The Journey to the End of the World (Joel Gustafson Stories) (12 page)

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Authors: Henning Mankell

BOOK: The Journey to the End of the World (Joel Gustafson Stories)
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‘I’ve run out,’ said Joel.
‘Why don’t you buy some more, then?’
‘I shall,’ said Joel, standing up.
‘Hurry up, then,’ screeched the girl. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Rickard,’ said Joel.
Then he walked away. And didn’t go back.
He tried to walk as fast as everybody else was doing, and to barge his way forward.
But he didn’t know how to do it. No matter what he did, somebody always got in front of him. Beat him to the next paving stone, the next street corner, the next shop window. He was always last.
I’ve had enough of this, he thought. When Samuel gets back from the hospital we’re either going to go back home, or to the Seamen’s Employment Exchange.
The hour was up at last. Joel went to the hotel reception and looked expectantly at the bald man, who shook his head ruefully. Samuel hadn’t rung.
‘It always takes time at hospital,’ he said. ‘You have to be patient.’
Joel decided to walk up the stairs, and did so slowly. It was like climbing up an incredibly high mountain. Every step needed all his strength. When he came to the room, the door was locked. The chambermaid had obviously left the key at reception. But why hadn’t the bald man said anything?
Joel hurtled down the stairs. Just as he reached the desk, the man behind it remembered.
‘You forgot the key,’ he said.
Who forgot it? Joel wondered. You or me?
He trudged up the stairs again. To make it easier he imagined that he was really clambering up some steep cliffs.
He unlocked the door. Remembered what had happened during the night. Pictured Samuel sitting on the bed, clutching his stomach.
He lay down on his bed and stared up at the ceiling.
Then he checked to see if the chambermaid had removed the chewing gum.
She hadn’t.
Then he pulled down the blind.
Stood in front of the mirror and thought he looked like the very devil.
Back to his bed again. Now the girl with the shrill voice was sitting on the edge of the bed. Wondering if he had any fags.
He tried to imitate her voice.
Then she lay down next to him. For the first time since he’d woken up, several minutes passed without him thinking about Samuel.
There was a knock on the door.
Joel leapt out of bed.
Samuel, he thought.
But when he opened the door, it was the chambermaid.
‘You’re wanted on the telephone,’ she said.
Joel flew downstairs. But he had no control over the propellers or the wings, and just as he was about to land in reception he tripped over the edge of a carpet and flew headlong over the floor. He knocked over a pile of suitcases belonging to a newly arrived traveller. The bald man burst out laughing and pointed to a little booth with a telephone. Joel closed the door behind him, took a deep breath and picked up the receiver.
‘Joel here,’ he said. ‘Where are you? How are you? When are you coming? I’m here at the hotel, waiting for you.’
There was no answer. All he heard was a little click. The line went dead. He shouted in vain at the receiver. But Samuel wasn’t there. Nobody was there. He replaced the receiver and went back to the desk.
‘There was nobody there,’ he said.
‘Really?’
‘What did he say?’
‘Who?’
‘Samuel. My father.’
‘It was a woman asking for you. Presumably a nurse.’
‘But why was I cut off?’
‘It happens. No doubt they’ll ring again.’
Joel sat down to wait. After half an hour he gave up and went back up the stairs.
They weren’t a mountain any longer.
They were an abyss.
He lay down on the bed to wait. Then he got up, took Samuel’s penknife and scraped the chewing gum off the back of the picture.
‘Don’t say anything,’ he said to the woman in the painting.
Then he hung it up again.
He went down the corridor to the toilet.
When he came back he couldn’t be bothered to lie down again.
He tried to improve the repair to the broken handle on Samuel’s suitcase.
In the end it came off altogether.
Just then there was another knock on the door.
Joel leapt to his feet.
Opened the door.
There was a woman standing outside. Wearing a blue jacket.
But Joel recognised her immediately.
Despite the fact that the night before, she had been wearing a green coat when she emerged from the front door of Östgötagatan 32.
8
Joel searched.
He searched frantically. He eventually thought he’d found what he was looking for. Around her eyes. They were similar to his.
But he was staring at her in horror. When he looked back later, he could distinctly remember thinking that this wasn’t how he’d imagined it was going to happen. Meeting Mummy Jenny.
How many times had he experienced this meeting in his imagination? Conjured up the circumstances? He didn’t know. He had pictured them meeting in a street. Or on a beach. Or in the depths of a forest.
But never like this, in a hotel called The Raven, opening a door and expecting to see Samuel standing there.
She had walked into the room and closed the door behind her. Joel was still staring at her.
‘Where is he?’ she asked.
Her voice was dry and tense.
That was also something Joel had wondered about many times. What was his mum’s voice like?
Now he knew. Dry and tense.
‘Samuel isn’t here,’ Joel said.
‘Where is he? When will he be coming?’
Joel decided on the spur of the moment not to tell her the truth. Not to say that Samuel had stomach pains and had gone to the hospital.
‘He’s gone out. I don’t know when he’ll be back.’
Then there was a question he wanted answering right away.
‘Was it you who phoned?’
‘Yes. But I wanted to meet you in person rather than on the telephone.’
Well, that’s one way in which we are similar, at least, Joel thought. I don’t like speaking on the phone either.
