The Family Clause

by Jonas Hassen Khemiri

  The grandfather orders his usual pizza and sits down at his usual table. There are people the grandfather recognises at the other tables, but they don’t meet his eye. One man has a neck tattoo, another a leather waistcoat with embroidered lettering on it.

  The man behind the counter asks the grandfather whether he would like a beer while he waits. The grandfather says no. He knows all too well that those beers aren’t free. The man says it in a tone that suggests the beer is on him, but the father fell for that bluff once and refuses to fall for it again. When his pizza is ready, he grabs the steaming hot box. Frida helps him with the door. See you tomorrow, says the man behind the counter.

  In the stairwell outside the apartment, he puts the pizza box on the floor in order to pull out his keyring. He weighs the keys in his hand. These are his keys. He paid to have them made. The old keys went missing, and the son refused to have new copies made for him. He just handed over his keyring and told him to go to a locksmith. Where is the locksmith? They’re all over the place, the son said. Can’t you do it? the grandfather asked. Why? said the son. I’m so tired, the grandfather said. I don’t have the energy. Dad, said the son. I’ve got three balance sheets that need to be finished before the end of the week. I need to find someone to renovate our apartment. My girlfriend is going to a conference. This week is going to be crazy, so I’d really appreciate it if you could go to a locksmith and sort it out yourself. Could you do that? The grandfather nodded. He found a locksmith. He had copies made. And, since he was the one who paid for them, the keys are his. No son can suddenly turn around, several years later, and announce that he has to hand them over.

  The father fetches a pair of scissors and cuts up his pizza in front of the TV. He tries to concentrate on the plot of the Friday-night British crime thriller, but the people all look the same. The police look like thieves. It’s raining non-stop. Everyone is wearing coats and concerned expressions. His thoughts keep drifting back to the son and their conversation. His son. The man who looks like a son, but who in actual fact is a snake. How can he sit there and tell his beloved father to go to hell, right in front of his grandchildren? How did he become so cold? When did he transform into a robot who puts his money and career ahead of his own dear father? Unbelievable. The son is a disgrace. A non-son. The son is a spoiled brat who has never had to fight for anything in his life. An embarrassing second-rater who invariably blames his failings on others. All his life, he has viewed the world through a lens that convinces him that everything bad is down to something beyond his control. When the son was young, it was racism. He didn’t get a work experience place at Vivo. Vivo are racist, said the son. He got top marks in every subject but music. The music teacher is racist, said the son. He was given his fifth foul in a basketball game after elbowing the opposing team’s centre in the head. The referee is racist, said the son. The weather was bad the evening he and his friends were planning to go to the outdoor cinema in Djurgården. What racist weather, said the father. Very funny, said the son, who, despite having the lightest skin on the basketball team, was number one at feeling discriminated against.

  He had discovered music while he was in high school, and he never went anywhere without his headphones. Once, the father had hidden the headphones to see how long he would spend looking for them. For half an hour he stomped around the flat. Go to school without your headphones, said the father. I can’t, said the son. Why not? said the father. I don’t know, said the son. I just can’t. I need them. Along with a couple of friends from the basketball team, the son started making music at the youth centre. The only problem was that it wasn’t music they made, it was nothing but drums and talking. They occasionally stole samples from the father’s old records; sometimes they made a song by taking an instrumental version of another song. There was no creativity to any of it, no melodies, no choruses, just swearing, sirens and lyrics that talked about keeping it real, never going mainstream, staying underground, because the son was convinced that the big commercial record labels were the root of all evil.

  Then came the divorce. The father and the children had sporadic contact at first. Then no contact at all. The son got together with a freckled girl who taught him about feminism, and when the father and son re-established contact, male power was suddenly responsible for everything bad in the world. It was because of men that violent porn existed, ditto gang rape, advertising campaigns featuring beautiful women, high-heeled shoes and ladies’ bikes. But the world is fantastic, said the father. Or your world, in any case. Because you have no idea what the real world is like. You’ve never hidden beneath a coffee table while the security services pounded on the door. You’ve never had an uncle who set himself on fire in prison. You’ve never felt real hunger, real worry, real fear. What would you know about that? said the son.

  The father moved abroad and the son took over his apartment, without any kind of transfer fee. The only condition was that the son would take care of the father’s mail. And that the father would have somewhere to stay whenever he came home. The son studied economics at a prestigious university. His classmates moved abroad, they became management consultants in London, they launched online start-ups in Berlin. But the son chose accountancy as his specialism, because it was the simplest and most secure. He found his office through two philosophers who ran a publishing house and bookshop. One of the philosophers had been part of the leftist movement during the seventies; the other had been arrested after the EU summit protests in Gothenburg and spent several months in prison for inciting riots or violence against civil servants, or maybe it was against police horses, the father wasn’t sure, but for several years their book warehouse was on the other side of the wall to the son’s office, and during that time it wasn’t racism or record labels or male power that was the root of all evil, it was capitalism with a big C, the son claimed. But you’re an economist? the father said with a shake of his head. A reluctant economist, the son said.

