Wonderful Feels Like This E-Book

Sara Lövestam

• Herausgeber: Allen & Unwin
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 404

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

A feel-good story of an unconventional friendship between an old retired jazz musician and a young girl who is trying to find her place in the world. What can a bullied teenager learn from an old man spending his days in a retirement home? For a start, she'll learn that it ain't got a thing, if it ain't got that swing... Passing by a retirement home on her way from yet another awful day at school, she hears a familiar song playing through an open window. An old man is playing her musical idol Povel Ramel - a quirky jazz musician from the 1940s - and it sparks a new stage of her life. The man's name is Alvar and just like Steffi, he has a huge interest in music. Before long he starts telling her his story. In his youth, as the Second World War tore across Europe, he travelled to Stockholm. Young, innocent and quite naive, Alvar began his life in the big city, struggling to become a famous jazz musician. Or at least someone who was in a band. Or at the very least someone who could dance the jitterbug and talk to girls. Intrigued and inspired by Alvar's story, Steffi spends more and more time at the retirement home, learning about jazz and forgetting about school. She begins to realize that she doesn't have to be the Steffi other people know; instead, as Alvar did, she can recreate herself through music.

Leseprobe

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

First published in Great Britain by Allen & Unwin in 2017

First published in the United States in 2017 by Flatiron Books, a division of Macmillan Publishers

Originally published in Sweden in 2013 as Hjärta av Jazz by Piratförlaget

Hjärta av Jazz © Sara Lövestam, 2013

English translation copyright © Laura Wideburg, 2017

By agreement with Pontas Literary & Film Agency

The moral right of Sara Lövestam to be identified as the authos of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Every effort has been made to trace the holders of copyright material. If you have any information concerning copyright material in this book please contact the publishers at the address below.

Allen & Unwin

c/o Atlantic Books

Ormond House

26-27 Boswell Street

London, WC1N 3JZ

Phone: [phone]

Email: [email protected]

Web:www.allenandunwin.com/uk

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Trade Paperback ISBN 978 1 76029 207 2

E-Book ISBN 978 1 95253 591 8

Cover design: Nada Backovic

Cover illustration: Nada Backovic and Shutterstock

Out of the blue, someone you meet will be the friend you need.

—Povel Ramel,

“Underbart är kort” (What Wonderful Feels Like)

CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER 34

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 36

SWEDEN, VÄRMLAND, AND JAZZ MUSIC DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR

HISTORICAL NOTE ON SWEDISH JAZZ MUSICIANS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

— CHAPTER 1 —

Steffi is becoming happy jazz. She lies on her striped bedspread, eyes shut, while deep down inside, she’s turning into an upbeat happy blues, a going-crazy-with-happiness blues. All the stupid people vanish into a fog far beyond her window; they’re nothing now as she walks the bass line with her guitar. She rubs away a few tears, which have mingled with the hair at her temples. Povel Ramel sings: Just slap them away like a mosquito! Who cares what they say? Get on with your own show! She’s singing along with his hit “A Happy Blues.” She takes a deep breath and no longer gives a damn about any of the other kids in class 9B. The bass player works the blues line like a madman. It’s one of the most difficult walking bass lines on the whole record. As if there were no rules, as if you could play exactly what you wanted, but she hasn’t yet figured out how.

When she finally leaves her room, nobody can tell that she’s been crying. Mamma puts a dish of fish in white sauce on the table, Pappa is throwing out the box the fish came in, and Edvin is getting out the tableware.

“Can you get Julia?”

The door to Julia’s room is closed. Steffi walks right in.

“Hey, would it hurt to knock?” Julia yells and then into the phone: “It’s just my nerdy little sister.” She turns her head to Steffi again. “One day you’ll walk in here and see something you really don’t want to see.” A laugh comes from the phone.

“Time to eat,” Steffi says.

“I need to finish this.”

“She needs to finish her call,” Steffi reports back to the kitchen, and her father gets up from the table with a sigh.

Edvin does not want to eat the fish or the potatoes. He swirls the sauce around with his fork and eats a little of it with a bit of lettuce and a tomato. The struggle to get Julia to the table transforms into a fight to get Edvin to eat at least one bite of fish.

“You’re eight years old.” Mamma sighs. “Eat it now and you won’t have to eat it later. You can’t live on gravy alone; you’ll get dizzy.”

Edvin laughs at the image. “Like thiiiiis?” he asks and flops his head from side to side again and again.

“Just eat.”

Edvin clamps his mouth shut. Julia has started to text under the table. Steffi swallows a bite of fish with potatoes.

“Think of it like this,” she says to Edvin. “Potatoes are precious like gold.”

Edvin looks at her skeptically. “No, they’re not.”

“More like gold than tomatoes. Look at your plate. What looks the most like gold?”

Edvin cuts a tiny piece of potato and stuffs it in his mouth, swallowing it with exaggerated effort. “It doesn’t taste like gold.”

