The Princess of Burundi

Sixteen

The bartender gave him a cursory glance and continued to wipe down the counter. Lennart took a drink of his beer and looked around the bar. One of the city’s most famous lawyers was sitting by himself at a table by the window. Lennart had met him before in some context he couldn’t remember. Now the lawyer was conducting a one-man trial over a glass of whiskey. It was probably not his first drink, because he was talking to himself with his face propped up in his left hand and the glass in his right.

“Well, well,” Lennart said and turned back to the man behind the counter. Lennart knew that the man’s lack of interest was an act, but right now he had no time for games.

“It was a while since he was here,” the bartender said.

“When was it?”

“I can’t remember.”

“Where is he now?”

The bartender paused, seeming to weigh the bother of keeping up his passive act versus the difficulties he could expect from Mossa if he told Lennart what he knew. He opted for what seemed the most comfortable option.

“Try him at Kroken,” he said, but the comment was more a test to see how knowledgeable his visitor was.

Kroken was an illegal gaming club housed in the basement of a building downtown. It had a handwritten sign on the door with the name POS IMPORT and a dozen crates of plastic weapons arranged along one wall, a business supposedly involved in importing toys from Southeast Asia and textiles from the Baltic states.

“He never goes there,” Lennart said.

He returned to his beer in order to give the bartender another chance. If he came up with another idiotic suggestion, he would know.

The lawyer by the window staggered to his feet, threw a five-hundred-kronor note on the table, and walked with assumed nonchalance toward the door. The bartender hurried over to the table, whisked away the money, and cleared the glasses from the table.

Lennart thought about Mossa. Where could he be? He hadn’t seen him in weeks. Mossa divided his time between Stockholm, Uppsala, and sometimes Denmark. Lennart suspected that gambling was not the only business Mossa had in Copenhagen. There had been talk of drugs, but Lennart didn’t think the Iranian was stupid enough to dabble in narcotics.

Mossa was a gambler known for his carefulness. He had not gotten himself tangled up with the law over the past few years. This was not because he had kept on the right side of the law, but rather it was a mark of his ability. He had the reputation of being beyond the police and prosecution.

Lennart had known him for about ten years. He knew that John had sometimes played with Mossa, who had liked his quiet ways. John rarely gambled large amounts and never in the big leagues, but was good when it came to the middle ranks, the enjoyable small-time games, which were not about the money.

Mossa didn’t play at the clubs except very occasionally a game of roulette, but when it came to card games he played only privately.

Lennart had joined him once or twice but had neither the tenacity nor the funds required.

“I heard he was in Stockholm these days,” the bartender said. “But he usually comes back to town at Christmas. His mom lives here.”

That’s more like it, Lennart thought. He knew where Mossa’s mom lived but he could hardly pay her a visit to ask her for her son’s whereabouts. Mossa would go ballistic. But there were other ways.

“Thanks,” he said and laid a hundred-kronor note on the counter.

He stepped out onto Kungsgatan and followed St. Petersgatan east. He stopped outside the Salvation Army and lit a cigarette, looking at the building and thinking back to the one time he had celebrated Easter there as a child, dressed up as a wolf cub. It was one of the neighborhood kids, Bengt-Ove, who had talked him into going. He had eaten a ton of Easter eggs.

One time, in later life, Lennart had stumbled into the Salvation Army drunk out of his mind. Bengt-Ove had been there to greet him. He must have stayed after their wolf-cub days. They had looked at each other for a few seconds and then Lennart had turned on his heel without saying a word.

He had felt shame that time, ashamed of his drunkenness and filth. Every time he walked past, that feeling of shame returned. It wasn’t Bengt-Ove’s fault. He would probably not have blamed him for his dissolute lifestyle, ratty clothes, stinking breath, or slurred speech. Sometimes Lennart wondered what would have happened if he too had stayed. He had friends who had been saved and left crime and alcohol behind. Would he have managed it? He didn’t think so, but the visit had awakened the thought of another life. He didn’t want to admit it, but secretly he thought of the hasty, unplanned encounter as a wasted opportunity. It was probably just a thought constructed in hindsight, like so many others, but it was an appealing thought, especially in moments of regret.

He didn’t blame anyone. Earlier he would have done so, but now his worldview was clear enough so he understood that only he was responsible. What good did it do to moan about injustice? He had had the chance. He had met Bengt-Ove’s gaze and he had seen it there, but had chosen to walk away.

