“Your mama told me about everything that happened.”
The social worker’s voice. Serious. She wants to know. Now come the questions.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
Not a word, to anyone, about what happened. It would just be worse.
“What is it you don’t want to talk about?”
“What you want to know—what Papa did.”
The hand is still on his shoulder.
“Your mama didn’t need to say what he did—I could see that myself. Her injuries. But she said what you did. About your courage. That it was why she was able to run away.”
Everything is released, suddenly. He isn’t at all prepared.
The lovely throb through his body sort of comes to a standstill and is washed away; the happiness and softness leaves every little joint and muscle and thought. And it feels as if he’s going to cry. His whole damned chest is pressed by shit that has to come out. But he has no intention of letting out a drop. To cry now, in front of her, would ruin everything.
He twists himself loose, again, and rushes to the kitchen. But she doesn’t give up and follows him. The food they never ate is still there on the round table, cold. He picks up one dish at a time and opens the oven door; 300 degrees is usually about right.
“Where is Papa?”
His voice is steady, nowhere near crying.
“He isn’t coming back.”
“I get that—I asked where he is.”
“At the police station.”
“In custody?”
“Yes . . .”
He notices her look. They usually have that look—people who think that he shouldn’t be familiar with that word.
“He’s been that before. In custody.”
“You don’t need to be worried that he’ll come back—it’s going to take time.”
“I’m not worried. Why would I be? So I don’t understand actually why we can’t stay here at home a few days.”
“Because you are fourteen years old. Because you and your even younger brothers have experienced something that children shouldn’t have to experience.”
You don’t have a fucking clue what we cope with. Or what shit we’ve seen, he wanted to say, but that wouldn’t be especially smart.
“Leo, listen. This is important. If your mama is away for a long time—we don’t really know yet, do we?—then you’ll have to live with another family.”
“What do you mean . . . ‘another family’?”
“But that might take a little time to arrange. So until that time someone will come here instead and look after you.”
“Come here? Who?”
“I don’t really know yet. We have an on-call list with decent people who help when things like this happen. It will be settled this evening.”
Another family. Leo adjusts the cutlery that has been waiting for a long time on the kitchen table and that must have rattled when Papa kneed Mama in the face. We already have a mother, even if she is lying in a hospital bed. He puts out glasses and ice water in a plastic pitcher—she never managed to bring that out. We already have a father, even if he’s in custody. And last of all he folds the ripped-off paper bits from the paper towel roll ceremoniously, runs the top of his hand over them and strokes them. And that is why I make this decision now.
“Listen.”
He tries to catch her gaze.
“Social services lady?”
He still has no idea what her name is because he doesn’t care.
“Yes?”
“It’s like this . . . If that’s the case, can’t Agnetha look in on us instead?”
“Who is Agnetha?”
“She’s on the second floor. Mama’s friend. She’s up here a lot. And she’s decent, like the people on your on-call list.”
VINCENT IS SITTING in bed—or rather, he’s arched backward. As soon as the social worker disappeared down to the second floor, he sneaked out and ran to the bathroom. And now, afterward, he has to bandage his entire stomach again.
Felix seems to have given up. He is breathing more peacefully and leaning against the edge of the bed. A bandaged little brother perhaps doesn’t alarm him so much anymore.
“What the hell happened out there, Leo? Is she gone? It sounded like she left.”
“She’s coming right back.”
“Did she say anything else about Mama?”
Leo sinks down by his younger brothers, against the same hard edge of the bed.
“Felix—Mama’s going to be gone a few days.”
“How many?”
“A few.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know.”
Felix isn’t satisfied. Leo sees a facial expression that is so familiar, knows that his brother intends to keep asking until he gets an answer. There isn’t one. And it’s as if Felix senses that. Instead of repeating how many, he starts to laugh—a sort of laugh none of them has heard before. More like a giggle, it doesn’t take shape on the inside where it usually does. It comes into being right at the front of the mouth, at the lips, comes from nowhere and isn’t connected to anything. It slowly gains in strength and he starts to talk at the same time, half giggling, half speaking, about the mummy in the bed and the cop and the social services lady and then all the blood spots on the floor—Leo, the blood must have spurted—spurted! Felix is giggling and Leo doesn’t have the energy to listen anymore. He climbs up into the bed, next to Vincent.
“Everything okay, my littlest brother?”
The stomach is finished. Rebandaged in new, careful layers. But the fingers of his right hand are free and Vincent brings these to his mouth before he answers by drawing the loop of the bandage up, a little above the upper lip.
“Yes.”
And then he draws the next loop of bandage down, a little below the lower lip.
“No.”
And again, up. And again, down.
“Yes. No.”
Up and down, the small opening in front of his mouth is closed and opened.
“Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes. No.”
Until Leo gingerly strokes the bandaged cheek.
“Excellent, little brother. That’s really good.”
Then the doorbell rings again.
He closes the door carefully and hurries toward the monotonous signal. It’s the social services lady and behind her, Agnetha. They are smiling.