“That’s because you’re eating it all alone. If you eat some fish with it, it’ll have more gold flavor.”

Pappa gives her a grateful look. Mamma is asking Julia where she bought her mascara, and when Julia doesn’t reply, Mamma asks Steffi about her day at school.

“Fine,” Steffi mumbles. She’s concentrating on her potatoes and fish. When the thought of the girls in class 9B forces its way into her mind, she slaps it away just like she’d slap away a mosquito. She is a happy blues, as cool as cool can be.

“I can tell our last semester is coming,” she says. “We’re getting a project.”

“Sounds fun,” Pappa says. “How exciting.”

“Don’t act so surprised,” Julia says. “When I was in ninth grade, we had a project, too, remember?”

“Yes, well . . . ,” Mamma says. “What fun that you get to do one, too. Have you picked out a topic? Or does the teacher assign one?”

“I don’t know yet,” Steffi says. “I’ll have to see.”

Edvin plumps both elbows down on the table. “This. Does. Not. Taste. Like. Gold.”

Steffi has stopped logging in to The Place, although sometimes she’ll go back just to see what’s happening. But then she’ll delete the guest book comments, trying not to read them, but she always does. She tries not to feel hurt by the words whore, dyke, and disgusting, but she is. She’s never been a prostitute, she’s never been in love with another girl, and she takes a shower every day, but the feeling of being dirty seems to come with the words. She’s definitely stopped going to The Place. She’s done that many times. Today she’s not even going to start.

Instead she takes out her bass. Last week she’d taken “A Happy Blues” to her bass teacher, who hemmed and hawed at it doubtfully. He’d explained that a walking bass line goes from one note to another through three notes you choose yourself. Then they practiced it together for a while, but it never sounded right. She has seen through him already. All he really wants to do is teach classical guitar and sing Bellman songs. It’s easier when she’s alone. She goes from A to D a few times, testing different notes, grimacing when it sounds off, repeats. Nods her head to the rhythm when she gets going, ups the volume.

Finally, she puts on “A Happy Blues” again. She ignores the bass player on the record and does her own thing between the downbeats. It sounds passable, but nowhere near Povel’s bassist. After eight measures, she gives up, stops playing, and falls backward onto her bed, her bass on her stomach. Listens to the rest of the song. Slaps away The Place’s nasty comments just like a mosquito, gets on with her own show. Becomes happy jazz.

— CHAPTER 2 —

Their project is supposed to explore some aspect of social or natural sciences in depth.

“They did a fashion show last year!” Karro protests. She rolls her eyes and looks around for affirmation. She’s wearing well-applied eye makeup.

“That’s why this year, we decided to change the guidelines,” Bengt explains. “This is practice for gymnasium, when you’ll have to study on your own. Take advantage of it!”

Karro rolls her eyes. Steffi can’t stand Karro, but on this point she has to agree. She’d hoped to record some of her music.

“You can choose to do a project on your own or in pairs,” Bengt continues. “Those who decide to work in pairs must give me a plan of who will be responsible for each part of the project.”

The girls immediately reach out their hands to pair off like invisible magnets—Steffi is left out, as if she has as much magnetism as a block of wood.

“Project outlines will be due next week. More detailed information is on our class page, and part of your work is to understand the instructions and follow them. Any questions?”

Victor raises his hand. “Is there going to be a test?”

Some giggles break out.

Bengt remains calm. “Everything is on our class page. You will be required to prepare a written report with a summary, a table of contents, and a bibliography, as well as do an oral presentation during class.”

As they all file through the classroom door, Steffi finds herself next to Sanja. Karro gasps theatrically as she grabs Sanja and pulls her away. “Watch out for Steffi!”

Sanja snickers and then sighs hugely in relief. “I didn’t see her!”

“You’ll have to wash your clothes in bleach, you know, if you get too close.”

Sanja giggles at the laundry advice as Steffi rushes off, breathing hard and trying to distract herself by thinking of what subject to choose for her project. But the lump in her throat gets in her way. She knows her face has turned bright red and her eyes have filled with tears that will brim over if somebody talks to her. She slinks into the bathroom.

Surprisingly, her reflection in the mirror is not quite as ugly as she’d imagined. She meets her own eyes, pushes her hair behind her ears, and tries to smile. She will never show them that they’d made her cry, never. She can picture their snickering and their pointing fingers: the slut’s crying! Never!

She flushes the toilet before she leaves.

She walks home with Povel Ramel on her mp3 player. The familiar notes open up that other world, where Karro is nothing more than Povel Ramel’s wilted kangaroo vine—useless in every way.

The headphones are warm on her ears and she walks in time with the music. “Wow, How Lively the Band Swings!” gives her feet a beat that swings as the bass slides into the closest Povel ever came to reggae. Next comes “Look, It’s Snowing,” and she hears the intro even before it starts. Her footsteps are lighter, strutting. She moves her lips in Povel’s lightning fast patter: “Look, it’s snowing, fireside glowing, flakes are whirling, everybody’s stirring. . . .”

