And it’s his pappa’s footsteps, treading slowly from the bedroom to the toilet – he can hear him peeing even though the door is shut.
Only half a sandwich to go. Two sips of orange juice.
There he stands. His long pale upper body, his thick forearms, his jeans unbuttoned at the waist, sockless feet that never seem to end. He stands on the threshold looking in and fills up the whole doorway.
He combs his hand through his hair, pulling it back; Pappa has always looked like that.
‘Good morning.’
Leo is chewing. When you’re chewing you can’t answer. Since you’re chewing and can’t answer, you’ve got time to turn your face towards Felix, leaving only your right cheek exposed to that voice.
‘I said good morning, boys.’
‘Good morning.’
Leo hears them answer in a quick chorus, as if they want this to be over as soon as possible. Pappa passes behind his back, opens a cupboard, takes out a glass, and fills it with water. It sounds like he’s drinking half of it, and then he turns towards the table.
‘Has something happened?’
Leo doesn’t look at him, just glances with his good eye.
‘Leo. You’re not looking at me.’
Now he turns his head a little more, as much as possible without revealing too much.
‘Show me your face.’
He’s not quick enough. Felix gets there before him. The sound of his sandwich plate on the table and a loud voice.
‘It was two against one, Pappa. They were …’
Pappa isn’t standing at the sink any more. There’s bare skin near Leo’s shoulder.
‘What is that?’
Leo turns even more to the side, further away.
‘Nothing.’
Pappa grabs his face. Not hard, but hard enough, and turns it upward. The stupid swollen cheek that is blue and yellow and puffed up around the eye.
‘What the hell is that?’
‘Leo … fought back. He did. Pappa! He …’
Felix answers again before Leo is even able to form a single word. He normally has so many, they fill his mouth. Now they aren’t there. When they come, he swallows them.
‘Did you?’
His father stands there, looking at him, then at Felix, then back to Leo, trying to meet his eyes, staring, staring.
‘Leo?’
‘Pappa, he did, I saw it, loads of times, he—’
‘I’m asking Leo.’
Eyes that stare and stare. And a mouth that asks and asks.
‘No. I didn’t hit back.’
‘There were two of them, Pappa … and they were big, thirteen or fourteen years old, and—’
‘OK. That’s enough.’
Those large hands lift up Leo’s battered face a little bit more, carefully fingering it.
‘Now I know. Go to school, Leo. And when you get home … we’ll take care of this.’
10
THEY DON’T LOOK much from this far above. There’s the taller one with fair hair and a backpack and the shorter one with dark hair and a gym bag over his shoulder.
He’s probably never watched them walking to school together. He walked Leo to school the first week, walked beside him, explained things to him, warned him, directed him – it’s a fucking savannah, hunt or be hunted, and it will only give you what you’re entitled to if you take it, you’re a Dûvnjac and no bastard is going to sit where you want to sit – until the second week when Leo asked him to walk a few metres behind, then the week after asked him not to walk him to school at all. With Felix, he’d never even considered it. He had Leo, and that was good enough.
But it wasn’t good enough.
His oldest son can’t even protect himself.
Ivan moves the two potted plants to one side and leans on the windowsill with both hands. There isn’t really much to the kitchen. A narrow corridor, a dining area, and a seventh-floor window from which both Skogås and the two heads below appear small. But it’s his. A four-bedroom flat with two entrances in a Stockholm suburb that didn’t even exist until a few years ago, when men in suits drew a few lines on a piece of paper, trying to solve an acute housing crisis by building a million identical flats.
He cracks the first egg, the second egg, the third egg, the fourth egg, always fried to a crisp, always thoroughly salted. He stands at the stove, stirring the eggs in the frying pan with a fork, but what he sees is a face. Swollen. Blue. Yellow. A face that won’t go away.
He tries to focus on the high chair, where Vincent sits and waves while his pappa cooks. He pours himself a large glass of water and drinks it. He boils water in a snorting kettle and mixes the instant coffee, heaping in several spoonfuls.