“We’ll do what you suggested.”
The social services lady is maybe smiling the most; she’s the one who’s talking.
“So, Agnetha will look in on you, at least this evening and tonight and in the morning. And then we’ll take it from there.”
Her coat is hanging on one of the hooks under the shelf for hats. She buttons one button after another and looks for a long time at Leo, who hopes they remain at a distance so that the giggling won’t erupt.
“But—there’s one condition.”
“Yes?”
“That Agnetha can come and go exactly as often as she needs to. She and I will stay in contact the whole time. Okay, Leo? Okay, Agnetha?”
He nods and they both wait for Agnetha to do the same. But she doesn’t answer. And they soon understand why. Her gaze has become fixed a little farther off in the stairwell, just where Mama stumbled and hit hardest. The only patch he didn’t really wipe away. There was quite a lot of blood there and he was in a hurry.
He waits until they’ve gone.
The cleaning bucket is still in the bathroom where he left it. He fills it with warm water and a dash of dish detergent, wets the rag, and rubs with the whole weight of his body pressed against the stone floor until the last drops that hadn’t been mopped up are gone.
Now he knows exactly what to do.
He opens the door leading to his two brothers—one giggling hysterically, one hiding in bandages—and plops down like before, on the floor with his back against the side of the bed.
“I still don’t know how many days, Felix. But we’ll fix it all the same.”
“What do you mean, fix it?”
“I have thought it all out. And you’re going to help me.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Do you still have the blue case? With the maps?”
“Yes.”
“Get it.”
“Why?”
“The social services lady thinks that we shouldn’t live here anymore. But that’s not going to happen.”
Felix is already giggling less as he gets up more slowly than ever before in order to illustrate how unwilling he is.
“Felix—just get it.”
The blue map case isn’t larger than a postcard, but it’s as thick as a box of chocolates and it flies in a nice arc as Felix throws it from the doorway to the bed, nearly hitting both Leo and Vincent as it crash-lands.
“Satisfied?”
A compass is shoved down in an open pocket on the outside of the case. It gets in the way as Leo scoops up and unfolds the map, which has shrunk all the cycle paths, minor roads, and lanes of Falun to a scale of 1:5000.
“Look here.”
He points somewhere in the middle of the map and Felix tries to do what he says, look, but he doesn’t understand what he should look at.
“What?”
“The roads from the city center to the forest.”
Leo’s index finger dives down to a little section in the outskirts of Falun, not particularly far away. The angular letters form S-L-Ä-T-T-A. Felix knows exactly how the map looks in reality. He has been there a couple of times; they have a really worthless football team.
“And? What about it?”
“I will explain it all, later. When we get there.”
“Where?”
Leo is in a hurry to fold up the map, and Felix almost feels in his body how there’ll be new folds that weren’t there before.
“Where, Leo? And, listen, I want that back when you’re through with it. Don’t ruin it—it cost fifteen kronor.”
“You can have ten shitty maps just like it when I’m done. Come with me now and I’ll show you.”
“Show me what?”
“What you’ll get to see.”
“And the mummy?”
“He said he wanted to be alone. Now he can be. We won’t be gone long.”
LOOKOUT POINT. THE little hill behind the thorn bushes that frame the square. Now they are squatting on the top of it, close to each other. Their hair is blowing and the fallen leaves are dancing drowsily over the open asphalt surface. They can almost forget this awful day for a bit.
“Hey, Leo?”
“Yes?”
“What are we doing here?”
“You’ll see in a minute.”
Then Leo’s cheeks tighten, which means he is entirely focused and has peeled away everything around—he does that sometimes, crawls inside himself. Felix follows Leo’s gaze. A woman, about their mother’s age, strolls across the square. It’s her Leo is studying. Or it might be the leather bag she’s carrying in her hand.
“Do you see it?”
It was the bag. A brown one, which seems not to be especially heavy.
“Yeah.”
“Do you know what’s inside it?”
“Do you?”
“Mmm.”
“What?”
“Twenty-five thousand. Sometimes forty. Sometimes even fifty.”
“Fifty thousand . . . what?”
“Kronor.”
The woman is on the way from the ICA supermarket on one side of the square to the bank on the other side, taking long, determined strides in leather boots with high heels that clatter. The wind carries the sound up to Lookout Point.
“Every day she does this walk, just after the shop closes—the same route, across the square with the bag in her hand—and when she gets there, she puts all the shit in that over there, do you see?”
She pulls out a metal box on the bank’s brick wall, tilts it, and lets the bag drop down, a toothless mouth that gobbles it up.
“Money they made. That goes into their account.”
“How do you know that?”
“The owner’s son usually brags about it in the smoking area.”
Now she’s finished—on the way back, without the bag, to the area’s largest ICA shop.
“Are we done? I want to go home.”
“Don’t you get why we’re here?”
“Vincent is alone. We’re leaving now, Leo.”
“The leather bag. I’m going to take it.”
“Take . . . it?”
“Yes.”
“What do you mean . . . take?”
