The Princess of Burundi

Seven

Mikael Andersson phoned the police at ten thirty. The call center-that is to say Fredriksson, since everyone else was in Eriksberg dealing with an assault-handled the matter.

Fredriksson had been enjoying his evening in the office. It was nice and quiet, and he finally had time to sort through some papers. He employed a to-him-brilliant system of eight piles, the largest of which was destined for that most comprehensive of archives: the wastebasket. He thought about how the advent of computers had triggered all that talk of the paperless office. Well, that certainly hadn’t become a reality at the Uppsala police station.

Not that he had anything against paper. His inner bureaucrat reveled in the folders, ledgers, and binders. Most of his colleagues, especially the younger ones, stored a lot of information on the computer. But not Fredriksson. He wanted to have rustling papers and binders to leaf through. The hole punch and stapler occupied a central place on his desk.

If the call interrupted him, the tone of his voice did not betray it.

“I knew Little John,” said the voice on the other end. “You know, the guy who was murdered.”

“What is your name?”

“Micke Andersson. I just found out. I’ve been working and I left my cell phone at home. I do snow removal and…”

“Okay,” Fredriksson said calmly. “You come home and find a message on your cell phone that John is dead. Who left the message?”

“John’s brother.”

“Lennart Jonsson?”

“He only had one brother.”

“You knew John?”

“We knew each other our whole lives. What happened? Do you know anything?”

“A little, but perhaps you know something we don’t?”

“I saw John yesterday and he was the same as always.”

“When was that?”

“Around five, maybe.”

“Where?”

“At my place. John had been to the liquor store and stopped by.”

Fredriksson made notes and continued. Little John had turned up at Mikael Andersson’s apartment on Väderkvarnsgatan. Mikael had just come home from his job at the sheet metal shop. He had just stepped out of the shower and thought the time was around five o’clock. John had been to the state liquor store at Kvarnen. He seemed happy, not troubled. He had been carrying two green plastic bags.

They had discussed a number of things. John had spoken about his fish tank, but he had not mentioned buying a new pump. Mikael had talked about work, about an evening shift he thought he was going to do. A couple of rooftops needed to be cleared of snow.

“Did he have anything on his mind? Did he ask anything in particular?”

“No, he was just stopping in on his way home, as I understood it. I asked him if he wanted to help with the snow removal. The company often takes on extra hands, but he didn’t seemed interested.”

“He didn’t want any extra work?”

“Well, he didn’t say no outright, but he didn’t pick up on it.”

“And that surprised you.”

“Little John wasn’t the type to sit around. I think I expected him to jump at the offer.”

“Did he need the money?”

“Who doesn’t?”

“I mean, for Christmas or something.”

“He didn’t say anything about that. And he had enough to buy Aquavit, didn’t he?”

John had stayed about half an hour, or three-quarters of an hour. Mikael Andersson had left his place to shovel snow at the apartments on Sysslomansgatan at a quarter past six. He was under the impression that John was on his way home.

“One more thing. He asked to use the phone but then he changed his mind. He never called.”

“Did he say whom he was going to call?”

“No. Home, maybe. He said he was late.”

Mikael Andersson put the receiver down and felt around for the pack of cigarettes he usually kept in his breast pocket until he remembered that he had quit two months ago. Instead he poured himself a glass of red wine even though he knew it would make him even more tempted to smoke. John had always teased him about preferring his “chick drink” and at first he had felt ashamed, but by now it was accepted as a fact of life.

He had lived with a woman called Minna for four years. One day she had left, never to return. She never even came back for her furniture or personal belongings. Micke waited for two months, then he packed it all up himself and drove out to Ragnsell’s dump in Kvarnbo. He filled half a container with her junk.

She was the one who had taught him to drink wine. “The only good thing I can say about her,” he would say. “I maybe could have understood it if I had hit her or been a bastard,” he told his friends who wondered why Minna had left, “but to up and leave like that, I don’t understand.”

