Two Soldiers

by Anders Roslund

  The runt had said his name. He didn’t turn around.

  “Gabriel!”

  He stopped. Four fast steps back.

  The little guy smiled proudly and held out his hand.

  “Sho, bro.”

  Ran his other hand through his slickback, stood a little taller.

  A hard slap.

  The one cheek.

  An obvious mark left by one of his rings.

  “You know . . .”

  Gabriel looked at the runt. Not a flicker. Just as proud, just as tall. His voice just as jarring when he held out his skinny hand again, didn’t give in.

  “. . . Eddie’s the name. One love, brother.”

  Gabriel didn’t hit him again.

  He carried on down the stairs and past the old hag in the ticket office and she said nothing, not even when he turned around and nodded at Wanda, she was with him and she wasn’t going to pay and no one was going to make a fuss.

  They leaned against the window, the glass cold against their foreheads, past stations that all looked the same.

  The same concrete blocks, the same people on their way home, on their way out.

  Hallunda, Alby, Fittja, Vårby gård, Vårberg, Skärholmen. Twelve and a half minutes.

  They got off, went through a shopping center that with every revamp got more like a gallery and less of a hub, the shiny glass walls of the elevator, down to three thousand parking spaces. They went as far back as they could—new signs and new colors, but it smelled the same, damp and exhaust.

  He asked for the Adidas bag and picked out a Mercedes. A slightly older model. They were the easiest.

  He started the clock on his cell phone (00:00) and lay down on his back on the mucky asphalt and with bent legs pushed his torso back under the car, arms above his head in the small space behind the grille (00:05), looking for the red cable that was thin and obvious and attached to the car alarm. As was his habit, he used a small pair of hairdresser’s scissors to cut through the red plastic, then wriggled back out and stood up, the newly sharpened end of a screwdriver into the gas tank lock (00:11), then a wrench around the screwdriver handle, he turned, could almost hear the air pressure drop, and all the doors opened simultaneously.

  He glanced over toward the exit, raised an arm and got a raised arm back, she was standing there and she was reliable and they were still the only ones there.

  He got into the leather driver’s seat and took a feeler gauge from his bag (00:15), held it against the cigarette lighter filament, then put it into the ignition and turned, turned, turned, heated it up again, turned again, quickly melted down the small, sharp plastic pegs that would catch the actual locking mechanism (00:24).

  She raised her arm.

  Voices.

  Steps.

  He felt inside the ignition with a pen (00:28) and, nothing catching now, took out another car key—any of the ones lying at the bottom of the bag, because older Mercedes generally started once the plastic pegs were gone—and checked the clock (00:32).

  They didn’t talk much. They never did.

  He had nothing to say to her.

  Gabriel drove out of the shopping center parking lot, and slowly through the southern suburbs of Stockholm in the middle lane. You could see the city behind them, and he accelerated into the outside lane, they were heading north, another forty kilometers to go. They normally stopped at the Shell station by the Täby exit, in front of the square glass booth, for air and water. Wanda normally went into the dirty bathroom around the back and prepared herself for the visit; he went into the shop and got his two bottles of Coke from the fridge and stared at the woman behind the counter, who looked away as he walked out, who never said anything, who knew his sort, had seen too many young men like him, knew that it wasn’t worth risking that arrogant and superior look, to challenge him and ask for eighteen kronor for the drinks in his hand.

  He was sitting in the driver’s seat, radio on full blast, half a bottle of Coke on the dashboard, when she came back from the toilet after twenty minutes. He always tried to check her walking first, see if her movements were normal, then if she had a dirty back from the hard floor—there should be no signs.

  They left the highway and from the exit to Aspsås you could already see the church, the small town, the prison. The almost deserted prison parking lot, he always went as far in as he could, close to the high wall.

  He was eighteen. She was seventeen.

  They didn’t go many places, didn’t often go far, but here, obviously they came here.

  She straightened her jeans, shirt, looked for the mirror on the back of the sun visor that wasn’t there, changed the angle of the one on the door instead and smiled into it, then walked toward the gray concrete building as he drove toward the church that loomed a couple of kilometers away—he would wait there until she was ready, by the carefully raked gravel path in front of the rows of headstones in the churchyard.

  The gate in the wall, the intercom by the handle, she turned toward the camera and microphone.

  “Yes?”

  It crackled, in the way that all loudspeakers by all prison gates crackle.

  “Visitor.”

  “Who for?”

  “Leon Jensen.”

  Someone in a blue uniform ran a nimble finger through a list of registered visitors.

  “And you are?”

  “Wanda.”

  “Surname?”

  “Wanda Svensson.”

  She was freezing.

  There was no wind, bright sunshine bouncing off the concrete, she was sweating and freezing.

  There was a click. The door was open.

  Heavy steps over to central security and the window and the uniform that belonged to the hands that looked at her.

  “ID.”

  It was colder. She was even colder, shaking.

  “Have you been here before?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you know what to do. Go in there. Take off your coat.”

