Yet at last along comes a car which appears to be the right one. A few buildings down from Håkan’s it begins to slow down, rolling past the building next door, stopping with a little squeak at exactly the right entrance. A door opens. It slams shut again. Someone whistles as he jingles the change in his pocket. Håkan’s father usually never whistles. But you can never be too sure about these kinds of things. Why shouldn’t he suddenly take up whistling? The car starts up, it turns at the corner, and then it’s very quiet again on the street. Håkan strains with his ears, listening intently for the familiar sounds in the stairwell. But he never hears the door slam the way it does after someone has entered the hall, he never hears the little clicking sound from the light switch when it’s flipped on, he never hears the dull muffled thud of footfalls growing steadily louder on the steps.
And so Håkan thinks: Why did I leave him so early? I could have stayed with him all the way to the door since we were so close, anyway. Now he’s just standing down there, of course. He’s lost his keys and can’t get in. Maybe he’ll get angry now. Maybe he’ll just leave and not come back till early tomorrow morning, when the door is open. And of course he can’t whistle. Because if he could, he’d certainly whistle up to me or mom to throw down the key.
As quietly as possible Håkan clambers over the edge of the ever-creaking daybed. And in the darkness he stumbles into the kitchen table. Every muscle stiffens as he stands completely still on the cold linoleum floor. But his mother’s sobbing is loud and steady, like the breath of a sleeper, so she hasn’t heard a thing. He moves on toward the window and gently pulls the shade to the side, peeking out. No life stirs on the street, but across the way, just above the doorway of another building, a light suddenly comes on. And at the same time a light appears in the stairwell. Yes, the light above Håkan’s door works exactly the same way.
After a while Håkan begins to get cold and so he silently creeps back to his bed. To make sure he doesn’t knock against the table again, he stretches his hands out in front of him, running them along the edge of the counter. His fingertips suddenly feel something cold, something sharp. For a moment he allows his fingers to run up and down the object, searching, until they grasp around a wooden handle. It’s a carving knife. When he climbs back into bed, he is still holding the knife. He slips under the blanket, pressing it close to his side. And then he is invisible again.
Immediately Håkan is back in that same room, standing in the doorway. He looks on at the men and women who hold his father captive. And he now realizes the only way his father can get free is if he, himself, rescues him — just like the Vikings did it when they rescued missionaries who were tied to stakes, about to be cooked by cannibals.
And so Håkan sneaks forward with his invisible knife and sinks it deep into the back of the fat man sitting next to his father. The fat man dies and Håkan starts to make his way around the table. One by one his victims slide down out of their chairs without ever really having the chance to know what hit them. When his father is free Håkan leads him down the long stairs, walking slowly, cautiously. Since there are no cars in sight, they walk across the street and board a trolley. Håkan arranges it so that his father can get a seat. But he’s worried the conductor might notice how his father has been drinking a little. And he hopes his father doesn’t use bad language around the conductor, or suddenly laugh out loud when there’s nothing there to laugh at.
As the distant wheels of the last trolley round a faraway corner, they carry a relentless song to Håkan in his kitchen bedroom. He has left the trolley and is now lying again on the daybed. His mother has stopped crying since he left, and this is the first thing he notices. Suddenly the shade in her room flies up to the ceiling with a dreadful bang, and when the echo from that bang trails off his mother opens the window. Håkan wishes that he could hop out of bed, run into her room, and cry out to her. If he could, he’d tell her to close the window, pull down the shade and go back to bed in peace, because now he’s finally coming.
“He’s on the trolley,” he’d say. “I put him there myself!”
But Håkan knows it wouldn’t do any good. She wouldn’t believe him. She has no idea what he does for her when they’re alone at night, when she thinks he’s sleeping. She doesn’t know a thing about the trips he sets out on, the adventures he throws himself into for her sake.