He sat down in the living room in the same armchair as yesterday when Little John had sat across from him. He hadn’t taken off his coat. John, whom he had known his entire life. His best friend. My only friend, actually, he thought, and couldn’t help sniffling.

He drank some of the wine and it calmed him. Rioja. He rotated the bottle toward him and studied the label before refilling the glass. Now that half hour with John seemed incredibly important. He wanted to recall everything, every gesture, laugh, and look. They had laughed, hadn’t they?

He drank up and closed his eyes. We had a good time, didn’t we, John? He had been standing there with those plastic bags in his hands and said something about the holidays. Mikael was suddenly convinced that John had left the bags behind, and he walked out into the hall to check if they had been left there under the hat shelf. But he saw only his sneakers and wet work boots, which he should dry out before the morning.

He walked thoughtfully out into the kitchen. What had John said? Mikael looked at the clock on the wall. Could he call Berit? He was sure she was awake. Maybe he should go over there? He didn’t want to talk to Lennart. He would just rant and rave and carry on.

The horse-racing schedule was on the kitchen table. I’ll bet we win ten mil’ now that you’re dead, he thought, sweeping the schedule and tip sheets onto the floor. We who never won anything but played anyway. Week after week, year after year, in the hopes of the big win. The rush. Happiness.

“We didn’t know what we were doing,” he said aloud. “We didn’t know shit about the horses.”

If they had been tropical-fish races we would have cleaned house, he thought as he picked all the papers from the floor. Minna had taught him something besides drinking wine: If you let things start piling up on the floor you know you’re on your way out.

He rested his head against the windowpane, mumbled his friend’s name, and looked at the snow falling outside. He normally liked Christmas and all the preparations, but he knew this view from his kitchen window of his neighbors’ holiday decorations would hereafter always be connected with the memory of John’s death.

Lennart Jonsson was making his way through the snow. A car honked angrily at him as he crossed Vaksalagatan. Lennart waved his fist in the air. The red lights disappeared toward the east. He was gripped by a feeling of unfairness. Others got to ride in cars while he had to walk, jumping over the mounds of plowed snow, crossing here and there to find cleared footpaths.

If he looked up and west he saw Christmas lights stretching in toward the center of town like a row of pearls. The snow crunched under his boots. A woman had once told him she wanted to eat that sound that shoes made on the snow when it was very cold. He always remembered her words when he walked in crunchy snow. What had she meant? He liked it, but didn’t really understand.

A car with a Christmas tree on the roof drove by on Salabacksgatan. Apart from that there was no one. He stopped, letting his head hang down as if he were drunk, and realized he was crying. Most of all he wanted to lie down in the snow and die like his brother. His only brother. Dead. Murdered. The desire for revenge tore through his body like a red-hot iron, and he knew the pain after John’s death would let up only when his murderer was dead.

Missing John was something he would have to live with. He pulled up the zipper on his down jacket. He was wearing only a T-shirt underneath. He walked along the street with a gait so foreign to him that he noticed it physically. He who normally rushed around without a thought was now proceeding with deliberation, scrutinizing the buildings around him, noticing details like the overflowing garbage can at the bus stop and the snow-covered walker, things to which he would normally never even have given a second thought.

It was as if his brother’s death had sharpened his senses. He had only a few beers in him, John’s beers. He had stayed with Berit until Justus had gone to sleep. Now he was sober, alert as never before, watching his neighborhood slowly being covered by a white shroud.

The snow crunched under his feet and he wanted to eat not only the sound but the whole city, the whole damn place; he wanted to tear the whole place down.

At Brantings square he was only a few blocks from home, but he stopped when he was halfway across. A tractor was working its way methodically through the masses of snow, plowing the parking spaces, entrances, and exits.

Was John already dead when he was dumped in Libro? Lennart didn’t know, he had forgotten to ask. John got cold easily. His thin frame was not built for this weather. With his slender hands he should have been a pianist. Instead he became a welder and an expert in tropical fish. Uncle Eugene used to joke about how John should go on the Double or Nothing show on TV since he knew everything about those fish down to the last fin and stripe of color.

