sleep. I think I can fill you in on what happened.”

They sat down at the kitchen table. Miss Nederström accepted the offer of a cup of coffee.

Then she told Samuel what had happened the previous day. How Joel had dragged Simon Windstorm a couple of miles through the raging storm. And how he had then gone to fetch help.

“Mr. Windstorm is seriously ill,” said Miss Nederström. “But for Joel, he’d have been dead.”

Samuel had listened in astonishment to what she had said. He wasn’t sure that he understood everything, but it was clear that for once, Joel hadn’t been stirring up trouble.

“Maybe I ought to wake him up,” Samuel said.

“No, let him sleep. He must be absolutely exhausted.”

They both peeped cautiously round the door to Joel’s room. He was lying with his eyes closed and the quilt up to his chin.

They tiptoed quietly back to the kitchen table.

What they hadn’t noticed was that Joel was awake. He had screwed up his eyes and seen them as two blurred shadows in the doorway. He had realized that it was Miss Nederström and Samuel. When they went back to the kitchen he sneaked up to the door and listened. He gathered she had come to ask how he was. Not to tell Samuel how difficult he was being at school, when he was there.

“Joel learns things so easily,” she said. “But he’s careless. And he has so many other things buzzing round in his head.”

“It’s not always so easy for me to take proper care of him when I’m on my own,” said Samuel. “But I do the best I can.”

Miss Nederström left shortly afterwards. Joel had managed to hasten back to bed.

He heard her walking down the stairs.

Samuel came to Joel’s room. He pretended to be asleep again, but he couldn’t fool Samuel.

“I heard you standing behind the door, listening,” he said.

He sat down on the edge of Joel’s bed.

“What’s all this that I ought to know about?” he said. “I want to hear it from you now. How are you feeling?”

“Fine.”

“You must be tired out?”

“Not any longer.”

Then Joel told his dad what had happened. Samuel listened without saying a word.

“Simon was heavy,” said Joel to finish off with. “I didn’t think it was possible for a person to weigh as much as that.”

Samuel stroked him lightly over the forehead.

“It was as if you’d saved a shipwrecked sailor,” he said. “A man overboard, but in the snow. There were enormous breakers in the sea of snow. The gale was howling. But you managed to get him to the shore. Alive.”

Joel understood what Samuel meant. Even though he had never rescued anybody from the real sea.

“It was like swallowing a lot of freezing cold water,” he said. “All that snow blowing into my face.”

Samuel sat looking at him for ages. Joel liked being looked at by his father.

“Come and lie down in my bed,” said Samuel eventually. “We can read a bit of Mutiny on the Bounty.”

Joel jumped eagerly out of bed. He was aching all over. But it was a long time since he and Samuel had read a book together. Far too long.

Samuel pulled the quilt up to both their chins. Joel felt as if he were hibernating together with a grizzly bear.

“I stood waiting for you outside the shoe shop,” Samuel said. “I don’t mind telling you I got pretty angry.”

“Maybe we can buy the boots next Saturday instead,” said Joel.

“You can buy them yourself,” Samuel said. “I’ll give you the money. It occurs to me that you don’t need me with you when you’re buying new shoes. Unless I’m much mistaken, you’re starting to be grown up.”

“I’ve been grown up for ages,” said Joel. “It’s just that you haven’t noticed until now.”

Samuel nodded.

“Maybe I haven’t wanted to notice,” he said. “You see, if you grow older, so do I. And I don’t want to. I think I’m old enough as it is.”

Joel suspected that Samuel disliked talking about growing old. Samuel took hold of the book.

“Shall we start at the beginning?” he asked.

“You can choose,” said Joel.

“Then we’ll read the end first,” said Samuel. “That’s the best bit.”

Then he read about the mysterious island that had suddenly appeared on the horizon. When the mutineers had started mutinying against one another. When Fletcher had hardly been able to control them any longer. The island rose out of the water like a gigantic rock. They had beached the Bounty in the shallows and gone ashore.

It was like entering paradise.

