Hasse and Kekkonen.
He wonders if Hasse’s father is still shaking. Pappa had been shaking inside, and when Hasse’s father arrived, the shaking stopped. That’s what you do – you give the shakes to someone else.
It begins.
The ugly, annoying ringing that goes on and on.
Leo brushes the brick dust from his coat, and even though he walks quickly he barely makes it.
The first years’ door almost slams open, and his little brother runs out.
‘Felix? Wait!’
They look at each other just long enough for their eyes to meet, and Felix keeps running, across the playground and over the street to the other side. Felix is fast, but not as fast as Leo, who manages to catch up by the time his brother stops at the far end of the car park.
‘She’s still here.’
He walks over to Mamma and Pappa’s red and white Dodge van, shrugs off his gym bag and jumps up, peeking in through the window on the driver’s side, jumping again.
‘She would have taken it? Wouldn’t she?’
He looks at his big brother for the first time, waiting for the nod that means, you’re right, she would have taken the car.
‘Here, choose whatever you want.’
Leo holds out a bag of sweets. Gobstoppers and gumdrops and Sour Patch Kids and ones that taste of raspberry and ones that look like rats and marshmallows.
But he doesn’t nod.
Felix kicks his stupid gym bag and starts running again, through the thorn bushes and up the pavement and into the lift, and Leo catches up with him just as the door is about to close.
‘Take one. Whatever you want. I bought them with the fifty Pappa gave me when I hit them on the nose.’
Leo smiles as he pretends to punch Felix’s nose and then hands him the bag.
‘Felix?’
A bag full of sweets, and he doesn’t even look at it.
Out of the lift and into the flat, and Felix stops in front of the hat rack, like he did at the car just now, looking, jumping, jumping again. Mamma’s black shoes aren’t there. Nor is her coat, or her gloves, or the thin scarf she bought when they went to Åland, which she often ties around her head.
‘Mamma?’
The kitchen is full of dirty dishes and open packets of sugar and there are empty bottles on the stove. In the bedroom the beds are unmade and the blinds pulled down.
‘Mamma!’
In the workroom a rice-paper lamp hangs from the ceiling, and Felix and Leo’s own room is just as it always is.
‘Mamma!’
Vincent’s room. Vincent and Pappa are on the carpet, surrounded by soldiers and piles of Lego. They’re building something. Pappa has a cigarette in one hand and with the other he gives Vincent one piece of Lego at a time, which Vincent presses into a long line on a square base.
‘Boys?’
Pappa’s long arm cuts through the thick cigarette smoke, cuts out small cubes and creates space, fresh air to breathe that soon turns smoky.
‘Come on in, boys. Sit down. Here, next to me.’
‘Where’s Mamma?’
‘Sit down.’
‘I want to know.’
‘When you sit down, Felix.’
He sweeps his other arm and knocks down whatever soldiers haven’t yet fallen, and a piece of a house on the Lego base.
‘She’s not here.’
‘Where is she?’
‘She’s not living here any more.’
‘Where, Pappa?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Where’s Mamma?’
‘She’s hiding.’
He puts his arms around them, his upper arms with the big muscles, one around each neck, something he only does when he’s been drinking red wine and melted sugar.
‘And I don’t know where. Where do you think she’s hiding? Did she say anything before you went to school? Did she? To you?’
Felix turns his head away, his eyes on the carpet at his feet.
‘Felix? Do you know something?’
Felix who screamed no, Pappa and knocked on the bathroom door, desperate to get in.
‘You can’t lie to me. Felix? You know that, don’t you. It never pays to lie to your pappa. And I can see that you know.’
The first tears.
‘Don’t cry now. Felix, not now.’
It gets worse.
‘Look at me, Felix. She’s betrayed me. Mamma’s betrayed me!’
They just keep coming. Even though they shouldn’t.