Lennart watched the tractor, and when it passed close to him he held up his hand in greeting. The driver waved back. A young man, about twenty. He pressed a little harder on the gas when he saw that Lennart was still there, put it in reverse with a confidently careless hand movement, came to an abrupt stop, adjusted his position, changed gears again, and spun around, preparing to take on the last sliver of snow.

Lennart was suddenly tempted to wave the driver down and exchange a few words with him, maybe say a few things about Little John. He wanted to talk to someone who understood the importance of hands.

He kept thinking about his brother in discrete body parts. Hands, the careful laugh, especially when he was among strangers-no one could claim that John had a dominating personality. That wiry body, its surprising strength.

John had been good at marbles too. As a kid John was always the one who went home with a bag full of marbles and new toy soldiers in his pocket, especially mastering those difficult ten-and twelve-step games. Only Teodor, the janitor, could beat him. He came by sometimes, borrowed a marble, and sent it flying in a wide arc, taking down a soldier. Being helped in this way was cheating, strictly speaking, but no one complained. Teodor treated them all the same, and each hoped that maybe next time he would be the one to get the favor.

Teodor laughed a lot, maybe because he sometimes had a beer or two, but mainly because he was a man who showed his feelings. He loved women, had a fear of heights, and was afraid of the dark. Apart from these important characteristics, he was most known for his expertise and efficiency in matters of building maintenance. Few could rival him in that area, especially when gripped by his famous temper.

Sometimes Lennart thought: If we had had teachers like that, with that strength and those weaknesses that Teodor has, then we would all have become professors of something. Teodor himself was a professor of being able to sweep a set of basement stairs without raising the dust, of doing three things at once, of keeping the grounds so clean that he made picking up garbage seem like an art form, of grooming the gravel paths and flower beds so well that they looked good for two, three weeks at a time.

We could have learned all this at school, Lennart thought while watching the tractor. Do you believe me, John? You were the only one who cared-no, that’s wrong; Mom and Dad did too, of course. Dad. With his damned stutter. His damned rooftops. All that metal crap.

Teodor didn’t have a big tractor, just shovels to start with and then a strong old Belos with a detachable snowplow hitched to the front. John and Lennart had helped shovel basement stairs, and once, in the mid-1960s-an unbelievably snowy winter-Teodor had sent them up on the roof, fifteen meters above the ground. They were the sons of a roofer. Ropes around their middles and small shovels in their hands. Teodor sticking his head up through the trapdoor, directing, holding the ends of the ropes. The boys sliding on the slippery slate, sending the snow down and over the edge. Svensson was down below, directing pedestrians.

One time Lennart had looked over the edge and waved to Svensson. He had waved back. Had he been sober? Maybe. Teodor in the trapdoor, terrified of looking down. To the west were Uppsala castle and the twin spires of the cathedral. To the east, Vaksala church with its pointy tower reaching like a needle toward the sky. More snow in the air. A beating heart under the winter jacket.

When it was time to crawl back up and then down through the trapdoor, Teodor laughed with relief. They went down to the boiler room, where the yard waste was burning in a huge furnace. They warmed themselves there. The air was hot and dry, with a slightly sour smell, but good. It was a smell Lennart had not come across since.

In a space next to the furnace there was a Ping-Pong table and sometimes they would play a round. John was the nimbler of the two. Lennart was the one who wanted to take care of matters with a smash.

Sometimes Teodor gave them soda, serving himself a beer. John always drank Zingo. Lennart smiled at the memory. So long ago. He hadn’t thought about the boiler room for ages, but now he reconstructed the various spaces, smells, piled crates with glass bottles and newspapers. So long ago. Professor Teodor had been dead for a few years.

Lennart bowed his head like a graveside mourner. He was freezing but wanted to dwell in his memories. Once he got home, life’s fundamental shittiness would no doubt reassert itself. Then he would have a drink, if not several.

