Us Against You Read online

  Benji sniggers at the man in the polo shirt. “Were you expecting me to trot out ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ when you mentioned Nietzsche? Or maybe ‘In heaven, all the interesting people are missing’? Or . . . how does it go? ‘And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who couldn’t hear the music’?”

  “I don’t think that last one is Nietzsche,” the man replies cautiously.

  Benji drinks his beer in a way that makes it impossible for the man to know if it was a mistake or a test. Then he says, “You still look surprised.”

  “I . . . no . . . okay, to be honest, you don’t look like someone who’d quote Nietzsche,” the man says, laughing.

  “There are lots of things I don’t look like,” Benji says.

  The corners of his mouth are dancing again.

  * * *

  Bobo and his mother go for a long walk in the forest that evening. She wants to tell him how hard is it to be an adult, how complex the world is, but she doesn’t know how. All the while Bobo was growing up, she tried to teach him that violence was wrong, but this spring he found himself in the worst fight of his life and came close to being seriously injured, and she’s rarely been as proud of him as she was then. Because he defended Amat. Got beaten up for his sake. He stood up for something.

  For many years she was pleased that Bobo was such a softie. Other boys were embarrassed when their mothers kissed them on the forehead in front of their friends, but not hers. He was the sort of boy who would say, “Your hair looks nice today, Mom.” Now she wishes he was tougher. Colder. Maybe he’d have been able to handle it better.

  “I’m not well, Bobo . . . ,” she whispers.

  Bobo cries when she tells him, but she cries more. Bobo isn’t the little boy who used to jump up into her arms anymore; he’s big enough now to have space in his chest for the greatest sorrow and tall and strong enough to pick his mother up and carry her home after she’s told him she’s going to die. She whispers against his neck, “You’ve always been the best big brother in the world. You’re going to have to be even better now.”

  That evening she hears him read Harry Potter to his little brother and sister. That night Hog makes some weak tea and Bobo comes into the bathroom and holds his mom’s hair when she throws up. When she’s lying on her bed, her son wipes her cheeks and says, “Do you want to hear something silly? You know you’re always telling me I’ll never find a girlfriend because my demands are too high? That’s your fault. Because I want someone who looks at me the way you and Dad look at each other.”

  Ann-Katrin presses Bobo’s big, dumb lummox’s head tight to her forehead. She would have loved to see him get married. Become a dad. Life is so damn, damn, damn tough sometimes that it’s almost unbearable. Even if that’s the way it’s supposed to be.

  * * *

  Katia is almost finished with her paperwork when the bouncer comes running in. She knows it’s already too late. None of the clientele of the Barn could be bothered to argue with Benji about his tattoo, but someone has called some men who don’t share the same tolerance of artistic freedom. One of them has a bull tattooed on his lower arm. As they walk through the door, Benji turns to the guy in the polo shirt and says, “Now would be a good time to move away!”

  He grins as he says this, like a naughty child who’s left a whoopee cushion under the seat of a chair. None of the men in the doorway is in anything like as good shape as Benji, but there are four of them and he’s on his own. He bounces enthusiastically down from his bar stool as if he’s pleased that there are so many of them, to even things up. They don’t rush at him; he’s the one who walks straight toward them, and it makes them nervous just long enough to give him an advantage. The man with the bull tattoo grabs an empty beer bottle from a table, so Benji decides to tackle him first. But he doesn’t get a chance.

  The man in the polo shirt watches Katia come rushing out of the office and throw herself into the group of men. She pushes the man with the beer bottle up against the wall and yells, “One single swing in here, and you’ll be drinking at home for a year!”

  Then she spins around toward Benji and sees a very familiar look in his eyes. The same as their older sister Adri’s, the same as their father’s: if there isn’t a war, they start one.

  “Benji . . . not here, not today, please . . . ,” she whispers.

