Us Against You Page 13

  Her colleague looked her sternly in the eye. “You’re four different women, Kira. You’re trying to be everything to everyone, the whole time. A good wife, a good mother, a good employee. How long are you going to carry on like that?”

  Kira pretended to stare at an important document on her computer screen, but eventually gave up and muttered, “You said four. Wife, mother, employee . . . who’s the fourth woman?” Her colleague leaned over the desk and switched off the screen, tapped the glass sadly, and said, “Her, Kira. When is it going to be that woman’s turn?” Kira sat and stared into the eyes of her own reflection in the dark monitor.

  * * *

  Now she’s sitting on the steps outside the house. Drinking wine. Waiting for a man who never comes.

  * * *

  Peter holds out his hand, and Elisabeth Zackell shakes it as if she doesn’t really want to. Her body language is odd, as if there’s a much smaller Elisabeth Zackell sitting inside her, trying to steer this one with a joystick.

  “I saw you play in the Olympic Games . . . ,” Peter admits.

  Zackell doesn’t seem to know what to do with that information, so Sune jumps in. “For God’s sake, Peter, you’ve got two hundred and forty international appearances standing in front of you! Olympic and World Championship medals! And she’s got her coaching license! If she’d been a man, you’d be on your knees begging her to take my job!”

  Peter takes the cup of coffee, sinks down at the kitchen table, and looks apologetically at Elisabeth Zackell.

  “But if you were a man, you’d already have a job at one of the top clubs, wouldn’t you?”

  Zackell agrees with a curt nod. “I’ve never been given a chance to coach a good team, so I’ve decided to take a useless team and make it good instead.”

  Peter’s eyebrows twitch in indignation, Sune bursts out laughing, and Zackell doesn’t appear to know what she’s said to warrant either response.

  “You are useless, aren’t you?”

  Peter smiles reluctantly. “How did you know we needed a new coach? Sune’s kept very quiet about his illness . . .”

  He breaks off when he realizes the answer. Zackell doesn’t have to say “Richard Theo.” Peter drinks some coffee, then exclaims, half to himself, “He’s smart, Theo. A female coach . . .”

  “Was it your daughter who was raped?” Zackell interrupts.

  Peter and Sune clear their throats uncomfortably. Zackell looks confused. “Wasn’t she? Raped, I mean. By a player the two of you had nurtured?”

  Peter replies in a quiet voice, “Is that why you’re here? As Richard Theo’s PR coup? A female hockey coach in what used to be a violent men’s club? The media will love it.”

  Zackell stands up impatiently. “I’m not going to talk to the media. You can do that. And I don’t give a shit about Richard Theo’s PR coup. I’m not here to be a female hockey coach.”

  Peter and Sune glance at each other.

  “What do you want to be, then?” Sune asks.

  “A hockey coach,” Zackell replies.

  * * *

  Sune scratches his stomach. As he always says, we only pretend hockey is complicated, because it isn’t really. When you strip away all the nonsense surrounding it, the game is simple: everyone gets a stick; there are two nets, two teams. Us against you.

  * * *

  There’s a sound from the garden, and Sune looks up and grins, but Peter is too distracted by his own thoughts to recognize the noise at first.

  “I—” he begins, trying to sound like a grown man, a general manager, a leader.

  But the sound interrupts him again. Bang! The boy Peter used to be, the dreamer, would have recognized the sound at once. He looks quizzically at Sune. Bang-bang-bang! comes from the garden.

  “What’s that?” Peter asks.

  “Oh, yes! Did I forgot to say?” Sune grins, the way you do when you haven’t forgotten a damn thing.

  Peter gets up and follows the noise, out through the terrace door. At the back of Sune’s house stands a four-and-a-half-year-old girl, firing pucks against the wall as hard as she can.

  “Do you remember when you used to come here and do the same thing, Peter? She’s better than you were. She could already tell time when she got here!” Sune informs him happily.

