A Bridge to the Stars (2 page)

His first question will be why they don't live by the
sea. That might not be the most important question, but
he wants to start with something that isn't too hard.

For every question he writes down, he also tries to
work out what possible answers there might be, and
what answer he would most like to hear.

Then he wants to know why he was born in
Sundsvall.

And why Jenny, his mother, went off in a train and
left him with Mrs Westman.

That's also difficult because he never knows what to
say whenever anybody asks him why he doesn't have a
mother.

He's the only one. The only person he knows who
doesn't have a mother.

Being the only one can often be a good thing.

Being the only one with a model aeroplane made of
balsa wood, or having a bike with a steel-studded tyre
on the back wheel.

But being the only one without a mother is a bad
thing.

It's worse than wearing glasses.

It's even worse than stuttering.

Being without a mother is the worst thing there is.

The only mum allowed not to be there is a mum
who's died.

He sometimes thinks he will give that answer when
somebody asks, or is taunting him. He's tested it to
hear what it sounds like.

'My mum died.'

But there are lots of ways of saying that. You can say
it to make it sound as if she died in a dramatic plane
crash in some far distant country, when she was on
some urgent mission. Or you can say it to suggest that
she was attacked by a lion.

'My mother's dead' is another way he could say it.

That makes it sound as if he doesn't really care.

But when he finds the photograph that morning,
when his dad's asleep with his head on the kitchen
table, he knows that his mother isn't dead. And he
knows that he has to find out what happened.

Every night before he goes to sleep he thinks up a
story with her in it, something he can lie and fantasise
about before he dozes off. The one he likes best is
when he imagines she is a figurehead on the bows of a
ship with three tall masts and lots of billowing sails.

Sometimes he's the captain of the ship, sometimes
it's his father. They always very nearly capsize but
manage to make their way through the submerged
rocks and sandbanks in the end. It's a good dream
because he can think up lots of different endings.

But sometimes when he's in a bad mood he allows
the ship to sink and the figurehead is buried two
thousand fathoms deep. The exhausted crew manage to
scramble onto a desert island, but he lets Jenny, his
mother, disappear for ever at the bottom of the sea.

Samuel Island or Joel Island. The desert island they
eventually land on is never called Jenny Island.

It's usually when he's been annoyed by Otto that he
lets the ship sink.

Even if he's generally on his guard, always ready for
somebody in the school playground to start asking
awkward questions, Otto has a way of creeping up on
him on the sly and catching him out when he's
forgotten to have an answer ready.

Otto is older than Joel and is repeating a year
because he has some illness or other and nobody
understands what it is. Sometimes he's off school for
months on end, and if he misses any more this year
he'll have to repeat the year yet again. Otto's father is
a fireman with the railway, and if you're lucky you can
go with Otto and see what goes on in the engine sheds.

But Joel isn't one of those allowed to go along. He
and Otto are usually at each other's throats.

'If I'd have been a mum and had a son like you, I'd
have run away as well,' says Otto out of the blue, loud
enough for everybody in the school yard to hear.

Joel doesn't know what to say.

'My mum's a figurehead,' he says. 'But I don't
suppose you know what that is.'

The answer he hasn't prepared at all seems to be a
good one, because Otto doesn't respond.

The next time I'll hold my tongue and just thump
him one, Joel thinks. I'm bound to get beaten up
because he's older and bigger than me. But maybe I'll
be able to bite him. . .

The next class is geography. Miss Nederström
emerges from the staff room where she makes tea and
solves crossword puzzles during the lesson breaks. She
has a club foot and she's been Joel's teacher ever since
he started school.

Once he put on an act to amuse the rest of the pupils
by walking behind her, imitating her limp.

She suddenly turned round and smiled.

'You're very good,' she said. 'That's exactly how I
walk.'

If she hadn't had a club foot Joel could well imagine
having her as a mum. But Miss Nederström is in fact a
Mrs and has children of her own with the surveyor
she's married to.

Geography is Joel's best subject. He never forgets
what his father tells him, and he has a diary with maps
of all the countries of the world in it. He knows where
Pamplemousse and Bogamaio are, although he's not at
all sure how to pronounce them.

