Stig Dagerman - Sleet - Selected Stories

He locked the bottle in the drawer again and took his rifle out of the closet. He laid it across the top of the desk and wiped away the dust that had collected on the barrel with a piece of blotting paper. Then he detached the breech and closed his eyes as he ran his fingers over its hard polished surface. For a whole week the rifle had been stowed away in the closet, and now, as he set the breech back into place, he did so with tender, gliding movements. He raised the rifle. Pulling the stock tight against his shoulder, he aimed it into the bower. It would have been nice if there were an owl out there to sight it on, or at least a sparrow or a few bottles. He had a pet notion about standing at the window or sitting in his chair, or perhaps even lying on the bed, and firing at bottles suspended from balloons. But there were neither bottles nor owls nor sparrows out there at the moment. Just then, however, the gate leading to the woods let out a loud squeak. And suddenly there was the teacher, coming down the path with a stack of books under one arm. He was smoking a cigarette and sweating profusely. Of course, it was very stupid of the forester, but by the time he realized that he was standing there in plain view aiming his rifle at the teacher, it was too late to do anything about it. Naturally the gun wasn’t loaded, but it was a very stupid thing to do in any case.

The teacher found his wife in the kitchen. She was at the sink, drying some coffee cups and dishes which until very recently must have been sitting on the tray. The tray was not hanging up as usual, but lying on the kitchen table with some spilt coffee still on it. He noticed each of these things before he greeted his wife. Then he sat down on a stool and prepared to drop the bomb.

“You didn’t come home the usual way,” commented his wife, wiping off the tray and hanging it on the wall.

“I went through the woods,” he said as he began weighing the books in his hand one at a time. “I thought it might be quicker. Maybe I was wrong.”

“Mrs. Mattsson came through the yard today. She also thought that was quicker.”

“Well, I won’t be doing that again,” her husband said, staring at her so intently that at last she couldn’t keep her own eyes still.

“Why’s that?” she said, hesitating.

Bang!

The teacher slammed the books down suddenly on the table. Then he allowed the silence to assert itself for a moment before he went on.

“I don’t feel like getting shot through the window,” he said at last with such nonchalance that the effect was doubly unnerving.

Alice sank down into a chair at the other side of the table, and then the two of them sat there looking deep into each other’s eyes for a few moments. This time her wide eyes fled nowhere. But the dumbstruck expression that hung on her face did not result from feelings of dread or a guilty conscience, as her husband imagined, but rather from pure astonishment.

“Shot?” she repeated, cracking a grin. It sounded so absurdly melodramatic.

Her husband rose slowly to his feet, but with his eyes sunk deep into her own, like those of a lion tamer.

“Just a minute ago the forester was standing at his window,” he said in a voice as even and nonchalant as before, “… aiming a rifle at me.”

At once Alice’s face turned a flaming red, and her eyes collapsed. Of course, he couldn’t help noticing this. He turned somewhat dramatically and walked to the window, and Alice could do nothing but helplessly stare at his back. Her first impulse was to jump up, spin him around and hurl everything she could at him in defense of the forester. But then, as her emotions settled, she became calmer, more clear-headed, and by the time she pushed her chair back she had thought of a way to preserve everyone’s dignity, to placate everyone’s conscience, to restore everyone’s damaged feelings.

“Arne,” she said to him, repeating his name insistently until he finally turned around. “Arne, you have to go up there right now and demand an explanation. If not for yourself, then for my sake. Do you think I like the idea of being home alone with some lunatic who goes around aiming guns at people? If you don’t go up there right now I won’t feel safe in this house for another minute. Besides, it’s a crime. People go to jail for things like that! Tell him that!”

They started up the stairs together, Alice leading the way, keeping several steps ahead of her husband. As for the teacher, he followed reluctantly, half-stunned by an unexpected, though gratifying fact — or two facts. “Lunatic,” she had said. And in such an angry tone. And “it’s a crime.” “Besides, it’s a crime. People go to jail for things like that!” And so he went along.

Before he knew it, there they all were. The forester was standing before them in his doorway, his hair mussed. He blinked a few times stupidly, as if he’d been sleeping and was hastily awakened. Alice was abrupt. She didn’t even allow him to catch his breath.

“Sir, my husband said you were pointing your rifle at him when he came through the yard.”

The forester backed a few steps into his room, sat on the edge of his desk and fingered his knees. He let out a nervous, embarrassed chuckle.

“A mistake,” he said, looking at the floor. “I wanted to see if the rifle was clean. So I took it out and was sighting it on something in the yard, and … well, unfortunately Arne happened to come walking down the path just when … but like I said —”

“Yes, yes, of course,” said the teacher. “It was just a little unnerving. You know, to look up and see … well, you understand.”

On their way back down the stairs, the teacher leaned toward his wife and whispered, “Since when have you started calling him ‘sir’?”

Alice stopped and looked up at him with an almost frantic determination.

“Since today,” she said. “He made a couple of stupid comments about you coming home in the middle of the day. So then I told him I thought he was taking a few too many liberties of that sort around here. And as far as I was concerned it was going to stop. That’s what I told him. Just like that scarf he had the nerve to give me. I’m sure you’ve seen that.”

“No,” her husband lied.

When they reached the bottom of the stairs, Alice took the scarf down from the shelf. Her husband studied her smile, comparing it with others on similar occasions, trying to determine whether it was counterfeit. Alice likewise observed his expression as he turned the scarf over in his hands, and by the exaggerated attention of his eyes she could tell that he had already been aware of it. This worried her a little. She climbed out of herself and stood by, correcting every movement before she made it, so that each small gesture would carry absolute credibility.

That evening the forester did not come down for coffee as usual. For a while they could hear him pacing back and forth in his room. Then he lay down on his bed. The springs creaked. Quite some time passed before they heard another sound from upstairs.

“He’s probably just feeling sorry for himself,” said Alice when her husband commented on the forester’s absence. “First because I snubbed him today, and now because of this business with the gun.”

It all sounded quite on the level. As the teacher spread honey on his roll he scrutinized all the different parts of his wife’s face, but everything held together. Later that night, just after they got into bed, they heard the forester’s heavy footsteps on the stairs. He left the house and headed straight out into the woods. The teacher lay back in bed, calmly and clearly weighing the various pieces of evidence against one another. On one side were all of the things that seemed to indicate guilt, on the other, innocence. His wife crept over into his bed. At first this made him glad, but then he grew suspicious, since he was almost always the one to take the initiative. He lay beside her silently running through two mental lists, first of the incriminating and then the vindicating evidence. But as he sank more and more deeply into the warmth of her body he became ever more convinced of her innocence. Until finally he felt freer and happier than he had in a very long time. He fell asleep quite late with a bit of her hair closed between his teeth.