“Do you think he saw the chess set?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think so.”
“OK, then,” he said and breathed out with an obvious look of relief.
Later that evening he called me at home and asked me the same thing again.
There was as much snow the next morning. Cars were knee-deep in it, and balcony doors were impossible to open. The streets were barely recognizable. Otherwise the day began as just another ordinary morning with Lind leading us in prayers. And when he came in to our first class — this time to lecture us on Christianity — everything followed the same fairly typical routine as he meandered through the room and talked to us. At his usual intervals he paused, speaking to each of us in turn, and in a moment or two it would be my turn. My desk was closest to the window, so I was always the last one Mr. Lind would address before Ekman. Today I was looking forward to it because I knew my psalms cold, and I had even made an extra effort to be well prepared. I kind of felt like I had a debt to repay. And Ekman must have felt the same.
So when Lind turned around at the door and slowly walked back along the row of desks, I was already smiling in anticipation of my turn. But I smiled too soon, because then something happened that caught me completely off guard. Lind went right on by me without stopping, and then he paused at the window and stood there for an interminable moment with his back to us — or, rather, with his back to me. Mystified, I turned to Ekman, but he hadn’t even noticed, probably because he was too preoccupied thinking about how it would be his turn next.
But his turn never came either. Mr. Lind went up to his desk and sat down, and that was it. We were asked to open our books and began to talk about the next lesson. I mean the others began to talk about it. Ekman and I didn’t exist. And when that fact dawned on him, Ekman turned as white as I’d ever seen him. As if it had a mind of its own, his hand delved into his pocket and shoved the chess set down as deep as it could possibly go.
It was worse for me. I had nothing to hide. And nothing to hide behind. Not even a pocket chess set to clutch in my hand. I could feel my face flushing red, and my skin seemed to prickle with guilt. There was nothing I could do to stop it. I grew warm and sweaty, and the bell just wouldn’t ring. I kept hoping for a word from Mr. Lind, or even a quick glance in my direction, but neither came. And when the bell finally did ring, I wished that it hadn’t. I didn’t want things to end this way. I don’t think either of us did, because Lind would not be walking past us again today.
And now he was gone.
The rest of the day disappeared down a well of sweltering shame and longing. As the day wore on our guilt only intensified, and with each passing hour Ekman became more and more sure that Lind had seen the chess set sticking up out of his pocket. I told him that was impossible, but this gave him little consolation. In truth, consolation was probably well beyond our reach. Even when we were ready to head home, as we made our way down the main hallway, we hadn’t come close to glimpsing it, but that’s when we saw Mr. Lind at the other end of the hallway coming towards us. He didn’t spot us right away. We stopped and stood on opposite sides of the hallway so that he couldn’t get by without seeing at least one of us. Finally he got so close that he couldn’t possibly avoid seeing us, but his pace never slackened in the least. Carefully I eased myself out from the wall where I’d been leaning. It felt a bit like stepping up onto a railroad track and trying to stop a train with nothing but your body.
But he didn’t run me over. He derailed and veered toward the nearest window, where he stopped and looked out at the damned snow. Desperation breeds its own kind of boldness, and mine was considerable.
“We’d like to speak to you, Mr. Lind,” I managed to blurt out.
“Yes,” Ekman whispered.
Lind pulled out a little black notebook and began to page through it aimlessly, or so it seemed. I got the impression it was just for show. Maybe he just wanted to give his hands something to do, since they were trembling slightly. Finally he put away the book.
“Come to my place at 8 p.m. then,” he said. “OK?”
We didn’t respond, nor did he wait for an answer. In a moment he was gone, somewhere in the late-day gloom. For hours that evening I sat at our kitchen table without as much as turning a page in my book. I was struck by how meaningless it was to read, how impotent reading seemed in the face of real meaning. And there was no one I could talk to about it. I had only one friend, and I couldn’t talk with him. Just before it was time to go he called, though, and I had to speak to him then. He wanted to know for the last time whether I thought Lind had seen the pocket chess set. A mirror hung just over the telephone and as I spoke to him I couldn’t help looking into it. I hated my own reflection, as if it were some shameful disease. And the worst thing was, even if I broke the mirror my reflection would still be there.
“Yes!” I screamed into the receiver desperately. “Of course he saw it! Haven’t you figured that out by now?”
I’d screamed so loud my mother came into the hall, wondering what was going on. I hung up the phone and told her it was nothing. It was nothing. That’s what was so hopeless about the whole thing. Whenever anything real happened, there really wasn’t anything to it. It just felt like there was.
I ran through the streets as the snowfall dwindled to a flurry. I felt as though my reflection remained in the storefront windows even after I passed them by, as though all the people I met on the street could see my guilt like a festering sore. Lind’s street was dark, and that was good. The staircase inside was murky, so I took the elevator. It was so full of mirrors that I had to turn the light off on the way up. When I rang Mr. Lind’s bell, Ekman came to the door and answered it. He had just gotten there himself and was standing in the outer hall waiting. Lind was on the phone behind a white door. I stepped softly up to the door and eavesdropped a bit. “Well, we’ll have to see about that,” I heard him say. Then it got quiet. See about what? Afraid and defiant, I hung up my hat and coat and gloves. Ekman combed his hair in front of the hall mirror. He could look at himself in the mirror. That was odd. It wasn’t right.
Then Lind came out into the hall and nothing turned out the way I’d imagined it would. Be fearless. This is what I had told myself at our kitchen table back home. You’ve done nothing wrong. You’re innocent.
All the same, it was the offender in me who stepped into the large room behind the white door. There were no hiding places in that room. I felt small, overwhelmed by the pure number of books, by the plushness of the carpets, by the crystal chandelier hanging from the middle of the ceiling. I stopped in my tracks to take it all in, feeling as if I’d been ripped asunder. In a distant corner of the room was an ensemble sofa, smoking table, armchair, and floor lamp. I wasn’t entirely aware just how it was I got there, but suddenly I found myself sitting on the sofa next to Ekman. The reading lamp was just above me, cocked in my direction, shining right in my eyes. I would have liked to move it, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. The light pierced right through my eyes into my head. It was painful, and out of that pain flowed regret. I suddenly regretted everything: that I had come here, that I had made friends with Ekman, that I had learned to play chess. I also regretted that I was alive. The light was blinding me and the sofa was cramped, forcing us to sit right up against each other. Then I began to sweat. A glass was thrust into my hand, and as it seemed to be dissolving before my eyes I had to hurry up and drink it down. When I put it down on the table, with its shiny surface, I noticed that Lind was sitting opposite, looking right at us. He had been looking at us for quite some time.