Storm

A popping noise woke me, and for a moment I wondered if it was yet another motorcycle trick, or someone beating a carpet. “Hey, sleepyhead. You awake?” Suzanne said.

Suzanne was already dressed and lying on her sleeping bag, impatient for me to be up, too. The door of the tent was partially open behind her, and through it I could see a sky filled with bruised clouds of purple and orange. The air was cold, and the wind stampeded over the campground.

“We get to stay inside tonight,” Suzanne almost sang, and pressed herself against me. “Peace and quiet. We’ll be with friends. God, I hope they don’t forget we’re coming.”

We had met Torbjorn and Jennifer three years earlier on Victoria Street in Sydney, Australia. It was late fall and the wet season had begun, bringing with it incessant deluges. After traveling for several months in the Outback, we had just sold our van to an Austrian couple and were looking for a place to park until they arrived to drive it away. Victoria Street was lined on both sides with the wheeled hulks that had taken travelers around the country. Most of the vehicles were patched and modified station wagons or delivery vans that looked like props for a Road Warrior film. The atmosphere was generally festive as travelers from all over the world waited to sell their vehicles, and while doing so traded stories of their adventures.

Parking space was at a premium on Victoria Street, and we asked a guy pacing in front of an orange Volkswagen bus if he would mind pulling forward to make room for us.

Torbjorn and Jennifer had been waiting three days to sell their van, and they were beginning to get frustrated. “But we had a great trip,” he said. “Fantastic trip.”

We began comparing notes on places we’d been. Suzanne and I knew that we’d made friends when we discovered Jennifer and Torbjorn had also suffered through the same plague of mice in the Outback, a bizarre experience that occurred in the middle of nowhere and included an invasion of mice into our van. For an entire night they ran along our bodies and over our faces in a frantic search for anything to eat.

Torbjorn was Swedish, Jennifer American, and they lived alternately in either Sweden or America while attending school and traveling. We met a few more times on Victoria Street before leaving Australia and, since they were also traveling north through Indonesia and Asia, we managed to meet them twice more before they left for home. Over the following years we’d kept in contact, and we promised to visit them in Stockholm. They’d invited us to spend Midsummer with them, the Scandinavian holiday that marks the summer solstice, on an island off the coast. It seemed like an especially valuable invitation as the clouds darkened over Gotland.

Our ferry swayed as the sea pushed and pulled at its mass as if trying to work it loose from the pier. Once we were inside, the ferry moved just enough to make it difficult for us to get off the bike and pull it onto its center stand. The corner we rode into was only dimly lit and it took a moment to join the rhythm of the ship’s swaying movement. An attendant in grease-stained coveralls and high rubber boots came over with wooden blocks and a rope. He didn’t speak English, and spoke Swedish with an accent we couldn’t understand a word of, so he used his hands and he cleaved the air to form the sharp angles of words.

We followed his instructions and the blocks fit perfectly. The rope, tied from the frame of the bike to a hook welded to the side of the ship, pulled the weight of the bike onto the blocks for support. I rocked the bike from side to side and it felt stable. I rocked it harder and the rope didn’t budge. The attendant returned, checked our work, and said it would be fine.

Suzanne and I stood on the deck, sheltered from the wind by a lifeboat, and watched Visby lose focus as the ferry pushed away from the island. It became a splotch of color, and then just a speck on the horizon. We went inside where it was warm and still and smelled of food.

My idea was to buy food from the ship’s cafeteria and sit at one of the formica tables beside a window and watch the sea pass as we ate. We each took a fiberglass tray and began sliding it along a metal counter. On the other side were stainless steel tubs containing bowls with fruit cast in gelatin and covered in cellophane, a bowl of tired looking apples and bananas, cups of yogurt, and cold cereals. There was a platter of open-faced sandwiches dressed with a lettuce leaf, slices of egg, and a thin fillet of herring arranged on the top. Other tubs, which leaked steam from around the edges, were filled with oatmeal, eggs, and meats in thick sauces. I was about to take some coffee, an apple, and a big bowl of oatmeal when Suzanne pulled me lightly by the elbow.

“But the food is so expensive here. We knew before we started this trip that would be the case.” I thought of the two-dollar tennis-ball-sized heads of wilted lettuce we’d bought so we could have something green, the apples at almost four dollars a pound, and meat so expensive we could only salivate over it. “That restaurant will be outrageously expensive.”

I moved toward the buffet again but Suzanne remained resolutely behind me. In my mind the most important expenses were fuel for the bike, fares, and equipment that would take us farther along our route. Suzanne and I had always traveled sparely, a little undernourished, and hungry for experiences. Food was one of the things that just didn’t matter while we were on the road. For three months in the Outback we ate nothing but pasta and tomato sauce and oatmeal. Traveling in that way had an ascetic quality that appealed to us. We thought of our travels as pilgrimages. If we made sacrifices, we would be rewarded with experiences and insights. If we were true to the spirit of our pilgrimages, everything would work out. All of our needs would be met.