It had taken her an eternity just to figure out the lyrics. Like most of Povel Ramel’s songs, they aren’t online, and all the many words flashed by in an instant. Once, in the fifth grade, she’d performed “I’m Digging You” in music class and was met with forty-four rolling eyes. Her music teacher tried to make them more receptive by explaining that this was actually the first rap song out of Sweden, written by the hardworking and mischievous Povel Ramel. It didn’t help that her teacher pronounced “rap” as “repp.”

The batteries run out halfway home. Steffi stops and shakes her player; sometimes this squeezes out ten more minutes. Sometimes it doesn’t. For a second, she thinks she hears it start up again, but when she puts on her headphones, she doesn’t hear anything. She shakes the player again but realizes as she’s shaking it that she’s already hearing the music. It’s “Where’s the Soap?” And it’s not coming from her headphones. She furrows her brow.

Nobody is around. Other than the weak sound of music, it’s completely quiet. The streetlights shine on no one but herself. Still, she can hear the words clearly: The wind’s stopped howling, the old aunt stopped growling. . . . She stands stock-still and brings her player to her ear to make sure that the music’s not coming from it. Then quiet falls again. A handful of snow slips from a tree branch. She is just about to start walking again when the next song starts: “Jazz Is Calling.”

Steffi turns around. Then she turns slightly to the left and finally to the right to zero in on the sound. It seems to come from the short row of town houses a few meters back from the road.

Her feet leave silent marks in the snow. The notes of a string bass and a clarinet bubble out like champagne, slightly muffled, but coming closer. When she comes to the fourth window along the row of town houses, she sees it’s slightly open. The music is coming from there, right next to her. Povel Ramel’s high-pitched voice finds its way out into the empty February air around her. It’s like being in a dream. She stands there until the clarinet has wailed up into a falsetto and then dies out. The wind is ruffling through a spruce tree somewhere, the dark sky seems to touch her head, and the yellow bricks in front of her are harsh with black shadows. Then there’s a noise from the window above her head, and she jumps as if she’s been slapped.

A voice, nothing like Povel Ramel’s, rasps at her as the shape of a head forms inside the window frame. Steffi wants to run away, but her body won’t move.

“So, answer me!” the voice barks from the window.

Steffi is breathless, even though she’s been standing absolutely still. She has to swallow before she can say a word. “What . . . I didn’t hear what you asked,” she calls up to the window.

“Well, then, let me repeat myself! Why are you standing around down there?”

Steffi has to think for a moment. Why does anyone stand around outside someone’s window?

“I heard someone playing Povel Ramel.”

More noise comes from the window and then it’s opened so wide that she can now clearly see the man’s whole head. He’s almost completely bald; his face has cheeks that are long and narrow, and his bushy white eyebrows are as white as the hair sprouting out of his ears. His lips turn up in an amused smile. “I’m sure you did, since I was playing Povel Ramel.”

Steffi stares openmouthed at the man in the window. He’s really old. Not like Grandma and Grandpa, who have just retired, but with wrinkly skin like parchment paper, like the old folks in the care center. He sucks on his lip and then lets it go.

“Do you know when he recorded this song I just played?”

Her heart starts to beat again, like when her teacher asks her a question she knows. Even more so, since she’s standing in the snow and being questioned about Povel Ramel. She feels that her answer will change everything.

“Nineteen forty . . . the forties.”

“Of course it was recorded in the forties. In 1946 exactly. Casper Hjukström on the clarinet. But that I don’t really care about.”

“You don’t?”

Silence from above. She looks up, expecting his head to disappear back into the room, gone as if he’d been a ghost. But the man stretches his neck farther out so she can now see his chin and cheekbones outlined against the wall. He lifts his wild eyebrows.

“Well, are you going to give me pneumonia in this cold air or are you going to come up and introduce yourself like a normal person?”

The hallway reeks of soap residue and plastic mats. Steffi stands still just inside the entrance after she’s been buzzed in. A picture showing a house in the forest hangs on the right-hand wall and on the left is a needlepoint with a phrase about God. She pulls up the shoulder strap of her school bag, which always slides down. A door opens down the hallway. The face from the window appears, followed by the rest of a body.

He’s not much taller than she is, but once, maybe, he’d been taller. She takes his knotty hand and they shake. His hand is cool and dry, his handshake stronger than she’d thought it would be.

“Alvar Svensson’s the name.”

She wonders if she should introduce herself as Stephanie or perhaps give an imaginary name. But she is who she is. “Steffi Herrera.”

Alvar Svensson leads her to his room. It is square and contains one bed, one plaid armchair, two chairs, one table, and one enormous bookcase. He folds into his armchair like a collapsing measuring rod, while nodding at Steffi to take a chair, which she does. It’s already dark, judging from the lack of light through the window. She pictures the ground outside where she’d just been standing and listening to the music.

