We remained on the stairs until dawn. With the morning light, the spell of hopeless calm that had descended over us was broken and we hurried up to our chamber. We hurriedly gathered those papers on which we had written our debts and found the reading ominous. Many of the promissory notes that bore our signatures were close to falling due. If we didn’t repay them at least in part, anger would spread among our debtors. They would begin to talk among one another and draw the conclusion that we were swindlers who had finally collected enough in order to abscond with the money. One or more would march down to the courts, display the notes, and demand the assistance of the authorities to collect the debt. The cases would multiply, the total sum would become known, and we would be searched for with increasing urgency.
“We must leave, Kristofer,” Sylvan whispered with his eyes full of tears. “And soon, before our location becomes known.”
“But where should we go?”
“We have to separate and go in different directions. Both the guardsmen on the street and the men from the police will be keeping an eye out for us in our fine clothing. If we separate, we’ll have a better chance of escaping discovery.”
“And what then? We can’t stay away forever.”
“We have to leave the city, Kristofer. You understand that, don’t you?”
I thought with a heavy heart of everything I had sacrificed in order to come here from Karlskrona, of the highways that had worn down my soles, of the rides on wagons and carts that I had paid for with services I’d have rather not engaged in. Sylvan, who had lived here all of his days and been given his life in the city as a gift of fate, might be ready to leave Stockholm, but for me such a flight meant the breaking of a dream for which I had been fighting my entire life. Rickard had not seen the poverty of the countryside and its small-minded misery. I told him as much, but he did not want to listen. “I’ll leave by way of the Sconce Tollgate and go on to Fredrikshald, Kristofer, and God willing I will make it there before the summer is over.”
We packed up our few belongings, me in the same knapsack with which I had arrived, Sylvan in a bag that he improvised from a shirt. Before the cock crowed and the sun was fully up, we were standing in the alley. Neither one of us found it easy to put our feelings into words. We embraced one last time, both moved to tears, before we went our separate ways: Sylvan to the north, to try to get a few shillings from his cousin for his trip, while I turned towards the sea in order to meet with the clothing merchant in Ferk’s Close. He did not turn up before midmorning and pretended not to recognize me or the clothes that I wore. In a merchant’s way, he seemed to have a sixth sense for a customer’s desperation and quickly realized that I was not in a frame of mind to negotiate. I exchanged the finery we had bought for more modest items: a rough jerkin as befitting a farmhand, a woollen jacket with patched elbows, a pair of trousers, and shoes constructed for lifelong wear. A knitted cap was traded for the hat. He acted surprised when I asked him how much he would pay for the difference between the items.
“Money for these stained rags? Young man, you must be joking.” In the end, he paid me a handful of shillings just to be rid of me. I pulled the cap down over my ears to conceal my hair, stepped out onto the Quayside, and looked around.
Where would I go now? I could no longer show my face in the City-between-the-Bridges. An unfortunate encounter in a narrow alley and my tale would be over. I had even spent too much time wandering around the Meadowland. The Southern Isle seemed my only viable alternative, with a crowd in which I would hardly be alone in my misery. I followed the harbor’s straight line towards the Lock, past the four great mill wheels that tamed the current rushing under the street, and on towards the drawbridges.
Despite what I had thought, life as a penniless vagrant was worse in the Southern Isle than elsewhere in the city, not in spite of the fact that there were so many outcasts and indigents everywhere, but because of them. At the pubs and cellars the staff had developed a keen sense of who lacked the ability to pay. They knew immediately who had found their way into the warm pub in order to help themselves to crumbs and dregs and try to steal a few moments of rest in a corner. I was mercilessly driven from some places, and denied entry to others if I could not show coin at the entrance. This meant that every nook and cranny was filled at night, and around haystacks and barns, servants had been sent out to keep watch. I came to spend my nights under the trees in Danto or around the Winter Tollgate. The coins I had received from the clothing merchant were enough for kitchen scraps and stale bread that I could soften in water and slurp up. No one could demand money for the water in the bay. I could wash my face and hands in its waves and when I needed somewhere cool to rest, I made myself a sleeping spot in the branches of those willow trees that leaned thirstily out into the bay.
