The Number 7 Read online

  “Ready?”

  “I kind of have to be, don’t I?”

  “Yep.” He hooked arms with me again and I let him lead me to the proper place. Then, with a jerk, the chair buckled our knees and we were rising.

  “I could get used to this,” I smiled, turning to look at my companion. He looked nervous, and I didn’t know why. I looked down at his skis: both intact. His poles: one in each hand. “Something wrong?” I furrowed my brow.

  “Are you kidding?” Gabe inhaled and leaned in close to me, his lips touching mine.

  Our first kiss: suspended above the blue square slope I’d just conquered, floating between a white earth and a pale blue sky. It lasted long enough that we couldn’t deny its existence, but short enough that the next part of the ride was spent in an awkward silence. It didn’t help that the chair behind us was occupied by three college-aged boys who sent out encouraging jeers. At the top, as we readied ourselves to dismount, I felt completely confident, and I let it get the best of me.

  “And then the ski lift stopped—” Gabe gasped for air during the retelling of my fall to his parents on the way back home. His eyes were watering with tears from laughing. “And the attendant walks out of the station and tells Louisa . . . wait, wait. Louisa, you tell it.”

  “He says, ‘I haven’t seen a fall like that since Niagara,’” I said, unimpressed.

  But Gabe’s parents fell into hysterics, and even I couldn’t fight the laughter any longer. I crossed my arms defiantly and fought a chuckle. Gabe reached behind the seat and put his arm around my shoulders, pulling me closer to him. He kissed me on the forehead before laughing some more and turning back to watch the road. It only took a few minutes before I relaxed under his embrace. The newness of the contact was thrilling, but silently I wondered about Chris. What would he have thought about my day?

  On Christmas Eve, I nursed a pretty nasty bruise on the left side of my body where I’d landed during my epic fall. Dad and Greta had both been thoroughly entertained by the story; Rosemary was the only one who expressed any form of sympathy. She offered to make me an herbal muscle rub from menthol, but I graciously declined, deciding to wear my wounds with pride and suck it up.

  I spent the day, in preparation for our first Christmas morning in our new house, baking brown bread. Since Mom had passed away, we were used to simple Christmases. I learned early on that Dad had a weakness for dark rye bread, and I used Christmas Eve as an excuse to go through the nearly five-hour process of preparing it. This was my fifth year baking it, and so I appropriately deemed it a tradition. But this year’s bread was different.

  I’d meant it to be a surprise. While combing through Grandma’s albums in the attic, I’d stumbled across her old recipe book. It was stuffed with loose recipes—some clipped from magazines, others handwritten—and on a couple of scraps, she’d written some lines of poetry. Dad had mentioned she’d dabbled as a poet. They were beautiful musings, and I felt lucky to have found them. I don’t know why the book was in the attic and not in the kitchen. Was it another memento left behind for me to find? Another breadcrumb on my way to finding her? Inside the book, I’d found a yellowed page of handwritten notes for rye bread. It was eerie reading the directions, written in Grandma’s stream of consciousness. Grandma recited the recipe with phrases such as “Don’t be afraid to knead the dough good now” and “I usually add a couple scoops of flour, if it needs it.” I brought the recipe down from the attic intent on baking it for Dad. Maybe he’d remember the taste from his childhood. Maybe this would bring him back to her.

  Fingering the recipe, carefully making sure the page didn’t get splashed with milk or crusted with sugar, I heard my grandma reading the instructions to me. I heard her voice the same way it streamed through her old phone late at night. And I felt so close to her, baking her recipe, in her kitchen, with her bowls. I pressed the fennel and star anise in her mortar and pestle, I formed two round loaves on her butcher-block countertops, and I baked the loaves in her oven. The same oven she used to bake the same bread for my dad years and years ago.

  While baking the rye bread my thoughts took me back to Grandma’s storytelling. For two months, I’d been listening to her narratives about Grandpa. Two months and a handful of phone calls, maybe more. I’d lost track of how many times my telephone—her telephone—rang. I’d listened enough times that I felt like I knew the family she described to me: Åsa’s resolve. Leif’s pride. Anna’s benevolence. And the twins: Gerhard, Lasse, and their inseparable bond. I knew this family, and yet . . . I didn’t feel like I was any closer to the end, no matter what Rosemary said.