“Well, as I was saying,” Alvar says and leans back so that his armchair squeaks. “I really don’t care if it was Hjukström on the clarinet. I was more impressed by the wonderful vision that went by the name Anita Bergner. I don’t suppose you’ve heard the song ‘Letter from Frej’?”

Steffi wants to laugh. He’s underestimating her, this old guy who enjoys Povel Ramel. She wants to imitate the bit where the woman begins to quiver in ecstasy from reading Frej’s letter, but she doesn’t know the words. Instead, she quotes from another part of the song:

“Your mere nearness devastates

A fire flames in me that incapacitates.”

She’s starting to sing as she reaches the end, but falters on the last note.

“Yes, that’s just how I felt when it came to Anita,” Alvar says, pleased. “Perhaps you’ve felt it, too.” He states this as a possibility, but not a question.

“She was outside the studio when Hjukström showed up with his clarinet.”

Steffi repeats his words in her head. Was he there?

“What do you mean?” she asks, feeling stupid.

“Oh, didn’t I say that? I was hired for a recording . . . oh, I probably forgot to mention it. I was in Stockholm back then.”

Steffi stares at the man in the armchair, the one who had been to Stockholm and had met Povel Ramel’s clarinet player. Did he come from Stockholm? But what about his Värmland accent, then? She decided it would not be polite to ask.

“You had to go to Stockholm,” Alvar reminisces without prodding. “Just look at the labels on the gramophone records.”

He grabs the arms of his chair and heaves himself up. He walks to his bookcase and pulls out something very flat. Since Steffi did not immediately jump up, he pulls out another and waves them around.

“Look! Konserthuset in Stockholm! Odeons Studio, Stockholm!”

Steffi looks closely at the records. They are as large as plates, and their paper sleeves have nothing printed on them. Circling the center holes, she can make out Povel Ramel’s name written in cursive. A gramophone record from Alvar’s time. It is so very real it makes her seem unreal.

“You couldn’t keep me away,” Alvar goes on. He holds out a record in its sleeve to her and she takes it. The paper is rough. She feels a connection with the past—just then a cell phone rings into the swing music still coming through Alvar’s large gramophone horn. Her cell phone plays a line from “A Happy Blues.”

Alvar startles and looks around, then laughs as he sees her pull out her phone. “Jazz is calling,” he says.

Steffi smiles. “Or the blues. The family is calling, my pappa, he’s wondering where I am.”

Alvar nods. The ears on his head seem so large they could have been bought at a costume shop.

“I’ll tell you my whole story someday, if you want to hear it.” Steffi thinks there must be a pleasant polite phrase she should say, but she can’t remember what it could be. “OK.”

When she walks through the door at home, she wishes she could have stayed longer at Alvar’s place.

“ADMIRAL!” Edvin is shouting, holding up his stick with a yellow flag, his imitation of a military gesture. When she doesn’t respond, he marches into the kitchen, flag held high, turns, and then marches back to her.

She takes off her shoes. She should have thought to tell her father she was in the music room at school. Then she could have stayed longer.

“Hi, Steffita,” her father greets her. He claps her on the shoulder.

Mamma asks her to help in the kitchen.

“Julia can,” Steffi answers, but then she sees the extra pair of shoes in the hallway and knows she can’t get out of it.

“Fanny’s come over,” Mamma says.

Fanny coming over is like having two Julias in the house. It’s also like having a song on repeat, because they say the same things over and over even if someone eavesdrops on them. What idiots some other girls are; how to get rid of unwanted hair; how cute the senior boys are. Fanny would complain, “I can’t stand the boys in our class. I want a real man!” And Julia would agree. “We girls just mature faster.” And wonders if she should get Botox for the wrinkle beneath one of her eyes. “It’s because you smoke!” Fanny would exclaim, and then the two of them would giggle so stupidly that Steffi couldn’t stand it. She had to be really bored to even bother eavesdropping on them. Most of it was scribbled in Julia’s diary anyway.

“How was school today?” Pappa asks.

An image of Karro and Sonja—Watch out for Steffi!—the bathroom, the song that came from nowhere, the bald old man in the window, the original gramophone records behind a plaid armchair.

“We were told how to go about choosing our projects,” she replied.

Edvin leaps into the kitchen. He’s exchanged his yellow flag for a golden sword. “En garde! A duel! What’s for supper?”

— CHAPTER 3 —

Kevin, Leo, Hannes . . .”

Sanja is ranking the boys, and Steffi is not there. She’s not there because she’s sitting on the farthest bench away, with her back to them, and she’s concentrating on putting on her sweater. She’s not there and that gives her a bit of breathing room.

“No, Kevin, Hannes, Leo,” Karro objects. “Hannes is really hot, now that he’s cut his hair, and Leo stinks.”

“That’s because he’s always exercising.”

“He still stinks.”

“But he’s so cute.”

“That’s why he’s third. Or do you want him?”

Sanja pretends to hit Karro with her towel.

Steffi can see them reflected in the mirror on the wall. She has the song “Letter to Frej” running through her head.