And they were still there now. After many hundreds of years.

Samuel closed the book and dropped it onto his stomach.

Both of them lay there in silence.

The wind was howling outside the window, but Joel could hear that the storm was beginning to ease off.

The walls of the house were creaking and crackling. It was like being on board ship. As if they were tossing about on the sea somewhere, in the captain’s cabin.

“I’d like to go there,” said Joel. “To Pitcairn Island.”

“So would I,” said Samuel. “To Pitcairn Island.” That was all they said. Joel dozed off and slept for another hour.

Joel tried to be angry. But he didn’t succeed.

They walked down the hill from the hospital. The Greyhound didn’t say a word. Nor did she run round and round him like she usually did.

Instead of being angry Joel tried to demonstrate that he couldn’t care less about her company. To act as if she weren’t there. But that didn’t really work either. He would never be an actor.

In the end he decided to be himself and do exactly what he wanted to do. They had come as far as the railway station now.

There were several large snowdrifts just behind the long, red wooden building that housed the freight office. Anybody walking past would think they were only playing.

As they passed the biggest of the snowdrifts Joel tripped the Greyhound up so that she fell backwards into the snow. Then he jumped on top of her and started rubbing snow into her face. She struggled as hard as she could, but Joel was stronger. Then he started to poke snow down inside her clothes. She kicked and scratched and fought back. Joel still wasn’t angry, but even so, he had to do what he was doing.

“Stop it!” she shouted.

“Purse your lips,” said Joel.

Then he pushed her head into the snow again.

He didn’t stop until she had started crying.

“So, now I’ve gotten you back,” he said, standing up.

Her jacket was torn. She was crying as she walked away. Joel thought it was odd that she didn’t run. Now, if ever, was the time when she ought to be running.

He set off for home. But suddenly he stopped dead and started following the Greyhound. Now he was the one running, not her.

He caught up with her at the tumbledown old building used as a warehouse by Thulin the ironmonger’s. She was still crying, but Joel could tell that it was ebbing out. He walked beside her for quite a while without speaking.

In the end he couldn’t keep quiet any longer.

“It served you right,” he said. “But I won’t do it again.”

“Nor will I,” she said. “But it wasn’t my idea.”

Joel stopped dead. What she said couldn’t be true.

“I thought you and I were the only ones who knew about it.”

“Nearly,” she said. “But it wasn’t me who wanted to do it even so.”

“Who was it, then?”

“The others.”

“But you could have told me.”

“I wish I had done.”

Joel gazed down at the ground. Should he believe her or not?

There was only one way of finding out.

“Show me,” he said. “Here and now. How to kiss. Then I’ll believe what you say.”

“Not out here in the street,” she said.

“We can go behind this building. Nobody lives here. There’s only saws and axes and such stuff inside.”

“Another time.”

“In that case, I don’t believe you.”

She looked at him angrily.

“But I’ve been crying! I can’t stand here kissing some body when I’ve been crying! Don’t you understand anything?”

Joel felt unsure.

“I’ll wait, then,” he said.

“I have to go home now,” said the Greyhound. “I’ll be in trouble if I don’t.”

“When shall we do it, then? If I’m going to believe you?”

“Later,” she said. “I promise.”

And now she started running. Joel felt relieved that they hadn’t stopped being friends despite everything. He still felt he couldn’t trust her completely, but he felt better even so. And he’d gotten her back.

Joel went to the railway station. Checked to see if anybody had dropped any small change behind the wooden benches. An old man was sitting with his back resting against the wall, fast asleep. Stationmaster Knif was shouting inside the ticket office, telling somebody off. Joel paused in front of the big timetable pinned to the wall. Somebody had crossed out the name of the little town and written in pencil:

No trains stop here. Only idiots stop in this dump.

Joel giggled. He wondered if Knif had seen that. How would he have reacted, in that case? He must have been raving mad.

The old man asleep by the wall was snoring. It seemed to Joel that he must be a hundred years old. Which would mean he’d been born in 1858. At about the same time as Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday had walked down that deserted street for the showdown with Ike Clanton and his gang.

