Clinch (10 page)

‘Come on! Give me your paw!’

Without raising his eyes, he holds up his big, dirty hand. It’s trembling. I let go of the shoe, take a hold of his mitt and position the knife blade diagonally across his palm. Then I let rip. The warm blood swells over my muddy fist. Lill-Johan roars again, his voice echoing between the wooden walls. I throw the knife over the rooftops. It clatters against something made of metal.

‘My name is Harry Kvist. Remember that. Remember it every time you look at your hand. The man who tailored my suit is called Herzog. One of the best tailors in town. I had to dig deep in my pocket to pay for it. Sit up!’

I grab his chin. He whimpers with pain and can’t do anything but obey me. I empty my shoe, stand on one leg and put it on. Lill-Johan kneels in front of me. He holds his injured hand in the other. A lone snowflake finds its way into his bleeding gob. He sways slightly.

‘Listen: do you have a sister called Sonja who’s on the game?’

The sounds flowing out of Lill-Johan are transformed into gargles when he tries to speak.

‘Quiet! Shake your head or nod! Sonja?’

He doesn’t stay quiet but he shakes his head.

‘Do you know anyone called Sonja at all?’

Again he shakes his head. I nod and turn around. After a beating of that order there’s no reason not to believe him. It’s completely stopped snowing now. I examine my right hand and give it a squeeze. It seems to have survived.

The gravel scrapes in my shoes as I balance along the planks. Lill-Johan whines hoarsely like a kid with a hacking cough. Every inhabitant in the Mire seems to have locked himself in his hovel. The fire on the metal plate by the entrance illuminates the cold December night like a lighthouse, but the down-and-outs have gone.

The sun is as high as it can manage in December. The sallow light makes Roslagsgatan glitter. Everything has frozen over in the night. People step along carefully like the transvestites one sees in the parks I sometimes visit in the summer months. Motorcar drivers avoid the tram tracks in the middle of the road. Horses place their hooves hesitantly.

I’m standing outside the laundry, smoking and waiting for Sailor-Beda to mend the tear in my overcoat. The hat is still lying in the mud among the shacks of the Mire. I am wearing a black jacket with non-matching trousers. The combination does not have my usual dignity. It’s cold, but when the rays of the sun get through there’s a little warmth. I hope the good weather keeps. A gaunt cat comes and rubs itself against me. Two hundred and fifty kronor of my emergency capital burns a hole in my wallet.

The gang of wiry boys from around the block are trying to climb the streetlight outside my house. They usually hang about on my corner, smoking, passing around torn-out photos of Josephine Baker and identifying the makes of passing cars. I can hear them from my window. If it’s a Ford or a Chevrolet they content themselves with simple statements of fact. Volvo, the home-grown challenger, raises their voices a little, and a Dodge makes them yell. What’s really bad is when an old Thulin or a Scherling comes spluttering by. First someone makes a piercing cry, then a wild discussion erupts before someone gets a punch
on the nose. Usually they don’t calm down until someone opens a window and throws a shoe – or the contents of a chamber pot – at them. I have no shoes I can get rid of, and not a potty either. If I need to get up in the night I use the sink.

I squat down and scratch the cat behind the ear. The grease in its pelt glimmers. My knee feels better but I have a slight stiffness in my back, stomach and shoulders. There’s a little scratch on my lower arm, but it was no match for Sister Ella’s Salve for Cuts and Grazes. This morning I loosened up my body with Danilo’s dance course, as seen in
Stockholms-Tidningen
. Lundin tears out the page of instructions every Saturday breakfast. Tomorrow it’s time for another one.

The cat darts off when the door tinkles as it’s opened. I straighten. Beda waddles towards me with the overcoat.

‘I did what I could. It was a nasty rip.’

‘I’m sure it’ll be fine. I’m only off to PUB to buy a new one.’

‘Your suit from Herzog’s. With all those stains.’ Her voice is filled with sorrow, marvelling at all the world’s evil.

‘I understand. Do what you can.’

Beda puts her hands together and starts swaying back and forth. I look around. Further down the street, Bruntell has rigged up his Kodak to photograph the kids. He chooses the oddest motifs. In the background, Ström is up on a ladder, screwing down his factory-painted sign with the elaborate text:
ALL BOTTLES BOUGHT, ALL KINDS OF METALLIC JUNK, RAGS, RUBBER AND VARIOUS OTHER ITEMS AT THE BEST POSSIBLE PRICE.

‘A new chemical laundry has opened on Observatoriegatan.’ Beda rubs one eye with the knuckle of her forefinger. It’s tearing up. Must be the cold.

‘I’m sure it’ll be fine. You’ve taken care of my laundry for ten years.’

Beda stops swaying and smiles fondly. On the other side of the street a rye-blond boy manages the feat of climbing all the way to the top of the streetlight, and the kids are yelling as if deranged. He’s wearing long trousers, a cap on his head.

