Two Soldiers Read online

  Out there, beyond the bars, sun already, it was a nice day.

  The first floor of Block D.

  D1 Left.

  Cell 2.

  He could see nearly the whole prison yard from here: the cracked asphalt, the small squares of brown grass, then the wall, maybe sixty meters away, so gray, so heavy. He knew that he had to hate it, that it was important. But he’d never managed. Not back then, long ago, when it had been more of a fence, nor later when it became more of a barrier with great rolls of barbed wire on top, nor even later when the first concrete wall, which had been three meters high, grew into this one, which was seven meters. He had tried to hate them, to spit on them, but it was as if they were just standing there, protecting, waiting, embracing.

  Leon got up from the rickety table, looked out beyond the edge of the wall at the sun hitting a church tower in the distance, the treetops that moved slowly, as if hesitating, and the white fluffiness that was presumably a cloud in the blue sky. Gabriel, one love best brutha, had been over there yesterday, the neatly raked path in front of the churchyard fence where they always waited in the driver’s seat while the bitch who was carrying smiled at the guards. His best brother. The only one he trusted. The only one he needed. They’d said hello the first time one day in third grade; Gabriel had been sitting at the front of class with his track marks, punctures in his veins the size of craters, nine years old and a drug addict. His body had been caught in a house that burned down—Leon had never understood how or maybe Gabriel had just never told him—and white coats had treated the skin that screamed for morphine for nearly eight months. When he left the big hospital, he kept filling his prescription and injecting, and when his skin no longer screamed so much, they got together to sell what he didn’t need, and then when they started middle school they’d added amphetamines, which earned them more, and soon the two of them had a third of Råby covered.

  Leon turned away from the view and the desk and lay down on the bed; the ceiling was yellow and changed to white by the wardrobe and gray by the sink and door. He swallowed, cleared his throat, carefully gathered the saliva with his tongue, rubbing in what he could find with slow movements; they stung, the big ulcers on the top of his tongue and the slightly smaller ones at the back of his throat. He had tried to knock back the amphetamine water without touching too much, but hadn’t been very successful; the ulcers itched and would continue to do so for another day or two.

  The rattle of metal. The door opened. It was seven o’clock.

  “Good morning.”

  She popped her head around the door, tried to catch his eye.

  He didn’t answer.

  “Good morning.”

  The female guard wasn’t going to give up, so he raised a hand to show that he’d heard and was alive, that was all she wanted to know, and what with the ulcers, he was going to talk as little as possible.

  Leon got up, the letter on the table,

  Brutha seriously ARMED and very TIGHT unit!!! 200% love respect pride bruthahood duty belonging honor.

  he turned the eleven pages over and pulled a pair of underpants out from a pile under the chair and then a towel from the shelf in the narrow wardrobe. He left the seven-meter-square cell and strolled down the corridor that was waking up, past eight open cell doors on either side, past the TV corner, the billiard table, the kitchen, and stopped just in front of the fish tank, the guards’ room with its big glass window. He stared at the bitch who had opened his door and demanded a good morning and she stared back and he pretended he was fucking her so she would look away or down, but she kept holding his gaze and he chose the gray door with the steamed-up window, went into the shower room and the one in the middle with water that burned your neck, shoulders, chest. When Alex came in, pale, tall, nineteen, and almost trustworthy, Leon nodded. Neither of them said anything, their tongues and throats were as sore as each other and Leon sneaked a look at his dick—Alex didn’t write letters when he was wasted, he jerked off, tired pupils that had been open all night and a fiery red foreskin that was shriveled and loose, the shaking hand that had held it, tugged it relentlessly. They’d met for the first time at a secure training center in Örkelljunga; a sharpened knuckleduster had left three round marks on the right of his chest that were still visible, the bastard had been so in his face. A few years later at Bärby prison, from high up on his left shoulder all the way down to his hip, a long, wide scar with lighter edges, Alex had tried again and Leon had held him by the left arm and dragged him across the asphalt in the prison yard.