The driver of the tractor glanced at him as he drove past. Lennart didn’t care what he thought. It was a long time since he had cared. He can go ahead and think I’m crazy.

One time they had surprised Teodor. It was for his birthday, an even year, one of the parents must have told them. He was scared of the dark and the assembled kids heard his voice in the distance through the winding basement passage. He sang to calm his nerves. “Seven lonely nights I’ve been waiting for you…” came echoing toward them, amplified by the narrow passage, the many dark corners and nooks. When he rounded the bike storage the neighborhood kids started to sing and Teodor stiffened with fear until he understood. He listened to their rendition of “Happy Birthday” with tears in his eyes. These were his kids, he had seen them grow up, rascals he had lectured and played Ping-Pong with, the ones whose soccer ball he nabbed when they played on the soft, wet grass, and the ones he juggled with in the boiler room.

Ten boys and a janitor in a basement. So long ago. John and his childhood. Back then before the future was set. Lennart took a deep breath. The cold air filled his lungs and he shivered. Had it always been fated that his brother would die young? It should have been he. He who had driven drunk so many times, drunk bad liquor, and hung out with drifters just living for the day. Not John, who had Berit and Justus, his fish, and those hands that had welded so many flawless seams.

He started to walk. It was no longer snowing so heavily, and a few stars could be seen between the clouds. The plow had now moved on to the south end of the square. It had stopped, and Lennart saw the young man pull out a Thermos, screw the cap off, and pour out some coffee.

When he passed the tractor he nodded and stopped as if on impulse. He walked over and knocked softly on the door. The guy in the tractor lowered the window about halfway.

“Hey there,” Lennart said. “Looks like you have quite a job.”

The young man nodded.

“You’re probably wondering what I’m doing here in the middle of the night.”

He stepped up onto the tractor so that his head was more on the same level as the driver’s. He felt the warmth of the cabin streaming toward him.

“My brother died yesterday. I’m a little down, as you can probably understand.”

“Damn,” the young man said and put his cup down on the dashboard.

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-three.”

Lennart didn’t know how to continue, but he knew he wanted to keep talking.

“How old was your brother?”

“He was older than you, but still. My little brother, you know.”

He looked down at his shoes, which were soaking wet.

“My little brother,” he repeated quietly.

Lennart looked at the guy for a short moment before nodding.

“I only have one cup.”

“That’s okay.”

He took the steaming mug from him. There was sugar in it but that didn’t matter. He drank some and then looked at the guy again.

“I was just looking in on my brother’s wife,” he said. “They have a kid about fourteen.”

“Was he sick, then?”

“No, murdered.”

The young man opened his eyes wide.

“Out in Libro, if you know where that is. Yeah, of course you do. That’s where the county dumps its snow.”

“That was your brother?”

Lennart drank the last of the coffee and handed back the mug.

“Tastes fucking good to drink something hot.”

But he shivered as if the cold had penetrated his core. The young man screwed the cap back on and shoved the Thermos into a bag behind his seat. The gesture reminded Lennart of something and he felt a sting of envy.

“Got to get home,” he said.

The young man looked out over the square.

“It’ll stop soon,” he said, “but it’s supposed to get colder.”

Lennart hesitated on the step.

“Take care of yourself,” he said. “Thanks for the coffee.”

He walked home slowly. The sweet taste in his mouth made him long for a beer. He picked up the pace. Through a window he saw a woman busying herself in the kitchen. She looked up and wiped the back of her hand against her brow as he was walking past. The next moment she went back to arranging Christmas decorations in the window.

It was almost two when Lennart came home. He turned on only the light over the stove, took some beers from the counter, and sat down at the kitchen table.

John had been dead for thirty hours. A murderer was still at large. For every second that ticked by, Lennart’s desire to kill the man who had murdered his brother grew.

He would check with the police to find out what they knew, if they were willing to say anything. He looked at the clock again. He should have started immediately, should have started making calls. For every minute, the injustice that his brother’s murderer was able to move and breathe freely was growing.

