The Father: Made in Sweden Part I (16 page)

‘Leo?’

He follows Leo out into the hall, where he’s standing in front of the mirror, putting his weight on his left leg and punching with his right hand.

‘Leo?’

Then Leo turns to the hat rack and carefully grabs hold of Pappa’s work clothes. The ones that Pappa usually wears – they’ve hardly ever seen him in anything else except when they’ve visited him in prison after he’s hit someone too hard.

‘Leo?’

They both know where the knife is. In an elongated pocket on one of the trouser legs. And that’s what Leo is unbuttoning.

‘What are you doing?’

Leo has crept inside himself to a place that is unreachable.

‘I told you.
Today
. I’m gonna take them.’

They walk next to each other down the same path one of them has been taking for almost four years and the other for almost a year. It’s not even a few hundred metres if they cut across the car park, go through the bushes, then cross the street to the school playground.

They don’t speak to each other at all. They just stand there in the playground and wait. Even after the bell has rung. Eventually, Felix can’t stand it any more.

‘Leo. The knife. You—’

‘The bell’s ringing.’

‘—don’t—’

‘And in exactly forty minutes it will ring again. Then you should run home. Get Pappa and stand on the balcony with him.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Home. Pappa. Balcony. When it rings again. OK?’

Leo looks at his little brother who doesn’t want to leave.

‘OK?’

And who nods, reluctantly.

‘When it rings like it is now. But for leaving.’

A long, ugly, annoying ring. Leo looks around. The junior school and secondary school playground, so lively a minute ago, is now dead. The children who ran and jumped and screamed and shoved and laughed and ran even more are no longer there. Six entrances to six classrooms have sucked them inside, like a vacuum cleaner, just to spit them back out in forty minutes.

He positions himself next to a brick wall and watches the secondary school playground, at the bottom of the hill. It’s not empty, not yet. Down there they take more time getting to their classrooms. The two slowest
are on their way to year seven, one in a denim jacket and one in a blue puffa jacket: Hasse and Kekkonen. Leo starts to tremble so much that the brick wall scrapes against his back – in fear, in expectation. Hasse and Kekkonen are standing in the middle of the playground inside the painted white lines near the flagpole, they smoke and yell at the others who are on their way inside, punch the ones who go past in the back. They’re big, even from a distance. But this time Leo knows exactly what to do. This time he’s the one waiting for them.

He stays close to the secondary school building, pressed against the wall until they make their way inside. He calculates the time. They should be in their classroom by now. He doesn’t need a watch, he knows when five minutes have gone by. And then he hurries down the hill, across the playground, and into the secondary school building, where he’s been a few times before.

He walks along a row of student lockers, his hand around the knife in the inner pocket of his jacket. It fits perfectly in the palm of his hand and the wooden shaft is smooth, as if it’s been polished by Pappa’s hand, day in and day out.

He walks down the first corridor, past the closed doors and hanging jackets, past someone who is playing an instrument in the first classroom; someone else wolf whistles in the second. The next corridor, and more doors. He’s walking down the fifth corridor when he sees what he’s looking for. The door to the physics room. The coats on the hooks next to the door. He stops in front of the puffa jacket, which has an oil stain on the chest and a cigarette burn on one sleeve, and a denim jacket with a patch on it of a tongue sticking out of a mouth.

He’s not trembling any more. He’s completely calm.

The knife is so smooth in his hand as he slashes it through the backs of the two coats, several times, in almost straight lines.

He then moves away twenty paces. That’s enough. He sits down and waits.

A class lasts forty minutes. And he guesses there are about twenty-five minutes left. He starts counting. One second at a time. To sixty. And then starts again. He has managed to get to sixty nearly twenty-five times when the long, ugly, irritating ring drenches the entire corridor. He stands up, feet wide apart on the floor, facing the shredded jackets.

Soon. Soon.

The door opens.

The first students leave. His knees quake. One by one they walk by. His upper body is bent slightly forward.

They come out last. At the same time, through the narrow door. Hasse. Kekkonen.

And they see their jackets.

And they see the slashed backs.

And they see him.

Leo raises his hand, waves. They start running. He starts running. Corridor, student lockers, entrance, playground.

He looks behind him. They’re getting closer.

Up the hill. Secondary school playground. Junior school playground. Across the road and the stones, through the bushes and the car park.

He can hear them shouting behind him.

Felix’s legs move faster than he ever knew they could. Up the stairs and all the way to the seventh floor instead of taking the lift that never comes.

When it rings again.

Into the flat, down the hall to the kitchen, and there’s Pappa sitting at the table.

