‘Please yourself, then,’ said Samuel, and left. Joel didn’t bother to stand in the window and wave. He went straight to his room. He lay down on his bed and pulled the covers over his head. An hour and a half from now he was due at the back door of the Community Centre. That’s what had been arranged. But it would be impossible now.
He sat straight up in bed.
‘Oh, hell!’ he yelled at nobody in particular. Then he lay down again with the covers over his head.
Why does everything go wrong? he wondered. You do the right thing. But it goes wrong even so.
Why is life so difficult?
He got out of bed. Lying there with the covers over his head didn’t help. He checked the kitchen clock. 17 minutes past six. The clock didn’t have a second hand, so he tried to count sixty seconds. But the clock showed 18 minutes past six when he’d only got as far as 49. He was counting too slowly.
I give up, he thought. The Caviar Man and Gertrud will have to manage without me. If there is a God, he’ll have to do without a thank you for his Miracle. He can send the police after me for all I care. I, Joel Gustafson, couldn’t care less about that.
But at that very moment, he had an idea. He would disguise himself. Surely he could dress up so that nobody would recognise him? He’d be able to hide behind the fat drummer, Holmström. He was the fattest man in town. The fattest drummer in the world.
He looked at the clock again. 24 minutes past six. He cursed for not having made up his mind sooner.
Joella, he thought. I can dress up as a girl. I can tell Kringström that unfortunately my brother is ill, but I’d also like to learn to play the saxophone...
No, that’s not possible, he thought immediately. I can’t wear Mummy Jenny’s dress. And there isn’t anything else.
He checked the clock again. Nearly half past six.
When ten past seven came round, he still hadn’t thought of a good way of disguising himself. He would have to go now. Yet again he’d decided to stay at home, but the moment he’d pulled the covers over his head, he’d bounced back up again. He would have to go! He took Samuel’s hat from the wardrobe, the one he’d bought in Hull. He pulled it down over his eyes. Then he took Samuel’s spare pair of reading glasses and let them hang down over his nose. That was all. He raced down the stairs and out into the chilly evening air. It will soon be winter, he thought. It will snow before long.
He ran so fast that he got a stitch. He had to pause and catch his breath. Then he set off running again. As the church clock chimed twice, he arrived at the Community Centre. Kringström’s big Ford had backed into the courtyard. The members of the orchestra were already busy unloading their instruments. The fattest drummer in the world was carrying the big bass drum in front of him, looking as if he had an extra stomach. The double bass player was perched on the car roof, untying the rope round his instrument case. Joel knew that his name was Ross — but was that his first name or his surname? Just then Kringström came out of the back door with the Community Centre manager, Mr Engman. Joel stopped dead when he heard that they were quarrelling.
‘Of course we have to have a bulb that works in our dressing room,’ growled Kringström. ‘Do you expect us to get changed in the pitch black? Are we supposed to drink our coffee in darkness during the interval?’
‘You don’t drink coffee,’ said Engman testily. ‘You drink vodka and whisky. And then you are all so drunk, you can hardly hold your instruments.’
‘Take that back here and now,’ roared Kringström. ‘If not, you can find yourself another orchestra.’
The quarrel ended as quickly as it had begun. Engman vanished through the back door, muttering away to himself.
Joel stepped forward.
Kringström looked at him in surprise.
‘What’s all this?’ he asked. ‘A dwarf in a hat?’
‘I’m the one who wants to learn to play the saxophone,’ said Joel, raising his hat. Kringström burst out laughing. He explained to the other members of the orchestra who Joel was. As if Joel had been a grown-up, they all marched up to shake him by the hand. Ross’s first name was Einar. The world’s fattest drummer had a hand so big that Joel’s disappeared inside it.
‘We’d better get a move on,’ shouted Kringström. ‘The pack of wolves will be after us before we know where we are.’
Joel helped to carry the instruments.
‘What pack of wolves?’ he asked Ross.
‘The audience,’ said Ross. ‘The audience are a pack of wolves. If we don’t play well, they gobble us up.’
It didn’t take long to unpack the instruments. The sheet music was distributed and placed in the correct order, and they started tuning up. Each of them would occasionally take a swig from a bottle that was passed round from hand to hand. The manager, Engman, appeared and assured the orchestra that he had replaced the broken light bulb.
‘So, we’d better get changed,’ said Kringström to Joel. ‘Stay here on the stage and keep an eye on the instruments.’
Joel is alone on stage. The empty auditorium in front of him is suddenly full of people. Everybody is waiting for Joel Gustafson’s Orchestra to start playing. Joel does what he’s heard you are supposed to do. He stamps on the floor, beating time, counts to four and raises his saxophone.
Kringström is in the wings, tying his bow tie. He notices Joel’s solo performance, and signals to the other members of the orchestra. They stand in the wings and watch Joel. Then they all run onto the stage and start playing pretend instruments as well. When Joel realises what is happening, he stops playing. But Kringström urges him on.
Another kind of silence, Joel thinks. The silent instruments’ orchestra...
Kringström takes over.
‘We’d better stop now if we’re going to have time to change before the pack of wolves closes in on us.’
‘That sounded great,’ says the World’s Fattest Drummer, patting Joel on the shoulder with his gigantic hand.
Joel blushes. It was only a game, after all! A game that somebody who’ll soon be twelve is too old for...
Then he feels his worries creeping up on him again. No game in the whole world can change reality. That’s what it is, full stop. Soon Sara and Samuel will appear. And Gertrud and the Caviar Man. And the pack of wolves.
He looks at the big curtain hanging behind the orchestra. It’s like an enormous painting — even bigger than the altarpiece in the church. It’s summer on the curtain. A blue lake is glistening. Birch trees have come into leaf. Blue and green. There’s a white seagull soaring up in the sky. Joel goes behind the curtain. It’s dark and dusty there. But what he has done is to exit from the autumn of the world outside this stage, and to enter into summer instead. That’s the way it should always be. You should live in a house in which every room was a different season. So that you could choose. The kitchen could be summer and the bedroom spring. The pantry could be winter and the hall autumn...
He discovers that there’s a peephole in the tall curtain. He can stand behind one of the white birch trees and look out into the auditorium. People have started to come in. Girls with their hair up and in high heels. Boys in black winkle-pickers and Brylcreemed hair. Joel can see that there’s a log jam at the very back of the room. Mr Engman, the manager, is waving his arms about. Suddenly everything turns black before Joel’s eyes. It was Ross walking over the stage and starting to tune his doublebass. More and more people are entering the auditorium. The light is dimmed. But there is a hell of a noise already. The girls are standing in clusters by one of the walls. Joel knows that it’s called the Mountain Wall. The boys are gathered by the opposite wall. Somebody kicks the floor, as if he were a horse. Somebody slaps somebody else on the back. More and more people are turning up. But not Sara and Samuel. And not the Caviar Man nor Gertrud either.