Povel’s bossa nova from the seventies gets entwined with Sanja’s attraction to Leo and his aroma. Steffi smiles at the thought. They could start a song, she thinks. Sanja would begin:

Your nose to me is so enchanting

And Karro would reply:

But your mouth spews only bantering.

They’d giggle like the singer Wenche Myhre and trill the lyrics that Steffi hasn’t yet figured out. Something about the gods.

“Excuse me,” a voice says too close to her ear and Steffi transforms back from air into flesh and blood. “Excuse me, but I think this slut has been laughing at us.”

Steffi immediately checks her clothes and finds herself still half-dressed. At least she had gotten her pants on and her cell phone is safely in her pocket. But her tights and woolen socks are on the bench next to her.

Her shoes squish all through the last class, even though she’d wrung her socks out as well as she could and held them under the hand dryer for at least two minutes. When she’s about halfway home, her feet have gotten so cold they hurt. She unties her shoelaces and pulls off her wet socks to walk the rest of the way home in just her shoes.

As she walks by the long, flat building that is the local retirement home, she sees that Alvar’s room is dark. Even though she hits pause on her mp3 player, she doesn’t hear any music from his window. Just as well, since her feet feel like tender blocks of ice. She walks a few more steps and looks back to see if he’s turned on a light, but she couldn’t turn back anyway.

Of course, according to Sanja and Karro, Kevin is the hottest of all the boys in their class. There’s no room for discussion there. Everyone agrees. It’s a fact, not an opinion. That Steffi disagrees with everyone else makes her a little worried. She knows she’s old enough to understand why cute boys are cute, but she thinks that Kevin’s eyes are too narrow and she doesn’t like the way the ends of his mouth turn down. She can’t see what makes him the cutest guy in class. This must mean that the others are right: there’s something wrong with her.

Just before she reaches her block, her shoes really start rubbing on her bare ankles and she forces herself not to tear up by holding her breath. She’s been through worse—and she is definitely going to learn how Wenche Myhre sings that trill.

At home, when she pulls off her shoes, her feet are bright red in the middle and white around her toes. They tingle as she pulls on some woolen socks from the dresser in the hall while she yells, “Hello? Anybody home?”

She gets no answer. But there’s a sound from Julia’s room.

A wheezing, a sigh, a human sound. Julia’s door is slightly open. Steffi tiptoes up to it. She sees Julia on her stomach on her bed, completely still. Then a snivel followed by a long, halting exhalation. Steffi stands there, mouth wide open. Julia is crying. Steffi feels frozen in place as she watches Julia’s shaking back and catches the sound Julia is trying to muffle. She feels tears welling up in her own eyes. She wants to ask what’s going on, but this is Julia.

She leaps back when, without warning, Julia flips over and stares at her.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

Steffi backs away. “I’m just . . . I’m just . . .”

“You’re so damn nosy! Go away and shut the door behind you!”

“What . . . what’s wrong?”

Julia sits up in bed. Her eyes are red from crying and her anger makes them ugly. “GO AWAY!”

By dinnertime, Julia seems back to normal. She rolls her eyes at Pappa. He’s been trying to understand the Swedish word påbrå.

“I thought it meant something else! I mixed up brå with bra and it wasn’t until I realized that å and a were totally different letters in Swedish that I figured out why Swedes didn’t understand me! But it was a logical mistake!”

“What does påbra mean?” Edvin asks.

Pappa starts a long explanation involving Pippi Longstocking, a Siw Malmkvist song from ages ago, as well as his own Caribbean Indian grandmother.

Steffi is chewing her fish balls, trying not to look at Julia. Julia is not a person who cries. She’s the one who flips back her hair and tries on lip gloss. Julia rolls her eyes at last year’s shoes and gossips with Fanny about twenty-year-old guys. There are never tears in Julia’s eyes, only mascara on their lashes.

Edvin is eating for a change and Mamma asks Steffi, “How was school?”

Steffi stuffs two fish balls into her mouth and nods instead of answering. Outside, the winter night is black as coal.

After dinner, Steffi decides to get right to work. She tries to laugh like Wenche Myhre and attempts the hoarse sound of a laugh making its way all the way up through her throat. Wenche Myhre is Norwegian, and her Swedish has a Norwegian accent.

Your mere nearness devastates

A fire flames in me that incapacitates

Steffi sings along as well as she can. “Oh, oh, oh!” She trills together with Wenche Myhre, and Povel Ramel’s lyrics become a dramatic duet between them. The trill is not so hard; it just doesn’t rhyme. Once she’s figured out the entire song, she pulls out her bass guitar.

“Dum de dum, the song’s in fifths. Dum de dum, she just can’t quit, I’m dancing with the dame who got a letter from Frej.”

Her socks on the radiator are slowly steaming off the water from the changing room toilet. Her CD keeps spinning; Povel’s voice takes over from Wenche. It is a good voice, a voice that sings only funny words with happy music.

