Pen 33 Page 5

  He picked up the cards. Grinned. The gold tooth in front flashing.

  “Damn, all the aces went to me again. You play like little bitches.”

  The others were silent. Shuffling their cards. Turning them.

  “Don’t show me your damn cards.”

  He was forty-eight years old, looked older, furrowed, worn. Thirty-five years of abuse left him with amphetamine-like tics that flashed unpredictably under his eye. His hair dark, ever thinner. Thick chains around his neck. Eighty kilos, muscular after his latest stretch of nineteen months at Aspsås. After he was released and had been using again for a while, he dropped to sixty.

  He suddenly stood up, stumbling to find the remote control among the cards and newspapers on the table.

  “Where the hell is it?”

  “Play your cards now, dammit.”

  “Shut up! Where is it? The remote control. Dammit, Hilding, put down your cards and help me look!”

  Hilding Oldéus immediately dropped his cards on the table, started nervously overturning newspapers that Tinyboy had just put down. Skinny, short, with a high-pitched voice. Ten stints in eleven years. A large sore on his right nostril, a chronic infection from incessantly scratching it while he was on heroin.

  It wasn’t on the table. Hilding searched aimlessly on the table and windowsills, while Tinyboy pushed the table aside, stepped straight between the irritated but silent card players, groping along the TV buttons to try to raise the volume manually.

  “Shut up, girls! Hitler is on the tube.”

  Everyone in the TV corner, the kitchen, the hallway, they all stopped what they were doing and hurried toward Tinyboy, standing just behind him, watching the lunchtime newscast on the monitor. Someone whistled in delight as the screen switched to a new image.

  “Shut up, I said!”

  Lennart Oscarsson in front of a microphone. Aspsås prison in the background.

  Oscarsson looked harried, he wasn’t accustomed to TV cameras or to explaining why everything he was in charge of had gone to hell.

  . . . how could he escape

  . . . as I said before

  . . . the prison claims to be escape-proof

  . . . it didn’t take place here

  . . . what do you mean not here

  . . . a guarded emergency visit to Söder Hospital

  . . . what do you mean guarded

  . . . two of our most experienced guards

  . . . only two

  . . . two of our most experienced guards and full-body chains

  . . . who made that assessment

  . . . he overpowered them both and

  . . . who decided that two guards were sufficient

  . . . and disappeared in the prison transport vehicle

  A close-up on Oscarsson’s face. Beads of sweat were running from the hairline above his forehead—the camera was enjoying his nakedness. Television was about surface and the moment, but you felt it in the gut, like now. His eyes roamed, he swallowed, he’d taken management training courses for the camera, but this was the real thing and he was thinking too long and stammering too much, forgetting to repeat the answers he’d practiced. Decide on a single answer and repeat it no matter what the question is. He knew the basic rules of the interview, but in front of a camera and those insistent reporters, and a microphone pushed into his face, that knowledge was drowned out by his fear of the people watching the news in Alvesta and Gällivare.

  “What a fucking loser!”

  Hilding’s penetrating voice shattered the silence, but Tinyboy had given him a command.

  “Hitler’s fucking gone!”

  Tinyboy took a hasty step forward, punched him hard, a fist to the back of the head.

  “Shut up! Are you having trouble understanding me today? I’m listening to this!”

  Hilding wriggled uneasily in his chair, ripped viciously at the sore on his nose, but said nothing. He’d learned this on his very first stint in here. Eight months for robbing a 7-Eleven in Stockholm. Seventeen, stoned out of his mind, panic-stricken, he threatened a young shop assistant with a kitchen knife, took the two five-hundred-kronor bills from the cash register, then made a deal with a drug dealer standing just outside the store. Hilding was still there when the police arrived. He’d learned—when prison was still threatening and unfamiliar—to lick the ass of the person who was in charge of your unit; ingratiation meant safety, and he was tired of being afraid. He’d licked Tinyboy’s ass twice before, once at Mariefred prison in ’98 and again at Frituna outside Norrköping in ’99. Tinyboy was no worse than anybody else.

