Knock Knock

by Anders Roslund

  “Zofia?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m . . . a little worried.”

  “You don’t need to be.”

  “I know—but I just can’t stop. It’s gnawing at me. What if she . . .”

  “Piet? Listen to me. She. Is. Completely. Healthy.”

  He used to find worrying futile, counterproductive. He’d survived by planning more meticulously, by doing his homework better, by being more prepared than whomever he was observing, chasing, fighting. And then—Zofia had her six-month postnatal checkup. That was all it took for irrationally intense worry for his child to take over.

  “She’s supposed to be able to turn from back to stomach and stomach to back. Be able to get up into a sitting position by either holding me or the doctor. She’s supposed to babble, find a lost toy, pass an object back and forth between her hands. And Piet—she can.”

  A little sister. At any moment his mind could return him to his place beside the hospital bed, holding Zofia’s hand while contractions racked her body.

  Normal life, Piet. You promised never to infiltrate another criminal organization, no more death, no chaos, no running.

  He remembered exactly how she looked when she said it so well.

  My body had decided. One more child. After trying for so long, and believing it would never happen again. My age, that’s what I thought . . . but it wasn’t that. Calm. Never having to live like that again. I relaxed, Piet. Another child, I don’t know, it sounds almost corny, but it feels like this baby is . . . a symbol of all that. Of your promise. Of our new life.

  “You never worried like this about Hugo and Rasmus.”

  “I know, Zofia.”

  “And she’s much more advanced and tougher than they were.”

  “I know that as well.”

  The crushing anxiety that the doctor might discover something else. Something they hadn’t seen. And it wasn’t because she was the first girl or the baby of the family. It was him. Realizing that nothing can be taken for granted. Everything is finite. It would have been much easier to keep living with the lies, living with them until he could no longer remember where lies end and truth begins. Until he no longer knew who he was.

  “Piet—we’ll see you tonight.”

  “Give her a kiss from me.”

  “She’s sending one right back.”

  A ten-minute drive. That was it. Then he was in Enskede with its suburban houses with yards and two cars in the garage. Their home. This was where they’d moved when Zofia was pregnant the first time.

  It was hot in the car even with the windows rolled down. Unusual in this country, high temps, high humidity, and only the first week of June. No use wiping your forehead with your sleeve because it was already wet. He parked in front of the rusty gate and lingered for a moment. This was the best part of his day.

  If he stretched up a bit, he could see Hugo on the other side of the straggly hedge, playing football with the neighbor’s kids, grassy knees and flushed cheeks. And through the kitchen window he could just make out the outlines of a curly head, Rasmus playing with his action figures at the kitchen table.

  Piet Hoffmann took a deep breath of the warm and humid air.

  Of course he had his doubts now and then.

  He’d slammed the door to another life.

  Sometimes he wanted to open it up again.

  Feel. How he used to feel. Adrenaline rushing through him, impossible to turn it off, his heart pounding with aggression.

  Now and then the past sought him out and tempted him with its rewards. Sometimes after the boys went to bed, he’d sit on the sofa with Zofia and admit just how much he longed for one more round. Just once more. Not for the cash. For the adrenaline, the high. To feel a little more, live a little more. An intermediary, that’s what they wanted when his past came looking for him. A guarantor for two parties. Most recently, brokering a deal between an amphetamine manufacturer in southern Slovenia and a major criminal network in central Sweden. His sole task would have been to vouch for both sides, be there during the agreement, and act as a bodyguard during the first trip. It was difficult to make Zofia understand how frustrating it was to see these jobs go to small-time dealers who weren’t nearly as good as he was, see them rake in the easy money for simple jobs.

  But every time he got home, like now, right before he had to look Hugo and Rasmus in the eye, he knew for certain that he’d made the right choice.

  And Luiza. Her eyes were just as steady and intense.

  Luiza, who would soon have to prove that she could both babble and find a toy.

  Besides, he knew if they ever caught him breaking the law again, they’d throw the book at him. He’d have to watch his sons and his daughter grow up from behind bars.

  No missions, no weapons, no deaths.

  Only this.

  A house, a home, a family.

  This was his life now.

  “Hello?”

  Piet Hoffmann shouted as he opened the front door. A few years ago, Rasmus would have come running with arms open wide. Now his youngest son was so immersed in his game that he didn’t even answer.

  “Rasmus buddy? Hello? I’m home.”

  “In the kitchen, Dad.”

  The hall mirror seemed to stare at him. He had to turn away. And there it was. Wedged in between the wooden frame and the mirrored glass. A note with no words on it, just a big red heart in the middle. It moved him still, after all these years. Zofia liked to leave small notes for him here and there, sometimes on his pillow when he pulled back the covers, or in his suitcase when he was unpacking in a hotel room somewhere, alone again. Or in the fridge when he picked up a tub of butter. At one time those unassuming messages of love had felt like a demand, and he’d wanted to escape them. Now he longed for those little notes. Felt disappointed when they weren’t around.

