As soon as he enters the apartment, the telephone rings. And because the light isn’t on, he is afraid. So he turns it on before he answers. It’s his fiancée. She is crying yet manages to speak every now and then. She says that she’s so worried about him that she can’t sleep. He is listening, but he doesn’t feel anything. Nevertheless, he promises her they will go for a walk the following evening. Behind her crying, he can hear the banjo player strumming his evening entertainment.
When he hangs up, he suddenly finds the ticket stub between his fingers. And for the hell of it, he dials the number. When nobody answers, he feels both relieved and disappointed. Then, while stuffing it back in his pocket, he suddenly remembers with terrifying clarity that he has forgotten the keys in the locks. So he dashes into the other room and turns on the light, but the keyholes are empty. And the shelf in the closet is empty, too. When he steps into the closet, the door suddenly slams shut behind him and he is filled with maddening terror. Then, with clenched fists, he beats the door open. It was only the wind, since one of the windows is open and swinging to and fro. He closes it, but he doesn’t pull down the shades. Instead, he draws the ones in the kitchen. The bottle is still on the table. There are just a few drops left at the bottom, but when he empties it, he feels a little warm.
In bed, he lays his pillow against his chest. Pillows are great for the lonely. From a pillow, he can make two soft thighs. He can also make a soft arm that wraps around his body. No one has as soft an arm as a pillow. Nor such a warm arm, since he can make it as warm as he wants. The arm makes him warm. It also makes him less lonesome. He sleeps dreamlessly throughout the night.
At six the following evening he meets his fiancée on the Räntmästare steps. She wants to go to Djurgården, where they can dance at Nöjesfältet and then go home from there. She mentions that she has fixed the sofa.
Which sofa? he asks.
Then he takes her arm and they walk up to Södermalm. They walk up Götgatan and do some window-shopping. The fiancée is so upset that she hardly sees a single display. At the top of the hill, she is out of breath and says they should turn around. Then he tells her that he doesn’t have enough money to go to Djurgården, but if she wants, they can go to the cinema. When they reach the Lantern, she says it’s a bad theater. They have been to it once before, and it was cold then. Besides, the films are always so worn out. Moreover, they only play bad films. They look at the posters for a bit. He thinks she is taking too long. When they go inside, she mentions that they have already seen the film. He gets upset and says that she has a bad memory.
She buys the tickets because he doesn’t have any money with him. But he stands next to her at the box office. When the cashier tears the tickets from the block, she looks at him and smiles. She recognizes him. He smiles back at her because she looks like his mother. She’s old enough. Yet she isn’t that old. She has a red dress with short sleeves and a little blue spot above her elbow, as though someone has pinched her. Even though it’s too early to go inside, he takes the fiancée’s arm and they proceed to the entrance. As the attendant tears their tickets, he looks back at the box office to see if the cashier thinks they’re silly for going in so early. But she is merely sitting there, gazing out at the street. He is relieved yet disappointed at the same time.
They sit at the very back of the theater. His fiancée wants to sit closer to the screen because she has poor eyesight, but her fiancé says the auditorium is so small that it doesn’t matter—and to a certain extent, he’s right. Then he tells her that this is where Greta Garbo saw her first film. It isn’t true, but his fiancée comes from Härjedalen and doesn’t know any better. But as he tells her, he isn’t so sure he is wrong.
When the six white half-globes on the naked green walls start to dim, he starts counting the people. Including himself and his fiancée, they are twelve. During the newsreel, he counts them two more times. During the break, he hears the telephone ring, and when the film starts, the fiancée whispers that they have in fact seen it. This doesn’t make him upset but cruel. Because she whispered this, he pinches her arm very hard and tells her to be quiet. So she is. And to keep her from crying, he acts as if the pinch was only an affectionate squeeze. So he ends up sitting in the dark and stroking the sore area. He tries to watch the film, but he can’t make any sense of it, even though he has already seen it before. And when the ten other people laugh, he laughs with them. His fiancée is not laughing.
They are the first ones to exit the auditorium, and even though he is blinded by the only light in the hall, he immediately tries looking at the cashier to see whether she is looking at him. But she is merely sitting in her booth, looking out at the street. Then he leaves his fiancée by herself and goes to the lavatory. Since it’s empty, he stands in front of the mirror and smokes a cigarette. As he smokes, he examines his face. He is bright red and his cheeks are burning. When he comes out, his fiancée is standing underneath the bright light. She is also very red, particularly her lips. When he comes closer, he notices for the first time that she’s wearing makeup. She has never worn any before. And when this occurs to him, he merely feels indifferent. Then, on the short walk to the gate, he turns around twice and looks back at the box office. The cashier is looking in his direction—but not at him, exactly. When the fiancée asks what he’s looking at, he asks her whether she thinks the cashier looks like his mother. She says she doesn’t think so but she does have a nearly identical red dress. Because she said this, he pinches her again. But this time he doesn’t caress her.
It is raining hesitantly, and the oil left behind by cars glistens underneath the streetlights. Church bells strike thirteen times, nine strikes of bronze and four of crystal. When they turn the corner, the fiancée wants to look at some baby items in a display window. But she doesn’t even get to do that, because he pulls her across the street with him. Soon after they reach the sidewalk, the father comes out of a café farther down on the other side of the street. Then, in the twilight rain, the dog and the father run down the same corner Bengt and Berit had just turned. As they run past the display window, the fiancée says:
I think that was your dad and his dog.
The fiancé snaps at her and says there are obviously a lot of black dogs in Stockholm. Then they walk back to the display window, but when the fiancée faces it, she can’t see a thing. Everything is just a haze of rain and tears. But after drying her eyes, she is finally able to see a little. There is a baby in blue clothing sitting in a high stroller, and a light is shining directly into its rosy face. She doesn’t notice when her fiancé lets go of her arm, nor does she notice when he takes two steps back. But he notices. Standing two steps away, he looks at his fiancée as though she were someone he didn’t know. He has never done this before and is surprised he’s doing it now. But the longer he looks at her, the less surprised he is and the less he recognizes her. The display window is big and bright, and standing in front of it, under the rain, is a skinny girl in black; someone you would normally walk by without noticing; someone you could stand next to in front of a display window or sit with at the cinema and afterward feel as though you’ve been alone the entire time.
Aren’t his clothes adorable? the fiancée asks.
Then the fiancé responds:
I’m not your son.
He never imagined saying something like that before. But he says it all the same. And now that he has said it, he doesn’t regret it. They walk straight to his apartment building from the display window. He walks quickly, and when he pays attention, he hears that her shoes have high heels. She is wearing them especially for him. She is also wearing a red dress, although he thinks it’s black. When he tries saying good-bye to her in front of the building, she tries to come up with him.