Joel sat down on a bench and dangled his feet. That was another problem when it came to having parents, he thought. You can’t choose yourself what time you want to live in.

Joel knew of course that this was a silly way of thinking. Childish. But good fun even so.

If he could have chosen, he’d have been one of Fletcher’s right-hand men. The one who would take over from Fletcher eventually. And then he wouldn’t have needed to sit around in a boring railway station with an old man fast asleep.

He’d have been in a totally different world.

In that world the leaves of palm trees rustled in the wind and women walked around in transparent veils.

Now he was back on that subject again! He stood up in annoyance. Stamped his feet hard to see if he could wake up the old man. Not a chance.

He checked his watch. Too late. Ehnström’s had closed. And he couldn’t very well just march up and ring her doorbell. Not when he didn’t have any Christmas magazines to sell, nor any mittens to look for. Besides, that unknown man might be there. The one who’d been holding hands with her at the cinema. It could be risky if he was. He might throw Joel out. Even out of the window. The man might be wild with jealousy. You could never tell in advance.

He started pedaling with his feet. Lumps of slush and dirt dripped off his boots and onto the floor. They looked as if they’d formed a map. An archipelago of islands. He started giving names to the various stains. “Snake Island,” “Doc Holliday’s Skerry,” “Windstorm Rocks.”

But all the time what he was really thinking about was Sonja Mattsson.

He wondered if he would ever see her wearing transparent veils.

Joel looked at the old man. And decided to get some help from fate. If he succeeded in waking the old man up before anybody else came into the waiting room, he would see Sonja Mattsson in transparent veils. He wasn’t allowed to shake the old man. Nor to shout. But everything else was permitted.

If the old man was still asleep the next time the waiting-room door opened, he could forget all about that business of the transparent veils. Fate would have made its decision.

Joel started kicking one of the bench legs, which were made of steel. All the time he was keeping an eye on the ticket office window. It could open at any moment. Knif had ears that could pick up the sound of a train fifty miles away. But the old man didn’t wake up. Joel kicked even harder. The old man snored. Joel was really furious with him by now. Maybe he was dead? Joel stood up and took hold of the backrest of the bench the old man was sitting on. He started shaking it. The old man grunted and rubbed at his nose. But he didn’t wake up. Joel shook so hard that the whole bench started jumping up and down. No effect. He was sure the waiting-room door would open at any moment now. He thought desperately about what he could do. Then he hit on the only possible solution. He ran to the ticket office window, which was closed, and hammered on it as hard as he could. It opened immediately. Stationmaster Knif was staring Joel in the face.

“What do you want, belting on the window like that?” he roared. “Do you want a ticket?”

“I was just checking if you were awake,” said Joel with a grin.

Knif turned red in the face.

“Get out!” he bellowed. “Get out of here!’

It echoed all round the waiting room.

And the old man woke up.

Joel ran off before Knif could come storming into the room — but the old man had woken up! That was the important thing. Knif’s voice could awaken the dead.

So fate had decided. Joel would get to see Sonja Mattsson wearing nothing but transparent veils.

He hurried home as fast as he could. No doubt Samuel would have made dinner and be wondering why Joel hadn’t come home.

Joel could imagine how astonished Samuel would be, if he heard what fate had decided.

One evening very soon I, Joel Gustafson, will visit the flat of Sonja Mattsson, also known as Salome, and see her naked behind transparent veils.

Samuel would doubtless fall down in a faint on the cork floor tiles.

Joel also wondered if Samuel had seen Sara wearing transparent veils. Now that would have been a sight for sore eyes.

Sonja Mattsson opened the door.

But she was not dressed in transparent veils. She had rollers in her hair. Just like the ones Joel had seen in Sara’s hair. He couldn’t help pulling a face. He’d been so sure she would open the door wearing nothing apart from transparent veils.

“Have you never seen rollers before?” she asked.

Joel blushed. She had seen through him.

“Yes, I have,” he said. “But not on you.”

