Wonderful Feels Like This Read online

  Alvar’s eyes are closed. Maybe he fell asleep. But then he makes a humming sound that whistles through his nose and he opens his eyes. “Well, that was news.”

  “What?”

  “Well, I thought he must have … obviously he would have … and why would anyone have told me, anyway?”

  “You didn’t know he’d died?”

  Alvar sucks on his lip and shakes his head quickly. “It would be strange if he hadn’t. Anita would say about him: that man will live himself to death.”

  Steffi studies his face as he talks about Erling. It is a sad, almost sorrowful face.

  “Do you miss him?”

  “Erling … Erling might have been able to help me when I was suddenly homeless. He would have shared his one-room apartment.”

  He’s jumped the gun on his story. Homeless?

  “Weren’t you living at Aunt Hilda’s apartment?”

  He shudders. “Didn’t I tell you? Aunt Hilda was all in a rage when she found out … she read it in the newspaper … didn’t I tell you? I thought I told you.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “She read in the paper that I was playing jazz music at the dance halls. She told me she’d never allow any Negroes or hooligans in her house. But I told you that, didn’t I?”

  She wants to pretend that he has. His blue eyes seem to be wandering back and forth from images in the forties to today.

  “Seriously? She threw you out because you played jazz music?”

  “I should have gone to Erling. But that’s not the way I saw it back then. Erling was furious about the success I was having and Ingmar wanted my head on a platter.”

  “And Anita?”

  “Anita was just sad.”

  * * *

  Alvar could see that Anita was sad. Even though she tried to hide it, he could tell.

  “Oh, Alvar,” she said. Her eyes went from him to the entrance.

  He’d been standing outside the door of Nalen like the worst dime-store detective. When he saw Erling and Ingmar go off to the restaurant, he sneaked inside. They could return at any moment.

  Anita, I know this might sound hasty, but would you marry me?

  The question was on the tip of his tongue, and when it reached his lips, he realized he couldn’t ask it. A homeless jazz musician asking this of a girl who lived in a house with crystal chandeliers. She still was Ingmar’s girl, and who was he? A lost boy from Värmland, even though his hair, for the moment, was still covered in Brylcreem. He couldn’t even ask her if she knew of anyone with a room to rent. It was 1946. Nobody had an extra room.

  “I’m going home,” he said instead. “I’m going home to Björke. Thanks so much for…”

  His voice became thick. He could feel her eyes on him as he turned around and left. Perhaps she called his name, filtered through the sounds of “Shake the Blues Away.” Seymour’s orchestra was playing. As Alvar made his way through the crowd, on both sides, girls were dancing. He’s joked with these girls, kissed some of them, and there were guys he’d loaned his bike to and listened to records with and they were part of the frame of his life here. Once upon a time, he was a jazz musician in Stockholm. They were still dancing, but he was leaving that scene.

  * * *

  “A boat with bananas.”

  Steffi stares at him as if he’s lost his mind.

  “See whether you can find it,” he says, waving his hand at the record shelf. “It’s by Harry Brandelius.”

  He smiles as she puts the needle onto the record. It’s hard to hear what Harry Brandelius is singing, but Alvar is singing along: “A boat with bananas arrived at last, we can eat them again like we did in the past.”

  It’s not jazz. It’s not even in four-four time.

  “What kind of a song is this?”

  “Listen!”

  “It’s a waltz, right?”

  “Girl, listen! We stood in line not for meat but for fish! Now we eat meat and it’s delish!”

  She does what he says and listens. When he’s done singing, she has an analysis. “It’s a postwar song, isn’t it? About how you don’t have to ration food anymore.”

  “Yes, and that song always comes into my head when I think about my trip home to Björke. It was constantly on the radio that year.”

  “So you went home?”

  “Yes, that’s what I just said.”

  “But I thought…”

  She’d thought his farewell to Anita was part of a longer story. He’d tell her how everything worked out in the end.

