‘… it’ll go off too soon. You hold it firmly and when the cloth is burning, don’t tilt the bottle. And you throw it forwards, with your whole shoulder and arm, like when you’re throwing a punch.’
Pappa walks round the kitchen table, twice, holding the bottle with a straight arm, chin and lower lip jutting out, hissing as he usually does when he’s drunk and somewhere else.
‘Because we are no Axelssons.’
He washes his petrol-soaked hands under the tap, and then lights an untipped cigarette as he opens a new bottle. This one is for drinking.
‘Do you understand that? You’ll never be a fucking Axelsson!’
He drinks even more quickly than usual.
‘It was like this. When I met your mother, I didn’t really want her. She was beautiful, she was, but I told her. I said, “I don’t want you,” I said, “love is just betrayal.”’
Pappa is carrying the newly opened bottle in one hand and the can of petrol in the other, as he walks towards the hall, close to Felix, and stops in front of the hat rack.
‘Do you know what she said, Leo? She said, word for word, “I will never betray you, Ivan.”’
The jacket is hanging on one of the hooks, the shoes are on the doormat.
‘Word for word! Just that. And then I said, “And how can I be sure of that?” Do you know what she answered, Leo? Can you guess?’
Leo’s jacket is on the next hook. Pappa throws it at the kitchen table where Leo is still sitting on his chair.
‘She said, “If I betray you, Ivan,” word for word, “you can kill me.”’
74
LEO COUNTS THE seconds. Six seconds from their sudden deceleration before the gearbox malfunctions, twelve seconds between Pappa screaming at the car in front of them for driving too slowly and the bend that’s sharper than Pappa remembers, nine seconds between someone honking their horn several times behind them and suddenly swerving out of the left-hand lane.
They stop. The same place they stopped this afternoon. And even though it’s dark, he can just make out the squat chimney of Grandma and Grandpa’s house, which seems so small under the branches of the cherry tree, partially obscured by the overgrown raspberry hedge. They sit next to each other, silent, scouting the area, as if they’d climbed up a hill and were looking down.
The plastic bag lies in his lap.
It’s not very heavy, but it forces him to sit as still as a stone because the bottle has to remain upright.
The smell is the worst part. Petrol fumes creep into his nose, his brain. He didn’t know what a Molotov cocktail was before this.
The shaking belongs to him now. Pappa has given it to him, just like he gave it to Hasse’s father.
‘Whatever happens, Leo, I want you to know that I love you.’
The shaking he’s so afraid of.
‘Pappa?’
‘Yes?’
‘Do we have to?’
He doesn’t blink once. It almost makes his pupils hurt.
‘Yes.’
‘But what—’
‘We’ll talk to her first.’
‘What if she doesn’t want to talk?’
‘Then she’s the one who’s decided what’s going to happen.’
Pappa opens the door and climbs out. The first step goes awry, and he staggers, before grabbing the rear-view mirror and regaining his balance. He waits for Leo to climb out too.
But he doesn’t.
Instead he stares at his watch and its ugly hands. Sixteen minutes and twenty-four seconds past one. He knows that’s how it works – if you just keep track of time, look at the clock, you won’t feel so much. He always does that when he races Felix up and down stairs with leaflets in his hand – counting the seconds keeps away his exhaustion.
Pappa doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to, he just holds out his arm until Leo gets up and moves the plastic bag a little, pressing it against his chest while he stands up. He doesn’t remember Pappa’s hand being so rough; he hasn’t held it in years.
It feels like a long walk to the house. Pappa keeps moving in that jerky way, tripping and stumbling. Still they make it to the back of the house. In the darkness, on the path between the raspberry bushes Grandpa is so proud of, raspberries that are larger than other raspberries, of a warmer red, some old variety that tastes especially sweet.
‘Britt-Marie.’
Pappa squeezes his hand and chases away the silence. But not the dark.
‘Britt-Marie!’
