That damn Finn in his stupid denim jacket.
He’d heard what Hasse and Kekkonen did to their prisoners, how they scraped sharp stones against their armpits until they bled and then poured salt into the wound. And what they did to Buddha who lives on the third floor, who was scared to death of spiders and was taken prisoner during the estate war. They bound him and then gathered daddy longlegs from all over the cellar and put them all in a cardboard box. Then they opened the bottom of the box, and Hasse pushed it over Buddha’s head, and Kekkonen taped the open flaps around Buddha’s neck. The daddy longlegs crawled over his face and into his hair and got caught in his ears and nose and mouth. Felix had seen Buddha afterwards, how he’d walked slowly back to his own street, a prisoner of war who didn’t know where he was or who he was.
He and Leo had been lucky.
Felix steps out onto the balcony, cold air in his face. He passes the elastic bandages and surgical tape to Pappa, leans over the edge of the railing, looking at the asphalt of Skogås. Leo sits in one of the striped camping chairs, his cheeks a little red.
‘Your knuckles will toughen up, but for now we’ll have to do this instead, protect them. You have to be able to practise more often and for longer.’
Pappa takes Leo’s hands, stretches them out, and winds the bandage around his knuckles.
‘When your knuckles make contact, follow through, continue the movement with your whole body – and it’s then, at that moment, you go through him.’
The gauze is wound over his knuckles and down between his thumbs and index finger and then diagonally over the wrist, round and round.
‘Make a fist.’
Leo clenches his bandaged right hand and then waits until his pappa hits it with the palm of his hand.
‘How does it feel?’
‘Good.’
The same thing with the left hand, then Leo punches the air several times in front of Felix, hopping and running through the living room and the hall, punching at nothing again and again. Pappa follows him back into the room and gets down on his knees again, and boxes the mattress so that it thuds and shifts.
‘What are their names?’
‘Hasse.’
‘And?’
‘Kekkonen.’
Pappa punches at the swaying mattress, then punches at his own shoulder.
‘This is how fucking Hasse and Kekkonen do it. Their punches stay right … here. At the shoulder! All of their movements stop here.’
He raises his right arm to the mattress, turns the right side of his upper body into it and continues the move, following through.
‘And this is how you should punch. You punch through them. You go through, straight through.’
Pappa moves one small step at a time until he’s standing right behind Leo. Felix can’t see much more than two backs, but doesn’t dare go any further into the room. He stretches himself, stands on tiptoe in the middle of the threshold. It seems like Pappa has hold of Leo’s arm.
‘You aim for the nose and it explodes like a huge fucking water balloon! And their brains are in there, floating in liquid like a goldfish in a goldfish bowl! And when you hit the nose first and then the chin … the brain bounces. Hasse’s and Kekkonen’s fucking little brains sloshing against the walls of the goldfish bowl.’
Leo hits again.
‘Nose! Chin!’
One more time.
‘Nose! Chin!’
One more time.
‘Nose! Get your body behind it! Chin! Follow straight through! Nose! Their fucking brains! Chin! They should bounce and splash!’
After a while Felix’s toes start to hurt, so he lies down and watches as Leo’s arm hits the mattress from underneath, and it almost looks funny, as if it’s not happening for real.
He’s still lying there when Pappa steps over him and goes to the kitchen and the stove and the pan for one more glass of Thunder-honey before he has to put on the work clothes that have been hanging a little too long in the hallway – there’s a job that Pappa has to tender for so that in a few days it might be his. Felix watches the feet on their way out through the front door and hears the two quick bangs as the lift opens and closes, then feels the calm that falls over the whole flat whenever Pappa leaves, as if there’s suddenly more room inside.
14
LEO PUNCHES AND punches the blue mattress. He’s wrapped his hands himself, just like Pappa wrapped them before leaving to paint some kitchen all day in a house in the suburbs. Leo knows he can hit harder and more frequently without that annoying pain. He begins each morning with a session before breakfast and school, runs home at lunchtime and punches without eating, then all afternoon and evening, and again if he wakes up in the night and can’t sleep.
He hears the vacuum for the second time this afternoon.
And he stops punching.
Mamma is up. She’s gone past by so many times, peeking in, and he recognises the look on her face – she doesn’t like him practising.
He punches again. Nose and chin. Hasse and that Finnish bastard. They could be waiting for him at any time or anywhere, so he’s been avoiding them, maybe even hiding from them, until he’s ready. Nose and chin, Hasse and the Finnish fucker. It happens almost automatically now. His whole body behind it. Shoulders that rotate, shoot forward, follow through and punch through them.
‘It’s time to take this down.’
Mamma has turned off the vacuum cleaner.
‘That’s a lamp hook. A lamp should be hanging there.’
She fetches a three-legged stool and steps up on it, stretching towards the ceiling and the hook while her son continues punching without looking at her.
‘Can you stop that now?’
Hard punches, much harder than she’d imagined, that force the mattress upwards.
‘Did you hear what I said? Stop hitting it.’
Even harder.
‘Leo?’
‘Nose and chin, Mamma.’
He turns and speaks at the same time, a punch for every syllable, and she grabs the mattress, holds it.
