Two Soldiers Read online

  Only on the right thigh. An order! Otherwise, punishment.

  Then he taped the bent spoon handle to one side of the shaver, checked that the needle moved without touching anything, positioned the pen shaft on the spoon handle, and finally attached the end of the pipe cleaner to the head that had until recently secured the blades, and taped it up again.

  “Right.”

  Plug in the socket on the wall. Smackhead smiled. Almost properly.

  The noise was loud, a humming that took over when he held the machine out in front of him, the sharp needle that had once been a wire in a metal brush was now the essential component of a tattoo machine that moved back and forth at high speed. Leon unbuttoned his pants and lay down on his side on the foul-smelling bed. White, shapeless cotton underpants and on his left thigh, a big square scab. Leon picked at it with his index fingernail, broke up what had already begun to heal until the fresh scab fell off and the opened wound started to bleed again.

  “Looks OK.”

  Infected. Bleeding.

  Smackhead leaned closer, nodded.

  “Looking pretty good. A few more weeks. Pick at it once a day.”

  Leon looked at the bleeding rectangle.

  An old name. A name that no longer existed and was going to be replaced.

  With a needle, he had injected old sour milk into the skin around the long-since tattooed letters, waited until the infection took hold and when the first scab started to form, he had scraped it off and when the second scab had started to form, he scraped that off too; he had scraped off one after the other and with each scab that came off a little more color disappeared, with every new drop of blood the past had been washed away a little more.

  “The Bollnäs Butt, when I was in Skåltjärnshyttan in Filipstad, he taught me. I’ve made over a hundred of these, done eight hundred and forty-four tattoos. I’ve—”

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  “I—”

  The young man who’d pulled down his pants and lain down on a stinking bed got up and punched the bony cheek with his fist, the electric shaver fell to the floor, the tape around the bent spoon slipped.

  “Keep your mouth shut. And get on with it. And write what you’ve got to write on my thigh, here, from the knee to the edge of my pants.”

  ONLY THERE!!!

  The skinny guy who was maybe around forty said nothing, looked over at where the curtain rail was fixed to the wall and the five capsules that were taped there, spat on his hands three times like he always did, and put the plug into the socket. It worked, as it had before, the sharpened needle going back and forth at high speed in the air. He smiled as he dipped it in the dish with ink that was called Rotring and could be stolen from well-stocked stationery shops and this time had been smuggled in up the ass of one of the long-termers who had been out on leave, only one g in return for ink that with any luck would be enough for three or even four tattoos.

  Ana stood on the red-and-white rag rug out in the narrow hall, looking at a plastic bag she would never open. If she had nothing to do with it, it had nothing to do with her. She made the decisions around here. She was the one looking at the plastic bag, the plastic bag wasn’t looking at her.

  She would throw it away.

  She would go out onto the landing and over to the rubbish chute and throw it down into the dark.

  But she knew things didn’t work like that. You’re to keep this. If it disappeared, she disappeared. You’re to keep this until he comes to get it.

  She had twenty-five days. They had twenty-five days.

  To start again.

  She closed her eyes, another time, other eighteen-year-olds outside another door with another plastic bag.

  The same words. The same warning.

  Until he comes to get it.

  He hadn’t come. He hadn’t collected it. Not that day. Not ever.

  It just seemed to carry on, farther in, farther away.

  And they had nowhere to go as there was nothing to leave.

  Ana looked at it again, plastic wrapped around hard metal edges on the ugly hat shelf in front of her; the next visitor of normal height would be able to stand here and see exactly what she was seeing . . . it was so hard to breathe and swallow, to draw in new air when an entire life lay in the way and took up all the space.

  Not anymore. Not again. Not ever.

  She had done her time for others.

  She was absolutely certain that she was still standing up but her legs buckled and the floor came closer and she hit her head on the wall, so it would seem that she had slowly collapsed and maybe even shed a tear or two. Someone who can’t go forward and can’t go back and can’t bear to sit still either doesn’t have much choice other than to cry. She cried and shook and looked up at the fucking plastic bag that just lay there and looked back at her.

  She stood up.

  She reached her hand up toward it and got hold of it between her finger and thumb; if she held it as close to the edge as possible, maybe it wouldn’t cut so deep into her hand and wouldn’t be so heavy. She picked it up and started to walk and was immediately back at Hinseberg prison for women, locked up and waiting, and she couldn’t understand why the heavy metal door was locked and she lay down again in the narrow cell and slept for four years, and had reached the front door when she dropped the bag and went back into the apartment, she needed tape, heavy gray packing tape. She lifted the bag up with two fingers again and went out onto the stair and down to the next floor, opened the rubbish chute and held the bag in the middle of the cement cylinder and felt her hand spasm. She was crying, other plastic bags flashed in front of her, when he was younger and when he got older and she hated them all as much as she hated this one because nothing ever changed, time clung on with sharp edges and hurt. You’ll keep it, bitch, because we want you to keep it. She was shaking as she pulled her hand back out and put the bag down on the hard floor, took out the roll of packing tape and cut off four pieces of equal length, attached them to her arm, then picked the bag up again, into the chute, one piece over, one piece behind, she pressed it hard against the cement wall inside the rubbish chute, then another across the top, and a piece of tape across that, and another, and another, and another until it was secured and she closed the cover.