Nobody else in the class knows as much about the
world as Joel. Perhaps he doesn't know all that much
about Sweden, but he knows more than anybody else
about what lies beyond the dark forests and over the
sea.

No sooner have they sat down than Otto puts his
hand up. Joel doesn't realise he's done so because Otto
sits in the row behind him.

Miss Nederström nods at him.

'Do you want to go home?' she asks. 'Don't you feel
well?'

Otto rarely puts his hand up unless he's feeling ill.
But this time he has a question.

'What is a figural head?' he asks.

Joel gives a start and feels his heart beginning to
pound. He might have known. That bastard Otto! He's
going to be shown up now. Everybody heard what he
said about his mother being a figurehead.

'Come again,' said Miss Nederström. 'What did you
say it was?'

'A figural head,' said Otto again.

'No, it's called a figurehead,' said Miss Nederström.

Don't tell him, thought Joel. Don't tell him. . .

And she doesn't.

'Is there anybody in the class who knows what a
figurehead is?' she asks.

Nobody answers, least of all Joel, the only one who
knows.

Then Otto puts his hand up again.

'Joel knows,' he said. 'His mum is a figural . . . one of
those things . . . '

Miss Nederström looks at Joel.

'Where on earth did you get that from?' she said. 'A
figurehead is a wooden carving attached to the bows of
a ship. Not nowadays, but in the old days when they
had sailing ships. Nobody can have a mum made of
wood.'

Joel has time to swear that he hates both Miss
Nederström and Otto before the whole class bursts into
cruel laughter.

'You know a lot about all kinds of unusual things,'
says Miss Nederström, 'but I must say you sometimes
get carried away by your imagination.'

Joel stares down at his desk lid, feels his face turning
red, and he hates and hates as hard as he can.

'Joel,' says Miss Nederström. 'Look at me!'

He slowly raises his head that feels as heavy as a
block of stone,

'There's nothing wrong with having imagination and
making things up,' she says, 'but you must distinguish
between what is fantasy and what is real. You
remember that time about the water-lilies?'

The water lilies! Of course he remembers, even
though he's been trying to forget. The outsize water
lilies on Mauritius that his father had once told him
about. As big as the centre circle of the ice-hockey
pitch they create every winter on the flat, sandy space
outside the school by spraying water onto it and
allowing it to freeze – the temperature never rises
above zero, and they can play on it for months.

One day everybody in the class was asked to talk
about something exciting they'd read about or heard
somebody talking about.

Joel had told the story of the water lilies on
Mauritius.

'I don't suppose they are really as big as that,' Miss
Nederström had said when he'd finished his piece.

He had been silly enough to insist he was right.

'They are as big as that,' he said. 'Maybe even
bigger.'

'Who told you that?' asked Miss Nederström.

'My dad saw them when he was a sailor,' said Joel,
'and he bloody well knows what he's talking about.'

He didn't know where the swearword had come
from. But Miss Nederström was angry and sent him out
of the classroom.

After that he'd made up his mind never to say
anything about far-distant lands again in class. How are
they supposed to know what reality looks like? All
they've ever seen is snow and the endless forests.

He trudges home from school through the snow
flurries. It's started to get dark already even though it's
only early afternoon.

I'm eleven years old now, he thought. One of these
days I'll be an old man, and eventually I shall die. But
by then I'll be a long way away from here, a long way
away from all this snow and that Otto who can never
keep his mouth shut.

His nose is running, and he hurries on home.

He collects a kilo of potatoes from Svenson's, the
grocer's; a pack of butter and a loaf of bread. Svenson,
who's never fully sober and has grease stains on his
jacket, notes the items down in his notebook.

I go shopping like a bloody mum, he thought angrily.
First I buy the goods on tick, then I boil the potatoes.
I'm like a mother to myself.

As he passes through the garden gate, hanging
skewwhiff from its hinges, it dawns on him that this
house will never float away down the river. There will
never be a suitable wind. It might have been better to
smash the house up, like his dad had told him they did
to old tubs past their sell-by date.

He runs up the dark, creaking staircase, opens the
door to their flat and lights a fire in the stove before
he's even started to take his boots off.

Something has to happen, he thinks. I don't want to
wait any longer.