It’s not enough. It doesn’t block out what’s in front of him.
One swollen cheek, one eye swollen shut, a battered face.
‘Owww!’
His plate is on the table, coffee cup in his hand, when Vincent leans over and grabs the ballpoint pen and a stack of Keno tickets and starts drawing on one that’s already been filled in.
‘Not those, those … those belong to Pappa. No scribbling there.’
‘You have so many.’
‘No more. Stop it!’
He looks at his son, who refuses to let go. His little hands are a lot stronger than you might imagine. A three-year-old, but the face is that of his ten-year-old brother, and it won’t leave him alone. He turns away and closes his eyes, then turns back, but the swelling continues to grow. Leo getting beaten, falling to the ground and crawling, taking it and not hitting back.
A fifth egg, another cup of black instant coffee. Ivan still sits there, even though he finished long ago, looking through the kitchen window, following the pavement towards the white brick school where two of his sons spend their days. The one-storey building that holds the junior and secondary school and where a swollen face sits at a desk, answering questions and anxiously glancing out of the window, looking for whoever beat him up. And who might be waiting outside to beat him up again.
He’s suddenly in a hurry.
He puts Vincent down on the floor and tells him to go to his room and wait there and not to wake up Mamma. He throws on the closest pair of shoes, brown leather, once nice but now scuffed and missing their laces, and takes the lift seven floors down to the basement, through a corridor that’s missing its lights and past the storage spaces.
The mattress is blue quilted on the outside and spun and carded horsehair on the inside, the hard kind that’s almost impossible to get hold of any more now that everyone wants to sleep on air and down. The mattress they slept on together the first few years they lived in the city.
It’s heavy and fills up the entire lift. He knocks down decorations in the hallway and clothing off the coatrack on his way into the kitchen. The twenty-year-old horsehair mattress covers the entire floor between the refrigerator and the dining table. He presses it down with his left knee and rolls it up, packing it tightly, and ties a rope at each end, moves it from the kitchen to his workroom and leans it against the wall while shoving a chair out to the middle. He takes down the large rice-paper lamp and presses the mattress up against the ceiling hook until it catches hold.
‘What’s that?’ comes Vincent’s small voice.
He hadn’t noticed his audience. Ivan smiles, sighs, lifts up his youngest son.
‘A new lamp.’
The curious eyes look at him for a long time.
‘No, it’s not, Pappa.’
‘No. It’s not.’
‘What is it, Pappa?’
‘A secret.’
‘Secret?’
‘Mine and Leo’s secret.’
Ivan walks towards the kitchen, Vincent following. He removes the scraps of rope from the kitchen table, puts the little boy in the high chair at the short end of the table, and takes a new bottle of red out of the wine rack under the sink, which has empty spaces for nine more – Vranac, with the label that he likes so much, the black stallion that can’t be bro
ken, rearing up on its hind legs. Pours half of the bottle into a pan, a few tablespoons of sugar, then heats it up, stirring it until the sugar melts, and decants it into a beer glass.
‘Thunder-honey, Vincent.’
He raises his glass to Vincent, who smiles and touches a finger to it, leaving a small, clear fingerprint behind.
‘Thunder-honey, Pappa.’
Ivan raises the glass to his mouth, closes his eyes. As he swallows he sees a face, swollen, blue, yellow.
11
THE DAY WAS not long enough. Leo had waited on one of the low benches in the junior school playground for his little brother, who was in school for longer than him today. Then they’d sat there together, talking, waiting, talking a little more. About nothing. They both knew they were waiting for time to go by. That if they sat there long enough Pappa might have passed out from the wine by the time they got home.
One step at a time, up all seven floors.
Slowly taking the last step.
Slowly.
Their door looks just like all the others. A letterbox that slides open, almost swishes up after a light poke of the fingertips. A black doorbell that makes a prolonged, muted ring. And a metal plate above it that reads NO CANVASSERS, which Pappa always points to in irritation whenever anyone they don’t know rings the doorbell.
