A Bridge to the Stars

3

There are two things Joel Gustafson wants.
A new stove and a bicycle.
He can't quite make up his mind which of those is the more important. He realises that two things can never be equally important at the same time, but he's unsure when it comes to choosing between the stove and the bicycle.
He knows of nobody apart from himself and his father who cook food on an old iron, wood-burning stove.
Everybody has an electric cooker nowadays. Nobody but him has to chop up kindling, carry in firewood and wait for ever and a day until the so-called hotplates have heated up sufficiently to boil the water for the potatoes.
It is a real pain, having to stand by the stove every day after school, making sure the fire doesn't go out. That's the kind of thing people used to have to do. Not now, though, not in the spring of 1956.
One day he plucks up enough courage to ask his father.
The wood had been damp and wouldn't ignite. In addition, he'd burnt himself on the pan when the potatoes were finally ready.
'Don't you think we should get rid of this old stove?' he says.
Samuel looks up from the kitchen bench, where he's lying down and thumbing through a newspaper.
'What's wrong with the stove?' he asks. 'Has it cracked?'
What's wrong with it? Joel asks himself. Everything is wrong with it. The biggest thing wrong with it is that it's not an electric cooker.
'Everybody has an electric cooker,' he says. 'Everybody but us.'
His father peers at him over his reading glasses.
'How many people do you think have a model ship called Celestine?' he asks. 'How many apart from us? Should we get rid of that as well? So that we are like everybody else?'
Joel doesn't like it when his dad answers a question by asking another one. That makes it hard to stick to the point that really matters. But this time he's going to be insistent.
'If I'm going to have to carry on boiling potatoes, I want an electric cooker,' he says.
Then he says something he hadn't intended to say at all.
'If I'm the mother in this household.'
His father turns serious, and looks at him long and hard without responding.
Joel wishes he could read his father's thoughts.
'An electric cooker is quite expensive,' says Samuel in the end. 'But we'll buy one as soon as I've saved up enough money. I promise. If that's how you feel.'
At that moment Joel loves his father. Only somebody who's been a sailor understands immediately what you mean, he thinks. Only somebody who's learnt how to make important decisions while terrible storms are raging on the seven seas understands when it's time to throw out an old wood-burning stove.
At the same time he's a bit sorry he didn't start by mentioning the bicycle. Now it's too late. Now he'll have to wait with that for a few weeks at least. You can't ask for two things at the same time, that's one thing too many.
He works it out in his head.
Today is March 3rd. He won't be able to get a bike for at least a month. But there will still be snow everywhere and it would be impossible to ride it. That's good. That means he wouldn't need to be the last boy in the school with no bicycle. But he ought to have mentioned the electric cooker much earlier. I must remember that in future, he thinks. Never wait too long before asking for something.
But more important than both the cooker and the bike is the dog.
The night Joel asked his dad about the electric cooker, he lies in bed unable to sleep. He can hear the radio that Samuel is listening to through the wall. There's still music playing. If he's still awake when the pips sound before the news, he'll be very tired when he has to get up for school tomorrow morning.
He listens to the cold that is making the walls creak. The rafters are groaning and sighing. Soon the days will grow longer and lighter. The snowdrifts will melt away, just as they always do. The first cowslips will eventually appear, glowing yellow by the side of the road.
Joel decides to go looking for the dog.
If it hasn't yet reached a star, I shall find it, he thinks.
He decides to go looking for the dog during the night. Night after night when his dad has fallen asleep, he'll get up, get dressed and sneak out into the darkness.
Perhaps everything is different at night-time. Perhaps the dog is only visible at night. Just think, there might be Day People and Night People. People who are only visible at night. Children who go to school at night. Parents who chop down trees in the forest or go out shopping. Night People and Night Schools, Night Cars and Night Houses, Night Churches and a Night Sun. Not the moon, but a real sun that is only visible to the people who live during the night.
He can hear that the late news has started on the radio. Samuel has turned up the volume because he no doubt thinks Joel will be asleep now. In fact Joel is wide awake, lying in his bed and waiting for his dad to drop off to sleep before getting up and going out into the night.
