My Father, His Son

by Reidar Jonsson

  In the hall I met the regular dog of the house. He licked my face affectionately while I bared my throat to him. Perhaps it was a secret-police dog I had in front of me. I offered my throat to the dog and asked him to take a substantial bite. He would probably have enjoyed planting his teeth in my throat but did not dare to reveal his true identity. He growled and crawled backwards, the yellow eye-teeth foaming in saliva. As if he knew he wouldn’t have a chance against a teddy bear killer.

  The nausea overwhelmed me and I lay down on the worn linoleum floor.

  I who used to brag about being cross-examined by the FBI couldn’t even recognize a secret policeman when I saw one! And who was that Monsieur Verdurin who so easily opened up his villa to a total stranger? Why did Omar constantly carry off parts from my dear old Volvo to have them repaired? Was it a clever form of house arrest? I felt dumber than a Swede and wanted very much to know what it was all about.

  Why did I, who generally speaking was without guilt, lie on the linoleum like a stupid dog?

  Looking back, I would want to see this exact moment of my life as a shining high point, my last big and hysterical laughter. There I was, and I really admired myself for being able to block all truths about my own person so totally! I was still capable of seeing myself as nearly perfect. I mean, it takes quite a bit of courage and a lot of energy to maintain such a viewpoint long after the moment of truth with all its force has crushed your day-to-day existence.

  And yet…

  Gleefully, on all fours on the floor, I could suddenly see another microscopic truth. A truth that was amazingly simple. It traveled toward my heart like a small silver bullet and hit me with this:

  Imagine if I were wrong??

  That would make Louise and all the others on her side right!

  Yes. Right.

  Nobody but myself kills myself. I am both the hunter and the wolf.

  After this knockout blow I had to lie in the hallway awhile longer. Again I thought of the day that was the beginning of the end for our family.

  SWEDEN

  1975

  My father-in-law looks pleased when I come rushing out into the yard with the double-barreled shotgun under my arm. For a moment I believe that Louise has told of the despicable rape in Stockholm.

  “Good," he says. “Finally.”

  “Now, goddamn it,” I say.

  “Want me to help you?” he asks.

  “No. You don’t have to get involved in this,” I say.

  “Are you going after them one by one or will you take all of them at once?”

  “There’s only one,” I say, a bit confused.

  “On the ground? Yes. Of course,” my father-in-law answers and walks toward the warehouse while he shakes his head at my agitated state.

  He has reasons to do so. My father-in-law is rather hard-of-hearing after all the shooting contests. Of course he was speaking of this summer’s big bone of contention — the five kittens.

  I am trapped.

  I see Jonas in the kitchen window. His face quivers with disappointment. I am the one who is betraying him. We have spoken of it for months. My father-in-law has refused to dash the kittens against a wall. Now it is too late. Louise has, as she puts it, studied the subject. Very loudly and at great length, she has complained that we men cannot even get rid of a few kittens. My mother-in-law refuses categorically all responsibility. Meanwhile, both the kittens and Jonas’s love for them have been growing. There has been an eternal tittle and tattle type of thing going on about who is going to kill them.

  My father-in-law reappears with a can of liver paté. He opens the can and serves the last supper on the pebbly ground. Then he fetches the kittens, who start gulping it down. Five of them, almost four months old. Can I do it with one shot? It depends on the distance. I measure it out. Four yards means good diffusion and enough power to get through two, should one stand behind another.

  I take aim. My father-in-law has gone inside. Only the kittens and I remain. I shut my eyes and press the trigger. It’s not especially dramatic. I go to get shovel and broom, a garbage bag, sweep a little gravel and sand over the pieces, and rake it all up, leaving no trace. A few minutes later I have deposited the small, broken corpses in a hole behind the warehouse, covered them with dirt, and put the tools back.

  All the time I keep telling myself that I am like my own grandfather, large and secure in a matter-of-fact attitude when it comes to killing a hen. We grandchildren stand in front of Grandma, who tries to remain steadfast against our fascinated attempts to look through the large and light kitchen window.

