From the short story collection Charlie Boy
- by Johan Bargum
- Söderström & Co Förlags AB, 1995
- Translated by Ken Schubert
- (Translation approved for the Internet by the author)
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- Solgatan (A Long Streak of Sunshine)
He awoke that morning in an oddly gradual and tranquil manner. Slowly, little by little, like a photographic image floating up in the developer, he emerged from the white, blank domain of sleep. Before his eyes drifted the wispy remains of a dream: a summer scene, a boat house, fog over the sea, something that called to him from the distance. He lay there for a while in the sluice between night and day, searching for a clue to the singularly motionless landscape, but he found none.
He sat up with a jerk. Reaching for his watch, he remembered that he had left it in the living room the night before, along with his glasses, wallet and clothes. Standing there and slowly undressing, he had examined the little etching by Hugo Simberg while, in the kitchen, his wife and daughter were saying their good-byes. With a busy day before her – board of directors meeting and a dinner banquet – his wife would need all the sleep she could get, and his daughter had known that she would be beside herself in the morning with excitement, jittery about last-minute packing.
There wasn’t much in the etching to study other than a bare hillock and – way down at the bottom – a little old man sitting on a sled drawn by a scraggly horse. Draping his clothes over the back of the armchair, he had almost been able to detect the movement of the unassuming little equipage. It was already on its way, about to emerge from its circumscribed reality; by the morning the hillock might be all that remained – it was a thought that had left him feeling slightly abashed.
Putting on his robe he slipped out of the bedroom. His wife was asleep, motionless as ever, with a pillow clasped over one ear. So many nights he had slept beside her, and it never ceased to amaze him that she could lie there in such absolute silence and repose – as still as a corpse.
He was quite certain that she had awakened and intended to lie there until she could fall back to sleep. Surely she realized that he knew that. After twenty years of marriage, neither of them needed to say a word.
With a mew the cat jumped down from the foot of the bed and trailed him out to the kitchen.
His daughter was sitting at the table sipping tea. She held the cup in both hands as if she were trying to warm them. Sit up straight, he thought; Christ so many times I’ve said those very words to her. She had placed her luggage next to the chair, and suddenly it occurred to him that she looked strangely tiny, as if the big, round backpack had caused her to shrink.
“Good morning,” he said.
“Morning.”
That sounded like a mew as well.
“Sleep well?”
The cat padded up to her and grazed her leg. Lifting it to her lap, she buried her face in its black fur. “I’m going to miss him,” she said. It purred and made up to her in hungry-cat fashion.
Removing the clothes from the chair and starting to dress, he assured her that missing loved ones was perfectly normal, hardly anything to worry about. He said everything that it was his duty to say, everything that parents are expected to say, since it is incumbent upon them – when the time comes – to cut the apron strings and shove them away, push them out like little bark boats and watch them drift off and vanish into the distance.
He went on talking for a while. Nobody could say that he hadn’t learned his lessons well.
He could have sworn that the little old man on the sled was nodding at him.
Lugging the backpack out to the car, she scraped the frost off the windshield and told him to hurry up; all at once she had recovered her energy and resolve – she was finally on her way. The early morning traffic crawled along sleepily, but they had plenty of time. She chattered away about everything under the sun: friends and freshly-baked croissants and an outing to Chamonix. Sitting at the wheel and interjecting insipid remarks, he tried to avoid skidding on the icy asphalt, weighed an assortment of exhortations in his mind and concluded that none of them could possibly do any good; she was on her way now and he had done his part. Whatever lay before her now belonged to her and her alone.
The eastern sky turned gradually pink, as if it were hesitating.
The morning commuters poured through the turnstiles onto the platform and out to the street. She bought a French newspaper, which she planned to read on the boat. She realized that she wouldn’t grasp all that much, but that was completely beside the point. She would underline everything she understood, put the newspaper away, and leave it there until the return boat trip; it was an experiment – a comparative study, she explained, looking pleased with herself. As she stood there in her dark green loden coat and crammed some coins into her change purse, he wanted nothing more than to take her in his arms; with her officious frown and corkscrew curls, she was such a wondrously energetic and purposeful being. But he held back, he had to; now she was really on her way, and even though he had come to the station to play but a supporting part, it must be a modest role and the main thing was not to forget his lines.
They still had plenty of time.
Folding the newspaper under her arm, she went out to the platform in search of the right train, the right coach. Trudging behind, he carried her backpack – which was lighter than he had imagined – and restrained himself from reminding her that, even as a little girl, she had always insisted on holding onto her ticket and finding her way to the right gate, the right platform, the right exit. And he had always trudged behind with the suitcases and bags, his own ticket in hand.
Stopping in front of her coach, she glanced one last time at the ticket and stuffed it into her pocket. He put the backpack down at her feet. Grabbing it, she climbed onto the train. Out of pure habit he started to follow her but immediately changed his mind. Something in her posture told him that she didn’t want him to.