This is how an adventure ought to start. An adventure you create for yourself, that you are the only person involved in . . .
The news comes to an end and Joel hears his dad switch off the radio and go out into the kitchen to get washed.
Joel knows exactly what his dad does. First he washes his face, then he brushes his teeth, and then he gargles. When he switches the light off in the kitchen he usually clears his throat.
Joel waits impatiently for everything to go quiet. But before he realises what's happening he falls asleep, and when he wakes up it's morning and his father has already disappeared into the forest.
Joel is tired and annoyed when he forces himself to get out of bed. The cork floor tiles never feel as cold as they do when he hasn't had enough sleep. Moreover his buttonholes are too small and his socks too tight, and he hits his head on the hood over the stove when he tries to warm his hands.
He has often wondered what actually happens when he falls asleep. He's tried imagining a little creature wandering about inside him, snuffing out a series of wax candles, and when it's completely dark, he's asleep. It will be one of those Night People, he thinks.
They want to be left in peace during the night. They want us to sleep.
He doesn't really want to go to school today. He would prefer to creep back into bed and go back to sleep, so that he's properly rested when night comes. He doesn't want to miss out on his newly thought-up adventure yet again.
But he puts on his rubber boots and clears the stairs in four jumps. He's made up his mind that before his twelfth birthday he will get to the bottom in three hops.
When he turns off by the church he starts running so as not to be late. Miss Nederstr?m doesn't like her pupils arriving late. If you do, you have to stand up and explain why. And then there's the risk of Otto marching up to you at break asking why your mother didn't wake you up in time.
He takes a short cut along the white paths through the churchyard, taking a quick look round to see if there are any new graves. As usual he jumps over a black headstone where it says 'The Family Grave of Nils Wiberg, Farmer of this Parish', but it's icy underneath the snow today and he slips and hurts his bottom.
Ghosts exist even though he doesn't believe in them. Perhaps it's Nils Wiberg who doesn't like the idea of Joel jumping over his grave?
He races over the schoolyard and gets to the top of the stairs just in time. The school bell is ringing and he imagines that it is the captain of the barque Celestine summoning his crew to their stations. This very day in 1956 they will set sail from Bristol and head for Biscay with a cargo of live horses and some cloth from a textile mill in Manchester.
Just like his father had told him about. Heading for Biscay with horses and fabrics.
On the way home from school Joel calls in at the bookshop and buys a little notebook for two kronor. He has nineteen kronor stashed away in a tin under his bed. He uses two of those coins to buy a book in which he can write down all the things he is sure are going to happen.
Logbook, he knows that's what it's called. Every ship has a logbook. Every day the skipper notes down what winds are blowing, the location of the vessel and anything unusual that has happened. If a ship gets into difficulties, the logbook always has to be rescued.
'It's the ship's Bible,' his dad told him. 'It tells the history of the vessel.'
While he's waiting for the potatoes to boil, he sits down at the kitchen table with his notebook and a pencil in front of him.
'The Search For The Dog That Headed For A Star', he writes on the cover. He underlines the first letter of every word and inserts a few vowels so that he can pronounce it. THESEFOTHEDOTHFAS.
That's the code for a secret society of course, he thinks. A secret society whose name nobody will be able to guess. He starts writing on the first page.
'The search for the dog that headed for a star began on March 8, 1956. The weather was fine. Clear sky, plus four degrees, colder towards evening.' He reads what he has written and has the feeling that the adventure is now under way. It's already there inside him. When you have an adventure inside you the only thing that matters is what happens next. Just as on a ship like the Celestine.
The figurehead on the bows always looks ahead. Never backwards.
He suddenly has an idea.
He will hide the logbook in the Celestine's display case. If he lifts the model up carefully he can put the book underneath her so that nobody can see it. Of course that's where the logbook ought to be!
The evening passes so unbearably slowly. Joel lies down on his bed and tries to read a book, but he can't concentrate. He fetches a needle and thread and tries to darn a hole in his sock. He can usually do this rather well, but tonight the thread gets tangled and he has to cut it away. He goes into his father's room and sits with him, listening to the radio.
