That thirty-five grand you thought I owed you. And five thousand in interest. And three thousand more … One for each rib.
Ivan balanced the envelope against the beer glass on the table, yellow plastic just like the chair he was sitting on, while heat streamed from the wide pizza oven. He sipped a little more beer from his glass – but not too much, he had to be sharp when he left.
He turned his head to the window. The busy road outside quaked in the early summer warmth – he was surrounded by heat.
He had called twice and tried to ask his son if he was up to something he shouldn’t be, without getting any answers. Until recently, there had still been a slight possibility that he was wrong. That was until just now, when the hot-tempered fat man finished his beer and left the pizzeria. He was a construction manager named Gabbe who, Ivan had discovered after many phone calls, was the entrepreneur behind the job he’d written down on the envelope. He’d presented himself as a carpenter with his own business who’d received an offer to work with a builder named Leo Dûvnjac – and therefore was seeking references.
And the conversation had started out well.
The shrill foreman confirmed that indeed he had hired Leo’s company as a subcontractor, so the money could have come from a construction job. But then, halfway through his beer, the foreman had leaned forward and given him a piece of advice: Be vigilant when they put in the bid. I’ll be honest with you. He won’t suit you. He dumps prices. It suits me ’cause I’m buying from him but for you, who’ll be working with him … they’re so far underpriced I don’t understand how they survive.
And now he knew. His suspicions had been justified. The foreman Gabbe had, without realising it, confirmed what Ivan had long suspected – that he recognised the masked robber on the television screen: it was his eldest son.
On the other side of the road stood a little house with a big garage.
The one the construction manager had pointed out.
Leo’s house.
Ivan drank up and put a fifty on the table. Everything would turn out as he’d thought it would during those long sleepless nights when the wine started to taste bad. First, he and Leo – the core – would unite in a small father-and-son firm that would gradually grow. Then he’d solve his problems with Felix and get to know Vincent, and they’d all sit and talk to each other in the evenings.
All four of them. Working and building a family business. A clan.
He set off. Across the main road. Towards the strange little house enclosed by fences with barbed wire spirals around the top – it looked more like a fortress than a home.
Hand against his breast pocket. He didn’t feel it – he’d forgotten the envelope at the pizzeria. No, there it was, close to his chest, a constant reminder of when he’d last seen his eldest son. It lay near his heart, just as it had month after month.
He was anxious to meet Leo, and he’d never been afraid of seeing anyone, ever.
Over the busy main road and onto a much smaller one and then around a proud wooden villa. Sweat slid down between his shoulder blades and stayed there, soaking the fabric of his shirt. He trudged past the villa and through an opening in the fence which reminded him of a small prison gate, and which led to an empty yard, almost completely covered in asphalt.
He went into the yard. Someone had done a poor job; the asphalt was uneven and crunched under his shoes.
He was passing the garage on his way to the house when he saw the door being rolled up. Someone was standing inside in front of a rotating cement mixer. A back he recognised. He’d seen it dressed in a black jumpsuit on the TV in his living room.
‘Leo?’
He peered into the dark garage, until the cement mixer was turned off and the figure turned round.
Only one meeting in four and a half years. Never here. And yet his son didn’t seem surprised – as if he’d been expecting him.
‘Hello, Pappa.’
‘Leo – we need to talk.’
His son looked much older than the last time he’d met him. Even though it had been less than a year. But he’d carried out nine aggravated robberies since then.
‘Sure. Talk.’
‘Can we go there?’
Ivan nodded towards the house he’d never visited as Leo pressed a button on the wall, and the garage door started to slide down. A hasty step inside as the door closed behind him.
‘Leo?’
‘Yeah?’
‘You and I belong together.’
Ivan patted his breast pocket, a rhythm only he could hear.
‘Because there are no secrets between us.’
He waited for a response that never came. So he continued.
‘You understand … I know it’s you.’
‘Know … what?’
‘That it’s you. And your brothers.’
‘What do you know about me and my brothers?’
It felt so strange to put it into words. He’d never imagined that. That it would be so damn hard to look at his own son and say it, just lay it out, and then wait for his reaction.
‘That you and your brothers are the ones the pigs are looking for … the Military League.’
He got no reaction. Leo’s face was blank.
‘It doesn’t matter whether or not you’re wearing a fucking mask. I can see straight through it. Through you. I recognise your movements, Leo, I’m your damn father.’
‘You don’t know anything about me, and you know even less about my brothers.’
‘You think you can fool me? You can fool the pigs – but not me!’
That damn blank face. It was still there.
‘Pappa, if you believe that, that it’s me and Felix and Vincent … if you believe it, go and snitch on us.’
And then it was as if all his nervousness subsided.
‘What?’
He didn’t even need to keep his hand on his chest any more.
‘Go to the police, Pappa, and turn us in – tell them you think your sons are the Military League.’
There was a homemade wooden box on the bench, as big as a banana box. Leo picked up a plastic bucket and emptied the contents into the mould. First, something that looked like a black cylinder. And then long metal arms with letters at the end – a typewriter. In pieces.