It had been winter then, like today, but the Salvation Army windows were dark and it was quiet. Lennart kept walking.

The list of names was in his coat pocket. Three names had been crossed off; five remained. He was not going to give up until his brother’s murderer was checked off. These eight guys were going to help him.

He decided to stop by and see Micke. They hadn’t talked since it had happened. He knew the police had been talking to him and maybe he had picked something up.

When Lennart arrived, Micke was about to go to bed. The last few days had wiped him out but he had found it hard to sleep.

“Oh, it’s you, is it?”

He didn’t like Lennart, but he was John’s brother.

“I’m sorry about John,” he added.

Lennart walked into the apartment without saying a word, in that presumptuous way that drove Micke crazy.

“Do you have any beer?”

Micke was surprised that he even asked. Usually he just walked over to the fridge and helped himself.

“I hear the pigs have been talking to you,” Lennart said and popped open the can that Micke handed him.

Micke nodded and sat down at the kitchen table.

“What did they say?”

“They asked me about John. He came by here on the day he died, you know.”

“He did? No one’s said anything about that to me.”

“He stopped in the late afternoon.”

“Why did he do that?”

“For Chrissakes, Lennart.”

The fatigue made Micke irritable.

“What did he say?”

“We just talked about normal stuff.”

“Like what?”

He knew what Lennart was after, and tried to re-create an image of a living John, not trouble-free exactly, but happy, with bottles of wine and spirits and a family he was eager to get home to.

“He didn’t say anything?”

“About what?”

“About some shit going on, you know what I’m talking about.”

Micke got up and helped himself to a beer as well.

“He didn’t say anything out of the ordinary.”

“Think hard now.”

“Don’t you think I’ve thought about it? Every damn second since it happened.”

Lennart looked at him searchingly, as if weighing his words, and took a drink from the can while continuing to gaze at him.

“Stop staring,” Micke said.

“Did you two cook something up?”

“Shut up!”

“Horses and shit,” said Lennart, who almost never got involved in the gambling parties that were formed and dissolved on a regular basis-mostly because his ability to pay up was generally doubted.

“Nothing like that,” Micke said in a voice steady and assured but in which Lennart sensed a moment’s hesitation, a look that flickered unsteadily for a tenth of a second.

“Are you sure? We’re talking about my only goddamn brother here.”

“My best friend,” said Micke.

“Fuck you if you’re not telling me the truth.”

“Was there anything else? I’d like to turn in.”

Lennart changed the subject.

“You coming to the funeral?”

“Of course.”

“Do you understand it?”

Lennart’s eyes and the gaze he directed straight down into the table-as if the worn Formica surface could offer any explanation for the murder of his brother-revealed the depth of his despair.

Micke stretched out a hand and put it gently on Lennart’s arm. Lennart looked up, and where Micke had only ever seen alcohol-induced weepiness he now saw the glimmer of real tears.

“No,” Micke said hoarsely. “I don’t get it. Not John of all people.”

“John of all people,” Lennart echoed. “That’s what I’ve been thinking too. When there’s so much scum.”

“Go home and try to get some sleep. You look like shit.”

“I won’t stop until I get ’im.”

Micke felt torn. He didn’t want to hear Lennart’s thoughts of revenge, but he also didn’t want to be left alone. The fatigue was starting to wear off and he knew it would be a long night. He recognized the symptoms. He had suffered from insomnia for many years. From time to time it got better and he sank into a deep, dreamless sleep that bordered on an unconsciousness that felt like a gift. But then the wakeful nights returned, the open wounds. That’s how it felt. Burning sores that ravaged him on the inside.

“What does Aina say?”

“I don’t think she really understands,” Lennart said. “She’s confused as it is and this will break her. John was her favorite ever since Margareta died.”

John and Lennart’s little sister, Margareta, had died in 1968 when she was run over by a delivery van outside the grocery store on Väderkvarnsgatan. It was a subject that the brothers had never touched on, and her name was never mentioned. Photographs in which she appeared were put away.

There were those who said that Aina and Albin had never fully recovered from losing their daughter. Some even hinted that Albin had taken his own life when he slid off the roof of the Skytteanum that day in April in the early 1970s. Others, especially his fellow workers, maintained that he had been sloppy with the safety ropes and hadn’t managed to compensate by gaining a foothold on the slippery roof.