— CHAPTER 4 —

On her way to school she hears the music again. Perhaps she hears it just because her first class is biology. Perhaps it’s just her imagination; music sometimes takes over her mind so that she’s not always sure if she’s remembering it or hearing it. But she sees that Alvar’s window is slightly ajar and there’s a fuzzy white shape that could be his head moving around inside the room. She pushes at the door to the retirement home and it opens.

Biology is hard enough as it is, but when Gunnel retired, they got a newly graduated substitute teacher who immediately figured out who were the most popular kids and did her best to keep them happy. Soon enough she was hired full-time. This new teacher was so adept at brownnosing that only Steffi seemed to notice. Steffi could see it in the way the teacher smiled whenever Karro called Steffi names and in the way she gestured whenever she talked about Darwin and the survival of the fittest. Survival of the cunt, Steffi thinks and stares at her textbook so that the new teacher, Camilla, can’t look into her eyes and see that she’s calling her a cunt. School is hard enough as it is. This month, they’ll even have to endure Sexual Health.

Steffi tiptoes through the empty hallway of the retirement home like a burglar. Before she’s reached Alvar’s door, a nurse turns into the hallway from another corridor. Steffi stops abruptly and so does the woman.

“Well?” the nurse asks when Steffi doesn’t say a word.

“Ah . . . ,” Steffi says.

She can’t think of anything more intelligible. But she does know all of Povel Ramel’s lyrics on his first and second CDs; she could quote them at will.

“Who are you looking for?” the nurse asks. Her voice is harsh. Her hair is strictly combed back, slick and shining, and she does not smile.

“Alvar.” Steffi exhales in relief.

Alvar breaks out into a wide clown smile when Steffi opens his door.

“Of course I know Steffi,” he replies to the nurse’s questioning if this girl really was coming to see him. “I’ve been waiting for Miss Steffi Herrera.”

“So where were we?” he asks as the nurse closes the door behind her.

Steffi blurts out the entire riff by Wenche that she now knows by heart: “Oh, my darling, there is only one like you, you, you, oh, every small detail of you is a miracle created by the gods, I worship your thin lean neck and the small wonder-filled dimples in your knees, every single golden hair on your amazing forearms, oh, I only dream of the next time I will embrace you, kiss you, hold you, oh!”

It doesn’t sound the way it does when she sings along with Wenche, just more like a gush of words, but she knows them all. Alvar watches her recite and then wryly replies, “My thin lean neck has not been admired in a very long time.”

Steffi blushes. “Oh, but . . . ,” she says, and then sighs like Julia.

Julia’s sighs, however, always seem to come from a deep, highly irritated place in her soul, while Steffi’s sound more like embarrassed coughs.

“It’s from ‘Letter from Frej,’ ” she says.

Alvar is laughing so hard his mouth is wide open.

“The small dimples in . . .”

“The small wonder-filled dimples in your knees.”

Alvar is sitting on his bed, still laughing heartily, but he’s gazing at the ceiling, and then he says, “When it comes to the miracle of love, I’m afraid we really can’t search for its explanation in our friend Povel.”

Steffi ponders the idea of the miracle of love for a moment, but Alvar’s gaze has moved from the ceiling to the carpet. Steffi really can’t say she knows more about this subject than all the things Povel Ramel has sung.

“You can interpret this in many ways, of course,” Alvar says. “One boring theory is that he did not know enough about love, himself, to sing about it very well, and another is that he knew it all too well and just decided to leave it be.”

Alvar looks at her as if she understands what he is talking about. Grown-ups usually don’t do that. Usually you have to listen to them, pretending you care about what they’re saying, until finally they say something interesting. Usually they never do.

“Doing it his way, he could keep love for himself while the rest of us sit and debate about what he knew. I’m sure he’d appreciate our second way of looking at him.”

Steffi throws herself into the armchair. She’s supposed to be in biology class, but that was now the furthest thing from her mind. Alvar’s room smells like soap and the musty gramophone. The scent of real thoughts.

“I know nothing at all about the miracle of love,” she says.

Alvar draws in a deep breath before he replies. “Perhaps you have a mother or father who loves you.”

“Yeah.”

“Then you know the first half. The rest will come in its own time.”

“Maybe.”

“Absolutely. How old are you, Miss Steffi Herrera?”

“Fifteen.”

“Fifteen years old. Yes, well, this age is as good as any to be surprised by love and its wonders. Have I told you about Anita?”

“Not really.”

“I must have mentioned it. Surely I told you I went to Stockholm?”

“You just said that you went there and there was a woman named Anita.”

“So I didn’t give you the story in the right order.”

“No.”

“Well, then. Let me start from the beginning. I was just a boy when I took the train to Stockholm for the very first time. It was 1942. . . .”

Alvar was just a boy when he took the train to Stockholm. It was 1942; it was a death-defying gamble to take a train. His mother told him that trains transported war matériel and could explode at any time. Also the Germans could come pouring out of the freight cars and take over every unlucky traveler onboard: the wrong train at the wrong time. The more she talked about trains, the more they seemed to be erratic machines of murder. Alvar was more eager than ever to ride one. Stockholm drew him like a peg pulls its string into tune.

