The Wrecking Crew (11 page)

They’d taken a slice right out of the middle of it, like a dentist preparing a tooth for a gold inlay; and the funny thing was, the place looked familiar. I knew a dozen canyons like it back home: the color and shape were just right. Except for the shacks and machines far down at the bottom, I could have been looking into a section of the canyon of the San Juan, or the Salt River, or even certain parts of the Rio Grande. It was quite a sight, when you considered that it had practically been dug by hand.

I got to work, to the accompaniment of a running lecture by Lindström on the technical aspects of the operation, most of which I already knew from reading Lou’s article. We photographed the ten-o’clock blast: they fire off about two hundred kilograms of dynamite morning and evening to knock the stuff loose so the power shovels can handle it. Two hundred kilograms, Lou informed me, is better than four hundred pounds. It made as much noise as you’d expect, and there was a satisfactory amount of dust and flying debris for the camera. After the fumes had cleared, we went below and spent the day taking pictures of tunnels and tracks and buildings and machines and magnetite ore in all shapes and manifestations.

Twice we were stopped by officious persons who came up to tell us that picture-taking was
förbjuden
in these sacred precincts, but Lou had arranged for the proper
tillstånd,
or permission, so the guardians of security were forced to retire in confusion. I had to hand it to the girl. She had the situation completely under control. She also knew exactly what she wanted, and she wasn’t a bit bashful about telling me what it was. All I had to do was aim the box as ordered and push the button. It wasn’t the way I was accustomed to working, but I let it go, contenting myself with taking an extra shot here and there when it looked as if she
^:
was passing up something nice and picturesque.

It was a hard day, and I was glad I was in reasonable condition; she didn’t drag her feet much. In the evening, aside from a little dust here and there, and a run in one stocking due to an unfortunate encounter with some machinery—for which Herr Lindström had apologized profusely—she looked as fresh as a peach on the tree.

“Well, we made a good start today,” she said cheerfully, helping me gather up the equipment as the limousine drove away. “Another day should see us finished there, if the weather holds. Then one more day to cover some of the smaller mines in the area, and after that we’ll start working our way back down along the railroad toward Luleå. There’s a place called Stora Malmberget, which means The Great Ore Mountain—isn’t that a wonderful name?—and then I want the docks at Luleå, of course. All the ore goes out that way in summer, and down through the Baltic by ship, but after the ice comes in the fall they have to send it over the mountains to Narvik, which stays open all year because of the Gulf Stream. We’ll come back here and finish up the job with that end of the operation. I certainly hope the weather stays clear. It was fine today, wasn’t it?”

She sounded enthusiastic and full of energy, as if she’d just got out of bed. She sounded as if this article really meant something to her. She was a hard kid to figure out.

“Yes,” I said, “it was fine.” We were outside my door now. I opened up and shoved the stuff I was carrying inside, and relieved her of her burdens. “Well, thanks for the helping hand. How about a drink?”

She shook her head. “No, thanks, and if you don’t mind a little advice, you’d better not have one, either. We’re due out for dinner in—” she glanced at her watch—“in twenty minutes, and unless you know your capacity and Swedish dinners better than I think you do, you won’t want to get a head start. They won’t serve us much in the way of cocktails, but that’s about the only alcoholic beverage they’ll skimp on in any way. So brace yourself, man, brace yourself.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said meekly, and went in to clean myself up for the ordeal.

The house was a large one, and looked pleasantly old-fashioned—two stories and a big attic, at a guess; no ranch houses or split levels here, thank you. We shook hands with the host and hostess, with a small son and daughter who bowed and curtsied prettily, and with a visiting fireman with the title of
Direktör,
a title that was shared by our host, a lean man in his forties. In Sweden, I was catching on, everybody has a title, and if your name is Jones and you’re in charge of the city pound, you’ll be introduced everywhere as Chief Dogcatcher Jones. Women are, on the whole, exempt from this formality, so Lou remained Mrs. Taylor, but I became Journalist Helm.

“There is someone here who wishes much to meet you,” said our hostess, a slender, gray-haired woman who had a little trouble with her English. “A guest from Stockholm. She was much interested when she heard we were entertaining a gentleman named Helm from America. She thinks you may be distantly related. Ah, here she comes now.”

