Travelling Light Read online

  A mass of screaming children persisted in running back and forth across the studio, but this didn’t seem to irritate Grandma in the least. She just let the mothers take charge of whoever it was they had brought into the world. Jonny and I sat down at a crowded table only to realise a moment too late that we’d chosen badly. This was a table for what Grandma calls the intellectuals, who associate exclusively with one another. I couldn’t figure out what they were talking about. Despairing of something to say, and after a long silence, I finally turned to a gentleman with a goatee and remarked that the evening light in the studio was unusually beautiful. To my relief, he started talking about the significance of light and then moved on to the theory of perception. It took me ages to work out that he was an art critic.

  Luckily all he seemed to want was a listener, so I nodded thoughtfully and said yes of course, and how true, and occasionally glanced at Jonny, who was sitting across from me looking miserable. He’d got stuck beside one of those geniuses who never say a word to help you out. Even so, I was quite proud of having brought my Jonny into a family with artistic roots, who really knew how to carry off a party on this scale.

  Eventually he extricated himself and came over and hissed in my ear, “Can we go home now?”

  “Of course,” I said. “Soon.”

  It was then that they came in, three gentlemen of uncertain appearance. They looked somehow dishevelled – or, more accurately, stained or smudged. They certainly weren’t bohemians. They did have long hair, but in a more middle-aged way. They made a grand entrance, bowing low to Grandma and kissing her hand. She led them to an empty table at the far end near the window and made sure each got a glass of champagne. Pretty soon one of them dropped his glass on the floor. He was in a state about it, but Grandma just smiled, though I knew how much she treasured those glasses – a wedding-present, I think. Coffee and cake were being brought in now, but these new gentlemen continued to be served champagne. Not the rest of us.

  I noticed Jonny was cleverly moving along the wall by carefully studying everything hanging on it, till in the end he reached the new gentlemen’s table. Of course he didn’t understand that this was a table set aside for the not-entirely-respectable; dear, sweet Jonny. But he did seem to be enjoying himself at last.

  One of the three went over and lifted a whole bottle of whisky from the liquor table and, as he carried it back, made a deep bow to Grandma, whose smile seemed to be wearing a little thin.

  My art critic had moved a bit further off but was still delivering an animated lecture about the theory of perception. I got up quietly and snuck over to Jonny, because it depressed me listening to stuff I didn’t really understand or care about. One of the gentlemen, with a droopy grey moustache, lifted his glass and said, “And so he writes crap about you, Juksu.”

  “Absolutely,” said Juksu. “And only three inches.”

  “You measured it?”

  “Of course, I took out my ruler and I measured. Exactly three inches. Like buying pea soup in a plastic bag, so you know what you’re getting. And no picture. But these newcomers, they get a picture, by God.”

  The third man said, “The trouble is, he’s so old; he just panders to the young.”

  “Yes, it’s hell.”

  “But you can’t have everything in life,” said the man with the moustache.

  “No.”

  They talked on, calmly and thoughtfully. They sounded like men who were used to talking together but could no longer be bothered with actual discussions. They made statements. They never referred to things like perception but seemed more interested in rising rents or an unfair review of some painting, though of course what could you expect… But when Grandma passed by on one of her charming circuits of the room, they grew lively and gallant. Jonny said not a word, but I could see he was fascinated. None of them paid us much attention, though they made sure our glasses were always full and made a space for me closer to the table. Their conversation was soothing, and we sat as if on an island sanctuary. None of them asked us about ourselves; they let us be anonymous.

  The party around us floated into the distance. The room had grown dim; the children had vanished. Suddenly someone turned on the overhead light and someone else carried in pirogi. The man called Juksu stood up. So did the rest of us, and somehow we all came out into the hall together. After a lot of bowing and scraping and sincere expressions of affection for Grandma, we took the lift down. But Grandma managed to whisper to me, “Don’t buy them drinks. There are three of them and you can’t afford it.” Though I think she saw that Juksu had her whisky bottle hidden inside his coat.

