That was the first of probably four hundred times we would come to hear the “theft verse” in school. But you could tell the Thief was scared because he looked like he was ready to fight. He turned and started walking out in front of our enormous group towards the back of the large red schoolhouse, and the space between him and the rest of us was filled with our contempt. In back of the building a ladder hung down from the roof, and it swayed back and forth in the wind.
“I bet you I can climb up there and draw a cross on the roof,” he said, spitting the words out at us. And some of us spat back: “The hell you can!” But by the time the challenge had left our mouths he was already several steps up.
So we sat down in the grass and followed his steep ascent. Like little angry dogs his hands clamped their teeth onto the ladder’s rungs with more and more fury the higher he went. We understood of course that he was very scared, and the closer he got to the top the more he began to slow down in hope that the school bell would ring. The wind was blowing much harder now, ripping into the ladder. We let him climb three-quarters of the way up before we finally shouted that the teacher was coming. That was his sentence for stealing.
But then everything else went as usual. He got to sit on our bench in the hallway during lunch, eating sandwiches like the rest of us. The girls sat on a different bench, towards which we all threw our crumpled sandwich wrappers. Only Sivert had nowhere to sit. Most of the time he just stood by the window, drawing pictures of queer little people on the white sill with his pencil. Sometimes he would go outside and throw stones at the birch trees, and then we would get up and go to the window to see what he had drawn, filled with a strange sort of resentment. We always hoped the teacher would come along and get a look at what Sivert had drawn.
During lunch my friend Inge and I always sat together. His father owned a vegetable stand, and maybe that’s why he always had cucumber on his sandwiches. He detested cucumbers, but he was too timid to say anything at home. Sometimes I got salted meat in my sandwiches. At home they thought I liked salted meat because that’s what I had always been given when I lived in Stockholm. But what they didn’t know was that back then I was in the habit of dropping my salted meat into one of the empty desks at school. Naturally, Inge and I could have exchanged sandwiches, but he didn’t like salted meat either. For that matter I didn’t like cucumber. So one day it occurred to us that we could take the thin slices of salted meat and cucumber and drop them discreetly behind our lunch bench, which stood against the wall and extended all the way to the floor. That entire fall and throughout the winter we dropped salted meat and cucumber behind the bench, and on our way home from school we fantasized about how a flood of salted meat and cucumber would flow out over the floor and drown the whole school if we ever moved that bench. But we never dared to move it. Instead, we continually searched for new places behind the bench to drop our toppings so that the load would be distributed as evenly as possible.
But it so happened that one week it was my turn to stay behind after school to air out the classroom, clean the chalkboard, and clap the erasers. And just as I was finishing up I was gripped by a sudden terrible desire to see what it looked like behind our bench. I was nearly overcome by disgust as I thought about the sight that awaited me, and several times I walked out into the hallway, whistling and turning around. To delay the decisive moment a little longer, I began to throw chalk, first trying to hit the teacher’s desk and then the fat Gustavus Adolphus who hung on the wall right behind it. Then I went around the room, lifting up the girls’ desktops and looking through their things. I was very curious, but also a little proud of myself, because I didn’t feel the need to steal anything.
At last I knew it was time to get going, and even then I couldn’t resist the temptation. I practically threw the bench out from the wall and then stopped to listen for the dull groan of the landslide. But there wasn’t a single sound in that whole dark building. I got down on my knees and felt along the wall from one end of the bench to the other, at any moment expecting my hand to slide through something dark and horrible. But all I could feel was the naked wood. Not one single piece of our sandwiches was back there.
