The Survivors

by Alex Schulman

  “It’s no longer in use,” Benjamin says.

  “No, doesn’t seem like it,” says Nils. “The station is so old. I’m sure it couldn’t handle modern-day standards.”

  Benjamin looks up at the building.

  “Do you remember the sound?” he asks.

  His brothers don’t respond, just gaze at the façade. “That sad hum of the electricity. Don’t you remember?”

  “Yes,” Nils murmurs.

  Benjamin looks at his brothers, who are reluctantly moving toward the tall fence. He peers into the black opening. The door is wide open. Its busted lock still hangs down like a broken limb.

  “To think that someone broke in,” Benjamin said. “I don’t get it. There couldn’t have been anything of value in there, right?”

  “Copper,” says Nils. “Hardly anything is as conductive as copper. And copper is worth a lot of money.”

  Benjamin’s eyes follow the fence, see how it surrounds the little building, and over there is the iron gate, the way in, and he sees the shape of himself as a child, the little boy pulling loose from his brothers and walking to the opening. He lays his forehead against the metal mesh. He hears his brothers’ heavy breathing. They’re standing side by side.

  “What happened?” Benjamin says.

  Nils and Pierre look down at their hands, which have pushed through the holes. He can tell from their posture that they don’t want to be here. But they have no choice.

  “All my life, I’ve blamed myself,” Benjamin says. “But I also had two brothers with me.”

  “We were children,” says Pierre.

  “Yeah,” says Benjamin. “And we were brothers. Remember what Dad always said? He said we should be happy that we’re brothers, because brothers are the strongest bond there is.”

  Benjamin does not turn to look at Pierre and Nils, just stares stubbornly into the dark doorway.

  From the corner of his eye he sees Pierre pat his pockets, take out a cigarette, which he lights in the shelter of his cupped hand.

  “I think about that day all the time,” says Nils.

  The sun is lower in the sky now, the shadows of the pines leaving black stains on the brilliant green blueberry bushes around the building.

  “When I got back to the house that afternoon…” Nils laughs suddenly. “I lay down in the hammock and listened to music. I thought, if I do everything I usually do, it will be like nothing ever happened. I knew you were dead, because I saw it happen. I stood right here and I saw it all. And I thought I would feel regret or fear. And maybe I did. But you know what the strongest feeling was?”

  Benjamin doesn’t answer, just watches Nils in silence.

  “Relief,” says Nils.

  “Jesus Christ,” says Pierre. “Stop it.” He spots a rock and kicks it.

  “If we’re going to talk about it, we should talk about it, right?” Nils says and turns back to Benjamin again. “I’m sorry for what I did. I was in shock, but that’s no excuse. And I hate myself for it. But have you forgotten what it was like? Have you forgotten how you and Pierre tortured me? I still have all my diaries. I read them sometimes. Every day, I wished you were dead. And then it finally happened.”

  Benjamin observes Nils. His slightly crossed eyes. He sees the scar between his temple and his eye from the time he fell on the edge of a pool as a child. His smooth, childlike skin, and the dark brown eyes that have such a lovely glow when the sun strikes them. Benjamin feels a sudden longing for his brother. He wants to feel Nils close, he wants Nils to hold him tight to keep him from falling toward the treetops and tumbling into the sky. He places a hand on his big brother’s shoulder, feels how thin he is, the knobs of his bones through his shirt. It feels strange and unfamiliar, but he leaves his hand there and Nils places a hand over Benjamin’s, pats it awkwardly. They look at each other and nod. His gentle smile.

  They walk in a line back through the forest, heavy steps through the glades where they ran as children. They take it slow on the last little steep bit down the hill, catch themselves among the trees so as not to lose control, and tumble out into the blazing sun.

  | 12 |

  The Arc of Light

  It was Midsummer Eve.

