Frozen Music Read Online Free PDF

They had now, with pleasure at the praise received from his father. Bertil made some jokey reference to the brains of the family and as Linus’s cheeks turned an even deeper colour, Olivia braced herself for the inevitable high-pitched, abandoned laugh. There it was, rising like pollen in the air, irritating her husband’s finely tuned sensibilities, making him frown and sigh.
    â€˜Here,’ he said, picking out his wallet from the inside pocket of his jacket. ‘Buy yourself something nice. One of those plane model kits maybe?’ He handed Linus five crisp ten-kronor notes. Bertil’s banknotes were never anything other than crisp and sometimes Olivia imagined her husband staying up late, starching them in the privacy of his study.
    Back in his room, Linus put the money in his brown leather wallet. He had stopped building those prefabricated model kits ages ago, but obviously Bertil had not noticed. Still, Linus knew exactly what he was going to spend the money on. He grabbed his red woollen hat and pressed it down on his head (he had convinced himself that by wearing it almost all the time – he even slept with it on at night – he would finally flatten those curls once and for all). On the Avenue he lifted his face to the sun, squinting up at the pea-green leaves of the limes. At the kiosk by the Park Avenue Hotel he paused, wondering if he should buy himself an ice-cream. He decided against it and walked on down the wide street until he reached the stationer’s. Inside the large shop he aimed for the display in the middle of the room where the notebooks were: bound ones, soft ones, patterned ones and blank ones. He looked through them for a good ten minutes, carefully turning each one around in his long-fingered hands that were so like his father’s, looking inside at the paper, sniffing it. Finally he made his decision.
    His notebook was bound in marbled gold and tan, with a tan imitation leather spine, and each page was edged with gold. The pages were plain and quite thin, and as he stood waiting at the till, hisfingers itched to begin to fill the book with his cartoons. Once out of the shop he walked so fast he did not even see Ulf and Stig, his friends from school. The two boys were ambling down the Avenue in the opposite direction, on their way to the sports fields.
    Ulf, his football tucked under his left arm, reached out and grabbed the sleeve of Linus’s blue sweater. ‘Want to kick around?’ he asked.
    Startled, because in his mind he had been far away, Linus narrowed his eyes to focus. ‘Hi, guys.’ He shifted from foot to foot and burst into one of his high-pitched giggles. ‘I didn’t see you there. I didn’t see you at all. But I have to go home.’
    Ulf shrugged his shoulders. ‘OK.’ And he bounced the ball on the pavement before kicking a pass at Stig. An elderly woman, wearing a long woollen coat in spite of the spring sunshine, almost fell over it and stopped for a moment to remonstrate. ‘Sorry,’ Ulf muttered, then he pulled a face and the three boys doubled up with laughter as the woman went on her disgruntled way.
    By the time Linus reached home, Bertil and Olivia had gone out. He remembered them telling him they were off somewhere for the day, but where they said they were going he had forgotten. He was pleased to have the place to himself. He could keep his woollen hat on, for a start, without having to have an argument about it (last time the subject came up he had declared that he would convert to Judaism if that was the only way he was going to be allowed to keep a hat on inside, but Bertil had threatened to call the rabbi, who was his friend, and tell him that Linus’s motives for conversion were less than pure).
    Linus went into the kitchen and made himself a chocolate milkshake and three large sandwiches, two with cheese and one with smoked sausage. He sat at the table thinking about his book and once