Excerpt from The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven by Nathaniel Ian Miller, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Please, Sven." She looked at me with pain.

"Please, yourself. If he is unimaginably lucky perhaps he will follow in his father's footsteps. Then he may look forward to a life spent counting things, and buying things, and selling things, and always thinking about the supply and demand for things, and talking endlessly about the cost of things until he and everyone around him goes completely mad."

I believe—no, I am certain—that she had tears running down her face when she left.

3

Four years passed. I became someone whose days did not constitute a life, but rather a death-in-progress. Time was something to endure. Because of my general lack of enthusiasm for work of any kind, I was shunted down to the worst jobs at the mill, and performed them during the worst shifts. There at the bottom I remained, either because of my father or because no one really knows or cares what happens during the night shift, so long as the simple tasks are accomplished adequately.

Freyja had four children whom my mother was always pestering me to see. I could not remember their names from one day to the next. Olga had two more after Wilmer: a daughter, Helga, and a third who died shortly after birth. In the years since Wilmer's birth, I had allowed, or tacitly encouraged, a caustic void to open between Olga and myself—or so I perceived it—and I did not hear of this loss until a week or so later.

My mother came to see me and though she failed to mention it until we'd been drinking tea for twenty minutes, almost as though it were an afterthought, I believe that in her own old-fashioned way she was pleading for help. "Your sister is not taking the best care of herself," she said.

It sounded unkind, but of course I spoke my mother's secret language, as most children do, and understood the real meaning: Olga was distraught. Sometimes it takes an emotional knife wound to roust you from the veil of self-pity. I startled like a drunk who wakes in an unfamiliar place.

When I came to see Olga, Arvid was standing at the door. It was eight in the evening. He looked exhausted, but he greeted me with his usual exasperating politeness and invited me in. It was oddly quiet in the place—Wilmer and Helga must have been in bed. There were plates on the table. Evidently they'd eaten dinner late, or no one had cleaned up. Arvid glanced at the plates, and then looked back at me. "If only we had a maid!" he said with a forced smile. "A man's work is never done."

I grunted in response. I was still examining the table. Two small plates with the food all mushed together, some things eaten, others pushed deliberately to one side: Wilmer and Helga. Two large plates: one immaculate, as though licked, and one covered with food. Arvid watched me for a long moment. "I am glad you came, Sven, but as you can see, Olga has already gone to bed. Perhaps you could try again tomorrow? I'm sure she would be delighted to see you."

I ignored him and stomped up the tiny staircase in my work boots. My sister was lying in her bed. The lamp was still lit and she had a book in her hands but her eyes were closed. As I sat down next to her the mattress creaked and sank.

"Sven," she said, showing no sign of surprise at my lurking presence in her bedroom. Her face was strangely empty. "I missed you." And then she began to cry. Great wracking sobs that made no noise, only a kind of croak or wheeze.

I held her in my arms and my shirt was quickly drenched with her tears. "I'm so sorry, Olga. Sorry I have not been here. These many years."

She did not talk much that evening. She didn't need to. Her pain was astonishing in its size. It sat upon her and held her immobile. It was a storm cloud that filled the room, the entire house. I did not doubt that her neighbors could feel it several blocks away.

After some time, she glanced at the clock on the mantel. "Your shift, Sven. You must go or you'll be late. Mother says you've lost too many jobs and cannot afford to lose another."

Excerpted from The Memoirs of Stockholm Sven by Nathaniel Ian MIller. Copyright © 2021 by Nathaniel Ian MIller. Excerpted by permission of Little Brown & Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.