A man with a high-pitched voice is going on about how important it is for cows to have enough space in their stalls.
He glances at Samuel, who is sitting in his worn-out armchair with his eyes closed.
Is he really listening to this? Joel wonders. Surely he's not interested in cows?
Suddenly it seems as if his dad has read Joel's thoughts.
'You forgot to buy milk from Mr Svenson today,' he said. 'Don't forget tomorrow.'
If the adventure and the secret society are not going to be exposed, it's important that he doesn't forget anything. Everything has to be exactly the same as usual.
'I won't forget tomorrow,' he says. 'I'll get some milk tomorrow.'
'It's getting late,' says his dad. 'Time to go to bed.'
Joel creeps into bed and lies waiting.
When the news has finished, Joel can hear his father gargling. He can see through the crack in the door when the light goes out. There are some creaking noises from the bed, then all is quiet. He waits for a bit longer before getting dressed. He knows there is a loose floorboard in the kitchen but even so he treads in the wrong place and makes a creaking noise.
He holds his breath and listens hard in the darkness.
Samuel hasn't heard anything.
Joel carefully opens the front door with his boots and jacket in his hand, and sneaks out into the vestibule. He laces up his boots, buttons up his jacket and pulls his woolly hat down over his ears. He's ready now. The secret society THESEFOTHEDOTHFAS has embarked on its journey out into the unknown . . .
When he emerges into the open it's cold and totally still. The weak streetlamps cast a yellow glow over the piled-up snow. He cautiously makes his way out through the gate and looks round. He can hear a car in the distance. He stands absolutely still until the engine noise has died away.
Then he starts walking through the deserted little town. For no special reason he finds himself taking the route he usually follows when going to school. But everything is different at night.
He has the feeling that the black houses, the shuttered windows, are looking at him, not the other way round. And his boots are making a very loud crunching noise in the cold snow. He stops outside the Grand Hotel and watches a cat climbing over the fence to Franzen's garage. But there is no sign of any people. Not until he's passing Hultman's shoe shop does he hear some people laughing from behind a lit-up window on the second floor.
It feels comforting to know that he's not entirely on his own.
He allows the laughing people to become members of his secret society.
They'll never know anything about it, but they can't stop me letting them join it.
He walks back through the town, down towards the river and the railway bridge with its enormous iron arches. He walks along one of the rails until he's in the middle of the bridge. He leans over the parapet and looks down at the ice below. Then he looks up at the sky. There are no clouds and he can see the stars glimmering like candles up above him.
If I were to climb up one of the arches, I'd get closer to them, he thinks.
He decides to introduce a hero's rule. Nobody can be a full member of the secret society, not even he, until they've climbed over one of the arches.
He's starting to feel cold and tired. He hasn't even thought about looking for the dog. But he has plenty of nights ahead of him. Besides, it will soon be spring, and the nights will get warmer and lighter.
He finds a stone by the railway track and throws it over the parapet and onto the ice down below. Then he goes home.
This first night he's only done a bit of reconnoitring. Tomorrow night is when he'll start looking for the dog, start out on the great adventure.
He tiptoes up the stairs, unlaces his boots and carefully opens the flat door. If Samuel has woken up, Joel has no idea how he's going to explain away his nocturnal wandering.
He listens outside the door, but all is quiet. Dad's asleep.
He quickly gets undressed, creeps into bed and curls up in order to get warm. He thinks about what to write in the logbook tomorrow. 'The first night Joel Gustafson completed his reconnaissance mission to everyone's complete satisfaction. The adventure has begun. The dog has not yet been tracked down.'
Then he falls asleep and when he wakes up next morning he doesn't feel tired at all. Hurrying to school and thinking about how he'd gone the same way in the middle of the night is really a big deal.
Tonight, he thinks. Tonight I shall find the dog that's heading for a star . . .
