Two Soldiers

by Anders Roslund

  He was sure. There was no one else on the other side of the door. He dropped down onto the hard surface and crawled out into the garage that connected the whole area underground.

  The helicopter had turned back but the sound was still distant and it was dark and he had started to walk, step by step closer to the buildings that were his childhood, and he’d seen blue flashing lights and pigs with bright torches, and then suddenly in the pit of his stomach, far down in his balls, as if he were proud, helicopters and road blocks and motorcycles and cars all because of him. He had sneaked past the first few buildings, loud music from an open window and then another with a man and a woman screaming at each other, next building, and the next building, he’d been so close. Stop. Someone had shouted behind him, it had been a man’s voice. Stand still. A pig voice, he knew exactly what they sounded like. And he’d managed not to run, took several deep breaths, so fucking close, and then turned around.

  He crept through the garage, between the cars that were standing there, he knew every dent in the concrete wall, every pipe, pillar, trash can, pile of tires.

  A man’s voice had shouted stop and he’d turned around. They were waiting a bit farther up by one of the entrances to a stairwell, four pigs with flashlights, and they’d been shouting at someone else. He’d pressed himself in against the wall while they searched through someone’s pockets and checked someone else’s ID and then moved on. Someone else. He’d run the last stretch to the door and into the garage he was now lying in, and he’d waited for Alex and Reza and Marko and Uros while the kids had blocked the elevators and the stairs to the apartment at the top with the mattresses on the floor and beer and pizza in the fridge.

  Leon breathed in the smell of the garage, the second time within twenty-four hours, crawled slowly under the cars and faster over empty parking spaces.

  A couple of meters away, the gray door called Råby Allé 34.

  He knew exactly how it would feel. Strange how our first experiences follow us. He had slept in other beds in recent years, walked up other stairs, but every step here, he wanted to laugh out loud and hit someone, he wanted to be alone and surrounded by the people he knew, every time on these stairs, he could feel it the whole way from top to bottom.

  The third floor. He rang the bell.

  He heard her, put his hand over the peephole, she wasn’t going to stand there looking at him.

  “Open up.”

  He pressed down the door handle. It was locked.

  “Open up, for fuck’s sake!”

  He was standing in front of a door that someone had unlocked for them for the first time when he was four and a half, and she had come home.

  “Open, or I’ll kick it in!”

  And he was there to collect the package. That was the only reason.

  “What do you want?”

  “You know what I want.”

  “You shouldn’t be here. I’ve explained to you before. And yesterday . . . the girl, the car trunk, the pictures . . . you’re never coming in here again.”

  “Open up!”

  Ana stood by the closed door and looked through the peephole that was covered by a hand.

  She had stood in front of him that time. The day before he turned sixteen.

  Her son.

  And she’d explained to him that she had opened the door for the last time, whispered something about being frightened even though you love someone, about the strength that doesn’t come back no matter how much you try, that with Gabriel he’d been unreachable for so long, and even more so with the others who seemed to make him so much stronger, but that he’d also become unreachable when he was alone and that when a person couldn’t get any further she had to give up or go under, and that’s what she’d done, given up.

  “I want to talk to you!”

  “Never again.”

  “About my dad.”

  She looked through the hole, which was black.

  He was standing on the other side. Thirty centimeters away.

  The black, his hand, she could almost touch it. About my dad. He’d never said anything like that before.

  She turned the key, pushed down the door handle, opened.

  She saw a boy, eighteen years old, tense face and unkempt hair, clothes like they all wore. He saw a woman, thirty-five years old, tense face and long hair that had started to turn gray, a dressing gown that looked like all the other dressing gowns she’d had. Maybe she was smiling slightly, or maybe it was one of the expressions a face makes when it recognizes something and for a moment sees something else. Maybe he wanted to touch her, his palm brush her cheek, but he didn’t reach out his arm and if you don’t stretch out your arm you can’t reach and can’t touch.

  “Where is it?”

  “Your dad. You wanted—”

  “I wanted you to open. Where is it?”

  He was standing in her hallway and she was so small, just like that time on the platform, and he wanted to say hello again, talk, about whatever.

  “Where the fuck is it?”

  He smelled of beer. And his clothes smelled of sweat.

  “It’s not here.”

  “Where?”

  “I threw it away.”

  He was standing so close.

  He’d instructed Gabriel to give her the plastic bag, she was to look after it even though they could have given it to someone else. And he’d just rung on this door out of all the others, after lying hidden on a mattress for twenty-seven hours.

  He didn’t care about her.

  “You have not.”

  And why should he? A thirty-five-year-old cow who didn’t want to open the door?

  “I know that you haven’t thrown it away.”

  She should never have thrown it away, it protected him, helped him to survive, he knew that somehow it would always be like this.

  Maybe he had wanted to reach out to her, touch her. He didn’t do it. He hit her.

  “Just like your dad.”

  He hit her again.

  “Just like your dad.”

