A Bridge to the Stars

4

A few days later Joel fell asleep at his desk in school.
He had no idea how it came about. All of a sudden he was just sitting there with his mouth open, fast asleep.
It was an RE class, and Miss Nederstr?m was red in the face with anger when she shook him by the shoulder to wake him up.
She had a patch of eczema on her forehead, just under her hair line. When her face turned red and the spots became white, everybody knew that she was furious.
'Joel,' she bellowed. 'Joel Gustafson! How dare you sleep through my lesson!'
He woke up with a start. He'd been dreaming something that vanished the moment he woke up. Something about his father. In the dream Joel had been in a vast forest, looking for him, but that was all he could remember.
When he woke up he couldn't believe that he'd been asleep. Asleep at his desk?
'No,' he said. 'I wasn't asleep.'
'Don't sit there telling me barefaced lies. You were asleep. The whole class could see that.'
Joel looked round. He was surrounded by embarrassed faces, grinning faces, curious faces.
Faces that told him Miss Nederstr?m was telling the truth. He had fallen asleep.
He was ordered to leave the room, and Miss Nederstr?m said she would be phoning his father.
Joel didn't respond.
She could find out for herself that they didn't have a telephone.
He sat on the floor in the empty corridor, eyeing all the shoes lined up against the wall. He thought he might get his own back on all those grinning faces by mixing the shoes up. Or throwing them out into the yard. But he decided not to.
Instead he took The Secret Society logbook out of his pocket. He'd forgotten to put it in Celestine's glass case that morning.
He searched through the jackets hanging in the corridor until he found a pen, then started writing.
'The lookout on the mizzen mast, Joel Gustafson, was so exhausted that he fell out of his crow's nest, but survived without serious injury. After resting for merely a couple of hours, he was ready to climb up the mast once more.'
What he writes is almost word-for-word something he'd read in a book his dad keeps in his little bookcase, and often thumbs through. That's the kind of thing you put in a secret logbook, Joel thinks.
Only somebody with inside information can know that it's really about him being thrown out of the classroom.
It's not good, being sent out like that. Better than wearing glasses or stuttering, but not good whichever way you look at it.
Joel can put up with his classmates grinning at him. So long as you don't start blushing or crying when you're sent out of the room, you are an important person.
What is not so good is that Miss Nederstr?m might come and visit them once she discovers that the Gustafsons don't have a telephone. If that happens, Joel might have a lot of awkward questions to answer. His father might start to suspect that Joel goes out at night. He tries to think of a good way of solving the problem, but he can't. There are only bad solutions. Like staying behind after school and knocking on the staffroom door and asking to speak to Miss Nederstr?m, and then apologising and explaining that he'd been awake all night with toothache. It's a bad solution because it's a cowardly way out.
Joel keeps on thinking.
Maybe he ought to take the cowardly way out after all. The main thing is that his father shouldn't start getting suspicious.
When the bell rings and the lesson is over, Joel decides to take the cowardly way out. He is responsible for the secret society, and he doesn't want to run the risk of not being able to find that solitary dog.
When he knocks on the staffroom door after school, Miss Nederstr?m believes every word he tells her. Instead of saying he had toothache, he says he had stomach ache. If you have toothache there is a risk that you might end up having to go to the dentist.
'It's good that you have come to explain,' she says. 'Now we can forget all about it. But you do understand that I was very cross when I noticed that you were asleep, don't you?'
'Yes, Miss,' says Joel.
Slush is sloshing all round his boots as he walks home.
One day it snows, the next day it thaws.
Joel hopes that spring will soon be here, but he knows it could just as easily turn very wintry again. The first year he started school, it snowed on the last day of term at the beginning of June. He remembered having holes in his shoes and snow melted inside them, and he burst out sneezing when Miss Nederstr?m asked him a question.
Joel is not sure whether or not he dares to walk past the cycle shop. Maybe it will be obvious from looking at him that he'd been out that night with The Flying Horse? Or perhaps he might faint as he walks past?
