St. Thomas Church is a setting where ordinary religious furnishings become the means of Tommy’s clandestine prank and a moment of mistaken wonder. Its austere, carefully arranged interior frames a sharp contrast: while the church’s temporary minister waits for a sign from God, smoke rises from the font because Tommy has put powder into it.

Setting and Appearance

Staffan waits outside the church with Yvonne and Tommy. He is dressed in a suit and pale yellow-striped tie; the tie recalls to Tommy a wartime picture. Staffan greets them warmly, embraces Yvonne, and offers Tommy his hand. When Tommy does not answer Staffan’s question about why he decided to come, Staffan turns back to Yvonne. He says he should be in Åkeshov but did not want to miss this, and that he will have to leave as soon as it is over. Tommy goes into the church before the exchange develops further.

Inside, only a few elderly-looking people sit in the pews, their hats prompting Tommy to judge them all to be old women. Yellow lamps hang along the walls. A red carpet patterned with geometric figures leads between the pews toward the altar, where a stone bench and flower arrangements sit beneath a large wooden cross. The modernist figure on the cross has an expression that could be read as a taunting smile. Near the entrance, the church keeps brochures, a box for money, and a christening font.

The Font and Tommy’s Act

Tommy looks into the font and sees that it is empty. Carved from a single large piece of stone and reaching to his waist, it has a dark-gray, rough-surfaced bowl with not a drop of water in it. What first seems almost too convenient to be real is, in fact, just what Tommy needs. He takes a two-liter plastic bag of white powder from his pocket, checks that no one is looking, makes a hole in the bag with his finger, and lets the contents fall into the font. The powder is saltpeter and sugar, which Tommy has burned before, though not in such a quantity or indoors. The church’s still interior gives the ensuing smoke a different effect from the outdoor experiments he knows.

Smoke and a False Sign

Bror Ardelius, temporary minister of Vällingby Parish, is the first to notice the smoke rising from the christening font. He has waited his whole life for a sign from the Lord, and for an instant the smoke seems to answer that hope. The feeling quickly passes: he takes its disappearance as evidence that this is no miracle, but simply smoke from the font, and is left wondering why it is there. The church thus holds two readings of the same occurrence at once: Tommy’s deliberate, material trick and Bror’s fleeting sense of divine possibility.