My Father, His Son

by Reidar Jonsson

  My mother-in-law dropped ice cream on her dress. I tried discreetly to signal the astonished musicians to resume playing. But they were much too interested in what would follow. My just lawfully wedded wife’s voice thundered across the dance floor. Her interpretation of my small confidences had grown to unbelievable dimensions.

  “He couldn’t fuck a whore if you paid him. Because he’s a man of moral standing. Isn’t it wonderful? He can’t even be unfaithful. That’s why I’m marrying him. He’s so moral that I wonder what will happen to him if we get divorced.”

  Everyone in the restaurant including the musicians and the personnel was listening with rapt attention.

  Louise fell silent and looked around. A normal human being would at this point have melted into the carpet. Not so Louise. Instead she stood up, stretched to her full height, and stared back at everyone.

  “The rest of you motherfuckers here have of course no idea what I’m talking about. I’m talking about a morally erect man, upstanding to such a degree that you’d never even get close to it!”

  I nodded in agreement. It sounded good. But I understood nothing.

  I felt a vague discomfort. Even in the middle of misery, one can feel flattered to be the star of the event. The cousin’s sea captain stared, probably fantasizing putting me in the stocks. My father was not present. He had no time. He was loading bananas for the Swedish populace. But my brother was there, representing the family. He looked stunned.

  Louise was asked to leave by the maitre d’, who had rushed over to our table.

  My in-laws, pretending that nothing had happened, were pulling Louise between them. The rest of the group disappeared, and I was left at the table with fourteen half-eaten ice cream dishes with cloudberry jam. The dance orchestra was launching into their next dreary number, and I was taking a walk around the table drinking all the leftover cordials. Why not?

  In a dimly lit corner, I was trying to be philosophical about what had happened. Things could be worse. The wedding night had been celebrated in advance. There was clear evidence of my manhood.

  My friend the sea captain zeroed in on me. He was as aroused as Louise, with one difference — he was deeply insulted. Either I had been at sea for seven years and done my share of rolling or else I had falsified my seagoing papers. He knew too well how things stood at sea.

  What should I do?

  We began to fight halfheartedly in the poorly lit restaurant. He tore my suit and I managed to pummel his head right into a big platter with elk meat.

  We kept on fighting without much conviction.

  My brother managed to separate us. Being an expert on women, he said that I had planted my last oat.

  “What did you tell her? That you only held hands with girls before you met her? You better go home and lie instead!”

  “About what?” I asked.

  I didn’t get it.

  So it went. Our wedding celebration was only a mild prelude, the first and not the last time I would be the victim of my wife’s outspoken nature. She loved to discuss sex with total strangers, provided I was the illustration. I remember one adventure she managed to turn into one of her showpieces. The problem with Louise was that she kept mixing up intimacy and publicity. She relished my little story as an example of my “moral rectitude” and it could roll over her lips in the most unexpected circumstances.

  The story takes place at the time our son, Jonas, was born. Unable to apply for student loans, according to Louise, if we wished to remain independent, we moved to the city of Norrköping and looked for work. I was happy. Louise got a job at the clinic for sexual disease and I worked on a tugboat in the harbor. While we walked around town pushing the baby carriage, Louise enjoyed nodding discreetly to the right and to the left describing to me the various venereal diseases of the passersby.

  It seemed as if the whole city found reasons to come to her desk. I had nightmares about a gigantic germ swallowing our little family. Of course, sometimes I had other fantasies.

  It was winter and bitingly cold. I had found an old fur cap at the Salvation Army store. We no longer used the surname Johansson — it had changed to Rutger — and I was in the process of shedding my skin, turning from sailor to adult student. In the bus, wearing the fur cap this piercingly cold winter day in question, I was suddenly overtaken by an erotic feeling so powerful that I began sweating profusely. I was seeing myself as one enormous penis rocking in and out of the fur cap. I wanted desperately to disappear from the bus. In a few seconds, the fontanel would split open and spray gallons of sperm into the furry head covering. I would look like a cupcake, covered with icing. What if somebody noticed? I thought. At the same time, to my amazement, I was rocking in a rhythm that had nothing to do with that of the bus.