He got himself a pencil and piece of paper, chewed on the end of the pencil for a while, then scrawled the names of eight men. They were all men his own age, small-time crooks like himself. A few druggies, a blackmailer, moonshiners, and a dealer-all old friends from the Norrtälje institution.

The gang, he thought when he looked over the list, the ones that law-abiding folk went out of their way to avoid on the street, that they pretended not to see.

He was going to stay sober and clear-minded. He would have all the time in the world to drink himself to death later.

Lennart opened a beer but had only a few sips before he left it on the table and walked into the living room. He had a one-bedroom apartment. He was proud of the fact that he had managed to keep his crib all these years. Sure, the neighbors had complained from time to time, and sometimes the rental agreement hung in the balance.

There were some photographs on a shelf. He took down one of them and looked at it for a long time. Uncle Eugene, John, and himself on a fishing trip. He couldn’t remember who had taken the picture. John held up a pike and looked happy, while he himself was serious. Not unhappy, but serious. Eugene looked content as always.

More fun than a barrel of monkeys, Aina had said about her brother. Lennart would remember that Saturday for a long time, his mother with one hand on Eugene’s neck and the other on Albin’s. They were sitting at the kitchen table. She had put out some cold cuts, Eugene was talking away in his usual manner, and she was on her way to the pantry when she paused and touched the two men she loved most. Her hands rested there for maybe ten seconds while she made that comment after something her brother had said. Lennart remembered looking at his father, who appeared relaxed like he always did after a shot and a beer. He seemed not to notice her hand, at least he didn’t remark on it, pull away, or look embarrassed.

How old had he himself been when the picture was taken? Maybe fourteen. It was about then that things had changed. No more fishing trips. Lennart felt as if there were a tug-of-war inside him all the time. From time to time he could feel happy and at peace, like when they were up on the roof, he, John, and Teodor, after they had finished with the snow. Or when he was with Albin at the metalwork shop, the few times he was allowed there. There, Albin’s stutter was of no consequence. Nor was his tiredness. When Lennart was little he thought his father was tired from the stuttering, it looked so exhausting when the words wouldn’t come. But that tiredness was gone at the shop. He moved in a different way.

Lennart suddenly remembered how Albin’s face would sometimes contract as if suffering from a cramp. Was it pain or exhaustion? Was that why he fell? They had told him it was icy. Or had he jumped headfirst? No, his colleague had seen him slip, heard the cry or scream. Was he stuttering then as he fell helplessly? Was it a stuttering cry that echoed against the massive brick walls of the cathedral?

He must have screamed so loudly that it reached the archbishop. The top dog had to be notified so he would have time to prepare a place for Albin high above the roofs and spires he had clambered on. He must be welding something up there in heaven, Lennart thought. What else would he be doing? He needed to have something to do with his hands, hated being idle. Golden rooftops up there, or copper at the very least.

He suddenly missed the old man, as if his grief for John pulled the one for his father along with it.

“Only a little while longer,” he said aloud and struggled with his emotions.

He sat in the dark apartment, one hour, two, maybe three, nursing his grief. His lips and cheeks grew stiff and his back ached. He stayed up and seemed to relive the good times with John.

He pushed all the bad times away. Sure, he had wondered about the connections, been asked questions in school, at the child psychologist’s, at the police, in jail, at social services, at the unemployment center. They had all asked him about stuff. He had tried to find the threads. Now they converged at a snow dump in Libro, a place no one had ever thought about.

He knew there were no clear-cut answers. Life was a mixture of coincidence and hopes that often ran out in the sand. He had stopped wondering about it all a long time ago. He had chosen his path. And if he was the one who was in sole control of this decision-he had stopped asking himself about that a long time ago. That it had all gone wrong, gone to hell, too many times, he knew that. He didn’t blame anyone or anything anymore. Life was what it was.

The other life, the righteous life, was there like a reflector that gleamed momentarily as it caught the light. Of course he had tried. There was a time during the eighties when he had worked for a construction company. He had shoveled gravel and mulch, packed lunches, and developed muscles like never before in his life.