‘Do the same thing – snitch on me! – like you claim I did to you.’
The cement mixer had small wheels that squeaked. Leo pulled it towards the table and tipped it until the grey goo completely hid the parts.
‘We belong together, that’s what you said, we don’t have any secrets from each other, just like when you explained to me exactly how much petrol should be poured into the bottle. Right, Dad?’
Leo rolled up the garage door and left, while it slid down behind Ivan’s sweaty back for a second time.
‘I would never go to the cops. And you know it.’
Leo started walking towards the house, and Ivan followed, hurrying to keep up.
‘Leo, listen to me.’
He walked straight ahead.
‘Don’t do it again.’
Without even looking at the man talking beside him.
‘If you need my help, Leo, let me know. We can work together. Build together again. We’ll put the past behind us and move on.’
Until he stopped. And looked at his father.
‘You’re going to help me?’
He stepped up onto the porch and opened the door to the little stone house without turning round.
‘You found your way here, so you can find your way out again.’
then
part three
70
SHE IS LYING close to him. The scent of his hair wafts on his peaceful breath, and she contemplates the naked body as it moves, turns over. Hand against his cheek, she caresses it, kisses it.
Vincent’s cheek. Skin that has been in the wind and cold and sun for only three years and is still smooth, soft.
First Britt-Marie settled into Felix’s empty bed, her s
on who screamed at his father’s raised hand and pounded on the locked bathroom door to be heard over the water running from the tap, and then sneaked past her bedroom door and fled into the darkness. Then she lay down in Leo’s empty bed, who was ten years old but for a moment had been an adult when he ran into the same darkness after him.
Vincent’s bed gives her some kind of peace. She doesn’t sleep, she can’t, but her heart beats a little more slowly.
She is lying there, her nose in his thin hair, when the front door opens.
It’s them.
And then it feels like it always feels when something bigger than herself, something she risked losing, returns. She is flying. She’s singing. She’s laughing.
She gently moves her face away from the back of Vincent’s head, rolls over carefully, shuts the door and then checks the next door, the one to the single bedroom from where the snoring can still intermittently be heard.
Leo and Felix, her beloved sons. She holds them tightly in the narrow hallway, and Felix’s mouth moistens her ear as he presses himself against her and whispers.
‘I know you’re going to run away.’
Leo hears, just as she hears, and he doesn’t whisper.
‘And I know you’re not going to. Right, Mamma?’
She’s careful to hold them both, simultaneously.
‘Everything will be all right.’
‘But … I know you talked to Grandma. I heard you. When, Mamma? When are you going away?’
She looks at them, into eyes so similar to her own.
‘I’m still here, Felix. Right? Now go and wash. And I’ll make some breakfast. You have to go to school soon.’
The boys are on their way down in the lift when she opens the cupboard in the hall. A light-brown leather suitcase stands at the back, half-filled with her stockings, panties, dresses, trousers, shirts from the last time she decided to leave but didn’t – fragments of a life in her hands – and then she continues to Vincent’s room and fills the other half with his clothes. That’s when she hears it. Running water in the kitchen. Ivan is awake. And she stands still.
The clink of a glass being put down in the sink. He’s on his way back to the bedroom. The door creaks and closes.
She waits, listening. Silence.
She sneaks past with suitcase in hand and puts it down by the shoe rack, returns to Vincent’s room, lifts up his still sleeping body and walks back gently.
Hand in her jacket pocket. Car keys. They’re not …
In the kitchen, they’re right there, on the kitchen table.
Vincent in her arms, she hurries towards them and her shoes make a little noise; the keys are next to the ashtray, and she grabs them and turns round.
‘What’s this?’
Ivan. He stands in the doorway with the brown suitcase in his hand.
‘What the hell am I holding?’
He whispers as he turns it upside down, tipping out the contents. A white slip lies on top of the pile in the doorway between the hall and kitchen. He bends down, grabs it with two fingers, lifts it as if it were dirty, and throws it behind him without looking away from what lies beneath.
‘Where do you think you’re going with my son?’
A small red T-shirt. Meant for a three-year-old.
‘You take my son to his room and put him back to bed without waking him. Now. Do you understand what I’m saying, Britt-Marie?’
He stands in the doorway, still whispering, his huge body filling the space. She walks straight up to him; he moves slightly and she forces her way past, towards Vincent’s room and Vincent’s bed. She wraps the blanket around her son’s arms and legs, and they move uneasily as she readjusts his pillow.
She returns to kneel on the hall floor.
A pair of panties and a green dress with yellow stripes on the sleeves are the last things she replaces in the leather suitcase, and she holds it tight as she walks towards the front door.
‘And where are you going?’
He hurries after her, standing on the hall carpet between her and the door.
‘Sweetheart?’
He holds out his arms, an embrace wider than hers, that kind that captures and destroys.
‘Let’s go back to the kitchen, to our kitchen table, sit on our chairs. The ones we bought together.’
And destroys.
‘We’ll talk. Just for a bit.’
‘There’s nothing to talk about.’