The owner of the general store folds up his camera tripod and carries it inside. Old man Ljung comes up from Frejgatsbacken, leading Lundin’s rented black horses.

A young woman without either a hat or a handbag comes out of the doorway of number 41. The blokes around the block call her the Jewel. The gossiping old bats at the General Store call her the Fashion Doll. Lundin firmly maintains that the shape of her head signifies an abnormally highly developed sense of ‘amour’.

Her heels clatter against the paving stones when she marches up to the junction. The Jewel stops and shouts at the kids, telling them to shut up. They screech back at her and laugh. Her hips swing hard when she turns around again. Her buttocks bounce from side to side like a pear-shaped ball.

It’s been years since I last had a woman. Maybe, in spite of all, I’ve missed it. I take a deep drag on my cigar.

‘Surely you’re not going bareheaded? In this weather?’ Beda gives me a concerned look, and rubs her running eye again.

‘It should be all right.’

‘Out of the question! You’ll catch cold! I’ll have a look among the unclaimed hats!’

‘It’s not necessary.’

‘Now just you wait here!’

The bell on the door tinkles and Beda disappears in a puff of bleach. I look in my notebook. The first stop will be Oscaria’s shoe shop, then PUB Department Store before I go on to Söder and Bondegatan, in the hope of visiting Sonja’s parents. If they
still have the sweetmeats with peas at the Corso wine bar, I may stop off there first. I may also allow myself a couple of snifters. I borrowed a bit of dough from Lundin this morning.

The doorbell rings again. Beda comes out. To the north one can hear a march playing – the Johannes Folk School orchestra is beginning its usual Friday practice session.

‘Look here,’ she says, proffering a checked cap with earmuffs. She stands on her tiptoes and puts it on my head, then pats my cheek with her chapped hand.

‘Damn!’

Beda raises a gnarled finger. ‘He who swears gets worms in his teeth.’

‘Ever since my twin brother and I tore my mother in two while she was giving birth to us, worms are all we’ve had to eat.’

Beda laughs, swaying and opening her mouth wide. Judging by the state of her teeth, she’s sworn once or twice as well.

She goes back into her laundry and I cross the street. I daren’t take off the cap yet, in case she’s standing in the window watching me. I head off towards Lundin’s Undertakers. A coal delivery man has parked his cart against the wall and is unloading a couple of sacks. He takes a sack on each shoulder and goes around the corner into Ingemarsgatan.

‘Kvisten!’

The blond urchin with the Vega cap has crept up without my noticing. His eyes are rebellious but he has a childish, round face. He stretches out his little mitt and smiles, his mouth full of topsy-turvy teeth. Clearly he’s the tough of the gang. The others stand a bit further off. They twist and turn, pushing each other and tittering.

‘Yes?’

‘My dad says Kvisten was an ace boxer?’

‘My name is Kvist, as far as you’re concerned.’

The boy nods, the gang behind him titters even more. ‘My dad says Kvist was the best boxer we ever had. Better than Harry Persson, even.’

‘That’s not the only thing your old man says, I imagine.’

‘Why didn’t you turn pro like HP?’

‘Clear off!’

‘What do you mean, mister?’

Behind him, the street urchins have lined up like a little choir. One of them at the edge, a little shit with a bruise under his eye, starts swinging his elbow and the whole gang give it all they’ve got, as they roar out: ‘Harry Kvist was a hell of a bloke!’

I flick the stump of my cigar towards them and grab the nearest boy by his ear.

‘Clear the hell out of here!’

My growl comes from the very bottom of my throat. The boy opens his mouth as if he’s about to answer back. I slap him so hard that it stings the palm of my hand. The boy hits the paving stones on his face.

The other boys screech and scatter like a flock of seagulls. I bend down and pick up the wriggling boy by the scruff of his neck. There’s a scarlet mark on his cheek. I brush him down.

‘Go home to your father. Tell him not to talk behind honest people’s backs. If this continues I’ll have to teach him a lesson as well.’

The boy wriggles free. I let him run. I take off my hat and find a Meteor in my pocket. The gold lighter is on strike. I sigh and open the door of the undertaker’s.

‘The kids are making a lot of damned noise,’ says Lundin as I lower my head to come through the doorway. He’s sitting in his black suit, noting something down on a paper at his desk.

‘Shouldn’t they be at their school desks? It isn’t even lunchtime. No discipline.’

‘
Until tribute comes to Judea, and the obedience of the peoples
.’

‘Give your piety a rest, you old hypocrite!’

‘I take it my brother has been to Bondegatan?’

‘First I was going to get a litre for her father. Kron if you’ve got it.’

‘You know where it is.’

‘I’d rather you get it if you don’t mind.’

Lundin stands up and closes every other button in his jacket. If I know him, he’s trying to avoid wear and tear on the buttonholes.

