Still invisible, Håkan gets down on his hands and knees and crawls beneath the table without drawing anyone’s attention. In his hand he holds an invisible drill. Without wasting a second, he places the drill bit against the wood and begins to bore up through the bottom of the table. In no time at all he has drilled straight through the table top. But he does not stop at this. He continues to drill, right through the bottom of a bottle, and then he watches as a nice, steady stream of vodka runs out through the hole. Beneath the table he recognizes his father’s shoes, and for a moment he cannot bear to think what might happen if he should suddenly became visible again. But then, with a rush of delight, he hears his father’s voice.
“There’s no more booze!”
Another voice joins in: “I’ll be damned, you’re right!”
And then they all get up to leave.
Håkan follows his father down the stairs. And when they reach the street, he leads him — although Håkan’s father doesn’t know it — straight to a taxi stand. Håkan whispers their address to the driver and for the whole trip he stands outside on the running board, holding tight to the door, making sure they actually go in the right direction. When they are only a few blocks from home Håkan wishes himself back. Again he’s in the kitchen, lying on the daybed, listening to the sound of the car as it pulls to a stop on the street below. But then only when he hears it start up again and drive off does he realize it wasn’t the right car. This one had stopped in front of the building next door, not at his. And so the right car must still be on its way. Maybe it got held up in a traffic jam at a nearby intersection. Maybe it stopped to help someone who got knocked off their bike. Yes, of course, there are a good many things that can happen to a car.
Yet at last along comes a car which appears to be the right one. A few buildings down from Håkan’s it begins to slow down, rolling past the building next door, stopping with a little squeak at exactly the right entrance. A door opens. It slams shut again. Someone whistles as he jingles the change in his pocket. Håkan’s father usually never whistles. But you can never be too sure about these kinds of things. Why shouldn’t he suddenly take up whistling? The car starts up, it turns at the corner, and then it’s very quiet again on the street. Håkan strains with his ears, listening intently for the familiar sounds in the stairwell. But he never hears the door slam the way it does after someone has entered the hall, he never hears the little clicking sound from the light switch when it’s flipped on, he never hears the dull muffled thud of footfalls growing steadily louder on the steps.
And so Håkan thinks: Why did I leave him so early? I could have stayed with him all the way to the door since we were so close, anyway. Now he’s just standing down there, of course. He’s lost his keys and can’t get in. Maybe he’ll get angry now. Maybe he’ll just leave and not come back till early tomorrow morning, when the door is open. And of course he can’t whistle. Because if he could, he’d certainly whistle up to me or mom to throw down the key.
As quietly as possible Håkan clambers over the edge of the ever-creaking daybed. And in the darkness he stumbles into the kitchen table. Every muscle stiffens as he stands completely still on the cold linoleum floor. But his mother’s sobbing is loud and steady, like the breath of a sleeper, so she hasn’t heard a thing. He moves on toward the window and gently pulls the shade to the side, peeking out. No life stirs on the street, but across the way, just above the doorway of another building, a light suddenly comes on. And at the same time a light appears in the stairwell. Yes, the light above Håkan’s door works exactly the same way.
After a while Håkan begins to get cold and so he silently creeps back to his bed. To make sure he doesn’t knock against the table again, he stretches his hands out in front of him, running them along the edge of the counter. His fingertips suddenly feel something cold, something sharp. For a moment he allows his fingers to run up and down the object, searching, until they grasp around a wooden handle. It’s a carving knife. When he climbs back into bed, he is still holding the knife. He slips under the blanket, pressing it close to his side. And then he is invisible again.
Immediately Håkan is back in that same room, standing in the doorway. He looks on at the men and women who hold his father captive. And he now realizes the only way his father can get free is if he, himself, rescues him — just like the Vikings did it when they rescued missionaries who were tied to stakes, about to be cooked by cannibals.
And so Håkan sneaks forward with his invisible knife and sinks it deep into the back of the fat man sitting next to his father. The fat man dies and Håkan starts to make his way around the table. One by one his victims slide down out of their chairs without ever really having the chance to know what hit them. When his father is free Håkan leads him down the long stairs, walking slowly, cautiously. Since there are no cars in sight, they walk across the street and board a trolley. Håkan arranges it so that his father can get a seat. But he’s worried the conductor might notice how his father has been drinking a little. And he hopes his father doesn’t use bad language around the conductor, or suddenly laugh out loud when there’s nothing there to laugh at.
As the distant wheels of the last trolley round a faraway corner, they carry a relentless song to Håkan in his kitchen bedroom. He has left the trolley and is now lying again on the daybed. His mother has stopped crying since he left, and this is the first thing he notices. Suddenly the shade in her room flies up to the ceiling with a dreadful bang, and when the echo from that bang trails off his mother opens the window. Håkan wishes that he could hop out of bed, run into her room, and cry out to her. If he could, he’d tell her to close the window, pull down the shade and go back to bed in peace, because now he’s finally coming.
“He’s on the trolley,” he’d say. “I put him there myself!”
But Håkan knows it wouldn’t do any good. She wouldn’t believe him. She has no idea what he does for her when they’re alone at night, when she thinks he’s sleeping. She doesn’t know a thing about the trips he sets out on, the adventures he throws himself into for her sake.
When the trolley stops around the corner, Håkan is up again, standing by the window, peeking out through the space between the shade and the window frame. The first people who come around the corner are two young men who must have jumped off while the trolley was still moving. They are joking around, boxing with each other playfully. Håkan recognizes them as the boys who live in the new house up the street. He can hear the distant chatter from some of the other people who have gotten off the car. When the trolley rattles across Håkan’s street, the headlights clear a path of darkness before it, and small groups of people briefly appear and then scatter back into the darkness in various directions. A man with unsteady steps walks directly toward the entrance to Håkan’s building. With his hat in his hand, he looks like a beggar. But this man is not Håkan’s father. It’s just the janitor who lives in their building.
Yet still Håkan stands and waits. He knows there are enough things around the corner that can hold up a trolley passenger. There are many different shop windows, for instance, like the one at the shoe store. His father may be standing there right now, perhaps picking out a new pair of shoes for himself before he goes home. And the fruit store has a big window, too, with interesting hand-painted signs. Folks usually stop there to look at these signs, because they have such funny little people drawn on them. The fruit store also has a vending machine that’s always stealing people’s money. It’s very likely Håkan’s father has just put a coin in it to buy him some cough drops, and now he can’t get the slot open, of course.