ALL LOVE PROHIBITED

By Anders Eklof

“ALL LOVE PROHIBITED” is a story of a young, idealistic foreigner who falls in love with a beautiful black woman in the tense, segregated Alabama of the early 1960s. Before arriving in the United States, he has never met a black person, and he is shaken by his instant, passionate reaction to her. His attempts to meet her and

• Language: English
• Publisher: TOPLINK PUBLISHING, LLC
• Release date: Oct 16, 2018
• ISBN: 9781949804683

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All Love Prohibited

Anders Eklof

Copyright © 2018 by Anders Eklof.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018958674

HARDBACK 978-1-949804-67-6

Paperback: 978-1-949804-66-9

eBook: 978-1-949804-68-3

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

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Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Epilogue

How can one idea like segregation become so hypnotic a thing that it binds a whole people together, good, bad, strong, weak, ignorant and learned, sensitive, obtuse, psychotic and sane, making them one as only a common worship or a deeply shared fear can do? Why has the word taken on the terrors of taboo and the sanctity of religion?

—Lillian Smith, Killers of the Dream

Chapter 1

Redstone Arsenal, outside Huntsville, Alabama, July 1961.

In the brilliant subtropical sun, the military school buildings looked like four bright sugar cubes neatly arranged on the olive-drab lawns. The leaves on the few trees among the buildings hung still and quiet on their branches, the air itself seemingly too stifled by the steamy heat to play among them or to stir the dust on Alabama’s rust-colored ground. Few people lingered outside, and the traffic on the base’s roads remained light, even though it was lunchtime. Most cars were air-conditioned and had their windows rolled up. All was calm and quiet and very bright.

About an eighth of a mile away from the school buildings, across the open space of a grassy field, was a half-barrel-shaped building made of corrugated, gray-painted sheet metal. It was a cafeteria, its shape resembling a giant version of the upper part of the type of barbecue grill one might see at large outdoor parties. In the merciless sun, it may well have grilled all who dared enter, had it not been effectively cooled by an air-conditioning system.

A young man looked lonely and a bit out of place, walking across the sundrenched field. He was the only person one could see walking outside in this heat. His blond hair and blue eyes gave clues to his Northern origins, and the paleness of his face and arms hinted that he had arrived in this area quite recently. He was a twenty-year-old Swede, Leif Karlsson, unaccustomed to the July heat of Alabama.

He was on his way from one of the school buildings, heading toward the cafeteria for lunch. The sun was too hot for comfort for him and its light too intense; it made him squint. As was his habit, he walked with long, energetic strides and his short but brisk walk made him break into a sweat. He was relieved to reach the cafeteria parking lot, but the steamy air above it trembled with the heat of the sun’s rays on the black, newly laid tarmac. It was going to be a relief to get inside in the shade.

As Leif entered the cafeteria, he welcomed the cascades of cool, dehumidified air that gushed from large ducts in the ceiling. He drew a deep breath of the comforting coolness and detected the mingled scents of cleaning agents and smoking vegetable oil. The odor was faintly unpleasant. It made Leif slow his gait, but he continued on.

There was a steady buzzing of voices and laughter in the room; clinking and clattering of plates, glasses, and eating utensils; and scraping of chairs and tables. He looked around to orient himself. Under the arched roof, the cafeteria had a brightly lit rectangular floor space, about sixty feet long and forty-five feet wide. Two end-to-end service counters partitioned its width about equally into an eating area to the left with tables and chairs, and the kitchen to the right. The two service counters swung out into L shapes where they met in the middle of the room, leaving a small shared space for two back-to-back cash registers. The kitchen featured gas-fired stoves, frying surfaces, and ovens, plus several dishwashing basins, all in stainless steel. It gave a clean but sterile impression, and the abundance of steel and the concrete floor helped raise the noise level.

The coolness of the cafeteria brought relief and made up for its sterile ambience and the noise in the room. Leif wiped the slight sweat off his brow and walked up to the line at the nearest counter, took a tray from a stack, and pushed it along the steel rails on the side of the counter. His eyes registered the assortment of salads and ready-made sandwiches on the self-service shelves on top of the counter. Nothing looked particularly appetizing, so he decided to go on to where cafeteria employees served the hot dishes. But the line had come to a stop, and he heard an angry voice from farther up. The words had a heavy Southern accent, and Leif could not make out their meaning. He and several others looked to see who had spoken.

