The Father: Made in Sweden Part I (64 page)

‘Leo …?’

He grabbed hold of Leo’s outstretched arm and heaved himself up with difficulty, until his bare feet were on the floor.

‘How the hell did you get in here?’

‘What are you up to, Dad? Fighting with your landlord, driving drunk into his fence, telling him to go to hell, threatening him. What if he’d called the police? What if the fucking cops came in? You’re lying in here like a knocked-out walrus, while Steve gives out the spare key, and they come in here, look around this pigsty and find … this.’

He threw the black folder into Ivan’s lap.

‘The path from you to me isn’t very far, is it? If they found this, don’t you … here, in the home of a father with three sons! “Let’s check them out.”’

Ivan looked at the folder of cuttings, but he didn’t throw it, he carefully put it on the bed.

‘You’d be handing over your own sons! Your fucking boozing would ruin everything again!’

He pulled down the blankets and forced apart the curtains. More light. Ivan ducked, as if trying to get away from it.

‘Look at me, Dad, and listen. Because I’m here to offer you a job.’

‘I have a job.’

‘Bullshit. I’ve just given six thousand kronor to Steve out there. And he said you owe him even more.’

He waited while the tired eyes stopped blinking and the daylight sank in.

‘A job offer. Because I’m a man short.’

Ivan was still squinting as he got up and silently left the room, with some difficulty.

‘So you’re a coward. You’re not man enough for it.’

Leo followed him.

‘You have to fill up on wine just to dare to go to Grandma’s house and throw a Molotov cocktail.’

‘Yes. That may be me. But I don’t snitch.’

‘I didn’t snitch on you!’

‘You—’

‘I was ten years old. And this … this doesn’t work any more. So knock it off.’

Piles of newspapers on the floor. Heaps of food scraps on the table.
The image of a father. Ivan pulled his hand through his disorderly hair and looked at his son.

‘If you keep on with this, Leo, they’ll hunt you down like an animal. They won’t let you go on like this for ever! There are pigs who sit around in cars, but there are others who have the same weapons that you do. They’re waiting for you to make a mistake, and then … then they’ll put a bullet in you. You can’t beat them – you can’t.’

‘I’m doing this with or without you.’

His father had sat down on the worn-out sofa. He looked almost small.

‘Do you need me?’

‘Are you in?’

‘Do you need me or not?’

‘We need you.’

We need you. Leo had said it. His three sons needed him.

‘I’m in.’

Leo nodded, then pulled down the thick blanket that hung in front of the kitchen window, dust dancing in the bright light.

‘Not another drop from now on.’

HE COULDN’T REMEMBER
the last time he’d wrapped a present, if he’d ever done so before. She’d always been the one who wrapped their Christmas gifts, late at night, while their three expectant sons slept.

Ivan lifted the bulky parcel, weighed it in his hand. Red glossy paper, then gold ribbon. The scissors lay on the table, and he pulled the sharp edge along the flat, hard plastic surface of the ribbon, as Britt-Marie used to, so it would twist into small curls which she arranged around the perfectly tight crisscrossed ribbons until the whole thing looked like a rhododendron in bloom. It didn’t work now. No matter which way he pulled the scissors or tried to bunch it up, it turned into spiky, thorny bushes.

The label should sit on top, in the middle, near the golden bushes. He attached it firmly, then used a blue ballpoint pen whose ink wouldn’t take, so he switched to black, which worked better.

He carried the parcel from the kitchen table into the narrow entrance hall and put it down next to the others, near the front door.

An empty Christmas present next to other empty Christmas presents.

He was about to go back and wrap a new parcel, but stopped. He was shaking again. It found its way through his dry skin. And he had to stand still until it subsided a bit, he didn’t want them to see it.

It would get worse by tonight. Even worse tomorrow. Getting the alcohol out of his body was like forcing out another person who’d moved inside him, who’d made himself at home, and who under no conditions wanted to move out again.

He had shaken less this morning. He’d stood in his own bathroom and pulled his hand over the tight, freshly shaven skin. His eyes looked so watery and small, as if hiding, not wanting to see the curly, grey hair on the sides of his head, the nose that was bigger now than when he’d come to Sweden.

