Clinch (20 page)

Quickly I work my way up the gears. Because there are many more vehicles in the left lane on Karlavägen, I keep to the right, where the number of oncoming cars are few. The grammar school whizzes by, a Ford veers ahead of me and hurtles into the snow drift that borders the road on both sides. I’m gaining on Leonard. If I put my nose against the windscreen, I can see the tail end of his black sports car far ahead.

The shop signs in the corner of my eye get ever hazier as my speed picks up. The Swedish-American Tailor’s Firm, Karlavägen Art Materials, Lindgren’s Lighting Oil & Home Furnishings Shop, the tobacconist, the piano tuner. I pass Siewertz’s Patisserie and
floor the accelerator. The engine growls in protest. The bare alley of trees along the pedestrian path in the middle seems to be on the move, the trees walking along with their arms joined. My fingers cramp around the steering wheel. The Pharmacy Elefanten flies past. From Humlegården a police car quickly approaches on my side of the road. It’s time to change lanes. It should be possible to do it in two steps.

My heart is bouncing like a ball in my chest. Where Sturegatan crosses Karlavägen, I press down on the clutch and swerve to the left before I wedge the car onto the pedestrian path on my right by once again stamping on the accelerator.

Snow is spouting all around the car. The American speedometer quickly rises beyond the sixty mark again. The snow crystals clamber over the split windscreen but the speed of the oncoming wind forces them to the sides. The police car sounds its horn at length as it surges past. When I get to Floragatan I repeat the manoeuvre and end up in the appropriate lane.

Leonard is only about twenty metres ahead of me. The street lies empty between us.

‘Now I’ll show you!’

We pass Humlegården. He increases his speed but I stay with him. Far behind us I hear the police car in pursuit. I press the needle past seventy miles per hour.

On the roof of the Soviet Legation the red flag droops in the snowfall. Inside the welter of shacks and lean-tos in the Mire, a couple of weary campfires are gleaming. I gain a few more metres on Leonard. We draw close to the crossroads with Odensgatan. He doesn’t slow down. I keep my hand on the horn.

A woman in a grey coat and shawl appears from behind one of the snowbanks, pushing a wicker pram. I step on the brake. Leonard speeds up.

The woman shoves the pram forwards and throws herself back into the snow. The black car misses her by a hair’s breadth. I hold my breath. My heart is close to blowing up inside. Doris’s car makes slow revolutions as it glides sideways along the street. I’m surrounded by white snow. The whole car is vibrating. I throw my arm over the seat and turn my head. The back-end misses the pram by a half-metre or so. The car lunges to a stop. There’s a smell of singed brake pads. The gauges in the chrome instrument panel have gone back to zero. My breath shivers with agitation.

There’s no sign of the black sports car. The police sirens cut through the woman’s piercing scream. She can’t stop. Her shawl is still on the snowbank like an old fishing net on a bone-white beach. Through the side window I see the red emergency lights approaching through the snowfall some hundred metres or so away. I turn the wheel, change down and press the accelerator. I want to go home.

Despite detours and extra circuits of the streets at home in Sibirien, I get home in five minutes. I sit for a while in the dark stairwell to catch my breath. I think about the woman with the pram. The elastic snaps when I open my wallet, get out the photograph and angle it to catch the faint light of the streetlight outside. The crackled picture is like a glittering grey mosaic. I push back my hat.

Lundin’s sign is creaking in the wind.

‘Little Ida,’ I hear myself muttering. I slide my thumb across the photograph and put it back. I stand up and climb the stairs, massaging the bridge of my nose. I’ve got a hell of a headache.

I go inside. The hall is also dark. Dixie comes hurtling along. Her claws scrape against my knees. She whines and yaps. There’s a smell of coffee and tobacco. I let my overcoat fall to the floor in a heap.

Doris is leaning against the draining board. She’s changed into a white, toga-like evening dress, with white heels. As usual she’s wearing false eyelashes, and her absinthe-green nail varnish matches her earrings. Behind her lie two of her fur coats. She’s holding a coffee cup.

