The Number 7 (17 page)

“Ladies first,” Chris mused as he heaved the door open, flooding the landing with fluorescent light.

Squinting my eyes and knocking the snow from my snow boots against the building, I took a step inside. I was awestruck. Rows, towers, and carefree piles of books upon books upon books. Chris had brought me to the Mecca of used bookstores. Housed in a vacant warehouse, Skip's Used Books was a Brandywine Valley institution. Genres were written in Sharpie on scraps of white paper haphazardly taped to the end of each aisle. I'd never seen anything like it. I turned to look at my friend, my mouth agape. His turned up in a knowing smile. He grabbed my hand and steered us down the first aisle, letting the books consume us.

“This is awesome!” I giggled excitedly, tugging tightly on Chris's grip.

My friend let me navigate the bookstore. Occasionally he'd pick up a book and read the inner sleeve while I selected books by the armful: an illustrated
Jane Eyre,
a book on photography, a history on Scandinavia, and a collection of Charles Schulz's early works. I even found a Swedish-English dictionary, circa 1948, and picked it up just to have on hand. After I'd explored every aisle twice, handling hundreds of used books that spanned a century (or more) of publication, I took my stack to the front desk.

“Seven dollars,” the balding man in glasses held out a greasy hand.

“Seven dollars for ten books? That's less than a dollar a book!” I said in disbelief.

“How much did you want to pay?” the awkward man chuckled, looking to Chris.

I looked at Chris to express my amazement but came up speechless. It was the first time I really looked at him under the fluorescents. He stood there, gazing intently at me with his large brown eyes in his vintage leather jacket, looking absolutely incredible. Under all the unshaven scruff, long curls, holey jeans, and dirt under the fingernails, Chris had a James Dean appeal. I'd seen it before: the first time we met in class when he told me about his backpacking in North Carolina, the time I watched him make advances with Lacey in the cafeteria, and that night in his Volvo when he took me to the Agnew Pennsbury Township and questioned his likelihood of doing the right thing. Everything Chris did was tender; under it all, he had such a gentle soul. And he carried himself with such humility despite being, quite possibly, the most handsome guy in school. He was a rough-cut diamond. Standing there in the bookstore, the balding man's hand still outstretched, I felt privileged to see the real Chris, the one he didn't show most people. And I felt connected to him. As if this bookstore was now
our
hidden secret. As if we both understood one another, even if no one else did. At sixteen, it was rare to find someone else who truly got me.

I handed the man my seven dollars, grabbed my books, and walked over to where Chris stood by the door.

“Ready to go?”

He quietly smiled, putting his hand on my back as he held the door open for me. His hand on my back transcended all of my previous girlish experiences with innocent flirtations. Chris was older and wiser. He had done this before. And
this
? Whatever it was left me breathless.

“With you? Anywhere.”

We climbed into his cold, dark car that smelled sweetly of orange rind and sandalwood. The windshield had already developed a thin sheet of ice. Under the pale blue light of a humming street lamp, Chris took my books off my lap and tossed them casually in the backseat. I sat motionless, helpless to do anything but watch as he leaned across his armrest and nuzzled his chin against my neck. He breathed deeply, hot air moistening my skin.
This is too much,
I thought. But when his lips at last met mine, I was already gone.

On Christmas Eve, the streets of Trelleborg were frozen, dark, and quiet. A candle flickered in a lone window here, a shadow brushed against a laced curtain there. Where was the moon?

For the fourth time that night, Gerhard stopped to set his gift down, rest his shoulders, and wrap his scarf tighter around his neck. He clapped his mittened hands together, the sound echoing down the empty street, before lifting his load and traveling on.

The bell tower at
Sankt Nicolai kyrka
loomed tall and great against the black December sky. Beneath it, Gerhard felt incredibly insignificant. He wished Lasse were there to keep him company so he didn't feel so alone.

“
God jul
! Merry Christmas!” Gerhard warmly greeted the church pastor who crouched on a small ladder in front of the church's doors with a hammer in one hand and two wreaths in the other.

“
Oy
!” jumped the frail man, steadying his balance. “Välkommen, Gerhard! You frightened me! Without your brother, I didn't hear you coming. How his laugh can carry.”

Gerhard forced a smile. He looked back at his gift and then at his wet boots. Suddenly, it didn't seem sufficient.

“Forgive me,” he apologized, trying to block the sight of his gift, a tall and heavy pine, behind him.

He knew he should have selected a different one. This tree was smaller than the ones he'd picked in prior years. But there was something about this one that had called to him earlier that afternoon.
You deserve greatness
, he'd told the tree, and he'd chopped it down with the utmost care. But now, standing in the dark, he wasn't so sure.

The old man carefully descended from his post.

“Here!” He chuckled and handed the wreaths to Gerhard. “I'm just getting ready for the others. They haven't come yet, but they will.”

The man quietly smiled, cocking his ear to one side as if expecting to hear footsteps in the snow. He stuffed his pipe with loose tobacco while Gerhard surreptitiously set the tree to the side of the yard. But the pastor followed him, and Gerhard cringed, expecting disappointment.

The pastor patted the exposed trunk approvingly, “It's good.”

The two men stopped and looked out at the dark streets, silently sharing the moment. The older man breathed deeply to assure himself he still could, while Gerhard's thoughts took him to the latest news coming out of Finland. Helsinki had recently been bombed, the Soviets officially invading, crossing Finnish borders, on November 30.

“The world seems to be getting colder,” Gerhard remarked, not really knowing the proper thing to say.

“Oh, it's never as cold as you think,” the pastor smiled, taking Gerhard's arm and leading him back into the church.

Gerhard set the damp tree at the front of the altar, and the pastor handed him two long planks of wood to make a simple stand. Once in its proper place, there was no denying this was the leanest tree Gerhard had ever cut down. It was tall, but it was also thin and the branches spare.

