A Bridge to the Stars (6 page)

'You're lying,' says Ture.

'Oh no I'm not,' says Joel.

'I have my own ideas about that,' says Ture. 'But
what do you want to be when you grow up?'

'A sailor, I think,' says Joel. 'Like my dad.'

'But there can't be any sailors living round here,
surely?' says Ture. 'There's no sea.'

'He lives here even so,' says Joel.

'Is he a captain?' asks Ture.

Joel would prefer not to answer. If he does, he'll have
to lie even more. He doesn't want to say that his dad is
only an Able Seaman.

'His last voyage was as captain on a boat called
Celestine
,' he says. 'They were transporting live
horses.'

He suddenly feels angry with his father. Why isn't he
a captain? Then they could have lived in a big house,
like this one.

'I might become an engineer,' says Ture. 'Or maybe
I'll work for the UN.'

Joel has only a vague idea of what the UN is. A sort
of place where people give speeches for the rest to listen
to. But he doesn't ask.

I can go to the library and look them up, he thinks.
Leonardo da Vinci and the UN.

'Why do you have two radio sets?' he asks, so as to
avoid having to talk about the UN.

'So that I can listen to two programmes at the same
time,' says Ture. 'Sweden and foreign stations at the same
time.'

Once again Joel is angry with his dad. Here we have
a boy aged twelve with two radio sets. His dad is over
forty, but he has only one. And that's much older than
the two Ture has.

'What kind of a radio do you have?' asks Ture.

'A Luxor,' says Joel.

Ture sits on the floor, on a cushion. 'The Secret
Society is good,' says Ture. 'But we could do more than
just look for a dog.'

'But you're going to run away soon,' says Joel. 'I
thought we could find that dog while you're still here.'

'A Secret Society must create fear,' says Ture. 'We
have to show that we're dangerous.'

'How?' asks Joel.

'I can show you tonight,' says Ture.

In fact Joel had intended staying at home tonight.
He's frightened of falling asleep at his desk if he goes
out every night. But he doesn't say that.

They agree to meet at midnight, among the goods
wagons. Then Joel has to leave. The stove and potatoes
are waiting for him.

'Why are you in such a hurry?' asks Ture.

'That's a secret,' says Joel.

He's in a bad mood when he goes home. He has too
many lies to keep track of. And it's all his dad's fault. He's
not a captain, he has only one radio set, and he hasn't got
a wife which means that Joel hasn't got a mum.

Samuel has nothing. Only an axe that he uses to cut
down trees in the forest.

Even worse, he's never said anything about who
Leonardo da Vinci is, or what they do at the UN.

And to top it all he comes home with that slut in the
red hat in tow.

Joel remembers that he has to go to the shop. As he's
nearly home, he has to retrace his steps. That makes him
even angrier.

I'm going to move in with Jenny, my mum, he thinks.
I don't care what she looks like, I don't care what she
does. Nothing can be worse than living with Samuel.
The only thing he'll take with him is
Celestine
.

He'll take that blue stool he got for his birthday to the
railway bridge and hurl it into the river.

There's a queue in the shop. Svenson smells of strong
drink as usual, fumbles with the goods and has trouble
in working out the bills. Joel waits and waits.

It will never be his turn. That's his dad's fault as well.

When Joel gets home he starts the fire in the stove,
then lies down on the kitchen bench while he's waiting
for the potatoes to boil. He falls asleep, and is woken up
by his father shaking him by the shoulder.

The meal is ready and the table set. Samuel is in an
extremely good mood. He's humming one of his sea
shanties. He keeps smiling at Joel.

After dinner he gets shaved. That's enough to worry
Joel. His dad only ever gets shaved once a week, on
Saturday afternoons. It's only Wednesday today. Samuel
is humming away non-stop.

Joel decides he'll have to keep a close eye on his father.

Can Sara with the red hat really put him in such a
good mood? Or is it something else?

After dinner Joel takes out his thirteen tin soldiers and
builds a fort out of some books. But he finds it hard to
concentrate because he can hear his dad humming away
in his room all the time.