Albin would never have committed suicide, and even if he had entertained the crazy idea it would never have happened during his work hours, on a roof. But the uncertainty hovered over the family like a cloud.

“I haven’t talked so much with her,” Lennart admitted. He got up and Micke thought he was getting himself another beer but instead he walked over to the window.

“Did you watch him as he was leaving? Did you happen to look out the window, or something?”

“No,” Micke said. “I stayed on the couch. Jeopardy was on.”

“Do you remember Teodor?”

“You mean Teodor from when we were little? Of course.”

“I think of him sometimes. He took care of me and John after Dad died. He put us to work.”

“Do you remember when we played marbles?” Micke smiled. “He was phenomenal.”

“John was his favorite.”

“He looked out for all of us.”

“But especially John.”

“That’s because he was the youngest,” Micke said.

“Just think if our teachers had been like Teodor.”

Clearly, the loss of his little brother was causing Lennart to look back at his Almtuna childhood, and there was no better person than Micke to relive it with. Micke understood Lennart’s need to access these comforting memories of early childhood. He didn’t have anything against it himself either, reveries of the busy playgrounds, the games, bandy matches on Fålhagen ice rinks, and track-and-field practice on Österängen.

It was the life they’d been given, that’s how Micke felt, and he thought it was even more true for Lennart. After those early childhood days, all hell had broken loose, starting with their attendance at Vaksala High School.

Lennart had been placed in a remedial class because he had “trouble following standard instruction,” and thus he fell into the hands of Stone Face, whose instruction was not particularly hard to follow since it consisted mainly of playing table tennis. Lennart was good at Ping-Pong from all the matches with Teodor in the boiler room. So good that he creamed Stone Face in match after match.

But where Teodor had figured as a portal to an adult life with as full a register of emotions as the sentimental janitor could muster, Stone Face was merciless about drumming his particular brand of life knowledge into his pupils.

Lennart would have none of it. He cut class, or hit back. From ninth grade on he was absent more and more, which had resulted in his poor reading and writing abilities. He knew nothing of history, math made him uncontrollably enraged, and he even cut shop classes.

The alternatives for Lennart were the pool hall in Sivia, Lucullus restaurant-which made the town’s first pizzas-and Kullen. He stole to survive, in order to finance his pool and pinball habit, to buy cigarettes and soda. He stole to impress, and fought in order to frighten others. If he couldn’t be loved he would be feared, he seemed to reason.

He didn’t accuse anyone, or direct blame at others, but inside he hated his teachers and the rest of the adults. At home, Albin stuttered out his admonitions. Aina became nervous and could oftentimes not take care of herself, let alone her difficult son. Aina found comfort in her youngest, John, whom she nonetheless saw being dragged into his older brother’s increasingly wild escapades.

“John was a good guy,” Micke said. He heard how inadequate it sounded, how flat.

“There’s one thing I’ve been wondering,” Lennart said and sat down at the table again. “Did John have another woman?”

Micke looked at him in disbelief.

“What are you saying? That he was fooling around on the side?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he said something to you.”

“No, I never heard him talking about another girl. You should know that. He adored Berit.”

“Of course he did. He was only unfaithful with his cichlids.”

“What’s going to happen with those fish?”

“Justus is taking over,” Lennart said.

Micke thought about John’s son, Daddy’s boy. In Justus he could see the teenage John. A man of few words, an easily averted gaze. It was as if the boy saw through whomever he was talking to. Many times Micke had felt inadequate, as if Justus was choosing not to burden his mind with Micke’s chatter, much less dignify it with an answer.

Come to think of it, in childhood John too had had that attitude. John could also give the impression of being superior, proud, unwilling to make compromises. That’s probably why he and Sagge had never seen eye-to-eye, even though John was a good craftsman.

It had been only in his closest relationships, especially with Berit, that John had revealed himself at all, flipping up the visor to display a thoughtfulness and capacity for dry humor that it took a while to catch on to.

“If anyone should carry on, it’s that boy,” Micke said.

He wanted another beer but knew that if he had one, Lennart would inevitably join him. And he wouldn’t stop at one. Chances were they would clean out his whole supply.

It was close to midnight and Lennart made no motion to leave. Micke got up against his will. He had a hard day to look forward to.

“Don’t know when it last snowed this much before Christmas,” he said and went to get the beers.