  She wasn’t crying anymore. But she was still sitting on the rag rug with her eyes shut. She had no idea how long, if it was just now, hours ago, days, years.

  Then she heard them, the sirens, she got up, stretched herself, that was familiar, home.

  She hated them.

  Faint at first, a couple of kilometers away she guessed, then louder, then a demanding, insistent sound that bounded and echoed from building to building.

  She had been counting.

  Five times so far today.

  Six yesterday.

  The day before, nine. The day before that, five. And the day before that, fourteen.

  A quick glance at the hat shelf, which was empty, but even so, the stupid fucking plastic bag was lying there, staring at her.

  Ana made her way to the kitchen, the noise pounding on her window, forcing its way in, taking over. Outside, the backyards and houses were pressing in, yards and houses that she loved and protected in a way that only a woman can love and protect someone who abuses her until she no longer has a choice, to be beaten and broken or to fight back. The conversations that had died, the stalls and shops that had closed down, a life that had been dismantled bit by bit by people who threatened them and stole from them while the outside world looked on, other people who had no idea how to recognize the boy or girl who’s so far gone they’ll burn their own house down.

  The honking, the noise, there it was, she wondered if it was the same truck, the same fireman as before, the one who usually came.

  ———

  He sat on the right at the front of the fire engine. Officer in Charge Front Passenger Seat. He checked the outside rearview mirror, glanced over at the driver, turned around and looked at the lead firefig
hter, then at Number One, Number Two, they were all ready. They had responded to the call-out within eighty-two seconds, never more than ninety and they were proud of it—that they could call themselves the ninety-second crew every day, every time. And the journey hadn’t even taken a minute, fifteen hundred meters from Eriksberg station to Råby Allé, one of four addresses that required police contact or an escort on any call-out. And today they’d been to all four—Råbygången, Råby Backe, Albyvägen, Råby Allé.

  Thom sighed.

  For every real alarm, he figured on sixteen like this. Cars, bikes, mopeds, rubbish bins, fences, waste-paper baskets. Sixteen. And then one serious call-out.

  He had just gone for a nap, it had been a long morning, he had put on his equipment and helmet five times and the smoke and strange feeling that you’re chasing shadows made his legs weak these days. He’d lain down but not been able to sleep in the fire station that he’d walked into twenty-two years earlier and was his security; eight weeks’ training as a firefighter had led to seven weeks’ training as an EMT, a few years working three days with the ambulance service and two days with the fire brigade, then an offer from the fire service college and a permanent position and the bed he’d just left and the corridor he’d just run down and the locker from where he’d just grabbed his helmet, uniform, and bulletproof vest.

  Black smoke.

  He wound down the side window.

  It smelled of metal, oil, gas.

  The first call-out, early that morning, Råby Allé 17—a moped. The second, a few hours later, Råby Allé 128—a container and two piles of tires. Now Råby Allé 46—it smelled and looked like a car.

  He opened the door and the flames seemed to grow, the smoke get blacker. He could see faces, hear voices.

  He couldn’t understand it.

  They were burning their own environment.

  He checked the straps of the bulletproof vest that he’d refused to wear for so long, and was about to climb down from the cab when a dull thud shuddered by his cheek, forehead, temple. The heavy, square paving stone had hit the reinforced side window with force; the thick glass, covered with some kind of protective plastic, had been installed when the hate had tipped over into violence a few years back.

  He looked at the window that was still intact, leaned forward—the paving stone, the one that had been intended for his head, was lying down by the front tire.

  “Abort.”

  The driver, a young, shy man who had driven backwards and forward between the fire station in the Eriksberg industrial park and the Stockholm suburb of Råby five times since dawn, looked as if he hadn’t heard or understood the officer in charge’s order.

  Thom raised his voice.

  “Abort. Now.”

  The large vehicle had just started to reverse when it suddenly stopped.

  Thom saw the young face, red, flushed.

  Then one behind, in front.

  The fire engine was surrounded. He guessed around thirty, maybe even forty, young bodies in track pants and hoodies and faces that were hard to distinguish as they were blotted out by the smoke and burning gas.

  They stood completely still and watched the car change color as it turned into a metal corpse.

  When something hit the front screen they didn’t have time to react; the hard and sharp edges shattered the unprotected glass into snowflakes on the floor, the seat, the dashboard, drifts on his knees. The axe looked new and was quite short, maybe thirty centimeters, it had impacted in the metal frame, just above the driver’s head, a big gash in all the red.

  “Drive.”

  The threats. The hate.

  But not this.

  He had never been aggressive back, not once in all these years had he hated back. He had chosen not to see them—the few hundred who disrupted the lives of twelve thousand.

  A gob of spit.

  “Drive.”

  He had leaned forward through the window that was no longer there and the gob landed on his neck, one of them standing nearby, the spit now running down his chest.

  The next one landed on the face, dribbled down his nose, cheek, chin.

  A boy.

  He was just . . . a boy.