*
The next night when Joel sets off on his adventure, everything starts to go wrong. In the dark kitchen he trips up over his own boots and knocks a saucepan off the stove as he falls. He thinks it sounds as if the ceiling had come crashing down when the saucepan hits the floor. He rushes back into his room and jumps into bed with all his clothes still on and pulls the cover up to his chin.
That must have woken his father up, he thinks. Nobody could have slept through that row. Least of all a sailor. But not a sound comes from his dad's room. He's still asleep. He hasn't heard a thing. Joel gets up once more.
Back in the kitchen he gropes around for the saucepan. It's ended up in a corner, between the sofa and the firewood bin. Joel places it carefully on the table, then goes out into the hall carrying his boots and jacket.
When he's outside in the street, listening to the silence, it occurs to him that there's something badly wrong with the secret society he's founded.
The word society means that there's more than one person involved. Joel on his own can't be a society.
But who can he ask to join? Who could he possibly share his secret with?
Joel has a lot of friends, but none of them is sufficiently close for him to share his secret with him.
If only I had a brother, he thinks. If Mum was determined to run away, the least she could have done would have been to leave me a brother.
He suddenly felt sad.
'Why should I go running around on my own in the middle of the night, looking for a dog that might not exist?' he asks himself aloud.
Just as he says that it starts snowing. A few snowflakes dance around under the streetlight. Then there are more and more, and he thinks crossly that spring is going to be delayed this year as well. The only good thing about it starting to snow is that he might be able to get a bicycle before everybody else has started cycling around.
He decides to take a look at the new bikes on display in the cycle shop window, before starting to look for the dog. There's a particular one he wants to see. It has a red frame and there's a logo with a flying horse just above the pump holder.
He hears a car coming and sees its headlights in the distance. He stands in the shadow cast by the tall gatepost next to the chemist's. When the vehicle passes he sees that it is in fact the rusty old lorry belonging to The Old Bricklayer.
He has an odd name, Joel remembers that. Simon Windstorm. But he's never referred to as anything but The Old Bricklayer. Everybody is a bit scared of him. He was once locked up in a home for madmen. Joel knows he was in there for nearly ten years. Nobody thought he would ever get out, but one day he jumped off the train at the local station and explained that he'd been released because he was fit again.
But why is he driving his lorry around in the middle of the night?
Joel presses on and thinks he must make a note of The Old Bricklayer in his logbook. It's something special that has to be recorded.
Anton Wiberg's bicycle shop is on the corner of Norra V?gen and Kyrkogatan. Joel pauses in the shadows before approaching the display window. There are a lot of streetlamps and illuminated shop windows just there. If he stands in front of the window anybody could see him. He checks the blocks of flats on all sides, but it's dark in all those windows.
He runs quickly over the street, jumps over the heaped-up snow left in the gutter by the snow plough, and there's the red bike. The Flying Horse.
There are a lot of bicycles in the window, but it's only the red one that interests Joel. That's the one he wants to be riding this spring.
He's been into the shop several times and asked about the price, and he knows it is only slightly more expensive than the rest of the bikes. The hard part won't be persuading his father to buy him that particular one, but getting a bicycle at all. It takes his father a long time to make up his mind about things, but once he's decided, fifty kronor is neither here nor there.
But there is another danger as well.
Anton Wiberg has only one red bicycle. There are several of all the other models. He must make sure nobody gets there before him and buys the red bike.
Joel pictures Otto in his mind's eye, coming towards him on the red bike. It's a horrible thought he would rather not entertain.
The trouble is that Samuel always takes such a long time to make up his mind. When there is only one red bicycle, he has to get a move on.
Joel takes one last look at the bike, then goes round to the back of the building for a pee.
A single bulb in a broken shade is shining over the back door. Joel pees into the snow and tries to write his name. It's not hard to write Joel, but he never has enough for more than half the surname. He kicks some snow over the yellow letters and refastens his fly. Without really knowing why, he walks up to the back door and tries it. Perhaps he's afraid that somebody might try to steal The Flying Horse.
To his astonishment he discovers that the door is unlocked. He can see right into the shop. See the bikes in the illuminated display window. The counter and the cash register.