  She puts her hands on his chest, feels the beat of his heart. His pulse is calm, his breathing steady. Four grown men want to beat him up, and he isn’t even scared. Nothing frightens Katia as much as that.

  Benji looks her in the eye. She has their mother’s eyes, and she doesn’t often ask her little brother for anything. So he kisses her on the cheek and laughs scornfully at the four men in the doorway. “Are you coming in or going out? I’m going home, so if you’re not too busy feeling each other’s dicks maybe you could get out of the way?”

  The men glance at Katia and the bouncers, and eventually they step back. The point has already been made: it’s no longer acceptable to show up in Hed with a bear tattoo. Beartown may have a “Pack,” but there are men here who are prepared to take a stand, too.

  As Benji walks through the door, he lets out a loud laugh. The men he’s left behind are quivering with rage. One of them mutters to Katia, “It’s lucky for your brother that he’s got you. You just saved his life.”

  Katia glares at the man. “You think? Really? You think I saved his life?”

  The man tries to smile confidently, but his mouth is dry. Katia snorts. She goes and gets her things from the office, then fetches her car, but Benji has already disappeared into the night, where she won’t find him.

  * * *

  All sports are silly. All games are ridiculous. Two teams, one ball, sweat and grunting, and for what? So that for a few baffling moments we can pretend that it’s the only thing that matters.

  That night Hog and Bobo clear the floor of the garage. They’ve never talked much as father and son, and perhaps they’re both worried that they might take to the easiest alternative now. There are bottles of drink in that house, as in everyone else’s. So they choose a different option, drive the cars out, move the tools and machinery until the garage is empty.

  Then they fetch hockey sticks and a tennis ball. They play against each other all night, sweating and grunting, as if it were the only thing that mattered.

  * * *

  When the door closes behind Benji, he walks alone a couple of hundred feet into the forest. Then he stops with his hands in his pockets and looks around. As if he’s considering whether or not to try to find another way of complicating his evening or if he should pick a tree to climb and smoke weed in until he falls asleep instead. The voice behind him is both expected and unexpected.

  “I’ve never been in a fight, not once, so I won’t be much use if that’s what you’re after. But I’d be happy to have a beer somewhere else,” says the man in the polo shirt.

  Benji looks over his shoulder. “Do you know any good clubs around here, then?”

  The man laughs. “Like I said, I’ve only been living here for the past four hours. But . . . I’ve got somewhere to stay. And a fridge.”

  He’s never done this before, asked someone home right away, it’s never worked that way for him before. But Benji has a way of encouraging people to be spontaneous. Foolhardy, too.

  They take the path through the forest. The man is renting a cabin at a campsite on the outskirts of Hed, in the direction of Beartown, far enough away not to be within sight of either town. They kiss for a long time in the hallway. When the man wakes up in bed the next morning, Benji is already gone.

  The man finds his book where he dropped it, between the front door and the bedroom. He leafs through it until he finds the quote he’s looking for: “One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.”

  * * *

  Some distance away a young man is standing in a cemetery firing pucks at a gravestone. He has scr
aped knuckles, and worse things are going on inside him. Alain Ovich is dead, and Kevin Erdahl may as well be. Benji is a man who loves men, and he loses everyone he loves.

  * * *

  It’s hard to have more chaos in oneself than that.

  11

  One Last Chance to Be a Winner

  It’s impossible to measure love, but that doesn’t stop us coming up with new ways to try. One of the simplest is space: How much space am I prepared to give the person that you are so that you can become the person you want to become?

  Kira once made a valiant attempt to discuss this with Peter in terms of ice hockey: “A marriage is like a hockey season, darling, okay? Even the best team can’t be at their best in every game, but they’re good enough to win even when they play badly. A marriage is the same: you don’t measure it by the holiday where you drink wine before lunch and have great sex and your biggest problem is that the sand is too hot and the sun is shining too brightly on the screen when you want to play games on your phone. You measure it from everyday life, at home, at its lowest level, from how you talk to each other and solve problems.”