  Peter follows the pucks’ movement toward the wall, and is thrown back in time, a whole lifetime. It’s a simple game, really. The girl misses one of her shots and gets so angry that she hits her stick against the wall as hard as she can. It snaps, and only then does she spin around and catch sight of Peter. He sees the child shrink instinctively. All of Peter’s childhood shatters inside his chest.

  “What’s your name?” he whispers.

  “Alicia,” she replies.

  Peter sees her bruises. He used to have similar ones. He knows she’ll lie if he asks how she got them; children are so incredibly loyal to their parents. So Peter crouches down and promises her with all the despair of his childhood shaking in his voice, “I can see that you’re used to getting hurt if you make a mistake. But hockey will never treat you like that. Do you understand what I’m saying? Hockey will never hurt you.”

  The girl nods. Peter fetches another stick. Alicia carries on firing pucks. Behind them Sune says, “I know you’ve already decided to save the club, Peter. But it can be useful to be reminded of who you’re saving it for.”

  Peter blinks up at the old man, more than he needs to. “You’ve coached the Beartown A-team all my life. Are you suddenly prepared to surrender the job to a . . . stranger?”

  He does his best to hide the fact that “stranger” wasn’t his first choice of word. Sune’s breathing sounds labored as he replies, “I’ve always known that Beartown Ice Hockey is more than a club. I don’t believe in targets and tables, I believe in signs and symbols. I think it’s more important to nurture human beings than to foster stars. And so do you.”

  “And you think that this Elisabeth Zackell in your kitchen thinks the same?”

  Sune smiles, but his chin moves slowly sideways. “No, Elisabeth Zackell isn’t like us. But right now that might be what the club needs.”

  “Are you sure about that?” Peter wonders.

  Sune pulls at his belt; his failing heart has made his trousers too big. Of course he doesn’t want to give up his job; no one wants to do that. But he has given his life to the club, so what sort of leader would he be if he wasn’t prepared to swallow his pride when the club’s at risk of dying?

  “When the hell can you be sure of anything, Peter? All I know is that the bear is supposed to symbolize the best of this town, but there are people around who want to bury it as a symbol of our worst qualities. And if we let those bastards get away with it, if we let them transfer all the money to Hed as soon as it suits their purposes, what signal are we giving the kids in this town then? That we were only a club? That this is what happens if you dare to stand up and tell the truth?”

  “In what way is Zackell different from you?” Peter asks.

  “She’s a winner,” Sune says.

  The men can’t find any more words. They just stand there watching as Alicia fires pucks against the wall. Bangbangbangbangbang. Peter goes into the bathroom, turns the tap on, and stands in front of the mirror without looking at it. When he comes out, Zackell has already put her boots on.

  “Where are you going?” Peter wonders.

  “We’re done, aren’t we?” Zackell says, as if she has just employed herself.

  “Surely we need to talk about the team?” Peter points out.

  “I’ll put more coffee on,” Sune says, pushing past them into the kitchen.

  “I don’t drink coffee,” Zackell says.

  “You don’t drink coffee?” Sune hisses.

  “I told you that when I got here.”

  “I assumed you were joking!”

  Peter stands between them, rubbing his eyelids with his palms. “Hello? The team! When are we going to talk about the team?”

  Eli
sabeth Zackell looks as though a very small Elisabeth Zackell is running around inside the big Elisabeth Zackell’s head, trying to find the correct switch. “What team?” she asks.

  * * *

  The game may be simple, but people never are. Bang bang bang.

  15

  Vidar Rinnius

  It won’t be long before the staff at Beartown School hold their first planning meeting in advance of the autumn term. They will discuss budgets and teaching plans and the rebuilding of the gym, as usual. But then a teacher will ask about a pupil named Vidar who has suddenly appeared on the register for one class. The headmaster will clear his throat uncomfortably. “Yes, he was a pupil here before, and now he’s joining us again. We’ve only just been informed . . .” The teacher will wonder where this pupil has been in the meantime. Has he attended a different school? “Well, Vidar has been in . . . an alternative educational system,” the headmaster will concede. “You mean youth custody?” the teacher will ask. “I think it’s more of a . . . clinic,” the headmaster will say. The teacher seems neither to understand nor to care about the difference.