‘I could only get Stamboul.’

I hand over the cigarettes and she gives me her empty coffee cup in return.

‘Everyone has a telephone nowadays.’

‘My social circle is not so very big.’

‘Why don’t you have one?’

‘Lundin’s telephone does me fine, I’ve told you a thousand times.’

I put the coffee cup on the draining board. The cigarette butts in the sink are sooty black at one end and crimson red at the other. In the yard, the door of the potato cellar slams again. I wriggle out of my jacket.

‘Don’t get undressed.’ She picks up the fur coats and presses them into my arms. ‘I’m in pain. I need my medicine.’ She picks up a half-full bottle of cognac. Lundin bangs his broom against the ceiling as she walks out of the kitchen.

‘Have you taken Dixie for her walk?’

The Husqvarna is still in pieces on the newspaper on the kitchen table.

‘It’s
urgent
!’ She turns around and puts one hand on her hip. Lundin has another go with the broom. I swagger along behind her with the fur coats held like two overgrown cats – by the scruff of their necks. She throws the door open and walks on ahead down the stairs. I hang up the furs in the hall and get back into my overcoat. By the time I’m walking out into the falling snow, she’s already sitting in the passenger seat of her Cadillac.

I walk round to the driver’s side and open the door. Doris lights a cigarette as I’m getting in. The seat hasn’t even had time to go cold. She’s staring fixedly straight ahead.

‘The furs.’

‘Furs?’

‘Yes, you idiot! The furs!’

I feel a sizzle of anger, but rather than clocking her one, I slam the car door. I go up and fetch the damned furs, walk back down again, throw them at her, then get in.

‘And now?’

‘The pawnshop on Storgatan.’

I check my watch. ‘It’s almost eleven.’

‘I know the owners. They live in the flat above. They won’t say no to Persian and seal musquash.’

‘Doris. It’s almost eleven.’

‘Harry, if you had a telephone we wouldn’t need to have this conversation.’

The engine spins to life and we drive off. Doris knocks back a mouthful straight from the bottle, lights a new cigarette from the old one and blows a smoke ring. It hovers between us like an empty speech bubble.

There’s no point reasoning with a drunk. I remember what a balancing act it is from the years when I looked a little too deep into the bottle myself. It’s all about finding the right balance between various beverages and staying on your feet for as long as possible, before collapsing on one or the other side of the tightrope. Maybe it’s possible to have a couple of good hours per day. Whatever side you fall on, it’s going to hurt. The problem is, there’s no choice. You have to find your way back up that damned rope. Without exceptions.

It’s snowing less now. I drive down Sveavägen with the windscreen wipers switched on. In front of me, a Central Garage tow truck is pulling a Volvo home. I have trouble finding any purchase in the curve as I turn into Hamngatan. The rear-end flexes with the soft suspension. Doris keeps one of her hands on the instrument panel and looks out of the side window. Maybe she’s crying. I daren’t look.

Nybroviken ice rink lies there gleaming, silent and deserted in the night. As we pass the National Theatre and drive into Strandvägen, I notice a police car in my rear-view mirror. We go
past Kreuger’s old house and I pick up speed. Most likely the goons on Karlavägen have stopped and put out a call for our Cadillac, but it seems unlikely that it’s gone out to the other cars yet, and probably they didn’t get our registration plates. We follow the road for a while to the east.

‘You can’t build a city on islands and peninsulas.’

‘What do you mean?’ I peer into my mirror. Because the police car doesn’t seem to want to veer off, I turn into Torstenssonsgatan.

‘Sometimes I think it’s sinking right into the water. So slowly that we don’t even notice,’ Doris whispers hoarsely.

‘A rotten city,’ I say.

Doris lights a new cigarette from the old. She looks down at her hands. She puts her cigarette in her mouth and spins her wedding ring on her finger. I can see her skin shining all white, like a scar, underneath. I drive past the post office and check that the police car is no longer following us.