Leo twists his left arm towards the brightness of the porch light and looks at his watch, the ugly hands. Nineteen minutes and fifty-two seconds past one. He checks again when the first light is turned on inside the house. Grandma and Grandpa’s bedroom. And again, when one of the living room lights goes on, the standard lamp with a flowery lampshade.
‘Go away!’ shouts Grandpa. He’s opened the window, and they look at each other. ‘Ivan, it’s the middle of the night, just go!’
And then it’s Leo and Grandpa looking at each other, until Leo looks away.
‘Britt-Marie! Come out, Britt-Marie! You don’t belong here!’
‘I’m calling the police, Ivan.’
‘You? A fucking Axelsson?’
‘If you don’t get out of here!’
‘Britt-Marie’s coming with me. She’s going home. To her family.’
‘I’m going to close the window. And if you don’t leave … I’m calling them. You hear that, Ivan? I’m calling the police.’
Grandpa closes the window, turns off the light. Pappa lets go of Leo’s hand for the first time and raises his fist to the house, towards Grandpa.
‘Britt-Marie! Don’t sit there like an Axelsson! Come out! To your family! Your kids! Me!’
The window stays closed, the house stays dark. Pappa grabs the plastic bag Leo holds pressed against his chest, lifting it right out of Leo’s arms, and takes the bottle out of the bag.
‘Come out now! Otherwise I’ll burn you! I’ll burn down the whole fucking thing!’
Pappa holds the bottle, hands it to Leo. Leo’s arms just hang there, useless.
‘Leo – aim at the basement window.’
Arms still not moving. He doesn’t take the bottle. And he doesn’t look at Pappa, he stares down at the ground and the grass.
‘We’re going to drive her out with fire. Do you understand?’
He takes a cigarette lighter from his front pocket, puts the flame to the mouth of the bottle, to the fabric soaked in petrol and pressed far inside, like a goose with a skinny fucking neck being fattened up.
The fabric flower petals turn yellow and orange.
‘Britt-Marie! You’re making this decision! It’s your choice! It’s …’
Pappa’s movements are slow, as movements are when even as they happen you know you’ll always remember them, even as they melt into the bare branches of the swaying cherry tree. He hits the basement window, the room where they usually sleep during those visits they never want to end. It takes almost a minute from the glass pane shattering – Leo is sure of it because he’s counting one second at a time – until the fire really starts to burn. That muffled sound. And the small flames growing and spreading and taking over.
Pappa isn’t screaming any more. He’s not going anywhere. He’s not even trembling.
The entire room is illuminated. A different shade of light from the lamps, yellower. Fire eats both the chairs and the bed.
Then the basement door opens.
Grandpa throws a large rug over the flames and then another one. Grandma and Mamma are carrying green and blue plastic buckets and throw the water onto the fire.
‘Let’s go, Leo.’
They are still running around inside. In and out of the laundry room filling buckets.
‘Now.’
Two ugly hands. It’s been four minutes and forty-four seconds since Leo stepped out of the car and into the raspberry bushes, which Pappa is falling into right now, and since they first passed the clothes line t
hat Pappa just now cut his cheek and chin on. It’s not much.
Leo closes his eyes as they drive home and keeps them closed the whole way back, and it feels like a long journey, as if they’re on their way to the other side of Sweden.
75
HE SEES THE police car as soon as Pappa parks, the moment he opens his eyes again.
Near their front door. Black and white. Parked diagonally in front of the high-rise, clearly visible under the streetlight.
He’s never seen a police car this close to home before.
They usually park further away, or in the car park, and then walk from there. Never like this, right outside, as if blocking the exit.
‘Everything will be all right.’
Leo curls up a little more tightly in the back seat.
‘We’re a family. Right, Leo? And if we stick together like families do, then everything will be all right.’
