A slightly different love
story about two young people.
We first met when I came
to my father's summer cottage in 1944.
I was four, Sonja seven.
The cottage was part of
Kampamåla village, two farms with a separate cottage each.
Our cottage,
summer of 1944
One was abandoned. The other cottage, ours, was in good condition, painted red
with white corners.
There was one child near my
age nearby, Solveig. She and I were the same age. More about her later.
The war was in full swing
and much was rationed, gasoline included, of course.
On our first visit we
arrived by taxi all the 35 km from Karlshamn run by wood gas, a war
measure.
Wood
gas powered taxis in Karlshamn
It must have cost a lot
because later we came by bicycle several times. Sometimes we took the bus to
Gäddeviksås, several kilometers from Kämpamåla. The last part of the trip was
with a wood gas powered taxi.
Marie-Louise, my little
sister, sat at the front of my mother's bicycle. I sat on the back of my dad's.
He worked hard and the back of his shirt got wet with sweat.
That summer was warm and sunny.
Or maybe we were only at the cottage when the weather was great?
The two farmers' families
hated each other. They didn't talk to each other at all.
There were two roads to
our cottage One was relatively wide and easy to walk. However, the parking lot
was not the best under the trees.
The other route was just a
path through the forest but much shorter. The parking lot was in a gravel pit.
Then we walked a crooked path, over many tree roots and a ditch with water.
Marie-Louise
and I summer of 1944
Marie-Louise, so much
younger than me, wasn't much of a playmate for a big boy, already four.
Then the neighbour’s
daughter, Sonja, came wandering, all by herself, through the dark spruce
forest.
Now I had a playmate, a
big one that I could play with.
This cottage stayed in my
life for many years. Sonja and I practically grew up together, at least during
the summers.
We lived in an idyllic
setting, far from roads and neighbors.
Father and mother often
walked around very lightly dressed or completely naked. We, the siblings also
did that if the weather was warm enough.
The painters
The painting
Father and I
painting. The picture is still in my home.
Father and mother must
have loved their time at the cottage. We were all there together for three summers. Then they divorced. After that, it was just my father and me.
We had no electricity,
water or sewage.
The evenings were lit by
kerosene lamps in the large room and the kitchen. We seldom had to use a flashlight
to go to the outhouse. Summer evenings are long and bright.
The cottage had two access
roads, a long and a short one.
Sometimes we may have
arrived via the long road. This one was not visible from Sonja's home, where
she lived with her father Axel, mother Rut and farmhand Emil.
Still, it rarely took more
than a few minutes after our arrival until her happy face appeared.
I think father and mother
almost saw her as a child in the house.
Sonja became my guide in
the neighborhood.
Both farms were in full
operation. It was wartime and all local food production was needed.
Johan-Gustav,
me, Aron Jonson and the hired hand Gustav
Sonja and I were welcome
everywhere.
Sonja and I
sharing my bike.
We participated in all
agricultural activities.
This may have been Sonja's
life, but I was a city child and assumed to think that milk came from the milk
shop.
Where milk came from, I soon
learned. It may have taken a few years, but Sonja taught me how to milk, both
cow and sheep. The sheep seldom stood still and you had to be very careful.
They could kick or run away.
The cows were much calmer.
Axel, Sonja's father, had
three cows. They were out all summer. One had a cow bell. Towards dusk, we
sometimes went out looking for the cows, led by the faint sound of the cow's bell.
Then we followed them home
to the barn where they were milked and had to stay inside until it was time for
morning milking. It was early, so early that I probably still was asleep then.
Summer offers a lot of excitement
in the country.
Sonja’s
parents, Rut and Axel Gustavsson
The hay harvest must be
done in dry weather. Then hay stood for a few days to dry. After it had dried,
it was taken home to the barn to become feed for the animals for winter.
We often played in the haybarn.
What was in the hay more than dry grass?
A lot of ants, many
spiders and other insects that sting. We had no problem with what lived in the
hay, insects have to live somewhere too.
When we left the barn, it
was time to find and shake all the living things out of our clothes.
We shook out the ants to
let them return to the surface of the earth again. Sometimes there were some
left in the clothes. I remember one morning when I woke up with ants in my bed. Could they
have come out of my clothes that hung on the edge of the bed?
