Stig Dagerman - Sleet - Selected Stories

The whole thing was a mess from the start. If Elinda had to go and get herself another fella while I was doing my conscript service, how come she couldn’t do better than some fat, pasty turd from a little market town? Turns out this lout went to school with Nisse. After I gave him the treatment he went back to this little burg they come from and spread rumors about me. I’d love to get my hands on that son of a bitch again. God forbid he ever shows his face in my neck of the woods. And Nisse could do with a lesson too. Would serve him right for driving around in his starched white shirts, talking shit for the next six months. So I drain my glass and tell Doughboy what really happened. In case he ain’t heard it right.

“At the time I’d been in the service for eight months,” I told him. “And the whole platoon was getting transferred from Jämtland down to Linköping. So on the layover in Stockholm, I get the idea to slip away and go home for the night. I figure a night with the wife, that’d be just the thing. So I rent a car and hire a driver. Sixteen crowns it cost me! Well, if you count the ride out there plus the cost of cleaning up afterwards. Still, I figure it’s worth it just to get to sleep on a real couch again. But then finally when I get home and I’m standing there in my kitchen, what do you think I come face to face with? Here sits this bastard in his bare feet, right there on the cushioned bench, and in his lap is my wife! Darning the son of a bitch’s socks! So I don’t exactly need the whole evening to figure out the shape of things. ‘Get your goddamn socks on!’ I say, yanking them out of the wife’s hands. ‘And get the hell out of here! And you know what, buster? I got a feeling one of them eyes of yours is gonna be black before you hit the door. In fact, you can bet your sorry ass on it!’ And I’ll be goddamned if that miserable clown don’t get his socks on in record time. Then he starts scrambling to get his shoes on — only I can see then that they’re my shoes! So out he goes, into the night in his stocking feet!”

Doughboy, he just grins and pulls back on the cork again. But enough is enough, ’cause the bottle is starting to wobble a bit and the sweat is pouring right down off me. Just put your hand up and show him you mean to stop here. But him, he just keeps grinning and pours another. But pouring is one thing, of course, and drinking is another. I’ve got character. And that pack of pious pricks shaking their heads back in the kitchen at home — well, what the hell would they know about that?

“Now that’s interesting,” Doughboy says. “’Cause what I heard is it was you that got the licking. Someone said they heard that from Nisse.”

A licking! Me! Well, that’s pretty much what I’d expect from that slimy ass-kissing Nisse. No, if someone deserves a thrashing it’s that prick. I’ll just have to remember to have a good talk with Nisse when I get home — as long as I’m in good shape. Get a couple warm belts in me and I can do my talking just fine. What a bunch of goddamn hypocrites, all of them back there. So I drain my glass in one go and tell Doughboy how things really went.

“So we finally get out of that Lappland shithole,” I say. “You should have been with us on that trip, Doughboy. Ten of us fellas and ten liters of brännvin . You really should have been there! We come straight out of that shithole and by the time we get to Stockholm that night we’re feeling mighty fine. And it’s on to Linköping first thing in the morning. So I go ahead and rent a car and driver to get home from Norra Station. With the cost of cleaning up afterwards it come to pretty much twenty crowns. So it ain’t like I’m counting pennies or nothing when it comes to the wife. I figured she’d be over the moon to see me walk in the door like that as I’m turning the key. But then what do I find when I get in the kitchen? Her sitting there all over this bastard, the tramp. And him, he’s half-naked, so it ain’t like I don’t know what’s been going on. And I’ve always been good to that woman — you know that, don’t you, Doughboy? So I just make sure she’s out of the way, good and safe, and then I yank that son of a bitch up off the bench. ‘Get your clothes on, buster!’ I yell at him. ‘You and me got some business to take care of!’ And I peel my army jacket off and tell him, calm as a cucumber: ‘I wouldn’t go entering no beauty contests if I was you.’ And right out the door I send him packing! And this is right from the horse’s mouth, believe you me! Out he goes reeling, in his bare feet! And you know I ain’t one to pull my punches. So if somebody or another is running around talking shit about me, they’ll get theirs soon enough. There ain’t no question about that, now, is there? I might not have the extra padding in my shoulders that some of these stuffed shirts have, like a certain radio dealer we might know. But if they think that’s where a man’s power comes from, my dear friend Doughboy — well, then, they got another goddamn thing coming to them! I’ll tell you, this soldier right here was stuck up in that Lappland pisshole for eight long months. Ain’t had a woman that whole damn time. Just wait till you get home and see your girl — that’s what I tell myself. And I drop twenty-five crowns in one go on a car and driver, not a penny more or less. You know me, Doughboy. I’ll spare no expense for my woman — she always comes first. You know that.”

And if my eyes tear up on me, well, Doughboy, he ain’t the kind of guy to make you feel foolish about that. He pats me on the shoulder and says “Don’t cry, there, Knutteboy. You got friends that care about you, here at home if nowheres else.”

“You’re somebody a man can count on,” I say to him, even though I’d still like to teach them bastards at home a thing or two, sitting there in the kitchen, dragging my name through the mud.

“Put that woman out of your head, Knut-boy,” Doughboy says.

Not like I’ve been thinking about her, but now when I do it’s hard for me not to wonder what she’s up to tonight. I’m grieving. Come all the way out here to bury my one and only father, and she’s out somewhere getting up to god knows what. Alone is what I am. Ain’t a goddamn soul left to turn to.

“Let’s just polish off this last little bit,” Doughboy says.

She’s not the only one that knows how to go out and have a good time, even if the one she’s promised herself to is off grieving a heavy loss. I can empty a glass too, and so I do.

“Stuck in that goddamn Lappland shithole, I was, for eight long months,” I start to tell him.

“Yeah, yeah, sure,” says Doughboy, like he knows all about it already.

Don’t see why he thinks he can take that tone with me. Bigger dogs than him have had to lower their tails to Knut Lindqvist. You’re on your own now, Knut-boy, and there ain’t a goddamn soul left on this earth you can count on. So is it any wonder your eyes start to sting?

“Get hold of yourself,” Doughboy tells me. “What say we go to the Pavilion, you and me?”

I try to get up, but it’s trickier than you’d think, the way his chairs swallow you up.

“It’s too far,” I say. “We’ll never make it.”

“We’ll take the car,” Doughboy says and grabs my arm to hoist me up. Only the floor moves on me and when I grab the table to catch my balance a glass goes crashing to the floor. What a pain in the ass! Why do folks have to put their glasses so close to the edge like that? The table ain’t so steady either, so I grab hold of the gramophone stand. A vase topples over and smashes to pieces on the floor. It’s that last glass of brännvin , I’m sure. Before that one I was steady like an oak. Still, just goes to show. My woman ain’t the only one that knows how to go out and have a good time.