When Vidar was sixteen, they were at another away game. Spider had been found guilty of a number of minor offenses and was on probation. He and Vidar waited in a park while the rest of the Pack moved on, because Spider also had a head that was never quiet, and just like Vidar he had realized that everything slowed down sometimes if you took the right drugs. The police came around the corner on horseback, saw the two suspected hooligans, and Spider panicked and ran. He had drugs on him, as did Vidar. Vidar could have outrun Spider, but Spider was on probation and Vidar lacked impulse control. He couldn’t help himself from protecting someone he loved.
* * *
So while Spider ran off in one direction, Vidar ran in the other—toward the police. The charges filed against him afterward were numerous and varied, Vidar can’t even remember them all. Possession of narcotics was one, he knows that much. Violently resisting a public official was another, he thinks. Then there was something about his hitting a police horse. Vidar has never really liked horses. Violence against a horse on official service? How long do they lock you up for that?
That was how he ended up in the clinic, and that was where he met Baloo. He worked there and was called that because he was the same size and had the same posture as the bear in The Jungle Book. When they became friends, it was fairly natural that the sinewy, dark-haired Vidar would be given the nickname Mowgli. Perhaps that helped him, getting a different name. Perhaps he was able to pretend to be a different person then.
Baloo didn’t say much, but he realized that Vidar had a lot of energy that needed a positive outlet if it wasn’t to explode in a negative way. When he found out that the boy played hockey, he borrowed some goalie’s gear, and every time the fuses in Vidar’s head were threatening to explode in impulsive outbursts of rage about anything at all, Baloo would suggest calmly, “Okay, Mowgli, let’s go to the basement.” There was a storeroom in the basement, large enough for Baloo to stand by one wall throwing tennis balls as hard as he could toward Vidar at the other end. After a month or so Baloo laid a new floor, smooth enough to feel like ice, so he could fire real hockey pucks.
They played as often as they could; sometimes Baloo even broke the rules and played with Vidar at night. He did it because he hoped it would help Vidar to learn not to break all the other rules. Definitions of “care” and “punishment” are always changing, and Baloo did what he could to give them a defined shape. He rarely said much, but he was the one who protested loudest when Vidar was released. “He’s not ready!” Baloo declared. No one cared. Vidar had a powerful friend somewhere, someone who had made sure that all the documentation that was required suddenly materialized. So when Vidar left the unit Baloo just whispered sadly to him, “Stay on the ice, Mowgli. Concentrate on hockey.”
* * *
Maya and Leo are sitting at the computer, and in her memory it will feel as though they spent several days playing. She holds the words inside her for as long as she can, but in the end she can’t help saying, “Don’t fight for my sake again. I know you love me, but don’t fight for my sake. Fight for other things if you must. But not for me.”
“Okay,” her little brother promises.
They don’t say much after that. But sometimes Leo gets something wrong and is so angry that he hits himself in the thigh and yells “Idiot!” and then Maya laughs so loudly that her throat starts to hurt. A bit like old times for a short while. Simple.
But then Maya gets something right in the game and even Leo is impressed, so he turns to give her a high five. She doesn’t react in time, and his hand hits her shoulder instead.
Maya jumps so hard that she knocks her chair over, as if he’d burned her. She stands there gasping, eyes wide open, and curses herself and tries to pretend it was nothing. But Leo has already understood. Sometimes little brothers do that. Hardly anyone has touched Maya since the rape. It doesn’t matter that Leo is her brother; fear isn’t logical, the body reacts independently of the brain.
Leo switches the computer off. “Get your jacket,” he says sternly.
“Why?” Maya wonders sheepishly.
“I’m going to show you something.”
* * *
When Vidar walks out from the unit, Teemu, Woody, and Spider are waiting outside in a car. Teemu has to give Spider a shove to get him to stop hugging Vidar. But he will never set foot in the apartment he has been given by the council’s housing association.
“I have to live at home. I have to help you count,” he tells his brother.
Teemu kisses him on the head.
* * *
The first thing Vidar wants to talk about? Beartown Ice Hockey! What does the team look like? What players have we got this year? Are we going to beat Hed? He’s the team’s keenest fan and—after his mom’s kitchen—the place he’s missed most is the standing area in the rink. Teemu can’t stop patting his younger brother on the shoulder and doesn’t even tell Vidar that he won’t need his place in the stand this year, that he’s going to get a chance to play instead. Teemu doesn’t say anything because he doesn’t want to make his brother nervous, and for a few short minutes his own happiness is pure and uncomplicated. He doesn’t want to spoil that.
Then Vidar asks about Benji Ovich. The last time the guys talked to Vidar, they told him that the new coach had made Ovich team captain, and they had been ecstatic at the time, because they regarded Benji as one of them. A Beartown kid who stood tall, took one hit, and meted out three in response. But when Vidar mentions his name both Spider and Woody fall silent. Their eyes harden, their words are worse.
“We’ve found out something about him . . .”
Vidar listens. The guys can’t bring themselves to use Benji’s name; they talk as if he’d died. Perhaps he has, at least in part, the person they thought he was. He’s no longer one of them.