While the potatoes are boiling he searches tentatively
through his dad's room for the photograph of his mum,
Jenny. He sifts through books and clothes, and all the
rolled-up sea charts, but he doesn't find anything.

Has he taken the photo into the forest with him? he
wonders. Why is he keeping it from me?

He decides to ask his father that the moment he
comes home, before he's even had time to take off his
woolly hat.

It's my mum after all, he thinks. Why is he keeping
her from me?

But when he hears his father's footsteps coming up
the stairs, he knows he isn't going to ask him anything.

He daren't. Instead he asks his dad to repeat the
story about the enormous water lilies that only exist in
the botanical gardens in Mauritius.

Samuel sits down on the edge of Joel's bed.

'Wouldn't you rather hear about something else?' he
asks. 'I've told you about the water lilies so many
times.'

'Not tonight,' Joel tells him. 'Tonight I want to hear
something I've heard about before.'

Afterwards he lies down in the dark, listening to the
beams twisting and creaking.

Something's got to happen, he tells himself before he
dozes off with the sheets pulled up to his chin.

He suddenly wakes up in the middle of the night.
And that's when, as he gets out of bed and tiptoes over
to the window, he sees that solitary dog running off
towards the stars.

There are two things Joel Gustafson wants.

A new stove and a bicycle.

He can't quite make up his mind which of those is the
more important. He realises that two things can never be
equally important at the same time, but he's unsure
when it comes to choosing between the stove and the
bicycle.

He knows of nobody apart from himself and his father
who cook food on an old iron, wood-burning stove.

Everybody has an electric cooker nowadays. Nobody
but him has to chop up kindling, carry in firewood and
wait for ever and a day until the so-called hotplates have
heated up sufficiently to boil the water for the potatoes.

It is a real pain, having to stand by the stove every day
after school, making sure the fire doesn't go out. That's
the kind of thing people used to have to do. Not now,
though, not in the spring of 1956.

One day he plucks up enough courage to ask his father.

The wood had been damp and wouldn't ignite. In
addition, he'd burnt himself on the pan when the
potatoes were finally ready.

'Don't you think we should get rid of this old stove?'
he says.

Samuel looks up from the kitchen bench, where he's
lying down and thumbing through a newspaper.

'What's wrong with the stove?' he asks. 'Has it
cracked?'

What's wrong with it? Joel asks himself. Everything
is wrong with it. The biggest thing wrong with it is that
it's not an electric cooker.

'Everybody has an electric cooker,' he says. 'Everybody
but us.'

His father peers at him over his reading glasses.

'How many people do you think have a model ship
called
Celestine
?' he asks. 'How many apart from us?
Should we get rid of that as well? So that we are like
everybody else?'

Joel doesn't like it when his dad answers a question
by asking another one. That makes it hard to stick to the
point that really matters. But this time he's going to be
insistent.

'If I'm going to have to carry on boiling potatoes, I
want an electric cooker,' he says.

Then he says something he hadn't intended to say
at all.

'If I'm the mother in this household.'

His father turns serious, and looks at him long and
hard without responding.

Joel wishes he could read his father's thoughts.

'An electric cooker is quite expensive,' says Samuel
in the end. 'But we'll buy one as soon as I've saved up
enough money. I promise. If that's how you feel.'

At that moment Joel loves his father. Only somebody
who's been a sailor understands immediately what you
mean, he thinks. Only somebody who's learnt how to
make important decisions while terrible storms are
raging on the seven seas understands when it's time to
throw out an old wood-burning stove.

At the same time he's a bit sorry he didn't start by
mentioning the bicycle. Now it's too late. Now he'll
have to wait with that for a few weeks at least. You can't
ask for two things at the same time, that's one thing too
many.

He works it out in his head.

Today is March 3rd. He won't be able to get a bike for
at least a month. But there will still be snow everywhere
and it would be impossible to ride it. That's good. That
means he wouldn't need to be the last boy in the school
with no bicycle. But he ought to have mentioned the
electric cooker much earlier. I must remember that in
future, he thinks. Never wait too long before asking for
something.

But more important than both the cooker and the bike
is the dog.

The night Joel asked his dad about the electric cooker,
he lies in bed unable to sleep. He can hear the radio that
Samuel is listening to through the wall. There's still
music playing. If he's still awake when the pips sound
before the news, he'll be very tired when he has to get
up for school tomorrow morning.