The speaker was a somewhat overweight, middle-aged man of average height. He wore civilian clothes, rather ill-fitting and in need of pressing. His dark-gray pants hung low in the front to accommodate a substantial beer belly. In spite of the day’s heat, he wore a long-sleeve shirt that was more off-gray than off-white. His fleshy face, which Leif saw only in profile, was reddened from anger and from having lived his life under the Southern sun. Leif could not see the target of the man’s ire, because the shelves above the counters obstructed his view. He could see that the man received a plate of food while he stared angrily at the person giving it to him. The man then continued to the cashier, and the line moved on.

The brief outburst had attracted attention not just at the counter but also from the customers at the tables near it. Leif noticed that it had met general disapproval. The disapproval seemed to reach the level of shock and anger in some of the dark-skinned military men sitting right behind the angry man. For a moment, they stopped eating and looked first at him and then at one another almost in disbelief. They shook their heads and continued their meals, making quiet comments among themselves. Leif drew the conclusion that the man had said something that was particularly offensive to them as dark-skinned people. That angered Leif, too.

All across the South, the struggle by black citizens to gain in practice what the Constitution promised them in words had reached a crescendo. The white backlash proved strong and violent, employing abuse, intimidations, beatings, and murders in attempts to keep the niggers in their place. But military installations such as Redstone Arsenal were islands of calm and equal rights in a stormy sea of intensifying emotion and racial strife. Racially offensive language and bullying were not permitted, and a black soldier could feel safe here. On a hot July day like this, his immediate concern might be the scorching temperature, not the discrimination and hazards he faced as soon as he left the base.

The line ahead of Leif was not long, and he soon faced the cafeteria worker who had been the object of the man’s outburst. She was a woman about Leif’s age. Her face was very dark and had an African look, with a short blunt nose and full lips. When he first faced her, she still bore a tense and pained look. But as she met Leif’s gaze, it gave way to a questioning and somewhat impatient expression. She apparently was waiting for his order, which was slow in coming.

Oh, yes, his order! The sight of the young woman had sidetracked Leif’s mind. Her eyes that met his were large, with long eyelashes and a shape that was faintly oriental, an impression heightened by high cheekbones. The eyes seemed to draw him in, and he had to force himself to look away and bring his mind back to what he wanted to eat. He scanned the food offerings behind the counter in panic, afraid to seem stupid. Instinctively, he wanted to make a good impression on this beautiful girl. She was fascinating; she made his heart beat fast and gave him a tickling feeling in the pit of his stomach. Relieved, he saw what he wanted.

Uh…I’ll have the franks and beans, he said. It did not sound as suave and confident as he had wanted it to. He tried to smile at her, but she had taken her eyes off him and turned to the containers of food. When she placed the plate with his food on the counter in front of him, she did not look up.

Thank you, Leif said, hoping to get her attention. The woman gave him a quick glance, nodded without expression, and turned to the next customer in line.

Leif took the plate of food, put it on his tray, and pushed it toward the cash register. He was embarrassed about the confused and awkward impression he might have made on the woman behind the counter. She’s strikingly beautiful, he thought. He wished she had noticed him. But for her, he was just another nameless, forgettable person in the line of customers.

When he sat down at an empty table, his anger at the white man who had said something offensive to her returned. It now felt like a personal insult. The woman is so beautiful, he thought. How dare that fat slob insult her! He looked back at her from his table, hoping to catch her eye. But she was too busy to pay any attention to customers already seated.

He finished his food and placed his tray with the empty plate in a movable rack of such trays. When he left the cafeteria, he hardly noticed the heat outside as he walked in deep thought back to his classroom building.

By evening, the incident still had not left his mind. He wondered how he ought to react to manifestations of racist bullying and oppression. What would he have said or done if he had been right behind the man who had offended that woman? It would have been embarrassing simply to swallow his indignation and remain quiet. He could not in good conscience avoid the issue of segregation by saying that it was not his business, a domestic problem that Americans themselves would have to worry about. If the plight of the Jews in Nazi Germany was not purely a German domestic issue, how could the plight of blacks in South Africa and the United States be of only local concern?

He could not rationalize cowardliness by saying he was just following orders not to get involved. The incident in the cafeteria had itself lasted a few seconds, but it had left an irritating residue of anger in Leif. He felt great sympathy for the woman. No, it was more than sympathy—he wanted to protect and defend her.