He had met people who had known Albin and slowly he developed another image of his father. Old construction workers talked admiringly of the knowledgeable old roofer, praise that Lennart absorbed. The collective memories of Albin’s great skill seemed to extend to his son a little.

Sure, there had been good times. And then John. His little bro. Dead. Murdered.

Berit cracked the door for the third time in half an hour, looking at Justus’s ruffled hair and the naked face that still bore traces of tears.

She closed the door but remained standing there with her hand on the doorknob. How is this going to go? she asked herself. The feeling of unreality lay like a mask over her face. Her legs were as heavy as if they were set in plaster casts and her arms felt like foreign outcroppings on a body that was hers and yet not. She moved, talked, and experienced her surroundings with full possession of all her senses but as if at a great distance from herself.

Justus had broken down. For several hours he had been shaking and crying and screaming. She had forced herself to be calm. Then he had eventually calmed down and, as if with the wave of a hand, sunk down into a corner of the sofa. Something strange came over his young face.

They had immediately become very hungry. Berit quickly cooked some macaroni, which they ate with cold Falu sausage and ketchup.

“Does it hurt to die?” That had been one of his questions.

How was she supposed to answer? She knew from that female police officer that John had been assaulted, but she didn’t want to hear any details. It hurts, Justus, she had thought, but in order to comfort him she told him that John had most likely not suffered.

He didn’t believe her. Why should he?

Her hand on the doorknob. Closed eyes.

“My John,” she whispered.

She had been sweating, but now she was cold and walked with stiff legs to the living room to get the blanket. She stood passively in the middle of the room, wrapped in the blanket, unable to do anything now that Justus had fallen asleep. Before, he had needed her. Now the minutes were ticking away and John became more and more dead. More distant.

She walked over to the window. The smell of the hyacinths almost choked her and she wanted to smash the window to get some air, fresh air.

It was snowing again. Suddenly she saw a movement. A man disappeared in between the buildings on the other side of the street. It was only a split second, but Berit was convinced that she had seen the figure before, the same dark green clothing and a cap. She stared down at the corner of the building where he had disappeared, but now all that could be seen were some footprints in the snow. She wondered if it was the same man she had seen while she was waiting for John. Then she had thought it was Harry’s brother who was helping him with the snow removal, but now she wasn’t sure.

Was it John appearing to her? Did he want to tell her something?

Ola Haver came home shortly before nine.

“I saw it on the news,” Rebecka said to him first thing.

She gave him a look over her shoulder. He hung his coat in the closet and felt the fatigue settle over him. From the kitchen he heard the continuous hacking of a knife against the cutting board.

He walked into the kitchen. Rebecka had her back to him and he felt drawn to her like metal shavings to a magnet.

“Hi,” he said and buried his face in her hair.

He felt her smile. She kept slicing and cutting.

“Do you know that in Spain women spend four hours working in the home a day and the men only forty-five minutes?”

“Have you been talking to Monica?”

“No, I read it in the paper. I had time for that in between the vacuuming, breast-feeding, and laundry,” she said with a laugh.

“Should I do something?” he said and put his arms around her body, grabbing her hands so that she had to stop cutting.

“It was a study involving several European countries,” she said, freeing herself from his grasp.

“How did Sweden do?”

“Better,” she said curtly.

He knew she wanted him to leave her alone so she could finish the herring salad or whatever it was, but he had trouble letting go of her body. He wanted to press up against her back and bottom.

“Was it bad?”

“The usual. Hell, in other words, but Bea had the worst of it.”

“Informing the family members?”

“What else is going on? How are the kids?”

“Was he married?”

“Yes,” Haver said.

“Children?”

“A boy, fourteen.”

Rebecka tipped up the end of the cutting board, pulling the knife over the board to scrape the last pieces into the frying pan. He looked at the knife in her hand. The stone in her ring, the one he had bought in London, gleamed ruby red.

“I’m making something new,” she said, and he knew she was talking about the food.

He straightened up and went to shower off.