  The bus was filled to the last standing room. I was sitting on the bench that runs along the side of the bus, and a woman, a good deal older than I, her fur coat open, was rubbing her genitals against my knee. We found ourselves promptly inside a dense and inconsiderate desire for satisfaction. Shortly both of us would be reaching a climax. There was nothing we could do to stop now. Helpfully I pressed my knee against her circular movements, at the same time as she was holding me in a pumping, squeezing grip. We never looked at each other, both of us pretending that nothing at all was happening.

  Two stops before mine she tore herself away. There were about ten people left in the bus. It did seem rather strange for her to be standing between my legs. I slithered up on the seat, blinded by the sweat running down my forehead. She turned around, smiling. Would I come? Images ran wildly beneath the fur cap. She was walking ten yards ahead of me, we were walking through the front door, up the staircase, she was opening her apartment door, and in the hallway we were throwing ourselves at each other, like wild animals. The sky turned red as a passion flower. The dreary suburb was a hot, pulsating jungle. There would be no need for us to walk in the usual, boring way to her door. I understood then the meaning of erotic fantasy.

  But what did I do?

  I froze. I could not even lift my hand to press the stop button. At the end of the line, gasping for air, I managed to collect myself and stumbled out of the bus, whereupon I began walking home.

  Light glimmered in our apartment windows. As I came closer, my steps grew lighter. I ran the last bit. I tore open the door and stormed in to my family, feeling like the hero who had undergone a wearing and extremely trying test. There I was, having relinquished an anonymous and immensely thrilling, orgiastic love tryst.

  Louise, to my disappointment, showed no admiration for me. Her cousin with the sea captain had arrived without warning and without her captain. The two of them were about to go out: The cousin needed a man. And they were planning to collect such a specimen at a nearby bar. The air was thick with their emancipation, and Louise’s words to me were crushing.

  “You’ll suffocate from all your morality! Why didn’t you take advantage of the situation? If we were to get divorced — what the hell would become of you?!”

  This is the point where Louise usually ends her story, when told in public, by condescendingly patting my head as if I were a stupid dog, not knowing any better.

  It was then that I decided that next time I would definitely grab any offered opportunities. The rumor spread. Mostly thanks to my dear wife’s advertisements. While she was telling her girlfriends how my “morality” was preventing me from doing anything, I was offering them discreet but practical opportunities to test her statements. An excellent exercise. As if being born a little each time or divorcing Louise step by step.

  The seven years with Louise turned into seven incomprehensible and painful ones and we discovered much too late that she had never meant a single word she had pronounced with such gusto. It was all pure verbal bravura and phony emancipation. Mere words to cover her own fear of being left alone. She would speak constantly about unfaithfulness, divorce, sex, and the disintegration of family in order to keep the ghosts out. She was speaking away her fear while
I was acting out mine. We were equally stupid and childish, the two of us.

  Eventually I had to admit to her the extent of my training program. By that time, my unfaithfulness had taken on considerable proportions. It dawned on me finally that it was I who was betraying myself.

  Louise’s self-esteem needed a sparring partner. She chose Axel. A stupid choice since he was my father figure in the hierarchies of the academic world. The mathematics of love were simple to her. Revenge. An eye for an eye. She would have to work hard to catch up with me.

  ALGERIA

  1976

  Secret police agent Omar became uniquely nice and useful the moment my person was declared uninteresting. Almost magically my Volvo was repaired. Omar’s friends produced miracles. My maternal grandfather would have applauded such craftsmanship and ingenuity. His last years were filled with tremendous pain. Wherever he turned, people had been transformed from artisans to machine servants. He felt contempt for this one-sided development. Nobody could repair anything anymore, he kept lamenting, only replace parts.