Chapter 2

Leif Karlsson had always been somewhat of a lone wolf. After the death of his mother when he was merely two years old, he had lived with his aunt and her husband. They lived on the outskirts of the little idyllic Swedish town of Norrtalje and had no children of their own and no neighbors with children of the same age as Leif. As a result, Leif had spent most of his early childhood by himself, but he did not experience that as loneliness. He was content and comfortable with the freedom it gave him, and it helped him gain self-confidence and self-reli ance.

At first, when he started school at age seven, he was bored. During his early years, his grandmother had read some children’s books to him, and his interest in the stories prompted him to learn, with his grandmother’s help, to read on his own. He could already read quite well when he started school, and school offered no challenge and nothing new. His grades in everything except reading turned out to be mediocre.

He made some friends among his classmates, but none of them lived close enough to his home for him to spend much time with them. In the summer, he often preferred to be on his own in the fields and woods, and in the winter, when the weather turned too cold and the days grew too short to enjoy spending much time outside, he became an avid reader. He asked for books for his birthday and Christmas, mostly books about daring travel in foreign lands. Such tales of exotic places and peoples and the true accounts of brilliant scientific and technical pioneers fascinated him.

He developed an interest in music at an early age, first being drawn to swing music from the 1930s. His interest in music led to an interest in electronics, and with the help of books borrowed from the town library he learned, at age eleven, how to build his own radio receiver. It allowed him to listen to music of his own choice.

In 1955, when Leif was fourteen years of age, two important events in his life occurred. The first one was that he fell in love. The girl was a year younger than him and very Swedish-looking, with long golden-blond hair and light-blue eyes, and her budding femininity, her laughter, and her pretty, innocent face held him spellbound. It was his first experience of love, widely exceeding in passion the several brief infatuations he had previously experienced. He idolized that girl, and in his dreams, he had had sex with her all the time. He imagined it as being heavenly, exciting, and pleasurable beyond words. But he never had the courage even to try to kiss her. After a while, she and her family moved to another town, and he never saw her again. He pined for her for a long time and did not think he could ever love anyone else.

The second important event was that rock ’n’ roll came to Sweden. Leif became a fervent fan. He became friends with some of the members of the teenage rock ’n’ roll bands in town and found that his experience in building radios enabled him to make some money building amplifiers for their guitar and bass players.

He had a natural sense of rhythm and learned to play drums on the sets of his friends in some of the bands. He could not afford to buy a set of his own, which kept him from becoming a steady member of any of the bands, but that did not bother him too much. He had enough sense of music to realize that the teenage bands in town were rather awful. They were his friends, so he did not want to criticize them, but it frustrated him sometimes that they did not sound at all like the American rock artists that Leif liked. At the time it was of no special significance to him that most of the musicians he liked were black. It was merely so statistically. But he was aware that he tended to favor music by black performers, and he admired and idolized them.

Leif’s first strong reaction to the beginning racial crisis in the United States occurred when he saw the news reports from the violence in Little Rock, Arkansas, where nine black youths were trying to register at a previously all-white high school. The violence of the riots it caused was on news programs all over Europe. His aunt had bought a TV set in early 1957, and Leif instantly sympathized with the young blacks who were almost his own age and was appalled and furious to see the threats and insults directed at them by the large, frenzied white crowd, which was held back from physically assaulting them only by the bayonets and rifles of their military guard.

As school became more challenging, his report cards significantly improved. His aunt and her husband were impressed not only by his school record, but by the sophisticated radios and amplifiers he built from scratch down in the basement of their house. It was increasingly clear that he would become the first in his family to go to college.

His interest in politics began when he started college in Stockholm. Like most Swedish college students of the time, he had strong, idealistic convictions about justice, fairness, and individual freedom and felt strong sympathy with the anti-colonial and anti-dictatorial political movements in other countries, but communism had no attraction. The Soviet Union did not inspire him as an example. It produced a mental image of conformity, gray blandness, and harsh dictatorship, the complete opposite of the joyous, uninhibited, colorful, and individualistic culture of rock ’n’ roll.

He did very well in college, and as a result, when he graduated and was due for one year of obligatory military service, he was selected to attend the radar school of the air defense forces. During that year, he learned of an opportunity to get a related civilian job at the end of military service. He was immediately interested, because it offered a unique experience.

