I went up to the staff. Nadje, who grew up in Iraq and always kept the children under strict control, and Karin, one of the regular supply staff, formerly full-time, who had always felt very affectionate toward my children.
“How did it go today?” I asked.
“Fine,” said Nadje. “No problems. John got his cheek scratched, not much, but he had a little cry about it and he’s fine now.”
“Who scratched him?”
“Heidi did. She said she was sorry,” said Karin. “She was just as upset as John.”
“OK,” I said. “We’ll be off, then.”
I turned and called their names. John came right away, but Heidi, pedaling away at top speed over the asphalt with Malou in the trailer behind her, gave no indication of having heard me. Vanja was lying in the sandpit having her legs covered in sand, with Katinka doing the shoveling. I went over to them.
“Come on, it’s time to go home,” I said.
“Lite till, pappa, var så snäll,” said Vanja with a grin. Please, Daddy, just a bit longer.
“Five minutes, that’s all,” I said, and sat down on the big stone opposite the bench. My body ached, and after having let go of Gunnar for a few seconds my thoughts seemed to return to him with renewed force. I’d been hoping that being with the kids would help and give me a new perspective, but it was just the opposite, I found myself feeling sorry for them having me for a father, for the person they saw and related to wasn’t the same as who I was inside, and this would gradually dawn on them when they were old enough to be able to judge the people around them in terms of personal qualities and character traits, rather than just how they appeared to them in ordinary interaction. I wasn’t good enough for them, but that wasn’t the sad part of it, the sad part was that they didn’t know.
“How’s Linda?” Karin asked.
“She’s fine,” I said. “She’s away at a friend’s in the country at the moment, enjoying a break. Just for a few days.”
“That’s brave of you, having all the kids on your own.”
“No, not at all,” I said. “They’re no bother.”
That they never gave me any trouble was because I was strict with them, far stricter than when Linda was around. I wouldn’t put up with things and gave them no leeway. They found this out soon enough and acted accordingly, but it wasn’t good. The nursery staff didn’t notice, seeing me only at drop-off and pickup times, and in those situations, with so many eyes upon me, my behavior was no different.
For crying out loud.
What a fucking mess.
How the hell could I ever have put myself in such a spot? What was I trying to do? Why couldn’t I keep all the badness to myself like other people did? But no, I had to go and shove it in everyone’s face, and drag others down with me in the fall.
Gunnar had done nothing apart from living his life as best he could, and now this.
I felt like shaking my fists at the sky and yelling at the top of my lungs. Instead I sat and stared at Heidi as she bombed around on her bike, John, who had climbed up next to Karin and now sat gazing up at the roof, Vanja, whose legs were now almost buried in sand, a stiff smile on my face to indicate how great I thought it was having children.
I stood up and went over to Vanja.
“Time to go home,” I said. “No buts.”
“But I’ve got no legs!” she said. “Look!”
“Is there a shark in this sand?” I said.
“No,” she said. “I was born like this.”
“All right, but it’s still time to go.”
“Why?”
“Because.”
“OK,” she said, getting to her feet again and brushing away the sand that didn’t fall off on its own. I went over to John and lifted him into the air, he giggled until he realized he was going in the stroller, but after protesting a bit he gave in. Now only Heidi was left. I wasn’t in the mood to look for her and shouted for her to come right away. When she didn’t, I pressed the button for the gate, walked the stroller over toward it with Vanja holding tight and then opened it. We’re going home, Heidi, I shouted, and with that she came running.
“Vänta!” she called out. “Vänta!”
“Yes, we’re waiting,” I said. “But you didn’t come when you were called!”
In a sulk, she gripped the stroller without speaking. Sometimes all I had to do was look at her and wink, or make a face as if I was angry with her, for her sulk to dissolve into a smile, often a devilish one at that, and then came the annoyance at having been fooled, at which point she would hit me, but with a gleam in her eyes. Other times her resentment lay deeper. This was one of those times.
We walked along the sidewalk, the street was full of cyclists, people on their way home from work. Vanja couldn’t stop talking. I listened with half an ear in case she looked up at me expecting a reaction of some sort, and noted that she was weighing up the pros and cons of the two breeds of dog she’d been interested in that week. Heidi walked along on the other side of the stroller, silent and in her mood, while John had descended into his usual stroller coma.
“Where’s John? Did we leave him behind at the nursery?” I said, thinking he needed some attention too, in case he felt left out.
“Here! I’m here, Papa!” he cried, turning his face to look at me.
“There he is, our little John-boy!” I said, glancing ahead toward the pizza restaurant on the corner, where a few customers were sitting out eating under the green parasols. Some afternoons when I’d come past with the kids the place looked like there was a mafia convention going on inside. Elderly Italian guys in brown suits, short and stocky, with shifty eyes.