I looked around and saw a girl in a shiny blue dress coming down the stairs. My first impression was that she must have borrowed the dress from a very rich old maiden aunt. It had that look of magnificent quality and complete lack of style and suitability... As I say, the first thing I noticed was the frumpy, shiny dress. Then I saw that the kid was beautiful.

It’s not a word I use lightly. It hasn’t got anything to do with big bosoms and sexy rear ends, in my interpretation, nor even with pretty faces. Hollywood, for instance, is full of women you can bear to look at and wouldn’t mind going to bed with. They even photograph fairly well. But they’re not beautiful, and the very few who are spoil it by working too hard at it.

This girl wasn’t working at all. She didn’t do anything as she came down the stairs, she just came down the damn stairs. She hadn’t put anything on her face you could notice except some lipstick, and that was the wrong color—that ghastly pale morgue-pink stuff—and it didn’t make a damn bit of difference. She was beautiful, and that was all there was to it. It made you want to cry for all the women in the world who were striving so hard for it and would never achieve it.

She was in her early twenties, rather tall and by no means fragile: she had a nice, durable, well-put-together look. She wasn’t even the kind of spectacular blonde you often get in that country. She had straight, light-brown hair that she didn’t, apparently, pay much attention to except to brush it hard morning and night. It was long enough to reach her shoulders. She had blue eyes. What difference does it make? You can’t add it up or analyze it. It’s just there. I will admit that I might be slightly prejudiced. I’m a sucker for that heartbreaking young-and-innocent look, particularly in combination with a fair complexion, after all the years I’ve spent in a land of dark and sultry Spanish-American beauties who knew everything before they were born.

I had a chance to watch her a little longer as she was first introduced to Lou, three or four years older, and then had the visiting Director, a pompous middle-aged man—I never did learn what he was Director of—introduced to her. Then it was my turn.

“Elin, this is Journalist Helm, from America,” our hostess said. “Herr Helm, Fröken von Hoffman.”
Fröken,
as Lou would have hastened to explain, merely means “Miss” in Swedish.

The girl held out her hand. “Yes,” she said, “I have been hoping to meet you, Herr Helm, since I learned in Stockholm you were in this country. We are related, you know. Very, very distant cousins, I think.”

My parents had often talked about coming back here to visit relatives. I did have some, somewhere. This girl could be one. I wasn’t going to disown her, that was for sure.

“I didn’t know,” I said, “but I certainly won’t argue the point, Cousin Ellen.”

“Elin,” she said, smiling. “Ay-linn. I always have that difficulty with Englishmen and Americans. They always want to christen me Ellen or Elaine, but it really is Elin.”

Then some more people came in, and she was borne away on a new tide of introductions and handshaking. There was none of the pre-food dawdling here that you get at home. Everybody being present at the appointed hour, our hostess barely gave us time to absorb the cocktails, so-called, that had been put into our hands—I think they were supposed to be Manhattans, God help them—then the dining-room doors were thrown open and we were introduced to the main business of the evening. It seemed on the whole like an improvement over spending two hours getting blotto while waiting for latecomers to make dramatic, breathless entrances with phony excuses.

Any previous liquor shortage was more than made up during the meal, as Lou had warned me it would be. There were beer and two different kinds of wine, and a promise of cognac to come. The table settings were aweinspiring to a simple New Mexico boy, and for a while I was kept busy noticing who was eating what with what. It was quite a layout to have to tackle without a manual of instructions. My conversation therefore consisted of letting my hostess explain to me the Swedish art of toast-drinking: you look firmly into the eyes of the person you wish to honor, both parties drink, and then you look again before putting your glass down.

You’re not, it seems, supposed to
skål
your host and hostess, and you’re supposed to wait for an older or more important man to take the initiative, after which you must soon return the courtesy, but any lady at the table except your hostess is fair game. In the old days, I was told, a lady could not propose a
skål
—it would have been considered very forward of her—nor was it considered proper for her to drink without a social excuse, so an unpopular girl could perish of thirst with a full glass of wine in front of her.

Having learned all this, I put it to use. I picked up my glass and saluted the kid on the other side of me.

“Skål,
Cousin Elin,” I said.

