“I ain’t gonna make you clean up your mess on the footpath out front, not this time, but you can be damn sure you’re gonna scrub all the puke off the front stoop!”
And I remember waking up again, a while later, with no trousers on my legs, ’cause of course they got caught on a metal latch and torn at the knee as I stumbled through the gate drunk. So Lydia, she was up early sewing them together again in the kitchen. And then I had to sneak down to the basement to have a stiff one in secret to steady myself. And the rest of them, they could see it in my step, ’cause there wasn’t anything else in my stomach. If it wasn’t for the old man I’d have had to make it over to the car on my own, but he took me by the arm. And then I got woozy from the drink and had motion sickness in the car, so it took us right up to the last minute before we all got to the church, they had to drive so damn slow. And then down in the dead room Nisse and Ulrik unfastened the coffin lid, and there lay Mamma with her pointy nose, so yellow and scrawny. And then Ulrik laid the handkerchief back over her again and I was weeping so bad I almost put out the flame on the candle I was holding. And then there was the sound of that lid creaking the way it did as they screwed it back on for the last time. And the caretaker, he walked ahead of the rest of us as we took up the coffin.
“You ain’t so sturdy,” Ulrik said to me, “so you get in back.”
And truth be told, I didn’t look like much in that suit, so I pulled up the rear. And boy, was it full in the church. Mostly old folks, sitting there staring. It was July and hot like the blazes, so the sweat was just pouring off me, and what a relief it was when I could put my end of the coffin down in front of the altar. And then afterwards I just held my handkerchief up in front of my face, and the gravel from the priest’s trowel sounded like a rattlesnake. And then up we went again to bear the coffin, and my shoulder was aching something awful, so bad I could scream. And I got the straps mixed up ’cause I was flustered. And Nisse, he wanted to say something smart to me, I could tell, but then I guess he remembered he was in church, so he bit his tongue. And I held up my end as best I could going out the church, but all the way back over to the dead house I felt sick right down to my toes. And Mamma, well, she was starting to smell a little. Just a little. Maybe I was the only one that noticed. And then as we was all lowering her into the grave I let go just a bit too soon, I was so wiped out. If the others wasn’t a good bit stronger than me to begin with, the whole thing would’ve just crashed down into the hole. I really wanted to speak a word there at the grave, but I couldn’t get a word out for all my bawling, so I just dropped in the wreath. And then we all headed back to the cars for the ride back to the funeral dinner. And at table Lydia leaned over to me and whispered that I brought too much brännvin, ’cause now all the old guys was getting drunk. I told her I thought Mamma would’ve liked to be here for this.
“She’d have been so goddamn happy to see everybody having such a good time!”
And must be I said this a little too loud, ’cause the looks I got from my brothers and sisters, well, it was enough to make a man’s blood run cold. But the old man, he saw it just the same way. He was getting good and tight himself by then, and who could blame him for that? The old man never did have much of a chance in this house to let go of things. And that evening me and him sat down together in his room here.
And that’s something you’ll never forget.
And as you sink now, further and further down, you know it’s gonna be the same tomorrow. The same but not the same. ’Cause the old man, he ain’t gonna be there to invite you into his room and talk to you like you’re a regular person. Ain’t nobody else left but the ones that cluck their tongues at you and treat you like you don’t matter. Tomorrow you’ll be on your own. As alone as it fucking gets. Is it any wonder you lay here now, sobbing yourself to sleep in this room, undressed by your own sister, drifting down into a murky drunken sleep? Is it any wonder you’d like to have your old Icelandic sweater to hold in your hands and stroke under the blanket? And so you ask Lydia one more time.
“Where’s my Icelandic sweater?”
But it’s too late. A second later and you’re out of reach, deep down under, where you don’t hear nothing and there ain’t no understanding.
But no, that’s not really true, ’cause for just a little shit part of one second you hang in there and stay alive. And that’s when you hear Lydia say in a voice weak and weary, but still clear as hell.
“You bastard.”
And a cuckoo calls high up in the air.
The old man’s clock is going again.
Acknowledgments
A number of stories in this collection first appeared in the following publications: “The Midsummer Night’s Chill is Hard,” Lightship Review 1, 2013; “The Stockholm Car,” Agni Online, 2013; “The Surprise,” Southern California Anthology 8. Los Angeles, CA: University of Southern California, 1996, 60–66; “Men of Character,” Southern Review 32:1. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University, 1996, 59–79; “Salted Meat and Cucumber,” Prism International 34:2. Vancouver, British Columbia: University of British Columbia, 1996, 54–60; “Sleet,” Confrontation 54/55. New York: Long Island University, 1994, 53–62; “The Games of Night,” Black Warrior Review 20:2. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama, 1994, 107–17; “In Grandmother’s House,” Quarterly West 38. Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah, 1994, 160–67; “To Kill a Child,” Grand Street 42. New York, 1992, 96–100.
Stig Dagerman’s letter to Karl Werner Aspenström, which appears in the translator’s note on page 14, is quoted from Robin Fulton Macpherson’s introduction to Stig Dagerman’s German Autumn (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011), 1.
The translator gratefully acknowledges the support of the Swedish Arts Council. He also wishes to thank the Dagerman Society for their invaluable support of the translation process, in particular the encouragement and helpful advice of the society’s chairperson, Bengt Söderhäll.