  A stuffy room.

  Just one window, with bars.

  One, two, three, four ten-kronor coins, both cell phones and her key ring in one of the small lockers. She locked it, walked slowly over to the gray metal detector, and passed through it, clutching the key to the locker in her hand.

  The piercing, monotone noise around her, inside her.

  You have to be heard.

  Two uniforms stepped forward and checked the red light that was flashing in the middle of the arch, the one that indicated waist level.

  “Your pockets.”

  Freezing, sweating, freezing.

  She made a show of searching her front pockets, back pockets, still clutching the locker key in her hand, and then went through the metal detector again. The same piercing noise.

  Leon’s orders.

  You have to be searched.

  “Still waist level.”

  One of the uniforms positioned two blocks about half a meter apart, the other held out a long plastic stick; she had to step up onto the blocks, she had to stand still with her legs apart while the plastic stick slid over her hips, the outside of her thighs, the inside of her thighs.

  “Your belt.”

  She took it off and put it in a plastic container.

  “Oh . . . sorry.”

  Her hand up in the air, the key inside it, as if she had forgotten it, she looked at them and smiled sheepishly and they stared at her until she had put it in the plastic container beside the belt.

  “Go through again.”

  Her chest, a small point slightly to the left, just there, it hurt so much.

  She was sure they would see that she was trembling.

  She walked through.

  But only that.

  Not a peep. Not any other sound.

  This time only, you have to be heard, you have to be searched, that’s all.

  She waited while the uniform that had been standing farthest away let the dog finish sniffing the belt, then it was given back and she pulled
it through the loops on her jeans, tried to meet their eyes and then hurried over the concrete floor toward the visiting room that was in the middle, and a bit brighter than the others.

  They locked the door from the outside.

  She had sat on the chair before. She looked around.

  It wasn’t a kind room.

  She often did that, divided rooms and apartments and houses into kind ones and mean ones. This one was mean. There was plastic under the sheet on the bed and no one would ever sleep there. The yellowed porcelain sink and tap only had cold water. The window was barred and looked out over a strip of grass that led to a seven-meter-high wall and unpainted administration buildings.

  She wasn’t as cold anymore, was barely sweating.

  She washed her hands and dried them with some sheets of toilet paper from the roll at the end of the bed. She looked in the mirror, smiled as she always did—her little brother called it her mirror face—checked her lips, eyebrows, hair.

  A metal door in a prison has heavy locks that make a very particular sound. When someone unlocks it, there’s a kind of clunking, quiet at first, then louder.

  “One hour.”

  He came in.

  “We’ll come for you first, then her. OK?”

  The two guards who’d walked in front of and behind him stopped in the doorway, nodded to her, and waited until she nodded back—they could go, they could lock the door again.

  He pointed to the bed. She sat down; he pointed again; she lay down on her back; the pillow was hard and the plastic chafed her neck when the sheet slipped down.

  He looked at her.

  She knew how she had to lie when his hands undid her belt, pulled down her zipper, pulled off her pants.

  Leon’s hand on her skin, just above the knee, her thigh, it pulled her underwear to the side and made her open her legs wider, his index finger and thumb against her labia.

  ———

  Around the outside.

  “Relax.”

  Inside.

  ———

  He found it, held it, pulled it out.

  A plastic bag, hard to see through.

  He weighed it in his hand.

  Two hundred grams.

  Leon smiled at her, the slippery, shiny plastic bag in his hand, but maybe not enough for her to dare to smile back.

  “You’ll come back. Here. In exactly fourteen days.”

  Was he pleased, had she done well? She breathed in carefully, hesitated, and again. Then smiled.

  “Put it up. Put it up again, but then dump it before you come. You have to smell. But have nothing up there.”

  They were standing close. He wasn’t much taller than she was.

  She shouldn’t have smiled.

  Leon’s voice, raised again.

  “Whore, d’you understand?”

  His movements, angry.

  “Whore, with your stupid fucking smile, you’re to smell but be empty, get it?”

  His breath. She nodded.

  “I get it.”

  He looked at her. I get it. You don’t get fuck all.

  Throughout the week, he’d made sure to mention that he was getting a visit, who was coming to visit, when she was coming again.

  Two hundred grams in two-gram capsules.

  Within a couple of days, every guard in every unit in Block D would know that a new and strong supply had got into D1 Left and they would all guess that this was how it got in.

  He stared at her until she looked away and then put a hand on his own stomach, where there was pressure in his side.

  He had taken eight condoms out of the packet that always lay beside the toilet roll at the head of the bed and filled each one with capsules, then swallowed them with cold water from the tap on the yellowing sink, and in a while he would throw up in another sink, in another cell.

  “Reza.”

  Österåker prison. One hundred grams.

  “Uros.”

  Storboda prison. One hundred grams.

  “Go there now.”

  Aspsås, Österåker, Storboda.

  A visit to three prisons, every second week.

  “I’m going there now.”

  “They’ve got fines. Both of them. Five thousand in cash.”