She looked at him in surprise.

“What had you expected?”

Joel gave a start. She had read his thoughts. He waited for what was coming next. No doubt she would box his ears and throw him out. She might go to the local newspaper and tell the editor. Next week everybody would be able to read about it.

Joel Gustafson thinks forbidden thoughts.

The veil man Joel Gustafson still at large.

“How much longer are you going to stand there gaping?” she asked. “It’s drafty.”

Joel stepped into the hall.

“Hang your jacket up and come in. But take your boots off first.”

This time he didn’t hide a mitten or his scarf. He followed her into the living room. She had sat down and tucked her feet up. She was wearing a pink dressing gown. He could see a bit of one thigh, but he didn’t dare to look properly.

She nodded at his feet.

“No holes in your socks,” she said.

“My mum has darned them,” said Joel.

She had lit a cigarette, and looked thoughtful as she blew a few rings.

“People talk a lot in this dump,” she said.

“Yes, you can’t have any secrets here.”

“People talk,” she said again. “About this and that. When you serve in a shop you get to hear all kinds of interesting things. Do you know what I heard today? After you’d left?”

Joel shook his head.

“That what that old lady said was true. That you don’t have a brother called Digby. You don’t have a brother at all, in fact.”

She didn’t seem angry when she said that. She was smiling. A friendly smile. Joel realized that he had no choice but to tell her the truth.

“I wanted to sell you some Christmas magazines,” he mumbled. “So I was forced to invent Digby.”

Joel told her about Otto. About having to pay him three kronor. She burst out laughing. But she still didn’t seem angry.

“Everybody’s talking about Joel Gustafson,” she said when it became obvious that Joel wasn’t going to say any more about the magazines.

“Nothing they say is true,” said Joel.

“Oh, the odd grain of truth comes out,” she said. “But I agree that the old ladies come out with lots of things they haven’t a clue about.”

“This dump is full of gossips,” said Joel. “You can’t even piss in the snow without everybody getting to hear about it.”

She laughed again.

“Just now, everybody’s talking about you,” she said. “Everybody thinks it was terrific of you to save the life of that old man.”

“Simon Windstorm,” said Joel. “That’s his name.”

“Windstorm?”

“Yes, Windstorm.”

“I wish I’d been called that,” she said. “It sounds better than Mattsson.”

“It sounds better than Gustafson as well.”

“People talk,” she said again. “Today somebody told me you didn’t have a brother. But they also said that you don’t have a mother.”

I’m off, Joel thought. She knows everything. She’ll soon come out with the veils business. She can read thoughts. She doesn’t just listen to gossipy old women.

“It’s none of my business, of course,” she said. “But obviously, I wonder who it is that does darn your wooly socks.”

“I do it myself,” said Joel. “I do all the shopping and the cooking. I’m my own mum. But that means I don’t have to put up with somebody nagging at me all the time. If I want there to be some nagging, I do it myself.”

She suddenly looked serious.

“I’m only asking because I’m curious,” she said. “That’s one of my big faults. I’m much too curious.”

“So am I,” said Joel. “But I don’t think it’s a fault.”

She stubbed out her cigarette. Joel looked at her red lips. He could feel his passions stirring. What if those lips could teach him how to kiss? That would be a bit different from the Greyhound doing it.

“I’ve made tea,” she said, rising to her feet. “Would you like some?”

“Yes, please,” said Joel.

He hated tea. All it did was make him want to pee. But this was Sonja Mattsson offering him tea. So he couldn’t possibly say no.

She came back with two cups and a teapot. Joel tasted it. It tasted awful, but he drank it even so.

“Tell me what happened,” she said. “Out there in the snow.”

Joel told her the facts. How he had found Simon and dragged him back to the house. As she seemed to be able to check absolutely everything, he didn’t dare to exaggerate. Although he would have liked to do, of course.

“You must be strong,” she said. “And persistent.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Joel. “You just do the best you can.”

She put down her cup and lit another cigarette.

“Do you smoke?” she asked.