They came for me one evening, dear sister, when I had already fallen asleep. As so often, I saw your face in my dream, only to see it transform into a mocking grin of someone staring down at me. A heavy boot had been shoved into my shoulder and kept me helplessly pinned to the ground. A lantern was held in my face and the cap ripped from my head.
“Well, if it isn’t Kristofer Blix! I bid you a good evening, because now your rest is over.” I tried to squirm out from under the boot without success.
“I haven’t heard of any Blix. My name is David Jansson, I must have got lost on my way back from the Last Shilling and lain here to wait for the morning.”
“Oh, is that so. And what is your father’s name?”
“Jan Davidsson, a journeyman brass maker in Hedvig Eleonora parish, and my mother is Elsa Fredrika, born Gudmundsdotter.” I mentioned the most distant church I could think of in the hopes of being taken at my word without the facts being checked. I was mistaken.
“Well, what do you know. And where is your parents’ home?”
“Out past Bog Hill, right next to the mills.”
“I’m sure they’ll be happy to hear you have had an escort through such dangerous neighborhoods.”
I was held tightly under the arms and placed with my feet on the ground, still restrained and unable to slip away into the bushes. My captors were three men. The one who had spoken was heavyset with stubby legs, his mouth full of tobacco, and with facial features that were not so easy to discern under the dirt. He walked in front with the lantern while his two companions, both silent, led me between them. I could not see them clearly as I was dealt a stinging slap on the neck with an open hand each time I attempted to turn in any direction. When I stumbled, one of them would pinch me with fingers like pincers. Their breath made me want to retch as they hissed in my ear: “Keep pace, you little pansy, or I’ll wring your neck.” We had hardly passed the Larder when I realized that the game was up and that I would pay with blows if we made it all the way to Bog Hill before I was forced to admit that I didn’t know anyone there, least of all any parents.
“Stay awhile. I lied. I am the one you are looking for.”
The man with the lantern turned around.
“You are the last of a dozen ragamuffins of the same age that we have had to drag through town on the same business this past week, so that is definitely welcome news.” He gave a sign, whereupon a terrible pain exploded before my eyes and my cheek hit a cobblestone on the street. As I fell, I heard laughter as if from a neighing horse and glimpsed a bloodied cudgel before my consciousness fluttered and went out.
I woke from a sharp jolt of smelling salts under my nose. I was sitting in a chair and the fists that had been holding me upright let go of my shoulders when I could manage to keep my balance. My head was throbbing and a wound at the back of my head burned when I touched it. The room emerged as my sight cleared. Tapestries were hanging on the stone walls, beautiful carpets were laid on the wooden floor. There were no windows. The chair was in the center of the room in front of an elegant desk with curved legs. On the other side of the desk, there was a gentleman sitting in an armchair. With growing unease, I started to realize that my chair had not been placed directly on the rug but on a stained piece of fabric that was spread out under me. The man noticed my gaze and said, “You are wondering about the sheet. It is to spare my Turkish carpets from being sullied by various impurities. Many guests who sit where you are sitting now, Kristofer Blix, cannot contain themselves. Those who don’t bleed lose fluids in other ways.”
He smiled derisively when I pulled back in alarm.
“You look alarmed, Blix, and that is understandable, but your fate now lies partly in your own hands. Keep that in mind when you answer me. If not for your sake, then for the sake of my carpet.” He was dressed in expensive clothes, the stubble on his face as short as the hair on his head that formed a deep widow’s peak on his high forehead. His eyes were icy blue. I would have guessed his age to be over forty. His voice was hoarse.
“My name is Dülitz. Do you know who I am?”
I shook my head. Dülitz reached for a carafe across his desk and poured himself a drink in a seltzer glass—water, to judge by its color.
“You were raving for a while, Blix, and I thought I could hear from your accent that you are not from Stockholm. Where is your parental home?”
“In Karlskrona.”
He nodded.
