The Family Clause

by Jonas Hassen Khemiri

  Instead, she devoted six months to tracking down her first boyfriend, who worked as a ski instructor in Chamonix. He had grown a beer belly and his pale skin was tanned everywhere but around his eyes, he spent his nights in bars, chatting up girls half his age. One night, as he was making his way home from the pub, she directed all of her combined strength towards his right foot. He tripped over and broke his collarbone and couldn’t work for the rest of the season. She was completely exhausted afterwards and barely had the energy to fly home; she had to bask in the sun next to a stream for several weeks before she felt remotely recovered. But she also couldn’t stop smiling at the wailing sound he had made as he lay on his back, looking up at the stars and whimpering at the pain in his shoulder.

  Once she had regained her strength, she tracked down the man who had introduced her to needles. He had become a Christian and worked at a detox centre in Avignon, with a second job at a travel agency where he spent his evenings wearing a spongy headset in front of a computer screen. At first, she thought he was selling holidays, but since he repeatedly said: that really shouldn’t have happened, it seemed more like he was dealing with complaints. She gathered her strength and hit him on the forehead. She pulled his nose. She kneed him in the crotch. After three minutes of attack, he said: Sandrine, is there a bit of a draught in here? Could you close the window? (Sandrine was his colleague, who looked more like a lump of dough with hair.) The daughter with no body followed him home, she followed him to detox sessions, she heard him try to convince addicts that life is sacred and God is everywhere. She gathered more strength than she ever had before and managed to make herself visible to him one evening. She was just standing in his hallway when he came home, he opened the door and put down the keys before he spotted her, and his face twisted, he sank to his knees, he lowered his forehead to the floor, he whispered something she couldn’t hear. She spent the rest of the night invisible on the floor in the hallway. She heard him whimpering in the bedroom and tried to get up, but collapsed. It wasn’t until ten the next day that she slowly, and after lots of pauses, managed to fly home to the rooftop and tell the burned twins, the woman with the knife in her eye and the middle-aged man who had been poisoned by his partner’s former or possibly current lover what had happened.

  A few years later, she decided to track down her father. She crossed forests and meadows, watercourses and more forest. She found his family. The constantly smiling wife, always dressed in black. The spotty son. The heavily made-up daughter. But the father was nowhere to be seen. He had moved abroad. Eventually, she found him in a small bar full of noisy metal chairs in the city he had sworn he would never return to. He looked unbelievably old. He always sat alone, never spoke to anyone. As she looked at her father, she felt her anger disappear. She began to feel sorry for him instead.

  She sat next to him on the sofa at night, in his minimal flat with a baseball bat in the hallway and an air rifle by the window. They watched the news together. When images of dead children appeared on screen, they swore. Idiots. They’re all idiots. The EU are idiots for taking these countries and trying to transform them into the same country and the USA are idiots for trying to control the entire world and Israel are idiots for killing Palestinians and the pizza place on the corner are idiots because they still can’t make an acceptable Four Seasons and the neighbours on the other side of the street are idiots for letting cats run around on the roof, meaning we have to get the air rifle out so the cats will leave us to sleep in peace. They’re all idiots, everyone but us. We’re made of comets. We’re space angels. The father changed channels. They laughed at a comedy programme. They muttered idiot at the idiot who answered with the wrong capital city on a quiz show. They mixed drinks, toasted and danced. They fell asleep together on the sofa. She was close to him in a way she had never been while she lived. She would never leave him. At night, she entered his body, she rushed through his veins, she cupped his heart like a tiny bird in her hands. She sat next to him as he ate his breakfast baguette. She sat opposite him as he ate his pizza lunch and as he ate his pasta dinner. She tried to stop him when, after five beers at his local bar, he decided to drive to the coast. He got up from the table, took several unsteady steps to one side and tried to find his car. There it was, black and no longer quite as glossy as it had once been. Just a few metres away, right where he left it. He walked over to the car. He tried to open the door. The lock was broken. Some idiot had sneaked over and sabotaged the lock. To hell with this country, said the father. The daughter agreed. What are you doing? shouted a man from the outdoor seating area. Sorry, said the father, and kept walking until he found the right car. He opened the door and sat down behind the wheel. He turned the key. He squinted at the approaching cars. Their lights were too bright, on full beam even though they shouldn’t have been. He signalled for them to turn off the full beams and they responded with headlights that were so strong that he had to pull over to the side of the road to wait for his vision to return. Do you have to go to the coast tonight? she asked. Yes, he mumbled. Her eyes widened. Had she heard wrong? Why do you have to go there now? she whispered, stroking his head. I don’t know, he mumbled. His face was resting on the wheel. He hiccupped. He turned the key again. Get some sleep first, she whispered. Close your eyes. Rest them. We can go tomorrow instead. We’ll go there tomorrow, the daughter without a body whispered. Do you promise? the father said. I promise, said the daughter. They slept in the car that night. They woke at dawn the next morning; the sun had transformed the car into a steel furnace. They staggered outside and walked home. They turned on the TV. They didn’t go to the coast. The coast was still there. The coast would always be there. They got on with their everyday lives. Just twice a year, the father decided to go home. He needed to pick up more insulin, new needles, change money, get his feet seen to, buy things to sell on, and possibly get his worsening vision checked. And see his children, of course. Don’t you want to come? said the father. I’ll stay here, she said. She didn’t have the energy to see the father laughing and joking with his children, it would be too painful to watch him hugging his grandchildren, smelling their necks and whispering rhymes in their ears.