‘People are desperate for a life beyond earthly existence. That’s why the old girls stand in line to see the spiritualist up the street. They live in hope. But the bad news, I have to announce, is that there are no ghosts. I should know, if anyone.’ He caresses his grey moustache.

Lundin disappears and soon comes back with a bottle wrapped in light green crepe paper. I take it and nod by way of thanks.

‘You want it put on the tab?’

‘And a pack of matches.’

Lundin sits down and pulls out a desk drawer. He finds a box and tosses it over. It rattles when I catch it with one hand.

‘So I hope my brother gets hold of her old man, then. And then let’s see if he’s as bowlegged as his daughter.’

‘And has something to tell,’ I reply, with my hand on the door handle. ‘It’s the only lead I have.’

‘Good luck!’

The clock chimes and I am back on Roslagsgatan. With the bottle under my armpit, I strike a match. There’s almost no wind. I light the cigar and look around.

The kids haven’t dared come back. The widow Lind from the tobacconist’s further down the street nods as she passes with a box of food from the NORMA restaurant under her arm. She has draped a dirty grey shawl over her head and shoulders. In the corner of her mouth is a short, fat cigar.

‘My only lead,’ I mutter to myself.

I button my overcoat all the way up and shove my hands into my coat pockets. I hear Lundin’s hacking cough inside the door. The coal delivery man’s cart is still there, its shafts pointing up into the air like the arms of someone drowning.

A couple of hours later I’m standing at the crossroads towards Folkungagatan, watching the pavers at work. They tore up Götgatan for the sake of the Metro and now they’re at it again, putting it back together. The workers are in teams of five, with one foreman. Their hammers ring out into the sunset. Stone splinters fly through the air like grey sparks. On my right the paving stones are already in place, but to the left the gravel road continues all the way to Skanstull. A worker sits on a steam excavator, watching the others. That special smell of iron imposing itself on stone mixes with the smoke of the trucks. The blokes are on their knees, their shredded fingertips wrapped in rags. The foreman’s voice, gravelled by the road dust, cuts through the rhythmical hammering: ‘Keep it up! No one goes home until we’ve filled the quota!’

I have new light boots made of sports leather and a long black overcoat with heavy lapels. I also found myself a bargain at PUB’s hat department, a black thing with a low crown, a narrow brim and a broad grey band, for eighteen fifty. In the bag between my new boots is the old overcoat and the bottle of schnapps. My other shoes had to go straight in the bin. I get out a Diplomat,
bite off the end and light it. If I’m to get through Christmas I have to urgently contact Wernersson to see if he has any more bicycles for me.

‘Damn it, Larsson. Were you one of them what built the Tower of Pisa? Can’t you see, it’s bloody out of shape?’ the foreman shouts at an old man, who sits up on his knees and throws out his arms.

A boy approaches, pushing a pram filled with coal, which he has most likely nicked from the barges by Söder Mälarstrand. God have mercy on any kid from Söder who comes home without something flammable at this time of year.

I look around. Outside NORMA, on the other side of the street, a couple of dockers are milling about, trying to pick up some lunch company by three o’clock, when the restaurant is on full ration. Further off, a lanky bloke in a bowler hat is checking prices in the window of a gentlemen’s outfitters. Overhead, a single-engine aircraft is writing an advertising message across the sky, but there’s too much wind to be able to read what it says.

I have a puff. Although the cigar is twice as expensive as a Meteor, it tastes sour.

A coarse-limbed draught horse, its two-wheeled cart loaded with paving stone, weaves its way through the workers. Steam shoots out of its distended nostrils, as if from a locomotive. I’d never get into an underground train. The mere idea of it is utter lunacy.

I toss away my half-smoked Diplomat. As I turn off towards Stora Teatern, I notice a street kid snapping up the cigar and blowing on the glowing tip.

The matinee is
Tonight or Never
, the same show as at home in the Lyran. The newspaper boy outside the cinema tries to make himself heard above the hammer blows. Somewhere from under
the ground, a whole team of blokes start singing a work song. The boy raises his voice even more.

‘Murder on Götgatan,’ he roars. ‘The son the perpetrator!’

I slow my steps and stop.

‘Read all about it in
Svenska Dagbladet
! Everything about a murder, just a few streets away!’

‘Is there a crossword?’

‘Yeah, but it’s the trickiest one in the whole country, if you know what I mean.’ The boy smiles.

I take out a one-krona piece and give it to him. He puts it in his pocket and folds the newspaper over his arm while he’s counting out the change. I raise my hand.

‘Keep it.’

‘Right you are.’ He hands me the newspaper.

‘A carpenter on Bondegatan. The daughter has flown, if you know what
I
mean.’

‘Well that’ll be old Ljungström on Bondegatan, just a few blocks down.’ A high-pitched signal in short pulses interrupts him. ‘Hold on, the moles are letting off dynamite again,’ he cries.

‘You know the street number?’