She looked me in the eyes, as custom demanded, and smiled.
“Skål,
Cousin… Matthew? That is the same as our Matthias, is it not? Do you speak any Swedish at all?”

I shook my head. “I knew a few words when I was a boy, but I’ve forgotten most of them.”

“That is too bad,” she said. “I speak English very badly.”

“Uhuh,” I said. “Half the population of America should speak it as badly as you do. How did you happen to hear of me in Stockholm?”

She said, “It is very simple. You like to hunt, do you not? A man in Stockholm whose business is arranging hunts for foreigners called up old
Överste
Stjernhjelm at Torsåter
—Överste
means Colonel, you know. There is an Ä
lg-hunt
at Torsäter in a week or two. Torsäter is the family estate near Uppsala, one of our two big University towns, sixty kilometers north of Stockholm, about forty of your English miles. Ä
lg,
that is our Swedish moose, not as big as your Canadian variety—”

She wasn’t getting very far. I said, “Cousin, why don’t you just tell the story? When you throw me a word I don’t know, I’ll stop you.”

She laughed. “All right, but you said you didn’t know Swedish... There are usually not many strangers at the Torsäter hunt. It is a small neighborhood affair, but the man in Stockholm said he had an American client, a sportsman and journalist who wanted to write about some typical Swedish hunting, and it would be very nice if Colonel Stjernhjelm would invite him to be a guest. The colonel was not really interested, until he heard that your name was Helm. He remembered that a cousin of his had emigrated to America many years ago and shortened his name. He remembered that there had been a son. The colonel, like many of our old retired people, is very interested in genealogy. Having made certain from his records that you were a member of the family, he tried to reach you in Stockholm, but you had already left. He knew I was planning a visit here, so he called me and asked me to get in touch with you.”

I grinned. “Just get in touch?”

She said, with some embarrassment, “Well, he did want me to let him know what kind of a person you were. So you must behave yourself while I have you under observation, Cousin Matthias, so I can write a favorable report to the colonel. Then he will invite you hunting, I am sure.”

I said, “All right, I’ll be good. Now tell me how we got to be cousins.”

“Very, very distant cousins,” she said, smiling. “It is rather complicated, but I think it was this way: back in 1652, two brothers von Hoffman came here from Germany. One of them married a Miss Stjernhjelm, whose brother was a direct ancestor of yours. The other married another nice Swedish girl and became an ancestor of mine. I hope this is quite clear. If it is not, I’m sure Colonel Stjernhjelm will be delighted to explain it to you when you return south. He has all kinds of genealogical tables at Torsäter.”

I glanced at her. “Sixteen fifty-two, you say?”

She smiled again. “Yes. As I told you, it is not a very close relationship.”

Then, for some reason, she blushed a little. I hadn’t seen a girl do that in years.

When it was time to leave, our host was shocked to learn that Lou and I had arrived in a car and now intended to drive back to the hotel. It seems that the Swedish laws against drunken driving are so strict that you don’t ever drive to a party unless one occupant of the car intends not to drink at all. Otherwise you play safe and take a cab. We were, of course, quite sober and capable, our host agreed, but we’d both imbibed detectable quantities of alcohol, and we couldn’t be allowed to run the risk. A taxi would take us to the hotel, and somebody would deliver our car there in the morning.

At the hotel, we climbed the stairs in silence, and stopped at Lou’s door.

“I won’t ask you in for a drink,” she said. “It would be a crime to dump whisky on top of all that lovely wine and cognac. Besides, I don’t think I could stay awake. Good night, Matt.”

“Good night,” I said, and crossed the hall to my own room, let myself in, closed the door behind me, and grinned wryly. Apparently she’d decided to give me some of my own medicine: two could play it cool as well as one. I yawned, undressed, and went to bed.

Sleep washed over me in a wave, but just as I was losing my last contact with reality, I heard a sound that made me wide awake again. Somewhere an ancient hinge had creaked softly. I listened intently and heard the click of a high heel in the hall; Lou was leaving her room. Well, she could be paying a visit to the communal plumbing. Her room, like mine, boasted only a small curtained cubicle with a lavatory and a neat little locker containing a white enamel receptacle for emergency use.