Chapter 43
43
F ighting isn’t hard. It’s the starting and stopping that are hard. Once you’re actually fighting, it happens more or less instinctively. The complicated thing about fighting is daring to throw the first punch, and then, once you’ve won, refraining from throwing that very last one.
***
Peter’s car is still parked in front of the rink. No one has set fire to it, even if he suspects that one or two people have thought about it. He scrapes the windows and gets in, without switching on the engine.
He’s always envied good hockey coaches more than anyone; the ones with that ability to stand in front of a group and carry everyone with them. He doesn’t have that sort of charisma. He was a team captain once upon a time, but he led through his play, not by his words. He can’t explain hockey to anyone, he just happened to be good at it. In music it’s called “perfect pitch,” and in sports, it’s sometimes called “physical intelligence.” You see someone do something, and your body instantly understands how to do the same thing. Skating, shooting a puck, playing a violin. Some people train all their lives without learning, while others have just got it.
He was good enough that he didn’t have to learn how to fight. That was his salvation. He doesn’t have a philosophical position; he hasn’t reasoned his way to not believing in violence. He just doesn’t have it in him. He lacks the instinct.
When Leo started to play hockey, Peter got into a discussion with a coach who kept shouting and yelling the whole time. The coach said:
“You have to frighten the little buggers to get them to listen!”
Peter said nothing. But in the car on the way home he turned to Leo and explained: “When I was little, my dad used to hit me if I spilled my milk, Leo. That didn’t teach me not to spill things. It just made me scared of milk. Remember that.”
The parking lot around him gradually fills with cars. People are arriving from all directions. Some of them see Peter but pretend they haven’t. He waits until they’ve gone inside. Until the meeting has started. He considers simply starting the car and driving home, packing up his family and belongings and driving as far away from here as he can. But instead he gets out of the car, walks across the parking lot, opens the heavy door of the rink, and walks inside.
***
Fighting isn’t hard. It’s just hard to know when to throw the first punch.
***
Ann-Katrin is sitting close to Hog in one of the last rows of chairs. It feels like the whole town is gathered in the cafeteria of the rink. All the chairs are taken but people are still pouring in, lining up along the walls. Up at the front, on a little platform, sit the board members. In the first row of seats the sponsors and parents of the juniors. In the middle: Kevin’s parents. Ann-Katrin watches as people she’s known all her life go up to Kevin’s mom as if this were a funeral, as if they were offering their condolences for the terrible tragedy she’s suffered.
Hog holds Ann-Katrin’s hand tightly when he sees what she’s looking at.
“We can’t get involved, Anki. Half the people in here are customers of ours.”
“This isn’t a vote, it’s a lynch mob,” Anki whispers.
“We need to wait until we know what happened. We don’t know everything, Anki. We don’t know everything,” her husband replies.
She knows he’s right. So she waits. They wait. Everyone waits.
***
Tails is standing in the middle of the parking lot on purpose, not hidden in the shadows or behind a tree. The last thing he wants, obviously, is to appear threatening.
When the little car with the logo of the local newspaper on the door pulls into the parking lot, he gives a cheery wave. A journalist and a photographer are sitting inside it, and he gestures to them to roll the window down.
“Hello, hello! I don’t think we’ve met? I’m Tails—I own the supermarket!”
The journalist shakes his hand through the window.
“Hello, we’re just heading to the meet...”
Tails leans forward, scratching his stubble hard.
“Yes, the meeting, eh? I just wanted to have a few words with you about that. Sort of... off the record, if you get my meaning.”
The journalist tilts her head.
“No.”
Tails clears his throat.
“Oh, you know how it is. People sometimes get a bit nervous when a reporter shows up. What’s happened has been pretty traumatic for the whole town, as you obviously appreciate. So we’d just like to know that your article... well... that you haven’t come here looking for problems where there aren’t any.”
The journalist has no idea how she’s supposed to respond to that, but the way the huge man is leaning over her door as he says it makes her feel uncomfortable. Tails, of course, just smiles, wishes her a nice day, and walks off.
The journalist and photographer wait a couple of minutes before following him. When they open the door to the rink and start to walk down the hallway, two men step out from the darkness. In their late twenties, black jackets, hands in pockets.