I looked back over my shoulder. Behind us, a woman in a black dress came hurrying along, almost dragging a boy by the arm, he was maybe nine years old, they overtook us and about ten meters farther on she shoved him up against the wall, where he pulled his pants down and started pissing while she glanced up and down the street. I couldn’t believe my eyes. His piss flowed across the sidewalk.
“What’s he doing?” said Vanja, looking from them to me.
“It looks like he’s having a pee,” I said.
The boy shook himself and zipped up his fly, and then they hurried over the road and continued on along the other sidewalk, whereas we turned left at the bike shop and made our way toward Södra Förstadsgatan. Just before the 7-Eleven we came to a halt. Heidi refused to go a step farther.
“I’m tired,” she said.
“Oh, Heidi,” I said. “Come on, it’s not far, we’ll be home in a minute.”
She shook her head.
“I want in the stroller,” she said.
“But it’s not big enough for two, it’ll break. Remember when the wheel came off?”
“I want some fruit,” she said.
“You can have some fruit, but not here. You can have a banana when we get to the shop.”
“I want it from that shop,” she said, pointing back from where we came.
“You want to go back?” I said. “All that way?”
“Yes.”
Vanja, who was still standing on the other side holding on to the stroller, laughed.
“Vanja,” I said. “That’s enough, don’t interfere.”
“She laughed at me,” said Heidi. Heidi hated more than anything the feeling that people were laughing at her.
“No, she didn’t,” I said. “We’ll walk on to the shop and you can get some fruit there.”
Heidi looked at me. Then she turned and ran off as fast as she could along the sidewalk. She stopped halfway and glared at me in defiance.
“Stay right here, Vanja,” I said. “Promise?”
Vanja nodded and I ran after Heidi. As soon as she saw me coming she set off again. As I caught up with her she stopped and wrapped her arms around a lamppost as tightly as she could.
“That’s enough from you,” I said, wrenching her away and carrying her back to the stroller. She screamed at the top of her lungs. People stopped
and stared. It was what she wanted. But they couldn’t see that. They thought I was hitting her or something. I thought the same thing myself whenever I saw mothers or fathers stooped over their children like that, their aggressive body language always made me think they had to be bad parents, people of the worst possible kind, even though I knew what it was like.
I put her down.
She yelled and said she wasn’t going anywhere.
“Do you want me to carry you?”
She shook her head.
“What do you suggest then?”
“Jag vill ha en frukt! Från den affären!” she yelled. I want fruit! From that shop!
I lost control immediately. I grabbed her hard by the arm, pushed my face into hers, and hissed at her.
“That’s enough from you! Do you understand? Come here!”
Tears streamed down her cheeks.
“Do you hear me?”
“I won’t!” she screamed. “Du är dum! Du är en skitpappa!” You’re stupid! You’re a horrible daddy!
“What did you say?” I spat, trying to keep my voice down so as to not give anyone watching ammunition.
“Du är en skitpappa!”she said.
Vanja grinned.
“It’s nothing to smile about!” I said, and right away her face changed to serious. But then, for some incomprehensible reason, I smiled too, and Vanja started to laugh.
“You’re all laughing at me!” Heidi yelled. And then she ran off again. This time she only made it a couple of meters before I caught her and hauled her back over my shoulder, then held her out in front of me.
“Are you going to walk with us?”
She shook her head.
“Put me down!” she shouted.
“Do you want me to ask John if he’ll walk? So you can sit in the stroller?”
She nodded.
John, realizing what was happening, was already gripping the stroller tightly with both hands.
The thought occurred to me that Heidi might have a bruise on her arm in the morning. It made me think of a case I’d read about, in Norway, a registered nanny who had broken a child’s leg forcing him into his stroller.
“Come on, John,” I said. “I’ll carry you, and Heidi can sit in the stroller.”
“My stroller,” said John.
“I’ll carry him,” said Vanja.
He went for it! I lifted him onto her back, he put his arms around her and held tight while Heidi got into the stroller, and our little circus procession finally set off again. Vanja could only manage as far as the 7-Eleven, but being out of the stroller already, John didn’t mind at all being carried on my arm instead.
