‘Eli…’
Tuesday
10 November
Oskar did not go to school on Tuesday. He lay in his bed and listened to the sounds through the wall, wondered if they would find anything that would lead them to him. In the afternoon it grew quiet and they had still not come by.
At that point he got up, put his clothes on and walked over to Eli’s. The door to the apartment was sealed. No one was allowed in. While he stood there looking a police officer walked by on the stairs. But he was only a curious boy from the neighbourhood.
When the sun went down Oskar carried the boxes down into the basement and put an old rug over them. Would decide later what to do with them. If some thief decided to break into their storage unit he would hit the jackpot.
He sat in the darkness of the basement for a long time, thought about Eli, Tommy, the old guy. Eli had told him everything; that he hadn’t meant for things to turn out the way they did.
But Tommy was alive and would be fine. That’s what his mum had told Oskar’s mum. He was going to be coming home tomorrow.
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow Oskar would go back to school.
To Jonny, Tomas, to…
We’ll have to start training him again.
Jonny’s cold hard fingers across his cheeks. Pressing the soft flesh against his jaws until the corners of his mouth were unwillingly forced up.
Squeal like a pig.
Oskar interlaced his fingers, leaned his face against them, looked at the little hill that the rug over the boxes made. He got up, pulled the rug away and opened the box of money.
One thousand kronor notes, one hundred kronor notes all mixed up, a few bundles of banknotes. He dug around the notes until he found one of the plastic bottles. Then he went up to the apartment and got some matches.
A lone spotlight cast a cold, white glow onto the schoolyard. Outside its circle of light you could see the outlines of playground structures. The pingpong tables that were so cracked you couldn’t play on them with anything other than a tennis ball, were covered in slush.
A few rows of windows of the school were illuminated. Evening classes. For this reason one of the side doors was unlocked.
He made his way through the darkened corridors to his homeroom. Stood for a while looking at the desks. The classroom looked unreal at night like this; as if ghosts silently whispering were using it for their school, whatever that would look like.
He walked over to Jonny’s desk, opened the lid and doused T-red onto it. Tomas’ desk, same thing. He stood without moving for a second in front of Micke’s desk. Decided not to. Then he went and sat at his own desk. Letting it soak in, like you do with charcoal.
I’m a ghost. Booo…booo…
He opened the lid and took out his copy of Firestarter, smiled at the title and slipped it into his bag. The exercise book where he had written a story he liked. His favourite pen. They all went into the bag. Then he stood up, made a final round of the classroom and enjoyed simply being there. In peace.
Jonny’s desk gave off a chemical smell when he raised the lid again, took out the matches.
No, wait…
He went and got two rough-hewn wooden rulers from a shelf at the back of the classroom. Rigged up Jonny’s desk with one so it would stay open, Tomas’ with the other. Otherwise they would stop burning the moment he let the lids drop.
Two hungry prehistoric animals gaping for food. Dragons.
He lit one match, held it in his hand until the flame was large and clear. Then dropped it.
It fell from his hand, a yellow drop, and—
WHOOSH
Damn…
His eyes stung when a purple comet’s tail shot up out of the desk, licked his face. He sprang back; had expected it to burn like… charcoal, but the desk was fully lit, one big bonfire reaching up to the ceiling.
It was burning too much.
The fire danced, flickered across the classroom walls and a garland of large letters made of paper, hanging over Jonny’s desk, broke off and fell to the floor, the P and Q burning. The other half of the garland swung in a large arc and fell onto Tomas’ desk which immediately burst into flames with the same WHOOSH, a searing explosion.
Oskar ran from the classroom with his schoolbag bouncing on his hip.
What if the whole school…
When he reached the end of the corridor the bells started to ring. A metallic clatter that filled the building and it was only when he was well down the stairs that he realised it was the fire alarm.
Out in the schoolyard the large bell rang fiercely to assemble students who were not there, gathered up the school’s ghosts and followed Oskar halfway home.
