The Father: Made in Sweden Part I (12 page)

LATE EVENING WINTER
darkness, and big patches of white, brown and grey snow lie on the asphalt, the steam pouring from his mouth as he counts his own big breaths.

He has no coat on. Despite that, he’s not cold. They’ve been doing this for a while, up and down, up and down, and the skin on his forehead and cheeks is covered with shiny layers of sweat. He wipes his hands across his face, and they end up wet, so he dries them on his trousers.

A three-storey building that looks just like all the others. 15 Loft Street. Five steps to the door. He turns his head to look at the next door along, 17 Loft Street, and his opponent, who stands there looking back.

Felix. His seven-year-old little brother, already in junior school.

Leo raises his arm slightly, angles it away from the shining streetlamp. A light brown leather strap, the watch face with red hands that are short and ugly. The day he has enough money, he’ll buy a new one, the kind that other people look at.

He waits. The second hand passes the nine. Ten. Eleven. He holds his hand high up in the air.

‘Now!’

At twelve exactly he runs. Opens the door to number fifteen, while Felix opens seventeen.

Taking two steps at a time to each new door, a wad of paper in his hand, Leo delivers seven different leaflets from seven different companies, which they’ve bundled together at home on their living room floor.

He opens the first letterbox and glances at the red hand of his watch. It took twenty-four seconds to run up the stairs and deliver the first bundle of ads. On each floor there are four letterboxes that he has to press open with the palm of his hand in order to make the opening large enough. One at a time, and as quickly as he can. They slam shut when he’s done and his black lace-up boots thud against the floor as he runs to the next slot.

He’s lived here his whole life. Ten years. An area south of Stockholm
called Skogås, thousands of identical high-rise blocks all standing in a row.

Every door is almost the same, but not quite. The names, smells, sounds are different. Often someone’s at home watching TV. Sometimes someone’s listening to music, bass and treble coming through the open slot. Now and then someone is drilling holes in the walls, and quite often people are shouting at each other. The dogs are the worst part. In this stairwell there’s one waiting on the second floor. One jumping at the letterbox as he thrusts in the flyers, which aren’t supposed to be visible from the outside in case the people paying him make a random inspection.

The dog starts barking as soon as he approaches, its heavy body against the inside of the door. He opens the slot, just a small gap, sees a long tongue and sharp teeth, and loses six seconds because those slavering jaws force him to stick his papers in one at a time.

And then there’s that letterbox at the very bottom, the one that always takes twelve extra seconds – number seventeen has no such apartment.

He wonders how far Felix has got.

He takes the stairs three at a time, but knows that because of that damn dog and then this door, it’s taken almost a minute and a half to do the entire stairwell. Felix will be out there smiling, a little bit cocky, fifteen seconds before him.

And he is. His little brother has won – but he’s not smiling.

Felix has company. An ugly, blue puffa jacket. Hasse. He’s in year seven, the kind of guy who stays in the smoking area of the playground even after the bell rings. There’s usually someone else with him too, a shorter guy who wears a denim jacket even in the winter: Kekkonen, the Finn who’s never cold.

But now he is alone. And he’s holding his arms outstretched. Above and around Felix, preventing him from moving.

‘What the hell are you doing?’ Leo screams.

That’s his little brother!

‘Let him go!’

Hasse smiles in victory, a smile that should belong to Felix.

‘And here comes another little faggot.’

‘Let him go, damn it!’

‘The little fucking faggot’s screaming! The little fucking faggot doesn’t understand! I told you last time. Right? I said “one more time”. If I saw you and your little fucking faggot brother here again, I said I’m gonna
kill you
.’

Leo is breathing heavily, but not because he took the stairs three at a time. He’s scared. He’s angry. And both sensations beat against his chest from the inside.

‘We’re not the ones who decide where these fucking flyers get delivered!’

The anger and fear push him to walk quickly towards Hasse, still trapping Felix with his arms, and the closer Leo gets the bigger the smile on that bastard’s face gets. He continues walking, a little more slowly. It doesn’t make sense. Hasse shouldn’t be smiling, he’s tall but not strong, and he should be scared and angry, like Leo. He should be preparing.