What got him excited was that the job would include a year of studies in the United States, which would be an adventure in itself. Leif had not yet turned twenty-one years of age and had never been out of the country. In America there would be famous and fascinating places to visit, and he would probably have opportunities to see some of his favorite artists in concert. The most awesome and compelling aspect of it was that he would be where events of global historic significance were just taking place. He would be living in the American South, where the black civil rights struggle was beginning to gain momentum, and the course would be taught at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama, the headquarters of the American space program. They had begun working toward the awesome goal promised by President Kennedy, to land a man on the moon, and the head of that historic effort was none other than the legendary Wernher von Braun, the genius who had created the German V1 and V2 rockets in World War II.

The excitement Leif felt at the prospect of such a trip was tempered by the realization that it would mean separation from his girlfriend Ulla for more than a year. Their relationship had already been stressed by his absence from his hometown while he was in military service, with only a few short visits to Norrtalje during holidays like Christmas and Easter. Ulla was a great girlfriend. She was good-looking, warm, smart, and easy to be around, and she really knew him and appreciated him as a person. She always told him that she liked his looks, and that she admired his intellect and strong sense of right and wrong and justice. What meant most was that she was satisfied with him and desired him as a man.

The only thing was that he did not actually love her. It was sad, because he knew she deserved that he did. It just did not happen. She was the first person in his entire life who had made him feel genuinely loved, and he was grateful to her for that. He did not want to lose her. Now he worried that the long separation would be too much. He did not think he himself could go for that long without female company. It would not mean anything to his relationship with Ulla if he had some superficial affair in America, and he could understand if Ulla also found some consolation for loneliness while he was away. He did not want to know about it, that was all. And he did not want it to have any long-term consequences.

Leif and five other young engineers were accepted for the job, starting in June 1961, immediately after their military service. Two Swedish military officers, Captains Flod and Weichbrodt, were to accompany them on the trip and would be their leaders and their contacts with American and Swedish official agencies. Both captains were in their forties and had been in the United States before.

Before they left Sweden, the engineers and the two captains were given a lot of information about what they could expect in the United States. Several hours of instructions from an employee at the American Embassy in Stockholm were meant to prepare them for the culture shock. The preparation included language training to speak English with an American accent and to understand the peculiar accent and idiomatic expressions of the American South. The embassy employee seemed to be a native of the South and delivered the lessons with a good deal of humor, which made a good impression on the men. Only one thing bothered Leif. The man warned them not to pay much attention to or get involved in any of the social disturbances that were beginning to rock the South. It could be dangerous and perhaps cause problems—even on the diplomatic level—if any of the Swedes were injured or arrested in such a context.

The recent violence associated with the Freedom Riders had been sensational news on Swedish TV, and Leif had followed the events closely with a sense of moral outrage and solidarity with the riders. The violence directed at them was not just outrageous. It seemed inexplicable in its intensity. The white mobs were whipped into a frenzy of homicidal hatred, attempting to burn the riders of the Greyhound bus to death by setting fire to the vehicle after stopping it outside Anniston in Alabama and preventing the occupants from exiting. Later, others attacked the second bus in Birmingham and beat the occupants so badly with iron pipes and baseball bats that several had to be hospitalized with serious injuries. That bus was also set on fire. What could create such vicious, irrational hatred? The fact that he might soon see it firsthand was intellectually interesting, but also frightening. These events happened not far from where he was going to be: Huntsville, Alabama.

It was obvious from the tone of the warnings that the embassy employee had no sympathy for the civil rights movement. Leif did not think it wise to protest right then and there. A controversy might lead to his removal from the team.

***

The young engineers and the two military captains arrived in Huntsville on a flight from New York. Night had fallen when they arrived, and Leif felt a wave of joyous excitement when he stepped out of the plane, felt the heat of the air, and noted how dark it was outside. It was only a little past nine o’clock at night. At this time in the summer in Sweden, the sun still shone. The warmth and the darkness made it obvious that he now was in a tropical environment, or at least subtropical. It was exciting and romantic.