  A teacher toward the back of the room will whisper, “Assault and drugs charges. He tried to beat a police officer to death!” Another will snap, “I don’t want that psychopath in my class!” Someone will ask, in a louder voice, “Wasn’t Vidar given a longer sentence?” but will get no answer. Another will ask nervously, “Vidar? What’s his surname?” The headmaster’s eyelashes will flutter like a hummingbird’s wings when he replies, “Rinnius. Vidar Rinnius. He’s Teemu Rinnius’s younger brother.”

  * * *

  Elisabeth Zackell scratches her head. It’s hard to tell if her hair has been fashioned by a stylist or by mistake. She steps out through Sune’s door in shoes made for freezing temperatures and feet at least two sizes larger and lights a cigar. Peter follows her, clearly worried now. “What are you doing?” he asks.

  Zackell, evidently not very good at reading people’s intentions, assumes he means the cigar. “This? Oh . . . I don’t know. I’m a vegan, I don’t drink alcohol or coffee. If I didn’t smoke, no normal person would ever trust me,” she says, not as a joke but as if she’s given the matter serious consideration.

  Peter sighs deeply before he starts to cough. “You can’t just show up here and take for granted that you’re going to get the job of coach without telling me what you’d do with our team!”

  Zackell fills her mouth with smoke and tilts her head to one side. “The team you’ve got right now?”

  “Yes! That’s the team you’d be coaching!”

  “What, your A-team? Hopeless. A bunch of has-beens who are too old and useless for anyone else to want them.”

  “But can you make them good? Is that what you’re saying?”

  Zackell chuckles. Not in a friendly or charming way, just patronizingly. “No. Dear me, no. There’s no way of making a useless team good. I’m not Harry Potter.”

  Peter gets smoke in his eyes and loses his temper. “What are you doing here? What do you want?”

  Zackell pulls a crumpled sheet of paper from her pocket. She blows the smoke away from Peter, hesitantly, as if she doesn’t really want to apologize for smoking and instead regrets that he doesn’t smoke. “Are you angry?”

  “I’m not . . . angry,” Peter says, pulling himself together.

  “You look a bit angry.”

  “Well I’m not . . . just leave it, okay?”

  “I’ve been told I’m not good at dealing with . . . people. Feelings, stuff like that,” Zackell concedes, but her face is still completely expressionless.

  “You don’t say? I can’t think why!” Peter says sarcastically.

  Zackell hands him the sheet of paper. “I’m a good coach, though. And I’ve heard that you’re a good general manager. If you can get the names on this list to give me their all on the ice, I can make a winning team out of them.”

  Peter reads the names: Bobo. Amat. Benji.

  “They’re just teenagers. One of them is only sixteen years old. You’re going to build the A-team out of them?”

  “They’re not going to build the A-team. They’re going to carry it. That one’s the new team captain,” Zackell says, cutting him off.

  Peter stares at her, then at the name she’s pointing at. “You’re going to make him captain? Of the A-team?”

  She replies as if it was the most natural thing in the world, “No. You’re going to. Because you’re good with people.”

  Then she hands him another piece of paper. On it is the name “Vidar.” Peter takes one look at it, then exclaims, “NOT A CHANCE!”

  “So you know Vidar?”

  “Know him?! He . . . he . . .”

  Peter starts shaking and actually turns right around, like a crazy egg timer. Sune is standing in the doorway with coffee. Zackell turns down the proffered cup but is given it anyway. Sune grins at the note. “Vidar? That boy, yes. He probably can’t play in your team. For . . . geographic reasons.”

  Zackell’s voice is matter-of-fact rather than smug when she replies, “I’ve been assured that he’s being released soon.”

  “From the clinic? How’s that happening?” Sune splutters.

  Zackell doesn’t say “Richard Theo.” She just says, “That’s not my problem. My problem is that I need a goalie, and he seems to be Beartown’s best goalie.”

  Peter is literally hugging himself with anger. “Vidar is a criminal and . . . and a psychopath! He’s not playing on my team!”