  Peter got cross, as if she were trying to spark an argument, and asked what she wanted. She said she wanted to have “a grown-up conversation about our problems.” He considered this for an unreasonably long time before he finally said, “I have a problem with you always leaving a tiny dribble of milk in the carton and putting it back in the fridge because you can’t be bothered to rinse it and put it in the recycling bin.” She just stared at him and asked, “You think that’s the biggest problem in our marriage?” Insulted, he muttered, “So why bother even asking if you’re only going to criticize my answer?” She massaged her temples. He slammed the door behind him and went off to a hockey game. It’s not without its complications, having a relationship that works like that.

  Kira is sitting at the kitchen table this evening. She’s seen the announcement of her husband’s death in the newspaper. The bottle of wine in front of her is unopened; there are two glasses beside it. She spins her wedding ring, around, around, around, as if it were a nut she was trying to tighten. Sometimes she tries taking it off, just to see how it would feel. Cold, it feels cold, as if her skin has grown thinner there.

  It’s late when she hears the Volvo pull up outside. It’s ridiculous, she knows it is, but she goes and stands right behind the door. Because when she hears Peter’s footsteps outside she wants to know if he puts the key in the lock straight away or if he pauses first. If he hesitates. If he stands out there and takes some deep breaths before summoning up the courage to go inside.

  * * *

  Peter stops with his hand on the door handle. Rests his forehead gently against the door, as if he were trying to hear how the house is breathing, if anyone’s awake inside. Not long ago, when she thought he was asleep, he heard Kira talking on the phone to someone in the kitchen: “For twenty years he’s said that next year it will finally be my turn to focus on my career. Next year. Does he really think he’s the only person driven to find out how good he can be at something?”

  For twenty years Peter has told himself that he’s doing this not for his own sake but for other people’s. He became a professional hockey player in Canada so he could provide for his family. He took the job as general manager in Beartown because the family needed a safe place after they’d lost Isak. He fought for the club because he was fighting for the town. Because Beartown Ice Hockey was the pride of the community, the only way for this whole chunk of the country to remind the big cities that there were still people living here. That they could still give them a thrashing.

  But he isn’t sure anymore. Maybe he’s just being selfish? He tries to stop thinking about the death notice. He’s always been prone to worrying, anxious about everything from bills to whether the coffee machine is switched off, but tonight is something different. Tonight he’s scared.

  He’s just put the key in the door when a metallic click makes him start. A car door swings open out in the street.

  * * *

  A black-clad man gets out and walks toward him.

  * * *

  Two cars are driving through the forest. One of them drives all the way to the kennels, and a man in a black jacket that can’t possibly be fastened over his muscular chest gets out. He shakes Adri’s hand. Adri was in high school with him half a lifetime ago and has nothing against him, except for the fact that he’s less sharp than someone suffering from rheumatism handling a disposable camera. Once she had to explain to him that south on the map didn’t actually mean a downward slope and on another occasion that islands didn’t float on the sea but were actually fixed to the ocean floor. He doesn’t have many branches on his family tree. He’s got himself a new tattoo on his hand, she notices, a spiderweb so uneven that it practically forces her to ask, “What the hell . . . did you lose a bet or something?”

  “What?” he answers uncomprehendingly, and stares at his hand, clearly not struck by the fact that it looks as though whoever did it was working in the dark.

  Someone once called him “Spider” at school because he had long, thin, hairy legs. He was the sort of boy who didn’t care what anyone called him, as long as they knew who he was, so he embraced the insult. He’s gotten himself at least a dozen spider-themed tattoos since then, all of them apparently done by drunks sitting on top of a tumble drier.

  Adri shakes her head wearily and opens the boot of Spider’s car, which is full of boxes of liquor. Adri notes that the other car is waiting as usual where the road ends, at the edge of the forest. The driver is sitting inside it so he can warn them if any unwelcome visitors are approaching, but the passenger gets out. Adri has known him for many years, too, and—unlike Spider—he definitely isn’t an idiot. That’s what makes him dangerous.