  He remembered the stout ladies who sold coffee and buns behind the spindly-legged tables. He remembered the old man with the clattery tombola who pretended to slam the hatch closed each time a child’s finger got too close, and the kids hooting and scattering and edging back again. A lotto board, five kronor per ticket, he remembered winning first prize, a chocolate bar, and he felt the melted chocolate swimming around in there beneath the paper. He remembered the coffee-stained picnic blankets where families sat uncomfortably, opening their thermoses. He remembered that the Midsummer pole was decorated by women but erected by men. Great cheer when it was finally upright, scattered applause that faded in the breeze. It was windier than usual, the speaker system swayed, the accordion music sounded distant and eerie. He remembered that Molly got nervous when the wind snagged the treetops and rustled their crowns above the meadow. He remembered that they had sat off to the side, separate from the rest of the crowd. As always, when the family was somewhere where there were other people, they participated without truly being part of the group. The brothers were grubby but dressed up. Mom had tried to tame Pierre’s hair with spit. Dad slowly peeled off a few bills for the boys, who ran off to buy soda. None of them really wanted to dance around the pole, Mom stood waving from the circle, and they danced to the little frogs song, but soon they snuck off one after the next, back to the blanket, and Mom was left alone, Molly in her arms, swaying back and forth to the song about musicians, and after a while she came back, exhausted but full of energy, giving a falsetto cry as she sat down.

  “Well, what do you say, shall we get going?” Dad leapt to his feet.

  “Yes, let’s go!”

  The family had a Midsummer tradition: each year, they drove to the E-road and stopped at a roadside pub for lunch. This was the only time all summer they ate at a restaurant. It was always the same pub, always empty on Midsummer Eve, when everyone else was at home eating herring luncheons with their families. Dad and Mom sat down at their favorite table, the one by the window with a view of the highway.

  “Have you got a charcuterie board?” Dad asked the server.

  “No, I’m sorry.”

  “Have you got anything with salami?”

  “Salami? Yes, there’s salami on some of the pizzas.”

  “Can I get that salami on a little plate?”

  The server stared at Dad, confused. “Okay…,” he said. “I guess that’s fine.”

  “Great, there’s our charcuterie board. Do you have ice-cold vodka?”

  “Of course,” the server replied.

  After a while he returned carrying tumblers with vodka in the bottom, which Mom and Dad sipped. Dad made a face.

  “Room temperature,” he said, waving at the server. “Can we get a bowl of ice?”

  “Wasn’t it cold enough?” the server asked.

  “Sure. We just want it a little colder.”

  Mom and Dad exchanged smiles as he disappeared, experienced drinkers willing to overlook the clumsy attempts of amateurs. The ice cubes creaked as they dropped them in, and they raised their glasses and drank.

  It was a lunch that slowly fell silent. The conversations got slower, Dad and Mom ate lazily, ordered more drinks. Dad anxiously tried to make eye contact with the server. They were no longer speaking, aside from a quick “Hey” as they had yet another vodka. Dad usually got listless when he drank, distant but harmless, but this time was different. Benjamin noticed that he was getting unusually testy. He sternly called out “Hello” when the server didn’t notice he was waving. Benjamin used his straw to blow bubbles in his soda, and Dad told him to stop. After a while Benjamin did it again, and Dad took the straw
away and tried to tear it in half. But it didn’t work, the plastic was tough, indestructible, and Dad tried again, baring his teeth with the effort. When he found that the straw was still intact, he threw it on the floor. Mom looked up from Molly, who was in her lap, took note of the turbulence, and turned back again. Benjamin didn’t move, afraid to look at his father. He didn’t understand. He realized that something was out of the ordinary. From now on, he would be on his guard.

  Afterward, they got in the car. Benjamin was always extra watchful in here, because it seemed like the worst of their drama happened in the car, when the family was enclosed in such a small space. This was where Mom and Dad had their wildest fights, when Dad swerved as he tried to tune the radio or when Mom missed a turn and Dad yelled in rage and twisted his neck to watch the exit vanishing behind them.

