In Every Moment We Are Still Alive

by Tom Malmquist

  * * *

  —

  My diary is lying on the bed, I didn’t put it there. When I am not writing, I usually keep it hidden under a pile of comics on my bedside table. I leaf through it. In the night I wrote down my uncensored anger about Dad’s injustices and alcohol habits and our relationship, he hasn’t just marked the bad spelling and ambiguous use of pronouns, he’s also critiqued sections in his upright handwriting. The marker pen has gone through several pages.

  The lead-up to what is known in the media as the gambling scandal is that my father publishes a series of articles in Expressen at the end of the eighties and the early nineties. He claims that the results of some matches in Swedish bandy and ice hockey have been fixed. His information comes from a poker pal from his youth, with contacts in the underworld, that’s what Dad tells me. In his articles he states that the Mafia has diddled the state-owned gambling behemoth Tipstjänst out of at least thirty-six million kronor by bribing key players from some of the leading teams to underperform in certain crucial matches. Before the articles go to print, Dad stands up at the dinner table in Björkängsvägen. He points at his big forehead and says: There’s going to be one hell of a hullabaloo, this is massive, believe me, this will end with a Pulitzer.

  No one comes forward to confess. The Office of the Chancellor of Justice sues Expressen for slander. Although Expressen wins on all 176 counts of the prosecution, Dad is treated with scepticism by his colleagues, even his closest friends are dubious about him. It makes me feel as if it’s the Malmquist family vs Sweden and the Mafia. Murder threats add weight to that feeling. Two bodyguards sit in a dark Saab with blacked out windows in our drive, and another three of them are indoors, opening and closing the front door for us. There’s a silent state of war in our home.

  One morning there’s a crackling sound of walkie-talkies. Two bodyguards order us upstairs onto the windowless landing, we run, we’re told to curl up on the floor with our hands over our heads, one of the bodyguards has drawn his pistol. Mum hugs me a little too hard. She presses her hand over my eyes and whispers:

  It’s only make-believe.

  * * *

  —

  I open the laptop on the table and start looking for a photo that Mum has been asking for. A group photo from the New Year’s dinner on Jägaregatan in 2011. Mum remembers Harriet borrowing my phone and photographing everyone at the dinner table. If so, it will be the last photo ever taken of Karin and Dad together. I think Mum is mistaken, I can’t remember the moment. Thousands of photos. I can’t find it but I stop on another one of Dad, from the summer of 2003. Out of focus, badly composed, it’s an image I should have erased, I have better pictures from that time. Dad is wearing a V-necked jumper, he’s sitting in a wheelchair in the entrance lobby of Huddinge Hospital. His chain with the gold crucifix against his chest. He’s unshaven. His glasses rest on his straight, sharp nose and the earpieces disappear behind his hairy ears. What makes me linger on the photo is a wrinkle under his right eye, which makes me think he’s just about to wink at me.

  * * *

  —

  In the evenings I wait until the sports programmes on the radio and his smoker’s cough are silent, and I can hear his snoring from the study. I wrap myself in my duvet, I traipse into the bedroom, continuing to Mum’s side of the bed. I shake her and ask if I can sleep Pompe. She always gives me the same answer: Yes, but only if you promise this is the last time. I lie on the beige carpet and tuck my hands into my armpits. It’s all quite different if Dad’s in the bedroom and he hears me coming in. He rummages about for his glasses on the bedside table. He wants to be able to see me clearly against the brown woven wallpaper. I pull the duvet tightly around me.

  Damn it, Tom, you’re too old for this, he says.

  I’m afraid of snipers, I squeak.

  I’m the one they want to shoot, you’re actually in more danger lying up here, he answers.