The front doors of the police car open simultaneously. And there are two of them. An older man, even older than Pappa, and a younger female cop, he’s not seen that many female officers before. They go straight to the car, towards Pappa.
‘Ivan Dûvnjac?’
They can be heard clearly even though all the windows are shut, and they knock on the glass until Pappa rolls it down.
‘Yes?’
‘You’re coming with us.’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘You know what we’re talking about.’
Pappa shakes his head and makes an effort to speak clearly; he doesn’t mumble, and he moves his lips.
‘No. Not a clue.’
And turns to the back.
‘Do you have any idea what they’re talking about, son?’
Pappa leans close, his alcohol-laced breath as intrusive as the smell of petrol and smoke on the sleeve of his jacket.
And they see him.
‘No, Pappa. I don’t know what they’re talking about.’
The older policeman nods towards Leo as he speaks.
‘Ivan – there are children here.’
The woman moves around the car, handcuffs in her hand.
‘So come with us now. Voluntarily.’
She waits there until Pappa, after an eternity, shrugs.
‘Leo?’
‘Yes?’
‘Go home and take care of your brothers.’
‘Pappa, I—’
‘Do it! Go home. Take care of your brothers.’
The police officer holding the handcuffs opens the door and Pappa stretches out his hands, palms up. The two cops in uniform stand on either side of him as he walks towards the police car and the back seat. That’s where he sits as the black-and-white car drives away, and he turns around, and they look at each other, not long, but long enough.
76
LEO PRESSES THE door handle gently, takes off his shoes and creeps inside, without turning on any lights. Vincent is lying upside down in bed as he sometimes does; he says something unintelligible and continues sleeping. But Felix wakes up. Or maybe he was already awake.
It’s hard to explain – at least in the middle of the night – that Mamma is not coming home. And then, after explaining that, it’s hard to explain that Pappa isn’t coming home either. Leo does it anyway, and Felix listens, and just when he’s finished explaining, Mamma calls. She asks if everyone is there, and when he answers that they are, she says she’s changed her mind, she’s coming. Right away.
He hurries into the kitchen, opens the cabinet under the worktop and pulls out two paper refuse sacks.
Mamma will be here right away and when she gets here the kitchen table should look like a kitchen table.
A petrol can. The remains of a pillowcase. Two bottles of wine.
Cigarette butts, Keno tickets, sugar packets.
He cleans away one thing at a time and puts the refuse sacks under the sink.
When the can and the pillowcase and the bottles are gone, and the kitchen table is a kitchen table, they don’t need to talk about it.
He wipes the table for a second time with a sponge and rinses out a saucepan, sniffs it and rinses it again until the smell of wine is gone. Just before Mamma arrives. And it feels so good in his chest and stomach. And he’s heading towards her when he sees two others.
‘Leo, these are … they’re police officers.’
There is no question. That’s why he doesn’t answer.
‘Do you understand? They’re here to look at the flat. And then … they’ll want to talk for a little while. To you.’
In our flat there is only us.
‘I’m tired.’
Vincent and Felix and Mamma and Pappa and I live here.
‘I understand that, love. But this will only take a few minutes.’
Those two … they don’t belong here.
‘Then they’ll leave. Leo? OK?’
They’re everywhere: the hall, the kitchen, Vincent’s room, his and Felix’s room, Mamma and Pappa’s room, the workroom, the living room, even the bathroom and the balcony. They open and close cabinets, drawers, cupboards, move shoes and soldiers and paintings and flower pots. They examine a homemade punchbag and then the golden mount on a sabre carelessly stuffed into a blue velvet sheath above a wide range of obsolete tools. Leo stands on the threshold between the hall and the kitchen the whole time. Even when they open the cupboard under the sink and lift out two paper sacks, pieces of cloth torn from a pillowcase that still smell like Mamma.
‘Hello, Leo,’ says the larger policeman, trying to smile at him. ‘It’s just as your mother said. I work as a police officer. And I want to talk to you. Just for a moment.’