He could feel stabbing pains lower down in his body. All the time. Cruel stabs in his stomach and side where he imagined his liver sat, behind where his kidney should be. He’d drunk wine every day and night, for how long he had no idea, but he knew it would take at least three days before his nerves returned to anything resembling normal. The fucking stabbing he could live with. But to rob a bank while this poison was leaving his body, while his nerves slipped out through his dry skin – that he feared.

There was a way. To drink. Not very much, just enough that the devil inside would leave a little more slowly, without making so much damned noise. To level out the anxiety. A glass of wine every other hour. No one would notice.

But he’d promised his eldest son not to touch a drop. And so he’d left the razor and the bathroom without stopping by the half-full bottle on the cutting board. He had gone straight into the bedroom with that stabbing in his side, to a worn brown leather suitcase with equally worn-out handles, and packed two pairs of jeans, two pairs of new underpants, two pairs of socks, two shirts and a light grey suit. He hadn’t known then if he would be allowed to stay here at Leo’s house. Maybe they’d celebrate Christmas here. Ivan, Leo, Felix, Vincent. First rob a bank together. And then celebrate Christmas.

He held out his hands to make sure they’d stopped shaking. He adjusted the empty parcel, which lay on top of the others, and went back into the kitchen again, to the table with the wrapping paper and ribbons and tape and gift tags.

‘And this time, Dad, do you know who this is for?’ asked Leo, who sat opposite Anneli. Each had their own wrapped-up present in front of them.

‘M-E-R-R-Y C-H-R-I-S-T-M-A-S D-A-D …’

He spelled what he was writing aloud.

‘… F-R-O-M Y-O-U-R S-O-N L-E-O.’

This empty parcel was significantly smaller than the one Ivan had taken out into the hall, and Leo dropped it into the brown hessian sack along with the others.

‘A happy family, Dad,’ said Leo. ‘Doing the things happy families do, wrapping presents and celebrating Christmas with the relatives. You didn’t expect that, did you?’

His hands shook on the table, but no one noticed. He grabbed the glass of cold water next to him and drank, without spilling any of it. There were two empty chairs at the table – but they weren’t here yet.

He’d left his basement in Ösmo for this house in Tumba, knocked on the front door. There were bells hanging on it, which sounded brittle and beautiful as they vibrated. Leo had opened the door, and Ivan had put his leather bag on the hall floor and hung up his black coat. He’d felt Leo’s hand on his shoulder, some kind of welcome, and for a moment he considered hugging him, but changed his mind. A woman had approached him, humming the Christmas carol that flowed out of the speakers on the wall. He hadn’t even known that his eldest son lived with anyone. He had held out his hand and said hello to this Anneli, who told him he was very welcome, and then took him on a tour of their Christmas-decorated house. It was only when they got to the guest room that he realised she was involved. Leo had stood by the sofa bed waiting for them, and together they had revealed the room under the floor. He’d climbed down to the missing weapons he’d only seen on TV, but it wasn’t really the weapons he was struck by – it was the ingenious design, and he stayed down there asking questions as one builder to another. For a moment he felt at ease. Together again. Father and son. And he had wanted to ask then:
When are Felix and Vincent getting here?

It had been dark outside the kitchen window when they started wrapping,
but there had been glimmers of light from the last of the rush-hour traffic; now only the occasional car temporarily interrupted the silence.

They took away the cardboard and paper as Leo pulled down the blinds and unfurled a map so big that it hung over the edges of the table like a tablecloth. Ivan tried to interpret it, read where they were going to strike tomorrow: one place in the middle called Heby and another to the left called Sala. Small towns he’d heard of but never visited. He guessed they lay a hundred kilometres or so northwest of Stockholm.

There was a knock on the door.

Ivan suddenly became aware how tense he was, how he held the air in his chest and his heart started to pound, as if after all these years he’d changed his mind and didn’t want to meet them.

He sat there and wriggled in his chair, while Leo went into the hall. It was possible to hear the door handle turning and the brittle jingle of bells, just like when he’d arrived a few hours earlier. Then someone laughed, and hands pounded on backs.

They’re hugging each other. My sons.

And God in hell how I need a drink.

A voice that might belong to someone in their twenties, though it was a little higher than he had expected – neither he nor Leo talked like that. Ivan strained to listen. Could it be Felix? Or Vincent? He’d be quite big by now too.