Joel was on the point of saying he did, but managed to stop himself in time. If he lit a cigarette he would start coughing immediately.

He shook his head. He didn’t want a cigarette.

“Now you can ask me,” she said. “Only two questions. No more.”

Joel thought. Two questions were not many. He would have to be careful. What did he want to know most?

“Why have you come here?” he asked.

That was what he wanted to know more than anything else. How could somebody who lived in Stockholm choose of their own free will to move to a dump like this?

“I needed to get away,” she said. “Things got a bit too much for me.”

Joel noticed that she had changed. Her face was much more serious now.

He wondered if he’d asked something inappropriate.

“There were too many men,” she went on. “And some of them wouldn’t leave me alone. That’s why I came here. I don’t know how long I’ll stay. We’ll have to see. How I get on. How I feel. What happens. And if I can stand the long winter.”

Joel tried to work out the significance of what she’d said. Too many men? What did she mean by that? And that they wouldn’t leave her alone?

There was no doubt about what the next question would have to be. Joel didn’t need to hesitate. He was curious and he couldn’t deny that he was jealous.

“Who were you with at the cinema the other night?”

She sat there with her teacup halfway to her mouth.

“How do you know I was at the cinema?”

“I was there,” said Joel. “But the film wasn’t very good.”

“It was adults only,” she said. “And you’re not fifteen yet.”

“I get in through a secret door,” said Joel.

She put her cup down.

“Now you’re telling me lies,” she said.

She seemed angry for the first time.

“It’s true,” said Joel.

“How did the film end?” she asked abruptly.

“I don’t know.”

“There you are! You’re lying!’

“I had to leave just before the end. If I hadn’t, Engman would notice that I’d sneaked in. If I’d still been there when the lights went up.”

“Who’s Engman?”

“The caretaker who runs the place.”

“I still don’t believe you. You weren’t there.”

“I can tell you what happened when there were only five minutes left.”

The words came pouring out of his mouth. He talked and talked until she believed him. He retold the story of the film back to front. He told her about the door in the basement. The only thing he didn’t mention was the Greyhound.

She had started smiling again. She believed him.

“OK, we were both at the cinema,” she said. “And you want to know who I was with?”

“Who were you sitting next to, holding hands?”

Joel heard to his surprise that he sounded angry. And she had noticed.

“That will have to be my secret,” she said. “I let him hold my hand, but that’s all.”

“You didn’t put any veils on for him?”

Joel almost bit his tongue off. But it was too late. He couldn’t pull the words back into his mouth. They weren’t on strings. Joel had often thought how useful it would be, when he’d said something he regretted, if he could haul the words back in.

She looked at him in astonishment.

“What do you mean by that?” she asked.

“Nothing,” said Joel, quickly.

He could see that he’d set her thinking.

“You gave Otto three kronor so that you could sell me a magazine,” she said slowly. “And I think you left that mitten behind on purpose. You sounded almost angry when you told me that you’d seen me at the cinema with somebody who was holding my hand. And you even invented a brother who doesn’t exist. Why?”

Joel could feel himself blushing. He stared down at the floor.

“I don’t bite,” she said. “I neither sting nor scratch. Unless I want to. And I don’t want to just now. Come on, what did you say?”

Her voice sounded gentle now. Joel almost dared to look at her.

“I don’t gossip,” she said. “It will stay within these four walls. Just between you and me. Cross my heart.”

Joel looked up at her.

“Cross my heart,” she said again. “Cross my heart.”

Joel didn’t dare. But he said it even so. He thought he would drop down dead on the spot.

“I thought you’d be wearing transparent veils when you opened the door. Nothing else.”

He said it very quietly. And very fast. But she heard.

“Why did you want that to happen? And why me?”

“I don’t know. But it was going to be a secret.”

She leaned back in her chair and looked at him. Joel hardly dared to meet her eye. He hoped she wasn’t going to throw him out the window. That she’d let him leave through the door.

He said as much.

“My dad, Samuel, would appreciate it if I got back home alive. I’m going now.”