  “Take it easy,” Mom muttered as Dad turned out of the parking lot.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Dad said.

  Benjamin was in the middle of the back seat, that was his spot, because from there he could keep an eye on his parents, on the road, and on his brothers to either side. He was the family’s silent command hub, controlling events from the center. As Dad went to turn onto the county road, he spun the wheel too far and the car brushed into a grove of saplings just off the shoulder, branches and twigs scraping hard across the windshield.

  “Hey!” Mom cried.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Dad said.

  He drove off, revving the engine hard and long at low gear, and when he finally shifted up, the car lurched, the boys’ heads bobbing left to right in back. Benjamin concentrated on watching Dad’s eyes in the rearview mirror, saw him blink as the car veered back and forth. Benjamin didn’t dare say anything; all he could do was sit quietly and concentrate as if he were the one driving. Through the side window he could see the car approaching the ditch. Pierre was nonchalantly reading a comic book he’d found on the floor. But Nils was pressing his head to the window, carefully following along as the car veered dangerously from one side of the road to the other. The county road narrowed and turned to gravel and the trees towered on either side of the car. Dad sped through the forest, and they were close now; as they climbed the steep hill just before they would turn onto the tractor path and descend toward the cottage, Benjamin thought they might make it after all.

  As they rounded the final curve, Dad lost control in the porous gravel. The car let go and careened freely across the surface, its wheels locked. Dad tried to counter the skid and the car ended up in the ditch on the other side of the road. Benjamin was thrown forward and came to rest over the gearshift; his brothers landed in the footwells. Dad looked around in confusion. Mom had hugged Molly tight to her chest as they left the road, and she quickly checked to make sure she wasn’t injured. Then she turned around.

  “Is everyone okay?”

  The brothers unfurled themselves again and got back in their seats. The car was at an angle, the three brothers pressed to the right. Dad started the engine.

  “What are you doing?” Mom asked.

  “We have to get out,” Dad said.

  “There’s no way—we’ll have to call someone,” said Mom.

  “Nonsense.”

  He tried to drive back onto the road, hitting the gas until the engine screamed, dirt and rocks striking the undercarriage, but the car stood still.

  “Shit!” Dad shouted, hitting the gas again. Pierre opened his door.

  “Close the door!” Dad cried. “For Christ’s sake, close the door!”

  Benjamin reached over Pierre and pulled the door shut as the engine howled ferociously, and Mom shouted to be heard over it: “It’s not going to work!”

  Dad put it in reverse and revved the engine and this time the car got traction and worked its way out of the ditch. Dad stopped in the center of the gravel road to put it in first. Pierre opened his door again.

  “I want to walk home from here,” he said.

  “Me too,” said Benjamin.

  Benjamin saw his father’s sneer in the mirror.

  “For Christ’s sake, what did I just say about the door!”

  He turned halfway around and slapped indiscriminately at the boys. Molly tore herself from Mom’s grip and tried to find a way out of the car.

  “Don’t open the door while the engine is on!”

  The brothers tried to shield their heads as his fist flew through the air. Dad got Benjamin in the shoulders a few times, and Pierre got a whack on the thigh. But Nils came off worst, because he was right in the way of Dad’s oscillating swings and couldn’t dodge the fist flying back and forth, so his face took blow after blow. “Stop!” Mom shouted, trying to grab Dad’s arm, but he was somewhere else, no one could reach him. Pierre’s first instinct was to flee, he fumbled with the door, trying to get out, while Benjamin had the opposite instinct. He huddled against Pierre’s side and pulled the door shut, closing himself and his brothers in with the blows.

  “It’s closed, Dad!” he screamed. “It’s closed!”

  Another swing of the fist, and a grunt, and everything went quiet. The blows stopped and Benjamin dared to peer out between his fingers. Dad was calm, looking at the steering wheel. Then he put the car in first gear and drove, and now all the brothers sat up and looked at the road, watching Dad’s slack hands on the wheel, following every movement as he guided the car down the tractor path and parked it outside the house. None of the brothers dared to open the door.