Only when he reached the old Konsum grocery store and could no longer hear the bell did he relax. He walked calmly the rest of the way.
In the bathroom mirror he saw that the tops of his eyelashes were rolled up, singed. When he touched them with his finger they broke off.
Wednesday
11 November
Home from school. Headache. The phone rang around nine. Oskar didn’t answer. In the middle of the day he saw Tommy and his mum walk past outside the window. Tommy walked bent over, slowly. Like an old person. Oskar ducked down under the windowsill as they went by.
The phone rang every hour. Finally, at twelve o’clock he picked it up. ‘This is Oskar.’
‘Hi. My name is Bertil Svanberg and I am, as you may know, the principal of the school that you…’
He hung up. The phone rang again. Oskar stood there for a while, looking at the ringing phone, imagining the principal sitting in his chequered sports coat, fingers drumming on the desk, making faces. Then he put his clothes on and went down into the basement.
Picked at the puzzles, poked at the little white wooden box where the thousand pieces of the glass egg glittered. Eli had only taken a couple of thousand and the cube. He closed the lid of the puzzle box, opened the other, mixed up the rustling banknotes with his hand. Took a fistful of them, threw them on the ground. Pushed them down into his pockets. Took them out one by one, played The Boy with the Gold Pants until he grew tired of it. Twelve wrinkled thousand kronor and seven hundred kronor bills lay at his feet.
He gathered the thousand kronor notes into a pile and folded them up. Put the hundred kronor notes back, closed the box. Back in the apartment, found an envelope that he stuffed the money into. Sat with the envelope in his hand and wondered what he should do. Didn’t want to write, someone could recognise his handwriting.
The phone rang.
Stop it. Understand that I don’t exist any more.
Someone wanted to have a long talk with him. Someone wanted to ask him if he realised the gravity of what he had done, which he did. As did Jonny and Tomas probably. Quite well, in fact. Nothing more to talk about.
He walked over to his desk and took out his rubber letters and ink set. In the middle of the envelope he stamped a ‘T’ and an ‘O’. The first ‘M’ went askew, but the second one was straight, like the ‘Y’.
When he opened the door to Tommy’s building with the envelope in his coat pocket he was more nervous than he had been at school the night before. His heart thumping, he gingerly eased the envelope through the letter slot in Tommy’s door so no one would come to the door or catch sight of him through the window.
But no one came and when Oskar was back in his apartment he felt a little better. For a while. Then it sneaked up on him again.
I won’t…be here.
At three o’clock his mum came home, several hours earlier than usual. At that point Oskar was sitting in the living room with the Vikings’ album. She walked into the room, lifted the needle and turned off the record player. By her face he sensed that she knew.
‘How are things with you?’
‘Not so good.’
‘No…’
She sighed, sat down on the couch.
‘The principal called me. At work. He told me that…there was a fire there last nigh
t. At your school.’
‘Really. Did it burn to the ground?’
‘No, but…’
She closed her mouth, her gaze getting stuck in the hooked rug for a few seconds. Then she lifted her eyes and met his.
‘Oskar. Was it you?’
He looked straight back at her and said, ‘No.’
Pause.
‘No. It’s just that it seems that although much of the classroom was destroyed, that…that Jonny’s and Tomas’ desks…that it was there it had started.’
‘Oh.’
‘And they were apparently quite sure that…that it was you.’
‘But it wasn’t.’
His mum sat on the couch, breathing through her nose. They sat a metre apart, an endless distance.
‘They want to…talk to you.’
‘I don’t want to talk to them.’
It was going to be a long evening. There was nothing good on TV.
That night Oskar couldn’t sleep. He got up out of bed, tiptoed to the window. He thought he saw something in the jungle gym down in the playground. But it was just his imagination, of course. Nonetheless he continued to stare at the shadow down there until his eyelids grew heavy.
When he got back into bed he still couldn’t sleep. He gently tapped on the wall. No answer. Just the dry sound of his own fin-gertips, knuckles against the concrete, knocking on a door that was closed for ever.
