Frozen Tracks Read Online Free PDF

that? Now some music.
    Now, let's see. You can touch whatever you like.
There's lots of interesting things here.
    What lovely hair you have! What's your name? You
don't know? Yeees, of course you do!
    This is Bill. That's his name. Bill. Billy Boy. He can
fly. Can you see that? Fly fly fly.
    Ellen? Is your name Ellen? That's a lovely name. A
splendid name. Do you know what my mum was called?
No, you can't possibly know.
    What do you reckon, wasn't it a marvellous name,
my mum's?
    Have some more. Take the whole bag.
    He-he-here it co-co-co-co-comes . . .
    He stroked his hand over the girl's head. Her hair was
like the down on a baby bird, a little fledgling whose
heart you could feel beating when you touched it. He'd
felt that once on a bird that was even smaller than Bill.
He was just as small as a bird too in those days.
    He touched her again. The man on the radio was
saying something. He found it difficult to breathe, wound
down the window and discovered some air he could use
for breathing. He touched the girl again, that down, all
those tiny bones. She said something.
    Evening was closing in. Clear outlines. The sun was
hanging in there between the houses, like a memory
Winter was keen to breathe in. He was sneaking a smoke
on the balcony, and sampling the late autumnal air in
between drags. Winter was closing in. He looked down
on Vasaplatsen, and watched people moving off and
leaving the square deserted. Everybody was going home,
by bus, tram or car, and leaving him and his family to
their own devices in their own territory.
    Angela hadn't said anything about buying a house
for ages, and he knew her view was the same as his,
always had been. They were city-dwellers, and the city
was for them. The city of stone, the heart of the city.
The heart of stone, he thought, taking another pull on
his ciga rillo. A beautiful heart of stone. It was better to
live here. In the classy suburbs sloping down to the sea,
it was so easy to become a clapped-out citizen, past it,
on the way out. For God's sake! He'd turned the corner
already. Forty-two. Or forty-three. He couldn't
remember, and anyway, who cared?
    He shivered, standing on the balcony in his shirt
sleeves, the cigarillo in his hand fading away just as
definitively as the evening out there. A few young people
sauntered past down below, full of self-confidence. He
could hear them laughing even at this distance. They
were all set for a good time.
    He went back in. Elsa saw him coming and presented
him with the drawing she'd made. A bird flying in a
blue sky. These last few weeks all her drawings had
been of blue skies and yellow sands, green fields and
then lots of flowers in every colour available from her
pencil box. Nonstop summer. She hadn't caught on to
autumn just yet. He'd taken her down to the park and
helped her to collect fallen leaves, carried them back
home, dried them. But she'd put off pinning down
autumn. Just as well.
    'A bird!' she said.
    'What kind of a bird?' he asked.
    She seemed to be thinking it over.
    'A gull,' she said.
    'Let's let the bird have a bit of a laugh,' he said to
Elsa, and burst out laughing himself. 'Ha-ha-HA-HA.'
She looked a bit frightened at first, but then she couldn't
stop herself from giggling.
    Winter picked up a pencil and a blank sheet of paper,
and drew something that could just possibly be construed
as a seagull laughing. There was even a name for this
gull, and he announced it in the top right-hand corner
of the picture. 'Blackie the Blackhead'. His bequest to
posterity. The first drawing he'd made for thirty years.
    'It looks like a flying piglet,' said Angela.
    'Yes, isn't it amazing? A pig that can laugh and fly
as well.'
    'But pigs can fly,' Elsa said.
    They were sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of
red wine each. Elsa was asleep. Winter had made some
anchovy sandwiches, which they'd just finished eating.
    'Those things make you thirsty,' he said, getting up
to fetch some more water.
    'I bumped into Bertil on our ward