A Bridge to the Stars (3 page)

He finds a stone by the railway track and throws it
over the parapet and onto the ice down below. Then he
goes home.

This first night he's only done a bit of reconnoitring.
Tomorrow night is when he'll start looking for the dog,
start out on the great adventure.

He tiptoes up the stairs, unlaces his boots and
carefully opens the flat door. If Samuel has woken up,
Joel has no idea how he's going to explain away his
nocturnal wandering.

He listens outside the door, but all is quiet. Dad's
asleep.

He quickly gets undressed, creeps into bed and curls up
in order to get warm. He thinks about what to write in the
logbook tomorrow. 'The first night Joel Gustafson
completed his reconnaissance mission to everyone's
complete satisfaction. The adventure has begun. The dog
has not yet been tracked down.'

Then he falls asleep and when he wakes up next
morning he doesn't feel tired at all. Hurrying to school
and thinking about how he'd gone the same way in the
middle of the night is really a big deal.

Tonight, he thinks. Tonight I shall find the dog that's
heading for a star . . .

*

The next night when Joel sets off on his adventure, everything
starts to go wrong. In the dark kitchen he trips up
over his own boots and knocks a saucepan off the stove
as he falls. He thinks it sounds as if the ceiling had come
crashing down when the saucepan hits the floor. He
rushes back into his room and jumps into bed with all his
clothes still on and pulls the cover up to his chin.

That must have woken his father up, he thinks. Nobody
could have slept through that row. Least of all a sailor. But
not a sound comes from his dad's room. He's still asleep.
He hasn't heard a thing. Joel gets up once more.

Back in the kitchen he gropes around for the saucepan.
It's ended up in a corner, between the sofa and the
firewood bin. Joel places it carefully on the table, then
goes out into the hall carrying his boots and jacket.

When he's outside in the street, listening to the
silence, it occurs to him that there's something badly
wrong with the secret society he's founded.

The word society means that there's more than one
person involved. Joel on his own can't be a society.

But who can he ask to join? Who could he possibly
share his secret with?

Joel has a lot of friends, but none of them is sufficiently
close for him to share his secret with him.

If only I had a brother, he thinks. If Mum was determined
to run away, the least she could have done would
have been to leave me a brother.

He suddenly felt sad.

'Why should I go running around on my own in the
middle of the night, looking for a dog that might not
exist?' he asks himself aloud.

Just as he says that it starts snowing. A few
snowflakes dance around under the streetlight. Then
there are more and more, and he thinks crossly that
spring is going to be delayed this year as well. The only
good thing about it starting to snow is that he might be
able to get a bicycle before everybody else has started
cycling around.

He decides to take a look at the new bikes on display
in the cycle shop window, before starting to look for the
dog. There's a particular one he wants to see. It has a red
frame and there's a logo with a flying horse just above
the pump holder.

He hears a car coming and sees its headlights in the
distance. He stands in the shadow cast by the tall
gatepost next to the chemist's. When the vehicle passes
he sees that it is in fact the rusty old lorry belonging to
The Old Bricklayer.

He has an odd name, Joel remembers that. Simon
Windstorm. But he's never referred to as anything but
The Old Bricklayer. Everybody is a bit scared of him.
He was once locked up in a home for madmen. Joel
knows he was in there for nearly ten years. Nobody
thought he would ever get out, but one day he jumped
off the train at the local station and explained that he'd
been released because he was fit again.

But why is he driving his lorry around in the middle
of the night?

Joel presses on and thinks he must make a note of The
Old Bricklayer in his logbook. It's something special
that has to be recorded.

Anton Wiberg's bicycle shop is on the corner of Norra
Vägen and Kyrkogatan. Joel pauses in the shadows
before approaching the display window. There are a lot
of streetlamps and illuminated shop windows just there.
If he stands in front of the window anybody could see
him. He checks the blocks of flats on all sides, but it's
dark in all those windows.

He runs quickly over the street, jumps over the
heaped-up snow left in the gutter by the snow plough,
and there's the red bike. The Flying Horse.

There are a lot of bicycles in the window, but it's only
the red one that interests Joel. That's the one he wants to
be riding this spring.

