Stig Dagerman - Sleet - Selected Stories

Anyways, I tell them I’m heading off to pay Mamma’s grave a visit with my flowers. But I can see right away this troubles Lydia.

“Well, Knut dear,” she says real quick. “I’m sure Nils can drive us all there.”

And damn if she ain’t intent all of a sudden on visiting Mamma’s grave too. But really she just don’t want me to go off on my own ’cause she’s worried things might turn out like last time. Not that she’s concerned about me, mind you. She couldn’t give a shit. No, it’s the gossip she’s worried about. I mean, I’m sure there was a fair share of that last time round, with me going off and getting plowed the night before my own Mamma’s burial. But I don’t give a rat’s ass how Nils feels about that and the same goes for Lydia. And right now Nils is out in the shitter, so before he gets back I slip out the door in record time and take the shortcut straight across the near field so I don’t run into him on his way back.

Christ! What a lovely family! Can’t even trust a man to go visit his own mother’s grave. Ulrik just had to spit his poison at me, of course, as I was ducking out the door: “Now don’t forget the rake and the watering can. Oh, that’s right — you can get them right there at the churchyard … if you ever make it there.” If I ever make it there! What the hell they think I’m gonna do with this bouquet, chuck it in the river? Eight crowns I laid out on it! So don’t tell me I ain’t doing right by my folks! If the rest of them showed the same kind of consideration, then maybe I could tolerate their abuse a little more.

It’s pretty nice out for October. I’ll say that. Up near the woods a heap of cast-off potato plants is burning in the field. It looks like the Wiklunds got themselves a harvester. It’s sitting there next to the barn. If Ulrik had a little more gumption he’d go in halves on that harvester to keep from working himself ragged. I suggest stuff like that every time I come home. But if Ulrik wants to slave himself to death, who am I to tell him otherwise? There’s leaves on the road, and it’s getting darker. I pick up my pace so I’ll get to the graveyard before the dark really sets in. In one of the windows of the parsonage I can make out the minister himself, sitting there smoking a pipe. A man of the cloth smoking! I don’t know why, but that just seems funny to me. It’s an easy walk, this one, along the road. But not for the blacksmith. He’s staggering practically from one side of the road to the next, and soon enough he’ll end up in the ditch. That man don’t know how to stay sober. Otherwise he’s a nice enough fella, and he was one of the last to see the old man alive. I should really have a word with the tin knocker, though, before I go back to Stockholm. Hitting the bottle hard together for old time’s sake is one thing, but letting the old man ride off like that by himself, in his condition — well, I’ll have some words for the tin-knocker about that when I see him, that’s for sure.

There’s not many people out. But they’ll have dancing over at the Pavilion tonight, even though it’s the middle of October. Says so on a poster anyway. That’s something I might have gone and done myself if the old man hadn’t just died. Mini-golf? It’s a little too dark for that. What’s the point of paying one fifty if you can’t even see the holes? Anyway, I keep to the right side of the road and head in through the gate at the churchyard. It ain’t hard to find the family plot, and that’s a good thing ’cause soon it’ll be too dark to read the names on the stones. Our plot is right near the dead room, just outside the door, actually. At Mamma’s funeral we carried the coffin past the open grave and into the church and then marched back there with it again. I was swimming in my own sweat, but it was the middle of July then. A heat wave.

On top of the grave is a vase with rotten flowers in it. Sure looks like Ulrik ain’t putting himself out much looking after it. Don’t look like the gravel’s been raked in a while. But I’ll have to let it stay that way for now, ’cause it’s getting too dark to see good. It looks kind of nice though, with the new flowers I brought. I don’t think anyone would argue with me over that. As late as it is I can hear them hammering down inside the dead room. Crazy ideas start running through my head. Quit your goddamn hammering! I think. You might wake the old man! Crazy stuff like that. It’s the coffin’s trimmings they’re working on now, I’ll bet. The errand boy from the nursery sticks his head out the door for a second, but he don’t recognize me. Just as well. I don’t have a mind to look in there on the old man, not this time of night. Once they get the head stone put up over Mamma’s grave — Mamma’s and the old man’s grave I should say now — I figure it’ll all look pretty decent. Good location too, the best in the place really.

It’s dark now. The wind sifts through the leaves with a hiss, creaks through the church roof. Should I go somewhere? Maybe sit at the café for a while? I might run into some folks I know. Probably not a bad idea to show my face for once while I’m back here. Otherwise people talk. Say things like: “That Knut, he’s so goddamn full of himself now that he lives in the city. Can’t bother to spend any time in the village except when he’s passing through on his way to the train.”

Or Doughboy’s place. I could always stop by there. But then it can’t be like when Mamma was buried. That time I dropped by Doughboy’s to borrow some brännvin to make up for the bottles my little brother Tage broke. Next thing I know I’m out half the night. Who the hell knows how many places we got around to before I made it home that night? Things can get a little wild over at his place, that’s for sure. I wouldn’t mind hearing about the old man, though. It was Doughboy, after all, that come up behind him in his car and almost ran him over when the old man crashed his bike. So I could head over there just to hear about the old man, whatever he can recall. And if Lydia and Nisse and the rest of them want to get all bent out of shape about it, well, they can go right ahead. What regard did they show the old man when he was alive? Now that he’s lying on the other side of that door over there, they carry on and make a big production of everything. Nobody but me troubled over him when he still drew breath. Sent money every month for eight years. I’d like to see how much small change Lydia squeezed out of her purse for the old man. Yeah, it only makes sense for me to go and get the story from Doughboy the way it really happened. Don’t care if it’s the last thing I ever do for the old man. I don’t plan on letting him down now. I’ll get to the bottom of things. And who better to ask than the fella that helped carry him in from the road? I’ve got to remember to thank him for that. Yes, it’s the right to do, going over and thanking him proper for what he did for the old man. That’s the least a man in my situation can do.

So I shut the gate behind me and fish around in my pocket for a cigarette butt under the streetlight. And as I’m lighting up I can see a car coming my way, almost like it’s looking for somebody, crawling along the road so close to my side that its lights wash out the churchyard wall. When it gets up alongside me the car stops. Then the door opens and what do you know? It’s Doughboy.

“Climb in, friend,” he says. And I do, of course, ’cause there ain’t anybody I want to see more than him right now. Him and only him.

“I went by your house,” Doughboy says. “And that sister of yours, she told me you come here to the churchyard. So I say ‘Maybe I’ll go over and catch up with him there.’ And her face looked like it was ready to explode when I said that, so I just got the hell out of there.”