The back wheels spin as the car lurches into Storgatan. As we pass by the Apothecary Stork, Doris looks up. By Schröder’s bakery, twenty metres on, she touches my thigh. Gently I apply the brakes and park by the black, barred windows of the pawn shop. I get out my pocket watch. It’s ten past eleven.

‘Wait here.’

Her make-up is intact. A little light under the fascia panel comes on, and a cold wind sweeps into the car when she opens the door and gets out with the fur coats in her arms. I follow her in the rear-view mirror as she shuffles around the snowbank by the police station on the corner of Skeppargatan. I light a Meteor. The snow is piled so high that she can only been seen from the waist up. She rings the doorbell, then tugs at the door. She walks back out onto the pavement and looks up at the façade. I start the car.

Suddenly she slips and disappears behind the snow. She’s wearing the wrong shoes, of course. Standing up again, she flings her furs on the ground, and stands there with a stooped back, covering her eyes. At long last she bends down, picks up her furs and comes back.

‘Do
not
smoke cigars in my car!’ She sits next to me with the furs in her lap. One of them gets caught in the door, so it can’t be closed. She swears and tugs at her coats. I roll down my window a fraction and flick away my Meteor.

‘Closed?’

She shrugs. ‘Drive to the Italian Club.’

The Azzurra Cave: the nightclub on Grev Magnigatan only opens at midnight, if it’s open at all in the middle of the week. I’ve been there a few times although it’s actually a members-only club.

‘It’s not open for an hour yet.’

‘Drive me to Kommendörsgatan, then!’

‘I’d like to remind you I’m not your driver, whatever you may tell your girlfriends.’

I have a good mind to put her across my knee and spank her until she’s covered in blue stripes, but instead I start the car. There’s not much else to do. I peer at her. I suppose every ship must have its ballast, however fine she may look.

The engine spins to life. I release the clutch and the wheels spin a couple of turns before gaining some traction. We travel in silence. By Östermalm square we meet the grey snow-plough tram, chugging through a cloud of fine powder snow. Soon after I almost run over a warmly dressed bloke taking his fox terrier for a walk. It’s impossible to see the yellow-striped pedestrian crossings in this weather.

When I turn into Kommendörsgatan we go into a heavy skid. The car thrashes along. I accelerate out of it. Doris doesn’t react
at all. She points at an anonymous iron door, hardly even visible behind all the snow.

‘Here.’

I stop. She opens the car door. It gets stuck in the compacted bank of snow. With much effort she squeezes out of the opening. She puts her head inside again.

‘Come with me.’

‘I can’t park here.’

‘With this car you can.’

I shrug and do as I’m told. As soon as the car door closes behind me I have a cigar in my mouth. The cold nips at my skin. The house is a big brick thing. A row of balconies in cast iron, bunched one on the other, split the façade into two sections. Most of the windows are dark but a big crystal chandelier is lit on the first floor. Elegant streets, these.

Doris slips up to the modest door. It’s half a stair down. She roots around in her handbag as she carefully goes down the steps. I puff some life into the cigar and look around. These are not my home haunts. Doris knocks on the door and immediately a little viewing slit opens in it. Doris holds up a card. At least two locks rattle, and then the door is opened.

A passage steeped in gloom leads into the cellar. The corridor is draped in heavy red fabrics, and the ceiling is painted in the same colour. The cement floor is covered with an elongated Oriental rug. Beside the door is a three-legged stool in some light-coloured wood. Jazz can be heard from the cellar.

A short man in a blue double-breasted suit receives us. His collar is perfectly fitted around his neck. A pistol bulges disquietingly under his pinstripes. His eyebrows join in the middle. If what I learned at sea is correct, this means he will die from drowning.

‘Who’s the thug?’

‘He’s with me. He’s okay.’ Doris removes her hat and pats her hair.

‘I have to search him.’

I stretch out my arms and the little bloke pats me down through my layers of clothes. Doris looks utterly bored. She rests one of her heels against the wall and inserts a Stamboul in her gold cigarette holder, while her handbag sways from the crook of her arm. Her hat is wedged between her body and her other arm.