“This meeting is for members only,” one of them says.
“We’re journalists...,” the journalist begins to say.
The men block their path. They’re a head taller than the photographer, two heads taller than the journalist. They say no more; one just takes half a step forward and stops, a subtle indication of his potential for violence. The rink is poorly lit, and the part they are in is silent and deserted.
The photographer takes hold of the sleeve of the journalist’s jacket. She sees how white his face is. The journalist isn’t from around here, she’s only got a temporary contract with the paper, but the photographer lives in Beartown. He has his family here. He pulls her away and walks back to the car. They drive off.
***
Fatima is sitting in her kitchen. She hears the doorbell ring, but Amat insists on answering it himself. As if he already knows who it’s going to be. There are two huge boys outside. Fatima can’t hear what they’re saying, but she sees one of them put his index finger on Amat’s chest. When her son closes the door again he refuses to tell his mother what it was about. Just says, “It was to do with the team,” and goes into his room.
***
Bobo is walking a little way behind William Lyt. He doesn’t feel comfortable with what they’re doing, but doesn’t know how to object.
“Amat’s one of us, isn’t he, so why are you so angry?” he asked on the way here.
“He needs to prove that now,” Lyt snapped.
When Amat opens the door, Lyt jabs him in the chest with his finger and commands:
“There’s a members’ meeting at the rink. The whole team’s going to stand outside to show our support for Kevin. You too.”
“I’ll try,” Amat mutters.
“You won’t try. You’ll do it! We stick together!” Lyt declares.
Bobo tries to make eye contact with Amat before they leave but doesn’t succeed.
***
The meeting goes the way meetings like that always go. It starts hesitantly, then quickly gets out of hand. The club’s president clears his throat and asks for everyone’s attention, in a feeble attempt to calm the anxiety.
“First, I would like to clarify that only the board can dismiss the general manager. The members can’t start unilaterally getting rid of members of staff, that’s not how the statutes of the club work.”
One man flies up from his chair, forefinger raised:
“But the members can depose the board, and you need to be very clear that we’re going to do that if you go against the wishes of the town!”
“This is a democratic organization; we don’t threaten each other,” the president replies sternly.
“Threaten? Who’s threatening who? Whose children are getting dragged off the team bus by the police?” the man snarls.
A woman stands up with her hands clasped in front of her hips, and looks at the board with sympathy:
“We’re not after a witch-hunt, we’re just trying to protect our children. My daughter was at Kevin’s party, and now the police have called her in to get a ‘witness statement.’ For the love of God, these children have known each other all their lives, and suddenly they’re expected to be witnesses against each other? What on earth is going on?”
A man gets to his feet after her.
“We’re not trying to accuse anyone. But we all know that... what can happen... This young woman wanted to join the gang. Maybe she wanted attention. All I mean is: Why would Kevin do something like this? We know him. He’s not that sort of guy. Not at all.”
Another man remains seated, but speaks up anyway:
“Anyone can see she’s just some sort of attention seeker. There’s a groupie mentality around these guys—that’s perfectly natural. I’m not saying she did it on purpose; it must be something psychological. She’s a teenager, for God’s sake, and we all know what happens to their hormones. But if she gets drunk and goes into a boy’s room, then she’s putting him in one hell of a position, isn’t she? One hell of a position. It’s hardly that bloody easy for the lad to interpret signals like that!”
Maggan Lyt gets to her feet, and blinks sadly at everyone around her:
“I’m a woman myself. So I take the word ‘rape’ very seriously. Very, very seriously! And that’s why I think we need to raise our children to understand that that’s not the sort of thing you lie about. And we all know that she’s lying, this young woman. The evidence is overwhelmingly in the boy’s favor, and there’s not a shred of a reason for him to have done what he’s accused of. We don’t wish to harm the young woman, we don’t wish her family ill, but what sort of signal does it send if we don’t put our foot down here? That all girls can cry ‘rape!’ the minute their affections aren’t reciprocated? I’m a woman myself, and that’s why I take this very seriously. Because everyone in here knows that this young woman’s father is trying to play politics with it. He clearly couldn’t bear the fact that there might be bigger stars on this team that he hims...”
