Mate Ch. 03

Gloegg was nice. The spices set off a deep bass-with-a-bow humming, helped along by the alcohol. Everybody's colors took on more intensity. This was why I usually avoided drinking except very little and alone - all my impressions grew and what was complicated became impossibly complicated. But I knew I was safe here and the chords were in harmony. In fact it was good to get larger doses of everyone, but I declined when Magdadad asked if I wanted more. I must not get too cocky.

Greta and Emma wanted to play more and I did too. This game began somewhere else but evolved into their creeping around pretending they were invisible and then jump out and say Booh! My job was to pretend to be scared or angry or happy and make faces and strange noises. (KWAEEK) This was fun, too and I could talk a bit with (OOOUMPH) the others if they didn't mind the occasional (IIIILP) interruption. They didn't. I talked about (FLAAFF) music with Conny. He was into World music, a genre I knew very little of, except Irish folk annd what Yussef sang while working. I liked (UMPHAAA) that well enough. Conny introduced me to Tinariwen, for which I will always be grateful. Red desert earth and fragile monotonous beauty. (GOOOOP)

Three o'clock - time for Donald Duck. End of GOOOOP-game. The probably weirdest of all Swedish Christmas customs is that almost all swedes watch an hour of Disney cartoons every Christmas Eve, the same ones every year. Except me, I had never seen them before which apparently was a major weirdness to all. We all sat down to watch except Magdamom who fussed around offering us things to nibble on and putting the final touches to the Christmas dinner which was to follow. I offered to help, but no.

I didn't mind an hour on the couch, particularly not when Emma wanted to sit in my lap and watch. Heaven is a three year old girl warm and alive and in your lap and smelling of little girl sweat from having played with you. I was so happy and so proud that she chose my lap. I would have fought a tiger for her, no questions asked.

Pride was another of these new feelings. Pride that Greta and Emma liked me. Pride (of course) that Magda liked, even loved, even wanted to have sex with me. Pride that I was a hero. Pride that I had been such a good fellow human being and invited Yussef and David into my home. Of course there were plenty of shortcomings, they were old friends or at least acquaintances, but it felt nice to finding more and more to balance them with.

It was hard to concentrate on the Disney-cartoons. Chip and Dale were throwing nuts at Pluto, but I didn't understand why, if there was a why. There was a bowl of nuts on the table, they were more interesting to me. They mumbled to themselves in their beautiful brown sensibleness. Nutty is a very inappropriate word. Nuts are, as I said, sensible. They are what they are and that's it. I carefully chose the prettiest nut (a meaningless concept to them) and put it in my pocket. I would plant it as a keepsake and to celebrate that she got away from Chip and Dale.

The dinner was massive. Risgrynsgroet; a sweet porridge made from rice. There should be one almond hidden in it and whoever gets it is supposed to get married next year. I planned to eat a lot of porridge if I had to - that almond was mine. Or Magda's. Lutfisk - a weird fish dish. It's made from saithe or ling which are dried until hard as wood. They can be stored like forever in that state and a few days before cooking them they are softened in water and lye. White, slimy, tasteless and considered a great delicacy.

Then there were pickled herrings, baked ham, smoked salmon, ribs, meatballs, sausages, bread, potatoes, cheese, kalvsylta, which is a not very good thing with small pieces of meat in jelly, beets, janssons frestelse (a potato dish with salty fish in it), cow's tongue and pigs feet. I reeled at the sight of this aggressive multitude of dishes.

"Don't worry," Magda whispered. "Eat as much or little as you want and you don't have to try everything." Still, the chords were discordant. We didn't eat in the same room, thank god, and it was bearable for short hunting trips to slay a rib and a beet or whatever.

I started with the porridge, and very cunningly asked everyone to please be quiet for a moment. The rest of the food tried to distract me, but I was able to concentrate and localize the almond by sound and smell. The others thought I was kidding, so it was a great delight to be able to display the almond of upcoming matrimony. Lots of kidding about marriage ensued. Magda's cheeks were a little red, but I knew from her smell that she was not displeased. I wanted to propose to her right then and there, but I had no ring and it would embarrass her if she didn't want to say yes. I would ask in private. Soon.

The effects of the gloegg had faded away and I risked having a bottle of Christmas beer with the food. I must admit that the combined forces of food and drink got the better of me. I politely thanked Magdamom for a fantastic meal, staggered into the TV room and fell asleep on the couch.

When I woke up Magda and the girls had made me into a rabbit. They had made ears out of towels somehow, painted my nose black and then black whiskers. They all laughed their heads off when I pretended to be outraged, my heart full of love. Smell of blueberry pie, a Strauss waltz. The girls wanted to know why I had talked about lobsters in my sleep when they put on the ears, but I had no answer to that.

It was now time for presents. Magdadad had gone out "to buy a newspaper" and he knocked on the door dressed in a Santa-suit of seldom seen hideousness. Greta and Emma took it in their stride, modern kids are apparently afraid of nothing. At their age I probably would have shat myself if I had met a creature such as the Magdadad-santa. Good thing my "dad" always had been busy being unconscious from having drunk too much at Christmas.

Well, this Santa was as jolly as he was hideous and soon the room was full of torn paper, delighted cries, ho-ho-hos (could be a great band-name) and me, who tried to follow who got what from who (rabbit ears flopping) and how the girls and Magda would react to my presents. It felt like one of the more frantic Pogues-tunes from the inside. My rabbit ears had by now lost both their rabbit-ness and their ear-ness. I looked more like wilted rhubarb with nose and whiskers.

Greta and Emma opened their presents at the same time, which was good since I had bought them both the same thing - a pair of good binoculars. They played with them a lot that night, actually - watching things like the neighbors and reported what they got for Christmas. They wanted to go out and watch things too, but all birds were asleep and the moon hidden behind clouds. Magda loved her necklace, just like I thought she would. I also gave her a pair of long-distance skates, since skating is something I like and hoped she would take to, too. That kind of skates you use on frozen lakes and she seemed happy enough with it.

Magda had bought me clothes. A pair of trousers and a sweatshirt. I loved them and I loved that I hadn't had to buy them myself. A new hope turned up - the hope that I would never have to buy my own clothes again. I sat, happy, nibbling homemade Christmas sweets in spite of being full. I felt like I belonged. I was no longer Peter the freakish recluse, I had a family, belonged to a tribe. It was good to know. Everything felt good right now, my rabbit rhubarb ears, my overflowing stomach and my future, growing brighter and brighter in my mind.

Merry fucking Christmas, everyone.