He's been into the shop several times and asked about
the price, and he knows it is only slightly more
expensive than the rest of the bikes. The hard part won't
be persuading his father to buy him that particular one,
but getting a bicycle at all. It takes his father a long time
to make up his mind about things, but once he's decided,
fifty kronor is neither here nor there.

But there is another danger as well.

Anton Wiberg has only one red bicycle. There are
several of all the other models. He must make sure
nobody gets there before him and buys the red bike.

Joel pictures Otto in his mind's eye, coming towards
him on the red bike. It's a horrible thought he would
rather not entertain.

The trouble is that Samuel always takes such a long
time to make up his mind. When there is only one red
bicycle, he has to get a move on.

Joel takes one last look at the bike, then goes round to
the back of the building for a pee.

A single bulb in a broken shade is shining over the
back door. Joel pees into the snow and tries to write his
name. It's not hard to write Joel, but he never has
enough for more than half the surname. He kicks some
snow over the yellow letters and refastens his fly.
Without really knowing why, he walks up to the back
door and tries it. Perhaps he's afraid that somebody
might try to steal The Flying Horse.

To his astonishment he discovers that the door is
unlocked. He can see right into the shop. See the bikes
in the illuminated display window. The counter and the
cash register.

His heart is pounding as Joel does what he really
doesn't dare to do.

He closes the door behind him, tiptoes past the
counter and goes to the bike that one day will be his.

There's a nice smell of oil and rubber. The saddle is
wrapped up in paper. To keep it clean.

I'm not going to think at all, he tells himself. I'm
simply going to do what I want to do but don't really
dare.

He slowly removes the bicycle from its place in the
window display and wheels it towards the back door. He
cautiously opens the door and peers out. It's almost
stopped snowing. He carries the bike down the steps,
switches on the dynamo on the front wheel, then pedals
off. He turns into Norra Vägen, where the sanded road
surface hasn't yet been covered in newly-fallen snow.
And he keeps on going.

When he gets to the Hedevägen crossroads he stops
and listens for traffic, but all is quiet and he sets off
again. It's hard not to think. Not to be scared stiff of
what he's doing.

I've become a Petty Thief, he thinks as he climbs the
hill leading to the railway station. A Petty Thief who
can't keep his hands off what isn't his.

He tries to calm himself down with the thought that
he had no intention of stealing the bicycle, merely of
trying it out.

Maybe he ought to write a note to Anton Wiberg and
pin it to the door? Saying that The Secret Society's night
patrol has discovered a back door unlocked and been
keeping a lookout for Petty Thieves all night long . . .

He climbs up the hill to the railway station and is
concentrating so hard on not falling over and damaging
the bike that he forgets to listen out for cars.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, two headlights are coming
straight at him. He gives a start and swerves towards the
side of the road.

Now I'm done for, he thinks in desperation. I've
nowhere to hide.

The front wheel skids into the snow piled up in the
gutter and before he knows where he is, he falls over and
the bike lands on top of him in the snow. He can hear the
car pulling up behind him, a door opening, then winter
boots squelching in the snow.

It's Dad, he thinks. I didn't mean it. I wasn't going to
steal it, I was just going to . . .

'Are you all right?' he hears a voice saying.

When he looks up he sees The Old Bricklayer standing
over him, his woolly hat pulled down over his ears.

'Have you hurt yourself?' he asks. 'What on earth are
you doing at this time of night, cycling around town?'

Joel feels a strong arm pulling him up out of the
snowdrift.

Simon Windstorm is mad, he thinks. He's going to
kill me.

'You seem to be OK,' says Windstorm. 'Go back
home to bed now! I won't insist on knowing what you're
doing out here at this time. That's none of my business.
Me, I drive around at night in my lorry because I can't
get to sleep. Off you go now!'

The Old Bricklayer mutters something to himself then
goes back to his lorry and drives away. Joel wheels the
bike back to the shop as quickly as he can. He carries it
up the steps, opens the back door and puts it back in the
display window. He tries to wipe it clean with his woolly
hat, but the frame is scratched in one place and he can't
do anything about that. He expects Anton Wiberg to
appear beside him at any moment.

I'm out of my mind, he thinks and can feel himself
starting to cry with fear. He rubs and rubs. The bike will
never be clean and dry again.