  And yet here she is. She floats above the city in her hunt for the father. She could feel that he needed her, and she eventually finds him in a sports bar. He seems happy. He is laughing and toasting with the people at the next table. He mutters when they ask to be moved. He doesn’t want to go home, not even when the bartender and then the owner and then both tell him to go home. He leaves the bar. He is with an older woman. The woman squats down and pees behind a recycling station. He walks on. The lights are out in the entrance to the daughter’s building. He peers in at the darkness. He knocks on the glass. A neighbour on the first floor opens the window and threatens to call the police. I want to see my daughter, he says. The neighbour closes the window. Come on. Let’s go. It’s one o’clock. It’s too late. We’ll ring her tomorrow. We can apologise then. It’ll be fine. Now let’s just go. Head for the metro. He follows the daughter’s instructions. They pass the barriers. They sit down on a bench. There are twelve minutes until the next train. Stay awake, she says. You can phone her tomorrow. She’ll understand. Anyone can be late, forget about a dinner or create a life and then not take responsibility for it.

  He looks down at the rails. He looks at the clock. The platform is empty. He gets up from the bench and climbs down onto the tracks. No. Stop. This might be the kind of thing you can do when you’re fifteen, but you’re a pensioner. You’re drunk. It’s late. Climb back up now. He glances around. I’ll help you up, says the daughter. Lean on me and you can climb back up onto the platform. He stays where he is. Hurry up, says the daughter. Ten minutes until the next train. He stays where he is. Nine minutes. He stays where he is. Eight minutes. He bends down and picks up a couple of small black stones from the tracks. They’re strangely round, like those balls you sometimes see in pot plants. Come on, says the daughter, feeling like a parent
. I’m not going to tell you again. This is the last time, okay? I’ve told you so many times now, I’m not going to tell you again. Climb back up. Do it now. Now. Do you hear me? Five minutes. He stays where he is. Four minutes. He stays where he is. Climb. Back. Up. Onto. The. Platform. NOW! the daughter says in her most soldier-like voice. Three minutes. Dad. This isn’t funny any more. Pull yourself up now, for God’s sake, you can’t stay here, this isn’t going to make anything better, two minutes, please please please please please, Dad, I’m begging you, climb up, you can’t stay here, you need to go home, what do you want me to say, that I love you, that I miss you, that I forgive you, one minute, the tracks are clicking, the rails vibrating, GET UP GET UP UP UP UP UP UP U—

  * * *

  A son who is on paternity leave and a mother who is a grandmother are meeting for lunch at the local Indian restaurant. The vegetarian daal dishes are seventy-five kronor, meat and fish eighty-five, grill dishes ninety-five, salads and soft drinks and coffee and cake are included, plain naan bread costs ten kronor, garlic naan fifteen. The son knows the prices by heart. He can’t register his children at the doctor without having to take out his phone and scan through his notes to double-check their birthdates and the last four digits of their ID numbers, but he remembers the prices at the Indian restaurant perfectly. Prices dig deep in his brain, while everything else flutters by.

  The son who is a father arrives five minutes before the agreed time. The one-year-old has fallen asleep in the buggy and continues to sleep as the father carefully wheels him over to the corner table. You can talk in peace there. The restaurant is half full. Two workmen come in and order food to take away. It’ll be fifteen minutes, says the man behind the counter. Fifteen? says one of the workmen, glancing out towards the square. We’ll have it ready in ten, says the man behind the counter. Help yourselves to salad and coffee while you wait. The workmen sit down. The son rocks the buggy. The movement is ingrained in him now. On more than one occasion, he has found himself rocking empty shopping trolleys in the same way. He checks the time. He isn’t the least bit worried that his mother won’t show up. She has never not shown up. But nor has she ever shown up three minutes before the agreed time.