He's scared of fainting, even though he's never done it. But he often imagines collapsing in a heap when he's said something that isn't true, or done something he ought not to do.
What frightens him most of all, though, is that he might give himself away. That he might stop outside the shop and shout that he was the one who borrowed the red bike one night when he discovered that the back door was unlocked. There's nothing that scares Joel more that him being unable to stop himself doing something. Not being responsible for his own actions.
He stops outside Leander Nilson's bakery and looks at the window. It's not the cakes he's examining, but his own reflection. In amongst all the buns and cakes is a mirror, and he can see his face in it.
Not that there's all that much to see. He has his woolly hat pulled well down over his forehead, and his scarf above his chin. But although he can only see his eyes, his nose and his mouth, he feels he can see his whole face even so.
He's not pleased with what he sees.
What is worst is that he thinks he looks like a girl.
He can't make up his mind why. Besides, nobody has ever told him he looks like a girl. He's the only one who thinks he has a face like a girl's.
The only bit he thinks is good is his nose. It's not too big and not too small. It's straight, doesn't have any lumps and it's not turned up. There's no chance of it snowing into Joel Gustafson's nose.
He'd prefer to exchange the rest of his face. Green eyes are nothing worth having. His mouth is too thin and his left ear juts out. His hair is black but it ought to have been fair, or at least brown.
He also has a crown over his forehead which makes his hair stand up like a fan after it's been cut. His father cuts his hair, and he always clips it too short.
You ought to be able to choose for yourself what you look like, he thinks. Go through some photographs and say: 'That's how I want to be!'
What annoys him most of all is that he doesn't look like his dad at all. That must mean that he takes after Jenny, his mother.
It's not good, looking like somebody you've never met, because that means you can't work out what you're going to look like when you grow up. He pulls his hat still further down over his forehead, so that he can only see with one eye.
If we lived by the sea I'd be able to go down to the shore and look out for ships, he thinks.
A year ago, when he was ten, it was never difficult to go down to the river and pretend it was the sea. Now that he's eleven, that's only occasionally possible. It gets more and more difficult to imagine things.
He pulls his hat down over the other eye as well. Now he can only see out through the gaps between the threads. He's caught his face like a fish in a net.
He decides to go down to the riverbank and see if the snow has melted around his rock. He pulls his hat back up and breaks into a run.
He tries to think about why it's getting more and more difficult to imagine that the river is really the sea, but it's not easy to think when you're running.
He takes a short cut through Bodin's timber yard, and hears all the squeaking and whistling from the saws. Then he slides along the ice that always forms in the spring on the hill down towards the bakery. Once he's passed the bakery there's only the long slope down to the riverbank left. The snow is deep there, and he has to trudge through it. Once he's come that far, he suddenly finds it easier to use his imagination. It's not so difficult once all the buildings and people have been left behind.
The snow he is trudging through is a desert. Vultures are circling over his head, waiting for him to collapse with exhaustion and be unable to get up again. He's all alone in the desert, and in the far distance is his rock. If only he can struggle as far as that, he'll be able to survive . . .
Suddenly, he stops dead.
There's a boy he's never seen before sitting on his rock.
He's completely motionless, and he's looking through a telescope.
Joel crouches down in the snow.
This is the first time anybody has ever encroached on Joel's rock.
Who is he?
Joel is quite sure he's never set eyes on him before. He's a stranger, unknown.
Why is he sitting here by the river? What is he looking at through the telescope? Where has he come from?
Joel cowers down in the snow like a scared rabbit, not taking his eyes off the unknown boy for a moment.
There is a clattering noise from up on the bridge. The gates close and a goods train comes chugging along through the trees. The smoke from the engine's chimney puffs up into the sky, as if it's the trees that are breathing. The unknown boy aims his telescope at the train.
Joel can see that he's about his own age. Possibly slightly older. Instead of a woolly hat he's wearing a peaked cap with ear flaps.
But what has he got on his feet? They look like tennis rackets. Snowshoes!
The stranger is wearing snowshoes!