‘She’s left us. Do you understand? So we don’t cry. Because she should be the one to cry. Now, you tell me. And we’ll go and get her, and bring her home. You and I and Leo and Vincent. Together.’
Leo was the most surprised of all when he spoke, but when Felix sat like that, he couldn’t stand it any more.
‘She’s gone to Grandma and Grandpa’s house.’
72
PAPPA’S MOVEMENTS ARE muddled and uncoordinated when he sits down in the front seat and starts the car without Vincent, who stands by himself in the car park, and just as confused when he realises after a moment why his other sons are shouting stop, Pappa, and he backs up at high speed.
No one speaks as they drive – to talk is to risk getting even closer to the other side of the road and the oncoming traffic. They keep quiet when Pappa stops at another square called Farsta, and goes to the off-licence, and they’re quiet when Pappa gets back in the car and opens a bottle with the black stallion on it, and they remain quiet the rest of the way to their destination over the bridge crossing Nynäs Road and past a high hill that seems like a good vantage point for Indians, down the other side and right up to the sign on iron posts that gives the area’s name, Stora Sköndal.
Finally they stop.
Pappa winds down his window, lets the wind hit his face as he empties the rest of the bottle then throws it out, to make a loud bang when it hits the sign. Leo opens his eyes at last, now the journey is over. Pappa is next to him, staring out of the window at the empty bottle in the tall grass; Felix and Vincent are still behind him with their eyes pressed shut, and about twenty-five metres away is a row of small houses with small gardens and small lace-curtained windows and potted plants.
Grandma and Grandpa’s is roughly in the middle, behind a raspberry hedge divided into three short rows, and Leo likes it very much. There he is never shouted at, the radio plays public radio or classical music, the rooms smell of candles and crumbs get stuck in the tea towels.
A plastic bag lies on the floor between Pappa’s legs, near the accelerator pedal. Another bottle. Pappa opens it, taking three, four, five, six sips.
‘If she doesn’t come home with us, then you know what to do.’
He turns the rear-view mirror to look hard at Felix in the back seat.
‘Because this … Leo can’t do this. Do you understand? He’s too big. Neither can Vincent. He’s too small. So you have to do it.’
Felix stares into those eyes for as long as he can, and then lowers his head.
‘Look at me.’
If he just keeps staring at the car mat he won’t be able to hear what his father says.
‘Felix?’
Pappa waits until the mat turns into a backrest, then into a headrest and then a father.
‘Look at her. Just like I’m looking at you now. And ask her the same question once more. You must always do that. Give a person one last chance. And then, Felix … get close to her. And do it.’
Pappa snaps his fingers, thumb against middle finger, and nobody snaps louder than he does.
‘If you don’t do it, Felix, exactly like I just told you to, she won’t understand that we belong together.’
He turns to the passenger seat.
‘Right, Leo?’
Leo doesn’t move, nor does he respond.
‘Right, Leo?’
Eyes that won’t give up. Will never, ever back down. Until Leo nods.
Ten, eleven, twelve more sips, and Pappa opens
the car door and steps out.
He’s wearing a carpenter’s shirt over carpenter’s trousers, a red-handled Mora knife sticking out of one pocket and a folding ruler sticking out the other. His brown shoes slip as he staggers across the road, waving his arms to his sons to follow close behind him, over the ditch and into the garden past the tall, bushy cherry tree Leo liked to climb to the top of, and then between two of the leafless raspberry hedges.
‘I’m staying here.’
Pappa grabs onto the fragile raspberry twigs, and they break every time he’s about to fall.
‘You go on.’
Vincent clutches Leo’s hand. Felix hunches over a little.
‘Leo? Felix? Vincent? You go on now. You do what we decided.’
The house is white. Five steps to the top of the porch and the wooden door with its small window of wavy opaque glass and just below it, edge to edge, a thin metal plate that looks like gold that Grandpa fixed there, with AXELSSON written on it – Mamma’s maiden name. The doorbell is friendlier than most, two repeated notes, not at all like their own or the bell that penetrates your skull at school.