  My son’s brain only has room for one thought at a time, thinks the father who is now a grandfather. Everything is always someone else’s fault, and that usually means the father’s. He is sitting in front of the TV. He has eaten two of the Four Seasons. The rest of the year can be lunch tomorrow. He gets up and carries the pizza box into the kitchen. On his way, he manages to knock over a pile of books in the hallway. He leaves them where they are. It isn’t his fault that his son has filled the office with so much junk he can barely breathe.

  * * *

  A girlfriend who is a mother who is a union lawyer jogs to the metro station in order not to be late for their bizarrely early dinner. Though the working day is over, she continues to work, skimming through the Labour Court’s ruling on a port company that has been ordered to pay out for breaking a collective agreement, and reading a colleague’s notes ahead of next week’s attempts at negotiation with the Police Authority. Three police officers have sued their employer for being banned from running their own private businesses: the bomb technician wants to teach safe and efficient driving; the detective wants to run a business filming and photographing golf courses with a drone; the investigator from the family violence unit arranges school talks about the dangers of the internet. The Police Authority’s argument is that the officers’ sidelines may damage public confidence in the police as a force. Through their legal representative, the union argues the opposite. She is the police union’s legal representative. Her name is on the homepage. She has her own business cards. Her own phone extension. She has a secretary who knows exactly what kind of coffee she likes before lunch (a double Americano with frothed oat milk), what kind of herbal tea she likes after lunch (camomile) and what kind of sweets she wants when she works late (a wine gum and liquorice mix). She has older colleagues who come to her for advice and a boss who has praised her work on several occasions during their Friday meetings. She is paid a wage six times the size of her mother’s pension. And yet there are occasions when she still doubts whether all of this is real. W
hether it’s actually happening. From time to time, when she first got the job, she went onto the union homepage just to look at her name beneath the staff tab. There were the secretaries. The head of security. The administrative team. And there, beneath the lawyers heading, in bold: her first and last name.

  She was the first person in her family to go to university. Her parents had fought their way here, leaving their homelands behind; they were brought over in buses because the factories were short of workers. Her father worked for Volvo, then her mother got a job there, too, at the same factory, on almost the same wage. They stayed there until they retired, and neither had ever considered driving anything but a Volvo. When the daughter graduated from high school, her parents took her out to a restaurant where the waiting staff wore matching uniforms and the tables had flowers and creamy white tablecloths. The mother wore the same clothes she had worn at the daughter’s confirmation. The father informed the waiter that it was his daughter’s birthday, which was almost true, just that her birthday had been a month or so earlier. When the waiter brought her an ice-cream dessert with candles, the father waved him over and asked whether it was included or had to be paid for before the daughter was allowed to blow them out. You’re grown up now, said the father, trying to hold back the tears. You’re free to do whatever you want with your life, said the mother. I’m thinking about taking a gap year, she said. Hmm, said the mother. Are you going to start taking drugs as well? asked the father. It’s entirely up to you what you decide to study, said the mother. Doctor or engineer, said the father. The choice is yours.

  The daughter who was not yet a mother chose law. She moved into a student flat in Stockholm. She spent four and a half years dressing up. She reduced the amount of makeup she wore by three-quarters. She threw away all clothes with visible logos. She tamed her tongue until the dialect and swear words disappeared. Tracksuit bottoms, trainers and hoodies became things she only ever wore to work out. She bought black shoes and a brown coat second hand and went to house parties in various student flats, places where people got drunk on boxed wine and slurred about structures and paradigms and cultural fields and contexts. She fucked a postgraduate linguistics student. She was together with a club promoter gender studies student for six months. She had an open relationship with a girl who studied graphic design and stripped in burlesque clubs. She spent a year and seven months with a man who studied systems science. All of her partners were different, and yet they were also exactly the same. Their parents looked alike. They had the same names. Similar places in the countryside. They were equally obsessed with barbecues. They listened to radio documentaries about global warming. They referenced long lists of films, book trilogies, old actors, house clubs, sports stars and singer-songwriters she had never even heard of. As a rule, she just smiled and nodded, because every time she accidentally revealed that she wasn’t entirely sure who Anders Järryd or Sven Delblanc or Majgull Axelsson or Twostep Circle or SAG-gruppen were, they all just looked at her and cocked their heads. Something pitying appeared in their eyes. They said that it wasn’t at all strange not to know about these things, but they said it in a tone that suggested she had just revealed that she believed Suriname was a type of delicacy and that TBC was a TV channel.

  When her parents visited Stockholm, she took them to see her student flat. She introduced them to everyone who was awake. She didn’t really know why. Maybe because she wanted to show both her friends and her parents how far she’d come. Her friends said that her parents were super nice, so genuine, it was great to finally meet them. Her parents said that her friends should spend more time on cleaning their rooms, cutting their hair and shaving, and less on being hungover.