  The hot water, he closed his eyes.

  The metal door groaned when the older man came in, probably thirty or maybe even forty-something, some said fifty; it was always hard to count time when chemicals had broken down the years. He was so skinny and moved with a kind of rolling gait, a face that was distorted by eyes that wanted to close and eyebrows that shot up, several missing teeth, the sort who does ten months at a time for some crap hold-up with a bread knife and without a balaclava in some video shop or 7-Eleven, whatever is nearest. Almost shuffling the final steps into the shower at the far end, his arms potted with big holes like the ones Gabriel had had, but that carried on down the back of his hands and up his throat, needles that had obliterated the same veins, hollows that had turned into cartilage, so that every time more pressure was needed to get through. Leon watched him, the shuffling, he knew that the soles of his feet were the same, that was why he walked like that, only using the ball.

  Leon nodded to Alex and they left the warm water at the same time and the old bugger had just enough time to turn around, his naked body almost transparent, his lips apart. Leon kept his hand open and the impact was hard when he hit him on the cheek; the man collapsed, lay still on the floor, fingertips covering the redness and lips even wider apart.

  “What are you smiling at, you bastard?”

  “I’m . . . not smiling.”

  “You’re smiling.”

  The hand again, the same force, the other cheek.

  “Stop fucking smiling.”

  There were people like Smackhead who smiled every time they finished a sentence, tense, ritualized, maybe because they were uncertain, maybe frightened, most of them didn’t even realize, just stood grinning and wanting to be liked.

  He hated that grin.

  “When will you be ready?”

  Even bigger grin, the body that was at cross-purposes with itself moved uneasily as the water continued to run over it, the twitches between the eyes and cheeks and eyes and forehead more frequent, more exaggerated. Leon grabbed hold of his straggly hair and held it tight, the only thing there was, if you wanted to pull up a wet and naked body with a wet and naked hand.

  “I said, when will you be ready, Smackhead?”

  That smile.

  The spasms in his cheek.

  The body that tried to hide.

  “Soon. Soon. My Gs?”

  Leon’s fingers even tighter around the long straggles.

  “Soon?”

  “Fuck’s sake, I’ve got everything, except the ink! And I want my ten Gs.”

  The other hand on the skinny shoulder, thumb and index finger around the collarbone that stuck out.

  Smackhead screamed like he always did.

  “Soon?”

  “Today. Today, for fuck’s sake. After lunch. A guard who—”

  The fingers and the collarbone in, around, again.

  “I don’t give a shit who. It’s ready, isn’t it? It’ll be ready when I come tomorrow.”

  He shoved the frail body down in front of him, pressed it against the tiles until it started to bleed and that bastard grin disappeared.

  twenty-five days to go

  Afternoon.

  He was certain of it.

  The sun was no longer forcing its way farther in through the gap between the red, yellow, and white blanket and the window frame; he guessed it was about half past two—three, maybe even half three. He was woken by the dog’s foul-smelling tongue on
his cheek and neck, he didn’t like it, black and white and much heavier than it looked; a couple of times he’d tried to get hold of it and push it away, but each time forgot that a body barely half a meter long could be as heavy as a sack of stones that refuses to leave the floor.

  Gabriel pushed away the tongue and snout, a knife-like pain in his shoulder; the wound had turned into a wide, swollen gash overnight, on top of old scar tissue—despite two stones and a long metal pole, the window at the back of the shop had still had sharp teeth that were hard to see in the half light and sank into the flesh of those who tried to pass. He had pulled himself into a small, tight ball on his way into the shelves of goodies, but had still managed to get caught and only freed himself on the third attempt. They’d sat in the kitchen afterwards, Jon had held a short needle over a lighter flame until it glowed and then doused both the needle and the wound with Finnish vodka; he’d sewn eleven stitches through the already partially dead skin with nylon thread. Gabriel gingerly touched the wound, which had stopped bleeding, and lifted his arm up and down—the pain eased with the slow movements but was replaced by a dull, silent ache.