Vidar may be unlike most of the members of the Pack because he doesn’t care who the hell anyone sleeps with, he never has. But the men in the black jackets aren’t talking about sexuality, Vidar knows that, they’re talking about trust and loyalty. Benji has pretended to be something he isn’t. He’s a fake, he can’t be trusted, and Spider and Woody think he’s shamed the Pack.
“We had his back, and all the time he wanted to screw us up the ass!” Spider snaps.
Vidar says nothing. When he was twelve or thirteen, just after Spider had fought for him in McDonald’s, Vidar asked, “Are we hooligans?” Spider shook his head seriously and replied, “No. We’re soldiers. I stand up for you, and you stand up for me. We haven’t got anything if we can’t trust each other a thousand percent. Get it?” Vidar got it. The members of the Pack have held together all their lives, and you don’t build up that sort of friendship without complex sacrifices.
They have different reasons to hate Benji. Some are disgusted, and some feel betrayed; some are just worried about what opposing fans are going to sing about them now. Some have the bear tattooed on their necks, and how much do you have to love something to do that? So Vidar says nothing. He’s just glad to be going home, that everything will be going back to normal.
And when Teemu leans forward and whispers, “The new coach is holding an open A-team tryout for you. If you’re good enough, you’ll be allowed to play!” Vidar’s joy sings so loudly inside his head that there’s no room for him to think about anything else.
* * *
It’s only sports.
* * *
The dogs at the kennels start to bark in the distance as the siblings approach, but Adri comes out blearily and quiet them down. Leo and Maya stop, alarmed.
“Is Jeanette here? Our teacher at school . . . she’s supposed to have a martial arts club . . . is it here?” Leo asks.
“ ‘Club’ might be a bit optimistic. But she’s in the barn.” Adri chuckles and yawns as she scratches her wire-wool hair.
Leo nods but doesn’t move, hands in pockets but staring with interest at the dogs. “What breed are they?”
Adri frowns, looks from Leo to Maya, tries t
o figure out what they’re doing here. Perhaps she realizes, because she, too, has sisters. So she asks, “Do you like dogs?”
Leo nods. “Yes. But Mom and Dad won’t let me have one.”
“Do you want to help me feed them?” Adri asks.
“Yes!” Leo exclaims, looking happier than a puppy with two tails.
Adri looks warmly at Maya. “Jeanette’s in the barn, you’ll find her there.”
* * *
So Maya walks into the barn alone. Jeanette is practicing with a sandbag and stops midmovement, trying to not to look surprised. Maya looks as though she’s already regretting her decision to come. Jeanette wipes the sweat from her brow and asks, “So you want to try martial arts?”
Maya rubs her palms together. “I don’t really know what’s involved. My brother kind of dragged me here.”
“Why?” Jeanette wonders.
“Because he’s worried I might hurt someone.”
“Who?”
Maya cracks as she admits, “Me.”
* * *
So where do you start? Jeanette looks at the girl and eventually chooses the easiest option: she sits down on the mat. After an eternity Maya sits down opposite her, a foot away. Jeanette moves closer, the girl flinches, so she stops. She explains gently, “You’ll hear people say that martial arts is violent. But to me it’s about love. Trust. Because if you and I are going to practice together, we have to trust each other. Because we borrow each other’s bodies.”
When Jeanette reaches out her hand and touches her, it’s the first time since Kevin that Maya has been touched by anyone except Ana without flinching. When Jeanette shows her how to wrestle, how to take a grip and how to get out of it, Maya has to learn to be held without panicking. On one occasion she does panic, throws her head back, and hits Jeanette in the face.
“It’s okay,” Jeanette says, not bothered by the blood on her lip and chin.
Maya looks at the clock on the wall. They’ve been wrestling for an hour, free from thought, and she’s sweating so much that if her eyes are streaming she doesn’t even know it herself.
“I’m just . . . I’m so fucking terrified sometimes that it’s never going to be okay,” she pants.
Jeanette doesn’t know how to reply, either as a teacher or as a human being, so she says the only thing she can think to say as a coach: “Are you tired?”
“No.”
“Then let’s go again!”
Maya doesn’t heal inside that barn. She doesn’t build a time machine, she doesn’t change the past, she isn’t blessed with memory loss. But she will come back here every day and learn martial arts, and one day soon she will be standing in the line at the supermarket when a stranger accidentally brushes past her. And she won’t flinch. It’s the greatest of all small events, and no one understands. But she will walk home from the store that day as if she were on her way somewhere. That evening she will come back to train some more. And the next day.
* * *
It’s only sports.
* * *
Ana is sitting high up in a tree, not far from the kennels. She sees Maya and Leo walk home through the forest. She’s been following them, she doesn’t know why, just wants to be close to Maya somehow. Everything feels far too cold without her.
They’re only a few feet apart when Maya passes beneath her on the ground. Ana could have called something, climbed down and begged and pleaded with her best friend to forgive her. But this isn’t that sort of story. So Ana sits where she is, high above, and watches her friend walk off.