But he’s smiling, and looking at something that seems to be … behind Leo.

It’s too late.

Leo gets a whiff of a musty, forgotten smell. From a dirty denim jacket that’s only ever been taken off when a teacher has demanded it. He recognises the smell but doesn’t see the fist coming at his neck and cheek. Surely he’s going to fall. The snow-patched asphalt is getting closer to his other cheek and his forehead. He’s on the ground, his vision blurry. Someone is standing near his face, shorter than Hasse and squarer. Kekkonen, the Finn who’s never cold, has been hiding behind a tall bush and he’s attacked Leo from behind, while Hasse just stands there smiling.

The ground is cold. He has time to notice that. But not to get up.

The first kick hits his cheek. The second hits him lower down, on his chin. The last thing he remembers is how strange it looks when the evening darkness disappears into a streetlight, how it’s sucked up, turning white before it turns black.

THE PAIN IS
most intense on his left side, near the ribs. When he pulls up his thin sweater and probes the skin with his fingers, the swelling is still there.

Leo lies in his narrow bed, which is too short for him, his feet reaching all the way to the end. It’s not exactly light outside his window, but it’s lighter than when he went to bed.

The pain throbs from a large spot in the middle of his head, as he
grabs hold of the blanket and mattress and heaves himself upright. A mirror hangs above his desk. The tight half of his face is less red now, more blue and yellow and swollen like his ribs. He touches it. It hurts worse.

He tiptoes barefoot across the room. Felix doesn’t move at all, lying on his stomach in bed with both his hands under his pillow, muttering something in his sleep. Leo walks out into the hall, unlike yesterday, when he crept in. And when his father had finally stuck his head into the room, Leo had made sure he was lying with his face turned to the wall, pretending to sleep.

Leo closes the door to Vincent’s room, where inside is the little bed he once slept in and his three-year-old brother lying upside down with his feet on his pillow. He continues past to Mamma and Pappa’s bedroom, also closing their door. And he stands there, as he usually does for a moment, in the middle of those smells. Red wine from his father’s breath, menthol from his mother’s, and mostly, the smell from his father’s huge work trousers that hang on an iron hook in the hall, a Mora knife and a folding ruler in one of the oblong pockets. It’s a smell that has always been there, like drying paint, or the smell of sunshine on skin – now it reminds him of Kekkonen’s denim jacket. He extends his hand gently towards them. The carpenter’s trousers have been hanging there for almost two weeks, untouched. That’s how it usually is in the winter, longer stretches between jobs.

He hears a sound.

Through the closed door.

Leo waits quietly, closes his eyes, hopes it will go away. One ear against the painted surface. Quiet again. It was surely his mother. She usually makes some sounds when she’s just come home and managed to sleep for a little while, when she’s been working several nights in a row at the nursing home. He’s learned the morning sounds. It’s good when his father’s breathing is deep and audible – watch out if you don’t hear it any more. Leo waits a little longer, then goes into the kitchen and takes out a new kind of white bread that tastes like syrup, cheese with large holes in it, and orange marmalade. He doesn’t take out the toaster, it rattles too much. He mixes orange juice in three glasses, a finger of yellow and the rest cold water from the tap. He makes sure whenever he’s close to the sink not to bump against the pan of congealed wine, a dark and hard layer that’s difficult to wash away. There are piles of Keno tickets on the counter covered with crosses forming different patterns, part of the system
his father has been using for so long. He counts the butts in the ashtray. His father sat up late into the night and won’t be getting up for a while yet. Leo goes back to the bedrooms, shakes Felix’s arm and then Vincent’s, with a finger to his lips – and they nod as they usually do.

They don’t say anything while they eat. Syrup loaf, orange marmalade on top of the cheese, a full glass of juice. He moves his chair slightly, making sure to keep his ear towards the hallway and the bedroom. He can’t hear the heavy breathing any more. Maybe Pappa’s just turned over? Or what if their chewing was too loud and he’s woken up? Leo shakes the last slice of bread from the plastic bag, butters it, and hands it to Vincent, who has marmalade on his fingers and cheeks and in his hair.