  His name is Teemu Rinnius. He’s not particularly thickset, and he’s not particularly tall, and his hair is so neat that his best friends call him “the accountant,” but Adri has seen him fight and knows that beneath that hair his head is made of concrete. His kick is so hard that in this town it’s the horses that are frightened of standing behind him. When he was younger, he and his little brother were so notorious that the hunters used to joke, “You know why you should never knock the Rinnius brothers off a bike? Because it’s probably your bicycle!” Now that he’s older they no longer tell jokes about him, and if anyone from outside comes to the town asking for Teemu Rinnius, even the smallest child has the sense to answer, “Who?”

  Teemu isn’t wearing a black jacket; he doesn’t need one. He opens the back door of the car and lets out two dogs. He bought them from Adri as puppies, so if anyone asks what he’s doing here this evening, he can say he’s thinking of buying another one. He has no delivery schedule, no fixed routine; Adri gets a phone call a couple of hours in advance, then he shows up once it’s dark. She calls him “the wholesaler,” half affectionately, half mockingly. She herself is the retailer. Two cars can’t go from door to door in Beartown dropping off bottles of drink without attracting suspicion, whereas everyone knows that all the hunters in the area usually drop in at the kennels from time to time to check out the puppies and drink coffee. Perhaps they come a little too often, those hunters, especially before major holidays. But if you ask anyone around here about Adri, they’ll all say the same thing: “She makes very good coffee.”

  The men in black jackets always have two cars, and Teemu never sits in the one containing the drink. There are police investigations that claim that he’s the leader of a “violent hooligan gang known as the Pack, who support Beartown Hockey.” There are plenty of stories of their influencing the club’s affairs, that highly paid players on the A-team who don’t perform well enough have voluntarily torn up their own contracts, but there’s never been any proof. And naturally there’s no proof that the Pack is involved in the organized smuggling of alcohol or trading in stolen cars and snowmobiles, either. There has never been any proof that the Pack has ever threatened anyone, the way crimin
al networks everywhere usually have to do in order to establish their violent credentials. Police investigations claim that the Pack don’t need to do that because they use hockey games to advertise themselves. The theory goes that anyone who has seen the black jackets packed in the standing area of the rink, or who has heard what they’ve done to fans of other teams that have challenged them, would understand the seriousness of the situation if they appear on the doorstep.

  But obviously that’s all nonsense. Rumor and exaggeration by city types who’ve seen too many films. If you ask almost anyone who lives in Beartown about the Pack, they’ll just reply, “What pack?”

  When Adri lifts the last crate of drink from the back of the car she notes that there’s a large ax under it. She rolls her eyes.

  “Seriously, Teemu, don’t you think it looks a bit suspicious, having an ax in the trunk when every cop in the district has seen pictures of that councillor’s car in Hed?”

  There aren’t many people who dare take that tone with Teemu, but he merely looks amused. “Adri, think about it: after what happened to that poor woman’s car in Hed, wouldn’t it look more suspicious if we didn’t have axes in our cars?”

  Adri bursts out laughing. “You’re such an idiot. Except you’re not.”

  Teemu smiles. “Thank you kindly.”

  * * *

  When Ana has fallen asleep out on the island, Maya lies awake and writes lyrics about hatred. Sometimes she carries on so long that she ends up writing about love. Not the earth-shattering falling-in-love kind but the boring, whole-of-your-life sort. She doesn’t know why, but she’s thinking a lot about her parents this summer. When you’re a teenager, you want them to be sexless, but somewhere along the way the smallest memories of affection between our parents get imprinted on our DNA. Parents who divorce, like Ana’s, can stop a child believing in eternal love. Parents who stick together for a lifetime can make a child take it for granted instead.