Thursday
12 November
Oskar threw up in the morning and was allowed to stay home another day. Despite the fact that he had only slept a few hours the night before, he was unable to rest. A gnawing anxiety in his body forced him around the apartment. He picked things up, looked at them, put them back.
It was as if there was something he had to do. Something absolutely necessary, but he simply couldn’t think of what it was.
At the time he had thought he was doing it while he set fire to Jonny’s and Tomas’ desks. Then he had thought it was giving the money to Tommy. But that wasn’t it. It was something else.
A great theatre performance that was now over. He paced back and forth on the emptied, darkened stage and swept up that which had been left behind. When it was something else…
But what?
When the mail arrived at eleven there was only a single letter. His heart made a somersault in his chest as he picked it up, turned it over.
It was addressed to his mum. ‘South Ängby School District’ was printed in the upper right-hand corner. Without opening it he ripped it into pieces and flushed them down the toilet. Regretted it. Too late. He didn’t care what was written in it, but there would be even more trouble if he started messing around with this, than if he just let it be.
But it didn’t matter.
He undressed, put on his bathrobe. Stood in front of the mirror in the hall, studied himself. Pretended he was someone else. Leaned over to kiss the glass. At the same time that his lips met the cold surface the phone rang. Without thinking he lifted the receiver. ‘Hi. It’s me.’
‘Oskar?’
‘Yes.’
‘Hi. Fernando here.’
‘What?’
‘Ávila. Mr Ávila.’
‘Oh. Yeah. Hi.’
‘I just wanted to ask…are you coming to the training tonight?’
‘I’m…a bit sick.’
Silence on the other end. Oskar could hear Mr Ávila’s breaths. One. Two. Then ‘Oskar. If you did. Or did not. I do not care about this. If you want to talk, we talk. If you do not want to talk, we don’t. But I want you to come to training.’
‘Why?’
‘Because Oskar, you cannot sit like caracol, how do you say…the snail. In the shell. If you aren’t sick you will get sick. Are you sick?’
‘…yes.’
‘Then you need physical fitness training. You will come tonight.’
‘What about the others?’
‘The others? What are the others? If they are stupid I will say boo, they stop. But they are not stupid. This is training.’
Oskar didn’t reply.
‘OK? You’ll come?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. See you later.’
Oskar put the phone down and everything was quiet around him again. He didn’t want to go to the workout session. But he wanted to see Mr Ávila. Maybe he could go a little earlier, see if he was there. Then go home when the session started.
Not that Mr Ávila would accept that, but…
He completed another round of the apartment. Packed his workout things, mainly to have something to do. Lucky he hadn’t started the fire in Micke’s desk, since Micke would be going to the gym. Although maybe it got destroyed anyway because it was right next to Jonny’s. How much had actually been destroyed?
Something to ask…
The phone rang again around three o’clock. Oskar hesitated before picking it up, but after the flicker of hope he had felt after seeing the lone envelope he couldn’t resist answering it.
‘Hello, this is Oskar.’
‘Hi. It’s Johan.’
‘Hi.’
‘What’s up?’
‘Nothing much.’
‘Want to do something tonight?’
‘When…what?’
‘Oh…about seven, or something.’
‘No, I’m going to…the gym.’
‘Oh. OK. Too bad. Catch you later.’
‘Johan?’
‘Yeah?’
‘I…heard there was a fire. In our classroom. Did…a lot get destroyed?’
‘Naw. Just a couple of desks.’
‘Nothing else?’
‘Naw…some…papers, and that.’
‘Oh.’
‘Your desk is fine.’
‘Oh. Good.’
‘OK. Bye.’
‘Bye.’
Oskar hung up with a strange feeling in his stomach. He had thought that everyone knew it was him. But that’s not how Johan had sounded. And his mum had said that a lot had been destroyed. But she could have been exaggerating, of course.