He listens to the cold that is making the walls creak.
The rafters are groaning and sighing. Soon the days will
grow longer and lighter. The snowdrifts will melt away,
just as they always do. The first cowslips will eventually
appear, glowing yellow by the side of the road.

Joel decides to go looking for the dog.

If it hasn't yet reached a star, I shall find it, he thinks.

He decides to go looking for the dog during the night.
Night after night when his dad has fallen asleep, he'll
get up, get dressed and sneak out into the darkness.

Perhaps everything is different at night-time. Perhaps
the dog is only visible at night. Just think, there might be
Day People and Night People. People who are only
visible at night. Children who go to school at night.
Parents who chop down trees in the forest or go out
shopping. Night People and Night Schools, Night Cars
and Night Houses, Night Churches and a Night Sun. Not
the moon, but a real sun that is only visible to the people
who live during the night.

He can hear that the late news has started on the radio.
Samuel has turned up the volume because he no doubt
thinks Joel will be asleep now. In fact Joel is wide awake,
lying in his bed and waiting for his dad to drop off to sleep
before getting up and going out into the night.

This is how an adventure ought to start. An adventure
you create for yourself, that you are the only person
involved in . . .

The news comes to an end and Joel hears his dad
switch off the radio and go out into the kitchen to get
washed.

Joel knows exactly what his dad does. First he washes
his face, then he brushes his teeth, and then he gargles.
When he switches the light off in the kitchen he usually
clears his throat.

Joel waits impatiently for everything to go quiet. But
before he realises what's happening he falls asleep, and
when he wakes up it's morning and his father has
already disappeared into the forest.

Joel is tired and annoyed when he forces himself to
get out of bed. The cork floor tiles never feel as cold as
they do when he hasn't had enough sleep. Moreover his
buttonholes are too small and his socks too tight, and he
hits his head on the hood over the stove when he tries to
warm his hands.

He has often wondered what actually happens when
he falls asleep. He's tried imagining a little creature
wandering about inside him, snuffing out a series of wax
candles, and when it's completely dark, he's asleep. It
will be one of those Night People, he thinks.

They want to be left in peace during the night. They
want us to sleep.

He doesn't really want to go to school today. He
would prefer to creep back into bed and go back to
sleep, so that he's properly rested when night comes. He
doesn't want to miss out on his newly thought-up
adventure yet again.

But he puts on his rubber boots and clears the stairs in
four jumps. He's made up his mind that before his
twelfth birthday he will get to the bottom in three hops.

When he turns off by the church he starts running so
as not to be late. Miss Nederström doesn't like her
pupils arriving late. If you do, you have to stand up and
explain why. And then there's the risk of Otto marching
up to you at break asking why your mother didn't wake
you up in time.

He takes a short cut along the white paths through the
churchyard, taking a quick look round to see if there are
any new graves. As usual he jumps over a black
headstone where it says 'The Family Grave of Nils
Wiberg, Farmer of this Parish', but it's icy underneath
the snow today and he slips and hurts his bottom.

Ghosts exist even though he doesn't believe in them.
Perhaps it's Nils Wiberg who doesn't like the idea of
Joel jumping over his grave?

He races over the schoolyard and gets to the top of the
stairs just in time. The school bell is ringing and he
imagines that it is the captain of the barque
Celestine
summoning his crew to their stations. This very day in
1956 they will set sail from Bristol and head for Biscay
with a cargo of live horses and some cloth from a textile
mill in Manchester.

Just like his father had told him about. Heading for
Biscay with horses and fabrics.

On the way home from school Joel calls in at the
bookshop and buys a little notebook for two kronor. He
has nineteen kronor stashed away in a tin under his bed.
He uses two of those coins to buy a book in which he can
write down all the things he is sure are going to happen.

Logbook, he knows that's what it's called. Every ship
has a logbook. Every day the skipper notes down what
winds are blowing, the location of the vessel and
anything unusual that has happened. If a ship gets into
difficulties, the logbook always has to be rescued.

'It's the ship's Bible,' his dad told him. 'It tells the
history of the vessel.'

While he's waiting for the potatoes to boil, he sits
down at the kitchen table with his notebook and a pencil
in front of him.