Joel has never seen any snowshoes before, only read about them in one of his father's books.
He presses himself down deeper into the snow, even though he's starting to feel cold.
Who is that boy sitting on his rock?
At that very moment the stranger turns round and looks straight at Joel.
'What are you lying there for?' he asks? 'Did you think I hadn't seen you?'
Joel couldn't think of anything sensible to say. He'd thought he was invisible, lying there in the snow. The boy on his rock has been looking through his telescope all the time, after all. How could he possibly have seen Joel?
The unknown boy jumps down from the rock and starts walking towards Joel on his snowshoes. Joel notes that what he has read in his father's books is true: when you are wearing snowshoes, your feet don't sink into the snow.
The boy stops in front of Joel.
'Are you thinking of staying there for good?' he says.
Joel still couldn't think of anything to say. Besides, the unknown boy is speaking with a peculiar accent. And he's smirking. Smirking non-stop.
'Who are you?' Joel asks eventually, standing up.
Although they are the same height, Joel looks like a dwarf, up to his knees in snow.
'I moved here today,' says the boy. 'I didn't want to, but I was forced to.'
Joel brushes himself down as he thinks.
'Where do you come from?' he asks.
'That doesn't matter,' the boy answers. 'I shan't be staying here anyway.'
Joel notices that the boy with the snowshoes is red-eyed, as if he'd been crying.
Joel suddenly loses control over himself. He says something he hadn't intended to say at all.
When he hears the words spurting out of his mouth, he regrets them right away: but it's too late by then.
'Those of us who live here don't sit down by the river and start blubbering,' he says.
The unknown boy looks at him in surprise. Joel wonders if he might be about to get beaten up. The boy in the snowshoes looks strong.
'I haven't been sitting here crying,' says the boy. 'I rubbed my face with my glove. I forgot that I am allergic to wool. That's why my eyes are red.'
Joel thinks he understands. There is a girl in his class who starts sneezing whenever anybody smelling of dog comes into the room. It must be the same thing.
'My name's Ture,' says the boy with the snowshoes.
Then he walks off, as if he's not the slightest bit interested in knowing that Joel is called Joel.
Joel watches him go, walking straggle-legged over the snow.
Whoever he is, he can keep away from my rock, he thinks. If he comes back here again I shall have to think up some way of scaring him off.
He trudges up the slope, stepping in his old footprints.
Snowshoes and a telescope, he thinks. Who is he?

The next day Joel looks round to see if there is anybody new in the school, but he can only see the familiar faces in the playground. As soon as lessons have finished Joel hurries down to the river again.
As soon as he passes the bakery he can see somebody sitting on the rock in the distance.
Once again he trudges down the slope, cursing inwardly because he doesn't have any snowshoes.
'I thought it was you,' said the unknown boy as Joel comes wading up through the snow.
'That's my rock,' says Joel, and he can feel his voice shaking with anger. 'Nobody else is allowed to sit on it, only me.'
'Do you have a title deed?' asks the unknown boy, with a grin.
Title deed? What's that? wonders Joel.
'If you own a rock you have to have a title deed,' says the boy. 'A certificate of ownership, with an official stamp. You have to have that.'
'It's my rock,' says Joel angrily.
His voice isn't shaking any more. He's just angry now.
The boy suddenly jumps down from the rock and Joel feels sure there's going to be a fight. If the rock is his, he will have to defend it. But instead the boy undoes the straps fastening the snowshoes to his boots.
'Would you like to try them?' he says.
Joel looks at him. Is he being serious?
'That rock is mine,' he says again.
'I've no intention of taking it off you,' says the boy. 'Are you going to try the snowshoes or aren't you?'
Joel fastens the straps round his boots.
It's a remarkable feeling, being able to walk on the snow. It makes him twice as tall. If I have a pair of snowshoes on, I'm as big as a grown-up, he thinks.
'They were very good,' he says as he returns them. 'They really were very good.'
'What else are you called, besides Joel?' the unknown boy suddenly asks.