Just at that very moment he looks out of the window,
into the deserted street.

There comes the dog!

The solitary dog heading for a star.

Joel knows right away that it's the very same dog.
There's no other dog like it, even if it seems to be just an
ordinary Norwegian elkhound.

Suddenly it stops and looks round.

Just for a moment Joel thinks it's looking straight at
him, through the shop window.

Then it sets off running again.

Joel rushes out through the back door, trips up on the
steps and falls headfirst.

When he gets to the street the dog has disappeared.
The street is deserted. He goes to the streetlight, but
there's no sign of any pawprints. No sign of any dog.

Joel sets off running through the night, and it's started
snowing again.

Back in bed he thinks about the dog he's seen. The
dog really was there, he'd seen it. Perhaps a dog heading
for a star doesn't leave any tracks behind it.

His fear gradually fades away. The Old Bricklayer
can't know that the bike Joel had ridden into the snow
had been pinched. And nobody will be able to find his
name peed into the snow. By the time he wakes up the
yellow marks will have been covered over. I'll get away
with it, he thinks.

But the dog does exist. And the adventure, the great
adventure has begun . . .

A few days later Joel fell asleep at his desk in school.

He had no idea how it came about. All of a sudden he
was just sitting there with his mouth open, fast asleep.

It was an RE class, and Miss Nederström was red in
the face with anger when she shook him by the shoulder
to wake him up.

She had a patch of eczema on her forehead, just under
her hair line. When her face turned red and the spots
became white, everybody knew that she was furious.

'Joel,' she bellowed. 'Joel Gustafson! How dare you
sleep through my lesson!'

He woke up with a start. He'd been dreaming something
that vanished the moment he woke up. Something
about his father. In the dream Joel had been in a vast
forest, looking for him, but that was all he could
remember.

When he woke up he couldn't believe that he'd been
asleep. Asleep at his desk?

'No,' he said. 'I wasn't asleep.'

'Don't sit there telling me barefaced lies. You were
asleep. The whole class could see that.'

Joel looked round. He was surrounded by embarrassed
faces, grinning faces, curious faces.

Faces that told him Miss Nederström was telling the
truth. He had fallen asleep.

He was ordered to leave the room, and Miss
Nederström said she would be phoning his father.

Joel didn't respond.

She could find out for herself that they didn't have a
telephone.

He sat on the floor in the empty corridor, eyeing all
the shoes lined up against the wall. He thought he might
get his own back on all those grinning faces by mixing
the shoes up. Or throwing them out into the yard. But he
decided not to.

Instead he took The Secret Society logbook out of his
pocket. He'd forgotten to put it in
Celestine
's glass case
that morning.

He searched through the jackets hanging in the
corridor until he found a pen, then started writing.

'The lookout on the mizzen mast, Joel Gustafson, was
so exhausted that he fell out of his crow's nest, but
survived without serious injury. After resting for merely
a couple of hours, he was ready to climb up the mast
once more.'

What he writes is almost word-for-word something
he'd read in a book his dad keeps in his little bookcase,
and often thumbs through. That's the kind of thing you
put in a secret logbook, Joel thinks.

Only somebody with inside information can know
that it's really about him being thrown out of the
classroom.

It's not good, being sent out like that. Better than
wearing glasses or stuttering, but not good whichever
way you look at it.

Joel can put up with his classmates grinning at him. So
long as you don't start blushing or crying when you're
sent out of the room, you are an important person.

What is not so good is that Miss Nederström might
come and visit them once she discovers that the
Gustafsons don't have a telephone. If that happens, Joel
might have a lot of awkward questions to answer. His
father might start to suspect that Joel goes out at night.
He tries to think of a good way of solving the problem,
but he can't. There are only bad solutions. Like staying
behind after school and knocking on the staffroom door
and asking to speak to Miss Nederström, and then
apologising and explaining that he'd been awake all
night with toothache. It's a bad solution because it's a
cowardly way out.

Joel keeps on thinking.

Maybe he ought to take the cowardly way out after
all. The main thing is that his father shouldn't start
getting suspicious.

When the bell rings and the lesson is over, Joel
decides to take the cowardly way out. He is responsible
for the secret society, and he doesn't want to run the risk
of not being able to find that solitary dog.