  Pompe is taken from one of Barbro Lindgren’s children’s books about the dog that doesn’t dare sleep by itself. I’m Pompe for one more year. I stop when I’m eleven, which is when the murder threats against Dad begin to subside, and the bodyguards are replaced by a large red emergency button, which I am told I should only press in cases of absolute urgency. The button is on a metal box connected to the telephone jack in the kitchen. I have so much respect for that red button that I take detours around it. In the event of an emergency I wouldn’t dare press it, I’d be much more likely to stop anyone who tried. Rather than sleeping Pompe I read under the reading lamp through the nights. It’s as if I’m inside a one-man tent made of light. Shadows and dark silhouettes have no right of entry. I read Tintin, Conan the Barbarian, The Phantom. But Superman gives me heart palpitations. There are so many people he could save but he doesn’t have time for them all in spite of his immeasurable strength and speed. More than anything I like to look at Bergvall’s Atlas. Inside, I’ve marked with a felt-tip pen all the places I’d consider living in when I grow up: Tórshavn, Mahé, Isabela Island, South Orkney Islands, Yaren, Easter Island, Bouvet Island. The islands are unfamiliar to me as a child, exotic names in a well-thumbed school atlas, small, greenish yellow dots surrounded by immense, dark blue oceans. I picture them as untouched, safe places, free from the masses, free of people, and I populate them with my favourite creatures from fairy tales. I have to stay within the glow of the bedside light, every night, week in, week out. I run off to pee all the time, the darkness frightens me, I’m sure that it’s because of the dark that I’m eleven and I wee the bed, because I never wee myself in the daytime. On my way to the toilet I run through the unlit hallway, past the kitchen, along the mirrored wall: there, in a room of seven square metres, he sits in a cloud of smoke. On the nicotine-yellow wallpaper hang photographs of him with table tennis players, boxers, wrestlers, runners, hockey stars, equestrians, and tennis legends. He’s writing on the Tandy computer. Although I learn to hate my father I manage to convince myself that the darkness breaks up around his writing fingers, secretly he is a guardian against the darkness, he protects me with his own life, he and the islands, the fairy tale creatures, the immense oceans, the depths, the waves, the sun.

  * * *

  —

  Room 404. By the open window there’s a half-metre tall abutilon, just behind the sofa on which I am sitting. We have a similar one at Lundagatan. Livia makes big eyes at it as she drinks her formula, it has spindly branches, it moves in the draughts of air like a huge insect against the glass. Livia’s nappy is heavy and warm. I change it for a new one and look for the clean dummy. My phone goes off and the tones of ‘I Drew My Ship’ ring out, the melody and Collins’s voice calm Livia, she used to go to sleep to that every night on Gotland. I didn’t have time to check the post before leaving the flat this morning, I just scrabbled together what was on the doormat and stuffed it all into my rucksack. I’ve had a reminder about the writ. Someone at Stockholm City Court underlined the following in thick green ink: If you do not acknowledge receipt the summons may be served in another way, for instance through a bailiff. The city of Stockholm is summoning me on behalf of Livia, in a procedural notice it is written: You are called to the City Court to respond to the petitioner’s suit and additional assertions in the enclosed application, procedural appendices 1–4. It also says that I have to provide an undertaking in writing to the City Court as to whether or not I am the father of the child.

  * * *

  —

  At Stockholm Central Station Mum scans the departure times.

  Are you angry? I ask.

  No, but I would never have let him travel by himself, she answers.

  Why didn’t we go with him, then?

  You know what, he was given an ultimatum, either stop drinking or you’re out, that’s what I told him. Her breathing becomes panicky. Now he’s sitting there in Båstad! Then she goes silent quite abruptly, looks over her shoulder, and adds: We shouldn’t talk about it here, people can hear us. We board carriage 3 of the train t
o Gothenburg and Mum checks our tickets against the numbers on the seats. Further down the carriage a man in a tracksuit reclines with his feet up. He’s reading a newspaper. Apart from him, the rest of the carriage is empty. Mum is wearing light blue jeans, a white blouse under a loosely knitted jumper with turquoise wrists. Her hair is curled.

  We have to run when we pull in, we have to change to Västkustbanan, the train leaves at 14:34, we mustn’t miss it, she says.

  You’ve said that a hundred times.

  These are our seats, she says and sits down. She gestures towards the seat opposite.

  I’d like to stand, I say.

  Why?

  Just because. She slides her suitcase under the table and looks out of the window as the train departs. It is lovely, though, Strömmen, she says.

  I like the Bjäre peninsula, I answer and sit down.

  That’s something quite different, you’ve been there since you were six, well, that’s half of your life, God, how times passes, she sighs.

  Will you get divorced?

  I don’t know, it’s complicated, he can’t sleep at night, he’s not feeling well, this whole thing with the gambling scandal has worn him out, he’s not himself any more, he’s self-medicating.

  Self-medicating?

  Yes, that’s actually the right term for all this, she says, stretching. She squints at the man in the tracksuit and adds: We shouldn’t talk about this now.

  He cried when he called last night, I said you were asleep.

  He called last night? she bursts out.

  We talked about the tennis, he was drunk as a lord.

  Tom, don’t talk so loud.

  Who can hear, who the hell cares?