The door. He’s sure of it. That fucking damn shitty door.

And it’s his pappa’s footsteps, treading slowly from the bedroom to the toilet – he can hear him peeing even though the door is shut.

Only half a sandwich to go. Two sips of orange juice.

There he stands. His long pale upper body, his thick forearms, his jeans unbuttoned at the waist, sockless feet that never seem to end. He stands on the threshold looking in and fills up the whole doorway.

He combs his hand through his hair, pulling it back; Pappa has always looked like that.

‘Good morning.’

Leo is chewing. When you’re chewing you can’t answer. Since you’re chewing and can’t answer, you’ve got time to turn your face towards Felix, leaving only your right cheek exposed to that voice.

‘I said
good morning
, boys.’

‘Good morning.’

Leo hears them answer in a quick chorus, as if they want this to be over as soon as possible. Pappa passes behind his back, opens a cupboard, takes out a glass, and fills it with water. It sounds like he’s drinking half of it, and then he turns towards the table.

‘Has something happened?’

Leo doesn’t look at him, just glances with his good eye.

‘Leo. You’re not looking at me.’

Now he turns his head a little more, as much as possible without revealing
too
much.

‘Show me your face.’

He’s not quick enough. Felix gets there before him. The sound of his sandwich plate on the table and a loud voice.

‘It was two against one, Pappa. They were …’

Pappa isn’t standing at the sink any more. There’s bare skin near Leo’s shoulder.

‘What is that?’

Leo turns even more to the side, further away.

‘Nothing.’

Pappa grabs his face. Not hard, but hard enough, and turns it upward. The stupid swollen cheek that is blue and yellow and puffed up around the eye.

‘What the hell is that?’

‘Leo … fought back. He did. Pappa! He …’

Felix answers again before Leo is even able to form a single word. He normally has so many, they fill his mouth. Now they aren’t there. When they come, he swallows them.

‘Did you?’

His father stands there, looking at him, then at Felix, then back to Leo, trying to meet his eyes, staring, staring.

‘Leo?’

‘Pappa, he did, I saw it, loads of times, he—’

‘I’m asking Leo.’

Eyes that stare and stare. And a mouth that asks and asks.

‘No. I didn’t hit back.’

‘There were two of them, Pappa … and they were big, thirteen or fourteen years old, and—’

‘OK. That’s enough.’

Those large hands lift up Leo’s battered face a little bit more, carefully fingering it.

‘Now I know. Go to school, Leo. And when you get home … we’ll take care of this.’

THEY DON’T LOOK
much from this far above. There’s the taller one with fair hair and a backpack and the shorter one with dark hair and a gym bag over his shoulder.

He’s probably never watched them walking to school together. He walked Leo to school the first week, walked beside him, explained things to him, warned him, directed him –
it’s a fucking savannah, hunt or be hunted, and it will only give you what you’re entitled to if you take it, you’re a Dûvnjac and no bastard is going to sit where you want to sit
– until the second week when Leo asked him to walk a few metres behind, then the week after asked him not to walk him to school at all. With Felix, he’d never even considered it. He had Leo, and that was good enough.

But it
wasn’t
good enough.

His oldest son can’t even protect himself.

Ivan moves the two potted plants to one side and leans on the windowsill with both hands. There isn’t really much to the kitchen. A narrow corridor, a dining area, and a seventh-floor window from which both Skogås and the two heads below appear small. But it’s his. A four-bedroom flat with two entrances in a Stockholm suburb that didn’t even exist until a few years ago, when men in suits drew a few lines on a piece of paper, trying to solve an acute housing crisis by building a million identical flats.

He cracks the first egg, the second egg, the third egg, the fourth egg, always fried to a crisp, always thoroughly salted. He stands at the stove, stirring the eggs in the frying pan with a fork, but what he sees is a face. Swollen. Blue. Yellow. A face that won’t go away.

He tries to focus on the high chair, where Vincent sits and waves while his pappa cooks. He pours himself a large glass of water and drinks it. He boils water in a snorting kettle and mixes the instant coffee, heaping in several spoonfuls.