“Swipe. A heist.”
“Heist?”
“That’s American. It means a supercool robbery.”
“That’s not supercool—you know, it won’t work.”
“It’ll work. And I know how. Just before she drops the money down I’ll snatch it.”
“But . . .”
The woman who has high heels on and is Mama’s age has company, so Felix falls silent. A guard in uniform. He is employed to watch over the city center. He marches loop after loop from morning to evening and he meets her now in the middle of the square.
“Shit, Robbie’s big brother. He’s the guard.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“Click. They call him that. Click, with the baton. Click, with the big radio. Shit, he knows who you are!”
“I’ll take care of that too.”
Felix looks for a long time at the guard, at Robbie’s big brother. If Leo snatched the bag, then Click would easily catch up with him. Just two or three steps.
“It won’t work. Do you know how quickly Click runs? And if he doesn’t manage to . . . then he’ll recognize you.”
“I’ll never get caught.”
“How can you know that? Freaking idiot! You can’t know that!”
“I said I’ll take care of it. Okay? Masked. That’s what you have to be. And before you strike, you put out false leads.”
The guard seems to be growing. Or maybe it’s that Felix only sees a uniform and a baton and a walkie-talkie. While Leo, at the same time, doesn’t seem to see him at all.
“I want to go home.”
“Just a little while longer.”
“Leo—we’re leaving now. The guard. Robbie’s brother. And—”
“A little longer.”
Felix pulls on one of the sleeves of Leo’s jacket.
“You are exactly like . . . back then! When you wanted to . . .” He pulls a little more. “Fight with Kekkonen. When you took Papa’s knife. You don’t listen and you disappear into yourself. When you aren’t with me—only with yourself.”
Felix gets up and starts walking. Soon he hears steps: Leo’s running gait.
“Felix . . . stop now!”
Until he has managed to catch up and they are walking side by side.
“You have to go along with it.”
“Leo—you can forget it.”
“You’re the one who’s going to lure the guard away!”
“Don’t you get it? I don’t want to be a part of it! And I don’t intend to be a part of it!”
Leo grabs hold of his brother, not hard, but with friendly hands around the tense shoulders so that they both have to stop. And he smiles, even laughs a little, like when they joke around together sometimes.
“Felix? You and I can do what we want. If we just do it together. And together we’ll easily hoodwink Click. A diversion tactic. That’s what it’s called. The fucking guard won’t understand a thing.”
“I don’t want to. Don’t want to. Don’t want to.”
“Listen, I’ve planned it all out, okay . . .”
Felix looks away, covers his ears, and starts to walk again. Leo follows him, like before.
“You don’t need to be afraid. Not a bit. That square, it’s ours.”
And he points, arm outstretched.
“See that fu
cking bronze statue that stands right on the edge between the benches? Do you see it, Felix? That’s us, afterward! We are going to stand there and shine.”
Felix presses his hands even harder over his ears.
“And do you know what’s best of all, Felix? That this is just a one-shot deal. Thirty, or even forty thousand in the leather bag. One single time.”
Every time the same thing—when Felix makes up his mind, he has made up his mind. Maybe he . . . went too fast. Maybe that’s it. So much else has happened. Maybe he needs to take care of that first so that everything will work out. Time to change tactics.
Social worker. Cop. On-call list. Blood. Custody. Another family. A day filled with words he hadn’t imagined he would need to explain to someone covering their ears. Words, which, if you think about them, if you try to understand them, put all together mean a long time.
A long time for three brothers to be alone in an apartment.
A long time for Mama to lie in a hospital bed and heal. He knows that makes Felix all the more worried, even sadder.
But also a long time for Papa to be locked up in a cell. He knows that will calm Felix down.
Because of course he needs his little brother to succeed.
“If I can change, you can change.”
THE INSIGNIFICANT SIGN greeted him from a few hundred yards away—mounted on metal legs, it stood there and pointed stubbornly to the left.
CORRECTIONAL FACILITY 2 KM
He leaned back in the sagging, far too soft driver’s seat, which seemed to become bottomless as his heavy body sank deeper in. A tap on the brakes, a sharp turn, and he was gone.
Change. When you can’t run anymore, when you don’t make your way home, or even know where it is—sooner or later change is the only road to travel, he was absolutely convinced of that.
He parked at the far end of the prison’s empty visitor parking lot and rolled down the side window for some fresh air. It wasn’t enough. He needed more. He opened the front door and let his left leg slide along with it and stick out while the dry-cleaned suit’s wide pant leg flapped in the mild April breeze and the newly shined dress shoe tapped on the dry asphalt.
The Muzak on the radio streamed out of the rasping car speakers with their loose hanging cords, and he leaned closer to the dashboard to turn it off, breathed slowly and deeply, and closed his eyes until the flashing colored spots inside his eyelids disappeared—finally, in all that stillness he could hear the warbling of birds from the edge of the woods, which picked up where the concrete wall of the prison left off.
The Sons: Made in Sweden, Part 2 Page 2
