‘When do you want me to be there?’ Joel asked. He could feel his face flushing. His plan had succeeded!
‘Come to the back door at half past seven,’ said Kringström. ‘But you’ll have to go now. I must go back to Paradise.’
Paradise? It was only when Kringström pointed at the little soundproof room that the penny dropped.
‘That’s my Paradise,’ said Kringström. ‘In there, there’s nothing but music. And me.’
Joel cycled home. Geronimo Gustafson had carried out the first stage of the big plan. On Saturday he would capture the fort.
He thought about Kringström and his Paradise.
He pictures himself fixing posters in the display cabinet outside the Community Centre. Joel Gustafson’s Orchestra will play at a dance...
Now he’s no longer wearing his baggy jacket. Now he’s in a shiny silver blazer. And white shoes. He’s beating time and directing the orchestra. Emblazoned on the side of the big bass drum it says ‘JGO’ in highly decorated letters. Joel Gustafson’s Orchestra.
For the rest of the evening he can’t get out of his head what’s going to happen on Saturday night.
He goes to Samuel’s room. His dad is reading the newspaper and listening to the sound of the sea on the radio.
‘Can you dance?’ he asks.
Samuel lowers the newspaper.
‘Of course I can dance,’ he says in surprise. ‘Can’t everybody?’
‘I can’t,’ Joel says.
‘You’ll learn before long,’ says Samuel. ‘Can’t Eva-Lisa teach you?’
‘But you never dance,’ says Joel.
‘Do you want me to dance here in the kitchen?’ asks Samuel, with a laugh.
The next question comes tumbling out of Joel’s mouth, without his having thought about it in advance.
‘What about Mummy Jenny?’ he says. ‘Did you dance with her? Did you dance together?’
‘I suppose we did,’ Samuel says. Joel can see a shadow of unrest settling over his face.
He wishes he hadn’t asked the question. Where did it come from? It simply jumped out, as if it had been hiding inside there and waiting for Joel to open his mouth.
The unrest fades away. Samuel is back to normal.
‘Maybe we should,’ he says. ‘Maybe I should invite Sara to go dancing with me? Kringström’s orchestra is supposed to be pretty good.’
Joel goes stiff.
Why can he never learn not to keep shooting off his mouth? Just think, if Samuel gets it into his head to take Sara to the dance at the Community Centre on Saturday night?
‘Kringström’s orchestra is pretty awful,’ he says.
‘Have you heard them?’ asks Samuel in surprise.
‘Everybody says so,’ says Joel. ‘They are the worst orchestra in Sweden.’
‘I’ve heard the opposite,’ says Samuel. ‘Maybe I should go and hear them, and see who’s right?’
‘You’ll regret it if you do,’ Joel insists.
Samuel puts down his newspaper and eyes him intently.
‘You seem to know an awful lot about Kringström’s orchestra,’ he says. ‘But isn’t it a bit early for you to start thinking about going out dancing?’
He ruffles Joel’s hair, and returns to his newspaper.
Joel goes to his room and breathes a sigh of relief.
That was a close shave, he thinks. Geronimo Gustafson’s big plan very nearly collapsed in ruins. Samuel came close to making up his mind to take Sara to the dance at the Community Centre.
Now Geronimo can breathe a sigh of relief. There’s nothing in the way any longer.
But he is wrong, Joel Geronimo Gustafson. When Saturday comes round and Samuel has made porridge and they are having breakfast together, he suddenly puts down his spoon and looks at Joel and says:
‘That was a very good suggestion you came up with.’
Joel doesn’t know what his dad is talking about. He hasn’t made any suggestions, as far as he knows.
‘Sara and I are going to shake a leg at the Community Centre tonight,’ says Samuel.
Joel can’t believe his ears.
But it’s true. And in a strange way, it’s Joel who set it up.
He stares down at his porridge in the same way as he’d stared down at his desk top a few days ago.
What is he going to do now?
Would he never be able to do his good deed? Is he going to have to drag this Miracle around like a millstone for the rest of his life?
When he finishes eating he goes to his room. Samuel is doing the washing-up, humming away all the time.
How is Joel going to solve this problem?
What is he going to do now?
Geronimo Gustafson. What on earth are you going to do now?
10
General Custer, Joel thought.
Or Geronimo. Or both of them together. They wouldn’t have coped with this. Not even together!
Once it had dawned on him that Samuel and Sara really had made up their minds to go dancing to Kringström’s orchestra that night, Joel felt that all was lost. The good deed he had spent so much time and effort organising and was on the point of achieving, would never happen now.
He was back where he’d started. Just like when he took a wrong turning in Simon Windstorm’s maze. The good deed was something he’d never be able to find his way out of. He’d have to keep pressing on with attempts to do a good deed until he was so old that he couldn’t even stand up any more.
He sat in his room, swearing. He muttered all the swearwords he could think of. And he invented several new ones. All the time, Samuel was bustling around in the kitchen, humming tunes. He filled the big zinc bathtub with hot water. Then he shouted for Joel to come and scrub his back for him. Joel would have preferred to hit Samuel on the head with the brush instead. Why did Samuel have to choose tonight of all nights to go out dancing with Sara? Why not next Saturday? Why not every Saturday apart from this one?
Why couldn’t grown-ups ever understand when it wasn’t acceptable for them to go out dancing?
Joel scrubbed and Samuel grunted. If the brush had been impregnated with a sleeping potion, Samuel would have fallen asleep on the spot and not woken up until tomorrow. Joel would pay Kringström and his orchestra and he would rent the whole of the Community Centre for tomorrow night so that Sara and Samuel could dance together then. But not tonight! Alas, the brush was not poisoned and Samuel continued humming. He stood in the middle of the floor in a pool of water, shaving.
‘We’ll have dinner together at Sara’s place this evening,’ he said contentedly. ‘Then we’ll go dancing. You can stay in her flat and listen to the radio if you like.’
‘No,’ said Joel.
‘Why not?’ wondered Samuel. ‘Sara’s a very good cook. Much better than you and me.’
‘I don’t want to,’ said Joel.
Samuel grew angry. Or perhaps irritated. Joel wasn’t quite sure of the difference.
‘Just this once you’ll do as I say!’ said Samuel.
‘No,’ said Joel and emptied the bathtub by pouring bucket after bucket of dirty water down the sink.
‘What are you going to eat, then?’ asked Samuel.
I shall starve, Joel thought.
But he didn’t say that, of course.
‘I’ll make my own dinner,’ he said instead. ‘You said I was good at looking after myself. You did say that, didn’t you?’
‘Perhaps I did,’ said Samuel. ‘I just don’t understand why you’re making yourself so difficult to get along with.’
Joel said nothing.
Neither did Samuel.
Another kind of silence, Joel thought. Different from the one in the forest or in the Underworld.
At six o’clock Joel knotted Samuel’s tie for him.
‘Are you sure you don’t want to come?’ Samuel asked again.
‘I prefer to stay at home,’ said Joel.