  Alvar nods. “Perhaps that’s why this song stuck in my skull. My adventure in jazz was over. It was time to go back to the waltz, the schottische, and the hambo.”

  Something in his voice reminds her of the feeling she’d had when she’d found they’d sawed her bass into pieces. She always had to remember her new bass right away to shake off that feeling. Did Alvar finally make it big, get into the papers, and then head home to Björke to listen to the hambo?

  “After all those years in Stockholm you just up and left?”

  “Almost four years.”

  * * *

  It had been almost four years since Alvar had been sitting on the same kind of bench on the same kind of train. Then he’d been mesmerized by a jazz clarinetist who had a clarinet at home and one for traveling. A clarinetist who showed no respect for angry ladies and replied with “Doo-be-doo-be-doo” to make a sad girl smile.

  Alvar had the same suitcase he’d used then, but nobody could mistake him for the same Alvar Svensson who’d left Björke four years ago. His hair was stylishly combed, as it should be beneath a stylish fedora. His woolen suit fit him well and kept him warm, although his wallet was painfully low on cash. A few girls, perhaps sisters, glanced up at him from their bench opposite.

  He smiled at them and one of them leaned forward. “Don’t you play at the Winter Palace?”

  At least three other travelers turned their heads toward him, some more discreetly than others.

  “Yes, I’ve played there a few times.”

  “I’ve seen you at Nalen, too,” another sister added with pleasure.

  What was he supposed to say to that? “Yes, I’ve played there, too.”

  They looked at him with expectation. He hoped they didn’t think he was going to leap up and start playing for them right in the middle of the train. He had his upright bass stored in the baggage car.

  He cleared his throat. “How … nice that you recognized me. And that you like to go to Nalen.”

  It seemed to work. The sisters looked happy. Strange how he could still be nervous in front of a few girls. Part of him felt like he was seventeen again. Perhaps it had to do with being on the train. A rumbling train had not seen Alvar since he was little more than a boy.

  The only people who seemed to have something against jazz music were an elderly couple who glanced almost fearfully in Alvar’s direction. They said nothing, however. Mostly the train was filled with young people. They wore winter coats and fancy hats in an attempt to impress the relatives back home with the sweet life in the big city. The fact that they all traveled third class told a different story.

  “What’s in your suitcase?”

  “Just clothes, records. Presents for my relatives.”

  The girl looked disappointed. What did she think? That his bass could fit in a suitcase?

  “For my mother, my father, my brothers, and my grandfather,” he added. And another present that was a secret.

  “What about for your sweetheart? Or do you have one?” The girl smiled flirtatiously. The other one giggled.

  “No,” Alvar said so abruptly that the giggling stopped.

  * * *

  Alvar’s mother screamed with happiness when she caught sight of him. She ran up, touched his cheeks, pulled him close, and then pushed him back as if she couldn’t decide whether to hug him or to look at him. She laughed and turned to his father. “Look what a man he’s become!”

  “Yes,” his father agreed.
“Good to see you, my boy. But what’s that on your head?”

  Alvar laughed and straightened the brim of his fedora.“That’s the hat people wear in Stockholm.”

  “Well, well!” his father said heartily. “And I imagine they’ve never seen a tree, either!”

  Alvar smiled halfheartedly at his father’s joke. You don’t need a hepcat hat working in the forest.

  “Alvar’s here!” Mamma started yelling to people walking by. “Alvar is home from Stockholm! It’s my boy Alvar!”

  We go back to life the way it was

  The way things were just because.

  — CHAPTER 30 —

  Steffi is silent so that Alvar can talk about his parents for a while. But there’s one thing she has to ask him. “Did people really say ‘Negro’ back then?”

  Alvar coughs—no, he’s laughing. “That was the word people used, even in the newspapers, back then. Especially in articles written about jazz music!”

  Steffi is staring at him.