  Grandpa’s heavy steps outside. The chickens clucking around in panic. Our shrewd tiny steps in order to witness the Sunday death of a hen. Grandpa, large and heavy, who lets the ax fall, and the hen who shudders and jerks, almost leading a headless life for a moment.

  That memory is not at all dangerous. This one is. Jonas can’t understand how I could kill the kittens so easily. A few minutes of precision work and rational thinking. Small and burdensome lives versus large and comfort-demanding lives. The neighborhood cannot be overrun by cats just because we do not take care of our own.

  Silence and gloom reign in the house. I see Jonas scurry through the hall. He disappears into thin air when I walk into the house. My father-in-law is gone too. Probably standing in the cellar, pouring alcohol into himself. Louise sits at the kitchen table. She stares at me with loathing and amazement.

  “I can’t believe what I’ve just seen,” she says.

  “But you wanted me to get rid of them. Didn’t you?”

  “That you could do it just like that, cold as ice. Just murder them. Get things out of your system by murdering a few innocent kittens.”

  “I’ve only done what you’ve asked me to do for weeks on end.”

  “That’s what everybody who puts the blame on somebody else says. Why can’t you ever stand up for what you do?”

  I have only one shot left in the gun. It swings up against her breasts, carelessly oscillating back and forth. From this distance of about one yard, there would be a considerable hole in her splendidness. Of course, it’s just a game. But I am furious. Always the same illogical demands. Her mixed and contradictory signals crush me. Enclosed in my own eye of the storm’s calm center, I see her go pale and at the same time there is a new glitter in her eyes. It’s irresolution mixed with contentment. Finally she has me at a point where I am visible and unyielding. I calculate my violent swings with the gun in front of her and press the trigger. The shot buzzes out through the open window beside her. The detonation feels as if a couple of wet woolen mittens were pressed hard against my ears.

  The first sound that reaches me is a strange gushing one. Louise sits straight as a pin on the chair and looks totally blank while the gushing continues. Suddenly she smiles, then begins to laugh. She stands up and walks stiff-legged out of the kitchen, holding the wet dress against her legs.

  “You wipe it up!”

  My mother-in-law materializes in the dusky hall. Her eyebrows are black and reproachful dashes drawn in coal. I crawl on the floor under the table and wipe up after Louise with my mother-in-law’s kitchen towel. One accident is no worse than another. Besides she must be rather inured by now. Also, she has her God to pray to. We don’t have that.

  When I get upstairs to Louise, she stands there, washing herself. I sit down on the bed and watch. It never fails to give me pleasure. Louise treats herself with practical and loving care.

  She seems to like having somebody watch her. Without knowing why — perhaps it was her story about Axel — I ask her what she thought of when we were making love.

  “Of someone else,” she answers.

  “And when you make love to someone else?” I wonder.

  “Then I think of someone else.”

  Although she drives me crazy, I have to admire her logic. It slips through like an irresponsible, whirling ball that without even a moment’s hesitation breaks an expensive Ming vase.

 
I laugh. She walks over to me and softly presses her hand against my face, forcing me down on the bed. She purrs and whispers that she is strangely excited. I can understand why, can’t I? There are tempests raging around us. Her breasts are smooth and slippery, still damp and a little cold. She adheres to me with suction, as if she finally found something to hold on to.

  Much later, when we lie completely still, she says softly, almost inaudibly, that I ought to understand. She has wanted to leave me for quite a while.

  “Axel?” 1 ask.

  “He’s enough for now,” she says.

  “He’s still going to get a hail of bullets between his legs.”

  I say it almost gaily, looking forward to that chore. “Don’t be stupid,” says Louise.

  Am I the stupid one? I don’t know. A pulsating pain is associated with the act of getting dressed. How many hours have passed since Jonas and I went down to the millpond to fish? Four. Perhaps five. It is a remarkable day that has not even happened yet. And now Louise plans to take Jonas from me. I am sure of it. But she is not going to succeed.

