The Father: Made in Sweden Part I (60 page)

On the kitchen table stands a petrol can, sickly green and with its lid on. Beside it stand two empty wine bottles. Beside those a plastic funnel and a cigarette lighter.

He’s never seen those things on the kitchen table before, not at the same time, and he creeps closer, his elbows on the threshold as he tries to get a better look.

That’s when Pappa gets up and comes towards him.

Felix plunges into the dark hall and stays close to the wall, holding his breath. Pappa goes past without seeing him.

‘Leo?’ calls Pappa over his shoulder as he passes.

Felix stretches his upper body, his neck. In Mamma and Pappa’s bedroom, near the edge of Mamma’s bed, Pappa holds her pillow in his hands as he pulls off the pillowcase.

‘Leo, the plastic wheel? Have you been listening?’

Pappa holds the pillowcase under his nose, where Mamma’s initials are embroidered in one corner. He pushes his head into it, smells it, breathing deeply, never noticing that someone is lying quietly in the dark, watching.

‘That should go down into the neck of the bottle. You push until it stops.’

Pappa’s long feet almost step on Felix as he heads back to the kitchen table, then he lifts up the bottle and shows Leo in that expansive way that only he has.

‘We did this when I was little, not with bottles but with geese. My brothers and I pushed food down their narrow fucking birds’ necks, and they grew big and fat and delicious.’

Felix bumps the threshold with his elbow, and the sound echoes through the apartment. He holds his breath like before, closes his eyes. Pappa should turn round. But he doesn’t. Even though it’s echoing.

‘You don’t know about that sort of thing, Leo. You don’t know things like that. But I know and I’m going to tell you, that’s what I’m going to do. Four thousand years ago the Jews were the first to tend geese. They were slaves. And they worked for a Pharaoh of Egypt who loved goose liver. All he ever wanted was foie gras foie gras … and they were forced to find a quick way to feed those fucking geese. Right? That’s when they started pushing the food down. Pushing pushing pushing. With really long sticks. Because the Pharaoh, he just wanted more and more. Then, there was this Spaniard, and he loves his geese – he talks to them, gives them fruit from his garden. Heaven for geese! But every autumn, when the other geese are heading to Africa or wherever the hell they fly to,
his
geese start walking around on the ground honking.
Honk honk honk!
And the geese up in the air stop – this is true, Leo – and they fly down and land and stay there, in Goose Heaven.’

Pappa’s hands fumble as they feel for the cap of the petrol container, tremble as they unscrew it and pull out the spout, until the bottle is resting on the edge of the plastic funnel.

‘He gives them love. Just like me. He creates a clan. And then … then you stay there.’

There’s a strong smell of petrol immediately.

‘Hold it here, Leo … like this … a firm grip, on the bottle. With both hands.’

Leo holds the bottle in both his hands. The black horse on its label rears on its hind legs while Pappa pours, checking now and then to see how much space is left.

‘No more than half. That’s important.’

Pappa is satisfied with the amount of petrol in the wine bottle. He smells Mamma’s pillowcase again – his breath fills up the whole kitchen – then holds it with two hands and rips it apart, putting strips of equal width into a pile.

‘Strips this size.’

He folds one of the pieces into a square with Mamma’s initials in the middle, then dips it until it’s damp with petrol.

‘A narrow fucking bird’s neck. Now press again. In goose hell there’s no protesting.’

Pappa pokes down the fabric a little at a time and stops before it touches the petrol in the bottle.

‘See? Never push it all the way down. If you do that, and then light it …’

Pappa uses his hands and makes a sound to simulate an explosion.

‘… it’ll go off too soon. You hold it firmly and when the cloth is burning, don’t tilt the bottle. And you throw it forwards, with your whole shoulder and arm, like when you’re throwing a punch.’

Pappa walks round the kitchen table, twice, holding the bottle with a straight arm, chin and lower lip jutting out, hissing as he usually does when he’s drunk and somewhere else.

‘Because we are no Axelssons.’

He washes his petrol-soaked hands under the tap, and then lights an untipped cigarette as he opens a new bottle. This one is for drinking.

‘Do you understand that? You’ll never be a fucking Axelsson!’

He drinks even more quickly than usual.