“Then we have one thing in common, which is that we are both far from the place of our birth.” He drank his water. Thirsty, all I could do was watch.
“During my childhood in Poland, I worked with glass, Blix.” He said my name as if it had a bad taste. “I made dragons, lions, kings, chimeras, and dancers rise out of the embers and cool into works of art. I came here in order to find refuge when my home became a puppet state of the Russians only to find out that people like me were forbidden here from practicing their craft. The king himself had made this decree, doubtless to make himself more popular with the artisans’ guilds. How the poor bastards who cut panes for windows could think that I was trespassing on their territory is beyond me. Luckily, I was already wealthy, and as I was in the midst of thinking about my options, there came a knock on my door one late evening. I opened it and there was a young man, not unlike yourself. I bade him come in, I gave him bread and wine, and finally he presented his question. ‘I need a loan,’ he said. I was taken aback. ‘I do have some coins I could spare, but why did you come to me?’ ‘Well, you are a Jew, are you not?’ In your language, Blix, for hundreds of years, a Jew is someone who loans out money for profit. That I had never before in my life either indebted myself or others was of no consequence to the young man. I was a Jew, therefore any and all could come to me for a loan, and this without any show of gratitude, for lending at a profit was said to be part of my nature.” As Dülitz spoke, he took a pipe out of a drawer, packed it with tobacco, and lit it on a candle. “My guest, quick to enter into debt, was not as eager to repay the loan that I had given him out of pity. I realized that I had found my new profession.”
A shadow drew over his face. “I am no simple bean counter who drives my business by way of interest rates, Kristofer Blix. I trade in other commodities. When the young man’s debt became considerable, I realized that I owned him and that I could do whatever I wanted with him as long as the fate that I selected for him was to be preferred to being tossed into the cold and damp cells of the debtors’ prison. Once I formed glass into the shapes that pleased me. Today I shape your lives in the same way.”
With these words, he laid the fading pipe aside, and from another drawer he took out a leather folio, which he opened before him and the contents of which he slowly started to divulge, although he did not for a single moment avert his gaze from mine.
“Do you recognize these, Blix?”
They were the promissory notes, each one that I had signed with my own name and whose collected value was over fifty dalers. “I have purchased your debts and now I also own you, Kristofer Blix, both body and soul.”
It took me a good while to find my voice again. “What are you going to do with me?” I asked. He answered with studied indifference.
“What can you do? What are your abilities and skills? Establishing this is the goal of our first conversation. Your value, for me.”
I told him everything. What else could I do? I told him about the years in Karlskrona, I recited everything that I had learned and everything I knew, and hoped that it would be enough. Dülitz dipped a shining white feather into an inkwell and wrote down some of the words that were apparently worth noting.
“Is that all?” he asked when I did not have more to say. “So, at the stroke of midnight every night you will appear on my doorstep. This will go on until I have decided how best to make use of you.” I experienced relief such as I had never felt before at the thought of being able to leave this abominable room, even if only temporarily, and breathe fresh air, wash the panic from my gullet, and feel the wind on my face.
“The thought of escaping from me will be the first one that comes to you and therefore I want to underscore that I will find you and that . . . Let us leave it at that, since you have managed to keep the cloth unsullied until now. Rask! Please show Blix out.”
I was grabbed by the scruff of my neck and lifted onto my feet. The man had to hold on, since my legs did not support me, and he kept his hold on me until I staggered out the door. Nonetheless, I managed to get a final question out over my shoulder. “What has happened to my friend Rickard Sylvan?”
Dülitz did not change his expression when he answered.
“We found him much earlier than you. Many of the stains on this cloth are his. Our conversation was of little interest despite my efforts, and I finally determined that his value did not exceed that of his debts. I have given him twenty days to pay me what he owes, and after that I will leave him to the courts, to a decade or two at the workhouse, and to a slow death by way of the manufactory.”
Outside Dülitz’s house, after my knapsack was tossed out after me, I knelt down on all fours in the dirt and vomited in the gutter until my bile ran yellow.