A tired woman in a stained white smock swayed with the ship and looked at us with impatience from behind the counter. She clutched a ladle and spatula in either hand and she seemed to suggest that we make our selections or move out of her cafeteria. I turned and looked at Suzanne. She’d put her tray back and clutched her bag to her side, and I knew she was going with or without me. I fumed as I put my tray on top of hers and followed her to the front of the ship.

Suzanne glowed as the attractive hostess led us through the dining room. I reluctantly followed them to a cozy table against a wall, but Suzanne asked if we couldn’t have one beside a window overlooking the front of the ship and the sea instead. “You’ll like that,” she said to me and smiled.

The hostess pulled Suzanne’s chair back and then tucked her in. Suzanne touched and inspected the crisp white cloth on the table, the sparkling glasses before her, the array of forks and spoons enveloped by the origami of her napkin. She unwrapped it like a gift and arranged it on her lap. The smile on her face was radiant.

She finished smoothing the napkin on her lap. She was quiet as she arranged her forks and spoons, and then she leaned forward onto her elbows to speak to me. “You know,” she said, “I realize you’d rather be down there with the motorcycle eating stale bread, but please don’t spoil this for me. Don’t give me any crap just because I want a nice breakfast and want to enjoy myself a little after eating out of cans for three days while camping with all those drunken idiots.”

“I mean,” she said, and wiped her nose with her napkin. “I mean that I can’t do this much longer. It’s like you’re outrunning me, and I can’t keep up. I wonder sometimes if you want me to quit and go home.”

She filled my cup and left. Suzanne leaned back across the table. “That wasn’t so bad, was it? And look.” She pointed to a corner of the restaurant. “They have a buffet in here, too. You can have something simple after all.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “It seems as though you don’t want to be here, and the more that becomes apparent, the more I hold onto the trip. It feels like it’s all I have.”

I arranged my cup and wondered what would happen if I said, “no.” We could split up and I could continue alone. Stockholm had an international airport. Suzanne could be home within two days. But I couldn’t think farther than that. “We need to be in this together,” I said.

“We can’t blame the weather, the people at the rally, or the price of the food. It’s us. You were right when you said I’m fascinated with this stuff—all of it. I love the challenges this trip is giving me. I want to keep going. For good reasons you want something different. I don’t know how to fix that.”

The buffet was formidable. It was arranged on several tables covered with silver platters, ceramic dishes, and bowls. There were baskets of warm rolls and thick slices of fresh bread. There were pastries and bowls of whole-grain cereals and dried fruit. Farther along were tureens of yogurt, mounds of fresh bananas, oranges, kiwis, strawberries, apples, and grapes. A platter of smoked salmon, garnished with fresh dill and lemon, was surrounded by plates of warm and cold meats, a nest of warm soft-boiled eggs, and pitchers of juices. We were on our second plate of food when I reached across the table and took Suzanne’s hand.

Halfway to Stockholm we stopped at a gas station and called Jennifer from a phone booth. Both Suzanne and I pressed into it to keep out of the rain and wind as we dialed the number.

Midsummer Day, which falls on the summer solstice, is the biggest holiday in Scandinavia. In ancient times it was a solar ceremony that marked the apex of summer and the beginning of the slide back into winter’s darkness. Formerly, it was the one night of the year when supernatural beings were about, and their presence was celebrated with huge bonfires that burned through the night, with dancing, drinking, and brazen abandon. In modern Scandinavia the presence of supernatural beings has been largely forgotten, but Midsummer is still, for many, a time of excess.

The prospect of spending it with Torbjorn and Jennifer appealed to us greatly. Torbjorn’s family owned a summer house on a remote island in the archipelago off Stockholm, and every year they gathered there with friends. Jennifer and Torbjorn had spoken fondly of the communal feasts, the Midsummer pole they decorated with wildflowers from the island’s meadows, and the dancing and music that lasted throughout the night. They’d spoken too of the island: its remoteness, the absence of roads, a small lake they used for bathing and swimming.

We waited, and when Jennifer picked up the phone again she told us her parents were also visiting. She said that it had been arranged for Suzanne and me to stay with Torbjorn’s parents in Tyresö, a town just south of Stockholm.

“It’s all set,” she assured us, and then gave us directions. “I’ll call them now. They’ll be expecting you. But we’ll see you tonight for dinner. You’ll be coming to our place.”

The rain and wind were ferocious, so we pushed the bike beneath the roof of the filling station and waited for the worst of it to pass. We watched in fascination as a layer of water accumulated on the road, filled the gutters, and overflowed onto the sidewalk in a matter of minutes. It fell so hard on the roof above us that we had to shout to talk. At one point Suzanne began to laugh and then did a little dance beside the bike.

Tyresö is a suburb of Stockholm, a community of high-rise apartment blocks, and many smaller ones, that rise from the forest like a cluster of mushrooms. It’s a place one wouldn’t see in a tourist brochure of Sweden, and it reminded me that life can be ordinary anywhere. There are many communities just like it throughout Sweden, especially outside the larger cities and towns, the result of well-intentioned social engineering during the 1950s and 1960s. It was as if the building of individual homes had come to a halt for a time in Sweden and was replaced by planned communities that could be replicated quickly at little cost. Each stands unto itself, with enough inhabitants to warrant a school, medical facility, stores, a post office, library, playing fields, parks, plots for gardens, swim center, and skating rink.