He walked towards the hall. That couldn’t be Felix, could it? He had been darker and more like his father – this guy didn’t have anything of Ivan in him. Nor was it Vincent – Ivan thought he might recognise him, if only vaguely.

‘Hello … I’m Jasper.’

Not even the hands seemed right. His boys’ hands were thicker; these were fine-boned and were enveloped by his own hands.

‘Ivan.’

‘I know. I grew up in Skogås. Used to spend a lot of time at your house, remember?’

Ivan shook his head.

‘Well, I remember you. Damn, you cut off some guy’s hair in the pizzeria, and then you gave them a beating one after the other.’

The man whose hands didn’t belong to either of his sons went into the kitchen. It was clear he’d been here before, and his voice seemed elated as he said,
Hello Anneli, look who’s here
. And she laughed, but it
wasn’t genuine, he could hear it, she was laughing because she thought she had to.

Ivan stayed in the hall. He didn’t want to leave it, not yet. Maybe more people would come? He took a last glance at the door as Leo pulled it shut, and then gazed out through the narrow window instead.

No. No one else was coming.

‘So he’s part of this too?’

‘He has been from the beginning.’

The map still lay on the kitchen table. Leo took up two 10-kronor coins from his pocket and placed them on the spot marking the town called Heby.

‘The bank’s here. And here, about two kilometres away, is the police station, manned by no more than one or two cops half the week. The day before Christmas Eve, they’ll be off home around this time.’

Leo tapped one of the coins on the map and the table.

‘Pappa? Are you following me? You stand here, outside the bank, easily visible. Anyone approaching needs to know that we’re armed.’

He pushed the golden coin that indicated the police station towards the bank.

‘The cops shouldn’t be there. But if they do get the idea to intervene, it’s your job, Pappa, to change their minds. A shot in the air. If it’s not enough – a shot over their heads. If that’s not enough, put as many shots as you need in the bonnet of their car. And if that still doesn’t deter them, you’ll have to protect yourself and Anneli, who will be in the car. Pappa, look at me!
If
you have to shoot – aim for the body.’

The two coins were now joined by a slightly larger silver 5-kronor coin, which Leo placed on the map about two kilometres north, next to a road that cut through one of the green forested areas.

‘We’ll leave the bank and drive the first getaway car here.’

Ivan looked at the map and at Leo’s hands, pointing and moving the coins. But he wasn’t paying attention. Two vacant seats. They hadn’t come.

‘Are you listening, Pappa? We cover the car and move through the forest … here. Two hundred metres … to here, to a car park, and to the second car, which is loaded with Christmas presents and Christmas food. From the stolen car to the rented car. And when we’re inside, we change into our Christmas clothes – the happy family heading home to celebrate Christmas.’

‘Is it just us? Us … four?’

‘It’s just
one
bank. We don’t need anyone else.’

‘Felix? And Vincent? Where are they?’

He looked back and forth several times between the empty chairs and Leo, who just sat there in silence. Then after a while he appealed to that Jasper fellow and the woman Anneli. None of them responded.

‘Look here, Dad.’

The gun had been sitting in a bag on the floor, wrapped in a bath towel. Not the kind he’d used during his own military service over thirty years ago, but the same principle, and Leo started to disassemble it into four parts.

‘A butt. A stock. And here … Dad, the mechanism, and inside the mechanism … here, the bolt. You move it a quarter turn and pull it out. Now you. Assemble it. And then we’ll go through how you use it.’

Four parts in front of him on the table. He didn’t want to touch them, or put them together, if he did it would become a deadly weapon. He’d known what his sons were doing, but hadn’t quite understood the implications.
He
was the one who was to hurt people.

‘Pappa? You have to know this, inside out. Just like when you taught me how to punch with my whole body, remember?’

His hands held on tight to his jeans. If he let go, it would be clear he couldn’t keep them steady. He studied the parts; after a while he picked up the bolt and put it into the mechanism, turned it, but couldn’t get it to click like it should. He could feel them standing around the table, watching him. He put it back in again, turned it, looked for parts to fasten to it and was suddenly overcome by doubt – not their doubt, but the kind that came from within and demanded that he drop the weapon and tell them that this was madness.