  He walked toward her as she backed away, down the hall he’d run along so many times as a kid, into the kitchen that had been breakfast and lunch and supper and, sometimes when it was cold outside, tea that she made herself that tasted of raspberries, and yet didn’t at the same time.

  He raised his hand to hit her again.

  “Out there.”

  She pointed to the hall, the door.

  “The trash chute. At the bottom.”

  He lowered his hand, which was still shaking, prepared, and walked over to the kitchen table where they had sometimes baked some round, heavy bread together and where he and Gabriel had divvied up packets of morphine in the beginning, and that he’d plunged a knife into four times one evening, the great gashes were still there if he lifted up the flower pot and tablecloth that she always put over them. There was a drawer between the two chairs and he pulled it open, screwdriver on the left, red and long. He took it with him and hurried back out into the hall, her black coat on a hanger under the hat shelf, keys always in the left pocket.

  “So you won’t be able to lock anyone out.”

  He should have gone down the stairs slowly, quietly. He ran. Down to the ground floor, on, stopped at the bottom by the door into the garage. And then turned around. Another door, equally gray, but not as thick.

  Screwdriver against the doorframe, by the bolt.

  A hard push.

  The gap opened, another push, again, again until it was wide enough for him to lift the door, force it open. The stench of trash, he didn’t breathe, rummaged around among the plastic bags that were leaking and milk cartons that weren’t empty, cutting himself twice on broken bottles.

  It was lying there. A white plastic bag with strips of heavy tape. In between four large bags that reeked of fish. He leaned over the edge of the container and managed to reach the bottom with his fingers, which slipped on the wet plastic surface before he managed to get hold of it and he stood up with the
gun in his hand.

  Lahti L-35. Finnish. He aimed into the air, his arm slightly to the side, even when he opened the door and went into the kitchen.

  She was sitting there, a cup of coffee as always, and a cigarette.

  “Like a child.”

  He aimed at her now.

  “What did you say?”

  “You’re standing there . . . posing like a child.”

  He didn’t let go of the gun when he hit her again on the right cheek.

  She fell and he kicked her on the thigh, the hip, her cunt.

  “You’ll show me some respect, whore!”

  She lay there, her neck sore when she gradually lifted her head and looked at him.

  “Just like your dad.”

  ———

  Wanda was still asleep beside him on the sofa, without her earrings. Gabriel had crept back up beside her and she hadn’t noticed, he’d stroked his fingers over her bare lobes and she’d turned toward him in her sleep, her face to his.

  Freezing. Sweating. It didn’t stop.

  He’d seen something moving slowly that was gray and black and five millimeters long and a heart and kidneys and buds instead of arms and legs. And for the first time in a while he’d thought about a fire that had taken a father he couldn’t remember and a little brother who he sometimes remembered in the mornings and 85 percent of his skin that he missed every day. He’d sunk into the picture that wasn’t of anything and stood in the middle of a fire. He’d waited in front of a door that was locked, and his father was standing on the other side and he was seven years old and had pulled at the door to get into the flames that were so high and his dad who was shouting at him that he had to let go and get out and when he hadn’t done that, shouted that he’d get a good beating if he didn’t leg it—he’d let go and he’d run away from the fire and that stupid fucking picture in front of him that moved so slowly and he couldn’t see whatever it was that was five frigging millimeters. He’d thrown the remote control at the TV screen and pressed himself closer to Wanda and that was where he was lying now when he took her arm and shook her and when she didn’t wake up, slapped her, but not as hard as normal, and shouted it’s your fault and started to walk away and out. He was going to meet him now; only one brother, only one love.

  ———

  The image was gone. How did that happen?

  When he closed the front door and went down the stairs, it stayed in there. With her.

  Gabriel stood completely still.

  It didn’t come. It hadn’t followed him.

  He walked on. He took out his gun like he usually did, but this time opened it and took out the only bullet, spun the chamber, and fired at his temple, a clicking sound.

  ———

  Four cellar storerooms. Five apartments.

  Paragraf 1. Famly never asks. Famly gives orders.

  This was the first one and where he’d be for the next few hours.

  It had been five months.

  And he would be able to hug him again soon.

  Paragraf 2. A soldier always stands ready for the famly.

  Gabriel went up the stairs of Råby Allé 124. The whole building was silent. Ordinary tenants who were sleeping so they could get up early tomorrow morning and live ordinary lives.

  It didn’t feel like he’d thought it would.

  He’d gone up three nights earlier with Jon and Bruno and Big Ali, cardboard boxes from the supermarket full of pizza and beer and candy, suitcases with bedding and pillows, and then once more with four newly stolen boxes that had been stored in the trailer in the garage that Leon wanted to be kept in one of the wardrobes. He’d filled the fridge and put out the mattresses and he’d felt it in his chest, his brother was going to sleep here and the whole fucking country would know that Ghetto Soldiers had escaped, and later, to be able to hug him again, it was already in his body, something laughing inside.

  And yet it wasn’t like that. He was on his way to something else. The fire once again.

  Paragraf 3. The famly before everthing.