We entertained ourselves.
We made our own games.
Sonja had a flat stone,
the size of a kitchen table, in front of her house. It was there when I visited
about 60 years later. A heavy rock, I think.
That stone became a center
for many years of play of various kinds. It was shop, school, boat at sea,
fishing boat in the lake or whatever else our imagination could come up with.
Sonja had something
amazing, a rowing boat. Ok, it was her father's.
We were strictly forbidden
to get near the boat. It was moored near my father's apple orchard, so it was
easy to get there.
Neither Sonja nor I could
swim then, but to row a boat we could. It was rare, but we sometimes borrowed the
boat for short excursions.
All that changed the
summer that father had bought a scrapped fishing boat from a fisherman in
Karlshamn. It was delivered by a tractor. This must have been a long journey,
given how slowly a tractor goes.
The boat was large, black
and sank within minutes of launching. It became father's eternal project to
seal the boat. It never got tight and we always had to scoop water out of it,
even when using it on the lake.
The first job, if we came
a Friday evening, was to empty the boat that had almost sunk after the five
days of inattention. We started with buckets.
.
A boat. What freedom?
No, not quite, none of us
could swim then but we still went. My little sister was with us sometimes. She
was at least good at scooping water while we rowed.
We used to row across the
lake to a promontory that was completely overgrown with wild strawberries and
blueberries.
I think we were the only
ones who picked berries there.
Berry picking
After my parent’s divorce,
my sister came rarely. My father had enough on his hands with one boy, I think.
In the crayfish season,
father and I laid out crayfish traps late in the afternoon. They were baited
with bread, scented with schnapps. The boat was so fully loaded with traps that
we barely had room to sit.
The traps of that time had
an open top. At the dawn, the crayfish could see the opening and jump out,
backwards.
Therefore, the crayfish traps
had to be taken up shortly after sunrise.
This was about 4:45 a.m.
in mid August. Father and I were up early.
We often harvested lots of
crayfish, so much so that we could drive to Växjö and sell them for good money.
Me and one
crayfish.
It all ended with the
crayfish plague about 1955, but by then my father was dead, and I was somewhere
else.
Sonja was my almost
sister, one who was bigger and stronger than me. She could lift what I couldn't
and get to where I couldn't reach.
She used to say, as an
encouragement:
"You only can, if you
really want to."
Father had many projects
in the works.
His biggest was grafting
apple trees, hundreds of them.
We often played close to
father and his apple trees.
There were a lot of snakes
in our forest clearing. Most were garden snakes but we had the occasional viper
as well. I don't remember who taught me the difference between a garden snake
and a viper.
But, to father's great
horror, seen from a distance, I was able to hold up a snake by its tail:
"Look, a viper."
The snake, a garden snake,
circled around and could bite my hand. This bite wasn’t hard, just a pinch.
Vipers can't bite their
own tail, only garden snakes are flexible enough to do that.
We examined how anthills
worked. It was cruel to the ants when we stuck a twig into the middle and
stirred. I've never done that after my first lesson on ants in biology class at
school.
Am I forgiven now?
The bird song was
almost overwhelming every spring. Father put up many bird nests. Unfortunately,
he wasn't careful to check their condition the next year.
I remember this episode
with horror.
A bird sat outside a nest
and flapped his wings for a long, long time.
It was stuck.
This is the
tree with the ill-fated birdsnest.
I couldn't reach up even
on the ladder, but Sonja who was a little taller almost reached up. She saw
that a leg had stuck into a crack in the wood.
She just had to lift the
bird a few centimeters, and it would be free again.
Then the ladder started to
slide away.
Sonja didn't release the
bird as she started to fall. She came down, hard, with a bird, minus a leg. It
was still in the bird's nest.
The bird died within
seconds, but this horrific memory has stayed with me forever.
After the divorce, father
found it difficult to take care of me at home. He had a responsible job and
could not act as a mother as well, although we lived only two flights of stairs
up from his office.
I was seven. That summer,
I stayed more and more weeks with the Jonson family, the second farm in
Kämpamåla.
It was absolutely perfect.
Sonja and I spent the whole summer together.