The impression was strengthened by the sound of crickets, a sound that at the time he could not identify. It reminded him of the tremulous sounds of violins one heard in thriller movies when something very dramatic could be expected to happen. There was a fragrance in the air, a faint smell of warm soil that he associated with fertility and dynamic life forces. The environmental sensations filled him with energy and anticipation of adventure. He expected to experience great and exciting things in the coming year and felt ready for them. He had a big smile on his lips when he stepped down the ladder from the airplane and followed the other Swedes to a couple of taxicabs that would take them to their motel.

The young men, aged twenty and twenty-one, had never before travelled outside Sweden without their parents. The experience was exciting for them all, a coming-of-age event. The first night in town, they had rooms at the Holiday Inn at the Huntsville airport. They were all taken to Redstone Arsenal the next day, where they were registered and given their ID badges, which had to be worn at all times on the base. A formal welcome by the man in charge of the school, Colonel MacPherson, followed the next day, and they were then introduced to their teacher for the course, Lieutenant May.

A short session of questions and answers followed to provide some information about Huntsville, Redstone Arsenal, and the school. No one mentioned the tense racial situation in the South. Leif registered that with some irritation but decided not to broach the subject. He had no idea how questions about that would be received. The man from the American Embassy in Stockholm had explicitly warned them not to get involved in anything political while they were in America. It was best to keep a low profile in that respect for now, because the absence of any mention of it made it clear that it was a subject too sensitive for the school officials to mention.

The next day, the Swedes moved into their individual apartments that the Swedish Embassy had leased for them for a year. The apartments were all in a row of duplex buildings, and Leif was given one where an elderly American couple occupied the adjoining apartment. Four of the engineers moved into two of the buildings, while the sixth engineer, who had managed to bring his wife at the government’s expense, also had an American couple as his neighbor in the adjacent apartment. The two Swedish captains had their individual single-occupancy homes nearby.

Earlier, two drivers with large military olive-green sedans had taken them back and forth between the motel and the base. They now helped with the move into the apartments.

Judged by American standards, the apartments were relatively modest, but none of the young engineers had ever lived in an apartment of their own before. Their new situation meant a step up in responsibility, maturity, and standard of living for them, and they excitedly explored their new homes. The apartments were modern and clean, and all had a TV in the living room and a small washer-dryer unit for clothes in the bathroom.

They all had a minimum of belongings, so the move into their apartments was quickly accomplished. Now an even more exciting task lay before them: The Swedish government had given each one of them a generous allowance of $2,500 to buy a car. Now they had their own apartments, each with its own driveway, and it was time to buy cars. None of them had ever owned a car before, and the prospect of going car hunting filled them with happy anticipation.

The apartments were located near the main road into the center of town, along which the majority of the town’s car dealers had their lots. It was an easy walk down to the row of car dealerships where they expected to find cars of their choice.

Except for Leif, the young engineers looked at this task in entirely pragmatic terms. Their funds were limited, and they wanted to bring their cars back with them to Sweden when their time in the United States was over. To do so was a smart deal. If they had owned the cars for at least a year in America, they would not have to pay the Swedish sales tax for it when they brought it into the country. If they still owned it after one year in Sweden, they would get a refund on the customs charge. These two substantial fees plus the shipping cost are added to the purchase price on American cars bought from Swedish dealers.

After owning their cars for a total of two years they could then sell them in Sweden or trade them in for other cars. At that time, they would bring about the same money that it had cost to buy them in America and take them to Sweden. They could buy brand new cars and in effect own them for free for a year in America and a year in Sweden. There was, however, one qualifier to this equation. To be practical and desirable for Swedish drivers, the cars had to be reasonably sized and economical in their fuel requirements. After careful consideration and discussions among themselves, all except Leif bought brand-new, virtually identical, rather nondescript compact cars. The idea was that buying five cars from the same dealer would give them greater leverage in negotiating a good price.

At first, they had the impression that their plan had worked. They were able to negotiate the price on each car down to exactly the sum they had available: $2,500. But then, after the deal was settled, they found they also had to pay for tags, and, of course, insurance. So they exceeded their budget. But after they had sat in the cars, sensed the new car smell, and already lusted after them, their first cars, brand new American cars, they were not inclined to pull out of the deal. Only two of those cars were available on the dealer’s lot, but the dealer promised he would be able to get three more in just a few days.