  He clears his throat. “Yes, in those days, everybody said Negro and it wasn’t particularly derogatory. Everyone wanted to play like the Negroes did. You would even see it in the ads: Svensson’s Band with the NEGRO Joe Wilson, Saturday at eight P.M., for example.”

  “But, today, it’s a word you just don’t use.”

  “So I’ve heard. Many times, in fact. And I’m not going to argue about it … not everybody back then admired the Neg … the black musicians the way we did. So I can understand why the word went out of favor. But, remember, I’m an old man.”

  He pats her on the head. Wants to get rid of the conversation’s unpleasant feeling.

  Steffi scratches her head. “Did anyone call anybody names like ‘slut’ and ‘the daughter of a whore’?”

  Alvar sighs. “All too many called people bastards and children of whores. Especially where the living conditions were poor.”

  * * *

  Living conditions were poor in the backwoods. In Björke, there were the people who owned timberland and the people who worked it. There were some people who were neither the one nor the other but still showed up at church cleaned up. And then there were the families living out in the woods. Some of them had never owned anything to speak of, while others drank everything away.

  Sending your child to a family in the back of the woods was a desperate move, Alvar thought, and shivered.

  He didn’t have to search long to find Knut and Elna Storfors. When Alvar was a child, he and his brothers used to run all over the woods. Sometimes they had errands and other times they were up to mischief. But this time was different.

  He took off his hat as he knocked at the door. He knew how the disrespect of leaving it on might provoke them. He bowed when Knut opened the door. Knut’s nose was red from drinking and he was surprised to see Alvar.

  “Hello. Merry Christmas,” Alvar said.

  Knut looked him up and down. “Merry Christmas yourself.”

  Alvar held up the bag of baked goods his mother had sent along as a Christmas gift. “A present from my mother, Kerstin Svensson.”

  Knut appeared even more surprised, but took the bag and let Alvar inside. The hall smelled sour. Either Kurt’s smell had soured the air or vice versa.

  “Who is it?” yelled Mrs. Storfors from the kitchen.

  Alvar could hear the shrieking and yelling of children’s voices on the other side of the house.

  Alvar fumbled with the knot in his tie but peered along his arm into the room. There was a big boy, perhaps eleven. Two girls, around seven, and a toddler.

  One of the girls was glaring at the toddler. “Shut up! You’re nothing but the daughter of a whore!”

  “Bastard child!” yelled the other girl.

  The toddler stared at them, crying.

  “He didn’t do anything to you—just this!” The first girl pinched the toddler’s arm.

  The toddler screamed and the boy grinned.

  Mrs. Storfors came running from the kitchen. Her face was bright red and filled with words she hadn’t time to say before she saw Alvar.

  She stopped and blushed even redder. She wiped off her hands on her apron. “Yes?” she asked as she curtsied while taking Alvar’s hand.

  The children’s screaming was silenced. Four heads were now turned toward Alvar. He forced himself to smile wholeheartedly. “I have a small Christmas present for Eleanor.”

  Both Knut and Elna Storfors stiffened, and he could see the muscles of Elna’s neck tense up.

  “There is nobody by that name in this house,” Knut explained.

  Alvar smiled as best he could, even though he felt his heart was being dragged over gravel.

  “Perhaps I misunderstood the name,” he said. “What’s your name, little girl?” He bent down to the toddler.

  “She’s a whore child!” one of the girls said, grinning, and her mother boxed her ear.

  “We don’t talk like that!” Elna said, and she hit the girl again when she started to say, “But you do—”

  Alvar kept his smile through sheer willpower. He looked the little girl in the eye and she looked right back. He could tell she was already starting to resemble her mother. “I have a present for you from Stockholm, from your—”

  “No, that name is not mentioned here,” Knut said roughly. Alvar felt a hard hand on his shoulder.

  “This nice present is from Alvar Svensson,” Elna explained almost as roughly. “He is much too kind to you bringing a present all the way from Stockholm, but that’s all I’m going to say about it.”