  * * *

  It was cold when we came out on the street. And very quiet. No cars or people and that remarkable half-light that comes with spring evenings. After a fairly long silence we introduced ourselves. They were Keke and Juksu and the one with the moustache was Vilhelm.

  “Well, let’s get going,” said Vilhelm. “We’ll head into town. But not to the usual place.”

  “No,” said Keke. “Not there. They’re not nice any more. Let’s go sit down somewhere and then we’ll see.” Then he turned to me and said, in a very kind voice, “How long have you two been living together?”

  “Two months,” I said. “Well, two and a half, nearly.”

  “And it’s going well?”

  “Oh yes, really well.”

  Vilhelm said, “Let’s go to our spot. Where the newspapers are.”

  This was outside the covered market down by the harbour. We each took a newspaper to sit on out of a recycling bin and settled in a line along the edge of the quay. The square was empty.

  “Now let’s have a little drink,” said Juksu to Jonny. “But we’ll have to do without glasses, if your wife will excuse us. You don’t say much. Everything okay?”

  “Just fine,” said Jonny.

  I had a feeling I ought to go and let him stay there with the three of them. I turned to Vilhelm and said politely, “It’s really nice here. I like people who don’t take life so seriously.”

  “You’re very young,” said Vilhelm. “But you have a wonderful grandmother.”

  We had a drink together and then suddenly Jonny spoke up excitedly. “I was listening to what you were saying, that we can’t expect to have everything in life, but still you have to expect something, I mean expect something incredible, from yourself and from other people… You have to set your sights high because it always turns out a little lower, if you know what I mean – like with a bow and arrow…”

  “That’s it exactly,” said Keke reassuringly. “You’re absolutely right. Look, here they come. I like boats.”

  We took another swig from the bottle as we watched the fishing-boats slowly approach the quay. Two drunks wandered up. “Hi, Keke,” said one of them. “Oh sorry, you’ve got company. Got any cigarettes?”

  Keke gave each of them a cigarette and they walked on. Up in the spring sky the dome of the cathedral rested like a white dream over the empty square. Helsinki was indescribably beautiful, I’d never realised before how beautiful it was.

  “The Nikolai Church,” said Juksu. “They have to change everything. So now they call it the Great Church. It’s idiotic, it doesn’t mean anything.” He let the empty bottle slide into the water and said as a kind of afterthought that they can’t even write decent poetry any more.

  By now the night was as dark as it ever gets in May, but we still didn’t need any lights.

  “Tell me something,” I said. “What do they mean by perception?”

  “Observation,” said Vilhelm. “You see something and suddenly you recognise some old idea or, better yet, some new idea.”

  “Yes,” said Keke. “A new idea.”

  I was feeling cold and suddenly angry and said eightieth birthday parties were a really stupid idea.

  “My dear,” said Vilhelm. “It was a proper party, and a beautiful one in its way, but now it’s over. Now there’s just us sitting here trying to think.”

  �
�What about?” said Juksu.

  “About ourselves. About everything.”

  “What do you suppose Grandma’s thinking about?”

  “No one knows.”

  Vilhelm went on. “For instance, about this business of maybe fifty a week. They run themselves ragged. And still they only have time for the young ones, the bastards.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “The art critics. Fifty shows a week.”

  “And no one asks any more,” Keke said. “We’re over and done with. We were critiqued long ago.” He thought for a moment. “My bum’s getting cold. Let’s make a move.”

  As we walked further along the quayside, he asked me what I wanted from life.

  I hesitated. Then I said, “Love. Security, maybe?”

  “Of course,” he said. “That’s right. In a way – for you at least.”

  “And travel,” I added. “I’ve got this real passion to travel.”

  Keke was quiet for a while and then he said, “Passion. As you can see, I’ve lived quite a long time, which is to say I’ve been working for quite a long time, which is the same thing. And you know what? In the whole silly business, the only thing that really matters is passion. It comes and it goes. At first it just comes to you free of charge, and you don’t understand, and you waste it. And then it becomes a thing to nurture.”

