Garbo’s Faces

a Novel — Part 7: Christmas

And there was snow. Lots of it. Just as Harriet had predicted: by the evening of the 21st, the winter solstice, snow had started to fall, and then it just kept on falling. Through that night, all through the following day, and well into the morning of the 23rd.

We had finally made it out in the afternoon of that, the shortest day of the year, and had, again, found shopping in full swing, Sunday or not. Actually, Harriet informed me, stores are not supposed to be open on Sundays, but this is America, she said, where commerce is everything, some sort of holy thing, she said. I wondered why she lived here if she objected so much, but I didn’t ask.

The following day, despite the snowy weather, I had then gone shopping on my own to get Harriet something I had thought of. It took me the better part of the day, and many phone calls from one store to the next, to track it down, but there is apparently the saying that you can find anything you wish for in New York City, and I found that saying to be true.

I had it wrapped very nicely, thank you.

On my way back to Harriet’s apartment that afternoon from I’m not exactly sure where — it was an antique book shop on a low numbered street in the Greenwich Village district somewhere — I saw quite a few stranded cars, held captive by the snow, and even an abandoned bus, a frustrated white whale. My taxi driver cursed the snow almost incessantly on our way uptown, but we did make it there in the end. I tipped him well.

I could tell that Harriet was relieved to see me back in one piece, albeit a snowy one.

Christmas Eve, while the city was digging itself out, or attempting to, I was to discover that, for Swedes, this was not the day before Christmas, it was Christmas. Christmas Day is pretty much a boring afterthought, is the impression Harriet gave me.

By the time I got up, Claire had been and gone. She had come in early and had got some very nice food ready for us before rushing off to take care of her own — husband and children somewhere in Brooklyn, from what Harriet later told me.

As I entered the living room, still surfacing from sleep, Harriet looked up, then, saying something to herself that I missed, rose and vanished in the direction of the kitchen. “Just be a minute,” she tossed back at me over her shoulder. “Make yourself comfortable.”

When she returned, she brought a tray with two cups of steaming hot chocolate. She handed me one of them on a matching saucer.

“Quick,” she said. “Before it forms a skin.”

I was about to ask her what she meant by that when the phone rang. It was a loud, almost alien noise that in a word violated the cozy atmosphere of the apartment. At first I wasn’t even sure what the noise was, I had not heard it ring before. Then it rang again. I looked around. Found it. Sitting on a small table in the hallway, black and yelling. And a third time. Harriet was staying put, faced hardened, not answering.

There was not a fourth ring. Instead there was a brief sort of leftover silence where the fourth ring should have been, if that makes any sense. Harriet looked at me, about to say something, when it rang again. And again.

“Would you answer?” she said in the end.

“Of course.”

“I am not in,” she added quickly.

“Sure.”

I picked up the heavy receiver. “Hello.”

There was no immediate answer. Then, “Is Harriet there?” A woman’s voice. Not American.

“Who is this?” I said.

“Mercedes,” answered the non-American voice. Then it asked, “Is Harriet there?”

“No,” I said. “She’s out.”

“In this weather?”

I didn’t answer.

“Please,” she began, then hesitated, then seemed to make up her mind. “Please tell her that Mercedes called to wish her a Merry Christmas.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I will.”

Without another word she hung up, and I too replaced the receiver.

“Mercedes?” said Harriet.

“Yes,” I said, surprised that she knew.

“She will not leave me alone,” she said.

“She wishes you a Merry Christmas.”

Harriet nodded, but didn’t answer. Meanwhile, I discovered what she meant by ‘before it forms a skin.’ My cup of chocolate had done just that. I scraped it aside with the spoon. Harriet watched me.

“I hate the skin,” she said. “Not the taste, I don’t even think it has a taste,but the texture.”

I tried it. I saw her point.

“Well, drink up,” she said.

We both sipped away at the very delicious hot chocolate in silence.

She finished first. “Now we’ll have some glogg,” she said and stood up.

Glogg is a spicy wine mixture that you drink hot. I guess we would call it mulled wine, though that isn’t even half of it.

The day we had gone shopping she had ordered the ingredients — almonds, raisins, cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, ginger root, brandy, port, vodka, and lord knows what else — from the local market, and they had delivered everything, along with a small mountain of other Christmas food, the next day.

“Glogg,” she said. “It is our Swedish Christmas wine.”

“Ah, yes.” I remembered. She had told me about it in the market, while reading out the ingredients from her list, and checking each as the smiling proprietor yes, yes, and yes’ed.

Whatever else glogg is, it is not for the faint of heart. At least not my mother’s version of it. To demonstrate alcohol content Harriet set a match to the finished hot mixture and the surface instantly caught fire and burned with a blue and white and here and there green flickering flame, a thin sheet of colorful movement.