There were several little signs by the door: Train and Coach Number, 2nd Class, No Smoking – they seemed to be saying this is as far as you go.
Through the window he could see her nod at the other passengers. Locating her place, she placed her backpack on the seat.
For a long while she just stood there without moving, her back turned.
And they still had an appalling amount of time.
She stood in the doorway, as if she no longer wanted to cross over the invisible boundary either. Looking pale and dogged, she fixed her eyes on him. “I had a bit of a rough time this morning,” she said, “but it’s okay now.”
He nodded.
“You don’t have anything to worry about,” she said.
High above the clock tower of the station, a lustrous, silver plane drew a broad, fluffy stroke over the transparent morning sky. A woman clad in black herded her rambunctious, snotty-nosed children into the adjoining coach. The minute hand of the clock lurched forward.
Suddenly it occurred to him that she would certainly want something to drink on the train. He felt awkward enough saying it, but when he added the assertion that he was out of cigarettes, which was a lie pure and simple, he immediately felt both unmasked and ridiculous. Nevertheless, she said it was a good idea – a cherry Fanta please, why not, they had plenty of time, didn’t they? In the meantime she would go ahead and put her backpack up on the luggage rack.
He bought the morning paper, the Fanta and a pack of cigarettes. For a while he stood there flipping through the newspaper. Wandering out of the station, he cut across the square. He circled the statue of Aleksis Kivi, who sat on his pedestal looking as though he had just finished reading one of Ahlqvist’s reviews. Realizing all at once that the train was about to leave, he sprinted the whole way back.
She was standing in the doorway, her backpack still on the seat.
“…departing on track number two,” boomed a grating voice over the public-address system.
Gasping for breath, he muttered something about a line at the newspaper stand.
She looked at him and smiled, “Six months isn’t exactly forever, you know.”
Trying to return her smile, all he could manage was an odd little grimace. He handed her the Fanta. “Oh yeah, and this too,” he said, holding out the newspaper. Taking a step back, he fumbled for a cigarette.
The station master was slamming the doors at the far end of the train.
Hopping down onto the platform, she threw herself into his arms and clutched onto him for a moment. Through all the layers of clothes he could feel a heart beating, though whose it was he had no way of knowing.
She slid the door shut behind her. Going quickly to her seat, she lifted her backpack onto the luggage rack. She put her handbag, the Fanta and the two newspapers on the empty seat beside her. Sitting down, she leaned back.
She’ll be asleep before the next stop, he thought. The train gave a little jerk and rolled away from the platform.
It was too early to go to work, much too early. The car proceeded as of its own accord – past the nude statue of Havis Amanda, which was covered by a thin and somehow obscene layer of hoarfrost, past the harbor, where the side propellers of a passenger vessel caused ice floes to swirl in the eddies like large shards of glass. And further along the promenade – deserted with the exception of a few isolated, rosy-cheeked joggers – the sea emerged beyond the string of islands stretching from Sveaborg to Flisholmen.
Stopping and turning off the motor, he gazed out over the glassy ice toward the horizon.
Suddenly he caught sight of a woolen glove lying on the passenger seat. Picking it up, he sat there a while and tugged on the dark brown stitching of the fingers. She doesn’t need it anyway, he thought, it’s got to be warm there by this time of year.
Sometimes six months can be even longer than forever. Lucky for her she hasn’t realized it yet.
Afterwards he had no idea how long he had sat there staring down at the glove in his lap. When he finally raised his head and looked out through the front windshield, the sun had come up and was floating like a red balloon over the edge of the woods at Sandhamn Harbor, just to the north of the lighthouse and the converted army barracks along the beach at Sveaborg. A faint, ruddy reflection, a narrow pink path, extended over the icy bay, all the way up to where he was sitting. He had never seen anything like it.
It was as if the long streak of sunshine had scrambled up over the radiator of the car, made its way through the windshield and struck him right in the middle of the chest.
For a while he just sat there with his mouth wide open.
He closed his eyes. All at once he was perfectly calm and content, despite the realization that it was all nothing more than a long series of separations, one after the other. However anxiously you scurried around like a rat in a maze, there was always someone who boarded a train, someone who flew the coop, leaving behind only a memento – until the day you were no more than a memory yourself. But right at that moment it was as if none of it made any difference. The whole absurd cycle of farewells suddenly struck him as entirely natural and fitting.
He clenched the little glove with both hands. He didn’t dare to open his eyes, not knowing whether the streak of sunshine was still there, unsure as to whether it had ever been there in the first place. But one thing he knew for sure: never again – not even when the last grating voice boomed over the last loudspeaker – would he understand so deep at the core of his being that regardless of how furiously you tugged and strained and grieved and raged, none of it could possibly do a bit of good.
It was remarkably hot inside the car. He leaned back. Summer, a boat house, fog over the sea; who could be calling to him?
It won’t be long now, he thought, and we’ll both be sleeping.
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