  He stood in front of the door. If he continued. If he took Wanda with him and the thing that couldn’t be seen. If he opened and went into an apartment full of another kind of love, the kind that he and Leon had written rules for.

  Paragraf 4. Or else punishment.

  ———

  Gabriel stood in the hall. And when he breathed, he was almost calm.

  Most of all in his stomach. And throat. If he was angry or frightened or sad, that was where he felt it. Now there was nothing. Every breath slipped in and down without pressing and pulling and burning inside.

  Alex was lying on one of the mattresses over by the wall in the sitting room. Uros and Reza were closer, by the door. And if he stretched over and looked into the kitchen—Marko Bendik, in the space between the stove and the fridge. They heard him, nodded, but couldn’t say anything yet.

  The fifth mattress was empty.

  A step farther in. He could see him now.

  Leon was standing by the counter in the kitchen, his back turned, the white plastic bag beside him—the one that only a few weeks ago had lain on a seat on the metro between Norsberg and Råby, only a few weeks ago, that they had then left on a hat shelf—the gun in three pieces, the slide on one side of the bag, frame on the other, and the actual barrel in one hand and a cleaning rod in the other, slowly in and out.

  He turned around. They looked at each other, started to walk toward each other at the same time, arms outstretched. A hug. Long. Warm.

  “One love, brother.”

  “One love, my only brother.”

  That feeling. But it wasn’t everything at once. It had always been that. All his yearning and joy and security and trust and someone who was part of him.

  He tried to feel it. He wanted to feel it.

  The first hug had always been everything at once. He held on to Leon and neither of them wanted to let go and Gabriel waited for the feeling that didn’t come.

  Another feeling instead. He recognized this too. Shame. Stronger than he’d ever felt it before.

  They hugged until Leon let go and walked over to the closet in the hall, opened it, and took out four cardboard boxes; carried them into the sitting room, unpacked four recently stolen portable television sets, mounted the small antennas, and put the four remote controls down on the floor in front of him.

  “I’ve been waiting for you, brother.”

  He picked up two of the remote controls and held them out.

  “You put on SVT and Sky News. I’ll put on Text TV and TV4.”

  Gabriel tried. But it was hard to meet Leon’s eyes.

  Shame.

  He took both of the remote controls, weighed them in his hands.

  “Brother . . .”

  “Switch them on.”

  “We have to talk, brother.”

  Leon was standing in a living room with no furniture and bare walls. He nodded at Alex, at Marko, at Uros, at Reza, held one of the remote controls over his head, pretended to aim and shoot, switched on the TV set to the far right. Text TV, showing a square with yellow letters that was at the top, Head of investigation warns the public, the square with blue letters just underneath, Biggest police operation since Malexander. He aimed and fired and switched on the next set, TV4 and a special newsflash, escape, hostage, breakouts, murder, every half an hour.

  “Brother, turn them on!”

  “Talk, brother. We’ve got to talk.”

  “Turn it on! We’ll talk later.”

  He’d never known that shame could be so invasive, that it could grab you by the throat and never let go. He tried to look into his beloved brother’s eyes and pretended to aim as well, pressed the remote control, pointed it at the TV to the far left. News special on SVT. A woman he recognized and then pictures of the prison wall at Aspsås and five passport photos of faces that right now were looking at themselves and then some other pictures of a white car with an open trunk.

  “The other one.�
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  “Brother?”

  “Later.”

  It wasn’t much of a pretend aim and pretend shot. He couldn’t. His fingers didn’t even want to press but did, because he forced them to. Sky News. And sports news, baseball, no matter how many times he tried.

  Leon’s face, maybe it was disappointment.

  “Turn it off.”

  Three TV sets on, the fourth silent. They stood, sat, and lay in front of the images that switched between reporters talking and close-ups of barbed wire and the black-and-white slightly grainy ones from various security cameras.

  About them.

  Leon stretched out his arms again, embraced Gabriel, pressed hard.

  “See that? It’s us!”

  “Now, brother. We have to talk.”

  “In a while. I’ve got a phone call to make first. This one.”

  He held up his cell phone.

  “They’ll be listening this time. Then we’ll shift. And ring the other one. Those fucking TVs, you know, they’ll just keep coming!”

  He pointed the remote control at the pictures of himself, and Gabriel looked at them and then looked away.

  “I want out.”

  Gabriel wasn’t quite sure if he’d said it out loud or not, maybe it had just been in his head.

  “Did you hear me, my only brother? I want out.”

  ———

  When Leon turned down the volume on all three televisions, one set at a time, it was totally silent.

  “You understand, brother? I . . .”

  They were all looking at Gabriel.

  “. . . I . . . fuck, Wanda . . . I’m going to be . . . a dad.”

  ———

  The first blow hit him on the right shoulder and the top of his arm.

  “So I . . . I want out.”

  The next one, more on the chest, almost his heart.

  “Her belly, inside . . . about this size . . . like a little person.”

  He held his index finger and thumb up in front of him a few millimeters apart, like Wanda had done.