The Sons: Made in Sweden, Part 2

by Anton Svensson

  “When the banknotes are lying packed in, they don’t look like much. But I counted. After I buried the clothes and the wig and covered them over with leaves.”

  Sweeping, exaggerated lip movements as he forms one number at a time.

  “Thirty. Seven. Thousand. Eight. Hundred. And. Fifty. Kronor.”

  One more time. Faster.

  “Thirtyseventhousandeighthundredandfifty.”

  Three brothers. Together. In Mama’s bed, sitting around a leather bag full of banknotes. One common breath and the local radio are audible. More crummy music in the empty space before the next newscast. Music and . . . feet. From the stairwell. More than one pair. And they stop at their floor.

  “The cops, Leo!”

  The doorbell rings. Twice. Someone who doesn’t seem to have time to wait.

  Leo flings himself off the bed with the leather bag in his hand and flies to the row of built-in closets. He chooses the one in the middle, the one for bedding and towels.

  The bag goes right between the pile of sheets and the one of pillowcases.

  “You two stay here.”

  The doorbell calls a third time while he’s in the bathroom washing his face clean of graphite. He dries himself and hurries to the front door. He glances toward the gap in the doorway of Mama’s bedroom and Felix forms the word cops with the same exaggerated lip movements as Leo’s just now.

  Leo closes his eyes, counts to three and turns the lock.

  The social services lady. And behind her, to one side, Agnetha.

  Not the cops.

  They say hello and make it clear that they want to come in. The social services lady is without her coat, so they must have been sitting down at Agnetha’s and have talked already.

  “Are your brothers at home too?”

  Leo nods toward the partially closed bedroom door.

  “In there. In Mama’s room.”

  The social services lady doesn’t ask for permission before walking in, and Agnetha follows, and Leo follows Agnetha and sees what they see: one little brother lying on half of the bed with a dirty, loose bandage; another little brother lying on the other half of the bed with his ear tight up against a radio broadcasting the local news. The social services lady starts to speak, as if she is in a hurry.

  “Your mother.”

  Or she doesn’t actually know how she should say it, only that it seems better to get it out right away.

  “She isn’t coming home, here, yet.”

  Felix takes in what she’s saying with one ear, while the other one is filled with the next newscast, which also begins with the shop robbery in the district of Slätta. It seems he wants to tell, as if so much would be simpler then, but he can’t, because he was involved too. What they did is about as far away from coconut balls and juice boxes as it’s possible to be.

  Thirtyseventhousandeighthundredandfifty times ten miles away.

  “I think . . . She thinks, that is, your mother, that it will take two more months.”

  Now he’s listening to the social services lady with both ears.

  “Two . . . months?”

  “Yes, Felix. First, she must heal on the outside. And then heal on the inside. She’s going to see many doctors, with different expertise. But after two months, when she’s healed both on the inside and the outside, she’ll come home to you.”

  Two months. Eight and a half weeks. Sixty days.

  Felix thinks about an eye, Mama’s eye, which looked tired and was shining red where it should have been white. Now he knows for sure that it’s true. Burst blood is better than black gaps. Burst blood heals faster than black gaps.

  “You’ll all be staying with a family.”

  The social services lady smiles when she’s speaking, as if it’s about something pleasant. It doesn’t seem particularly genuine; more as if she feels sorry for them.

  “A good family, who will help. In Hosjö. You’ll stay with them for the time being. Until your mother is back again. Only for that time.”

  Leo doesn’t care for her smile at all.

  “I don’t understand. It’s working really well with Agnetha. She can come here when she wants to.”

  “We already talked about it a couple of days ago, Leo, didn’t we? That Agnetha was a temporary solution.”

  “Temporary? What a useless word.” He turns to Agnetha instead, who isn’t smiling so damn much. “But . . . what do you think, Agnetha? Isn’t it going well? Can’t you tell her about it, so that she understands?”

  Agnetha tries to look at the social services lady just as much as at Leo and his two brothers.

  “Well, yes, it has gone well. You are fine boys, all three of you. But I have a full-time job. Two months . . . it simply won’t work, Leo. I think you’ll understand that, if you just try to.”

  The social services lady attempts to put her hand down on Leo’s shoulder, or neck, and he ducks so she’ll miss. She doesn’t know him well enough to know how little he likes it. So she nods toward the hall instead.

  “Come with me over here. We need to talk, just you and I.”

  She carefully closes the door after them and looks for words that perhaps for the first time will define the sort of dilemma she’s now facing and has never before had to solve—what it means to be in the vacuum that arises when two parents disappear at the same time and two little brothers are trying to survive with a fourteen-year-old who has been schooled in resolving life through dancing with bears.

  “Listen to me, Leo. I think . . . that you aren’t doing okay, even though you say you are. I don’t think Felix is okay, no matter how many times he says so. And I don’t think that even you, Leo, think that Vincent is doing especially well, right? His entire body bandaged—still. He needs some help. And right now that help is not here with you in this apartment.”

  SUNSET OUTSIDE THE window, an orange sky shining brighter still as Leo adjusts the Venetian blinds.