In the end he gives his model soldiers a kick and they
all end up under the bed.

They can stay there until they're buried in dust, he
thinks.

Then he goes into his father's room. Samuel is lying
on his bed, listening to the radio and wiggling his toes.

'Hi, Joel,' he says. 'What are you playing with?'

'I'm not playing,' says Joel. 'I want to know who
Leonardo da Vinci is.'

'Who?'

'Leonardo da Vinci.'

'That's a name I've heard before. Why do you want to
know who he is?'

'I just do.'

'Hang on, I'll have to think a bit. Leonardo da
Vinci . . . '

Joel stands in the doorway, waiting. His dad wiggles
his toes and thinks.

'He was an inventor, I think. And a painter. A long
time ago. He knew everything. He invented cannons and
aeroplanes long before anybody else.'

'I'm going to be like him.'

'Nobody can be like him. You can only be who you are.'

'Why did you never become a captain?'

'I didn't have any schooling. I just had my hands.
That means you can only be an Able Seaman.'

Joel thinks he ought to tell him to stop wiggling his
toes. Stop smiling, stop humming sea shanties. But he
just stands in the doorway and says nothing.

'I'll go back to my room, then,' he says.

His father doesn't answer. He's closed his eyes and is
humming a tune.

If he's lying there thinking of Sara, I'm off, Joel
thinks. If he brings her home one more time, I'm getting
out of here.

He will need to find out where his mother lives. He'll
have to ask his dad about that. It's the most important of
all the questions currently occupying his mind. He
wishes it was the only thing he had to worry about. Most
of the time nothing at all happens, he thinks, but just
now far too much is happening that he needs to think
through. It gets more difficult to cope with life for every
year that passes, he thinks. Not the least difficult thing is
understanding grown-ups, understanding his father.

He wishes he could creep into Samuel's head and sit
down in the middle of all his thoughts. Then he would
be able to compare what his dad says with what he
actually thinks.

Perhaps being a grown-up means not saying what you
really think.

Or knowing which lies are least dangerous. Learning
to avoid untruths that can too easily be found out . . .

He takes his alarm clock into bed with him and wraps
it inside a sock before placing it under his pillow, next to
his ear. Then he switches off the light.

When Samuel sees that, he won't come in and sit on
the edge of Joel's bed. He'll simply close the door and
go to his own room.

It's easy to fool grown-ups, he thinks. Just because
you've switched the light off, they think you're asleep.

What he would really like, in fact, is for his father to
come and sit on his bed even so. Sit down and tell him
about Jenny without Joel having to ask first.

It's hard to settle down to sleep. The alarm clock is rubbing
against his ear. He shudders at the thought of having
to get dressed in a few hours' time and go out into the night.
He wonders what it is that Ture is going to show him.

Create fear, he said. What does he mean by that?

Joel tosses and turns. The alarm clock is irritating
him, and he has to check and make sure he hasn't
accidentally switched it off.

He needs to do a lot of thinking about Ture.

Having met him is both a good thing and a bad thing.
Good that he's going to run away in a week's time
because Joel has said various things that can be found out
as untrue. But at the same time, it's a bad thing that he will
no longer be around. It's good having a nobleman as a
friend. A nobleman who is older than Joel.

He thinks about the enormous flat. He pictures himself
in all the different rooms. Looking at the paintings
and books, walking on the soft carpets.

But when he comes to the suit of armour, he stops dead.

Now he's on his own, Ture is no longer in his
thoughts, and he can put on the armour with no risk of
being found out. Last of all he closes the visor.

Now he's on a battlefield somewhere.

Miss Nederström has told them that it was always
misty when knights in armour rode into battle.

Now he's mounting his steed, the magnificent stallion
he's seen at Mr Under's, the horse dealer. The black
horse with the white patch under his right eye. Somewhere
in the distance, invisible in the mist, the enemy is
waiting . . .

He gives a start when Samuel opens the door.

It takes a long time to build up a good dream, but all
it needs is for his dad to take hold of the door handle,
and it's all gone.