When the summer ended, it
was obvious for my father that he couldn’t bring me home. He made a deal for me
to stay as a foster child with the Jonson’s.
Living with Jonson's was
like a dream to me. They didn't have any children of their own then and I
became something of an eyestone for all of them.
Britta and
Aron Jonson 1947
I stayed for 1.5 years and
did not move back to Karlshamn until September of the next fall.
Bäckaskog's school was
closest. It had two teachers, each with one classroom. A two-room school.
Bäckaskog
school 1948
Sonja was a big girl now
and studied in the classroom with the big kids.
I started first class
together with Solveig. We had only seen her from time to time before then,
six-year-olds did not walk the forest roads much on their own.
Now we were in the same
class, with the same road to school. Now our little group of playmates
increased to three, Solveig included.
It was four kilometers for
Sonja to school and me, a little shorter for Solveig.
I remember, of course,
that it always snowed, the wind was in my face and it was uphill in both
directions.
Britta, my stepmother at
the time, said, however, that she always drove us when the weather was bad.
(That was true.)
The first schoolwork I
brought home was the grade one reader.
"Father rows a boat. Mother is sweet."
They were the first words
I learned to read in first class.
The world soon opened up.
We had a library at school and I could bring home extra books to read.
"All the people in Småland”,
our province, read the newspaper Växjö Dagblad.
So did we.
I began reading the
newspaper as soon as I could make out the headlines, beginning with the comics,
of course.
Johan-Gustav
and me, summer of 1948
The news came on the radio
at 7:00 p.m., exactly.
We had a battery radio
with two large batteries.
Johan-Gustav and Gustav,
the farmhand, sat down in front of the radio set.
Johan-Gustav looked
intensively at the clock and started the radio exactly at the moment when the
first works we could hear were:
"Sveriges Radio. Today's news, followed by today's news
analysis."
The news lasted 15
minutes, then the radio was turned off.
"It's too expensive to listen to the news analysis, we can
read about that in the newspaper tomorrow."
We got electricity in the
first winter I was there.
Next year Johan-Gustav
could listen to the news analysis too. No batteries required then.
The battery radio and
batteries ended up on the garbage pile behind the house.
The winter was another
perfect time for us the children.
It was cold
and with lots of snow.
And took part in the snow removal
Everyone in the world
would get electricity for next spring.
All new subscribers had to pay for part of the installation costs.
Would they have
three-phase 380 V for motors or just 127 V for lamps?
That discussion lasted
weeks. Axel, Sonja's father, was very uncertain about the value of all that power.
They had their kerosene engine for the threshing, what else could they need?
In the end, it was decided
that his farm would only get single phase 127 V. He deeply regretted that a few
years later when his 1922-vintage thresher engine died a noisy death with
pieces flying all around.
Father ordered three-phase
for his cottage. It powered electric heaters of unexpected capacity. If you
forgot about them and were out too long, the cottage could become hot like a
sauna.
The power lines through
the forest were good at catching lightning. Everyone experienced lightning
strikes and the horror when light bulbs exploded.
We had several summer-experiences of that kind in the next few years.
My year at Jonson's came to
an end. Time to go to a big school in Karlshamn.
Sonja and I parted ways and met mostly
during summers after that.
Our friendship deepened with time.
The games became more
intense.
One was to play “Indians
and whites”. I was the Indian in war paint and lightly dressed.
With increasing age came puberty
at about age 13 for me.
My penis would grow at
completely unexpected times.
I started seeing Sonja
with different eyes. She was a good looking girl, with all the curves in the
right place. I used to try to catch a peek at her breasts, whenever possible. The
best moments were when she bent forward.
Once when my penis had
gotten really big, it stuck out, uncovered by any clothing. I noted what had
happened but did nothing to hide my nakedness.
Sonja didn't say anything,
but soon left for the day.
I have to admit I tried to
show myself and what I had quite often. Sonja never reacted again, as far as I
know. She just looked in silence.
This life came to a sudden
end when my father died.
It was spring again and we
visited the cottage every weekend.
This happened in early
June, when all was green again.
Father was a little
annoyed by all the brown-burnt grass from last summer. He thought it slowed the
new grass from growing.
He put a match to the
grass in the field. It didn't take many minutes until the whole field was on
fire. Then the fire approached the edge of the forest.