Alvar was already taller than his teacher and he’d played his father’s guitar until it had fallen apart. He thought it was time to go.

“You don’t have to go searching for trouble,” his mother declared. “I forbid it.”

So he went to his father. His father had good sense and could understand a solid argument.

“I’ve never even heard a real clarinet!” Alvar said.

His father grunted and scratched his chin.

“And what will happen to me if I stay here?” Alvar said, his voice shaking with passion. “Am I supposed to work in the forest hauling timber all my life, when I know, I really know that I could do more, be something big?”

Alvar’s voice had cracked a bit as he said this, but that could be seen as a mark of his intensity and not his youthful immaturity. His father still scratched his chin. A good sign.

Alvar finally was able to leave Värmland because, first, Värmland was much too close to occupied Norway, from where the Germans could swarm just as easily as from the very next train. Second, his mother had an aunt who lived in Stockholm and who was having difficulty with her old legs. Third, Alvar was beginning to drum on every object in the house until even his normally even-tempered father could take it no more. Alvar had to promise that he would be quiet in his aunt’s house and not beat up the furniture. He promised he would wear a muzzle and tie his hands together if that was what was needed. In the end, his mother gave in.

Alvar got his first look at the ways of Stockholm as soon as he climbed into the train car. People in fine hats passed below his window on their way to first- and second-class cars, but on the wooden bench across from him he found the most interesting people. A man with an odd-shaped case. A military man with an arm in a sling.

A blond girl his own age with a middle-aged woman who held tightly to the girl’s hand. It looked like the older woman could barely contain her anger, and also that she hadn’t had a great deal of practice doing just that. “Cry if you want to,” she hissed from the side of her mouth. “But don’t forget whose fault it is that we’re here right now!” The girl bit her lip and didn’t lift her gaze from the floor. Her tense shoulders and white knuckles gave witness to her unhappiness.

Alvar swallowed, tried to look away, but kept glancing back at that closed, delicate face. Was there anything he could do? But he had no talent for comforting unhappy girls. Unexpectedly she looked up at him and he caught his breath so abruptly he broke out into a coughing fit. He tried to draw attention away from this by drumming his fingers on his knees. He drummed with concentration, faster and faster, in time with the train’s accelerating engine. He kept on until, from his left, a strong hand took hold of his and held it in the air until he calmed down. The passengers on the benches around them expressed their approval.

“You’re not fully grown yet, are you?” the man across from him asked.

“I’m seventeen!”

He said this with emphasis so that the girl across from him could hear. Seventeen might not be so impressive, but it was still closer to being a man than a boy, right? The girl glanced at him quickly, but he couldn’t tell what was going through her mind. Alvar made the great mistake of imagining what her legs might look like under her skirt and then couldn’t keep up the facade of strutting masculinity. The man with the unusual case asked him where he was going, and Alvar’s voice cracked when he stammered out, “Stockholm. I’m going to find a job and take care of my mother’s older relative, but what I really want is . . .”

A few heads turned in his direction, and he avoided looking at the young girl to keep his voice steady.

“I’m really going to Stockholm to play swing music.”

Someone snorted, but the man with the case grinned.

“So you like swing, do you? Some people go to Stockholm for a girl, for others it’s a way to make a living, but you are one of the chosen few going there for music.”

As the man said this, people around them snickered. Alvar laughed with them. What else could he do?

“I’m sure your latest tune is well known in . . . ,” the man teased with a wink.

Alvar began to sing “How Do You Do, Mr. Swing?” in a wavering voice and heard a few other voices joining in.

The song petered out; nobody really knew the lyrics, but the fact that so many had enjoyed the song made Alvar feel good. He even managed to take another peek at the girl. The woman beside her had laid her arm over the girl’s shoulders. Neither of them had been singing along.

The man with the odd case was still interested in Alvar. After a few kilometers of listening only to the train chugging along, he leaned forward to put his elbows on his knees. “You don’t look like a jazz cat to me.”

“Thank the good Lord for that,” a woman sitting on Alvar’s bench harrumphed.

Jazz cat, Alvar repeated to himself. He didn’t know what cats had to do with it, but he was sure he’d find out when he got to Stockholm. He wasn’t going to reveal such a gap in his knowledge in front of this beautiful blond girl.

“I’m just me,” he replied. He hoped that would be good enough.

“And who are you, then?”

“Alvar Svensson from Björke.” He held out his hand. Decided he would keep the name of his hometown to himself from now on.

“If you want to keep your good name, stay away from that swing music!” the woman to his right exclaimed.

“And what do you mean by that?” the man said, egging her on.