In exactly forty minutes.

Pappa looks tired, a pot of coffee in his hand as he fills up one of the china cups.

Then you have to run home. Get Pappa. And stand on the balcony with him.

‘What … are you doing here, boy? Now?’

Felix doesn’t answer. He doesn’t hear the question. He runs to the balcony door, which won’t open, turn, turn, the damn … then it slides open and he stands on tiptoe to see over the railing.

They’re screaming behind him.

But the sound of running drowns it out.

Leo’s breathing starts from his stomach and fills his lungs and expands. He never knew this was what it was like to fly. Across the car park and the asphalt path towards the entrance to the building.

He stops and glances up.

There, he’s sure of it, Felix’s head sticking up over the balcony railing.

He turns around and waits for his pursuers. His knees sway, sink slightly.

He brings his arms up, right hand protecting the right cheek.

Felix sees Leo approaching. Sees him stop outside the entrance. Sees him turn around.

And then.

He sees the two boys chasing him. Who aren’t wearing their jackets this time. But he knows. He
knows
who they are.

‘Pappa!’

Felix rushes back into the kitchen, to Pappa at the table with a china cup in his hand.

‘Come here! Come on, Pappa! Here! The balcony!’

A big gulp of warm coffee.

‘Now, Pappa!’

But Pappa continues to sit there with the cup in his hand, and Hasse and Kekkonen are down there with Leo.

‘Pappa!’

He grabs Pappa’s arm fiercely, he pulls, and pulls, and pulls on his arm.

‘Pappa! Pappa!’

And Pappa finally gets up, goes outside with bare feet, leaning over the railing as he always leans.

And he sees. What Felix sees.

‘Pappa! Leo’s down there!’

‘Yep. Leo’s down there.’

‘And they are, too!
Them
, Pappa! We have to—’

‘We don’t have to do anything.’

‘No, Pappa! Hasse! And—’

‘Leo has to take care of this. And he will, all by himself.’

Leo has chosen a place that can be seen clearly from the balcony, near the bushes and the lamp posts. Hasse gets there first, panting as heavily as Leo. They stare at each other. Hasse without his jacket, Hasse who is tall and has to look down to meet Leo’s eyes.

Legs apart. Hands up.

One last look at the balcony on the seventh floor. Felix is jumping and grabbing and pulling until half his body is hanging over the railing. And next to him, Pappa.

A single blow. Right hand. Right on the nose.

Hasse doesn’t know what’s hit him. He just sinks down to his knees, tears spurting from his tear ducts, blood flowing down his mouth and chin and neck. Just where Leo lay earlier.

Kekkonen arrives next, and he’s panting loudly, quickly.

He’s a lot shorter than Hasse, but stronger, and more powerful. He strikes the first blow right past Leo’s cheek, but Leo’s knees are so soft and his feet so fast that when Kekkonen throws a second and a third punch they’re not even close.

Leo’s first punch makes contact. Not quite on the nose, more the cheek. The stocky boy is still standing.

And hits back.

His legs and feet slide like before, soft, fast, and Leo hits the temple, then the shoulder, then the other cheek until Kekkonen reels and his eyes change – the Finnish bastard’s eyes turn from present and angry to absent and scared.

Leo is about to turn towards the balcony, towards Pappa and Felix, when everything changes again. He doesn’t see how, or why, but Pappa suddenly starts shouting and pointing, as if trying to warn him.

Someone grabs him from behind. Leo squirms. Pulls. He needs to get free! And he’s almost out of his grasp …

When it falls out of his jacket pocket.

Pappa’s Mora knife.

He’s not quick enough. He bends to the ground to pick it up, and it’s not there. Kekkonen is faster and waves it in front of him.

When a knife flashes in front of your face, it’s mostly the blade that’s visible.

Especially when it strikes.

‘Cut him, for fuck’s sake!’ shouts Hasse to Kekkonen, lying on the filthy asphalt with both hands on his nose as if trying to hold it in place.

The first thrust sinks deep into Leo’s left shoulder. Or, actually, into the left shoulder of his thick quilted jacket. The Mora knife rips open a big hole and the white, fluffy lining tumbles out.

When the second thrust comes, he angles his upper body a little, turning
it to the side, and the knife cuts through the air beside him. The third comes faster and straighter, hits the jacket again, the sleeve, but the tear is smaller.

Hasse shouts,
Cut him! Cut him!
and Kekkonen stares at Leo with those demonic eyes that sneer every time he thrusts the blade forward. He’s aiming for Leo’s face, and manages two more slashes before the front door opens behind them.