How on earth does the stranger know that he's called Joel?
'Gustafson,' he replies. 'But how do you know my name's Joel?'
'It's carved into the rock,' says the boy. 'It must be you if you say the rock belongs to you.'
Joel had forgotten that. Scratching his name into the rock last autumn, with a rusty old nail.
'What about you?' he asks. 'Apart from Ture?'
'Swallow. But I'm a nobleman and so I'm called von Swallow. Ture von Swallow.'
'Eh?' says Joel. 'Surely nobody can have a name like that? And why don't you go to school? Why have you moved here? Where the hell do you live?'
'My dad's the new district judge,' says Ture. 'We live over the courthouse. I don't need to go to school because it's in the middle of term. Dad fixed that. I'm working at home. But I start school in the autumn. Or so they think. I'll have run away by then. It's not possible to live here. So I shall run away.'
He takes off one of his gloves and checks his watch.
'In one week, three days, seven hours and nine minutes from now I shall run away,' he says. 'Just in case you're interested.'
Joel gapes at him.
Not that he has his mouth wide open. It's an invisible mouth inside him that's gaping.
He's never heard a lie like that before. First the boy with the snowshoes claims that he's a nobleman and is called Swallow. Then he says he's going to run away and gives the exact time. Joel would never be able to think up a lie like that. The boy with the snowshoes must be somebody pretty special.
'Why?' he asks. 'Why are you going to run away just then?'
'Because there's a train leaving for Orsa at that time,' says the boy with the snowshoes. 'Because Dad will be busy with the sessions then. Nobody will notice me carrying out my suitcase. There's a lot of stuff I need to take with me. That's why it's important that nobody sees me. I could really do with somebody to help me carry it. Maybe you could do that?'
'Of course I could,' says Joel. 'I've thought about running away as well.'
What a lie, Joel thinks. He lies so convincingly that it almost seems true.
'Show me something exciting,' says the boy. 'If there is anything exciting to show round here.'
Joel trudges after Ture, who is taking big strides on top of the snow.
Perhaps he'll give me his snowshoes if I help him to run away, Joel thinks.
That's not true, of course. But still . . .
They get as far as the bakery, and it's starting to get dark already.
Out of the blue, Joel knows what he is going to do.
'There is a secret,' he says. 'But it's at night. Only at night. Maybe you'll be asleep then?'
'I'll be there,' says Ture.
Joel thinks.
Opposite the courthouse are the marshalling yards. There are always goods wagons waiting to be connected to some train or other the next day.
'I'll be waiting for you next to the goods wagons,' he says. 'At midnight. But I shan't wait long.'
'What happens at night?' asks Ture.
'It's not sure that anything will happen at all,' says Joel. 'But there's a secret society.'
'I'll be there,' says Ture. 'My room is in the attic, but I can set up a ladder.'
Joel is in a hurry now. The potatoes ought to have been boiling on the stove already. Samuel will soon be home. And he has to prepare for tonight as well. Being the only member of a Secret Society is one thing. Not being alone any more will be something completely different.
'See you, then,' he says. 'I have to go home now.'
'Where do you live?' asks Ture.
'You'll find out tonight,' says Joel.
It's only when he's bounding up the stairs that he remembers he was supposed to collect a kilo of coffee from the shop.
He unlocks the door and before he's even taken off his boots he checks to see how much coffee is left in the tin on the shelf over the stove. Enough for one more day, so he can breathe again. His dad would have gone through the roof if they'd run out of coffee.
He can go and get the coffee himself, Joel thinks, as he sits down on the cold floor in the dark entrance hall. I haven't got time. Being responsible for a Secret Society means that you only seldom have time to boil potatoes.
Joel curses the kindling in the stove that refuses to light. He runs through all the swearwords he knows, forwards and backwards, but still he can't make the wood catch fire. He starts running through his range of swearwords once again, at top volume; but he calms down when old Mrs Westman starts bashing on her ceiling with her walking stick.