  Clothes. Schoolbooks. Exercise equipment. Toiletries. And a small number of the hundred-kronor banknotes, which belong in a bank depot but are wedged in between sheets and pillowcases. He packs enough for two months in a gym bag and two plastic bags.

  “Vincent refuses to get his stuff ready.”

  Felix chose a single bag, his mother’s suitcase. The one he’s now holding in his hand.

  “He refuses to even say what he wants to take with him so that I can pack for him.”

  The taxi is coming in an hour. The taxi that will pick up three brothers and drive them to a house in Hosjö.

  Leo doesn’t sigh as he goes to Vincent’s room. He understands why those bags in particular aren’t ready—a small backpack and some sort of gym bag lying empty in the middle of the floor—while Vincent busies himself with constructing the roof of a Lego airplane. Or maybe it’s . . . nothing. Just pieces that are attached together and don’t belong together at all.

  He sits down next to him. Big brother and little brother, close to each other.

  “Vincent? You have to stop building . . . well, whatever it is you’re building. And pack instead. Felix and I don’t know what you want to take with you.”

  Vincent continues to press Lego piece onto Lego piece onto nothing.

  “The social services lady and Agnetha said so. We’re going to another family. To where all the fine houses are.”

  A round red piece on top of a green, oblong one.

  “You heard it yourself. That’s why you’re sitting here and sulking, right? But it’ll go quickly. Mama will be back soon, and then it’ll be back to normal.”

  A flat blue piece on a wide black one; two yellow ones side by side with four white ones.

  “Vincent?”

  Leo puts his hand on the stack of many-colored Lego pieces and forces his little brother to look at him.

  “Please, please, Vincent?”

  He stays like that until he gets an answer.

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe, what?”

  “If you promise, Leo, that she’s co
ming back. That we’re coming back. Here.”

  “I promise.”

  “Scout’s honor?”

  “Scout’s honor. If you promise something else. That none of them—not the social services lady and not Agnetha, and not the other family, that none of them, Vincent, can know that a mountain of coconut balls was under your bed. Or that there’s a lot of money in the leather bag in Mama’s closet. Not ever. Okay?”

  His youngest brother has always been one of the smart ones. There has always been something going on in that little head, and as quick as hell. But after Papa’s blows, after the bandage, it’s working incredibly slowly.

  Lost thoughts have to take their time.

  “Okay, Vincent? Thumbs?”

  His thumb was never wrapped in the gauze bandage. It was always free. Now it meets first Leo’s thumb, and then Felix’s.

  “Thumbs.”

  “And Vincent—this is the only time. With the leather bag in the closet. Leo has promised. Right, Leo? The only time.”

  Felix observes Leo, waiting him out. It was directed only at him.

  “The only time. I promise both of you.”

  Leo pretends to swear on an imaginary Bible and gestures something like the sign of the cross. Vincent smiles a little, and it has been a long time since the last time. Now, maybe it’ll work now.

  “And Vincent?” Leo reaches out and gently grasps two partially bandaged hands aiming to continue to build on nothing. “Listen, when we knock on the door of the family, you can’t look like this. You have to take off those lousy bandages. Otherwise . . . otherwise they’ll send you somewhere else, and you won’t get to be with us. Don’t you understand that?”

  He tries to make contact with Vincent’s eyes, the eyes that usually are so present and alert but have fallen down these last few days into deep holes.

  “Now, Vincent, we’re going to loosen your left hand. Only a tiny bit.”

  He catches hold of the dangling piece and unravels it, two turns and more skin can breathe.

  “See, it’s going well. Now your right hand, and just a little again. Okay?”

  Loosened bandages are soon hanging from both hands, like the shed skin of a snake. Leo reels them in carefully, carefully. The arms are demummified. The upper body comes next, dressed in a total of three rolls of gauze, with bigger gaps, more skin gleaming through. Another two lengths have been used to reach from the upper thighs to his ankles where they are tied with simple knots.

  “Vincent, trust me. One more turn—now the bandage around your neck is gone. Do you feel the air on your skin? Now we’re rolling this off. I promise it won’t hurt.”

  When half of his body is freed from the once-white fabric, things change. Vincent starts to pull it off himself and pushes away his big brother’s hands.

  “I’ll do it.”

  Just as methodically as he wrapped himself up, he unwraps himself, letting the discolored, floppy bandage fall in a twisting pile on the floor.

  Leo smiles at what is surely a sign of life.

  And he does so entirely certain he was right all along.

  They hadn’t fucking needed to pack their bags and move to another family for two months—he can take care of things, just as he’d said. This, and whatever might happen. You can take care of things if you think. If you plan. And then don’t do what others think you’re going to do.

  He looks at Vincent, who’s sitting close to him, without bandages; at Mama’s bedroom across the hall, with a closet that hides a bag with more than thirty thousand kronor; at Felix, who’s going to understand, when he’s older, that in order to weave in a golden thread you sometimes have to first weave in a black one—and that his big brother really meant it when he promised that it was the only time. That if it should happen again, it wouldn’t be for at least several more years. And that if it happens again after that—again, it isn’t going to happen for many years.

  That’s how Leo’s thinking as he sits on the floor of a boy’s room with his brothers, one on each side of him.

  He can’t know at that moment that these autumn days, when he looks back on them much later, will always remain happy days.