  He remembers when the father was away and the mother went out with her girlfriends. They were still living in the old flat at the time, the one with a kitchen window onto the walkway, a window they had to clean more often than the others because the exhaust fumes from the four-lane road turned the glass and the window frame and the threshold between the double doors in the hallway black. The little sister was asleep, he was awake; there were no mobile phones, no internet, but there were clocks, and it was late. Suddenly, he knew that the mother was dead, she had been raped and kidnapped. If you stood at the far end of the kitchen, with your head against the cleaning cupboard, you could see all the way over to the video shop, you could see the corner she would appear around if she had chosen to walk outside rather than through the tunnel. And, of course, she would walk outside, surely she wasn’t stupid enough to take the tunnel at this time of night? Or was she? Suddenly, he was convinced she had taken the tunnel and that it was the last mistake she would ever make. He peered towards the corner. The owner of the video shop was smoking outside. A night bus pulled up and then drove off. She didn’t appear. She was chopped up in the boot of a car. Her remains were being submerged into a hissing bath of acid. He got an idea. He had just discovered the power of music, and if he could listen to Tupac’s ‘Part Time Mutha’ and hold his breath for the whole of the track, his mother would come home unscathed. He fetched the shiny new CD. He pushed it into the stereo in the kitchen. He waited for the first verse, then he took a deep breath. He quickly realised that it wasn’t going to work. It was impossible. He rewrote the rules. If he could hold his breath during the first verse, then breathe during the chorus, then hold his breath during the second and third verses, his mother would come home unscathed. He tried. It was hard, but he managed it. Almost. He wondered where he and his sister would live now that their mother was dead. Here with their father? With Grandma, their mother’s mother, and Dad? At Grandma’s during the week and Dad’s at the weekends? Grandma and Dad would never want to live together. We’re too different, Dad says. You’re too similar, says Mum. Equally stubborn, equally egotistical. Rubbish, the father says with a smile. You would never have fallen in love with me if I was like your mother. Imagine if that’s precisely why I fell in love with you, says Mum. An awful thought. His parents smiled at one another. How will Dad react to the news? He’ll go crazy. The son knew that. Whenever anyone threatened his family, he transformed from a salesman into a T. rex. Once, when the son and his friends were playing basketball in the park, the ball happened to collide with a family who were having a barbecue nearby. It landed in the middle of their food, the ball gently grazing the back of one of the old women, and the son remembers feeling happy that he had the chance to fetch the ball and apologise. While his friends were afraid because of the oldest brother’s reputation, he thought it was an opportunity to get closer to the family, that it was the moment he had been waiting for, he would apologise in his father’s language and the tough guy with the scar on his cheek would smile and say it didn’t matter and that the son and his friends were welcome to come over and try some food if they wanted. But the big brother from the other family didn’t accept his apology. He flipped out when the ball brushed against his elderly relative. He grabbed the ball and kicked it into the cosmos, it landed in the distance on the other side of the sand pit and the son couldn’t understand what had gone wrong, why his apology hadn’t given him the reaction he was hoping for. He went to collect the ball, he started to cry on the way home, the father saw what had happened and five minutes later he was down in the yard. He walked over to the big brother, he said things in their language, the son only understood every third word, and the words he did understand definitely weren’t things he had learned in native language classes at school. He heard the big brother apologise, the old men and women trying to mediate, the big brother’s mother trying to get the father to sit down and have some food, but the father refused to be bribed, he continued to shout: give me one good reason to come back! Then they headed home, the son and the father and the basketball. The son was still standing by the window. He peered out towards the corner. He listened to the same song over and over again. When she finally appeared, she smelled of cigarettes and alcohol. She was wearing that mask of makeup that made her look wearier than usual. Oh, sweetie, she said when he started to cry. Look at me. Look at these heels. There’s not a rapist on earth who would dare attack me in these. I swear. The son told her about the song and how he had tried to hold his breath and how he had been sure she would never come home. She looked at him with an expression that was both anxious and flattered. You don’t need to worry, she said. It’s not your job to keep the world together.

  With thirty seconds to spare, he sees her Prius approaching far too fast. She swings into the square and parks between two benches. Creative parking, one of the workmen says as she comes through the door. Thanks, she says with a smile. She hugs her son and tiptoes over to the buggy to peer down at her sleeping grandson. Sleeping nicely, she says. For now, he says. They go over to the counter. The son orders the daal and a garlic naan. The mother asks ten questions about the different dishes. She wants chicken, but in a strong sauce, and she doesn’t like cauliflower. Eventually, the man promises that the chef can make a special sauce just for her. Thanks so much, she says, holding out her card to pay. I’ll get it, says the son. Absolutely not, she says. Yes, he says. No, she says. They argue about it for thirty seconds, until the man behind the till gets bored and takes the son’s card.

  They help themselves to salad and drinks and sit down. Nice ceiling height in here, says the mother. This place must be late forties, early fifties? The son shrugs. I’d guess 1951, she says, answering her own question. When the waiter arrives with their food, she asks when the place was bu
ilt and whether it was before or after the lamell apartment blocks. Lamell? he says. You don’t happen to know who designed this building, do you? she asks. No idea, the waiter says. We only took over this place two years ago. There was a Chinese restaurant here before that. Nineteen fifty-one is my guess, says the mother. The waiter places the steaming plates of food in front of them and disappears. It’s incredible how little people know about their history, the mother whispers.

  They start to eat. The mother talks. She tells him about work trips to London and inspiration breaks in Italy, she is going to a concert at Storkyrkan tomorrow and there is a French film festival starting at Zita on Thursday. What about you? she asks. Are you getting any sleep? Yeah, we’re okay, the son says. It’s going fine. It’s nice to be on paternity leave.