Sleet: Selected Stories

At first he passes right by the bar, brushing so close to the bouncer that the man mutters something after him. He turns off into a little side street and stands across from the building where his father’s workshop is. After a while he goes through a gate and into the storage yard, pretending his father is still there. He pretends his father has hidden himself somewhere behind the barrels or sacks, waiting for Håkan to come and seek him out. Håkan lifts the lids of the paint barrels one by one, and each time he is equally surprised that his father is not sitting inside, all scrunched up. When he has searched the yard for half an hour he is finally convinced that his father has not hidden himself there after all, and so he returns.

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