At last it starts burning. Joel gives the potatoes a quick scrub, and pours some water and a pinch of salt into the big pan. Four big potatoes for Dad, three little ones for himself.
Then he goes to the showcase and carefully lifts up Celestine and takes out his logbook. Samuel might turn up at any moment, so he doesn't have much time before the heavy footsteps start echoing up the stairs.
He's caught on to the fact that it's easier to think when he writes. And there's an awful lot of things he needs to make up his mind about.
Just what should he tell Ture?
The Secret Society hasn't exactly done very much. Can he really admit that he's the only member? He thinks about what Ture has said, about what's going to happen in a week's time.
Joel has never seriously thought about running away. You have to know where you're going to when you run away. You have to have a plan, some special aim in mind.
If he knew the whereabouts of his mum, Jenny, he could have set out to discover what she looked like.
If he'd had a telescope like Ture, he could have hidden behind a bush and spied on her. No doubt she is so like him that it would be like examining yourself in a mirror.
Children do not take after their parents, he decides, as he puts another piece of firewood into the stove. It's the parents who take after their children.
The only times he's thought of running away have been when he's been angry with his father. That time when he was given a stool instead of a kite, he thought about wandering off into the forest and lying down in the snow to die. His dad would find him the next morning when he set out into the forest to work.
He listens for footsteps on the stairs, then sits down at the kitchen table again. I'll have to use my imagination, he thinks. I'll have to make up whatever doesn't exist for real.
If Ture is going to run away next week, he'll never find out that what Joel tells him isn't true.
He writes down the names of his classmates that he likes: they can become members of The Secret Society. The ones he doesn't like, such as Otto, will be excluded. They have committed serious acts of treachery and been forced out of the society.
He also writes down the name on the grave he generally jumps over in the cemetery. Nils Wiberg is a member of the society who died in mysterious circumstances. Then he remembers Rev. Sundin, the old dean, who died last year, the day after the end of term. He can also be a member who died in unusual circumstances. And the judge who died on the steps outside Stora Hotellet! What was his name? T?rnqvist? He can also be a dead member.
He suddenly recalls what Ture had said. About living over the courthouse, and his dad being a district judge. That means he must be the replacement for T?rnqvist, he decides. Now I have something I can show Ture. The icy step he slipped on and broke his neck.
That was as far as he got, as the front door banged and he could hear footsteps approaching up the stairs.
He listens to the stamping of his father's feet. What do they sound like today?
It's quite loud, but he doesn't sound angry or weary. They're not bottle-steps today, more like storytelling-steps. Real seafarer's strides.
Even so, there's something not quite right about them. There seems to be a sort of echo.
Joel hurriedly replaces the logbook under Celestine and sticks a fork into the biggest of the potatoes.
The flat door opens and Joel understands why the footsteps sounded so odd.
His father is not alone.
Behind him is a woman in a red hat, black overcoat and rubber overshoes. Joel recognises her immediately. It's Sara, who works as a waitress in the local bar. Big-breasted Sara, who wanders around balancing trays and beer bottles and is always laughing so that you can see the big gap in her bottom teeth.
That slut! What's she doing here?
Joel has occasionally been in the bar to sell copies of the local weekly paper. He's watched Sara weaving her way among the tables carrying bottles and a rag. If anybody gets drunk or tries to grope her breasts, she shouts for the ill-tempered bouncer Ek, who's always fluttering around like a bat outside the Gents. Between them they eject the drunkard or the groper. Joel has seen such goings-on as he's moved from table to table, trying to sell newspapers.
He doesn't know what her surname is. But he doesn't like her. Her breasts are too big and she smells of perfume, beer and sweat. There have actually been occasions when he's thought it's a good job she isn't his mother.
But here she is now, standing in the hall and laughing just as loud as she does in the bar.
Why is she here? Joel asks himself uneasily. Why is she hanging up her overcoat and taking off her overshoes? And why is she still wearing that red hat?
They come into the kitchen and Joel notices straight away that his father smells of beer. Beer and sweat and wet wool.