  The screen switched images again. Oscarsson’s tormented eyes lingered, though for another reason: the Aspsås wall was in the distance, as the camera moved in slow motion over the edge of the wall to the sky and back again, the clichés of a quickly produced news report. A voice, factual bordering on dry, explained that Bernt Lund had escaped during a supervised furlough this morning, that he’d been arrested and convicted four years earlier for a series of brutal rapes of minors, which culminated with the so-called “basement murders” of two nine-year-old girls, that he’d served those years in isolation at Kumla and was recently moved to one of the special departments for sex offenders at Aspsås to serve out the rest of his time there, that he was considered very dangerous, and that in the interest of public safety they were showing pictures of him.

  Bernt Lund was smiling. He was sitting in shirt and pants and smiling at the camera in black-and-white stills. Tinyboy took a few more steps forward, stood in front of the TV screen.

  “Fuck. Fuck! It’s that perv whose ass I kicked at the gym yesterday! It is that fucking bastard!”

  Tinyboy screamed his anger, those closest to him jumped up, moved a bit farther away. They’d seen him flip out over the sex offenders before.

  “What the hell are they even doing here? Why the hell do they have that fucking pervert unit here?”

  Tinyboy screamed, pushing away memories. That’s how he had done it. Every time. At home, in the house in Svedmyra. Those fucking images. His uncle. At his father’s funeral. He was five years old and felt Per stroke his back, down over his butt.

  “I’ll cut their dicks off!”

  The images blocked his thoughts. He had to think them, see them, live through them again and again. Per said they were going to go into Daddy’s office. He held his hand on the outside of Tinyboy’s suit pants. He pulled them down, first the pants, then the underwear. Then he pulled down his own pants. He pressed himself against him, touched his ass with his penis.

  “One by one, goddammit, Hilding, help me cut their dicks off!”

  He cleared his throat, collecting saliva, spat on the TV screen, on Bernt Lund’s black-and-white face. He watched as the spit flowed slowly over the frozen smile, fell from the glass screen to the floor.

  The crowd dispersed. One to his cell, one down the corridor, one picked up the cards from the table. Tinyboy sat down again, in the same chair, waved off Hilding as he handed him the cards. It was as if the images refused to leave, could not be resisted. He screamed and he focused and he hit his hands hard against his thigh as image after image pierced his defenses.

  Per again. In their summer house in Blekinge. The big hands did what they’d done last time, and he was bleeding profusely from his bottom. He hid his underwear so that Mom wouldn’t see—she never looked in the cupboard in the shed.

  “Tiny, dammit, you should come and play.”

  “Lay off. You’ll have to play without me.”

  “Forget about Hitler now.”

  “Leave me the fuck alone. Otherwise, I’ll give you another beating.”

  He was thirteen years old. He was high as hell on speed and beer. Larren, who was big and never afraid, was with him. They hitchhiked down to Blekinge and climbed into the cabin. Laila was in the kitchen washing the dishes, and Per sat in the living room. They didn’t understand what was happening, even when Larren held him while Tinyboy hacked at Per’s scrotum with an ice
pick.

  “Full house!”

  “What do you mean full house?”

  “Eights and sixes.”

  “That’s not a fucking full house.”

  “It is too a full house. Tinyboy, explain it to this asshole.”

  “I’m not playing. Didn’t I already say that? You’ll have to play on your own.”

  Keys rattled. Two guards on the other side of the door.

  Tinyboy looked in their direction. They had somebody with them. Somebody new. Surely here to fill Bojan’s empty cell. He’d been moved to Hall yesterday morning—he had been in a precarious situation and someone had warned the guards, and management acted immediately. There’d been no blood in this unit, not for a long time.

  The new guy was a big bastard. Shaved head, tanned as hell, a sunbed fag. Tinyboy sighed loudly and looked at him as he walked through the door, the guards on either side of him, as if he had his own escort. The new guy stared straight ahead, said nothing, saw nothing. The guards showed him to his cell, Bojan’s old one, but left the doors wide open.

  “What kind of clown is that?”