  Now the Volvo purrs through the Sahara like a contented cat as I drive back toward Algiers and Bordj El Kiffan, leaving the oasis behind. The trip takes one day and one night.

  Each time I drive through the desert it reminds me of all the years, days, and hours I have spent staring out over oceans. The Sahara’s stiff sand waves in the cold moonlight give me the same feeling of smallness or greatness — I don’t know which — that I experienced when my eyes met with the unbroken horizons of the sea. Along the road, the car’s shadow sails across the sand as a giant ray fish, silent and untiring. I feel exactly the same, suspended in air, moving forward. I have left Louise. We are no longer intertwined. Her pain is no longer mine and mine is no longer hers.

  In Bordj El Kiffan nothing looked the same.

  It’s one thing to read in a cheap detective novel about what a place looks like following a thorough search and quite another to stand in the middle of the devastation. My hospitable Frenchman’s model train setup was totally demolished. Not one thing remained as it had been. Furniture, dinnerware, all his Wagner records … everything was crushed and trampled and lay broken on the floor. It must have taken hours of intense work to pulverize everything so methodically, every large and small part of the Frenchman’s unique home. My few possessions were all destroyed. Even the already broken tape recorder with my French-language course had been stomped upon. The course book had been turned into confetti. I had only been a guest and never had a chance really to get to know the owner of the house, but I felt robbed, undressed, and invaded.

  What could have happened?

  Murder? History catching up with a lonely former French soldier?

  I sat down on the overturned bed, swallowing with effort. I felt like crying and as if I had been beaten all over. And I had no idea why. I wanted revenge.

  Omar entered into the hall from the garden, pushing the door open. In his arms he was cradling the old dog, and over his shoulder he carried the Frenchman’s most prized possession, the MAT 49 machine gun.

  The dog looked dead. His saliva was dripping on the stone floor.

  “It’s not dead. But almost,” Omar said in perfect Swedish.

  If you ever run into someone called Omar in North Africa, brace yourself. As for me, I have met too many Omars. This was one too many. I sighed. Both of us knew what needed to be done.

  While we walked down to the long, deserted, sandy beach, Omar told me of Monsieur Verdurin’s hasty escape from the country. Monsieur Verdurin was an old pied noir. He had apparently been working for all those fanatical organizations in France that dream of the return of the colonial empire, with full restitution both of the important families and of French honor.

  “But how could you let him stay here?” I asked.

  We were standing on the beach with the Mediterranean night breathing softly. The sound of the wind and the ocean seemed an-noyingly eternal. Algiers’s lights made an arch toward the heights a few miles away. How many times haven’t I seen the city at a distance, when I was at sea? How many times haven’t I slowly approached other cities? Heaven and ocean becoming one black entity, a few words of command from the bridge, our ship gliding closer to an alien coast. I was only sixteen years old, the first time I arrived in Algiers. The night was as inky, the breeze as faint, and the ocean breathing as indifferently as now.

  Omar put the poor dog on the ground. It whined and rattled. I put the spade into the sand and began digging.

  Standing in the pit, I swallowed and suddenly felt as if I were back in the same hole, being sixteen years old. Omar took the MAT 49 from his shoulder and handed it to me when I had crawled out of the grave.

  “Monsieur Verdurin told me how good you were with it.”

  “Really?” I said. “I’m a stupid Swede who lives in a country filled with unrealities, but I can take apart and put together that machine gun blindfolded. Strange, isn’t it?”

  Omar walked off a few yards, leaving me with the faintly whining dog. I checked the MAT 49. Most likely, Omar was a clever tool in a game I did not understand. But he was a fool anyway. He had carried the machine gun over his shoulder with the safety off. I held out my arm and put the muzzle of the gun to the dog’s forehead. I wondered who had kicked apart his innards. The beast stared back at me, showing his teeth. It looked like a smile. I pressed the trigger.

