Crow’s Fire
Post-War Advice

It is a pristine Northern Sweden winter’s day. February would be my guess, and probably around ten in the morning. The surrounding landscape is draped in feet of snow, glistering almost blindingly in the sunlight.

At this time, I’m staying with my father’s mother (farmor) Irene, in her little house in the minuscule village of Mattarbodum (four, perhaps five houses scattered around a small lake—the, yes, you guessed it, Mattarbodum Lake). She lived alone upstairs (her husband, my grandfather, was long gone by this time—I never met him), and Bruno, a nephew of hers, I believe, lived below. Bruno also took care of the land, and some farm animals, a horse among them.

My parents? you ask. Well, they are both in Stockholm, where my mother is about to give birth to an out-of-wedlock conceived child, a disaster that would be entirely too shameful to admit and broadcast in this cold backwater community. As it happened, it turned out that the child, which soon after it was born was given away to adoptive parents, was, in fact, my father’s; something he only found out thirty or so years later, but that’s another story.

Irene has bundled me up but good because it is freezingly cold outside. In fact, looking back, I was so bundled up that, like Charlie Brown in that strip, should I fall down, stuffed to something almost sausage-like, I would probably not (like a turtle on its back) be able to get back on my feet—at least not without help.

But here I am, still upright, three-and-a-bit years old, marching down the snow-covered and recently plowed road that runs a stone’s throw north of Irene’s house. Each step crunches the snow with a thousand little explosions. There is not a cloud in the sky. Not a breath of wind. The sun shimmers in the everywhere-you-look-snow: yes, it is the purest of pure landscapes. And no other sounds than my crunch, crunch, crunch on the frozen snow.

I can see two other houses from where I stand—one a little farther down the same road and one on the far side of the frozen lake. Three houses then, counting Grandma’s. Three chimneys. Three fires. The smoke from each rose stick-straight up into the frozen air like, like, well, like smoke rising stick-straight up into the frozen air.

A popular song at the time asked the question: Why should we light fires to keep the crows warm? Strange subject matter for a popular song, but it carried an admonition (this was, after all, early 1952, and the hardship and shortages of the Second World War were, if no longer actual, still fresh in everyone’s minds—Sweden, too, although neutral, suffered shortages during the war). The sung advice was: Do not waste fuel, but insulate your homes well so that the heat will stay inside rather than escaping and instead warming the crows.

The artist was one Britta Borg, who was to move on to almost legendary fame in Sweden, and it was a song that must have been playing a lot on Grandma Irene’s radio (my other grandma, Olga, allowed no radio in the house, much less one playing popular songs which were all the Devil’s work). The reason I believe so is that I knew the song, and as I crunch-crunch-crunched my way down the snowy road, I sang it loudly into the air, clouds of frozen song rising. What I could not figure out was why we should not keep the crows warm, for it was very cold, and they didn’t have any clothes or houses. Perhaps I had spied a freezing crow or two, perhaps I was feeling sorry for them, perhaps I was singing for them to keep them warm.

I don’t know, for that is all this memory serves up: winter, glittering snow, stick-straight smoke, well-padded boy, and the crow song that he sings.

I am very glad the memory has stayed with me. I find it mysteriously beautiful.

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