‘Listen to me, Leo! Who did this to your face? What are their names?’
She hugs the mattress, stands in his way so he has to stop punching.
‘Hasse and Kekkonen.’
‘I want their full names.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’m going to call their parents.’
‘You can’t do that! If you call them … don’t you know what would happen?’
He sits down on the stool, right next to his mother’s slippers, which have a little ball of fluff in the middle.
‘Leo – I’ll take care of this.’
‘That will only make it worse! Don’t you get that?’
She’s not hugging the mattress any more, she’s hugging him.
‘Their full names.’
He shakes his head and his forehead scrapes against her chest.
‘Well then.’
She steps up on the stool again, lifts the mattress and throws it on the floor.
‘I can take care of this better by myself! Stay out of it!’
‘You can start by taking off those ridiculous bandages.’
‘I have to practise!’
‘Now, Leo.’
‘Pappa said so. I have to practise!’
‘And I’m saying you have to stop.’
He doesn’t say anything else. Not one word. He stays silent as she finishes vacuuming and when Felix comes home and when they eat their snack at the kitchen table, and when she asks them to put on their coats, because they’re going to go and pick up Pappa like they usually do, and then go to the supermarket as usual.
He’s still silent in the car.
He’s sitting in the passenger seat, Felix and Vincent in the long middle seat, and Pappa’s paint stuff is in the back. Mamma is driving, dropping off, picking up – it’s something she does often. They’re going somewhere, and usually he loves this, being together in the car, it’s probably the best thing o
f all.
It only takes a few minutes to drive from their neighbourhood of high-rise blocks to a neighbourhood of single-family homes. They stop in front of one of the homes and load what Pappa has left outside the gate – the brushes, scrubbed clean and smelling strongly of paint thinner, rollers lying in plastic bags, cans of paint and wallpaper paste – while Pappa finishes talking to an older lady and gets an envelope from her.
Leo is also silent when he moves to the back seat, when Pappa sits down next to Mamma, kisses her on the cheek. Pappa is so happy, laughing in the same way he and his client were laughing a moment ago, when she said that in May there’d be more work, that they’d need the whole house repainted. Pappa looked at Leo when she said that, and Leo had known why: he’d need more arms and legs for such a big job.
‘Your hands, son? How are they?’
Leo feels his unwrapped knuckles with the palm of his hand.
‘Leo? I asked you a question.’
‘They—’
Mamma interrupts him.
‘I took it down today.’
Pappa turns towards her, his face unchanged.
‘What?’
‘I took it down. That old mattress we used to sleep on when we first met.’
Now. Now it changes. His cheeks tighten, his lips become narrower. Mostly, it’s the eyes. They’re on the hunt.
‘What did you say you did?’
‘I don’t think we should discuss this in the car, Ivan.’
‘What exactly are we not going to discuss in the car? That our son’s face is black and blue and he needs to be able to protect himself?’
‘Please, Ivan, can’t we talk about this later? Can’t we just go shopping, go home, have a normal Friday night? Let’s talk about it in the morning.’
Pappa’s silence makes them huddle closer together in the back seat. And he already smells like the black wine he started drinking during the last hour of the job.
‘I’d practised enough. Pappa, you know—’
‘Show me your hand.’
Leo holds out his right hand.
‘Soft.’
Pappa pulls on it, pushes it.
‘Way too soft.’
Leo doesn’t look at Pappa, he looks at Mamma in the mirror, her eyes trained ahead on the cars exiting the car park they’re about to enter, outside Skogås shopping centre.
‘But I’m ready now. Pappa? Nose and chin, and then my whole body and—’
‘You’ll be ready when I say you’re ready.’
Everyone climbs out. And it doesn’t feel good. Leo hears loud voices outside the entrance to the shopping centre, glances at Pappa. He knows Pappa hates those voices. So he lingers a little longer.
They’re sitting exactly where they were last time. The loudest ones are on the benches, the ones who are a little quieter on a set of low iron railings. They sit in a row, green beer cans in their hands; they’re adults, but not as old as Mamma and Pappa. Often Pappa will stop right in front of them, ask them why they’re there, why they don’t get a job like everybody else, and then after a while he usually calls them parasites and stares at them, mostly at one guy who has blond curly hair and a black quilted jacket with a hood and another guy next to him with long brown hair and shiny moon boots. But Pappa doesn’t say anything at all this time. And it feels so good. In his gut. The guy with the curly hair screams something at them as Pappa turns left towards the off-licence and Leo and Felix and Vincent follow Mamma into the supermarket. Mamma ends up with seven bags of shopping paid for in part by the money in Pappa’s envelope, and they help her carry them to the car. Even Vincent holds a large plastic bag of toilet paper in his arms.
They load the shopping next to and on top of Pappa’s painting equipment. Pappa is already sitting there, holding a bottle with the black horse on its label, half-empty, looking out the side window at the seven guys on the benches and the fence, the parasites.
Mamma is just about to start backing out of their parking spot when Pappa grabs the ignition key and switches off the engine.
‘Leo. Jump out of the car. You’re coming with me.’
