The Father: Made in Sweden Part I (42 page)

‘Look, Leo, it’s a bomb. Everybody’ll fall over at the same time.’

Then Vincent drops the ball on his soldiers again and again, fetching it after each drop, until all of the soldiers are lying down, together.

‘We’re going to take it down, Leo,’ Felix whispers right behind him. ‘The punchbag. We’re going to go in and shut the door.’

Felix moves the three-legged stool to the middle of the workroom, climbs up, stretching towards the hook in the ceiling, though he can’t reach it.

‘There should be a lamp there. The one Pappa took down. If it was still there, then Kekkonen would never have stabbed you with Pappa’s knife … and you would never have almost died.’

‘Nothing happened. Felix? I beat them. Both of them.’

‘It will never be OK. Never! You hear me?’

Felix tries again, in the middle of the stool, on tiptoe, arms shaking. His hand stretches just a little higher and his fingers touch the hook, but he can’t get the punchbag off. He sits down on the stool, biting his lip, like he does when he’s crying and doesn’t want anyone to see.

‘Are you sad?’

He’s seven years old. If you’re only seven years old you can’t take down a damn mattress from a hook on the ceiling.

‘Nuuh.’

A severed, half no.

‘I hear you.’

‘It’s not me. It’s the stupid bag. And that stupid ceiling hook.’

Felix gets up and punches it, punches it again and again, until he tires himself out. And then he watches as Leo reaches up, pushes the punchbag up towards the ceiling, until the loop slides off the hook and the mattress falls to the floor. Then Felix hands him the lamp, and Leo puts it in place on his first try.

They leave the room, already the smallest one in the apartment, but now it feels even smaller, too small to enter ever again.

Vincent’s room is larger. They each sit down on one corner of a rug that depicts a city, watch as their little brother stands up all the soldiers, then releases a tennis ball from each hand, two bombs at the same time.

They have been sitting there for quite a while when they hear sounds they know well coming through the walls –
tooot-toot-toot-toot-toot
– then again –
tooot-toot-toot-toot-toot
– then again –
tooot-toot-toot-toot-toot
.

‘Come on!’

Vincent leaves his soldiers standing, lined up, unbombed, runs to the window and climbs up on the box full of Lego.

‘Leo! Felix! Come here!’

They stand on either side of their younger brother, looking out of the window. The light-blue ice cream van that’s honking so loudly stops outside building two – the building Jasper lives in, whose father throws condoms off the balcony that land in a tree on their way down and hang there like white leaves – then outside building four – where Marie lives, who Leo almost fooled around with once – and then at house number six – where the Turkish family lives, Faruk and Emre and Bekir – and then honks again as it drives towards their front door, where it will stand as long as customers keep arriving.

‘Boys!’

That stupid honking. That was why they hadn’t heard his heavy footsteps in the hall.

‘My boys!’

It’s hard to know whether Pappa is angry or not. The voice doesn’t sound it. But he has those eyes.

‘Ice cream! Damn it! My boys are going to have some ice cream. Get your jackets!’

Vincent runs again, from the window to the hallway to the front door. Felix moves more slowly, but follows him. Leo remains where he is, the soldiers at his feet and both tennis balls in his hands. He lets go and they fall over, all of them.

Then he goes to help Vincent put on shoes that were once his and the snowsuit that Felix loved so much, zipping it all the way up and then putting on the hat that had only ever belonged to Vincent – while Pappa empties the last of his bottle of wine into two squash bottles with pictures of blackcurrants on their labels.

It was almost winter as he was riding the lift with Pappa less than an hour ago. Now, when they open the door, it’s spring – the birds, the trees, the sun. And there is the ice cream van, waiting in exactly the spot where the Mora knife was dropped.

‘Boys, have whatever you want!’

Pappa has a 100-kronor bill in his hand. He looks different. He’s been drinking his black wine, but that’s not it. He’s trembling again. Even though he’s smiling. Even though he’s drinking from one of the blackcurrant squash bottles. Pappa is trembling. Inside.

‘That one.’

They choose.

‘Maybe … that one.’

Actually, Vincent chooses.

‘No. That one.’