  Tinyboy pointed in the direction of the new guy. Hilding took a deep breath, looked like he was thinking, searching through his previous stints.

  “I don’t know. Never seen the bastard before. Have you?”

  Dragan shook his head. Skåne shrugged his shoulders. Bekir picked up two cards from the table.

  “Forget him. Play now, I have good cards!”

  Tinyboy didn’t take his eyes off the new guy’s door. He was waiting. He usually did that, waited until they came out and then told them the lay of the land.

  ————

  An hour and twenty minutes. Then he came out.

  “You, come here!”

  Tinyboy waved his hand as a command. The new guy heard him, stared straight ahead, ignoring the voice that was demanding his presence at the end of the corridor. He walked slowly, almost deliberately, into the kitchen, drank some water from the tap, put his big shiny head under the stream of water.

  “You there, come here!”

  Tinyboy was annoyed. This was his unit. He decided if someone answered him or not.

  “Come here!”

  Tinyboy pointed at the floor in front of him. He waited. The new guy stood completely still.

  “Now!”

  The new guy didn’t get it—he really didn’t get it. The silence was almost palpable to Hilding, and he glanced uneasily at Tinyboy, picked up the deck, and raised a finger to the others, telling them to wait. Dragan and Skåne and Bekir had already understood. There was going to be a fight, and they weren’t a part of it. They had front-row seats and high hopes, and they, too, could feel the silent tension.

  The new guy started moving. Toward Tinyboy. They were hunting each other. He walked over to the place on the floor Tinyboy was pointing to, then past it, and stopped with just a few centimeters between them.

  Tinyboy had never lowered his eyes. He wasn’t about to do that now either. The new guy was taller than him. He had a huge scar, like a halter from his left ear to his mouth, sharp and deep. Tinyboy had seen similar ones made by a knife or a razor blade.

  “My name is Tinyboy.”

  “And?”

  “We like to introduce ourselves around here.”

  “Fuck you.”

  The images of Per and Larren and a scrotum bleeding like hell and Aunt Laila, who was screaming at the kitchen sink while he ran around with the ice pick asking if Per wanted more, if he wanted it somewhere else. Per had been weeping, Tinyboy was taking aim at his eyes, when Larren let go of Per. Not the eyes. That was Larren’s limit.

  Tinyboy shook. He tried to hide it, but everyone saw. He shook and hesitated and spat, but on the floor this time.

  “Where you from?”

  The new guy yawned. Twice.

  “Jail.”

  “I know you fucking came from jail. Do you have your verdict with you?”

  Three times.

  “Tinyturd, is that what they call you? You know damn well I can’t take my verdict with me into the unit.”

  Tinyboy starting rocking, weight on his right leg, weight on his left leg. Per had died a long time ago, and he had died without his balls, and the ice pick had been confiscated, evidence that went to the reformatory.

  “I don’t care whether or not you can take your verdict with you! I wanna know what the hell you’re in for—I don’t want any fucking pervs or snitches in here!”

  It’s strange how a room can seem cramped, how letters become words become messages and bounce off the walls, taking all the space, all the power, as if nothing else exists other than breath and silence and waiting.

  The new guy couldn’t get any closer, but somehow he did. He hissed small droplets of saliva between them.

  “Are you looking for an adventure?”

  Someone had to give in, look down at the floor, or turn away. But they just stood there.

  “Because there’s one thing I’m gonna make damn clear to you, Tinyturd. Nobody, and I mean nobody, calls me a snitch or a perv. And if some junkie loser does, then things won’t turn out well for him.”

  The new guy poked Tinyboy in the chest with a long outstretched finger. He did it several times, and hard. He was still hissing, but speaking jail Romani now.

  “Honkar di rotepa, buråbeng.”

  He poked Tinyboy one more time in the chest and then turned around, walked back to his cell just a short distance away, and left the door wide open.

  Tinyboy stood completely still. He followed him with a blank expression, watched him disappear behind the door, and then looked at Hilding and the others, shouting at a deserted corridor.

  “What the fuck. What the fuck!”

  An open door and a middle finger poking at his chest.