  There was candy in the bag, which the other children immediately took for themselves. There was also a butterfly in silk paper and a little muff, which the other girls grabbed. Only a small rag doll with braids was left.

  The toddler picked it up and looked at its button eyes. Alvar’s chest had filled with anger, but he forced himself to smile.

  “What’s your name?”

  The girl hugged the doll. Soon it would smell as sour as everything else in this cabin, but at the moment, it was something from outside. A Christmas present from a very nice man. She looked at the doll as she answered his question.

  “My name is Svea.”

  — CHAPTER 31 —

  Steffi can’t let go of the thought that the little toddler had been Svea. She can’t wait to go see Alvar again to talk about it. She wants to see Svea and ignore her torrent of insults to look for the innocent four-year-old behind them.

  But right now she’s in school with no one to talk to. She checks the door to the computer room. Elin is teaching, but the door is open. A few seventh graders are chasing a fat, buzzing fly with a newspaper. Elin comes silently up behind them and stops them.

  Steffi finds an empty place at the back of the room so as not to disturb the lesson. She logs into The Place under her own name, but changes her mind. Nobody can see the screen where she’s sitting. She feels the excitement of doing something forbidden as she logs in as Hepcat. In school!

  Karro has written to Hepcat again. She always writes to Hepcat.

  From: Karro N

  To: Hepcat

  I didn’t SAY my eyes were enormous, but thanks. If u don’t give me ur address, I’m going to go to Karlstad and search for u house by house. Hee, hee, no, but seriously, I can’t stand living here. My pretend pappa is disgusting and all my mamma does is gamble on the net. My siblings are idiots and everyone at school is mental. u r the only one I know who’s OK.

  Steffi reads this a few times. This very morning, Karro had spat onto her math book. Thready mucus, along with a note: “You can use this to clean yourself up.”

  Steffi doesn’t owe Karro a thing. Spitting on somebody’s math book should disqualify you from decent human interaction for all time.

  She reads the message again. U r the only one I know who’s OK. She runs her hand through her hair. She rubs her forehead. She wants to escape the feeling that life is complicated.

  From: Hepcat

  To: Karro N
/>   I also want to get away from here. My family is nothing like yours. But the people around here have trouble accepting people for who they are. I’m tired of being spat on. And I know there are people who only care about one thing: making music swing. Their feet on the ground, their hearts filled with blues.

  In what way is he disgusting?

  P.S. Life is complicated.

  As she sends her reply, she notices that Karro is logged in. Steffi looks around the computer room among the seventh graders fighting for the word processing programs and teaching portals.

  Karro is on the other side of the room. She’s staring at the screen with a sullen expression. She clicks, sighs, and suddenly she lights up. Not terribly noticeable, but obvious if you’re watching her closely. Steffi looks at her own screen. Message read. Four minutes later, the reply comes in.

  From: Karro N

  To: Hepcat

  Well, in how many ways can he be disgusting? All right, one is he ALWAYS comes into the bathroom when I’m taking a shower. He gropes me when he hugs me. He calls me things. Totally disgusting, like I told you! Right now I’m in the computer room at school and making sure nobody is reading this or I WILL DIE!!!! Thanks for being there. It means a lot to me.

  Steffi peeks at Karro again. Ponders her own existence. Her body exists IRL, where people judge each other by what they see. Online, she exists through her thoughts, not her body. She is Hepcat. Which existence is more real, the body or the mind? Is it fair to say that Karro hates her in the real world, but online, she is deeply thankful? What’s the truth?

  Hepcat replies to Karro. Hepcat says that it must be against the law for her stepfather to do those things. Film him secretly when he comes in the bathroom and calls you stuff. It’s a violation of your rights. Sending the message gives her mixed feelings. She feels good, because big people are helpful. She feels bad, because Karro is still disgusting.

  As she gets up to leave the room, Karro is getting up, too. For a few seconds, they stare right at each other. A breathless break without a solo. Not even the fly on the ceiling moves.