  He liked them so damn much. He liked her so damn much.

  Rasmus was sitting at the far end of the short side of the kitchen, that was always his spot no matter where in the world they lived, no matter what house Dad dragged them to. The eight-year-old looked up as the sound of steps made their way from the hall to the kitchen, but he didn’t stop playing with his action figures, especially the one with a very round stomach and a red hat and blue legs and yellow arms.

  “Hi, buddy.”

  “Hi, Dad.”

  “What are you up to?”

  “Playing.”

  “I see that—but what are you playing?”

  “With my new action figure.”

  “Yeah, and . . .”

  “Dad—you don’t get it.”

  Hoffmann looked at the plastic figure with a red hat and blue legs as it jumped away from all the others lying on the kitchen table, watched it do somersaults and mumble something. He realized his son was right. He didn’t get it at all.

  “Mr. Potato Head.”

  “Huh?”

  “That’s another action figure I have, Dad. Up in my room. This isn’t one of those—but it’s like a Mr. Potato Head. I’ve never had one of these before. Cool, right?”

  “Very cool.”

  The flour was in one of the cupboards on the wall, the salt on the kitchen counter, eggs, milk, and butter in the fridge. Pancakes. The safest bet.

  “You hungry, Rasmus?”

  “If you make them in the waffle iron. I want checkered pancakes.”

  The waffle iron. Checkered pancakes. That started last year. Hoffmann still didn’t understand why, or where it came from, but if that’s what he needed to do to keep them fed, then that’s how the pancakes would be made. He found the iron in one of the bottom cupboards and opened the window, shouted loudly.

  “Hugo?”

  The dull sound of a foot kicking a ball on the other side of the hedge and then a ten-year-old celebrating when it landed
in a homemade goal.

  “Yeah, Dad?”

  “Are you hungry? Pancakes?”

  “Checkered?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I’m hungry.”

  Piet Hoffmann was just about to shut the window when he changed his mind, leaned out, and shouted again.

  “What about the rest of you? Are you hungry, too?”

  The two other players in the improvised football match wanted checkered pancakes too, so Hoffmann made enough batter for five people.

  “Can you set the table, Rasmus?”

  “Mmm.”

  His youngest wasn’t listening. The new plastic figure jumped around the kitchen table in his hand. Always some new character from some new cartoon. Over the two years that Piet Hoffmann spent working in West Africa, he took trips home every three months, and every time he did he made sure to bring the most popular action figure home with him.

  “Okay, Rasmus. Then I’ll set the table. If you clear your stuff.”

  “Just a minute.”

  “Now, buddy.”

  “Just gotta go to the bathroom first. Then I’ll pick up.”

  Rasmus started out walking, but it turned into a run, that’s how it was with him: if he left his games and visited this world, he did so in a hurry. Hoffmann smiled. There was something so vulnerable, almost beautiful about being able to leave this reality so completely in the hands of someone else. He took five plates and drinking glasses out of the cupboard, got tired of waiting for Rasmus to come back, and started to move the toys off the table to a bench near the stove. But when he got to the new toy, the one who looked like Mr. Potato Head, who in Rasmus’s imaginary world jumped so high, Piet Hoffmann felt a stab in his chest. One he hadn’t felt in a long time. A stab in the region of his heart, which meant trouble was on the way.

  The plastic figure lay in his hand.

  And he felt its weight.

  It wasn’t all plastic.

  He lifted it a few times, weighing it in the air, guessing it was around three hectograms.

  Then he inspected it more carefully.

  He took off its little red hat. He pulled off the blue legs and yellow arms.

  It couldn’t be. And yet—it was.

  He felt furious, terrified.

  This wasn’t the way he wanted to get that adrenaline rush back.

  He was holding a hand grenade.

  Built with a core of TNT and steel balls so as to end all life in its vicinity.

  His youngest son had been playing with death dressed up like a toy, here, at their kitchen table.

  He was furious.

  He was terrified.

  Fury.

  Terror.

  His son, who trusted him with his safety, who trusted him with his whole world, had sat there playing with death.

  A hand grenade. Transformed into a toy.

  Piet Hoffmann held it in his hand. Let his thumb slide over the hard surface, over the rise on the top. A small oblong ball with a metal casing, with explosives pressed inside, and a spark plug connected to a striking pin, which, the moment it was pulled, would run down toward a fuse and everyone who happened to be in its vicinity would have five, or four, or sometimes only three seconds to live.

  Fury. Terror.

  Two sides of the same emotion.

  It used to be so much easier.

  Back then when he chose rage and anger, any fear that pushed its way inside could be used, transformed into more aggression. Psychologists at his school and then at his juvenile correction institute and finally in prison all called it a lack of impulse control. They said that’s why he preferred violence. But that wasn’t true at all. Violence was just a good tool. If you used it correctly. And so he did—he mastered the violence that came so naturally. Until finally Zofia and his kids were forced to pay for it. Until love and truth and trust made life so much more complicated and opened the doors to fear.