  Mechanically I pick up the receiver, having rushed downstairs to stop the insistent ringing. Of all people, it’s Axel. It gives me certain pleasure to describe in minute detail what I’m going to do to him. My mother-in-law comes into the hall. She has no more facial expressions left. I’m babbling on. Axel takes it calmly and reasonably as always.

  “OK. But before you perforate my tender and highly valued body parts, I want to speak to you about your speech at the conference in Harpsund. ‘The Third Man’ … ? Even the title of the talk is questionable. Wasn’t that an old movie?”

  “Oh yes,” I say and think so hard that my brain squeaks.

  “Just a piece of advice, if you don’t mind. I don’t believe it would be very wise —”

  “Not very wise!” I scream. “It happens to be the truth. Which I believe our dear prime minister should hear.”

  There is some static on the line. Axel keeps sounding as if we were having a regular telephone conference. I cannot understand how Louise can let herself be raped by such an insensitive oaf.

  “OK,” Axel says. “It’s your funeral.”

  There is nothing strange about that line. He always says that. That’s why he is a professor. But then he says something strange.

  “I think you should have a long talk with Louise. We’ve spoken about you. You ought to grow up one of these days. And I have to stop being your father.”

  He hangs up.

  Who does he think he is, really? He has not done anything except saw me into small pieces. What kind of fatherly care have I received from him? Raping my wife — is that what fathers do for their sons?

  I feel sudden disgust faced with the approaching conspiracy. Axel’s mild warning regarding the conference with the prime minister ought to be taken seriously. I should be careful not to play the seer.

  As a representative of the labor party, our prime minister has been listening unusually keenly these last few years, meaning that he and the inner government circle have met frequently with so-called select groups. People from commerce and industry participate as do a few prominent professors with the right party colors, such as Axel, an occasional sociologist such as me, and finally some authors and assorted screwballs thrown in for good measure. One talks endlessly, puts forward hypothetical theories, drinks heavily into the small hours of the night, and generally behaves like a swine, becoming bosom buddy with people one otherwise wouldn’t want to spit on. That’s the whole idea. Because next time you debate with someone in front of the whole Swedish population, you’ll remember how the guy on the other side, the poor devil, dissolved in alcohol fumes, revealed intimate and sentimental details about his life. Who can crush a man who once told you, tears brimming his eyes, that as a child he never could learn to swim?

  I came along as a kind of Jiminy Cricket when I wrote about farmers’ organizations centralizing the collectively owned refinement units. That’s been one of the forerunners in depopulating the same rural areas that their party in such eloquent sentences keeps declaring that they want to guard and protect. My criticism was appreciated by the Social Democrats, who thought I had forgotten their own idolization of large-scale production. I had not. However, a little screeching is good for them. The upcoming election results were of personal interest to the prime minister: Should he stay on as the leader of his party or put his energy into an international career?

  I must humbly report that I enter this picture somewhat. The politicians know that I have kept a sharp eye on the devastating destruction of the old glassworks. They would like me to become a spokesman for the opinions of ordinary citizens. Naturally, I don’t know a thing that the government doesn’t already know —- or ought to know. The glass workers have done everything to call attention to the problem. They have demonstrated outside the minister’s office doors. An inane theatrical drama was performed in Stockholm in front of jaded city folks and with compulsory attendance by the minister of culture.

  Everyone knows or ought to know. But the knowledge is too simple; it has to be ritualized and rewritten in acceptable sociological language. That’s what Axel and I do. Unfortunately, personal or political motives always exist behind the supposedly objective opinions given. Axel has his motives as I have mine, and he does not like my proposed contribution to the next conference. I don’t know why the prime minister shouldn’t hear what I have to say. I am going to find out why. And confront Axel at the same time.

  But that has to wait. He will be allowed to live this weekend.

  I watch my father-in-law working in the yard. He has dug a large hole in front of the rowan tree and keeps digging deeper, tenaciously and rhythmically. I walk over to the hole. He doesn’t say a word about the shot from the kitchen window. When I ask if he wants me to relieve him, he nods and climbs out of the hole. I try to sniff discreetly when he sweeps past but can’t tell if he has been drinking.