  As I worked the dough in Grandma’s kitchen, I hoped that the next phone call would feature a victory for Lasse. There was so much goodness in him, I could feel it. I needed to hear that he had joy in his life. I needed to know he’d been happy.

  That evening, Christmas Eve, I listened to the story I’d been waiting for.

  XXI.

  After celebrating the New Year, Gerhard and Lasse read the daily news about Finland’s seemingly failing attempts to defend against a ravenous Red Army. Sweden stood firmly on “nonbelligerent” ground, sending relief supplies—but not troops—abroad. The Magnusson family needed a distraction from the destruction to their east, and Gerhard decided to provide it for them. What he didn’t anticipate, however, was the secret battle that would ensue within him.

  “I’m going to enter the Vasaloppet,” he announced proudly one morning over breakfast.

  “Like hell you are!” Lasse snorted and jabbed Gerhard’s stomach with his fork. “Look at that paunch! What have the trains done to you? The ferries have been good to me,” Lasse inspected his own impressive bicep, doubled in size since beginning his work with his father. “I should enter the race, if for no other reason than to ensure you don’t kill yourself!”

  Gerhard smiled. Lasse had taken the bait.

  They didn’t have much time to train. Sweden’s annual cross-country ski race was in three weeks, and Lasse was right. He was in far better physical condition than Gerhard.

  Gerhard excelled in all things cerebral; he outwitted his brother with little effort. He excelled in school, and his teachers adored him. He was used to being on top. But he questioned his physical capacity. As the days wore on, he felt the odds stacking up against him, and as much as he had difficulty admitting it, he didn’t like it.

  The brothers looked at the Vasaloppet as their magnum opus. All of their smaller petty competitions—the intellectual contests, the physical trials—leading to this point seemed juvenile in comparison. Suddenly, the Vasaloppet represented more than just a ski race. Gerhard’s attention-grabbing decoy had grown bigger than he expected. He became obsessed. Every waking minute he thought about techniques to quicken his pace, to sustain his endurance, to beat his brother. A week before the race, the church hosted a party for all the Trelleborg skiers; the small coastal city was sending seven of its men to Sälen to compete. Before the party, Gerhard watched as Lasse bent over their washbasin, lathering his thick, blond beard with soap. And Gerhard suddenly realized how much older Lasse looked. He seemed stronger, more handsome. Gerhard reached up to touch his own face and loathed its boyishness.

  He was also nervous about the evening’s festivities—almost more nervous than he was about the race—because he knew most of Trelleborg’s young women would be at the party.

  “We’ll have fun tonight, yeah, Gerhard?” Lasse asked, buttoning his vest.

  “I don’t like to dance,” Gerhard confessed, lying on his bed, fiddling with his pocket watch.

  “Liar! You don’t know how.” Lasse tossed his hand towel at his brother. “It’s not that hard. You just do a little of this,” he held one hand to his stomach and the other he suspended in the air, dancing around the room, leading an invisible partner. “And then a little of this,” he spun the partner around. “They like it when you hold them close.” He winked, dipping the woman to an almost impossible depth. Gerhard smiled. For a fleeti
ng moment he wanted to call off the race.

  “Just think of women as if they were that watch,” Lasse gestured to the keepsake in Gerhard’s palm. “You gotta wind ’em up before they’ll work.” Lasse laughed deeply, ducking from the pillow Gerhard threw at him.

  There was no forgetting—no escaping—the war even for the night. Gerhard and Lasse both noticed the heavy drapes in the church windows as they approached.

  “To prevent airstrikes,” Lasse jabbed his brother in the ribs with his elbow. “Der Rote Baron. The Red Baron,” he said, referencing the famous fighter pilot, in an exaggerated German accent while pointing to the dark sky. “We’re in hiding.”

  Gerhard looked down the main street of the town. Heavy drapes hung in every window of every house in Trelleborg. When had that happened? He felt like a stranger in his own town.