Father tried to knock down
the fire with everything he had.
I got scared and ran the fastest
I could to the nearest farm, Sonja's parents'.
It only took seconds, the
smoke was visible over the forest top, for them to understand the seriousness. All
ran back with me.
They worked hard until sunset.
Then the immediate danger of a forest fire was over. No tree had caught fire.
However, our old earthen
cellar, built from huge logs about 100 years ago, was still burning. There was
no way that the fire would spread from there, but it had to be extinguished as
well.
Father and I, I was
fourteen, took turns going out every half hour all night, picking up a bucket
of water from the lake and extinguish what fire was still visible.
At dawn, everything was
extinguished. We had had a next sleepless night before we returned to
Karlshamn.
Father had had circulatory
problems after a blood clot in his leg earlier and was temporarily on sick
leave at the time.
Once back, one of the
municipal officials came up to the apartment and told father:
"You cannot sit at the King's table, you will sit further
away at dinner."
The king would come
through Karlshamn a few days later and there would be a royal dinner for the
city's important people. Father was included, he would sit near the King.
Father wanted to remain at
the first seat assigned. We went out, visited a couple of influential local
politicians, but the decision was made.
He never went to that
royal dinner.
Father died, or began to
die, at lunchtime.
He was going to set the
table, pulled out the cutlery box and stood still, like frozen.
I led him to my bed.
The ambulance arrived. He
was dead at seven o'clock that day. He had had a stroke. Had all the stress
around the fire and the dinner seating arrangements been too much for him?
Then everything changed in
my life.
I moved into my mother's
little apartment. There I got a bed in the dining alcove in the kitchen.
My life there was hellish with
my, not yet officially mentally disturbed, sister.
The high school had a few
days of winter holidays every year.
The Jonson family invited me to stay
with them the next February. It became a memorable and pleasant visit, for many
reasons.
I was among friends. Sonja
and I met every day. One night we were busy with a board game after everyone had
gone to bed.
We started playing with
each other. My hands explored her breasts and, eventually, slid down towards
Sonja's crotch.
We fully agreed that this petting felt
good. Keep going.
Then Sonja, 18, said:
"No, we can't go on, I have to save my virginity for my
boyfriend. If you want to sleep with a girl, try Solveig, our schoolfriend. She
sleeps with boys sometimes.”
I'm going to go to a party in Grönteboda tomorrow. You are
welcome too."
That night I walked the
few hundred meters home to my room through the clear, cold winter night with
highly mixed emotions.
The next night Sonja and I
got a ride to the party.
I knew many of the guests
before. We played the latest and newest music, including Snodda's
"Haderian, Hadera".
It was a cold night and
when it was time to go home, not all the cars could be started.
Solveig and I decided to
walk the three kilometres through the forest on our own.
She offered me to warm my
hands over her breasts, under her coat.
By the time we got to her home,
her parents had long since gone to bed. The bedroom door to the kitchen was
closed.
We seated on the firewood
box and I continued to warm up by pettin a little here and there.
We were soon warm again.
Then we undressed. She wore a girdle with a lot of closure hooks. I opened them
one by one.
"You're good at this, Bengt. You must have practiced a
lot," Solveig said.
As a good Swedish
teenager, I was 15, I always carried a condom in my wallet.
I put on the condom and
Solveig showed the way.
I probably wasn't a good
lover, teenagers tend to be too fast, but we did make love. I disposed of the condom
in the kitchen stove. It made a sizzling noise in the fire.
It's worth mentioning, there
was a big dog sitting beside us all this time. He liked to be patted on his
head.
This is the only time in
my life when I've had made love, patting a dog with one hand.
This was probably the
coldest night that winter.
On my way home I looked at
the stars, so far away. They looked different this night. I'm a man now, a man
who's made love.
Solveig and I never met
again. We tried, but between her studies and my further adventures, it never
happened.
She got Leukemia and died
way too young. I have put a flower on her grave every time my travels have taken
me near the church in Urshult.
She passed away 20 years old. My flowers
Now almost all the actors of
this story are there, except Sonja and I.
She's 83, I'm 80.
We talk to each other on
the phone sometimes.
It takes many years to make an "old friend".