* * *
The next day Vidar takes the bus to school. Plenty of people know who he is, so no one dares to sit next to him. Not until a girl a few years younger gets on at a stop on the outskirts of the Heights. She has scruffy hair and sad eyes, and her name is Ana.
The first thing Vidar notices is how beautiful her ankles are, as if they weren’t meant for floors but for running through forests and over rocks. The first thing Ana notices is Vidar’s black hair, so thin that it hangs over the skin of his face like raindrops on a windowpane.
* * *
In many years’ time we might say this was a story about violence. But that won’t be true, at least not entirely.
* * *
It’s also a love story.
35
But Only if You’re the Best
There’s going to be a press conference in Beartown. It’s the worst possible timing for some people, when the whole town feels like it’s on its way toward imploding from a hundred different conflicts, but of course it’s the best possible timing for other people. Richard Theo, for instance.
* * *
The representatives of the factory’s new owners fly in from London; the local paper photographs them cheerfully shaking hands with the Spanish-home-owning politician in front of the factory. Peter Andersson stands dutifully alongside; his voice is unsteady and his eyes are fixed on the tarmac, but he promises to “get to grips with hooliganism.”
The Spanish-home-owning politician is so proud that his shirt is practically bursting. He starts the press conference by mentioning his esteemed and modest colleague, Richard Theo: “He deserves our thanks for his great service to the district. Without Richard’s contacts and hard work over the course of several months, this deal couldn’t have been concluded!” The Spanish-home-owning politician goes on to describe, rather less modestly, his own involvement in the deal. Taxpayers will benefit enormously, he explains, and the most important thing: “Jobs in Beartown have been saved!”
When the female politician at his side suddenly opens her mouth, the Spanish-home-owning politician is so taken aback that he doesn’t have time to react at first. She says, “And not just in Beartown, of course. In collaboration with the factory’s new owners we have reached an agreement in which the workforce in Hed will also be prioritized! That’s one of the conditions: if the council is to support the factory financially, the entire council district needs to benefit!”
The journalists take notes and photographs, film the press conference. The Spanish-home-owning politician stares at the woman, and she meets his gaze. He’s powerless, because what can he say? That he’s not thinking of giving Hed any jobs? He’ll be facing elections soon. He’s shaking with rage, and his smile for the cameras is strained, but when he’s asked about the jobs, he is forced to say, “Any responsible policy obviously has to involve . . . the whole district.” He is standing slightly hunched as he says this, whereas the female politician feels herself grow several inches taller.
* * *
Early one morning in a few months’ time, an envelope will be lying on the step outside her front door, and the documents inside will show how the Spanish-home-owning politician has been involved in undeclared property speculation in Spain. It will, admittedly, turn out that the Spanish-home-owning politician is entirely innocent, but Richard Theo doesn’t need evidence, just doubt. The headlines about “dodgy deals” will be big; the notification of his innocence will be confined to a few modest lines on the back pages of the local paper. The Spanish-home-owning politician’s political career will already be over by then, after his party colleagues agree unanimously that “the party can’t afford any scandals.” He will be replaced by a female colleague who appears to have plenty of enemies in Beartown but even more friends in Hed.
* * *
Benji doesn’t turn up for practices with the team. He doesn’t call, he doesn’t answer when anyone calls him. But late one evening when most of the lights in the rink are out and the locker rooms are empty, he is standing alone on the ice wearing jeans and skates, with a stick in his hand. He’s come here to shoot some pucks, the way he’s done a million times before, and to see if it still feels the same. If it can be the way it used to be. But his gaze has been caught by the image of the bear in the center circle. Someone glides out onto the ice and stops beside him. Elisabeth Zackell.
“Are you going to play in the game against Hed?” she asks with a complete lack of
sentiment.
Benji swallows hesitantly, still staring at the bear. “I don’t want to be a . . . problem. For the team. I don’t want them to feel that—”
“That’s not what I asked. Are you playing or not?” Zackell asks.
Benji closes his eyes quickly, opens them slowly. “I don’t want to be a burden to the club.”
“Are you planning to have sex with anyone in the locker room?”
“What the . . . ? What?”
Zackell shrugs. “That’s what people think, isn’t it? That gays have a problem with discipline? If everyone starts having sex with each other in the locker room?”
Benji frowns. “Where the hell have you heard that?”
“Are you planning to have sex with anyone in the locker room or not?”
“Like hell!”
Zackell shrugs again. “So you’re not a burden. Hockey is hockey. People can say what they like about you outside the rink, but in here it doesn’t matter. If you’re good, you’re good. If you score goals, you score goals.”
Benji doesn’t look convinced. “People hate me. You as well. Maybe it’s just too much for them, that you and I are both . . . you know. Maybe they could live with one, but two in the same team, that’s . . . too much for people.”
Zackell sounds taken aback. “What do you mean?”
Benji’s eyebrows twitch. “That you’re . . . gay.”
“I’m not gay,” Zackell replies.
Us Against You Page 30