  Inside the party, Pontus offered Gerhard a snaps glass filled to the brim with aquavit. “Some strength for the race. Flavored with caraway seed; you’ll like it.” The two stood away from the dance floor.

  Gerhard swallowed the liquor down quickly, watching as his brother pressed himself against a pretty dark-haired girl on the dance floor. Pontus laughed.

  “It’s good when the cheeks turn red,” Pontus chuckled.

  “It tastes like fire,” Gerhard coughed.

  Pontus nodded and smiled. “So why aren’t you out there?” He gestured to the group of dancing young people.

  Gerhard shrugged. “I’m waiting for the right moment.”

  “Let me tell you about the right moment,” Pontus put his heavy, thick hand on Gerhard’s shoulder. With his other hand, he reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and produced his prized ticket to America. “One night in Göteborg I was at a boxing match with a friend. We’d both placed bets on the same fellow to win, a big Pole named Kozerski. He had arms like tanks,” Pontus patted down his own, flaccid biceps. “Anyway, my friend had this ticket.” He waived the red paper in front of Gerhard’s face. “He always talked about getting out of Sweden, going to America. Said he was waiting for ‘the right moment.’ He wasn’t just a talker, my friend. He was really going to do it. This was all before the war, of course. It would have been easier for him to get out then,” Pontus paused to belch. Gerhard leaned away from his uncle. He suddenly needed another drink.

  “The Pole and the other guy fell out of the circle. Kozerski lost his balance and took a blind swing. Hit my friend on the nose. Right here,” Pontus pointed to the bridge between his eyes. “My friend fell over. Dead. I couldn’t believe it. I reached down to try to save him . . . hell, I didn’t know what to do. I could tell he was dead, though. You just know these things. One day you’ll see a body and know what I mean.”

  Gerhard looked to his uncle, waiting for him to continue, but it appeared as if Pontus was done.

  “So you stole his ticket?” Gerhard asked in disbelief.

  “Right out of his pocket. I didn’t know what else to do.” Pontus shrugged his shoulders. “All this to say . . . get your ass out there. Lasse is making you look like a goat standing over here by yourself. Or worse, standing here with me.”

  Pontus walked away, and Gerhard realized with a shock that his revolting uncle was right. He felt sorry for himself. He needed to get some fresh air. Outside, he lit a cigarette and looked up to the sky. He thought about Lasse as he reached into his pocket and ran his fingers over his watch. It was comforting to feel its smooth surface. The watch reminded him of his role. At the station, he was important. People respected him there. He didn’t have to worry about competing with Lasse; he didn’t have to worry about women or dancing.

  Exhaling into the night air, he suddenly realized he wasn’t alone. In the darkness about twenty meters away stood Agnes Landquist, the same girl whose bicycle he’d repaired so long ago. Tonight was the first time Gerhard had seen her in quite a while, though he saw her father often. She probably didn’t remember him, at least not in the same way he remembered her. But there, outside in the bitter winter air, she advanced toward him and coolly laughed.

  “You look so much like your brother. I almost thought you were him.”

  The moon illuminated her figure as she walked closer and Gerhard realized just how much she’d changed since the last time they’d met. Her cheeks were thinner, her curves more pronounced, and she held herself as a confident, beautiful woman.

  “May I join you? I needed a break from the party,” she said, never taking her eyes off Gerhard.

  He nodded.

  “May I have one? I’ve never smoked a cigarette before.” Agnes gestured to Gerhard’s lit cigarette.

  “I’m out of paper. Can we share this one?” He held it out for her.

  She took it and wrapped her lips around it, looking like she’d done it before.

  “I didn’t know girls smoked.”

  She shrugged and handed the cigarette back. For a while they smoked in silence. Eventually, Agnes reached down and wrapped her hand around Gerhard’s. He didn’t move. He couldn’t breathe.

  “Is it true what they’re saying?”

  “What are they saying?” he asked, already knowing what she really meant. She wanted to know about the rumors circulating town. She wanted to know about Hitler’s Army.

  “That they’re coming to Sweden.” Her voice fell hard on the unnamed.

  “Yes, I think it’s true,” Gerhard answered, putting out the cigarette but holding onto her. It was the first time he’d touched a woman; he gripped her hand tightly to keep her from noticing his trembling.