Oskar chose to believe Johan. He had seen it, after all.
‘Oh, Christ’s sake…’
Johan hung up, and looked around, hesitantly. Jimmy shook his head, blew smoke out of Jonny’s bedroom window.
‘That was the worst I’ve heard.’
In a meek voice Johan said, ‘It’s not so easy.’
Jimmy turned to face Jonny who was sitting on the bed, rubbing a tassle from the bedspread between his fingers.
‘What happened? Half the classroom burned down?’
Jonny nodded. ‘Everyone in the class hates him.’
‘And you…’ Jimmy turned towards him again, ‘you say that… what was it you said? “Some paper.” Do you think he’ll go for that?’
Johan lowered his head, embarrassed.
‘I didn’t know what to say. I thought he would…get suspicious if I said that…’
‘Yes, yes. Done is done. Now we just have to hope he turns up.’
Johan’s gaze flew back and forth between Jonny and Jimmy. Their eyes were empty, lost in images of the coming evening.
‘What are you guys going to do?’
Jimmy leaned forward in his seat, brushing away a little ash that had fallen on his sweater, and said slowly, ‘He burned it. Everything we had from our dad. So what we’re going to do is something that…that doesn’t concern you. Understand?’
His mum came home at half past five. The lies, the distrust from the night before still hung like a cold cloud between them, and his mum went straight to the kitchen, started making an unnecessary amount of noise with the dishes. Oskar shut his door. Lay on his bed and stared up at the ceiling.
He could go somewhere. Out into the yard. Down into the basement. To the square. Take the subway. But there still wasn’t any place…no place where he…nothing.
He heard his mum walk to the phone and dial a lot of numbers. His dad’s probably.
Oskar shivered a little.
He pulled the blankets over him, sat up with his head against the wall, listening to the sound of his mum and dad’s conversation. If he could talk to Dad. But he couldn’t. It never happened.
Oskar pulled the blanket around himself, pretending to be an indian chieftain, indifferent to everything as his mum’s voice rose. After a while she started to yell and the indian chieftain fell down on the bed, pressed the blanket, his hands over his ears.
It’s so quiet inside your head. It is…like outer space.
Oskar made the lines, colours, dots in front of his eyes into planets, distant solar systems that he travelled through. Landed on comets, flew for a while, jumped off and hovered freely in weightlessness until something pulled on his blanket and he opened his eyes.
Mum was standing there. Her lips twisted. Her voice abrupt and sharp as she talked. ‘So. Now your father has told me…that he…on Saturday…that you…where were you? Tell me. Where were you? Can you tell me that?’
His mum pulled on the blanket up by his face. Her throat tensed to a hard, thick sinew.
‘You’re never going there again. Never. You hear me? Why didn’t you say anything? I mean…that bastard. People like him shouldn’t have children. He’s not going to see you any more. And then he can sit there and drink as much as he likes. You hear me? We don’t need him. I am so…’
His mum twirled abruptly away from the bed, slammed the door so hard the walls shook. Oskar heard her rapidly dial the long number again, swearing when she missed a digit, had to start over. A few seconds after she finished dialling she started to yell.
Oskar crept out from under his blanket, grabbed his workout bag and went out into the hall where his mum was so preoccupied with yelling at his dad that she didn’t notice that he had slipped on his shoes and walked up to the front door without tying them.
It was only when he was standing in the stairwell that she saw him.
‘Wait a second! Where do you think you’re going?’
Oskar banged the door shut and ran down the stairs, kept running, the soles of his shoes smattering, on his way to the pool.
‘Roger, Prebbe…’
With his plastic fork, Jimmy jabbed in the direction of the two guys emerging from the subway station. The bite that Jonny had just taken from his shrimp sandwich lodged halfway down his throat and he was forced to swallow again to get it down. He looked quizzically at his brother but Jimmy’s attention was directed at the guys on their way over to the hotdog stand, greeted them.
Let the Right One In Page 46