The princess of Burundi (6 page)

The driver of the tractor glanced at him as he drove past. Lennart didn’t care what he thought. It was a long time since he had cared.
He can go ahead and think I’m crazy
.

One time they had surprised Teodor. It was for his birthday, an even year, one of the parents must have told them. He was scared of the dark and the assembled kids heard his voice in the distance through the winding basement passage. He sang to calm his nerves. “Seven lonely nights I’ve been waiting for you…” came echoing toward them, amplified by the narrow passage, the many dark corners and nooks. When he rounded the bike storage the neighborhood kids started to sing and Teodor stiffened with fear until he understood. He listened to their rendition of “Happy Birthday” with tears in his eyes. These were his kids, he had seen them grow up, rascals he had lectured and played Ping-Pong with, the ones whose soccer ball he nabbed when they played on the soft, wet grass, and the ones he juggled with in the boiler room.

Ten boys and a janitor in a basement. So long ago. John and his childhood. Back then before the future was set. Lennart took a deep breath. The cold air filled his lungs and he shivered. Had it always been fated that his brother would die young? It should have been he. He who had driven drunk so many times, drunk bad liquor, and hung out with drifters just living for the day. Not John, who had Berit and Justus, his fish, and those hands that had welded so many flawless seams.

He started to walk. It was no longer snowing so heavily, and a few stars could be seen between the clouds. The plow had now moved on to the south end of the square. It had stopped, and Lennart saw the young man pull out a Thermos, screw the cap off, and pour out some coffee.

When he passed the tractor he nodded and stopped as if on impulse. He walked over and knocked softly on the door. The guy in the tractor lowered the window about halfway.

“Hey there,” Lennart said. “Looks like you have quite a job.”

The young man nodded.

“You’re probably wondering what I’m doing here in the middle of the night.”

He stepped up onto the tractor so that his head was more on the same level as the driver’s. He felt the warmth of the cabin streaming toward him.

“My brother died yesterday. I’m a little down, as you can probably understand.”

“Damn,” the young man said and put his cup down on the dashboard.

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-three.”

Lennart didn’t know how to continue, but he knew he wanted to keep talking.

“How old was your brother?”

“He was older than you, but still. My little brother, you know.”

He looked down at his shoes, which were soaking wet.

“My little brother,” he repeated quietly.

Lennart looked at the guy for a short moment before nodding.

“I only have one cup.”

“That’s okay.”

He took the steaming mug from him. There was sugar in it but that didn’t matter. He drank some and then looked at the guy again.

“I was just looking in on my brother’s wife,” he said. “They have a kid about fourteen.”

“Was he sick, then?”

“No, murdered.”

The young man opened his eyes wide.

“Out in Libro, if you know where that is. Yeah, of course you do. That’s where the county dumps its snow.”

“That was your brother?”

Lennart drank the last of the coffee and handed back the mug.

“Tastes fucking good to drink something hot.”

But he shivered as if the cold had penetrated his core. The young man screwed the cap back on and shoved the Thermos into a bag behind his seat. The gesture reminded Lennart of something and he felt a sting of envy.

“Got to get home,” he said.

The young man looked out over the square.

“It’ll stop soon,” he said, “but it’s supposed to get colder.”

Lennart hesitated on the step.

“Take care of yourself,” he said. “Thanks for the coffee.”

He walked home slowly. The sweet taste in his mouth made him long for a beer. He picked up the pace. Through a window he saw a woman busying herself in the kitchen. She looked up and wiped the back of her hand against her brow as he was walking past. The next moment she went back to arranging Christmas decorations in the window.

It was almost two when Lennart came home. He turned on only the light over the stove, took some beers from the counter, and sat down at the kitchen table.

John had been dead for thirty hours. A murderer was still at large. For every second that ticked by, Lennart’s desire to kill the man who had murdered his brother grew.

He would check with the police to find out what they knew, if they were willing to say anything. He looked at the clock again. He should have started immediately, should have started making calls. For every minute, the injustice that his brother’s murderer was able to move and breathe freely was growing.

He got himself a pencil and piece of paper, chewed on the end of the pencil for a while, then scrawled the names of eight men. They were all men his own age, small-time crooks like himself. A few druggies, a blackmailer, moonshiners, and a dealer—all old friends from the Norrtälje institution.

The gang,
he thought when he looked over the list,
the ones that law-abiding folk went out of their way to avoid on the street, that they pretended not to see
.

He was going to stay sober and clear-minded. He would have all the time in the world to drink himself to death later.

Lennart opened a beer but had only a few sips before he left it on the table and walked into the living room. He had a one-bedroom apartment. He was proud of the fact that he had managed to keep his crib all these years. Sure, the neighbors had complained from time to time, and sometimes the rental agreement hung in the balance.

There were some photographs on a shelf. He took down one of them and looked at it for a long time. Uncle Eugene, John, and himself on a fishing trip. He couldn’t remember who had taken the picture. John held up a pike and looked happy, while he himself was serious. Not unhappy, but serious. Eugene looked content as always.

More fun than a barrel of monkeys, Aina had said about her brother. Lennart would remember that Saturday for a long time, his mother with one hand on Eugene’s neck and the other on Albin’s. They were sitting at the kitchen table. She had put out some cold cuts, Eugene was talking away in his usual manner, and she was on her way to the pantry when she paused and touched the two men she loved most. Her hands rested there for maybe ten seconds while she made that comment after something her brother had said. Lennart remembered looking at his father, who appeared relaxed like he always did after a shot and a beer. He seemed not to notice her hand, at least he didn’t remark on it, pull away, or look embarrassed.