Leo and Felix exchange a glance.
He doesn’t want to go in, but leans in closer, trying to hear Pappa’s footsteps without really daring to put his ear against the door.
They look at the nameplate on the door. DÛVNJAC. Three deep breaths. Then they open the door and go inside.
‘Leo!’
A single step and the voice has already arrived. His legs don’t want to continue down the narrow hallway, so they just stop there.
‘Leo, come here!’
Pappa is sitting in the kitchen. Still wearing jeans and no shirt. An empty glass stands next to a pile of Keno tickets, the pan on the stove is empty. It’s easier to look down at the floor, concentrate on the yellow linoleum floor far away from the staring eyes.
‘Come here.’
Leo steps forward. Felix stands beside him until Leo stops him, go to Vincent, pushes him when he doesn’t move fast enough, go to Vincent’s room and close the door, one more step. His gaze never leaves the floor.
‘Yes?’
‘Your face.’
He looks less at the floor and more at his father’s legs.
‘I want to see your whole face.’
His father’s legs turn into a stomach, chest, eyes. It’s hard to see what he’s thinking.
‘Does it hurt?’
‘No.’
A hand pokes at the tight and aching skin.
‘Don’t lie.’
‘A bit.’
‘A bit?’
‘A bit more.’
‘And they go to the same school as you?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you know their names?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you didn’t hit them back?’
‘I—’
‘You go to the same school? You know their names? But you’re not going to do … anything about it?’
Pappa towers over him.
‘You’re afraid. My son is … afraid? A Dûvnjac? Well, everybody’s afraid! Even me. But not everyone runs. You stand your ground. Control your fear. And you grow.’
His big body is shaking. And then he points out into the hallway, towards the workroom.
‘We’re going in there.’
‘There?’
‘Now.’
It happens again. Just like in the hallway, his legs refuse to budge.
‘Now.’
Leo starts moving, though slowly, when the door to the bedroom opens. Mamma. Her hair is dishevelled, and she’s wearing a yellow nightgown that doesn’t fit properly any more.
‘What’s all the screaming out here …’
Pappa whispers, but his voice is still loud.
‘Go back to bed.’
‘What’s going on? Ivan? What are you up to?’
‘Don’t get involved in this.’
‘What are you … oh my God, Leo, your face, what—’
‘This is between me and Leo. This is my responsibility.’
He puts his arm around Leo’s shoulder and pulls him a little closer, not hard, but clearly towards the room.
‘Now let’s go in.’
12
FELIX STANDS BEHIND the closed door, listening. He pushes on it and hears Mamma ask Pappa what he’s up to, and Pappa telling her it’s none of her business.
He doesn’t hear Leo’s voice at all, no matter how closely he listens, and he doesn’t like that. He knows that’s not good. It feels like when that bastard Hasse stretched his arms out on either side of him to keep him from moving forward or back. Or worse, like it did yesterday when he didn’t have time to warn Leo that Kekkonen’s fist was coming at him.
He opens the door and goes out into the hallway. He has to. He can’t stand it any more.
And walks right into Mamma.
She hears him, but doesn’t see him. Her eyes are boring into the closed door of the workroom. He stands next to her, listening with her.
A … it sounds almost like a thud. And another. Or maybe a … punch. As if someone is throwing punches. Again. Again. Again. Again.
Just like yesterday. When he couldn’t do anything. When he cried and screamed inside Hasse’s arms.
He opens the door before Mamma is able to stop him. It looks weird.
Pappa is on his knees, on the floor, and he’s never seen him like that. His upper body leans against a large, blue, tied-up mattress. Pappa is holding it as if he’s hugging it. And he never hugs anybody. Leo is also shirtless. Bare chest and jeans.
He looks like Pappa.
‘Put your weight into it, like this,’ says Pappa. ‘Your whole weight.’
And it’s then that Felix realises that the blue mattress is hanging from the ceiling where the rice-paper lamp used to hang.