Mamma turns the key again.
‘We’re going home.’
‘Don’t argue with me!’
Pappa turns the key in the other direction.
‘You drive home. And take Felix and Vincent with you.’
He opens the door and climbs out, stands there waiting until Leo gets out, then leans in through the side window, his elbows on the metal frame.
‘Just do what I say. Drive home. And take the boys with you.’
Pappa starts walking, they both do. Back to the shops. Leo shoots a last glance at Mamma, but she doesn’t look at him. She starts the car and backs out of their narrow parking spot.
‘Him, up ahead in the middle. Do you see him? That’s the leader. The leader of the parasites.’
Pappa points at the man with blond curly hair and black quilted jacket, who’s the loudest of them all and obviously doesn’t have to sit on the hard railings.
‘I think I’ll … have a little talk with him. What do you say about that, Leo?’
They stop right in front of him. In front of all of them.
‘Fellas. I want you to listen now.’
If they could just keep walking towards the shops. Or if those crowded benches would just suddenly give way. Or if an atom bomb fell. Then he wouldn’t have to stand here. Leo hunches up, closes his eyes. No nuclear bomb drops.
‘See that pizzeria over there? I’m going to go in there and have a bite to eat. With my son. It might take … forty-five minutes. And when we come back out, you’ll have disappeared.’
‘Are you joking?’
‘I don’t want to hear your fucking voices any more. And I don’t want to see you.’
The curly-haired blond waves the beer can in his hand.
‘Are you kidding me? Do you hear that? That wop must be joking. And what do we do when someone is being funny? We laugh at him.’
The blond gestures widely as he talks, waves his arms, a conductor producing loud laughter from the whole ensemble.
‘Do you really believe that? That I’m joking? A little fucking parasite who doesn’t work, is that who’s in charge here? I don’t think so. Tell you what, son. If you and your fucking parasite pals haven’t packed up your beer cans by the time I come out here again, I’ll grab you by your longhaired necks and throw you into the bushes.’
Leo moves a little to stand beside Pappa, his whole body facing the pizzeria; if he stands here, he can’t be seen at all. There are seven of them. In quilted coats and denim jackets. They could be Hasse and Kekkonen’s big brothers, and they’re screaming now, especially the one with the curly hair, fucking Turkish bastard, and the guy sitting next to him in the moon boots who’s giving them the finger with both hands and spitting, so you wanna get a beating, do you, Greek bastard, in front of your own son, and grabs a clod of dirt from the flowerbed and throws it at them.
‘Pappa isn’t Turkish.’
Leo takes a step forward, not completely visible but more so than before. It feels important to say something.
‘Or Greek. He’s half Serbian and half Croatian. And Mamma is Swedish. So I … I’m a third Swedish.’
The one who spat and threw dirt puts down his beer can on the bench and starts laughing, for real this time.
‘Fucking Greek bastard, a third? Take your retarded kid and get lost!’
It’s not a very big restaurant. Nine tables. There are small, dark, round lamps that look like snow lanterns hanging above the red and white checked tablecloths draped over every table. At three of the tables men sit alone, drinking a glass of beer, and at two of them young couples are eating pizzas larger than their plates. Pappa goes up to the bar and to the bartender Mahmoud, orders a beer, a sixth of Finnish vodka and a large orange-flavoured Fanta, then sits down at the table by the window.
They’ve been here several times before. He usually likes coming here, a Fanta in the
dark with Pappa. But not now. His whole throat is dry, and he can’t get the drink down, as if there’s a blockage somewhere between his chest and stomach.
‘You’re not drinking anything? Aren’t you thirsty? Take a sip.’
Leo shakes his head.
‘Don’t you like it?’
A sip. And it gets stuck where the others got stuck. Near his heart.
‘Do you know how much there is in here, Leo?’
Pappa’s envelope and the thick wad of cash inside it.
‘Eight thousand kronor. I have to work. Mamma has to work. Everybody needs money. And when I work, Leo … I can’t protect you, you have to be able to protect yourself. You have to be able to protect your brothers.’
Pappa has drunk half the beer and all of the vodka.
‘Your Mamma doesn’t understand that – that you have to protect yourself. Those parasites out there don’t understand – that you have to work.’
His father points towards the window; the men outside seem upset, one of them is standing up, the long-haired one who called Pappa a Greek bastard.
‘They huddle together on a fucking fence yelling because they don’t have anything else in their lives. They think they’re mates because they drink from the same beer cans. Brothers, Leo! Family. That’s much more! So much bigger! It means … belonging together. Protecting each other. Whatever happens, you stick together. People like that? Damn it! If you hit just one of them on the nose, the rest will fall into the same fucking heap.’
On the other side of the window, the guy with the long hair has stopped screaming, and walks towards the restaurant door with determined steps. And they are there too, Leo notices, running between the buildings across the street: Jasper and the Turks and the boys from Kullstigen. Every single time. Somehow Jasper always knows when there is going to be a fight and he always runs so he can be the first one there to watch. It’s as if he can’t get enough. Then again, he doesn’t have a father who hung a mattress from the ceiling.
The Father: Made in Sweden Part I Page 9