  It was awfully cold. He was walking too slowly, and I was freezing.

  Then he said, “You lose sight of the picture. I think we’re out of cigarettes.”

  “Not a bit of it,” said Juksu. “Philip Morris – Grandma shoved them in my pocket. She knows what it’s like.”

  Keke went over to the other two men. They lit their cigarettes and walked on as slowly as before.

  Jonny and I followed them. I whispered, “Are you tired of this? You want to go home?”

  “Ssh,” he said. “I want to hear what they’re saying.”

  “His clay,” Vilhelm was saying. “It went to an amateur. Some pushy little nobody. He hadn’t been dead two days when this creep comes along and buys the clay from his widow for nothing. And he was old; just imagine that clay.”

  “Hang on a minute, Jonny,” I said. “I’ve got sand in my shoes.” But Jonny went on ahead with the others.

  When he came back he told me excitedly how clay becomes more and more a living thing over time and how you always use the same clay for every sculpture and you can’t ever let it dry out, and new clay just isn’t the same, it’s not alive…

  I asked him which of them was the actual sculptor, but he didn’t know.

  “They were just talking about seeing a picture,” he said, “so I don’t know.” But he was very excited and asked if we had anything at home, anything we could offer them. After all, it wasn’t that late. “And anyway,” Jonny said, “this isn’t a chance we’ll ever have again. I really want to.”

  I knew we didn’t have much in the house, and Jonny knew it too, perfectly well. Some anchovies, bread and butter and cheese, but only one bottle of red wine.

  “That’s enough,” said Jonny. “You and I can just pretend to drink. They’ll stay for a while, long enough, don’t you think? And it’s only just around the corner.”

  “Okay, let’s do it,” I said, and he laughed.

  Brunnspark was beautiful: everything growing and bursting into leaf. Suddenly I wasn’t tired any more; all I knew was that Jonny was happy.

  We all stopped in front of a large bird-cherry tree that was already in full bloom, shining chalk-white in the spring night. As I looked at the tree, it suddenly occurred to me that I hadn’t loved Jonny the way I could have loved him, totally.

  Keke looked at me and said, “That’s only a gift; it doesn’t mean anything.”

  I didn’t understand. We walked on.

  He said, “You know your grandmother never painted anything but trees, and always trees in the same park. In the end she knew trees, the very essence of trees. She’s very strong. She never lost her passion.”

  Of course I had huge respect for these men who did nothing but search for their lost passion and cared about nothing else, but at the same time I was worried there wasn’t enough coffee and the house was a mess. And I started thinking about what was on our walls; maybe our pictures were completely unacceptable, just things we liked without having any idea why. Keke asked me if I was cold.

  “No,” I said, “One more street and we’ll be home.”

  “Your grandmother,” said Keke, “has she ever talked to you about her work?”

  “No, she never has.”

  “Good,” Keke said, “that’s good. They wrote her off in the sixties but she stuck to her guns. You know, my dear – I’m sorry, what’s your name?”

  “May,” I said.

  “Perfect. You know, it was all Informalism then, everywhere; everyone was supposed to paint the same way.” He looked at me and could see I didn’t understand. “Informalism means, roughly, painting without using definite forms, just colour. What happened was that a lot of old, very talented artists hid away in their studios and tried to paint like young people. They were afraid of being left behind. Some managed to do it, more or less, and others got lost and never found their way back. But your grandmother stuck to her own style and it was still there when all that other stuff had had its day. She was brave, or maybe stubborn.”

  I said, very carefully, “Or maybe she could only paint her own way?”

  “Marvellous,” said Keke. “She simply had no choice. You comfort me.”

  We’d come to the door of our building, and I said, “Now we have to be quiet or the neighbours will complain. Jonny, you go up and get something out of the fridge – whatever you can find.”