  Zackell shrugs her shoulders. “This isn’t your team. It’s mine. You asked me what I want? I want to win. And I can’t do that with a few old A-team players no one else wants. You have to give me more than that.”

  “What?” Peter grunts, leaning disconsolately against the wall of the house.

  Zackell blows out a cloud of cigar smoke. “A gang of bandits.”

  * * *

  Teemu Rinnius walks into the Bearskin. Ramona leans over the bar and pats him tenderly on the cheek. He’s carrying two bags of groceries, one of them largely filled with cigarettes. When Holger left her, Ramona stopped going out. Teemu has never criticized her for that; he’s just made sure she’s never gone short of anything. So she very rarely criticizes his life choices. Morals can always be debated, but the two of them know that most people are only trying to get through the day. As Ramona usually says, “Everyone’s wading through their own shit.”

  Teemu can look almost harmless, with his neatly combed hair and clean-shaven chin. And Ramona can look almost sober, if you get there early enough in the morning.

  “How’s your mother?” she asks.

  “Okay, she’s okay,” Teemu says.

  His mother is always tired, Ramona knows that. She’s rather too fond of sleeping pills and difficult men. Once Teemu got old enough, he was able to throw the men out, but he’s never been able to do anything about the pills. In his blue eyes he carries all the lives he wishes his mother could have had, and perhaps that’s why Ramona has allowed herself to care more about Teemu than all the other men who have wandered into and out of the Bearskin over the years. But today those blue eyes are lit up with something else as well: hope.

  “Vidar just called! You know what he said?” he exclaims.

  There are police investigations that claim that Teemu Rinnius is lethally dangerous. There are plenty of people who say he’s criminal. But there’s one pub in Beartown where he’ll only ever be a little boy, uncertain and eager.

  “What is this? Some sort of quiz? Just tell me, boy!” Ramona snaps impatiently.

  Teemu laughs. “They’re letting him out! My little brother’s coming home!”

  Ramona doesn’t know what to do with her feet and ends up dancing around in circles twice before she gasps, “We need better whisky!”

  Teemu has already put a bottle on the counter. Ramona hurries around the bar and hugs him. “This time we’re going to take better care of your brother. This time we’re not going to let go!”
<
br />   The old bartender and the young fighter laugh. Today the pair of them are too happy to ask themselves: Why is Vidar being released so early? Whose hand is turning the key?

  * * *

  Politics is an endless series of negotiations and compromises, and even if the processes are often complicated, the foundations are always simple: everyone wants to be paid, one way or another, so most parts of all bureaucratic systems work the same way: give me something, and I’ll give you something. That’s how we build civilizations.

  Richard Theo is very fond of his car; he drives many thousands of miles each year. Technology may be good for a lot of things, but it leaves evidence. Emails, text messages, phone messages, they’re all a politician’s worst enemies. So he drives a long way to talk quietly about things no one will ever be able to prove.

  Peter Andersson is right. Theo called Elisabeth Zackell because he recognized her PR value. A female coach in a club known for violent masculinity. Theo also understands the value of winning, so when Zackell had gone through the list of Beartown Hockey’s A-team players, Theo asked what she needed. She replied, “First and foremost? A goalie. There was a junior here a couple of years ago with good stats, Vidar Rinnius. He seems to have vanished. What happened to him?” Theo knows nothing about hockey, but he understands people.

  It was simple to find out which treatment center Vidar was in: over the years Theo has been a good friend to people working in various authorities and public bodies. So he called Zackell and asked her, “How much do you really want Vidar?” Zackell replied, “If you can promise me him and I can find three more good players in Beartown, I can win.”

  Richard Theo had to cash in a few personal favors. It cost him some more promises and plenty more driving in the car. But Vidar Rinnius will soon be released, considerably earlier than expected. No laws have been broken, no rules have even been bent. The only thing that has happened is that Richard Theo has become friends with the chair of the right committee, and that the case happened to be given to a new adviser, who considered that Vidar’s “treatment requirements needed to be reevaluated.”