He started to stand up.

“You have time for another cup of tea,” she said. “I’ll just boil some more water.”

She took the teapot with her into the kitchen. Joel noticed that he was covered in sweat. Maybe he ought to take this opportunity to sneak out. She wouldn’t be able to see the hall from the kitchen.

But he stayed on the chair. Heard the clattering noises in the kitchen. Then everything went quiet. He waited.

All of a sudden, there she was. In the kitchen door way. And she was naked. Apart from something very thin, a net curtain perhaps. Or a veil. Joel stared.

Then she disappeared.

She came back into the room a couple of minutes later. Now she was wearing the pink dressing gown again. And carrying the teapot.

“I saw you,” Joel said.

She looked surprised.

“Saw what?”

“The veils.”

She frowned.

“Are you suggesting I stood here wearing veils?”

“In the kitchen doorway.”

“You must have been dreaming.”

Joel thought for a moment. He realized that she was creating a secret that they could share. There was no better way of protecting a secret than claiming that what happened was really just a dream.

“Yes,” said Joel. “I suppose it was just a dream.”

“That will never come back,” she said. “Remember that.”

She said it with a smile. But firmly.

“No, I don’t suppose it will ever come back,” said Joel. “You only have dreams like that once.”

They sat drinking their tea in silence.

“You’d better go home now,” she said. “It’s late and I need to get some sleep.”

Joel put on his boots and jacket in the hall. She stood in the doorway, watching him.

“Thank you for the dream,” he said when he was ready to go.

“It was nothing much,” she said. “It was so little that it was almost nothing at all.”

Joel stood motionless in the street. Holding his breath. He looked slowly in both directions. No sign of Samuel. The starry sky up above was no longer visible. Clouds had come creeping in from nowhere. Perhaps it would start snowing again.

But the stars couldn’t help him to find Samuel in any case. He would have to find his own way to wherever he was. Without the Plow or Orion as navigational aids.

Joel racked his brains.

Samuel seldom returned to the same drinking den several times in a row. So Joel could exclude the ramshackle house by the river where the Crow and the Goblin brothers generally sat drinking.

Joel was thinking as fast as he could. It would be best if he could catch Samuel before he’d got to wherever he was heading. But where would that be?

That lonely foghorn was still howling inside him.

I’ll give him a good thumping, he thought bitterly. I’ll give Samuel a punch on the nose. Knock him over.

If I had the strength to drag Simon home through the snow, I’ll be up to doing the same with Samuel. And then I’ll tie him down to his bed.

Joel started walking towards the western edge of town. There were two places in that direction that Samuel could be heading. He walked slowly at first, then faster and faster. When Samuel got it into his head that he fancied a drink, he was always in a hurry. It was as if he had a stomach upset and needed to make a dash for the lavatory. Joel couldn’t know how big a start his father had on him. A cup of warm coffee wasn’t the same as a clock. He walked even faster. The little town was asleep.

There’s only me, Joel thought.

Hunting for Samuel. And I’ve solemnly promised to give him a good thumping when I catch up with him.

Then I’ll drag him home.

Or maybe I ought to drag him to the rubbish dump instead? Get rid of the problem once and for all? Then I can take the bus to Ljusdal and continue over the oceans to Pitcairn Island.

He passed by the railway line and sidings, where the big, dark building containing the abattoir was situated. The streetlights were starting to thin out. Joel hurried on his way. He paused at the crossroads.

Then he saw Samuel. It couldn’t be anybody else. He was on his way to the sawmill. There were a few places there where people used to gather to drink. The police had been called out there once or twice, Joel knew that. Somebody had been stabbed in the arm during a fight. There had been an article about it in the newspaper. Samuel had turned very pale when he read about it.

The sight of Samuel on the road made Joel feel a mixture of relief and anger. It meant he had caught him in time. Samuel hadn’t yet settled down with a glass or a bottle in his hand.

He started running. The snow creaked under his boots. But Samuel didn’t hear him. He didn’t notice anything until Joel materialized by his side.