  The fear that he might lose the people who meant more to him than himself.

  He heard Rasmus flush the toilet, heard him washing his hands.

  Piet Hoffmann weighed the hand grenade again, almost unconsciously, bobbing it up and down in his open palm. He’d come across more than his share of these in recent years, received offers for them from his black market contacts; the market in grenades had grown in recent years. He had eyes and ears out there—paid for quality information, because it was his greatest asset in the security industry, and quickly went out of date. It was crucial to keep informed about the life he no longer lead, though sometimes wanted to.

  The bathroom sink whined when you turned it on full blast, which Rasmus always did even though he wasn’t supposed to. The water rushed out like a howling rain, and that’s why it was so noticeable when he turned it off.

  The kind of grenade Hoffmann held would have been smuggled over the border in a box of ten. It was intended for use in combat, but it was also an obvious choice for a Swedish gang intent on arming itself to the teeth. Ideal for an army of boys with little money, no weapons training, whose goal was to seem dangerous without having to pay for the consequences. Unlike guns, hand grenades demand no prior knowledge, cost a measly five hundred kronor, and the fourteen-year-olds whose job it was to throw them didn’t have to be there when they exploded. They’d drive up to a window their gang leader pointed out, throw the hand grenade against the glass as hard as they could, and drive off on their moped, hearing it explode in the distance. Never having to see what they’ve done, never having the sight of arms and legs torn apart in their mind.

  There was a click as Rasmus closed the bathroom door. The patter of small feet on a short walk back to the kitchen. Back to what Rasmus thought was just a toy.

  “Dad . . . what . . .”

  “Come here, Rasmus. Sit next to me.”

  “. . . what did you do! Dad! You ruined my new toy!”

  Piet Hoffmann pulled out the kitchen chair closest to himself.

  “Rasmus, sweetheart, please do as I say.”

  Rasmus did not. He ran over to the table. Everything had been scattered about.

  The new toy’s hat. Its arms. Its legs.

  And Rasmus started to cry.

  Big wet tears rolled down his cheeks, as they sometimes do.

  “Mine . . . it’s mine! I don’t understand, Dad. Why did you . . .”

  Hoffmann had never hit one of his children, had promised himself he never would. So his children never tried to hit him. But now Rasmus did.

  With eight-year-old fists.

  Straight to his father’s chest.

  Piet Hoffmann waited for the next blow and grabbed him by the arm, pulled him close, and forced his son against the chest he’d just hit. Holding him in his arms, hard but not too hard, until finally the little boy relaxed.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “No. I’m sorry, Dad. But I don’t get it . . . I don’t understand. Why did you do it? Why did you ruin . . .”

  Then he cried again. A new kind of tears. These were neither angry nor disappointed. Just sad.

  “I’m sorry, Rasmus, but you can’t play with that ever again.”

  “But I want to. And it’s mine.”

  “From now on it’s not. It’s mine. I’ll be taking care of it. But first you have to help me, Rasmus. You have to tell me exactly how you got it. Where it came from. Who gave it to you.”

  Rasmus pushed away from Piet’s chest a little. So he could look straight into his father’s eyes.

  “You’re angry.”

  “No, I’m not angry.”

  “I can see it. And hear it. You have that voice, Dad. Even though I didn’t do anything.”

  Fear.

  That’s what his son heard.

  And confused it with the rage.

 
“Maybe I’m . . . a little angry. But not at you. I’m angry with someone else.”

  “Who?”

  “That’s what you’re gonna help me figure out.”

  Rasmus pushed away a little more, now he was loose. And Hoffmann let him go.

  “Okay. I’ll help you. But you’re wrong, Dad.”

  “Wrong?”

  “The toy was mine. My name was on the envelope.”

  “Rasmus—what are you talking about? What envelope?”

  “The one in the mailbox.”

  “Which mailbox?”

  “Our mailbox. Out front.”

  Piet Hoffmann’s son went to the kitchen window and pointed toward the gate and driveway and a black mailbox with white, spindly letters on it. Painted by Hugo on the day he learned to write the family’s last names.

  KOSLOW HOFFMA

  NN

  “I always check it first thing when I get home. And it’s always just stuff for you and Mom. Always, always, always. But today it wasn’t. Because that’s where I found it. My new action figure. With my name on it. To Rasmus and Hugo. That’s what it said. And Hugo hardly even plays with them anymore. So it is mine. It was to me.”

  “Was it . . .”

  Now Piet Hoffmann also went over to the window, both stared at the mailbox.

  “. . . in an envelope?”

  “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “What do you mean how?”

  “Rasmus, you’re supposed to help me. How was it laying there?”

  “I told you. In the mailbox. In an envelope. Like when you get something in the mail. Don’t you know anything, Dad?”

  Piet Hoffmann stroked his son’s cheek, chin, grabbed his little head with both hands, and held gently as one holds the dearest thing in the world.