Leif was less concerned with the economic trade-offs. He wanted to take this opportunity to find something special. His inclination was to go for something that was unique and different, something that stood out in some way, something that he would be unlikely ever to have a chance to own in Sweden. He wanted a car that was good-looking, fast, and exciting. He could not get a brand-new car of that description for $2,500, and it took him a few days before he found a used one that satisfied him. In the meantime, he got a ride from the other engineers to and from the Arsenal for their technical courses.

Leif’s eventual choice was a 1958 Thunderbird with a tannish-yellow body and a bright-white roof. It had some mileage on it but was very clean, with an aftermarket exhaust system that produced a lionlike roar when he blipped the throttle and a deep resonant gurgle at idle. Leif grinned widely behind the wheel when he test-drove it. Because of its color, he immediately named the car Yellow Bird after a popular, wistfully romantic song with a Caribbean theme. The name invoked images of beautiful, tropical islands in the sun.

After buying the car, he drove around Huntsville, familiarizing himself with the place and with Yellow Bird. He enjoyed riding along with the mighty engine growling as he accelerated away from traffic lights, good music playing loudly on the radio. It was amazing that this was his car. Yellow Bird!

To his amazement, he discovered a radio station all the way over on the right of the dial that played music that he especially liked, featuring almost entirely black artists. Life was sweet indeed—almost a fairy tale. He was in America, at the center of its space program. Living in his own beautiful apartment, driving his own fabulous car, listening to a local radio station that played his favorite music. It was a life he had not even dreamed of a couple of years ago. Now he just had to find a local girlfriend, and everything would be perfect.

He wished he could get to talk to the beautiful black girl at the cafeteria. Wouldn’t that be something if he could make her his girlfriend? He recalled her face, so dark and so incredibly beautiful, with skin that looked velvety smooth. The contrast between the darkness of her face and arms and the white uniform she wore was somehow intriguing. He thought of her as the Negress. For Leif, the word did not imply any lack of respect for black women or women in general. Rather, it had positive and romantic connotations, denoting an exotically beautiful woman.

But the situation in Alabama would not allow him to approach her; he realized that. Interracial dating was not socially accepted in Alabama; it might even be illegal. That was an impression he had received from news reports and other things he had read. He knew that it would, in any case, be extremely dangerous. If some of those Ku Klux Klan types saw the two of them together, they would surely be in big trouble. The Klan was not in the habit of giving discreet, friendly advice in such matters.

Chapter 3

For the first few days on Redstone Arsenal, the six young engineers went to a restaurant recommended by the man who had conducted the Q&A session their first day. It was part of a noncommissioned officer club, or NCO club, as it was usually called. It had simple but good food at a reasonable price. But Leif did not feel comfortable during his visit there. It had too military an atmosphere, where all the customers gave an impression of being hard macho men who were proud of being soldiers in the biggest and most invincible war machine ever. The task of the engineers during their stay in the United States was to learn to operate and maintain an anti-aircraft rocket system, a weapon of war, but that was not what had attracted Leif to the job. He wanted to be where important and exciting things were happening, both within the space program and the black civil rights movement, and perhaps get a chance to see some of his favorite artists in concert. When he asked his teacher if there was an alternative to the NCO club restaurant, he was told that there were many restaurants on this giant military base. Among them was one close to the school building, one that had many civilian and military customers, but not the same quality of food. Leif thought it was worth investigating an yway.

Leif became fascinated by the young black woman in the cafeteria at his first visit, and he was the only one of the Swedish students who went there that day. The incident where the white customer shouted angrily at the woman lasted just a few seconds, but it created a negative impression of the cafeteria itself. Leif still felt compelled to go back there because he could not forget the woman. He had to see her again. Perhaps they could never have any contact other than the impersonal exchange across the cafeteria counter, but he longed to see her, to let his eyes rest on her face. He found that face fascinating. As far back as he could remember, he had been intrigued by the looks of women with an African ethnicity. As a young boy, he had never seen a black person in the flesh, but he had seen pictures of young African and other dark-skinned women in the monthly magazine his uncle subscribed to, and they had always been very pretty. On Swedish TV, news items from the United States had sometimes shown close-ups of young African-American women. Leif had found many of them also quite attractive, but none had been as beautiful as the woman in the cafeteria.

He returned to the same cafeteria a few days later, this time in the company of two of the other young Swedes. He had told them the cafeteria was okay and cheaper than the NCO club. He had not mentioned to them anything about what had transpired there