But he's not drunk. He isn't swaying and his eyes are not red. But his hair is standing on end, and Joel doesn't like it when his father looks like that.
That slut Sara is still wearing her waitress outfit, he sees. White blouse with a beer stain in the middle of one of her enormous breasts. Black skirt with a little hole in one of the seams.
Joel is getting more and more worried.
This is the first time his father has ever brought somebody back home after a day working in the forest.
Joel has always thought that his dad's friends are sailors plying the various oceans. Friends who are waiting for him to drop that axe, pack his sailor's chest standing in the hall, and set out once more for the endless seas.
How could he bring this slut back home with him?
'Sara's come back with me for a cup of coffee,' says Samuel, patting Joel on the shoulder.
'There isn't any coffee,' says Joel quick as a flash.
'What do you mean by that?' Samuel asks. He's smiling all the time.
'We've run out,' says Joel. 'I didn't have time to go to the shop. There's enough for you tomorrow morning. But not for her.'
'Never mind,' says Sara with a laugh. She pats his cheek.
That's when Joel decides he is going to kill her. It will be the next mission for The Secret Society, once they've found the dog that headed for a star.
'So you are Joel, then,' she says. 'Haven't I seen you in the bar now and then, selling newspapers?'
Joel doesn't answer.
Samuel shakes the coffee tin. Strangely enough he doesn't seem to be angry. He ought to be. Inviting somebody back for coffee only to find that Joel has forgotten to call at the shop as usual.
Can that slut in the red hat really put him in such a good mood?
He suddenly has an awful thought.
Perhaps his father is going to remarry! In which case Joel would risk having brothers and sisters with Sara as their mother . . .
No, that can't be possible. A sailor can't marry a waitress in a bar.
'A lovely place you've got here,' she says, wandering round the kitchen and having a good look.
'It's annoying that we don't have any coffee,' says Samuel, giving Joel a dirty look.
'Oh, it doesn't matter,' she says. Then she pats Joel on the cheek again. Her hand is big and red and rough.
'How did it go at school today?' she asks.
Joel mumbles something inaudible in reply.
'You're a real misery today, aren't you?' says Samuel, sitting down on the sofa.
That's a betrayal. Joel is petrified. Whose side is he on? Is he putting on a show for Sara and her red hat? Is he letting his own son down?
Sara sits down on Joel's chair and straightens out a fold in the tablecloth with her big hand.
'You can invite me to coffee another time, Samuel,' she says.
So she intends coming round again, then? If she does I shall run away, Joel thinks. Samuel can sit here on his own, gaping at her red hat.
'I'm going to my room,' says Joel.
He closes the door, goes down on one knee and peers out at the kitchen through the keyhole.
He's afraid his father is about to disappear. Sara with the red hat has started to eat him up.
When she speaks he nods and smiles and seems extremely interested.
What are they talking about? A new grocer's shop that's due to open shortly. Why is he interested in that? He's never the one who goes shopping!
Plums. Prunes. Good for constipation.
Why is he pretending to be interested in that?
Nearly half an hour later he kneels down again and looks through the keyhole. His knees and back are aching, but he has to keep an eye on his father.
I'll kill her, he thinks. If I don't, she'll take my dad away from me.
In the end she gets to her feet.
Joel can hardly straighten his stiff knees and barely has time to dash over to his bed, lie down and pretend to be reading a book.
Samuel opens the door.
'Sara's leaving now,' he says. 'Come and say goodbye.'
I don't want to, he thinks. But of course, he does go out into the kitchen.
''Bye, 'bye, Joel,' she says as she buttons up her coat. 'The next time you come to the bar, I'll make sure the customers buy all your newspapers.'
Then they're alone, Joel and his dad.
'Did you hear that?' asks Samuel. 'Go there and sell lots of newspapers and earn a bit of pocket money.'
Joel lays the table while his father fries some pork. He clatters away with the pan, humming an old sea shanty.
While they are eating Joel decides to get his own back. He can see that his dad is thinking about Sara all the time. He must get him to think about something else.