  Wanda was still asleep.

  He yawned, sat up on the edge of the bed, looked at her naked back and bum and thighs, his cock swelled, and

  BTW brutha, ur whore. She seems to have plenty of room for everything, hahaha brutha.

  he clenched his eyes tight until things calmed down, looked at the clock, nearly three, half an hour to go. The white tube, he quickly rubbed the cream on his skin all the way up to his neck, his clothes were lying on the red carpet that was so thick and soft, his hoodie stained dark brown from the right shoulder to halfway down the back by dried blood, he picked it up and pulled it over his head then scraped off what he could reach with his nails, couldn’t find his pants and one of his socks, two pairs of track pants and bare feet in his sneakers.

  Her ears. He leaned over, his fingertip gently touching the soft skin and her earrings, two crosses with a small diamond in the middle. From the jewelers on Kungsgatan. He’d emptied the trash bag on the floor and let her choose two things before they sold the rest to the Chinamen down by Odenplan—one hundred and ninety-four thousand for a window and five display cases. She had chosen the earrings and a ring with a red pearl that was too big really, but fit if she wore it by the knuckle on her middle finger.

  He looked at her naked body, she moved uneasily when he opened the door, said something he didn’t catch, and then turned over.

  Big Ali was lying on the sofa in the sitting room, the cut on his forehead, from when he’d smashed the window with his fist wrapped in a jacket then leaned in to reach the lock on the door, was now a straight, dark gash from his eyebrow to his hairline. Gabriel shook his sleeping shoulders hard, rapped Jon’s feet at the other end of the sofa, and punched Javad Hangaround, who was asleep in the armchair with his mouth open, in the chest.

  The red—or maybe it was orange—front door was unlocked, this was Råby after all, no one would ever come into their apartment without permission.

  The air was afternoon warm and without smells and seemed to kind of pack itself into the space between the concrete wall of the balcony and the railings, through the door onto the main stairwell, the elevator down to the basement, and the metal door, heavy key in the lock. They went into the garage that had been dug out under the six-story concrete building that constituted Råby Allé 1 to Råby Allé 214, past the rows of cars, down around the bend to the next level and the two shiny cars at the far end, one silver and one black. Gabriel carried on when the others stopped, waited, watched while he walked slowly around each one in turn, Mercedes CLK 500, cabriolet, eight cylinder, no scratches, no damage, Audi R8, four-by-four, six gears, he opened the driver’s door, three hundred and six horsepower, started the engine, listened, four hundred twenty horsepower, checked the trunk, the tires, the lights, the wheel rims. Two parking spaces away was a rental trailer from OKQ8. He looked around, then opened two padlocks and lifted off the plastic hood. Twelve small cardboard boxes with pictures of laptops on the sides and two considerably larger ones with eighty-inch screens and four yellow, oblong boxes with something in them that looked like loudspeakers.

  Gabriel calculated, one hundred and twenty thousand, a quarter of that if they sold it to the man in Tumba.

  He could feel the nylon thread pulling in his shoulder—eleven stitches and Big Ali’s forehead, thirty thousand, it hadn’t been worth it.

  They walked toward the automatic doors that opened without a sound and marked the end of the underground concrete space, carried on across the square to the metro, passed the station manager and ticket attendant, who turned their heads and looked the other way as the four young men with no tickets went straight through the barrier and up the steps and onto the 3:25 train to Norsborg, the next and final station on the line.

  They got off, had a smoke, waited.

  Ten dead minutes while a short man in a Stockholm transport uniform walked down through the eight cars to change driver seat, from one end of the train to the other, and the journey back along the red line through the southern suburbs to stations in central and northern Stockholm. Gabriel stood on the platform by one of the middle cars as the driver passed through, a spliff still between his fingers, while Jon, Big Ali, and Javad Hangaround went in and out the open car doors, checking who was sitting where, explaining to those necessary who had chosen the wrong places and how long they had to switch seats.