No one opens the door. Vincent holds onto Leo’s hand. She’s not here. Felix breathes heavily on his neck. She’s not here!
They all run down the steps, and Pappa waves his arms from the raspberry bushes to signal that they have to go back up, ring again.
Nobody opens the door. The doorbell. Nobody opens … Two repeated notes. Nobody …
Somebody opens the door. Grandpa. His eyes aren’t happy like they usually are.
‘Is … Mamma here?’
Grandpa looks over their heads, scanning.
‘Where’s your pappa?’
And steps outside.
‘He’s in the car, Grandpa.’
And closes the door behind him.
‘In the car?’
‘We want to talk to Mamma.’
Grandpa looks around again, whispering.
‘Come in.’
‘Out here. We want to. Please, Grandpa.’
Grandpa doesn’t really understand. Just as they themselves don’t understand. He looks at Leo, the oldest, who’s trying to say what Pappa wants him to say. At Vincent who’s holding his big brother’s hand and seems so small as he moves even closer. At Felix standing some distance behind them, staring down at the ground with both hands buried in his coat pockets.
‘Please?’
‘Out here. OK. Wait a second.’
He shuts the door carefully, and goes inside. Time moves slowly. One hour. Another hour.
Leo checks the ugly hands of his wristwatch.
Two hours. It feels like that. Two minutes.
Then he hears it.
Someone slowly climbing the stairs, the ones from the room in the basement with an extra bed so big that usually all three sleep in it, stairs that are slippery and sound hollow when you walk on them.
Mamma. And she smiles, happy and scared at the same time. She does as Grandpa did, looks around and takes a step outside.
‘He’s not here, Mamma.’
She hugs them, one by one.
‘Mamma?’
Leo concentrates on saying what Pappa wanted him to say. If he does it, she won’t hear what’s stuck in his throat.
‘Yes?’
‘Come home.’
She shakes her head, her blonde fringe falling down over her forehead and eyes.
‘I can’t.’
‘Please.’
‘Not now. Everything will be all right. Later.’
‘Please, please, please, Mamma.’
‘Leo? Listen to me. Everything will be all right. And you will live with me. In a few days. Do you understand?’
She squats, holding onto Leo and Vincent, hugs them for a long time. But not Felix, who steps back so she can’t reach him. He’s the only one who can do it, because Leo is too large and Vincent too small.
He runs to his mamma, who is holding her arms wide, clears his throat, looks at her …
And spits.
He weeps and spits again. Warm saliva he’s been saving for a long time runs from her forehead and cheeks down onto her neck.
Felix stands in front of her and closes his eyes, shaking and crying. And she puts her arms around him and hugs him too. He spat in her face twice, and yet still she hugs him until he pulls away, away from the saliva on her face and chin, and he can hear Leo and Vincent running away, his brother’s clogs clattering as he runs across the road to the car with Pappa’s face staring out of the window.
73
IT IS NIGHT, or at least Felix thinks so. Time seems far away when he wakes up. There are neither curtains nor blinds on the window. They usually keep it like this – a window no one can see through on the top floor of the seven-storey building. During the winter, or like now when winter is coming to an end, the sky is blacker and the stars and full moon brighter by contrast; lying in bed, it’s like being close to them, and Felix feels as if he could open the window and stretch up to touch them.
Felix likes looking at the sky. But he doesn’t like himself.
He doesn’t like lying here not being able to sleep. He doesn’t like sweating like this or breathing like this, gasping for air. But what he likes least is how he can still feel Mamma’s arms holding him. She just held him when she should have beaten him! He should have hit her! He hits his own body, hard, and the arms he can still feel wrapped around him. He feels absolutely nothing, so he scratches his forearms with his sharp thumbnails. He’s trapped between waking and sleeping, but he can hear the voices coming from the kitchen: Pappa talking in that way he does sometimes that makes it hard to understand what he’s saying; Leo responding occasionally with a few short words.