When he knocks on the staffroom door after school,
Miss Nederström believes every word he tells her.
Instead of saying he had toothache, he says he had
stomach ache. If you have toothache there is a risk that
you might end up having to go to the dentist.

'It's good that you have come to explain,' she says.
'Now we can forget all about it. But you do understand
that I was very cross when I noticed that you were
asleep, don't you?'

'Yes, Miss,' says Joel.

Slush is sloshing all round his boots as he walks
home.

One day it snows, the next day it thaws.

Joel hopes that spring will soon be here, but he knows
it could just as easily turn very wintry again. The first
year he started school, it snowed on the last day of term
at the beginning of June. He remembered having holes
in his shoes and snow melted inside them, and he burst
out sneezing when Miss Nederström asked him a
question.

Joel is not sure whether or not he dares to walk past
the cycle shop. Maybe it will be obvious from looking at
him that he'd been out that night with The Flying Horse?
Or perhaps he might faint as he walks past?

He's scared of fainting, even though he's never done
it. But he often imagines collapsing in a heap when he's
said something that isn't true, or done something he
ought not to do.

What frightens him most of all, though, is that he
might give himself away. That he might stop outside the
shop and shout that he was the one who borrowed the
red bike one night when he discovered that the back
door was unlocked. There's nothing that scares Joel
more that him being unable to stop himself doing
something. Not being responsible for his own actions.

He stops outside Leander Nilson's bakery and looks
at the window. It's not the cakes he's examining, but his
own reflection. In amongst all the buns and cakes is a
mirror, and he can see his face in it.

Not that there's all that much to see. He has his
woolly hat pulled well down over his forehead, and his
scarf above his chin. But although he can only see his
eyes, his nose and his mouth, he feels he can see his
whole face even so.

He's not pleased with what he sees.

What is worst is that he thinks he looks like a girl.

He can't make up his mind why. Besides, nobody has
ever told him he looks like a girl. He's the only one who
thinks he has a face like a girl's.

The only bit he thinks is good is his nose. It's not too
big and not too small. It's straight, doesn't have any
lumps and it's not turned up. There's no chance of it
snowing into Joel Gustafson's nose.

He'd prefer to exchange the rest of his face. Green
eyes are nothing worth having. His mouth is too thin and
his left ear juts out. His hair is black but it ought to have
been fair, or at least brown.

He also has a crown over his forehead which makes
his hair stand up like a fan after it's been cut. His father
cuts his hair, and he always clips it too short.

You ought to be able to choose for yourself what you
look like, he thinks. Go through some photographs and
say: 'That's how I want to be!'

What annoys him most of all is that he doesn't look
like his dad at all. That must mean that he takes after
Jenny, his mother.

It's not good, looking like somebody you've never
met, because that means you can't work out what you're
going to look like when you grow up. He pulls his hat
still further down over his forehead, so that he can only
see with one eye.

If we lived by the sea I'd be able to go down to the
shore and look out for ships, he thinks.

A year ago, when he was ten, it was never difficult to
go down to the river and pretend it was the sea. Now that
he's eleven, that's only occasionally possible. It gets
more and more difficult to imagine things.

He pulls his hat down over the other eye as well. Now
he can only see out through the gaps between the
threads. He's caught his face like a fish in a net.

He decides to go down to the riverbank and see if the
snow has melted around his rock. He pulls his hat back
up and breaks into a run.

He tries to think about why it's getting more and more
difficult to imagine that the river is really the sea, but it's
not easy to think when you're running.

He takes a short cut through Bodin's timber yard, and
hears all the squeaking and whistling from the saws.
Then he slides along the ice that always forms in the
spring on the hill down towards the bakery. Once he's
passed the bakery there's only the long slope down to
the riverbank left. The snow is deep there, and he has to
trudge through it. Once he's come that far, he suddenly
finds it easier to use his imagination. It's not so difficult
once all the buildings and people have been left behind.

The snow he is trudging through is a desert. Vultures
are circling over his head, waiting for him to collapse
with exhaustion and be unable to get up again. He's all
alone in the desert, and in the far distance is his rock. If
only he can struggle as far as that, he'll be able to
survive . . .

Suddenly, he stops dead.

There's a boy he's never seen before sitting on his rock.

