Montecore (27 page)

But no Laser Man crime
, no exploded jaws, punctured stomachs, or paralyzed store owners affect your family more than that night in April ’92 when someone breaks into the studio from the courtyard, breaks the storeroom pane, and climbs in through the window. They wander around in Dads’ studio and break things at random, the copy machine crashes to the floor, binders of negatives are tossed from the bookshelves, posters are torn down. Someone discovers the dog biscuits and starts a dog biscuit war. Someone wants to be worse and poops in a photography magazine that Dads have contributed to, then wipes the poop in long streaks over the white studio walls. Someone wants to be worst of all,
discovers the cans of used chemicals, developing fluids, and fixer, and someone unscrews the cork and says that this fucking smells like gas and someone else presents the idea and some third person says of course and they laugh and cheer and collect all the flammable material in the darkroom, crumpled posters, Kadir’s old mattress, the empty boxes, the negative binders, a dried houseplant, some unused wooden frames. Then on with the liquid and a little more, don’t be stingy, there too, more, finally everything is wet and they back toward the door and it’s smothered giggles, someone who has to pee, come on now, dammit, you’ll have to go later, shh, there’s someone out there, are you messing with me? no, shut up now, who’s going to light it, you, no, I will, okay do it then, who’s got the lighter, come on someone has to have a lighter, but hell
SOMEONE
has to have one, okay, thanks, are you with me, are you ready?

The flames that light up the room meet the poured-out trail of liquid, rush silently blue toward the waiting pile, giggling rush out to the courtyard, smothered laughter, someone who still has to pee, someone who’s looking for a key to their moped, someone who says no one lives upstairs, right?

The next day Moms answer the telephone and stand totally silently for way too long. Moms don’t even have time to explain the details before you have gathered your troops. It’s you, Melinda, Imran, and Patrik who with tense fists and gnashing teeth jump the gates to the commuter train, force yourselves up the escalator, crash through the exit gate so it bursts, stamp your gravel-puffing steps in time through the shopping center, share silent rage when you see the police’s cordon
tape from a distance and the black soot marks that have lapped out from the smashed store window.

It’s you who see Dads sitting alone on the edge of the sidewalk, Dads who are mumbling to himself and who have had a blanket placed over him by someone who doesn’t know him and who doesn’t know that Dads always have blankets over his legs and never over his shoulders.

Everything until now was practice but now it’s serious, now they have pushed us too far and your friends pretend not to hear Dads’ mumbling about that you can bet it was vandal
blattar
who did it, typical immigrants, they hate other immigrants who succeed and …

You say it kindly because not even you are ready to test Dads when they’re this fragile: Why would a gang of
blattar
write
WAR
on the wall with poop?

Dads answer: Precisely so that we will suspect the wrong people. They are smart, you know, smarter than you’d think when you see them … or perhaps they were going to write … Varón? Maybe it was South Americans?

You never find out who’s guilty, because the police have more important things to worry about, and when you ask the constable whose name is Nilsson when they are going to put out the nationwide alert and interview neighbors and dust for fingerprints and do composite sketches he laughs as if you were joking. And he must be a racist too, you can tell by looking at him, that he’s been bought off and bribed by
WAR
, because he’s totally blond and totally freckly and his pants are pulled up too high and he’s totally going high-water, and what else can you expect from someone who shares a name with Pippi’s monkey? Do you say this to him? No, true to
form you speak inwardly instead of outwardly. But your friends agree with you, don’t they? They don’t contradict you, anyway.

You walk silently, you follow Dads home to the apartment, Dads’ scarred hands shake and Dads take out his old lucky chestnut and put it back in his pocket again and Dads say words that not even you can interpret, and then on the train home, Dads’ jaw goes up and down, up and down, without the tiniest sound.

After that day, Dads become statues in front of the TV. Dads watch
Glamour
and
TV Shop
. Dads start reciting old photography quotes in new versions. Sons are called into the living room to change the channel and to be reminded that Cartier-Bresson certainly was right: You don’t get any points for second place, no points for the second pla … Then Dads lose themselves in the ad for the cleaning product Didi Seven and the quote dangles, severed, in the air.

Dads mix up little brothers and call them the wrong name again and again.

Dads sit alone in the living room and make comments about the wardrobe quality of the extras on
Falcon Crest
reruns.

Dads sit as though bewitched in front of the looped ads for the Abdomenizer, a totally new kind of exercise implement that sculpts your stomach muscles in three different ways at once, you can store it under your bed and work out in front of the TV and look at all these people, sitting here tanning-salon brown and face-lifted, who have succeeded in dieting themselves to new lives in just ten minutes a day.

Little brothers have started school and they’re losing front teeth and learning all the letters of the alphabet
perfectly and sometimes you think that right now little brothers are the same age you were when the Dynamic Duo started. And in some way it’s impossible to imagine that you, who were so big then, practically all grown up, were actually as small as little brothers are now, as gap-toothed, as boyishly stick-armed. At the same time, little brothers start to ask you about Dads. They wonder why Dads have become so strange and why Dads think the girl who hosts the nature program on Channel 1 will answer when they comment on hyenas’ digestion and get irritated by the obviously unprofessional cameraman. Little brothers look sometimes worriedly but mostly fondly at Dads, and when they need help with homework they come to you instead. Because Dads say that Magdalena was Jesus’ woman, and Jesus was about like history’s first photographer in a metaphorical sense, and the disciples were like Jesus’ invisible henchmen, they were like photographer’s assistants who got Jesus down from the cross and moved that stone, you know, and actually you could say that most things in life can be explained with photographers. And assistants. But despite the changes in Dads and despite Dads’ stubborn refusal to go to the doctor, there is not a single time when Dads hit Moms. Neither do Dads ever make the mistake of touching a hair on little brothers’ heads. However, there are times when big brothers must be shown the right way and then it’s often the best of moods, with Dads who are humming along to some ad jingle in front of the TV and then suddenly change moods before anyone has time to react and the reptilian-quick surprise attack is most often with words and seldom with blows, an attack that makes clear that no matter what you do, you will always be a
disgrace to the family because you spend time with niggers, disgusting abids, sweat-stinking monkeys when you really should be spending time with Östermalm Swedes who play tennis and piano. But no, you have to play basketball and ruin your life with people from the outskirts, disgusting fat Indians and monkeys, and Dads spit out the words and you just take it without striking back because you know that dads will be quiet anytime now, because the ads will be over and the episode of
Glamour
will come back on and you know that it’s not really Dads saying those stinging words because Dads are gone, Dads have been stolen, and everything is Sweden’s fault.

Four weeks later, Dads disappear quite physically. Moms go from rage to worry to fury to teary conversations with friends, to rage back to worry and then just a heartbreaking sadness that pales cheeks and makes Moms start to take pills that help with sleeping and sometimes freeze her movements so that it can take fifteen minutes to throw a garbage bag down the garbage chute. The studio is burned up, Dads have packed their worn suitcase and left family responsibility behind.