‘It
was
like this. When I met your mother, I didn’t really want her. She was beautiful, she was, but I told her. I said, “I don’t want you,” I said, “love is just betrayal.”’

Pappa is carrying the newly opened bottle in one hand and the can of
petrol in the other, as he walks towards the hall, close to Felix, and stops in front of the hat rack.

‘Do you know what she said, Leo? She said, word for word, “I will never betray you, Ivan.”’

The jacket is hanging on one of the hooks, the shoes are on the doormat.

‘Word for word! Just that. And then I said, “And how can I be sure of that?” Do you know what she answered, Leo? Can you guess?’

Leo’s jacket is on the next hook. Pappa throws it at the kitchen table where Leo is still sitting on his chair.

‘She said, “If I betray you, Ivan,” word for word, “you can kill me.”’

LEO COUNTS THE
seconds. Six seconds from their sudden deceleration before the gearbox malfunctions, twelve seconds between Pappa screaming at the car in front of them for driving too slowly and the bend that’s sharper than Pappa remembers, nine seconds between someone honking their horn several times behind them and suddenly swerving out of the left-hand lane.

They stop. The same place they stopped this afternoon. And even though it’s dark, he can just make out the squat chimney of Grandma and Grandpa’s house, which seems so small under the branches of the cherry tree, partially obscured by the overgrown raspberry hedge. They sit next to each other, silent, scouting the area, as if they’d climbed up a hill and were looking down.

The plastic bag lies in his lap.

It’s not very heavy, but it forces him to sit as still as a stone because the bottle has to remain upright.

The smell is the worst part. Petrol fumes creep into his nose, his brain. He didn’t know what a Molotov cocktail was before this.

The shaking belongs to him now. Pappa has given it to him, just like he gave it to Hasse’s father.

‘Whatever happens, Leo, I want you to know that I love you.’

The shaking he’s so afraid of.

‘Pappa?’

‘Yes?’

‘Do we have to?’

He doesn’t blink once. It almost makes his pupils hurt.

‘Yes.’

‘But what—’

‘We’ll talk to her first.’

‘What if she doesn’t want to talk?’

‘Then she’s the one who’s decided what’s going to happen.’

Pappa opens the door and climbs out. The first step goes awry, and he staggers, before grabbing the rear-view mirror and regaining his balance. He waits for Leo to climb out too.

But he doesn’t.

Instead he stares at his watch and its ugly hands. Sixteen minutes and twenty-four seconds past one. He knows that’s how it works – if you just keep track of time, look at the clock, you won’t feel so much. He always does that when he races Felix up and down stairs with leaflets in his hand – counting the seconds keeps away his exhaustion.

Pappa doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to, he just holds out his arm until Leo gets up and moves the plastic bag a little, pressing it against his chest while he stands up. He doesn’t remember Pappa’s hand being so rough; he hasn’t held it in years.

It feels like a long walk to the house. Pappa keeps moving in that jerky way, tripping and stumbling. Still they make it to the back of the house. In the darkness, on the path between the raspberry bushes Grandpa is so proud of, raspberries that are larger than other raspberries, of a warmer red, some old variety that tastes especially sweet.

‘Britt-Marie.’

Pappa squeezes his hand and chases away the silence. But not the dark.

‘Britt-Marie!’

Leo twists his left arm towards the brightness of the porch light and looks at his watch, the ugly hands. Nineteen minutes and fifty-two seconds past one. He checks again when the first light is turned on inside the house. Grandma and Grandpa’s bedroom. And again, when one of the living room lights goes on, the standard lamp with a flowery lampshade.

‘Go away!’ shouts Grandpa. He’s opened the window, and they look at each other. ‘Ivan, it’s the middle of the night, just go!’

And then it’s Leo and Grandpa looking at each other, until Leo looks away.

‘Britt-Marie! Come out, Britt-Marie! You don’t belong here!’

‘I’m calling the police, Ivan.’

‘You? A fucking Axelsson?’

‘If you don’t get out of here!’

‘Britt-Marie’s coming with me. She’s going home. To her family.’

‘I’m going to close the window. And if you don’t leave … I’m calling them. You hear that, Ivan? I’m calling the police.’

Grandpa closes the window, turns off the light. Pappa lets go of Leo’s hand for the first time and raises his fist to the house, towards Grandpa.