He's completely motionless, and he's looking through
a telescope.

Joel crouches down in the snow.

This is the first time anybody has ever encroached on
Joel's rock.

Who is he?

Joel is quite sure he's never set eyes on him before.
He's a stranger, unknown.

Why is he sitting here by the river? What is he looking
at through the telescope? Where has he come from?

Joel cowers down in the snow like a scared rabbit, not
taking his eyes off the unknown boy for a moment.

There is a clattering noise from up on the bridge. The
gates close and a goods train comes chugging along
through the trees. The smoke from the engine's chimney
puffs up into the sky, as if it's the trees that are breathing.
The unknown boy aims his telescope at the train.

Joel can see that he's about his own age. Possibly
slightly older. Instead of a woolly hat he's wearing a
peaked cap with ear flaps.

But what has he got on his feet? They look like tennis
rackets. Snowshoes!

The stranger is wearing snowshoes!

Joel has never seen any snowshoes before, only read
about them in one of his father's books.

He presses himself down deeper into the snow, even
though he's starting to feel cold.

Who is that boy sitting on his rock?

At that very moment the stranger turns round and
looks straight at Joel.

'What are you lying there for?' he asks? 'Did you
think I hadn't seen you?'

Joel couldn't think of anything sensible to say. He'd
thought he was invisible, lying there in the snow. The
boy on his rock has been looking through his
telescope all the time, after all. How could he possibly
have seen Joel?

The unknown boy jumps down from the rock and starts
walking towards Joel on his snowshoes. Joel notes that
what he has read in his father's books is true: when you are
wearing snowshoes, your feet don't sink into the snow.

The boy stops in front of Joel.

'Are you thinking of staying there for good?' he says.

Joel still couldn't think of anything to say. Besides,
the unknown boy is speaking with a peculiar accent.
And he's smirking. Smirking non-stop.

'Who are you?' Joel asks eventually, standing up.

Although they are the same height, Joel looks like a
dwarf, up to his knees in snow.

'I moved here today,' says the boy. 'I didn't want to,
but I was forced to.'

Joel brushes himself down as he thinks.

'Where do you come from?' he asks.

'That doesn't matter,' the boy answers. 'I shan't be
staying here anyway.'

Joel notices that the boy with the snowshoes is red-eyed,
as if he'd been crying.

Joel suddenly loses control over himself. He says
something he hadn't intended to say at all.

When he hears the words spurting out of his mouth,
he regrets them right away: but it's too late by then.

'Those of us who live here don't sit down by the river
and start blubbering,' he says.

The unknown boy looks at him in surprise. Joel
wonders if he might be about to get beaten up. The boy
in the snowshoes looks strong.

'I haven't been sitting here crying,' says the boy. 'I
rubbed my face with my glove. I forgot that I am allergic
to wool. That's why my eyes are red.'

Joel thinks he understands. There is a girl in his class
who starts sneezing whenever anybody smelling of dog
comes into the room. It must be the same thing.

'My name's Ture,' says the boy with the snowshoes.

Then he walks off, as if he's not the slightest bit
interested in knowing that Joel is called Joel.

Joel watches him go, walking straggle-legged over
the snow.

Whoever he is, he can keep away from my rock, he
thinks. If he comes back here again I shall have to think
up some way of scaring him off.

He trudges up the slope, stepping in his old footprints.

Snowshoes and a telescope, he thinks. Who is he?

The next day Joel looks round to see if there is anybody
new in the school, but he can only see the familiar faces
in the playground. As soon as lessons have finished Joel
hurries down to the river again.

As soon as he passes the bakery he can see somebody
sitting on the rock in the distance.

Once again he trudges down the slope, cursing
inwardly because he doesn't have any snowshoes.

'I thought it was you,' said the unknown boy as Joel
comes wading up through the snow.

'That's my rock,' says Joel, and he can feel his voice
shaking with anger. 'Nobody else is allowed to sit on it,
only me.'

'Do you have a title deed?' asks the unknown boy,
with a grin.

Title deed? What's that? wonders Joel.

'If you own a rock you have to have a title deed,' says
the boy. 'A certificate of ownership, with an official
stamp. You have to have that.'

'It's my rock,' says Joel angrily.