  They caught his attention, gave a thumbs-up, and disappeared into their planned cars.

  He stayed where he was. Waiting.

  Any minute, there, there, he heard feet rushing up the steps and crossing the platform, jeans, a jacket, twenty-five, the sort who stuck out when he sat down at the back of the now empty car.

  Gabriel got on.

  A minute from Norsborg to Råby.

  Plenty of time, they’d done it so many times before.

  Love respect pride bruthahood duty belonging honor don’t forget that brutha.

  The doors slid shut, the train started to roll, he sat on one side right at the back, the Jacket sat opposite, looked at someone who looked back. Gabriel took off his hoodie, opened the window, then closed it again with his shirt caught in it. They were now hidden between the gray concrete wall and the gray shirt.

  The new GS will b led by the command. The command will be 2 people.

  The guy sitting opposite took two white ICA supermarket bags from his inner pockets, and placed them on the empty seat. Gabriel put his hand on the thin plastic-wrapped metal shapes, hard and angular; he lifted them up and weighed them with small movements, close to his body. Lahti. They contained what they were supposed to contain. Glock. He raised his arm and watched Big Ali in the car in front and Jon in the car behind open the end doors into his car with their allen keys, hurry in and pick up a plastic bag each, then disappear out again the way they came.

  Only 2, bro! Seriously ARMED, very TIGHT unit!!

  One minute. Plenty of time. When the metro train stopped at Råby station, they all stepped out from their cars and walked toward the exit and a deserted center with the eerie glow of fluorescent lighting. They passed two empty shops and waited as a young boy stood up from a bench some distance away, gold chain around his neck and slicked-back hair, he looked for acknowledgment from Gabriel—Eddie’s the name—and nearly caught his eye, that was enough, he grew, the mark from a ring still visible on his cheek. He took one of the white ICA bags and carried it to the supermarket and the lockers just inside the main entrance where you could pay five kronor and store your bags while you were shopping. They watched the kid put in a coin and stuff the bag in, then lock it, and Gabriel knew that he was perfect—twelve years old, illegal possession of a weapon, a minor.

  No more president, vice president, prospect. Now its commander, soldier, private.

  The sun was shining when four boys, teenagers, young men, left an empty shopping center and walked through a summer slightly war
mer than the last. Råby was seldom beautiful to anyone who didn’t belong there and on days like this the bright light peeled the last layer of color from the high structures and the concrete buildings became, even for Gabriel, Jon, Big Ali, and Javad Hangaround, a gray, airless place and none of them said anything as there was nothing much to say. The automatic door into the underground garage opened as silently as it had thirty minutes earlier and they walked into the cool darkness, a vast cavity that stretched the length of Råby Allé, to an exit in the middle of the garage, a door that said number 34, and then took the lift to the third floor, the door by the rubbish chute.

  She looked about thirty-five, dark hair that had been dyed even darker when gray wisps had displaced time, quite beautiful really, but a pale face, a mouth that didn’t want to smile and eyes that were older than her years.

  “You’re to keep this.”

  She looked at the other white plastic bag with an ICA logo on it, which had recently been on an empty train seat.

  She didn’t answer.

  She pulled the door hard to, but a foot was in the way, she couldn’t close it as long as the one they called Big Ali, who was tall and square, was stopping her with his foot.

  “Five hundred a day. You’re to keep it for twenty-five. Until he comes to get it.”

  “Go to hell!”

  The commanders have the power. The commanders decide the jobs. Soldiers and privates can never refuse.

  She pushed his shoulder with one hand and pulled the door with the other.

  He stayed where he was.

  She looked at the others, half a step behind, the same clothes, the same arrogant tilt as they glared at her.

  She met Gabriel’s eyes. He would look away. And he did.

  A fucking order is never refused.

  “Gabriel?”

  It wasn’t long, but he looked at the floor for a moment, which triggered more words, louder.