His heart is pounding as Joel does what he really doesn't dare to do.
He closes the door behind him, tiptoes past the counter and goes to the bike that one day will be his.
There's a nice smell of oil and rubber. The saddle is wrapped up in paper. To keep it clean.
I'm not going to think at all, he tells himself. I'm simply going to do what I want to do but don't really dare.
He slowly removes the bicycle from its place in the window display and wheels it towards the back door. He cautiously opens the door and peers out. It's almost stopped snowing. He carries the bike down the steps, switches on the dynamo on the front wheel, then pedals off. He turns into Norra V?gen, where the sanded road surface hasn't yet been covered in newly-fallen snow. And he keeps on going.
When he gets to the Hedev?gen crossroads he stops and listens for traffic, but all is quiet and he sets off again. It's hard not to think. Not to be scared stiff of what he's doing.
I've become a Petty Thief, he thinks as he climbs the hill leading to the railway station. A Petty Thief who can't keep his hands off what isn't his.
He tries to calm himself down with the thought that he had no intention of stealing the bicycle, merely of trying it out.
Maybe he ought to write a note to Anton Wiberg and pin it to the door? Saying that The Secret Society's night patrol has discovered a back door unlocked and been keeping a lookout for Petty Thieves all night long . . .
He climbs up the hill to the railway station and is concentrating so hard on not falling over and damaging the bike that he forgets to listen out for cars.
Suddenly, out of nowhere, two headlights are coming straight at him. He gives a start and swerves towards the side of the road.
Now I'm done for, he thinks in desperation. I've nowhere to hide.
The front wheel skids into the snow piled up in the gutter and before he knows where he is, he falls over and the bike lands on top of him in the snow. He can hear the car pulling up behind him, a door opening, then winter boots squelching in the snow.
It's Dad, he thinks. I didn't mean it. I wasn't going to steal it, I was just going to . . .
'Are you all right?' he hears a voice saying.
When he looks up he sees The Old Bricklayer standing over him, his woolly hat pulled down over his ears.
'Have you hurt yourself?' he asks. 'What on earth are you doing at this time of night, cycling around town?'
Joel feels a strong arm pulling him up out of the snowdrift.
Simon Windstorm is mad, he thinks. He's going to kill me.
'You seem to be OK,' says Windstorm. 'Go back home to bed now! I won't insist on knowing what you're doing out here at this time. That's none of my business. Me, I drive around at night in my lorry because I can't get to sleep. Off you go now!'
The Old Bricklayer mutters something to himself then goes back to his lorry and drives away. Joel wheels the bike back to the shop as quickly as he can. He carries it up the steps, opens the back door and puts it back in the display window. He tries to wipe it clean with his woolly hat, but the frame is scratched in one place and he can't do anything about that. He expects Anton Wiberg to appear beside him at any moment.
I'm out of my mind, he thinks and can feel himself starting to cry with fear. He rubs and rubs. The bike will never be clean and dry again.
Just at that very moment he looks out of the window, into the deserted street.
There comes the dog!
The solitary dog heading for a star.
Joel knows right away that it's the very same dog. There's no other dog like it, even if it seems to be just an ordinary Norwegian elkhound.
Suddenly it stops and looks round.
Just for a moment Joel thinks it's looking straight at him, through the shop window.
Then it sets off running again.
Joel rushes out through the back door, trips up on the steps and falls headfirst.
When he gets to the street the dog has disappeared. The street is deserted. He goes to the streetlight, but there's no sign of any pawprints. No sign of any dog.
Joel sets off running through the night, and it's started snowing again.
Back in bed he thinks about the dog he's seen. The dog really was there, he'd seen it. Perhaps a dog heading for a star doesn't leave any tracks behind it.
His fear gradually fades away. The Old Bricklayer can't know that the bike Joel had ridden into the snow had been pinched. And nobody will be able to find his name peed into the snow. By the time he wakes up the yellow marks will have been covered over. I'll get away with it, he thinks.
But the dog does exist. And the adventure, the great adventure has begun . . .