He creeps out of his bed, across the floor to the hall and the threshold of the kitchen, and peeps in.
Pappa is sitting with his back to him on a chair. Leo has his left side to him. All the lights are on, even the bright one above the stove and sink that stings your eyes if you look into it.
On the kitchen table stands a petrol can, sickly green and with its lid on. Beside it stand two empty wine bottles. Beside those a plastic funnel and a cigarette lighter.
He’s never seen those things on the kitchen table before, not at the same time, and he creeps closer, his elbows on the threshold as he tries to get a better look.
That’s when Pappa gets up and comes towards him.
Felix plunges into the dark hall and stays close to the wall, holding his breath. Pappa goes past without seeing him.
‘Leo?’ calls Pappa over his shoulder as he passes.
Felix stretches his upper body, his neck. In Mamma and Pappa’s bedroom, near the edge of Mamma’s bed, Pappa holds her pillow in his hands as he pulls off the pillowcase.
‘Leo, the plastic wheel? Have you been listening?’
Pappa holds the pillowcase under his nose, where Mamma’s initials are embroidered in one corner. He pushes his head into it, smells it, breathing deeply, never noticing that someone is lying quietly in the dark, watching.
‘That should go down into the neck of the bottle. You push until it stops.’
Pappa’s long feet almost step on Felix as he heads back to the kitchen table, then he lifts up the bottle and shows Leo in that expansive way that only he has.
‘We did this when I was little, not with bottles but with geese. My brothers and I pushed food down their narrow fucking birds’ necks, and they grew big and fat and delicious.’
Felix bumps the threshold with his elbow, and the sound echoes through the apartment. He holds his breath like before, closes his eyes. Pappa should turn round. But he doesn’t. Even though it’s echoing.
‘You don’t know about that sort of thing, Leo. You don’t know things like that. But I know and I’m going to tell you, that’s what I’m going to do. Four thousand years ago the Jews were the first to tend geese. They were slaves. And they worked for a Pharaoh of Egypt who loved goose liver. All he ever wanted was foie gr
as foie gras … and they were forced to find a quick way to feed those fucking geese. Right? That’s when they started pushing the food down. Pushing pushing pushing. With really long sticks. Because the Pharaoh, he just wanted more and more. Then, there was this Spaniard, and he loves his geese – he talks to them, gives them fruit from his garden. Heaven for geese! But every autumn, when the other geese are heading to Africa or wherever the hell they fly to, his geese start walking around on the ground honking. Honk honk honk! And the geese up in the air stop – this is true, Leo – and they fly down and land and stay there, in Goose Heaven.’
Pappa’s hands fumble as they feel for the cap of the petrol container, tremble as they unscrew it and pull out the spout, until the bottle is resting on the edge of the plastic funnel.
‘He gives them love. Just like me. He creates a clan. And then … then you stay there.’
There’s a strong smell of petrol immediately.
‘Hold it here, Leo … like this … a firm grip, on the bottle. With both hands.’
Leo holds the bottle in both his hands. The black horse on its label rears on its hind legs while Pappa pours, checking now and then to see how much space is left.
‘No more than half. That’s important.’
Pappa is satisfied with the amount of petrol in the wine bottle. He smells Mamma’s pillowcase again – his breath fills up the whole kitchen – then holds it with two hands and rips it apart, putting strips of equal width into a pile.
‘Strips this size.’
He folds one of the pieces into a square with Mamma’s initials in the middle, then dips it until it’s damp with petrol.
‘A narrow fucking bird’s neck. Now press again. In goose hell there’s no protesting.’
Pappa pokes down the fabric a little at a time and stops before it touches the petrol in the bottle.
‘See? Never push it all the way down. If you do that, and then light it …’
Pappa uses his hands and makes a sound to simulate an explosion.
The Father: Made in Sweden Part I Page 41