  “I’m going to lie down,” Dad said as he stepped out of the car. Benjamin watched him through the window, between the front seats: Dad steadied himself against the tree trunks that lined the driveway, took broad, unsteady steps up the stone stairs, and he was gone. Mom got out of the car, opened the door on Nils’s side, and signaled to the brothers to climb out. They gathered outside the car. Benjamin looked at his mother, her swimmy eyes, the crooked smile she always wore when she’d had too much to drink and was trying to make sense of things in a world that was suddenly incomprehensible.

  “Are you all okay?”

  She gently stroked Nils’s face.

  “Sweetie,” she said, inspecting a cut on his chin. “I’ll talk to Dad about this and he will apologize to you. But I think he needs to get some sleep first. Do you understand?”

  The boys nodded. Mom put her hand on the hood of the car to steady herself, turned a gentle smile on Pierre, and patted his cheek. She looked at him for a long time but still didn’t notice that his eyes were welling with tears, didn’t see how he was trembling.

  “Dad and I are going to nap for a while,” she said. “And then we’ll have a proper family meeting about this.”

  She handed Molly to Benjamin.

  “Can you take care of her for a while?”

  And she slowly walked off down the path. She stopped short, as if she’d just thought of something, but then she kept going, past the root cellar and up the stone steps to the house. Only once she was gone did Pierre let himself burst into tears, and Benjamin and Nils held him from either side, and Nils grabbed Benjamin, and as the three of them hugged each other next to the car Benjamin felt, for the first time in a long time, that the brothers were together.

  That was when Molly disappeared. She wasn’t herself after the car ride, she was whining uneasily, first pacing back and forth nervously along the path, and then she suddenly dashed into the trees as if she had made up her mind to run away. Benjamin called after her, first encouragingly, “Hey there, hi there,” then sternly, “Come here right now!” All three brothers called for her, but she paid no attention and kept going up the hill; she no longer wanted to be a part of it.

  And that’s how the brothers ended up walking into the forest that afternoon, to follow the frightened dog, and at last they caught her. Benjamin picked her up, saw the fear in her eyes, felt her heart beating through her rib cage.

  They kept going. He
remembered that Pierre was wearing a white shirt that Mom had carefully tucked into his jeans but was now hanging over his waistband. He remembered that they walked over roots that looked like ancient fingers. He remembered that they heard the cuckoo somewhere in the pines, and that they imitated its call. He remembered that they scraped pieces of bark from one tree and floated them in the stream that flowed down the forested slope to the lake. And they kept walking up the hill, and it wasn’t something any of them really wished to do, they didn’t even say it out loud, but they ended up there anyway, on the narrow path that led to the electrical substation. They could hear the sound of electricity from far off, like an organ in the distance, a low rumble growing louder and deeper as they approached, and soon they could see the top of the massive metal structure gleaming in the sun.

  When they got there, they passed the rows of rubber-clad poles and walked up to the fence. They gazed through the door that appeared forced and into the building.

  “Wonder what it looks like in there?” Benjamin said.

  “Probably just a bunch of wires,” Nils replied.

  “Should we try to get in?”

  “No,” said Nils. “It could be dangerous.”

  They stood side by side at the fence, their hands on the metal mesh. “I got a shock once,” Benjamin said. “I asked Dad what it was like, and he took out one of those rectangular batteries, and then he told me to lick it.”

  “What was it like?” Pierre asked.

  “It stung my tongue and I couldn’t talk for a while. But then it passed.”

  “But you can get much worse shocks than that,” Nils said. “Like if you stick a fork in an electrical outlet. That can kill you.”

  Benjamin tested the handle on the gate. Just like that, it opened. “Someone broke in here too!” he cried.

  He walked through the gate and across the patch of grass in front of the building, stood opposite his brothers and grabbed the fence with one hand. “Let me out!” he cried, pretending to sob. “I beg of you!”