‘You punch with your body, not your hands, you need to put your full weight behind it.’
And it’s Leo who’s doing the hitting, at the mattress that Pappa is hugging. Again. Again. Again. Again.
‘When someone wants to hurt you, you aim for the nose. A single punch. Go for the bigger one first. If you hit his nose, it’ll make his eyes water.’
Now Pappa stands up, jumping lightly on the spot, low, quick jumps, and he punches the hanging mattress hard, very hard.
He stops hitting and nods to Leo who’s rubbing the knuckles of his right hand, which are already skinned and red.
‘When you hit the nose, he’ll lean forward. The idiots always lean forward when their tear ducts start to squirt. That’s what happens if you hit the nose just right, they open up, and then he’ll stand just like this, look at me, Leo, with his forehead near yours.’
Pappa leans forward, very close to Leo’s chest, like a ram about to slam his horns into another ram. And that’s when he sees them. He looks at Mamma, who wants answers but won’t get them, so chooses to look at Felix instead.
‘Go and get some water. A big glass. Your brother’s getting thirsty.’
Now he pokes, nudges his head gently against Leo’s chest.
‘Now punch again. But never straight ahead. If you do that you’ll hit the forehead, the skull, it’s the hardest bone in the body, and you have to protect your hands. Aim your next punch here.’
Pappa points to his chin, and gestures at his cheek.
‘The jawbone. You crook your arm, as if you’re hitting diagonally from the side and also from below.’
He makes a fist and hits his own jaw and cheekbone.
‘You aim for this, the cheekbone is fragile. With your whole body behind you. A short right hook slanted underneath.’
Leo punches. Punches and punches. Tries to crook his arm, come around with it, punch just as Pappa wants him to.
‘Water? You were supp
osed to go and get some water, Felix. Didn’t I say so? Run!’
Felix does it, runs to the kitchen, to the tap from which the water is always warm and takes so long to run cold, fills a big glass and walks slowly back, holding it in both hands.
‘Good. From now on this is your assignment. You bring us some water every half-hour and hand it to your brother. Now … close the door.’
Pappa turns his bare back to them. And lays his arms on Leo.
‘You’ve hit him on the nose. He’s leaned forward. Now you keep on hitting. Until he’s on the ground. And if there’s more than one of them, they’ll give up. One or two or three. It doesn’t matter. It’s like … dancing with a bear, Leo. You start with the biggest bear and hit him on the nose – then the others will run. Dance and hit, dance and hit! You wear him out, and when he’s confused and scared you hit him again. You can defeat a bear, as long as you know how to dance and hit!’
Felix is waiting for Mamma to close the door, but instead she steps into the warm, musty room.
‘Ivan – what do you think you’re up to?’
‘I told you to leave.’
‘I see his face. I do. But this …’
‘He needs to learn how to fight.’
Mamma has a different kind of voice than Pappa, thinks Felix. When she screams it cuts through you.
‘You can’t do it like this! Leo isn’t you. You of all people should know best where this will lead!’
‘Damn it! He needs to learn how to protect himself!’
‘Let’s go into the bedroom. You and me. Now, Ivan! And talk about this!’
Pappa is silent for a moment. Even though it looks like he’s going to scream back.
He goes over to Mamma and shoves her out of the room.
‘And what are we going to talk about, Britt-Marie? How he should lie down the next time he takes a beating? Which side of his body he should turn up so they can hit him even harder? He has to be able to protect himself! Or should he be a fucking … Axelsson?’
Mamma doesn’t answer.
And when Pappa closes the door, Felix squeezes her hand.
13
FELIX’S FOOT TREMBLES a little as he stretches up towards the cabinet and Mamma’s green medical box on top of it. He sits down on the lid of the toilet seat and opens the box up, taking out bandages and surgical tape. With these items in hand, Felix runs across the brown carpet of the hallway, into the living room and across its wooden floor that’s always cold and creaks when Pappa walks on it.
The Father: Made in Sweden Part I Page 8