Heidi had fallen asleep even before we got to the supermarket. So that was why, she really had been tired. I bought some falukorv sausage, a recipe mix for beef stroganoff, a packet of rice, ingredients for a salad, milk and yogurt, a large Pepsi Max. I was angry with myself for taking my frustrations out on the children. And yet it didn’t stop me being strict with Vanja as we passed through the supermarket. No, I said. No, you’re not having one of those. Come here, now. Come here, I said! Oh no, you don’t! It was like somehow existing on different levels, all of which had suddenly become active at the same time. One that was absorbed in the letter from Gunnar and an almost savage feeling of despair. One that was thinking about what to have for dinner, and that steered the shopping cart around the store accordingly. One that regretted having treated Heidi the way I had before. One that was annoyed by Vanja’s behavior. One that was sad to see her obey, because maybe it meant I was strangling her spirit. One that was pleased she did as she was told.
The arm I was using to carry John was aching from his weight by the time it got to be our turn at the checkout. I put him down so I could place the groceries on the conveyor and he ambled off to the end and tried to climb up, it was one of those things he liked to do, to kneel on the shelf underneath and watch the groceries come gliding along. I lifted him up, then took the last items from the cart, inserted my card into the card reader, keyed in my PIN number, confirmed the amount when it appeared on the display, removed the card, and slid it back in my pocket.
I bagged the groceries, lifted John onto my arm, and then we set off home.
“Who did you play with at dagis today?” I said, and looked at Vanja, mostly to see if she was feeling affected by my harshness. “Benjamin or Katinka? Or Lovisa?”
“Inte Lovisa,” she said. Not Lovisa. “Og liiite Benjamin.” And Benjamin a teeny bit.
A beggar, one of the most active, had stationed himself outside the bank. He was on his knees with his hands folded in front of him, rocking backward and forward as he glared at the passersby. In front of him was a cap with some coins in it.
“Why’s he sitting like that?” said Vanja.
“He’s begging,” I said. “He wants money.”
“Why hasn’t he got any money?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “He probably doesn’t have a job. So he begs to get money for food.”
“Why didn’t you give him any?”
“Because he’s not doing anything. If he’d been playing an instrument or something I’d have given him some. That’s what I usually do, anyway. But sometimes I might give something to beggars anyway. If I feel sorry for them. Never much, though.”
“Why didn’t you give him any then?”
“What a lot of questions,” I said, and smiled.
She smiled back.
“He’s most probably from Eastern Europe. That’s a group of countries a long way away. They come here to beg for money. They’re a kind of gang.”
“A gang of thieves? Are they thieves?”
“Not exactly. But they’ve basically made it their job. Which means there’s no point begging anymore. Begging’s not a job.”
I laughed at my reasoning and Vanja smiled at me. I picked up speed so we could cross while the light was still green. On the other side of the road, the old saxophonist sat playing his amputated little tune. Now I’d have to give him something. I dipped into my pocket and fished out what was there, stared at the coins that lay in my palm, and handed Vanja five kronor.
“Do you want to give him this?” I asked.
She looked up at me with fright in her eyes. Then she nodded, a grave little nod, and stepped forward almost on tiptoe, slow, measured paces, and tossed the coin into his open instrument case. He winked at her, and she scurried back to my side.
We needed to get some fruit as well. The stall didn’t take cards, so I put John down on the ground and waited my turn at the ATM, glancing at the faces of those standing around or passing the long curve of the building that occupied one corner of the square and on whose top floor we lived. I was keeping an eye out for Gunnar. I knew the chances of him turning up here were minimal, but there was little that was rational about this, it was basically all feelings, and the depths of those feelings were unfathomable.
The woman in front of me, with short sandy hair and glasses and an almost cone-shaped body, snatched her receipt from the machine and stuck her card back in her pocket, casting a quick wary glance at me. I inserted my card and tapped in my PIN, withdrew three hundred kronor, and checked to see what John was doing while I waited for the transaction to complete, he was already on his way over to the fruit stall, hugging the wall of the building, small as a tree stump.
“Do you want to hold the money, Vanja?” I said.
“Can I keep it?”
“No, but you can pay for the fruit.”
“I don’t want to.”
“OK,” I said. “Give it to me then, I’ll do it. Look at John, have you seen him? Do you think he’s forgotten all about us?”
She laughed when she realized he’d gone over to the shoe shop. I wheeled the stroller over to the stall, then trotted off to bring him back, picked out a bunch of bananas, put some apples and oranges in a couple of bags, filled another with green grapes, and handed the whole lot to the stallholder, who I supposed was from Turkey, or perhap
s Macedonia or Albania. He weighed the fruit and put it all in a big white carrier bag, I handed him some money, and when he gave me the change I saw he’d knocked eight kronor off the price, I thanked him and crossed the square with Heidi still asleep in the stroller, handed the key card to Vanja, who held it up to the panel and pushed the door open. I wheeled the stroller inside and turned it around so I could drag it up the two steps. Heidi’s head bumped this way and that, but without her waking up. John was already at the elevator, trying to reach up and press the button.
My Struggle, Book 6 Page 12