  Twelve, maybe thirteen years old, the slicked-back hair, the heavy gold chain, a child dressed up like the adult he wasn’t and would never live long enough to be, and his boy’s mouth grinned as he pointed to the axe and then turned to the thirty or forty others who were guarding the fire engine, then spat again. Thom wasn’t sure what, but something burst deep, deep inside and he didn’t look at the driver with the tense, youthful face, but heard his own voice, loud and clear.

  “Drive.”

  “Drive?”

  “They’ll move on. Let it burn.”

  ———

  Cheek and forehead against the windowpane.

  Was she imagining it? Though the flames were long gone, it felt warmer now, as if the heat from a burning car had risen on the black smoke and was now washing over the building and the people who lived there.

  Ana recognized him.

  She had seen him many times before. He never shouted. Not like the others. He looked straight through them, just carried on with his work, putting out the fire, not a word, never.

  This time, he’d been scared.

  His abrupt, agitated movements, his eyes, he had looked at them, studied them.

  First the stone. Then the axe.

  But probably most of all the gob of spit, saliva hit harder, cut deeper than metal.

  The car was still burning when the large, red vehicle reversed out of the parking lot and the ring of track pants and hoodies dispersed. She recognized the sudden, loud bang of a gas tank exploding, a sound as shattering as the recent sirens.

  She sat down on the narrow wooden windowsill and looked out at the metal that was turning black and the flames that had been given new life, rubbed her forehead and cheek against the windowpane, and felt sure that it was getting hotter.

  A world within the world.

  Identical concrete buildings that faced the E4 like a wall and everyone driving past at a hundred and ten kilometers an hour.

  They had nowhere to go because there was nothing to leave.

  They had nowhere to go because there was nothing to leave.

  Identical concrete buildings inside a wall that kept the rest out.

  A world within the world.

  Lennart Oscarsson stood at his window, stretched. Aspsås over there with identical roofs and deserted playgrounds in a tiny town, Aspsås in here with gravel yards and rectangular soccer fields in an even smaller space. He wanted security, he spent his nights in an idyll but would never understand why he had chosen to spend his days in a high security prison, one of three Swedish maximum security prisons for only the most dangerous criminals with long prison sentences.

  He stretched again, swallowed a persistent yawn, and walked over to the door as someone had knocked, a timid hand on the boss’s closed door. Martin Jacobson. And a very young woman whom Oscarsson had only met briefly at an interview and vaguely recognized, but had never really spoken to.

  “Julia. Julia Bozsik. I work in Block D. D1 Left.”

  With a friendly gesture, he showed her over to the new sofa and they sat down with their arms first on, and then around, a square cushion each. Lennart Oscarsson had consciously worked to recruit more women into what was a traditional and sometimes stale male domain and he was glad, almost proud, to see the young person in front of him, who wasn’t much older than the youngest inmates in some of the units.

  “Now, how can I help you?”

  Julia turned toward the prison governor, whom she’d barely met, let alone spoken to. He seemed friendlier than his office, which was far too big and far too formal, and she could look at him without feeling she was being studied, assessed.

  “A couple of nights ago . . .”

  A sofa in the prison governor’s office.

  She looked around, she felt uncertain, sometimes
. . . it wasn’t always easy to figure out where you were heading or why.

  Jesus . . . a prison?

  Three years doing science at high school. Unemployed for a few days in summer and an appointment with the job center.

  She had never seen a prison before.

  She had never spoken to, known, or even met a criminal before.

  Three days later—after three days’ training—she had signed for her uniform and done her first day and was supposed to be responsible for them.

  “A couple of nights ago, the nightshift was . . . sorry, pure hell. Nine cells, nine inmates who didn’t sleep, who started . . . it sounded, I can’t explain it any other way, like they were constantly moving, noisy and aggressive, tidying their cells, making their beds, pulling off the sheets, making them again, pulling them off, pulling them off.”

  After three days’ training, she had put on her uniform and taken responsibility for them, but for the most part she’d been scared. Of the young guys. Their aggression, their hate was tangible and overwhelming. Not that the older ones were any better, they sized her up and commented on her body but never triggered the same feelings—the uneasiness, discomfort, the young guys could lose it at any moment and their hate was different, so potent.

  “Last night was the same. Awake, restless. And since I opened up this morning, they’ve all been complaining about headaches and done just about anything to get a sick note and some sleep. The ones who didn’t get one, the ones we forced to go to work, are confused—one managed to knock over four pallets on his first attempt to pick them up with the forklift, and then drove straight into one of the workshop walls—another one hid in one of the toilets in the laundry, turned off the light and stayed there for three hours, he’d jammed the lock and door handle with two rubbish bins.”

  The uneasiness, the fear, from the first day she’d walked the locked corridors prepared for a fist in her face or a piece of sharpened metal in her back at any time, she’d been so tense, so terrified of these men who didn’t for a moment care about the consequences—the men who hated, exploded, lashed out—and soon she realized that she was creeping along the gray concrete walls and had tried to deal with it, was trying to deal with it, she looked straight ahead so she would never show how frightened she really was, always looked people in the eye, laughed too loud for too long, talk, talk, she knew that the fear only existed if she didn’t hide it well enough.