He pretends to be asleep.

Samuel closes the door gently.

He usually listens for longer than that, Joel thinks.
Tonight it happened far too quickly. As if he were
hoping that I'd be asleep.

There ought to be rules for fathers, thinks Joel angrily.
They shouldn't be allowed to come bursting into a
dream. They should only be allowed to listen so long at
the door to see if you're asleep. They shouldn't be
allowed to invite certain people home for coffee.

All fathers ought to be made to sign such rules. And
every time they break one, they should be punished.

The radio falls silent, Samuel has a good gargle, and
his bed creaks.

What actually happened? Joel wonders.

Why was Jenny so unhappy? What happened?

When the alarm starts buzzing under his pillow, he's
not sure at first what it is. It goes off when he's in the
middle of a dream. Joel is surrounded by strangers, but
he knows that his mother is among them somewhere.
The only person he recognises is The Old Bricklayer.
Then the barriers at the level crossing start ringing. It's
the alarm clock under his pillow.

He lies still in the darkness, listening.

What had he been dreaming about? Was it a nasty
dream? Or just an odd one?

He keeps on listening. Silence always has many sounds.

A beam creaks. He hears his own breathing. There's a
rushing sound in his ears, like the wind.

Joel is afraid of the dark. Not being able to see the walls
and ceiling, not being able to see his own hands. Waking
up in the dark is a kind of loneliness he's scared of.

It's the nearest he can imagine to death.

A black room where the ceiling could be just above
his face, but he can't see it.

When you wake up in the middle of the night there's
no way of knowing if you're the only person left in the
whole wide world.

He switches on the lamp standing on the blue stool.
Then he switches it off again. The darkness isn't
frightening any more. Not now that he knows nothing
has changed while he's been asleep.

He tiptoes into the kitchen, puts on his boots then
creeps silently down the stairs. Old Mrs Westman is
having a coughing fit.

The stars are twinkling in a clear sky when he gets
outside, and he starts running so as not to be late. Ture
is waiting for him by the goods wagons, in the shadows.
Once again he creeps up on Joel from behind and grabs
him by the shoulder, making him jump.

I ought to have known, thinks Joel. Ture will keep on
doing that for as long as he sees it makes me jump.

First they go looking for the dog. Joel shows Ture the
streetlight where he last saw the dog. He'd like to tell the
story of the night when he carried The Flying Horse out
of the bicycle shop – but would Ture believe him? Joel
has no idea what Ture thinks. And when he runs away
next week it will be too late. After that he'll never get to
know anything.

It strikes Joel that this is the first time he's met
anybody who he knows he's soon going to be separated
from, and will never see again. Never ever, as long as he
lives . . .

'A dog,' says Ture without warning. 'Why are we
looking for a dog?'

Joel doesn't know what to say. All he knows is that
the dog is important. The dog heading for a star.

He can't explain it, he just knows . . .

Ture suddenly pokes him in the back.

'There's somebody coming,' he whispers.

He points down the street, and Joel sees a figure in
dark clothes approaching along the opposite pavement.
Somebody lit up by a streetlamp before being swallowed
up by the darkness again.

They stand next to the wall where they are sure of not
being seen. The darkly clad figure has its head bowed,
looking like a body that stops at the shoulders. But Joel
sees who it is.

It's No-Nose. The woman with a handkerchief instead
of a nose in her face.

'It's Gertrud,' he whispers into Ture's ear. 'I know
who she is.'

'Why is she out in the middle of the night, walking
with her head bowed?' wonders Ture.

Ture indicates that they should follow her. They sneak
along in the shadow of the house walls, keeping the
hunched figure in front of them.

It's not hard to follow her because she never stops and
turns round to look.

Joel has always believed that people who are being
followed can sense it. But evidently not Gertrud. No-Nose. People either feel sorry for Gertrud, or dislike her.
But nearly everybody is frightened of her.

You can feel sorry for her because she lost her nose
during an operation at the hospital. You can also dislike
her because she doesn't stay indoors but wanders around
in the street and doesn't cover up her deformed face.