Life Deluxe (19 page)

* * *

Choir singing. Harmonies. Sacral atmosphere. Then the bishop sang a solo for a few minutes.

The choir again. Church Slavic. Kyrillos holy texts.

The air was filled with smoke and myrrh. Natalie tried to listen to the words even though she couldn’t understand them.

Mom crossed herself. Natalie felt as if she were lost, not there.

Lit de parade
. Natalie was standing closest to the open casket. There were mountains of flower wreaths all around it. She tried to pin her gaze to the wooden cross behind the casket, but she couldn’t tear her eyes from Dad. He looked so alone even though the chapel was packed with people. Dressed in a black suit. Combed side part. Arms crossed over his chest. An icon with his
svetac
, Saint George, in his hands. He looked small. And he was still.

So still
.

The previous day Natalie and Mom’d talked to the bishop. Gone over the way in which they wanted the ceremony and the rituals to be done. Every Serbian Orthodox family has its own saint, a
svetac
. The Kranjic clan’d had Saint George as its saint for over a hundred years. And according to the legend, Saint George was the one who’d slain the dragon. He was a warrior. That suited Dad better than any other.

The night’d been long. According to tradition, the body should have been in the ground within twenty-four hours. But there hadn’t been time to assemble all the guests on such short notice. Plus, the police wanted to do an autopsy. So they’d decided to wait for a few days. But over a week would have been scandalous. They spoke with the Swedish-Serbian priest from Södertälje about paying his employees in the church to watch over the body and read the Book of Psalms. It was important: no one would be able to say that the Kranjic family hadn’t done everything according to the rules. Mom drove out to the chapel
every day and checked on them. Dad was to be treated like the hero he had been.

Natalie was wearing a black, long-sleeved dress from Givenchy with a round neckline. Nothing made it obvious how fancy it actually was. That wouldn’t do. The bishop’d been clear about that. No showing off, no high heels or skirts that were too Swedish.

Mom was even more conservatively dressed, in a black suit with a skirt that went down to mid-calf. She was wearing a hat with a dark veil.

It was warm—probably two hundred people in the chapel. But Natalie knew that at least another three hundred were shoving elbows outside. And then the dispatched police on top of that, for some reason.

Mom and she’d arrived two hours earlier. Seen the casket carried in, feet first. They accepted condolences, flowers, kisses on their cheeks. More than five hundred faces to greet. She didn’t know a tenth of them.

She shut out the choir, the faces, the soft flames from the wax candles. She saw Dad in front of her. On Skeppargatan. On the gurney. Under a yellow blanket. Under tightened straps. Dirty. Bloody. Her ears were still ringing from the explosion. Still: Dad was without sound.

The ringing in her ears. Dad.

The chaos.

She was running next to him.

They’d had to tear her from the ambulance.

After the car bomb went off, she’d sat in a cramped room in the hospital for ten hours. No flowers, no boxes of chocolate. Just machines with digital numbers on their displays. At first, they hadn’t wanted to say where they were caring for Dad, but this time Natalie demanded that they bring her there. The bed’s metal frame gleamed in the rays of sun that found their way in through the blinds. Half his face was covered in bandages, and there were tubes going up his nose and arms.

Mom sat at the foot of the bed, sniffling. Natalie and Goran sat in chairs. Stefanovic ought to have been there—but they said he was also being cared for in the ICU. There was a policeman on guard outside the room. The police feared more violence.

After a while, a nurse came into the room. “You have to go now. He is going into surgery one more time.”

Mom stopped crying. “What are you going to do?”

“You’ll have to ask the doctor.”

“Is it as serious as the last operation?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know.”

Mom and Goran rose. Natalie didn’t want to leave. She wanted to stay here. She wanted to sit next to Dad for the rest of her life.

“Come, honey,” Mom said in Serbian. “It’s time.”

Natalie rose, leaned over to kiss Dad on the forehead.

Then: his hand trembled.

Natalie looked down. Put her hand over his. It was more than a tremor. He was moving his fingers.

“Mom, wait. He’s moving.”

Mom hurried forward. Goran also leaned down. Dad raised his hand from the mattress.

Natalie thought it almost seemed as though he wanted to say something. She leaned in even closer.