'I want a bike,' he says. 'I'm the only one who doesn't have a bike.'
But his father doesn't hear him. Sara with the red hat has started eating up his thoughts.
'A bike,' he says, louder this time.
Samuel turns to look at him.
'I beg your pardon?'
'I want a bike. I don't want to be the only one who doesn't have a bike.'
'Of course you shall have a bicycle,' says his father. 'I've already been thinking about that. The next time I collect my wages we shall go and buy you a bicycle.'
Is that really true? wonders Joel. Has he really thought about it of his own accord?
Suddenly there's so much that Joel doesn't understand.
Is this what it's like to be grown up? Doing and saying things that children don't understand?
'It was fun to have a visitor,' says Samuel. 'Usually it's just you and me, sitting gaping at each other.'
'Are you going to get married again?' asks Joel.
'No,' says his father. 'I haven't got round to thinking about that. But it does get lonely sometimes.'
'Tell me about my mum,' says Joel.
Samuel puts down his fork and gives him a serious look.
'Soon,' he says. 'But not just now. Not when I'm in such a good mood . . . '
When they've finished eating Joel builds a little cabin in his bed. His blanket and the bedcover over two chairs make an excellent hiding place. He creeps inside it and starts thinking.
Far too much has happened at the same time.
First of all the boy with the snowshoes turns up. And they'll be going out together tonight. Then Sara comes visiting. And next his dad says that of course Joel can have a bike.
That's too much.
Thoughts are buzzing around inside his head and Joel has trouble in pinning them down. He knows you have to take one thing at a time, but that's easier said than done just now. What he would most like to do is to go to sleep and dream about The Flying Horse. But he hasn't time for that. He has to make preparations for the night. He has to be absolutely clear about all the things he's going to make up so that Ture doesn't start suspecting anything. But it's not easy to concentrate because Sara keeps intruding on his thoughts in her overshoes and her red hat, and with the big hand she keeps using to pat him on the cheek.
The cabin doesn't help. He just feels impatient.
He goes into his father's room: Samuel is sitting in his chair with his eyes closed, listening to the radio.
Joel does something most unusual. He sits on his father's knee.
'Phew, you're as heavy as a tree trunk,' gasps his dad. 'You're crushing the life out of me.'
On the radio some nasty-sounding voice is bleating on about a journey with a motorbike and sidecar through Italy.
'Genoa,' says Samuel out of the blue. 'I've been there.'
'But I haven't,' says Joel. 'Not yet, at least.'
Samuel chuckles so violently that his stomach bounces up and down. But he doesn't explain why he's laughing.
The sidecar trip comes to an end and is followed by some marching music. Samuel beats time with one foot. But soon he hasn't the strength to keep Joel on his knee any longer.
'You're too heavy,' he says. 'I don't understand how you can be so thin and yet weigh so much.'
Then he turns serious.
'Sara,' he says. 'The lady who was here. She had a boy just like you once. But he died in a fire. Him and his dad. They were living a long way from here at the time. She moved here after that. It must be hard to be reminded of it all every time she sees somebody like you.'
When Joel has gone to bed and his dad has sat with him for a while and tucked him in, he thinks about that fire.
As long as Sara doesn't eat up his dad, she's welcome to come round for coffee some time.
As long as she doesn't take his dad away from him...
He lies in the dark and has trouble in staying awake. Several hours to go yet before midnight, a lot of waiting to do.
He would really have preferred it to be another evening. It's never good to have too much to think about at the same time. Even so, he eventually hears his dad gargling in the kitchen, and then everything goes quiet.
He lies in bed watching the luminous hands on his alarm clock. They are moving incredibly slowly towards midnight. At a quarter to twelve he tiptoes out through the door. He thinks the hall still smells of Sara.
It's a calm, starry night. Maybe Ture won't turn up, he thinks. Even so, he hurries along the deserted streets and stands in the shadow of a goods wagon in the marshalling yard.
The white courthouse with its columned balcony is in darkness. There's no sign of any light at all.
Joel waits . . .