Sleet. Stig Dagerman

      The Surprise

      There are some people who never do anything to be loved and yet still are. And then there are those who do everything to be loved, but never are. The very poor, it could be said, often find it hard to be loved. When Håkan’s mother had been a widow for five years, her father-in-law turned seventy. They were invited to his birthday celebration in the form of a short, curt letter some eight lines long; it read:

      Of course you’re free to come if you want to, Elsa, but you got to bring your own bedding ’cause its cold in the back room. Besides, some people’s probably gonna have to sleep in the hallway. You ain’t the only ones coming. There’s the bank clerk and the store manager Mr. Jonsson. Both of them’s been invited and they’ll probably sleep in the living room. If you can come up a day ahead of time, then that would be nice. We’ll need some help with the cleaning and the tables and the cooking.

      Best,

      Irma

      p.s. I’m sure there’s a few other things, like the dishes and such, that’ll have to be taken care of afterwards, and maybe Håkan can chop some firewood.

      Håkan’s mother read the letter out loud one night under the lamp. She was tired and she gripped the edge of the writing table with both hands as she read. For the whole day she had been cleaning the ceiling of a large, lush apartment in Östermalm, and she had a terrible headache from all the hours spent with her head crooked upwards. After she finished reading, both she and Håkan sat quietly for a while without looking at one another. Håkan began flipping through his geography book: the waterfalls at Trollhättan have a natural beauty … the Dutch are a cleanly folk who scrub their pavements daily … under Mussolini’s harsh but effective rule, these unsanitary swamps were nonetheless drained … from Chile comes a fertilizer we call guano …

      Håkan’s mother stared out into the room. Her hands were completely alone as they crumpled the letter into a rough ball. As he looked at those hands, Håkan could see that they were ashamed. The hands of the poor are always ashamed. They worked to smooth out the letter again, but it kept its wrinkles, like the face of an old woman.

      That night the light burned long over the small desk, and Håkan went to sleep quite late. For a while he thought his mother had fallen asleep with the light on. But when he raised himself up carefully on his elbows, he could see that her eyes were still open. And he could see her hands on top of the blanket, at first crumpling up and then smoothing back out a small invisible letter.

      The next night the light burned even longer. Fully dressed, his mother sat at his father’s old desk, writing. It was a letter that never seemed to be finished. By the time Håkan went to sleep, the desk top was littered with wadded balls of inkstained paper. When he awoke in the middle of the night, it was cold, and his mother was sitting on the edge of his bed. She was holding her hand on his forehead, as if he were running a fever. She waited until he was fully awake and then looked him in the eyes.

      “It’s only twelve o’clock,” she said. “How do you spell ‘century’? With a ‘c’ or an ‘s’?”

      The alarm clock said quarter past one. “C,” he whispered. He heard her tiptoe quietly back to the small desk and begin scratching with her pen. Then he fell back to sleep and slept the deep sleep of a child until morning.

      The next day she was standing outside the school gate, waiting for him. Like all children with poor mothers he was ashamed at first and pretended that he didn’t know her. He crossed the street with his friends, parted company, and then timidly made his way back. His mother sensed his anxiety, and she did not take his hand until they were completely alone on the street. They rode the trolley down towards the city, sitting opposite one another, looking at each other’s hands. When they got off the car, she took him again by the hand and led him through the rush-hour crowd along the bustling rows of shops on Drottninggatan. They stopped in front of a big, fancy store with a window full of flashing lights. Håkan’s mother stood there for a minute, pretending to read the signs in the window. There were several English phonograph records on display, and she read their titles without understanding them. When at last they went inside, she pushed Håkan out in front of her like a shield.

      In fancy stores the salesgirls are always your enemies. When you talk to them you suddenly feel embarrassed and stammer. “What can I do for you?” they say, so arrogant, as if they’re speaking to you in some foreign language. And immediately you translate – “Can you really afford it?”

      “We want to talk into a record,” said Håkan’s mother. “You see, his grandfather’s turning seventy, and he wrote this poem that he wants to say into the record.”

      They had to sit and wait a while until the recording booth was free. The bench was made of metal, and they sat vulnerably out on its edge, whispering. Håkan’s mother gave him a note. It was the poem she had written the night before. He read it, but understood nothing. While he was reading he could not keep his mind off the salesgirls in their pure white work blouses. It seemed to Håkan that they were staring at him from behind the counter, and his face flushed red from shame and dismay. His mother looked around.

      “Don’t forget the rhymes,” she whispered. “And make sure you talk loud.”

      Håkan’s eyes struggled with the words on the page to the point of tearing, and he stared at the rhymes until they echoed inside him: seventy years old – young and bold; your loving wife – the stream of life; hard at work – no duties shirked; sewed your seeds – dropped their leaves; horses and plows – feeding the cows; to make things nice – your sacrifice; on this glad day – happy birthday.

      When they entered the hot, cramped booth, the air was still thick from the heavy perfume of a woman who had just finished singing in there, and Håkan’s throat suddenly seized up, locking his voice within. He opened his mouth, but couldn’t get a single sound to come out. His mother stood behind him, holding him by the shoulders. To Håkan, it felt as though she was about to strangle him. The sweat ran down his back in large, hot drops. But when everything was set and the recorder began to hiss and rasp, he found that he still did have a voice after all. The words came loose and filled his voice – big words, solemn impressive words – and he read the first line like a priest. When he was finished, there was still some room left on the record, so his mother bent forward and sang into the microphone in her mild Christmas Eve voice: “Happy Birthday to you … Happy Birthday to you …”

      That whole evening she could not stop talking about what a good job he’d done, about what a surprise it was going to be for Grampa and the other farmers in the village, for the relatives from Uppsala and Gävle, and for the bank clerk and the store manager. What a surprise they’d all get when she wound up the phonograph and put the record on. Many times that night she simply sat and looked at Håkan, her eyes alive with pride. Sometimes she would fold her hands beneath the light and sit there quietly for a while. But then, sooner or later, she’d begin it all over again.

      The next night she disappeared from the apartment with a mysterious smile on her lips. She came back shortly afterward with a portable phonograph she had borrowed from the neighbors. She set it down in the middle of the table and put the record on, handling it as if it were a relic, something that shouldn’t be touched. She wound the crank and lowered the needle tenderly onto the spinning disk.