  He goes off and I dig.

  After ten scoops of dirt, I am aware of how tiring the work is. I have lost the ability to do monotonous muscular work, as well as the pleasure of simple tasks and pure physical effort. My head is spinning. My body has grown used to sitting down in one place.

  Damn it all.

  I increase the tempo and let the sweat pour. Then my father-in-law stands there, the toes of his boots by the edge, and scratches the back of his head. I take a break, panting. He looks at me with his brown, hard, small eyes and asks me where Jonas is.

  “How would I know? I’m standing in this hole, digging.”

  I suggest that Jonas may have gone over to visit my uncle. The latter is still a warm, joyous, and irresponsible sort. Children are fascinated by him. He wiggles his ears, shows his tattoos, tells hilarious stories from his years at sea, and is generally childish. I love him — and it irritates me that I’m ashamed of him. He never wants to grow up and he can’t drink. It gets awkward when he insists on dancing with Louise, making my aunt run upstairs and slam doors. Things are exactly like they used to be. The only difference is that my uncle keeps his bottles in the cellar nowadays.

  I smile a little to myself. It seems there are plenty of folks in Småland who have problems with alcohol in combination with supervising wives. My father-in-law looks questioningly at me, but I can’t tell him what makes me smile. He is still thinking about Jonas’s whereabouts and doesn’t see that as something to laugh about.

  “The fishing rod is gone,” he says.

  An indefinite chill deep down in the hole grows up along my legs and freezes them to ice. The handle of the spade is smooth from frequent use. No, it’s impossible that Jonas has taken off for the millpond by himself. I stand still and note my own slowness, my unwillingness to realize the truth: Jonas has gone down to the pond all alone.

  Suddenly, the paralysis wears off. I leap out of the hole and start running, hollering to my father-in-law:

  “Follow me with the car!”

  I trust that he und
erstands what I mean. My lungs are on fire while I run. I recall what Jonas and I said about the stream that goes to the millpond. I explained where the free-fishing boundary went, and how irritating it was, since the large beasts were probably lurking right in the pond. Now, if one were to walk out carefully, a balancing act on the rotten, unsteady wooden bridge below the pond, one could reach them. Couldn’t one? We had been nodding like two cunning, wily fish poachers. I see the scene in front of me while I run along the slope, throwing myself through brushes and vegetation. The forest swallows my frenetic calls. His name disappears between the tree trunks. Finally I reach the stream.

  Everything is quiet and serene.

  The water pushes its way over the rim of my boots when I wade along the edge of the treacherous stream, deep with cloudy cavities in places. The reeds have elbowed their way in from the sea. They cover and hide the old, muddy, steep edges. Fifteen years ago, one could stamp one’s feet on the tottering grassy mounds and scare out herds of crayfish. Now the water is dead.

  When I was thirteen, we went swimming in the pond. I can still see the rays of sun streaming through the brown water when I swam upward, having dived in from the sluice gates. I see my skinny and sinewy body — white at first and then slowly browner — as it falls slowly into the dark, frightening pond. Beside me Jonas is falling. He is fully dressed. His boots are too large, he has a stunned expression on his face and asks with wide-open eyes why he was not allowed to live.

  “Jonas!!!”

  I bellow his name out over the pond. The bridge is empty. The wet, half-rotten planks are loose. And at the furthest point lies our fishing rod.

  I fly toward it, slip, and fall against one of Jonas’s boots, which has gotten stuck at the very end, between two rotted planks. It takes a few seconds before I realize that Jonas is actually hanging there, his foot still in the boot. I slither to the edge and see his body, the head under the water. How long has he been struggling? An hour? Two minutes?

  After a moment’s frantic effort I yank him up. He is lifeless. I have no idea what I am saying or doing. I hit his chest with my fist and plead with him to wake up, to speak to me, say something, tell me if he caught anything. He is blue and white, frighteningly white. Then I become calm and work methodically. I blow my breath into his nose and mouth. I hit the spot over his heart with hard, calculated blows.