  After she graduated, she got a job at Sweden’s biggest firm dealing in employment law. She never understood what her colleagues meant when they warned her about the heavy workload. It was the first time she had worked in a job that gave her energy, rather than the other way around. Before long, she stopped trying to blend in. Whenever she worked late, she put on the clothes she felt comfortable in: tracksuit bottoms, hoodies and sliders. She played loud hip-hop in order to focus before important negotiations. The more she was herself, the easier it became to talk to people who weren’t lawyers; ordinary people who had been forced to work fourteen-hour days in restaurant kitchens with no ventilation, or who had been lured over from Cambodia with the offer of a logging job, but who had instead been forced to pick berries and live in a shed and had never been paid the agreed wage. She was made for this. The only problem was that anything not related to work felt colourless and unimportant in comparison.

  At nine minutes past five, she opens the lift door and turns the key in the lock. She steps over the mountain of shoes, hangs her coat on a hanger that is already holding another coat, throws her scarf onto the overfull hat shelf, and turns and holds out her arms to the children who come running from the living room. Mummy! the four-year-old shouts, running straight into her arms. Mooo, the one-year-old shouts, trying to climb up her legs. Hi, honey, she hears from the kitchen. Delays on the red line? She doesn’t rise to the bait. She has no intention of letting this Friday evening end in an argument. It’s perfectly natural that he is looking for conflict. He’s been alone with the kids all day. He hasn’t been able to take out his frustration on them, which means he needs to take it out on her. Though did she do that when she was on maternity leave? Did she act like a child or like an adult? She drops it. She refocuses. She picks up her children and wanders into the kitchen. The four-year-old tries to push away the one-year-old, the one-year-old tries to hit the four-year-old in the face with a plastic cup. Let’s see what yummy things your wonderful daddy has been cooking, says the mother. Sausage stroganoff, says the father. But with halloumi instead of sausage. She puts the children into their chairs and moves them apart to avoid any fighting.

  The hob is flecked with red. The worktop is covered in dirty chopping boards, sticky bowls, empty cans and Hama bead boards that haven’t yet been ironed. Hey, love, she says. Hi, he says. They kiss. A brief kiss at the very tip of their lips. A pensioners’ kiss. A confirmation camp kiss. When did we stop kissing one another? the girlfriend wonders as she heads over to the sink to wash away the germs from public transport.

  They survive dinner. They survive bedtime. The mother emerges from the bedroom and glances at the clock. They have two hours to themselves. They can enjoy their evening tea, watch a film, have sex, give each other massages, all at the same time. The one thing she doesn’t want is for them to start arguing. But when she gets back to the kitchen, he is in a mood. She can tell right away. He is opening and closing the cupboards with slightly too much force. He changes the bin bag beneath the sink with a demonstrative sigh. You want tea? he asks in that tone of voice that makes it seem like an extreme sacrifice to reach out and put the kettle on.

  What has she done to deserve this? Did she take too long putting the one-year-old to bed? Was she in the bathroom for too long? Did she forget to throw away an empty milk carton? Has she unwittingly managed to cheat on him with Sebastian from work? Yes please, she says. What kind? he asks. There it is again. Not the words, but the way he says them. That voice. He sounds like he has already asked her the same question hundreds of times, and she has replied the same way every time: Forget it, you fucking idiot. Camomile, she says. Without a word, he takes out two teacups and two teabags. Are you in a mood? she asks, hating herself for saying it, because she has promised herself she’ll stop taking emotional responsibility for this idiot. Managing his moods is his responsibility, not hers. But she’s said it now, and he has the chance to mull over his answer, to pause, think and say: not at all. Just a bit tired. Long day. She knows she is supposed to ask the question. She is supposed to ask whether it was hard work having both kids at home. But she doesn’t want to. She took almost all of the leave when their daughter was born. She works full-time. She hasn’t done anything wrong. When she fails to ask, he tells her anyway. About the ca
r ride to the soft play centre, the one-year-old doing a poo in the car seat, the four-year-old helping to find a bin in the car park. The staff who ignored them at first, the slide all three of them went down. He takes his time. Five, possibly ten minutes. And, like always when he is telling her something, the whole thing becomes a demonstration of what a fantastic father he is. She is supposed to applaud him, but her hands are tired. He says that they bought some fruit in the square afterwards, and then they went to get petrol and the four-year-old suddenly needed to pee, so they had to pull over and she nods and listens and thinks about how interested he was in all of the details when she was on maternity leave. Being on paternity leave is just so exhausting, he says, looking weary. It’s unbelievable. I don’t know how I’m going to manage this. Honey, she says, and she can hear the chill in her voice. Honey, she tries again, with a slightly lighter tone this time. How long have you been doing it now? Four months? Try spending a solid eleven months at home. I don’t know how you did it, he says with a shake of his head.