'The Search For The Dog That Headed For A Star', he
writes on the cover. He underlines the first letter of
every word and inserts a few vowels so that he can
pronounce it. THESEFOTHEDOTHFAS.

That's the code for a secret society of course, he
thinks. A secret society whose name nobody will be able
to guess. He starts writing on the first page.

'The search for the dog that headed for a star began on
March 8, 1956. The weather was fine. Clear sky, plus
four degrees, colder towards evening.' He reads what he
has written and has the feeling that the adventure is now
under way. It's already there inside him. When you have
an adventure inside you the only thing that matters is
what happens next. Just as on a ship like the
Celestine
.

The figurehead on the bows always looks ahead.
Never backwards.

He suddenly has an idea.

He will hide the logbook in the
Celestine
's display
case. If he lifts the model up carefully he can put the
book underneath her so that nobody can see it. Of course
that's where the logbook ought to be!

The evening passes so unbearably slowly. Joel lies
down on his bed and tries to read a book, but he can't
concentrate. He fetches a needle and thread and tries to
darn a hole in his sock. He can usually do this rather
well, but tonight the thread gets tangled and he has to cut
it away. He goes into his father's room and sits with him,
listening to the radio.

A man with a high-pitched voice is going on about
how important it is for cows to have enough space in
their stalls.

He glances at Samuel, who is sitting in his worn-out
armchair with his eyes closed.

Is he really listening to this? Joel wonders. Surely he's
not interested in cows?

Suddenly it seems as if his dad has read Joel's
thoughts.

'You forgot to buy milk from Mr Svenson today,' he
said. 'Don't forget tomorrow.'

If the adventure and the secret society are not going to
be exposed, it's important that he doesn't forget anything.
Everything has to be exactly the same as usual.

'I won't forget tomorrow,' he says. 'I'll get some milk
tomorrow.'

'It's getting late,' says his dad. 'Time to go to bed.'

Joel creeps into bed and lies waiting.

When the news has finished, Joel can hear his father
gargling. He can see through the crack in the door when
the light goes out. There are some creaking noises from
the bed, then all is quiet. He waits for a bit longer before
getting dressed. He knows there is a loose floorboard in
the kitchen but even so he treads in the wrong place and
makes a creaking noise.

He holds his breath and listens hard in the darkness.

Samuel hasn't heard anything.

Joel carefully opens the front door with his boots and
jacket in his hand, and sneaks out into the vestibule. He
laces up his boots, buttons up his jacket and pulls his
woolly hat down over his ears. He's ready now. The
secret society THESEFOTHEDOTHFAS has embarked
on its journey out into the unknown . . .

When he emerges into the open it's cold and totally
still. The weak streetlamps cast a yellow glow over the
piled-up snow. He cautiously makes his way out through
the gate and looks round. He can hear a car in the
distance. He stands absolutely still until the engine noise
has died away.

Then he starts walking through the deserted little
town. For no special reason he finds himself taking the
route he usually follows when going to school. But
everything is different at night.

He has the feeling that the black houses, the shuttered
windows, are looking at him, not the other way round.
And his boots are making a very loud crunching noise in
the cold snow. He stops outside the Grand Hotel and
watches a cat climbing over the fence to Franzen's garage.
But there is no sign of any people. Not until he's passing
Hultman's shoe shop does he hear some people laughing
from behind a lit-up window on the second floor.

It feels comforting to know that he's not entirely on
his own.

He allows the laughing people to become members of
his secret society.

They'll never know anything about it, but they can't
stop me letting them join it.

He walks back through the town, down towards the
river and the railway bridge with its enormous iron
arches. He walks along one of the rails until he's in the
middle of the bridge. He leans over the parapet and
looks down at the ice below. Then he looks up at the sky.
There are no clouds and he can see the stars glimmering
like candles up above him.

If I were to climb up one of the arches, I'd get closer
to them, he thinks.

He decides to introduce a hero's rule. Nobody can be
a full member of the secret society, not even he, until
they've climbed over one of the arches.

He's starting to feel cold and tired. He hasn't even
thought about looking for the dog. But he has plenty of
nights ahead of him. Besides, it will soon be spring, and
the nights will get warmer and lighter.