Samuel paused and eyed him up and down. Then continued walking.

“Go home, Joel. Stop following me.”

Joel was in front of Samuel now. Walking backwards.

“You said you weren’t going to go out drinking anymore. You said that, didn’t you?”

Samuel didn’t answer. He tried to walk past, but Joel stood in his way. He was angry now. So angry that tears were welling up in his eyes.

“Come home with me now,” he said.

“I’ll go home soon,” said Samuel. “I need a bit of a change. I get so miserable sitting at home on my own.”

“Getting drunk won’t make things any better.”

“I’ll have a glass or two whenever it suits me.”

Joel felt as if he were talking to a tree. Samuel simply wasn’t listening.

He stopped dead. Samuel almost barged into him.

“Come home with me now,” said Joel. He was pleading.

“I’ll be home soon,” said Samuel. “Don’t you bother about me.”

The words echoed like thunder inside Joel’s head. Don’t you bother about me. Didn’t Samuel understand anything at all?

Joel flung himself at his father and started punching him in the chest. The road was slippery. Samuel fell, and dragged Joel down with him. They landed in a snowdrift. Joel could see the Greyhound underneath him. He remembered how he had gotten her back by poking snow inside her clothes.

Why not do the same with Samuel? He started rubbing snow into his father’s face. Samuel grunted and growled in surprise. Then he started resisting. But Joel didn’t give up. He thrust more and more snow into his father’s face and tried to poke some down inside his shirt. He kept going until Samuel grabbed him by his coat collar and flung him to one side.

“What do you think you’re doing?” said Samuel, starting to brush the snow off his clothes.

Joel attacked him again. He didn’t bother about snow anymore, just hit and punched, and Samuel had to defend himself as best he could.

Then it all stopped. Joel was lying flat on his back in the middle of the road.

Samuel had stood up.

“You can’t lie here,” he said.

“Oh no?” said Joel. “I can lie here and freeze to death.”

Samuel bent down, took hold of Joel’s arm and pulled him to his feet. Samuel was strong when he wanted to be.

“I’ve had enough of all this stupidity,” he said. “Go home. And leave me in peace. I’m a grown-up and I’ll do as I like.”

“If anybody here is grown up, it’s me,” said Joel. “I don’t know what you are.”

“How dare you stand here insulting your own father!”

“I’m not insulting anybody. I’m just telling the truth.”

Samuel was on edge now. No doubt he was longing for a drink as well. But when he was on edge he could become hot-headed. Joel took a step backwards.

“Go home this minute,” said Samuel.

“I’ll burn the house down,” said Joel.

Samuel was angry. On edge and hot-headed. He tried to grab hold of Joel, who was expecting it and managed to jump out of the way.

“I don’t want to hear another word from you,” said Samuel. “If you don’t go home this very minute, I’ll... I don’t know what I’ll do.”

“You can always beat me to death,” said Joel. “But who would cook for you then?”

Samuel made another attempt to grab hold of him. They were dancing round each other in the middle of the road.

“Say that again...,” said Samuel, threateningly.

Joel shouted it out so loud that it echoed.

“You can always beat me to death. But who would cook for you then?”

“People will hear you,” said Samuel. “Stop shouting.”

Now he was the one doing the pleading.

“There’s nobody around to hear,” said Joel.

Then all the wind went out of his sails. He didn’t have the strength anymore. He felt like a balloon that had burst.

“Go home this very minute,” said Samuel again. “Leave me in peace. I’ll be back soon. This is the last time. I promise.”

Samuel turned round. Joel saw his hunched back. Watched him walk away, getting smaller and smaller. Until he was swallowed up completely by the darkness.

Joel walked home. His head was completely empty. He had no strength left at all. If this was what life was like, he could do without it. No matter what he did, Samuel spoiled everything for him.

He returned to the house by the river. He’d made up his mind by then. He went up to his room and fetched the mattress and the quilt. Then he dragged the old bed out of the woodshed and placed it in front of the steps up to the front door. When Samuel eventually came home he wouldn’t be able to avoid seeing him. No matter how drunk he was.