  Tinyboy shouted again.

  “Fuck, racklar di Romani, tjavon?”

  First the bastard had looked him in the eye, then threatened him, then poked him in the chest. Nobody calls me a snitch or a perv. And if some junkie loser does, then things won’t turn out well for him. And then he’d gone to his cell, leaving the door open, and refused to come out again. Tinyboy had waited in the corridor for an hour until Hilding ventured over, tapped him in the back, and whispered it’s here. Now they were both sitting on a toilet with their hands on a piece of tinfoil, swatting each other’s fingers out of the way.

  Inside was a flat brown square of something.

  They’d ordered Turkish Glass. It had one hell of a kick and the best high. They were trying to fly through Aspsås and Unit H and the hours of waiting. They were trying to get through it.

  They’d ordered this from the Greek, and paid for half when he delivered. Now they owed him more than was good for them. They should have made do with Pressed Moroccan or Yellow Lebanese, but Hilding had nagged and pleaded and licked ass and Tinyboy had given in; they’d placed the order for Turkish Glass and waited three days. Now, they smiled at the small, glowing pieces of glass as they lifted the hash into the light of the bathroom.

  “You see, Tiny?”

  “Of course I see.”

  “It’s so . . . beautiful.”

  Tinyboy held the lighter’s flame underneath the foil. One minute was usually enough. The flat brown square turned into a soft mass, and he crushed and shaped it with his fingers. Hilding kept his tobacco in the outer pocket of his prison-issued coat. They usually made their joints 75 percent tobacco.

  “Smells good.”

  “Fucking hell, Tiny.”

  Hilding stood on tiptoe and pressed his hands against one of the ceiling tiles, the one closest to the lamp. After a few seconds it gave way easily, and he reached in and fished out a corn pipe. Tinyboy packed his pipe, inhaled as he lit it, inhaled again, then handed it to Hilding, who hurriedly pushed it into his mouth.

  They took two drags at a time, then passed the pipe, two more drags. It was quiet in the shower room, a couple of sinks dripping, one of the overhead lig
hts blinking, drip drip blink blink blink drip. It was good Turkish Glass, even better than last time.

  “Holy shit, Hilding Wilding, motherfucker.”

  Tinyboy took two more drags and passed the pipe. He giggled.

  “You know what, Hilding Wilding? We’re sitting in a fucking shower room smoking good hash and it didn’t even occur to us that this is the perfect place to get rid of a perv.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “And we didn’t even think about it.”

  “Are you talking about this fucking shower room? We sure as hell’ve whipped enough rapists and snitches in here. How new is that? In the joint in America, they butt-fuck each other by the sinks.”

  Tinyboy couldn’t stop giggling. That’s how Turkish Glass worked, first he got giggly as hell, then he got horny as hell, and if he hadn’t smoked for a while he became terrified of seeing it all over again, Per and his penis, and he would start searching for the ice pick and a bleeding scrotum.

  He inhaled deeply, pipe in hand, held on to it to annoy Hilding while patting him on the head.

  “You don’t understand shit, Hilding Wilding, we should be doing a lot more than just kicking their asses.”

  Hilding reached toward the pipe, but Tinyboy pulled it back, holding on to it stubbornly.

  “Listen. Next time we get a pervert in this unit, we’ll wait the bastard out—wait until he goes into the shower. When he’s in here, water all over him, you’ll create a diversion out in the yard so that all the guards end up there.”

  Hilding wasn’t listening. He was trying to get hold of the pipe, reaching toward it again.

  “What the hell, it’s my turn now.”

  Tinyboy giggled and threw the corn pipe into the air, almost to the ceiling, caught it, then gave it to Hilding, who took two long drags.

  “Listen, I said. Now we have him in the shower. Then either me or Skåne go in and shiv him till he croaks. Then, we butcher him. We cut up the fucking bastard into tiny little pieces and crush his bones. And then we’ll lift up the whole fucking john and wash every little fucking piece of him down into the drain in the floor. Then we put the toilet back on again and flush a few times. Wash the blood away with the shower.”