The green ones that taste like pears, a whole box of them.

‘Now, boys, let’s go for a walk. We’re going to have some ice cream and go for a walk!’

Pappa is tall, even compared to the other fathers. And when he puts Vincent on his shoulders, he’s quite a way from the ground. Leo walks next to him, Felix a few steps behind. They each have their own green ice lolly in their hands, and Pappa drinks from the second blackcurrant bottle. They walk across a large car park, towards a field and a football pitch with new goalposts and new nets, then on to a wood near the shore of the bay, where you can hear the cracking sound of ice breaking up.

THEY’RE ON A
peninsula, a solid area of land sticking out into the water, making the coastline less even. Huge boulders lying on top of each other, a jigsaw with edges that don’t fit together properly. There are only two trees on the entire peninsula, pines, not very tall, with branches that are darker at the bottom from the moisture trapped there as the snow rapidly melts.

Drevviken Lake is almost three hundred metres across. Next summer Leo will swim all the way from one side to the other. He tried last year.
He swam as far as the middle one evening when the surface of the water was smooth. And he would have made it. He’s sure of it. But he turned round because Felix and Vincent were screaming from the top of a stone slab so loudly it echoed off the bluffs, telling him to hurry back because he’d just eaten and he’d sink like a stone if he kept swimming. He wonders sometimes if that’s really what would happen; it’s deep out there.

It only takes half an hour by boat to get from here to the beaches of Sköndal, where his grandparents live. Maybe when he’s bigger he could swim all the way to their house some time, if he sticks close to land where the waves are smaller and he doesn’t eat beforehand, and if he has some dry clothes tied onto his back in a plastic bag.

Pappa is sitting under one of the pine trees swallowing loudly. When Pappa makes a noise, at least you know where he is and what he’s up to. It’s when he doesn’t make any noise, that’s when you feel your whole body preparing.

The second blackcurrant bottle is almost empty now, a few drops more and then all gone, and Pappa puts it down on the ground. It rolls down the embankment towards the ice and the thin strip of meltwater that has appeared along the shore.

‘Pick up your lolly sticks.’

Leo searches the ground for lolly sticks dropped into the wilted grass and brown leaves. They’ve eaten so many that his stomach still feels bloated.

‘Every single one! And then come here. Holding your sticks.’

They count to eleven, and then walk over to the two pines, and Pappa stretches out his hand.

‘Give them to me.’

They’re supposed to sit around him, like three Indians around their chief.

‘Good. Now, you each take one back.’

‘One each?’

‘One stick for each of you.’

They grab them and sit down as before, holding three lolly sticks, waiting.

‘Now you’re going to break them.’

They all hear what Pappa said, but they don’t understand him.

‘In the middle. Break them.’

Break it. Take it apart. A lolly stick?

‘Leo?’

Pappa’s voice is impatient, annoyed – the tone that means anything can happen.

Breathe in, breathe out.

The lolly stick lies like a bridge between Leo’s hands, and he pushes on it, breaking it into pieces. So easy.

Felix then does the same thing as Leo – the two ends, one in each hand. It hurts as the stick presses against the skin and bones. Again. Again.

‘Felix?’

Felix presses again, doesn’t pay attention to the pain as the edges dig in deep. And it breaks. Soft ribs protrude like antennae from each fractured edge.

‘Vincent?’

A three-year-old body with three-year-old legs on his way to the water, the wind in his thin hair, he gets down on his knees and picks up something from the shore, then comes back with a stone that dwarfs his hands. He puts the lolly stick on the uneven surface of the bank. Three-year-old arms high above his head, he brings the stone down hard on the stick. He repeats this several times.

It begins to splinter, at least on one edge.

‘How did it go?’

They’re gathered in a ring, and Leo and Felix hold out the two pieces of their lolly sticks.

‘They’re broken?’

‘Yes.’

‘Completely?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good. Now, Leo, you’re the strongest. Here. You take these five sticks from me. Break them in half. At the same time.’

‘With my hands?’

‘Just like you did before.’

He looks at Pappa, who has finally stopped trembling inside. He’s going somewhere with this but won’t say where.