“I can tell by your case what you think,” the woman replied with a snort. “But respectable people are forced to stand by while that horrible jazz music destroys an entire generation. No, my boy, you just make sure you find yourself a good job and take good care of your relative when you get to Stockholm. Make your parents proud of you!” The way her eyes drilled into him made it hard for Alvar to disagree.

Still, his curiosity about the man’s case increased after her comment. It wasn’t a suitcase, even though it resembled one. It was long and had a clasp. Alvar stared at it, his curiosity increasing moment to moment as the train chugged on. The man grinned slightly and then, without looking at Alvar, he opened his case. Alvar felt his pulse increase and knew everyone was watching as he craned his neck, but he couldn’t help himself. The man began to lift out parts of a clarinet, taking his time, putting the reed to his mouth, checking to make sure each part fit properly. Then he slowly took the instrument apart again and set each section back in its place. He closed the lid and snapped the clasp shut. It was as if the doors to paradise were being slammed shut before Alvar’s eyes. He tried to catch the man’s eye, but he was now staring at the ceiling.

“Was that . . . was that a real clarinet?” Alvar finally had to ask, even though he already knew it had to be.

The man brought his gaze down. “Oh, that? Yes, that’s the one I take when I’m on the road.”

Alvar stared. A man who takes a clarinet on the road implied that he had another clarinet at home, and that meant that this man was a real musician. The other passengers had come to the same conclusion.

“Oh, please play something for us!” the blond girl asked, ignoring the stern look from her traveling companion.

The man laughed. “Oh, no, no, no.” He seemed pleased, in spite of his protests, and finally gave in.

“So, just for the sake of the beautiful girl who requested it . . . ,” he said, and managed to wink at everyone in the compartment.

Two of the women covered their mouths as they giggled.

The man quickly reassembled his clarinet as he said, “Give me a beat.” He looked straight at Alvar. “Like this.”

He clapped a simple beat, and it was entirely different from how all the folk musicians clapped in Björke. Something in the elbows, something much more exciting. Alvar tried to do that, too, until he could. Then the man put the clarinet to his lips.

Alvar didn’t recognize the music. Perhaps it wasn’t even a real tune, but an improvisation of melodies and rhythms like those that Alvar had heard only on the radio. This was jazz! Alvar found himself keeping time with the clarinet, his elbows moving in the same swing beat the man played, while the landscape of Sweden passed by outside the window. The blond girl across from him swayed her upper body to the music, her eyes fixed on the clarinet player, ignoring even the hard grip on her shoulder as the music took her away.

“So was that Anita?”

“Who?”

“The girl on the train.”

“No, that was just a girl on a train.”

“So why are you telling me about her then?”

“Well, it was terrible, what she was going through. She’d had to leave her newborn baby with relatives in Värmland to spare her family from gossip.”

“You didn’t mention that.”

“We hadn’t gotten to that point of the story. By the way, have you seen a real clarinet?”

Steffi nods. “Sure, we have one at school.”

“Then you probably can’t imagine how things were back then. I was seventeen and I never had. And to have one in school in those days . . . that would have been . . .”

Alvar begins to laugh instead of finishing his sentence. “Thank God times change! Your school can’t be . . . you do go to school, don’t you?”

Steffi nods. It’s almost lunchtime. By now sex health class is over and any survivors had probably all gotten a condom to take home and study.

“We don’t start until twelve thirty today,” she lies.

At school, nobody had gotten any condoms. They seemed to have been divided into a boys’ group and a girls’ group. Next week they were supposed to discuss what is important in a good boyfriend or girlfriend. Steffi decides she’ll skip that day, too.

After math class, she hurries into the music room.

Jake, her music teacher, often stays behind after school so that anyone who wants to can come in and try out an instrument. He’s just putting away some percussion instruments.

“Can you hand me the maracas?” he asks Steffi.

She hands him both the maracas and the guiro.

Then she asks about the clarinet. Jake looks confused at first, but then takes it from the cupboard and says he can give her five minutes to look it over. You take it up so well, your little clarinarinet. Povel Ramel’s voice in her head.

The clarinet is well worn and certainly had been used by kids to hit other kids on the head. How else could it have gotten so wrecked, with gaps where there should be connections? Still, she can imagine how it must have looked to a young boy traveling on a train in the forties.

She tries to blow it, but no sound comes out. Jake tells her to wet the mouthpiece first, then tense her lips and blow harder. She gets a sound. Yes! Not exactly Arne Domnérus, but it is a sound. A wail between melodies, she thinks. She tries pressing some of the pads on the keys. It sounds like a sick animal.

Jake is standing there, keys in hand. “Would you like to take it home?”

“May I?”

“Sure. Give me a security deposit but don’t spread it around that I let you. OK?”

He winks at her. He lets her take instruments home now and again.

All the way home, she keeps her fingers crossed that nobody from school will see her with the clarinet. It would be hard to explain to Jake if it got broken, and she’d never be able to borrow an instrument again.

As she passes by the retirement home, she wonders if she should stop in and show it to Alvar. Then she reconsiders. It would be better if she learned to play something on it first.