The Father: Made in Sweden Part I (61 page)

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 clan, 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 …’

‘He was the one who screamed. Whose hand got hurt,’ answers Leo.

Voices rumbling. He doesn’t hear it. If you decide to not hear something, you won’t. He does that sometimes, goes into his own room and locks the door. His room is even smaller than this one, and inside it’s only him, his body, everything exists inside, nothing exists outside.

‘Leo? You know we can open this door anyway, don’t you? Leo? Your mother doesn’t want that. So open up!’

Then his youngest brother wakes up. Tousled hair, tired eyes.

Leo picks him up and walks back and forth between the door and the window.

‘Vincent? They don’t exist.’

He stops near the door and the rumbling that’s telling him to open up, come out.

‘They don’t exist.’

The tired eyes aren’t tired any more, they’re watching him, listening.

‘You hear that, little brother?’

‘Yes.’

‘They don’t exist. And we’re … going to go straight through them.’

The three-year-old is trying to understand. And then he smiles.

‘Straight through?’

‘Straight through.’

Mamma and the two officers are still outside. Pappa is being driven along some other street with two police officers.

He walks around the room for a long time, a big brother holding his little brother behind a closed and locked door.

And he’s probably never felt as calm as he does right now. With Felix and Vincent. In a place where he decides who exists and who doesn’t.

DECEMBER CHANGED ITS
clothes during Leo’s three-hundred-mile ride west through a countryside decked out for Christmas; ice on Lake Mälaren and a capital city where people walked quickly with their eyes to the ground were replaced by Gothenburg, a city of pedestrians in their autumn jackets. So Leo did the same as they did – buttoned up his jacket and strolled.

He got a bottle of water at a kiosk and a hot dog at a grill opposite Valands Art School, where he was supposed to turn off the avenue and follow the tram lines to Vasa Park. From there it wasn’t far to Erik Dahlberg Street. To them. His brothers. He hadn’t seen them once since they’d moved here. He hadn’t felt it so much this autumn because he’d decided not to, but he did. Now that he was so close he felt the tug of expectation.

He’d decided to leave them be, yet somehow it still felt as if it were they who were keeping him at arm’s length. They’d always been in contact. Never judged each other, or got in each other’s way, never ever needed to ask each other for help. Now they spoke two, maybe three times a month, stiff conversations about the weather and the price of taxis and some new movie the other should see. Not a single word about the abortive weapons sale. He hated it. It was just like his mother and her siblings, the way people who had nothing in common talked to each other.

His little brothers lived in an apartment in a beautiful 1920s building. On the board inside the door a piece of tape with their names had been affixed over someone else’s. Third floor. He rang the doorbell and knocked, just to be sure. He could tell just from the sound of approaching feet that it would be Felix, before he even opened the door.

His hair was longer – Felix had always kept his hair cut short – but it looked good. They hugged each other in the doorway, as if everything was normal.

‘Hungry?’

The smell of food. He followed Felix down a narrow hallway to the
kitchen where Vincent stood next to the refrigerator. He looked older. Older than just the few months that had passed. Stronger – physically more like a man. And his eyes, just as intense, were more piercing and distinct. Another hug. It was hard to say if the distance and chilliness were just in Leo’s head, something he’d imagined.

‘So … nothing here is yours?’

‘Nope.’

A table he’d never seen before. Chairs he’d never seen. A microwave oven, a toaster, a radio, all unfamiliar. And a Salvador Dalí poster on the wall. He wondered if they even knew who that was.

‘Just like when we were little, and you got all my hand-me-downs,’ said Leo.

‘Second-hand. The whole lot. Furniture, kitchenware. They even left us some shampoo. But Mamma liked it.’

‘She said she’d been here.’

Bolognese on the stove; Felix was making dinner.

‘She said it was going well. At the university, with your courses. And she was so proud of you, Vincent, that you’d already got through the first year of your school studies.’

He was anxious. He couldn’t hide it, and he could tell Felix could see it.

‘You should see his marks. Every single exam, perfect. He’s only eighteen, Leo, and our little brother can do anything he wants to.’

Felix winked at Vincent, who smiled shyly – that was still the same at least – and then took out the plates, glasses and a bottle of wine.

‘How long are you staying?’

‘The train leaves in four hours.’

‘Four hours? Here I thought you came to hang out for a while.’

Leo didn’t say anything.
Fucking superior, stubborn little brother
. He was here to heal the breach, not make it worse.

‘Just a simple financing robbery. Everything’s ready. A little bank in Heby. The day before Christmas Eve. A few million.’

The bolognese was almost ready. The water on the other burner was boiling.

‘Then we’ll have enough money for a big job. And after that … you can study whatever the hell you want to.’

‘That’s what we’re already doing,’ said Felix, taking out a packet of spaghetti and dumping it all in at the same time. ‘I thought you knew that. That we’re already studying what we want to.’

‘I need you.’

‘We’ve quit, Leo.’

He’d decided he’d stay calm no matter what. But that didn’t last long. Leo slammed his hand onto the table, the silverware and plates shook.

‘Do you think you’re normal now because you’re at college? Because you’re sitting on a fucking wooden chair behind a fucking wooden counter?’

Felix poured wine into his glass up to the top.

‘I’m not studying in order to be normal, I’m studying to get an education.’

Leo took a small sip.

‘What about you, Vincent?’

His youngest brother looked away.

‘Vincent, damn it!’

‘It was easier to be part of it than to not be,’ Vincent replied. ‘To find out if everything was going to go to hell.’

Leo laughed, not kindly. He took another small sip of wine.

‘Go to hell? Vincent – it
won’t
go to hell. Ever. Come over here, sit down.’

Vincent did as he asked and sat down on the chair opposite Leo.

‘But
if
it does?’