Next to the bar is a china store and watchmaker’s shop. Håkan stands for a while and peeks in through the window. He tries to count the dogs, first the ceramic ones in the window and then the ones he can barely make out if he shades his eyes and searches along the shelves and counters farther inside. The watchmaker comes up and pulls down the bars of the window. Yet through the small slits Håkan can still see the watches that lie inside, ticking. He can also see the correct time on the clock, and he decides that the second hand will go around ten times before he finally goes in.
As the bouncer stands there arguing with a fellow who is trying to show him something in a magazine, Håkan steals into the bar. Without wasting a moment he runs up to the right table, not wanting too many people to notice him. His father doesn’t see him at first, but one of the other painters nods to Håkan and says:
“Hey, your kid’s here!”
Håkan’s father pulls him up onto his knee. He brushes his razor stubble against the boy’s cheek. Håkan tries to avoid looking directly at him. But still, he’s fascinated with the red streaks that permeate his eyes.
“What do you want, boy?” his father asks him. But the tongue is soft and flabby in his mouth and he must say the same thing over a couple of times before he’s finally satisfied with it.
“I came for the money.”
Håkan’s father slowly places him on the floor and then leans back, laughing so loudly that his friends have to quiet him down. As he laughs he takes the change purse from his pocket, fumbling with the rubber band around it. For a long time he searches in the bottom until he finds his shiniest one crown piece.
“Here you go, Håkan,” he says. “Go on, boy. Go and buy yourself some candy.”
The other workers will not be outdone, and so Håkan also gets a crown from each of them. Overwhelmed by shame and confusion, he holds the money in his hand while he makes his way out through the tables. As he dashes out past the bouncer, he’s terribly afraid that someone will see him and talk about him at school, saying, “I saw Håkan coming out of a bar last night.” But he pauses anyway, just outside the watchmaker’s window, and while the second hand nibbles its way around the clock ten more times he stands there pressed against the bars, knowing that he will have to play his games again tonight. And of the two people he plays these games for, he cannot decide whom he hates the most.
Later, as he slowly turns the corner, Håkan meets his mother’s gaze from ten yards above. And so he walks as slowly as he dares up to the building’s entrance. Next to the entrance is a wood shop and for a moment he musters the courage to pause and kneel there, staring down at an old man who is picking up coal in a black bucket. By the time the old man has finished, his mother is standing behind him. She pulls him up and takes hold of his chin in order to fix on his eyes.
“What did he say?” she asks. “Or did you lose your nerve again?”
“He said he’ll come at once,” Håkan whispers back.
“And what about the money?”
“Close your eyes,” Håkan says, and here he plays the last game of the day.
When his mother closes her eyes, Håkan slowly reaches out and slips the four crowns into her outstretched hand, and then he turns and sprints down the street on feet that slip on the stones because they’re so afraid. A growing cry follows him along the walls of the houses, but it doesn’t stop him. On the contrary, it makes him run even faster.
Men of Character
Foresters wear puttees, green or gray. This one never went anywhere without his rifle, just as he never went anywhere without being in a great hurry. When he came through the village he was always in a half-sprint, the dust stirring up above his ankles. Everyone greeted him, but he greeted none, perhaps because he was always in such a desperate rush that he had no time to notice those who slowed down and stepped out of the way when they saw him coming. Sometimes they would move right to the edge of the ditch by the side of the road and follow him with their eyes. To these bystanders it looked as though he was being led by a dog on a long leash, a big invisible dog to which he secretly whistled through his ever-pursed lips, against which he set his own hurried pace. And his attention appeared to be so thoroughly engaged by the movement of this phantom hound that it could not be distracted by anything else. When he passed them, the villagers never laughed, nor even smiled, but they would nudge one another from time to time, as if to remind themselves of the association they all shared in the shape of that strange invisible dog.
As he sprang up the concrete front steps of Cederblom’s Grocery, the forester startled a small group of women who stood at the top, offering each other snuff. In their sudden alarm, they jumped out of his way as he entered the store. Inside he unslung his rifle and stood there firmly with his feet spread wide on the newly scrubbed floorboards, weighing the weapon by the shoulder strap until he found its perfect point of balance. Only then did he step forward to the counter, and all of the eyes staring at him in curious bewilderment now slunk hastily off in other directions. The rifle butt came to rest firmly on the floor, the barrel sticking up an inch or two above the counter’s edge, and the two girls attending to customers suddenly looked nervous, even frightened, as they filled their customers’ paper bags and cartons at the counter.
When the forester’s turn came, he handed one of the girls a typewritten list. Not even when he was told that something or other was out of stock would he bother to speak. He would simply shake his head in displeasure and shrug his shoulders, as if to free himself of the annoyance. The forester always bought the same things, provisions for his excursions into the woods — canned goods, hard bread, goat’s cheese, oranges, coffee, condensed cream — and other essentially masculine things normally associated with strength, solitude and superiority — puttees, boot-grease of a particular brand, expensive pipe tobacco, the finest pipe cleaners, flasks for field use, and flints for his cigarette lighter.
When at last his goods were set before him on the counter, he would shove them down into his pack himself, the very abruptness of his movements making any assistance from the shopgirl impossible. No one in the village had ever heard him ask for help, just as no one had ever heard him say thank you. No one had ever seen his match blow out in the wind when he stopped to light his pipe, nor had anyone ever heard him swear because a stone had crept into his shoe. The forester was plagued by none of those things that made other people feel ridiculous, nothing that could be laughed or even smiled at. But the villagers were patient.
One day the forester came into the store and bought a woman’s head-scarf. On this day he left his rifle and backpack at home. Nor was he wearing his gloves as usual. The villagers were rather surprised to see how small his hands were — so small and white, almost like a woman’s. The cigarette that he was smoking also looked ridiculously small in the middle of his big, red face. From the moment he entered Cederblom’s, he was acting out of the ordinary. Instead of immediately approaching the counter he went over to a little glass case just to the left of the entrance. Inside were the sorts of things that people usually paused and snickered at, but never bought: cheap necklaces, gaudy bathing caps, imitation gold bracelets, trinkets, brilliantly colored silk bath robes, cigarette holders, earrings. What good would any of these things be to him out in the middle of the woods? Leaning over this museum of urban vanity, the forester stood for a good while ardently puffing on his cigarette, without ever taking it from his mouth. Finally it occurred to one of the shopgirls that she should go over and offer her assistance.