Five lolly sticks. A much thicker bridge between his hands. Leo strains his shoulders, arms, fingers. And he can’t do it. The palms of his hands are sore from trying to break stick after stick, and from the resistance of five of them.

He just can’t do it.

‘I …’

He doesn’t dare look at Pappa. He can’t look into those eyes, that have the same stare Pappa used on the blond curly-haired parasite and his long-haired buddy outside the shopping centre.

‘… can’t do it.’

Five thin sticks. Leo drops them and they bounce off the rock. He closes his eyes. Pappa’s hand touches him, and it doesn’t feel angry, it just rests lightly on his shoulder.

‘That, boys, is our family. Our
clan
.’

Pappa picks up five sticks, slowly holding each stick up one at a time in front of their faces.

‘This stick is Vincent. This is Felix. And this one is Leo. And … Mamma. And … Pappa.’

Then he bundles up all the sticks.

‘A clan always sticks together.’

The sticks now lie between his own huge hands.

Vincent. Felix. Leo. Mamma. Pappa.

‘
We
are a clan.
You
are
my
clan.’

And he tries to break them, several times, without success. Not even he can do it.

‘If a clan can
stick together
, it will never break. Sometimes Mamma doesn’t understand that. She doesn’t understand what real solidarity is.’

They’re sitting close to each other now. His breath smells like the wine in those squash bottles.

‘A clan is small – but it can never be destroyed. A clan has a leader who leads – and who will hand over responsibility to the next leader. Do you understand?’

They all nod at Pappa, who is watching them. He is mostly looking at Leo.

‘Do
you
understand that, Leo?’

Pappa’s eyes are the same as in the lift. Only now there’s no mirror in between them.

‘Even large armies have tried to crush small clans but haven’t succeeded – because a clan is a family that always supports each other!’

He looks at them, and they realise that he’s said something important.

And they try to respond.

‘Like … Indians?’ suggests Felix.

‘No! No, no, no! Indian tribes are like … just ordinary communities, I’m talking about clans, family ties, that … like Genghis Khan. Or, like the Cossacks.’

Pappa rises and wobbles slightly on the rock.

‘The Cossacks have no country … they have only their family and their friends. They’re nomads with no homeland – they can go anywhere because they will always have each other.’

He crosses his arms over his chest with one hand on each shoulder, sinking down with legs bent like a frog, and starts kicking, throwing up one leg at a time, and now he’s not a frog any more, he’s more like a grasshopper, and he sings something that sounds like
kalinka
. He kicks until he stumbles and is no longer a Cossack, his huge body falling backwards towards the rocks, and he hits his head, but laughs out loud in a way he rarely does.

‘In a clan,
a real clan
, we never hurt each other.’

After a while he sits up again.

‘In
a real clan
we never snitch on each other.’

The smell of wine on his breath mingles with the smell of sweat from his tight work shirt.

‘In
a real clan
we always protect each other.’

Leo knows it’s probably not the case, but still it feels as if Pappa is speaking only to him.

‘Otherwise … we’ll lose everything.’

THEY STAYED THERE
for a long time, with Pappa alternating between sitting and lying on the bank. Leo had always thought it was strange that Pappa could dance and sing
kalinka
one minute and then retreat into himself the next. And when he withdrew he would say things that Leo didn’t understand, about when he was little and when he grew up and came to Sweden.

They walk one by one in a long line down the narrow woodland path. The afternoon is a little colder, and Leo hugs the quilted jacket more tightly around his body. They’re not moving very fast, even after Vincent stops abruptly with his head tilted pleadingly, and Leo agrees to carry him. Pappa is at the back of the line, singing something that doesn’t have
any words. He’s crept out of himself again and the silence has not returned, not once during their whole walk back along Drevviken Lake, through the woods, past the football pitch and the field and the school and all the way to their front door.

There’s always another bottle.

The wine rack under the sink is empty, but behind it there is one more, the one that is always kept there so they’ll never run out. Pappa takes the bottle and heads for the bedroom, lies down on the unmade bed, and Leo waits until he’s asleep to close the door. It’s important for Pappa to go to sleep, for the calm to return, so they don’t have to feel on edge for a while.