  “I think so, too,” she breathed into the night.

  They stood for a long time without exchanging words. She guided his right hand to the small of her back and took his left in hers. Listening to a fading waltz floating out from the party, they drifted in the snow creating beautiful, looping circles wherever they stepped. She placed her head on his shoulder. He smelled her hair’s faint traces of rosewater. They danced slowly. At last, she stopped and looked up at him. Her eyes were wet, but Gerhard couldn’t tell if it was the cold or something else. He wanted to give her everything—his love, the moon, the world—in that moment. He’d wanted her from their earliest days in school together. He would have surrendered everything to her if she’d asked him.

  “I think I’d like to kiss you,” she whispered.

  She lifted her mouth to his. She tasted of tobacco. It reminded Gerhard of the station. Her lips were soft and wet. It was obvious this wasn’t her first kiss, and Gerhard hoped she couldn’t tell it was his. He shuffled his feet nervously and steadied his hands on her hips. Agnes breathed heavily and clung passionately to him, as if she wanted him to carry her off, far from the church, far from the party. But something about her desperation made Gerhard feel as if she wasn’t clinging to him, but to something greater. She seemed eager to lose herself, but she wasn’t giving in to passion or the moment or to him. She was giving up. She was letting go. This isn’t how he wanted it to be. She shut her eyes tightly to keep the tears concealed; he kissed her eyelids one at a time, and then he had to go. He couldn’t surrender with her; he wasn’t willing to give up. Not yet. That would only come later.

  In Sälen, on the night before the race, no one in the Magnusson family spoke of the Winter War or of Germany. Each twin quietly prepared for the race in his own way. They took to the trail to analyze the conditions of the snow, the bends in the slope, and the density of the air.

  “It’s good, Gerhard.”

  “What is?”

  “This,” Lasse said, stretching his arm out in front of them. “Today we’re boys. Tomorrow, men.”

  Gerhard walked slowly. He wanted to win; he’d worked so hard.

  “I went to Kalmar last week,” Lasse lit a cigarette and offered one to his brother, who waved it away. “Walked right into the naval office and said I was ready to enlist.”

  Lasse waited, but Gerhard said nothing.

  “Gerhard, I want so badly to be a part of it. I feel ready.”

 
“It?” Gerhard asked though he already knew the answer.

  “Everything,” Lasse inhaled. “This war.”

  “And did you enlist?” Gerhard kept the panic from his voice—the anger and the fear—deep in his belly. Was this a challenge? Was Lasse testing him?

  “They told me I was out. Not eligible. ‘Go back to Trelleborg,’ they told me. ‘Stay on the ferry. Österberg’s orders.’ I told them I had come to enlist. I told them to screw Österberg, that I had a right to fight, a right to wear the uniform.”

  Gerhard’s brow narrowed as he stared at his brother. What did Lasse want from him? He was glad Lasse had been turned away. He didn’t want to lose his brother to a fight that wasn’t theirs. But Lasse wouldn’t understand that, so he only stared back into his brother’s wounded eyes.

  “I’m nobody, Gerhard!” Lasse suddenly burst out, running a hand through his hair. “You . . . you have your plan. I know you’ve been secretly stashing away money to go to college. And you’ll get there . . . you’ll get there because you’re you. Don’t you know I know that? But me? What have I got? I’m never getting out of Trelleborg.

  “So tomorrow, when we meet back here again,” Lasse flicked his cigarette into the snow and began walking away into the darkness before shouting over his shoulder, “don’t try to do me any favors. Got it? Tomorrow we level the field. It’s just you and me. Racing the same race, fighting the same fight.”

  The conditions the next morning weren’t ideal. The snow was wetter than normal, and it clung to their skis. The air was heavy and saturated; another snowfall was on its way.

  Lasse and Gerhard stayed in motion, keeping their muscles warm and their adrenaline going. They knew that the family stood somewhere on the sidelines, but they didn’t dare look for them. Neither wanted any distraction from the race ahead. It was possible that one or both brothers would not finish.

  “Gerhard, I don’t think we should start together,” Lasse announced ten minutes before the signal.