How old had he himself been when the picture was taken? Maybe fourteen. It was about then that things had changed. No more fishing trips. Lennart felt as if there were a tug-of-war inside him all the time. From time to time he could feel happy and at peace, like when they were up on the roof, he, John, and Teodor, after they had finished with the snow. Or when he was with Albin at the metalwork shop, the few times he was allowed there. There, Albin’s stutter was of no consequence. Nor was his tiredness. When Lennart was little he thought his father was tired from the stuttering, it looked so exhausting when the words wouldn’t come. But that tiredness was gone at the shop. He moved in a different way.

Lennart suddenly remembered how Albin’s face would sometimes contract as if suffering from a cramp. Was it pain or exhaustion? Was that why he fell? They had told him it was icy. Or had he jumped headfirst? No, his colleague had seen him slip, heard the cry or scream. Was he stuttering then as he fell helplessly? Was it a stuttering cry that echoed against the massive brick walls of the cathedral?

He must have screamed so loudly that it reached the archbishop. The top dog had to be notified so he would have time to prepare a place for Albin high above the roofs and spires he had clambered on.
He must be welding something up there in heaven,
Lennart thought. What else would he be doing? He needed to have something to do with his hands, hated being idle. Golden rooftops up there, or copper at the very least.

He suddenly missed the old man, as if his grief for John pulled the one for his father along with it.

“Only a little while longer,” he said aloud and struggled with his emotions.

He sat in the dark apartment, one hour, two, maybe three, nursing his grief. His lips and cheeks grew stiff and his back ached. He stayed up and seemed to relive the good times with John.

He pushed all the bad times away. Sure, he had wondered about the connections, been asked questions in school, at the child psychologist’s, at the police, in jail, at social services, at the unemployment center. They had all asked him about stuff. He had tried to find the threads. Now they converged at a snow dump in Libro, a place no one had ever thought about.

He knew there were no clear-cut answers. Life was a mixture of coincidence and hopes that often ran out in the sand. He had stopped wondering about it all a long time ago. He had chosen his path. And if he was the one who was in sole control of this decision—he had stopped asking himself about that a long time ago. That it had all gone wrong, gone to hell, too many times, he knew that. He didn’t blame anyone or anything anymore. Life was what it was.

The other life, the righteous life, was there like a reflector that gleamed momentarily as it caught the light. Of course he had tried. There was a time during the eighties when he had worked for a construction company. He had shoveled gravel and mulch, packed lunches, and developed muscles like never before in his life.

He had met people who had known Albin and slowly he developed another image of his father. Old construction workers talked admiringly of the knowledgeable old roofer, praise that Lennart absorbed. The collective memories of Albin’s great skill seemed to extend to his son a little.

Sure, there had been good times. And then John. His little bro. Dead. Murdered.

Berit cracked the door for the third time in half an hour, looking at Justus’s ruffled hair and the naked face that still bore traces of tears.

She closed the door but remained standing there with her hand on the doorknob.
How is this going to go?
she asked herself. The feeling of unreality lay like a mask over her face. Her legs were as heavy as if they were set in plaster casts and her arms felt like foreign outcroppings on a body that was hers and yet not. She moved, talked, and experienced her surroundings with full possession of all her senses but as if at a great distance from herself.

Justus had broken down. For several hours he had been shaking and crying and screaming. She had forced herself to be calm. Then he had eventually calmed down and, as if with the wave of a hand, sunk down into a corner of the sofa. Something strange came over his young face.

They had immediately become very hungry. Berit quickly cooked some macaroni, which they ate with cold Falu sausage and ketchup.

“Does it hurt to die?” That had been one of his questions.

How was she supposed to answer? She knew from that female police officer that John had been assaulted, but she didn’t want to hear any details.
It hurts, Justus,
she had thought, but in order to comfort him she told him that John had most likely not suffered.

He didn’t believe her. Why should he?

Her hand on the doorknob. Closed eyes.

“My John,” she whispered.

She had been sweating, but now she was cold and walked with stiff legs to the living room to get the blanket. She stood passively in the middle of the room, wrapped in the blanket, unable to do anything now that Justus had fallen asleep. Before, he had needed her. Now the minutes were ticking away and John became more and more dead. More distant.

She walked over to the window. The smell of the hyacinths almost choked her and she wanted to smash the window to get some air, fresh air.

It was snowing again. Suddenly she saw a movement. A man disappeared in between the buildings on the other side of the street. It was only a split second, but Berit was convinced that she had seen the figure before, the same dark green clothing and a cap. She stared down at the corner of the building where he had disappeared, but now all that could be seen were some footprints in the snow. She wondered if it was the same man she had seen while she was waiting for John. Then she had thought it was Harry’s brother who was helping him with the snow removal, but now she wasn’t sure.

Was it John appearing to her? Did he want to tell her something?

Ola Haver came home shortly before nine.

“I saw it on the news,” Rebecka said to him first thing.

She gave him a look over her shoulder. He hung his coat in the closet and felt the fatigue settle over him. From the kitchen he heard the continuous hacking of a knife against the cutting board.

He walked into the kitchen. Rebecka had her back to him and he felt drawn to her like metal shavings to a magnet.

“Hi,” he said and buried his face in her hair.

He felt her smile. She kept slicing and cutting.

“Do you know that in Spain women spend four hours working in the home a day and the men only forty-five minutes?”

“Have you been talking to Monica?”

“No, I read it in the paper. I had time for that in between the vacuuming, breast-feeding, and laundry,” she said with a laugh.

“Should I do something?” he said and put his arms around her body, grabbing her hands so that she had to stop cutting.

“It was a study involving several European countries,” she said, freeing herself from his grasp.

“How did Sweden do?”

“Better,” she said curtly.

He knew she wanted him to leave her alone so she could finish the herring salad or whatever it was, but he had trouble letting go of her body. He wanted to press up against her back and bottom.