He’s thorough. He smells of Triumf aftershave. I’m a head taller than him.

‘Okay.’ He nods for us to move on down the passage. I jog along behind Doris. Our steps are muted by the thick rug. Her heels make her bottom swing irritably from side to side. Her garters are visible under the thin white fabric of her dress, first on the right side, then on the left.

If this is an unlicensed drinking place, it’s the most exclusive one I’ve ever been in. It has to be Ma’s place. She and her sons are running things up here in Östermalm. It’s been that way ever since the Reaper rigged up Old Man’s car with a couple of Nobel’s dynamite sticks.

The passage bends abruptly and yet another iron door with a spy hatch appears. Now I hear the high-pitched tones of a trumpet. Doris thumps the door hard. Music wells out of the hatch and the door opens just as the trumpet once again shreds the melody with its sharpness. I take a step back.

‘Welcome!’ The girl in front of us smiles, tilting her head. She has sequins on her dress. Doris pushes past her. The girl keeps smiling.

Variously coloured lights whirr about like chaff in a barn. Patches of red chase yellow, blue and green. They play catch over
the thick rugs, speed around between the small, round tables, sparkle off the hostess’s sequin dress, hit the mirror and the bottles behind the long bar counter and lose themselves across the little dance floor, where a few people seem to have lost track of each other in the confusion of lights and music. On the tables and along the bar, paraffin lights glimmer. In a corner of the large premises, an entire jazz quintet with a double bass is crowded onto a small stage.

Someone gives me a slap on my upper arm. On reflex, I shield my chin behind my shoulder, quickly duck and move forwards and resurface on Doris’s left side. She moves her lips and gesticulates. I lower my hands and nod. The girl with the sequined dress tucks her arm into mine and pats my hand as if I were an old pauper from the workhouse.

Doris makes off towards some booths with sofas and tables. The hostess ushers me to the bar. The club is half filled. The quintet stops abruptly and there’s scattered applause. Behind the bar is a battery of colourful, curvaceous bottles. Over the mirror is a row of portrait photographs of former heroes of the ring. I recognise the yanks, HP, and some others too. The drummer whisks up a new, slow, suggestive melody. A bartender entirely dressed in white, with cotton gloves on his hands, leans towards the hostess.

‘Give him one on the house!’ The hostess nods at me and disappears into the throng.

Soon there’s a tall, slim glass on the bar counter. A little pink paper parasol is attached to a toothpick. Carefully I pick it up. By sliding a little paper cylinder up and down along the toothpick, one can open and close the parasol. I do so many times before I lift the glass to my mouth. Its yellow contents taste mainly of lemon.

I light the cigar, which has been left to go out and droop in my mouth. I turn my back to the bottles and rest my elbows on the counter for a while.

On one side of me is a bloke in a tailcoat and a crooked shirt-front. He’s sitting on his tails. On the other side of me stands a youth in a large beret, a city suit, plus fours and plucked eyebrows. He looks like Leonard. Between his long fingers he holds a slim cigarette, which gives off a thin sliver of smoke that wraps itself around the rising dark grey from my cigar.

A few couples are slowly floating around on the dance floor. Despite the darkness, I can make out that some of the girls with red lips and mascara around their eyes are actually boys, dressed in spangled crinoline. One of them has a tiara in his hair. I lean over towards the youth at my side.

‘Do you know a boy called Leonard?’

He shakes his head. I show him the little parasol and how one can open and close it. He gives me an uninterested glance.

I turn to the counter, and the bartender leans across.

‘You want a job?’

I shake my head.

‘A girl, then? Or maybe a boy?’

I shake my head again and drain what’s left of the fruit squash. I’m just about to ask him about Zetterberg when Doris taps me on the shoulder. She tucks her arm under mine and drags me towards the exit. On our way we bump into a transvestite in evening dress, whose chest hair wells out of his cleavage. In the short summer nights of Humlegården he’s known as Snuff-Josefin. He nods at me. Doris doesn’t notice.