Leo has never met a police officer who doesn’t wear a uniform. He wears a long coat like Pappa’s except lighter, and he points to the newly cleaned kitchen table.
‘You’re not … in trouble. And it’s not your fault. Nothing that’s happened is your fault, Leo. I just want to ask a few questions. I just need to know what happened when you and your pappa were out driving around.’
He pulls out a kitchen chair, Pappa’s chair, and sits down, holding a small spiral notebook and a pencil above it.
‘Tell me, Leo. You sat in the car. And Pappa was driving. Where did he drive?’
‘I don’t want to say.’
‘And … why don’t you want to?’
‘Because I don’t want to.’
‘Try.’
‘Because I don’t want to.’
‘Leo? I’m talking to you.’
‘Because I don’t want to.’
Leo looks down at the floor until the terrible cop goes out into the hall and comes back with his winter jacket and puts it on the shiny kitchen table. He notices how big the cop’s hands are, but he knows that however strong they look, they couldn’t snap five lolly sticks held together.
‘It smells of smoke. Can you smell it?’
This is ours.
‘There’s a can of petrol in one of the paper sacks. In the other one there were some empty wine bottles and shredded rags.’
Not yours.
‘Do you know what that means? Altogether?’
We live here.
‘Do you know what your pappa’s made here?’
Not you.
‘A Molotov cocktail. That’s what it’s called. It’s a bottle full of petrol. And when it’s smashed the petrol turns into flames, spreads, destroys, kills. A fire bomb used in war.’
We are a clan.
‘Your grandfather saw both you and your father at the house when it was burning. And your grandmother did too. And your mother. And five neighbours. All of them saw you – and all of them saw your father.’
A clan always sticks together.
‘Your grandfather also saw you holding a bag. What happened then? Did you throw it? Or was it your father?’
A clan can’t be broken.
‘Leo?’
No matter what happens.
‘Now I want you to listen to me.’
In a cl
an, a real clan, we never hurt each other.
‘Your mother could have died. And your grandmother. And your grandfather. They could all have died.’
In a real clan, we never snitch on each together.
‘Look at me, Leo. Do you understand what your father did, that he meant it?’
In a clan, in a real clan, we protect each other, always, always, always.
‘You don’t need to protect your father – he’s the one who’s done something wrong. He’s the one who should take care of you.’
‘I’m not a lolly stick!’
It comes out so suddenly that even he isn’t prepared for it.
‘Do you hear what I’m saying! I’m not!’
‘Tell me now exactly what your father did. For your mother’s sake, for your brothers. Leo? Tell me.’
He hasn’t thought about his mother crying. But maybe she’s just started? She is somewhere behind him, he can’t see her eyes, but he can hear her – she’s not afraid, not of what happened or could have happened, this is directed at him, at her son standing in front of a detective, answering questions that no one else has anything to do with, that’s why she’s crying.
‘I’m not a fucking lolly stick you can break in two!’
The pencil on the spiral notebook is lying there as he rushes up to the table, snatches it away and, with all the fear and all the anger collected in his ten-year-old arm, stabs the grey point of the pencil into that huge right hand.
Then he runs away, chased by the howling detective and by Mamma, who tries to grab hold of him, and the other detective who almost collides with him in the hall. Leo locks the bedroom door from the inside. Vincent is still asleep upside down in his bed, and Felix is sitting on the floor next to a pile of Lego.
‘Leonard!’
He hears Mamma pounding on the door.
‘Come out of there! You hear me! You have to talk to them!’
It’s hard to understand how Vincent can sleep through all this commotion.
‘Open the door!’
And that Felix can sit on the floor surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of Lego pieces.
‘Leo? Do as your mother says. Turn the key and open the door,’ shouts the tall detective.
‘Was it him?’ Felix whispers as he points to the door. ‘Was it him? Did he …’
The Father: Made in Sweden Part I Page 42