  Don’t swear, she says.

  I’m so fucking sorry, I answer. She sighs, tugs at her jumper, and asks:

  Why didn’t you tell me this?

  You were sitting there talking to him when I woke up, you spoke for ages.

  Yes, he called this morning, we had quite a bit to talk about.

  Are you going to get divorced?

  It’s up to him, she answers in a clipped voice.

  I’m on your side, he’s a bloody drunk, I answer.

  He’s ill, Tom, it’s not his fault, it was wrong of me to let him travel on his own. She leans forward and pats me on the cheek.

  Stop that, I say and turn away.

  You’re just like Dad, no one’s allowed to touch you.

  Stop it.

  Not so long ago you refused to let go of my skirt, she says.

  You never wear a skirt, I say.

  I do actually, but it’s just an expression, it means you were very Mummy-focused.

  What’s going to happen now, are you going to fight, or what?

  I’ve already told you, we’re taking him home, he can’t drive the car himself, we’ll drive him home, we’ll go home, I suppose we’ll have to stop for the night, we’ll get there so late, we’ll leave right away in the morning, he mustn’t be by himself.

  The tennis doesn’t finish until next week.

  He can’t work now anyway, answers Mum.

  Are you getting divorced?

  Darling, you’re all I have, we’ll have to see, Dad needs help now, there’s been a lot of pressure on him lately, it’s been difficult for us all, she answers.

  People are talking about Dad at school.

  Oh really? says Mum.

  We have a supply teacher in woodwork, he asked loads about Dad, he said Dad’s good at making stuff up, he said there’s no gambling mafia here.

  Don’t listen to what people say, they talk so much rubbish.

  He said we had bodyguards because Expressen wanted to sell more newspapers.

  Sweetheart, don’t think about it, people are naïve, don’t give it another thought, I’m going to have a serious talk with your teacher when we get back, she says, and takes off her jumper. Her throat is a livid red.

  No, you mustn’t.

  He can’t talk to you about those kinds of things, it’s nothing to do with him, she says.

  You mustn’t, I won’t go back if you do.

  Okay, okay, let’s leave it for now.

  What does naïve mean? I ask after a while. She blows her nose into a tissue, then spits out her chewing gum and throws it in the bin under the table.

  Just that people are really idiotic, she answers before going on: I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately.

  About me?

  About us, about Dad, about me, about everything that’s happened, I never had a family when I was growing up, I only got one with your father, I never had a mother or a father in that way, not like you, I grew up in foster families, I just longed to grow up and have a family of my own, family is the most important thing one can have, a real family, sorry, my head is a bit messed up at the moment, I’m a little confused…God, oh dear, I feel awful, I shouldn’t have let him go. She snatches at another tissue and presses it against her nose.

  Were you adopted?

  No, I just lived with other people, it’s hard to explain.

  Dad is a goddamn big baby.

  Tom, don’t talk like that.

  Well he is.

  Am I red here? she asks, touching her throat.

  Yes.

  I don’t usually wear perfume, I have a bad reaction to it.

  So why did you put it on, then?

  Was it bad of me to let him travel on his own? she asks.

  Don’t know, he’ll be fine.

  We won’t be, though, not financially at least…where would we live?

  I’ll be a millionaire one day from the hockey, you don’t have to worry about money, in a few years we’ll be rich.

  Sweetheart, I’m thinking aloud, sorry, we’re tired, we’ll see how it all pans out.

  Mum?

  Yes, sorry, I’m not thinking straight.

  When Dad left, didn’t he want me to go with him?

  I’d never have allowed that, she answers.

  But did he want me to come?

  There was never any question of that, I would never have let him take you in any case, but we have to get some sleep now if we’re going to manage this.

  You sleep.

  Tom, put your seat down and close your eyes for a while, we need to sleep, she says.

  I’m not tired.

  It’s a long trip, try.

  Give it a rest, I’m not some fucking kid, I say, and get out my Game Boy from my rucksack and start choosing from my game cassettes. Mum pulls on her eye mask and puts her feet on the seat.

  Well I’ll sleep for a while now, wake me if you need me, I don’t sleep very deeply anyway, she says, then pulls down her eye mask to her chin and peers into her bag. There are sandwiches in the outside pocket if you want one, liver pâté and pickled gherkins in some of them, they’re marked with a cross on the foil, they’re your ones, she says. She adjusts her eye mask and uses her jumper as a pillow. I really do have to sleep now, I’m tired.