Joel lay down and pulled the quilt over him. It was cold. But he didn’t care anymore. He didn’t care about anything at all.

He slowly dozed off. And fell asleep.

Occasional flakes of snow started to drift down onto the bed. Then more. It had begun snowing again. Silently in the night.

Christmas was approaching. School had broken up for the holidays. Joel had reluctantly allowed himself to be dressed up as a shepherd when they assembled in the church to listen to the headmaster’s boring Christmas address.

Afterwards, Joel had gone home with his school report in his jacket pocket. It hadn’t been as bad as he’d feared it might be, although it could have been better. Still, he knew that Samuel would be pleased and proud: Joel was one of the top ten in his class. And he had the highest mark of anybody in geography.

He’d put his report in the middle of the kitchen table.

Then he’d walked to the hospital to visit Simon. Simon was still poorly, but the doctor told Joel that the chances of his recovering were rather better now. He might even be able to talk.

“Simon never says much,” Joel had said. “So it will be enough if he can only talk a little bit.”

When Joel left the hospital, the Greyhound was waiting for him outside. They continued up the hill to Simon’s house and fed the dogs. They did that every day. Joel had been forced to tell Kringström that he couldn’t go to practice the guitar and dust and wash up, not while Simon was ill in hospital. Kringström had heard about what had happened, and said that it was OK for Joel to attend whenever he had time.

Quite a lot had changed. Every time Joel went to do the shopping and Sonja Mattsson was behind the counter, she spent ages talking to him.

The fat old ladies were not very pleased about that. But Sonja told them they could go and do their shopping somewhere else, if they couldn’t wait until it was their turn.

Joel and Sonja had a secret they shared. That was nobody else’s business.

Samuel hadn’t gone off drinking again. Joel could never be certain that his dad wouldn’t simply disappear one of these days, but it did seem as if Samuel was now starting to think seriously about moving away from their little town by the river. Perhaps he might even try to become a sailor again, despite everything.

Samuel had finished reading Mutiny on the Bounty, and then started it all over again.

Joel had decided to postpone toughening himself up. He wouldn’t sleep in the snow again. Not now. Later, perhaps. After all, there was a long time to go until 2045.

He still thought he would be able to become a rock idol. But it had dawned on him that it would probably take rather longer than he’d thought at first. Even learning to play the guitar was pretty difficult. But he was getting better. He knew nine chords now, and the strings didn’t dig so deeply into his fingers anymore.

Written in the house by the river

My name is Joel. My dad is Samuel. Our surname is Gustafson. On the wall in the house where we live is a ship called Celestine, in a display case. I think it is similar to the Bounty. We live on the bank of a river where ships never ride at anchor. All that flows past here is tree trunks, logs; the water is cold, there aren’t any palm trees. But in the summer we hear the whining of mosquitoes.

We’re going to travel to Pitcairn Island, my dad and I.

I can’t say when we’ll arrive, because I don’t know when it will be possible for us to set off. Maybe when the snow has melted away and spring has come? One can always hope.

Do you ever have snow on Pitcairn Island? It’s not possible to work that out by looking at a map. But if you do have snow, I can bring my skis with me. Samuel is very bad at skiing.

We’ve read about your mutiny, and we think you did the right thing. Captain Bligh was a cruel man. He didn’t understand how bad things were for the crew. How hard it can be to leave paradise. Where women wander along the beaches in transparent veils with nothing on underneath. Fletcher was a hero. May he rest in peace.

We shall be traveling to Pitcairn Island in order to live there. Do you have a B&B place? It will have to be cheap, as we don’t have much money.

Samuel wonders if there’s a school. But I don’t think that’s very important.

Samuel can chop down trees in the forest. He’s very good at that. If you have a forest, of course.

As for me, Joel Gustafson, I’m still very childish. But I don’t normally cause any trouble.

When we get there, it would be great if a woman wearing transparent veils could surprise Samuel on the beach.

Me as well.