She was in the middle of the room now. Joel had backed away towards the window. He was still staring at her all the time. Even so, he wasn’t at all sure that he could really see her. She was a sort of mirage. Something that existed and yet didn’t exist.
She sat down on the very edge of the chair. It struck Joel that she might be just as scared as he was.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ she said, studying her hands.
Joel immediately looked at his.
Silence.
What can I say if she doesn’t know what to say? Joel thought. He’d stopped staring at her now. He was embarrassed instead. He glanced surreptitiously at her as she studied her hands.
He’d always imagined that this occasion would be full of joy. When he met his mum at long last. Not a time for stares and embarrassment.
All the pictures he’d imagined had been a waste of time. Nothing had turned out as he’d expected.
He kept on looking surreptitiously at her. All the time looking for similarities. Her hair was soft and curly. Not tufty like his. Her eyes were blue, the same as his. But she was small in stature. And thin. In a way, she was like Samuel.
Then it occurred to Joel that she was also pretty. If Jenny Rydén really was his mum, he’d been lucky. He had a good-looking mother. The question now was whether she wanted a son looking like Joel.
At that moment she looked up from her hands.
‘I don’t know what I should say. But I suppose I ought to say I’m sorry.’
Her eyes were moist, Joel got a lump in his throat immediately.
She stood up and turned her back on him. She took a handkerchief out of her handbag. Joel recognised it from the previous night.
She turned round again. Now she was smiling. Joel could see that her teeth where white and regular. Not like his own, that seemed to point in various directions.
‘I wish Samuel was here,’ she said. ‘But at the same time, I’m glad he’s not.’
She sat down on the chair again. And looked at him. All the time she was slowly shaking her head.
Joel broke into a sweat. She doesn’t like me, he thought. She’d expected something completely different.
That made him feel angry. He didn’t know where the anger came from, but he had no say in the matter. He suddenly wanted to tell her about how it had been. All those years. All those thoughts, dreams, fantasies.
She interrupted his train of thought.
‘You are so big,’ she said. ‘But you were so little then.’
‘It was Elinor who sent Samuel a letter,’ said Joel. ‘But we couldn’t find a grocer’s shop.’
‘I stopped working there when it closed down,’ she said. ‘But how did you manage to find me at Autumn Light?’
Joel shrugged. But he said nothing.
‘When Arne came and told me you’d been there, I couldn’t understand what he was talking about. I thought he was making it up. But when he said that you spoke with a northern accent, I realised it must be you. No matter how unlikely it seemed. And he remembered the name of the hotel. The Raven. So I rang. And now I’m here.’
‘I’ve just left school,’ said Joel. ‘It was that letter from Elinor. Samuel thought we ought to come here. So that I could find out what you looked like.’
He regretted that last sentence the moment he’d said it. But she wasn’t annoyed. Instead, she stood up.
‘Can’t we go out? It’s so hot in here. And I want to talk to you on your own, before Samuel comes back. I don’t even know if I want to see him.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t know. So much of this is hard to cope with.’
‘I think he wants to see you.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
She shook her head again.
‘Let’s go out,’ she said.
Joel looked at the
Celestine
.
‘This is for you,’ he said. ‘From Samuel as well.’
He pointed.
‘I remember that,’ she said slowly. ‘It was in the kitchen.’
‘Yes,’ said Joel. ‘It’s always been on the kitchen wall. And it’s for you.’
He produced the cardboard box they’d kept it in, that had been stashed away under the bed.
‘It’s for you,’ he said again.
‘Why should it be for me?’
‘We couldn’t think of a better present for you,’ said Joel. ‘Samuel thought you should have an elk steak. But I didn’t agree. And so this is what we agreed on.’
‘An elk steak?’
‘Yes – but to get one at this time of year Samuel would have had to go poaching.’
She burst out laughing.
‘Nobody but Samuel would ever have thought of an elk steak,’ she said. ‘Nobody but him.’
Joel wasn’t sure how he ought to interpret what she had said. Was it positive or negative? He didn’t know.
She suddenly took hold of his arm. It was the first time she’d touched him. The first time he’d felt her hand. He’d been so little all that time ago that he had no memories of it at all.
It also made him feel a bit scared. Was this really his mother, standing there in front of him? This Jenny Rydén? Or could it be somebody just pretending to be his mum?
‘There’s such a lot I’d like to explain,’ she said. ‘I don’t know where to start. And I don’t even know if I can.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Joel. ‘That’s life.’
‘That’s what Samuel used to say: “That’s life.”’
Joel seemed to recall that it was really Geegee who’d said that. But perhaps it was something everybody said when they were grown up.
That’s life.
She was still holding on to his arm, and more or less whisked him to the door. She was holding the cardboard box in her other hand.
‘I can carry that for you,’ said Joel.
She gave him the box.
Joel locked the door. Jenny Rydén pressed the button for the lift.
I’m about to travel in a lift with my mum, Joel thought. If the lift crashes and we’re killed, at least I’ll have met her. Assuming she really is my mum.
‘Why are you called Rydén?’ he asked.
The words just came tumbling out of his mouth. He ought to have bars there, just in front of his teeth, to prevent words from jumping out whenever they felt like it.

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