‘Of course we need to talk, Britt-Marie. You and me.’
‘Don’t you hear me, Ivan? Don’t you understand what I’m saying? There’s nothing to talk about any more.’
He raises his hand as he raised it last night and shakes it in front of her face.
‘We have three sons. Right? Three fantastic sons! And I have a good job. And you have a good job. And we … Britt-Marie, we have this, we live … here.’
The rough palm caresses her cheek.
‘It’s you who doesn’t understand what I’m saying. Britt-Marie? My love? That it’s important for me, for us, that our sons are able to defend themselves.’
He now caresses her cheek with the back of his hand, which is softer.
‘What is it you really want? I don’t understand. Sweetheart? What do you want me to do? What would you change? Why do you want to … destroy all this?’
‘I’m not the one who’s destroying it, Ivan.’
He gently pushes her long hair behind her ear.
‘Maybe I went … a little too far yesterday. But you understand why. Right? You know what that was about. I love our sons. I love Leo. I love … our son.’
His voice changes, the whispering becomes a hiss.
‘I was just so fucking angry! Hasse’s father stood outside our door and … made demands. That we should apologise! You surely understand, sweetheart, why that pissed me off. Sweetheart?’
He slides his index finger down over her lips.
‘Next time. I’ll calm down. Control myself. I will. I promise.’
She looks him in the eyes.
‘I’m …’
And holds on a little tighter to her brown leather suitcase.
‘… going now.’
‘What do you mean … going?’
She unlocks the front door.
‘What’ll happen then? If you go? What’ll happen to my family? To my boys?’
‘It’s too late.’
‘My darling, I—’
‘I’m leaving now, Ivan. You have to understand that.’
Then everything changes. He grabs her arm, tugs it away from the handle, and lashes out verbally.
‘You think you can go? You think so, eh? And what the hell are you taking with you? Nothing! Not from here! You’re not taking anything with you!’
He grabs her arm and pushes her against the hallway wall, holding her with one hand and hunting through her jacket pockets with the other. He pulls out the car keys, and they glitter in front of her.
‘You’re not taking any fucking car. Do you understand! Not from here! Because you don’t own anything. Nothing!’
Her other pocket, her purse, he empties out all the notes and all the change.
‘Nothing! It’s not your money!’
‘Half of it is.’
‘You don’t own any of this!’
‘Half of the car is mine. Half of that money is mine.’
Ivan releases her, she sinks down a little, and he runs to his wall – full of tools, and as any visitor would notice, so different from her side of the hall, with its wicker baskets for mittens and the two paintings Felix did for her – and takes down his sword from its place of honour. He draws the shiny blade.
‘Half?’
The blade of the sabre shines like the car keys, and he thrusts it forward, then up, down, up.
‘Half, you say?’
The wicker basket on her wall. He thrusts the blade towards it, through it, and two pairs of gloves and a hat fall at their feet.
‘Let’s do that. If you l
eave … we’ll split it all—’
He holds the sword in front of him and runs down the hall, past their bedroom and into Vincent’s room.
‘—in half.’
She doesn’t understand yet. But she knows something is wrong. And she runs after him.
‘Split it. Everything.’
He pulls off Vincent’s blanket and throws it to the floor. A naked three-year-old body rolls over on its side and Vincent curls up slightly, scratching his cheek and nose, yawning.
‘Everything.’
The curved blade. Above the three-year-old body. Above her Vincent.
‘Leave, Britt-Marie, and you’ll make me split everything.’
She can feel his breath, violent and erratic, full of fear and aggression.
‘Half for you. Half for me.’
‘You’re whispering.’
‘We’ll split everything, Britt-Marie, just like you want, like you choose.’
‘You’re whispering, Ivan. Why are you doing that? Because you don’t want to wake him. If you really wanted to cut him in half, you wouldn’t be whispering.’
He is sweating, trembling, the edge resting on Vincent’s bare skin.
‘You were the one, Ivan, who ran downstairs barefoot when you saw that knife – you were afraid of losing one of our sons.’
She is no longer looking at Vincent, who yawns and turns onto his other side; she’s looking at someone even smaller.
‘You won’t do it, Ivan, because I know you love him.’
As he sweats and trembles more violently, he loosens his grip a bit.
She doesn’t look at him as she leaves the room, the flat, the building, she can’t hear him as he sinks to the floor slowly, as the sabre falls from his hand, as he cries like someone who’s never cried before.
71
LEO IS SITTING on one of the long wooden benches next to the fourth years’ brick wall, a gumdrop in his mouth. He looks through the bag for a yellow one, the kind that’s sour at first, then sweet, then salty and good to chew on for a long time.
He looks around in the same way he has done for the last few weeks, like an Indian on the mountaintop looking over the valley below. The secondary school playground and, near the middle, the flagpole and smoking area. There’s a group without any coats on, despite the chilly March wind – year sevens, three girls and as many boys. He doesn’t know any of them. The two he’s really looking for haven’t stood there for a while.
The Father: Made in Sweden Part I Page 40