  We got in. Jonny put out the red wine and glasses and our guests sat down and went on with their conversation. We didn’t turn on the lamp; there was enough light from the window.

  After a bit Jonny said he had something they might like to see, and I knew he wanted to show them his model ship. He’s been working on it for a couple of years, every detail handmade. So they went into the spare room and Jonny switched on the overhead light. I could hear a murmur of conversation but left them in peace and went to the pantry to put on some coffee.

  By and by, Jonny came out into our little kitchen. “They said I’ve got a passion,” he whispered. “A vision of my own.” He was very agitated. “But it’s not theirs, it’s not the one they’re searching for.”

  “Great!” I said. “You take in the coffee and I’ll bring the rest.”

  When I came out, Vilhelm was talking about the flowering bird cherry we’d seen on the way home. He said, “What can you do with something like that?”

  “Just let it flower,” said Keke. “Look, here’s our lovely hostess! Isn’t that right – shouldn’t we just let it flower and admire it? It’s one way to live. Trying to recreate it is another. That’s what it boils down to.”

  After the party broke up, Jonny was silent till we went to bed. Then he said, “Maybe my passion is nothing special, but at least it’s mine.”

  “It is that,” I said.

  The Summer Child

  IT WAS CLEAR from the very start that nobody at Backen liked him. He was a thin, gloomy child of eleven, who somehow always looked hungry. The boy should have aroused people’s most tender protective instincts, but he just didn’t. Partly it was his way of looking at people or, rather, of observing them, with a suspicious piercing stare that was anything but childlike. And then he would hold forth in his odd precocious way, and dear God the things he came out with!

  It would have been easier to overlook all this if Elis had come from a poor home, but he did not. His clothes and his suitcase were clearly expensive and his father’s car had delivered him to the ferry landing. It had all been arranged by advert and telephone: the Fredrikson family were offering a holiday home to a child for the summer out of the goodness of their hearts, and for a small fee, of course. Axel and Hanna had discussed it thoroughly – all the b
ig-city children in need of fresh air, woods, water, and good food. They had said all the things people usually say to convince themselves that only one course of action would allow them to sleep easily at night. Meanwhile there was all the rest of the work that had to be done in June. Many of the summer residents’ boats were still on their slips and a couple of them hadn’t even been properly checked over.

  And so the boy arrived, carrying a bunch of roses for his hostess.

  “You really didn’t need to, Elis,” said Hanna, thanking him. “Or was it your mother who sent them?”

  “No, Mrs Fredrikson,” Elis answered. “My mother’s remarried. It was my father who bought them.”

  “Very kind of him… But couldn’t he have waited a little before driving off?”

  “I’m afraid not, an important conference. He sends his respects.”

  “Yes, yes, right,” said Axel Fredrikson. “Well, let’s get aboard and get home. The kids can’t wait to meet you. That’s quite a suitcase you’ve got there.”

  Elis told them it had cost eight hundred and fifty marks.

  Axel’s boat was quite large, a sturdy fishing-boat with a deckhouse, and he’d built it himself. The boy climbed awkwardly aboard and at the first splash of spray he grabbed hold of the seat and closed his eyes tight.

  “Axel, don’t drive so fast,” said Hanna.

  “He can go in the deckhouse.”

  But Elis wouldn’t let go of the seat or even once look out at the sea the whole way there.

  The children were waiting expectantly on the dock – Tom, Oswald and little Camilla, whom they all called Mia.

  “Well,” said Axel. “This is Elis. He’s about the same age as Tom, so you should get on fine.”

  Elis stepped onto the dock, went up to Tom, took his hand, gave a short bow and said his full name: “Elis Gräsbäck”. Then he did the same with Oswald, but just looked at Mia, who giggled uncontrollably and put her hands over her mouth. They walked up to the cottage, Axel carrying the suitcase while Hanna carried a basket of shopping from the local store. She put on the water for coffee; the sandwiches were already made. The children sat round the table staring at Elis.