“It's not the best tree, is it?” Gerhard tilted his head to confirm the pine was, in fact, leaning heavily to one side.

“Nonsense,” the pastor scoffed and handed Gerhard a crate of paper decorations, the same ones that had adorned the tree every year since Gerhard was a boy. “‘In simplicity and godly sincerity . . . do we have our conversation in the world.' 2 Corinthians 1:12.”

“It's leaning!” Lasse cried as he entered the church carrying a copper kettle and a basket of warm saffron buns. “Can't you straighten it?”

“
Tack
, Lasse. Are your mother and father far behind?” The white-haired pastor took the pot and beckoned to a table where Lasse could set the buns.

“They're waiting on Pontus. He cut himself shaving and there's blood everywhere,” Lasse laughed and scratched his brow. “Idiot,” he muttered quietly.

Gerhard started hanging red strips of thin paper on the bare branches and filling paper cones with caramel candy. His brother joined him.

“Have you ever seen such a thin tree?” Lasse dipped his hand into the crate.

“But it smells good,” Gerhard inhaled slowly.

Lasse leaned in and sniffed. “Smells like winter.”

“Smells like Christmas,” Gerhard corrected.

“You're such a romantic.”

By eleven, the first families arrived on foot. Fathers on kick sleds pushed young children through snowy streets. Cloaked women with wool kerchiefs clung to lit torches and hummed Christmas melodies. They stepped carefully in wet sled tracks and clasped hands with young daughters. Leif, Åsa, Pontus, and Anna arrived just in time to join the church choir. The small assembly started low, quietly warming up.
Godafton mitt herrskap
. Good evening, gentlemen.

It was nearly two o'clock when the sanctuary finally fell still. Gerhard and Lasse sat in the front pew, teasing a pigtailed girl about the
jultomte,
the Christmas elf.

“You better hurry and put out some porridge on your front step! He'll pass your house if you don't, and then no presents for you!” Lasse grinned wide-eyed as the little girl stared doubtfully at the two older boys. He jabbed Gerhard in the side.

“Everyone knows the
jultomte
isn't real,” the girl protested.

“Yes, but why take the chance?” Gerhard asked earnestly.

“
He
still puts out the porridge for the
jultomte
, and he's seventeen!” Lasse laughed, pointing at a blushing Gerhard.

“I do,” Gerhard confirmed. “And the
tomte
's always come. So hurry home and do as we say.”

The girl's mother called to her from the back of the church and in an instant she was gone. Lasse and Gerhard gathered their coats and followed sleepily.

“It's not silly,” Gerhard defended himself.

“Oh, come on,” Lasse groaned.

“It brings good luck.”

“It brings mice,” Lasse playfully shouldered his brother before jogging ahead.

The crisp night air smelled bitter, like rust or iron. The cold made their bones ache and their limbs numb. Lasse shuddered and hopped twice to help his circulation.

“Ready,
Bror
? We'll race home.”

But Gerhard just stared at the sky. It was too wondrous to go back just yet. There was still something magical about these early hours. Christmas morning.

“Can't we take the way by the shore?” he asked hopefully.

“
Helvete
!” Lasse cursed under his frosty breath, and then remembered he was in front of the church. “Oh.”

“It's too beautiful to go back now,” Gerhard began, but Lasse held up his hand.

“We'll race to the shore, then.”

“Let's take our time,” Gerhard pleaded.

“Oy, oy, oy, Gerhard. You really are something. I'm freezing like a dog!” Lasse looked annoyed while lighting a hand-rolled cigarette, but his tone softened as he exhaled. “Well, come on.”

The two brothers rounded the path by the shipyards and strained to hear a low hum breaking the silence of the evening. Drums? Motors? No.

Stallarna
. The stables.

Down near the docks sat a squatty old barn with a rotting wood door. The old horse stables. It'd been sitting there for two hundred years, and in the summer, the seamen could still smell manure when they walked by. Old barn smells had a way of lingering for centuries.

“Should we?” Gerhard asked, but Lasse was already headed in that direction.

A sign in the window read
ST
Ä
NGT
, CLOSED, but the penetrating sounds from within alluded to something else. Lasse reached for the latch, and the boys stepped inside.

The room was warm; a fire blazed behind an iron grate. A weary fiddler played sadly in the corner. Twenty shipyard workers, brutish men with biceps the size of ham hocks, leaned heavily on each other. Pontus, with his deep, baritone voice, stood near the fire on a footstool, leading the men in Bellman's “Epistle 72.” The twins sighed at the sight of him. One of the men toward the back of the crowd wept somberly as he remembered a woman he once loved. His salty tears mixed with the burning drink he lifted to his lips.
Stallarna
, where the spiritless found spirits to warm their souls. Lasse and Gerhard sipped slowly on mulled wine, listening to the sad song of the sleeping nymph. They waited until the end before pulling Pontus from his pedestal and away from his adoring audience. His hair, his pores, his breath smelled sweetly of
br
ä
nnvin,
and the barkeep gave his singer a pint for the walk back. The uncle stumbled as his nephews pushed him out into the snow.

The three men walked in silence as they passed the tall grasses on the shore. Glimmering waves crashed quietly on the shadowed sand. Pontus stopped to blow his nose in a dirty rag.

“Nephews, let me tell you this now before I'm too sober. I don't think I'd have the courage to say it without . . . ” He lifted his drink—a toast to the night's sky—and gulped loudly. The twins stopped and stared at their red-rimmed, sad-eyed uncle. “Those words you heard tonight? The old man's sermon about miracles and divinity? Don't you believe it.”

Pontus rubbed his nose with the back of his hand and sniffed. The twins exchanged unknowing glances. Their breath danced in the air before it disappeared.