Heard a breath.

Felt Mom, close behind her.

Another breath.

Then, a weak voice. Dad whispered in Serbian, “Little frog.”

Natalie squeezed his hand.

“What is he saying?” Goran asked.

“Quiet,” Natalie hissed, without turning around.

Goran leaned in closer, tried to listen.

Dad’s voice again. “Little frog. You will take over.”

Natalie looked at him. She couldn’t see his lips moving. It was deathly quiet in the room.

Dad spoke again, “You will take over everything.”

The bishop held his speech. He was dressed in something that looked like a cross between a black dress with gold decorations and a magician’s cloak. Natalie’d been to Serbian Orthodox mass perhaps seven times total in her life, always on Easter. But the priest today wasn’t just anyone. The bishop was a hotshot on the holy circuit. Bishop Milomir: bishop of Great Britain and Scandinavia. Normally he lived in London, but he’d flown in for this right away.

The bishop droned on. About how Dad’d come to Sweden in 1981, looking for work. Started working at Scania in Södertälje. How he’d advanced, started companies, created businesses. Become a wealthy man, a successful man, a respected citizen. How he continued to attend
mass regularly, donated money to philanthropic causes and to the building of the church in Enskede Gård. Above all: how he always stood up for the Serbian people and the Serbian faith. He’d clearly heard some things from others, or else he’d made them up. Like all that about Dad going to mass all the time—that was about as real as the Easter Bunny.

The choir began singing again. The bishop swung an oil lamp over the floor. Everyone sang together: the informal national anthem about Saint George—it’d never been more fitting. The candles that everyone was holding in their hands were burning low. The flames were flickering slowly. For over an hour now.

The bishop began to read in Church Slavic. He poured oil over Dad’s body. Drops on Dad’s pale forehead.

The smell of myrrh. The monotonous drone of the mass.

It was over now.

The Swedish priest from Södertälje announced that it was time for the last kiss. Mom started moving. It had to happen in a particular order, and you had to walk counterclockwise back to your spot.

Natalie held her hand tightly.

They approached Dad.

His sand-colored hair looked lighter than usual. His jaw, which ordinarily looked so wide when he smiled at Natalie, appeared thin. His neck usually looked broad, strong. Now: fragile as a bird’s.

Mom bent down and kissed Dad lightly on the forehead.

Natalie stood above the casket. It felt as though everyone in the chapel stopped to look at her. Waited to see what she would do.

She looked down. Dad’s face. His closed eyes. Shiny eyelashes.

She bent down. Stopped with her lips a few millimeters above Dad’s forehead. She didn’t cry. Didn’t think. Didn’t mourn.

She only had one thought in her head:
Dad, I am going to make you proud of me. Whoever did this to you will regret it
.

Then she kissed him.

The crowd was beginning to thin out. There were maybe a hundred people left in the graveyard. Even the cops were beginning to drive away.

Natalie walked toward a taxi that she’d called over fifteen minutes ago. That alone irritated her—to have to wait more than fifteen minutes when there ought to be cabs around the corner.

Viktor was walking a few paces behind her. Mom’d been clear: “You’re not married yet, so unfortunately, he can’t stand with us in the chapel.”

Viktor hadn’t seemed to care about that. Honestly, he hardly seemed to care about anything lately.

Farther off, by the fence, Goran was walking toward them.

Head angled slightly down. Goran had shitty posture.

He stopped when he reached her.

Right, left, right. Even though he’d already kissed her cheeks before the funeral. “Natalie,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

She wondered why he was repeating this routine.

He extended his hand. Took Natalie’s hand in his. Held it for a few seconds. Squeezed it. His gray eyes bored straight into hers. His look was not pitying, like the those of the others. It was determined. Sharp.

He released her hand. Continued walking toward the graveyard where Mom and a few others were still standing.

Natalie remained where she was. Looked down at her hand.

A scrunched piece of paper.

She unfolded it—messy handwriting, in pencil; two words and a time:
Stefanovic. Tomorrow. 1800
.

Viktor caught up with her.

“What was that all about?”

Natalie folded her fingers over the note.

“Nothing.”

The taxi was waiting outside the gates. She saw a cop climb into a car farther up the street.

“Nothing at all.”