“And you drink this,” I said, looking on in amazement.

“Ah, it’s not that bad.”

She used a ladle to scoop me a glassful of the stuff, and I must admit, once in the glass it looked a lot less threatening and it smelled deliciously of spicy warmth. She ladled herself a glass and said, “Skol, and God Jul.” We touched glasses and drank.

You could feel the stuff make its way down your throat and into your stomach. And not painfully. Very nice, in fact. I had a second sip and she said, “Not so bad, right?”

“No,” I said, “not so bad at all.”

We brought our now refilled glasses of glogg back into the sitting room. “Now,” she announced, a little louder than normal, “we do the tree.”

Tree was perhaps a misnomer. It was a small Douglas spruce that Claire had brought that morning. Only five or so feet, if that, but it was full and smelled quite nice. Claire had also found a proper stand and filled it with water. The tree looked happy enough nestled into the corner between two windows.

Harriet put her glass down and vanished for a while. While she was gone the phone rang again. I answered.

“Is Harriet back yet?” Mercedes again. The voice was hard to mistake.

“No,” I answered.

There was a pregnant silence at the other end. “I had planned to come over. Surprise her,” she said finally.

“She is not here,” I said.

Harriet arrived, arms full of ornaments and festoons, frowning at the phone.

“When will she be back?” asked Mercedes.

“I don’t know.”

“Will she be back today?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you know?” she said, to which I said nothing: the English way of dealing with rude remarks.

“If she’s there, please tell her I called,” she said, and hung up.

“Mercedes again.” said Harriet. Not a question.

“Yes,” I said.

Then Harriet did something that, before or since, I have only seen done in movies. She carefully put the armful of ornaments down on the sitting room floor and came over to where I stood, still holding the receiver, wondering at the intent expression on her face. She crouched by the edge of the little table and crabbed the telephone cord close to where it disappeared into the wall. She wound it once round her hand and then, grabbing it with her other hand as well, in one swift motion ripped it right out from the wall with a little explosion of plaster and paint. “That should take care of that.”

“Yes,” I had to admit, “that should.” I replaced the receiver atop the now neutered telephone.

“Now we do the tree,” said Harriet.

Two generous glogg refills and some wonderful ham on rye sandwiches later (which, by the way, she blanketed with a strong Swedish mustard — hot and sweet both, almost Indian), we sat down by the decorated tree, pleasantly stuffed, groaning a little, and warmed by the wine.

Evening had crept up on us and with it fresh snow: large flakes swirling down, illuminated momentarily by the window’s light before they continued on down, out of sight, to make more work for the city cleaners. And to think that tomorrow was Christmas Day. Would anyone mind impassable streets? I thought not.

Harriet was telling me about Stockholm again, about her childhood holidays, white, cold and joyous. She seemed content.

We exchanged presents. She had bought me a wonderful fur jacket, warm enough for Amundsen’s South Pole trek it seemed, but that was exactly what I needed, at least here in New York.

I had bought her a pair of soft skin gloves, lined and warm, and she tried them on, held them up to the light, turned her hand this way and that and proclaimed that they were perfect.

I, too, received gloves, and I too proclaimed them to be perfect.

Then she ran out of presents to give me. To make sure, she looked around as if perhaps she had misplaced one of them, no she had not — which seemed to disappoint her a little. But I had one left to give her.

“Back in a tick,” I said and rose, with some difficulty — as I said, her glogg was not for the meek. Once in my bedroom I retrieved the nicely wrapped package from my suitcase, where I had hidden it.

“Here,” I said on my return. “Merry Christmas.”

She took the package and turned it over twice. Squeezed it. Shook it. Frowned. “Hard,” she said. “One thing. A book, no?”

“Open it.”

She did, and then she started to cry.

“Oh, Nachiketa,” she said. “How did you remember? How could you even find — ?” Her voice trailed off as she opened it, then closed it right away. Looked at me with glittering eyes. “You found it,” she said.

I smiled, very happy that I had thought of it, and happier still that I had found it.

“It’s the very book,” she said. “The very book. It is the book dad used to wrap up and hide so carefully. How could you possibly have found it?”

“Luck,” I said. Which was true. That, and that New York saying.

The very good (and expensive) edition of the Viktor Rydberg’s illustrated poem was, like most valuable books, protected by a clear, plastic covering which Harriet now removed the better to smell it.

First she put her nose to and smelled the dustcover, then some of the individual pages. “The same smell even,” she said, and closed the book. She dried her eyes with the sleeve of her shirt and then replaced the plastic cover, smiling all the while, as if she had her dad in mind as she now cared for the book just like he had done.

Protective cover all back in place, she said, “I must read it to you. It is such a beautiful story. I must try to translate it for you.”

© Wolfstuff