‘Britt-Marie! Don’t sit there like an Axelsson! Come out! To
your
family! Your kids! Me!’

The window stays closed, the house stays dark. Pappa grabs the plastic bag Leo holds pressed against his chest, lifting it right out of Leo’s arms, and takes the bottle out of the bag.

‘Come out now! Otherwise I’ll burn you! I’ll burn down the whole fucking thing!’

Pappa holds the bottle, hands it to Leo. Leo’s arms just hang there, useless.

‘Leo – aim at the basement window.’

Arms still not moving. He doesn’t take the bottle. And he doesn’t look at Pappa, he stares down at the ground and the grass.

‘We’re going to drive her out with fire. Do you understand?’

He takes a cigarette lighter from his front pocket, puts the flame to the mouth of the bottle, to the fabric soaked in petrol and pressed far inside, like a goose with a skinny fucking neck being fattened up.

The fabric flower petals turn yellow and orange.

‘Britt-Marie! You’re making this decision! It’s your choice! It’s …’

Pappa’s movements are slow, as movements are when even as they happen you know you’ll always remember them, even as they melt into the bare branches of the swaying cherry tree. He hits the basement window, the room where they usually sleep during those visits they never want to end. It takes almost a minute from the glass pane shattering – Leo is sure of it because he’s counting one second at a time – until the fire really starts to burn. That muffled sound. And the small flames growing and spreading and taking over.

Pappa isn’t screaming any more. He’s not going anywhere. He’s not even trembling.

The entire room is illuminated. A different shade of light from the lamps, yellower. Fire eats both the chairs and the bed.

Then the basement door opens.

Grandpa throws a large rug over the flames and then another one. Grandma and Mamma are carrying green and blue plastic buckets and throw the water onto the fire.

‘Let’s go, Leo.’

They are still running around inside. In and out of the laundry room filling buckets.

‘Now.’

Two ugly hands. It’s been four minutes and forty-four seconds since Leo stepped out of the car and into the raspberry bushes, which Pappa is falling into right now, and since they first passed the clothes line that Pappa just now cut his cheek and chin on. It’s not much.

Leo closes his eyes as they drive home and keeps them closed the whole way back, and it feels like a long journey, as if they’re on their way to the other side of Sweden.

HE SEES THE
police car as soon as Pappa parks, the moment he opens his eyes again.

Near their front door. Black and white. Parked diagonally in front of the high-rise, clearly visible under the streetlight.

He’s never seen a police car this close to home before.

They usually park further away, or in the car park, and then walk from there. Never like this, right outside, as if blocking the exit.

‘Everything will be all right.’

Leo curls up a little more tightly in the back seat.

‘We’re a family. Right, Leo? And if we stick together like families do, then everything will be all right.’

The front doors of the police car open simultaneously. And there are two of them. An older man, even older than Pappa, and a younger female
cop, he’s not seen that many female officers before. They go straight to the car, towards Pappa.

‘Ivan Dûvnjac?’

They can be heard clearly even though all the windows are shut, and they knock on the glass until Pappa rolls it down.

‘Yes?’

‘You’re coming with us.’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘You know what we’re
talking
about.’

Pappa shakes his head and makes an effort to speak clearly; he doesn’t mumble, and he moves his lips.

‘No. Not a clue.’

And turns to the back.

‘Do you have any idea what they’re talking about, son?’

Pappa leans close, his alcohol-laced breath as intrusive as the smell of petrol and smoke on the sleeve of his jacket.

And they
see
him.

‘No, Pappa. I don’t know what they’re talking about.’

The older policeman nods towards Leo as he speaks.

‘Ivan – there are children here.’

The woman moves around the car, handcuffs in her hand.

‘So come with us now. Voluntarily.’

She waits there until Pappa, after an eternity, shrugs.

‘Leo?’

‘Yes?’

‘Go home and take care of your brothers.’

‘Pappa, I—’

‘Do it! Go home. Take care of your brothers.’

The police officer holding the handcuffs opens the door and Pappa stretches out his hands, palms up. The two cops in uniform stand on either side of him as he walks towards the police car and the back seat. That’s where he sits as the black-and-white car drives away, and he turns around, and they look at each other, not long, but long enough.