  The sound was sucked up by the night and the gasps of the swells. Omar returned. We heaved the dog’s body into the hole and Omar took over the spade work. I stood beside him.

  “What happened? Did you destroy Monsieur Verdurin as painstakingly as you did his home?” I asked Omar when he had filled the sandy pit. He shook his head.

  “It was the family. I managed to get him away in time.”

  “The family?”

  “The family, the relatives, and the religion. If you have any idea what such concepts really mean. Our French friend managed to seduce the girl who cleaned the house. That’s his version. Hers is that he forced himself on her. Remember how angry the women around here were when they discovered that you were alone in the house? That was just a mild breeze compared to the hurricane that occurred here today. Religion and morality are not as easy to control as one may believe.”

  “There are parts of us that can’t be ruled, that can’t be reached,” I mumbled. “I remember another night,” I said. “Last time I dug a hole in Algiers, we put something quite different into it.”

  We began walking along the beach, away from Bordj El Kiffan’s lights. And I told him about my first encounter with Algiers.

  ALGERIA

  1961

  The road to Algiers begins in an attic in Sweden. Ollie’s attic.

  Another year of my life had rolled by. I was ready to celebrate my sixteenth birthday and nobody remembered my mother’s death anymore. People threw their thoughts forward. You had to hang in there. Otherwise I could miss my next mother, too. I never understood why Ollie had married my father, since he was never at home. But that was not my problem.

  It was a cozy year. Ollie had her own business, being the widow of a greenhouse grower of cucumbers and flowers. She had no ovaries and therefore, according to her, a better hand than most with children. Ollie was a modern woman. Her educational method was simple. As long as I tried it out at home first, I could do whatever I pleased. It was the same method I myself had developed during my parent-free spell in the Chinese Wall.

  However, I was no longer the only one at Ollie’s. After a week my sister arrived. As for my brother, he stayed with our maternal grandmother. He had definite opinions about Ollie. But he could afford to have them since a maternal grandmother is even better than a real mother. Our maternal grandmother would have won the title of National Grandmother of the whole of Sweden — had she opened her home to me and my sister. That didn’t pan out and we learned to make the best of it.

  It was a strange feeling to have siblings again in the home of a total stranger. From her
old family, Ollie had already a stepson. His name was Kurt and he never said more than one single word: “Michelin.” As I understood, it meant that he went around longing for French tires. But I could be wrong. He was married to a handsome woman, Elsa. They lived downstairs, we lived upstairs.

  Kurt would stare at me suspiciously and mumble “Michelin.” He was the brooding type and almost turned me into one. I wondered what that one word of his really meant.

  But who am I to complain? My new family could look and act any way they wanted. As long as you have your health, as my grandmother used to say. Not everybody has the luck of getting a new mother, work, and even a fun leisure time. I worked in a store as errand boy. As such I was picking up cucumbers from our greenhouse. It was always Elsa who handed over the crates. She was wearing only a shirt tucked into some blue jeans. And sweat was pouring out of her armpits. She was tanned and very blond. Her breasts would have made my uncle rave about heated cantaloupes. As for me, I walked around wishing I were a cucumber. I couldn’t help it. As soon as she touched a cucumber, I would get an erection. It was aching and throbbing. I would make some clumsy excuse and rush up to the attic above the garage. That’s where I spent my free time, indulging in erotic fantasies.

  One year is a pretty long time, after all. And much of what happened is another story, faring perhaps best by being stored away, like my mother’s pictures and books that had been packed in that attic. The attic is where I read through my father’s old diary. Upon reading it, I drew the conclusion that he and Ollie had met each other long before my mother died. And that was why my brother had refused to move in with her. He was always a step ahead of me, but then he had for a long time been totally clear in understanding where a man’s propelling power lies. I kept fighting it. An impossible task. It was horrendous. Every time Elsa grabbed hold of a cucumber, I turned blind with desire. After reaching the attic, I would throw on some old clothes, struggling to lessen the pressure and become normal again.