  “Five thousand?”

  “Yes. Give them what they’re expecting first. Then tell them that they’ve got fines. You understand, whore?”

  “I understand.”

  Leon went over to the metal plate on the wall between the doorframe and the mirror, and touched the red button without pressing it and then came back to her.

  “And Gabriel?”

  “Yeah?”

  “His report.”

  He was very close, his breath just as hot.

  “The kids have sold everything. Ninety thousand. And there’s more from Södertälje and maybe from Märsta.”

  Her voice almost a whisper, as if she was reading to herself, it was important to get it right.

  “Twelve houses in Salem and Tullinge. A hundred and forty-six thousand. Two debt enforcements in Vasastan. Fifty-five thousand. Two big barrels of gas from the Shell station in Alby. Nine thousand. A computer shop tomorrow, I think.”

  He nodded. She didn’t know if it was good enough. She hoped so.

  “And . . . one more thing. It’s important.”

  “Right?”

  “Gabriel said it was important to tell you that your phone’s being tapped.”

  Leon had kept his hand by the red button, but now he let it drop, looked at her.

  “Which one?”

  “He said . . . Gabriel, he said . . .”

  “Which one, whore?”

  “He said . . . the one you share with Mihailovic.”

  She had remembered. She closed her eyes. His eyes, she didn’t like them.

  “And you are sure, whore, are you sure that’s what he said?”

  “Yes.”

  She didn’t want to be near him, his face was so tense. Instead of lashing out, as he turned back to the metal plate between the door and the mirror, he leaned toward the microphone and pressed the red button.

  “We’re done.”

  That crackling again.

  “Central security.”

  “Jensen. We’re done.”

  “Five minutes.”

  He was finding it hard to stand still, his breathing was irregular and his voice was raised.

  “Are you living there?”

  “Where?”

  “There.”

  Every time they were done, when they were standing there waiting, the same question.

  “Yes.”

  “In his room?”

  “Yes.”

  “All the time?”

  “Yes.”

  He was standing so close. She was scared.

  “I moved here. You moved there.”

  She waited in the room when he left, one prison warden in front of him and one behind him, down the spiral staircase, into the passage. They stopped in the first room on the right-hand side; he had to be naked when plastic-gloved fingers ran through his hair, felt under his arms, up his ass when he leaned forward. I’m going to kill them all. A new set of clothes and they continued down the straight, wide passage several meters under the prison yard, through the locked doors with small cameras that stirred into action as they approached, the corridor to Block D, one floor up, the unit on the left.

  ———

  He hadn’t eaten all the day, and while the guards got ready for evening lockup, he’d emptied himself in one of the shower room sinks, handed out the first supplies in the unit, and then broken and emptied three two-gram capsules into a mug, stirred the cloudy water for a long time with his pinkie and drunk it before the powder had completely dissolved, then rinsed it down with more water so that it wouldn’t stick to his tongue or throat. He would hand out the rest tomorrow; it wouldn’t cost them anything this time, and every prisoner in the corridor would take too much and for too long over the next few days.


  This time you’re to be heard, you’ll be searched, that’s all.

  He looked out the window.

  You’ll come back. Here. In exactly fourteen days.

  It was already light outside.

  Put it up again. But then dump it before you come. You have to smell and they’ll stand there with their dogs, doctors, and signed documents from the Prosecution Authority. You’ll be searched. But you’ll be empty.

  It had been dawn before, but now it was daylight.

  As soon as the door had been locked, Leon had turned on the lamp that had no shade and gave off a hard, white light that stayed on all night. He had sat down at the simple wooden table against the wall by the window, had taken out some fine felt-tip pens and white A4 paper—real writing paper that you could buy in the prison shop, with thin blue stripes marking out each line, and started to write, and

  One love best brutha!

  after four fucking words had thrown the pens against the wall, stood up, and screamed I’m going to kill them all at the barred window and metal door and

  Miss u so fucking much.

  screamed I’m going to kill them all again at the walls and ceiling and floor and bed and wardrobe and table and chair and

  But hope alls good with u bro. Aspsås is soft. And brutha Alex gives love an respct.

  just after midnight he’d taken another four g and it had been difficult to get the black felt-tip pen to do what he wanted, as if his mind couldn’t catch his thoughts anymore because they were racing so fast and when they did stop for a moment, they couldn’t be held for long. He had read through the eleven pages

  Its night deja an its summer an I make it 4 inside an 4 outside. An we cant fight 2gether brutha but soon brutha soon.

  and realized that what had seemed so good when he wrote about dark and light and the difference between a seven-meter wall and a see-through wall was just bollocks and

  Bro, u know I make the rite decision for the famly. RW is buried and GS will b seriously armed and a tight unit

  when the first rush had passed he had written more, counted on his fingers, twenty-seven days, that’s when it would start, they would start.

  Eleven pages.

  Leon put down the pen and stood up, looked at the bedside lamp and turned it off, but never before it was light outside.