As we rode into Tyresö I became confused by the similarity of the apartment towers. It was still raining hard. There was traffic, and Jennifer’s precise directions lost their clarity. I was about to pull over to read through them again when I noticed a man waiting beneath the eaves of a building. He was looking into the storm like a watchman and waving his arms. I knew the tall, thin frame belonged to Arne, Torbjorn’s father. He saw us, too. Then he waved with both hands and we rode toward him.

Arne took half our luggage in his arms and led us to a cramped elevator that took us to the eighth floor. Inge, his wife, welcomed us at the door. She showed us our room, gave us towels, and pointed out the tub in the bathroom. We cleaned ourselves up, and when we were done, they called us to the kitchen, where they’d arranged bread and cheese on a plate. Arne heated water for tea and put milk and a bowl of sugar on the table. He and Inge sat down opposite us and arranged themselves.

An hour passed. Our cups were empty, and the bread and cheese were gone. The storm had picked up again. Inge looked out the window and winced. From their eighth floor kitchen window we could see only the smoky-gray of the storm.

Harö is one of more than a thousand islands that form the dense archipelago off the coast of Stockholm. The archipelago was once the home of fishermen and their families who supplied the city with food, but in the last decades it’s become a land of summer homes. Inge was raised on Harö. Her mother went there as a young woman to work as a nanny for a well-to-do merchant family. She met the local customs inspector and married him. They worked, saved their money, and finally bought a place of their own.

Torbjorn had told us stories passed down from his grandfather about the storms that blew unimpeded across the Baltic from Russia, about trying to collect enough food for the winters, how he and Inge’s mother would row their small boat for a day and a half to Stockholm to sell their fish and buy supplies, and how they’d make the same trip in the winter by walking over the frozen sea.

At seven o’clock we all rode the elevator to the ground floor, ran through the rain past the bike, and climbed into Arne’s car. Suzanne sat on the back seat and sighed. She’d put on the floral print dress and black shoes she’d wrapped in plastic and packed at the bottom of her bag. Despite the wrinkles in the fabric and her leather jacket she looked transformed. She’d added a hint of blue to the outside corner of each eyelid and stroked her lashes with a touch of mascara.

Suzanne absorbed the seat. She stretched out her legs and let her arms fall to either side of her body. She closed her eyes and her face relaxed. She could have been on the most comfortable bed in the world. I put my hand on her lap and she pulled me beside her.

Jennifer and Torbjorn lived on the north side of Stockholm, a half-hour drive that took us through the city. Arne called out the names of landmarks as we passed them: “Globen,” he said of a huge golf ball-shaped building. “They play some sport there.”

We crossed a bridge that spanned a body of water, and to either side were inlets, coves, and waterways. An ordered skyline rose along the shoreline on the opposite side. Suzanne and I sat up in the back seat to look out the windows as Arne pointed. As we drew closer I saw the city in greater detail. There were huge ice-breakers, ferries, and container ships tied along the shore. A light-blue subway train emerged from a tunnel and rushed toward the center of the city. I saw black church steeples, green copper roofs, and ochre- and rose-colored palaces.

“Is all built on granite,” Arne said of the city. “Granite and water. That’s Riksdagenshus, where the government lives,” he said of an ornate and squat building beside the water. “Over there, opera.”

Suzanne and I crowded against the right window to see the small island where the oldest section of Stockholm lay. As our car passed we were able to snatch a glance of the Renaissance facades, ornate entryways, and hairline alleys that ran between the buildings.

Our view of the city was eclipsed as the car entered a long tunnel that took us beneath the city, and as suddenly we were deposited in the middle of a busy intersection. Rain and wind lashed the streets. They were nearly deserted except for a couple hurrying along the sidewalk as they left a restaurant. They held their umbrella in front of them like a shield as they moved along.

The world outside was like a silent movie. There was no sensation of the gusts of wind or the blasts of rain. The interior of the car was still and warm, filled only with the murmur of our voices and the soft scraping of the windshield wipers. I opened my window a crack and the wind rushed in, carrying with it a drizzle of rain I felt on my face.

Torbjorn and Jennifer’s apartment was filled with a womblike warmth. It was the kind of warmth that invited us to remove our jackets as we walked into it, the kind that worked its way below our skin like a salve, a warmth I would never have noticed had we not been without it for so long.

Jennifer asked if we wanted a cocktail. The word sounded deliciously exotic, and I welcomed the tumbler of whiskey and ice she handed me. The liquid went down my throat like an abrasive cord, and then swelled and glowed in apology. We all sat around a low table—Torbjorn and Jennifer, their parents, Suzanne and I. Rob and Ginny, Jennifer’s parents, had just completed a Jewels-of-the-Baltic cruise that had taken them to Tallinn, St. Petersburg, Helsinki, and Stockholm. I listened as they annoyingly described long periods below deck because of the storms, the mediocre food, the wreckage and squalor of Tallinn and St. Petersburg, and how it wasn’t a trip they’d recommend. Arne assured them Harö would be different, that it was beautiful there, and it hadn’t rained on Midsummer since before he was born.