***
Peter is standing in the doorway. It takes a few moments for the first person to notice him, then in a flash everyone else turns around. A sea of eyes he has known his whole life. Childhood friends, schoolmates, teenage crushes, colleagues, neighbors, parents of children his children play with. At the back, along one wall, their very presence exuding menace, stand two dozen young men in black jackets. They’re not saying anything, but not one of them takes his eyes off Peter. Peter feels their hatred, but he stands there, defiantly straight-backed, as he looks at Maggan Lyt.
“Please, don’t let me interrupt,” he says.
The room is silent enough for everyone to hear when his heart breaks.
***
The journalist and photographer will talk to the editor-in-chief when they get back to the newsroom; the journalist will expect the editor-in-chief to send them straight back to the meeting. But instead he will mumble something along the lines of “I don’t know if we can really call it ‘threatening’... People are just nervous... we have to understand that... Maybe we shouldn’t... you know...” The photographer will clear his throat and suggest: “Look for problems where there aren’t any?” The editor-in-chief will nod and say, “Exactly!”
The journalist won’t say anything then; she’s too young, too concerned about her job, but she will remember the fear in their eyes. And for a long time afterward, she will find it hard not to think of what Kevin Erdahl said to her when she interviewed him after the semifinal. What all sportsmen learn to say when a teammate has done something wrong. The feigned surprise, the stiff body language, the abrupt response. “What? No. I didn’t see that incident.”
***
Fatima doesn’t knock on her son’s door on this occasion, as she always does. When she walks in, Amat is sitting on his bed with a business card in his hands. She perches next to him and declares firmly:
“A boy is allowed to have secrets from his mother. But not if he’s this bad at hiding them.”
“It’s nothing. You don’t need... Don’t worry, Mom,” he replies.
“Your father would have...,” she begins, but he interrupts her. He never does that.
“Don’t tell me what Dad would have done. He isn’t here!”
She keeps her hands in her lap. He’s breathing hard. He tries to hand her the business card. She doesn’t take it.
“It’s a job,” he manages to say, somewhere between a boy’s hopefulness and a young man’s anger.
“I’ve got a job.”
“A better job,” he says.
His mother raises her eyebrows in surprise.
“Oh? Is it a job where they have an indoor rink so I can see my son practice every day?”
His shoulders sink.
“No.”
“Then it isn’t a better job for me. I have a job. Don’t worry about me.”
His eyes flash.
“So who is, Mom? Look around! Who’s going to take care of us when your back can’t take anymore?”
“I will. Just like I always have,” she promises.
He tries to press the business card into her hand but she refuses. He cries:
“You’re nothing if you’re alone in this world, Mom!”
She doesn’t answer. Just sits beside him until he starts to cry. He sobs:
“It’s too hard, Mom. You don’t understand how much I... I can’t...”
Fatima removes her hands from his. Stands up. Backs away. And says sternly:
“I don’t know what you know. But whatever it is, there’s clearly someone out there who’s terrified that you’re going to reveal it. And let me tell you something, my darling boy: I don’t need any men. I don’t need a man to drive me in a big car to the rink each morning, and I don’t need a man to give me a new job that I don’t want. I don’t need a man to pay my bills, and I don’t need a man to tell me what I can think and feel and believe. I only need one man: my son. And you’re not alone. You’ve never been alone. You just need to be better at choosing the company you keep.”
***
She leaves him. Closes the door behind her. Doesn’t take the business card.
***
Maggan Lyt is still on her feet, too proud to back down now. She turns to the board and demands:
“I think we should have an open vote.”
The club’s president addresses the whole meeting:
“Well, I feel obliged to point out that according to the statutes, it is within the rights of anyone here to demand a secret ballot...”
He realizes too late that this is precisely what Maggan is after. She turns to the room and asks:
“I see. Is there anyone in here who isn’t prepared to stand by their opinion? Who can’t look the rest of us in the eye and say what they think? By all means, stand up and ask to be allowed to vote anonymously!”
No one moves. Peter turns and leaves. He could have stayed to defend himself, but he chooses not to.
***
Amat puts his headphones in his ears. Walks through his own neighborhood, and the rest of the town. Passes his whole childhood, a whole life. There will always be people who won’t understand his decision. Who will call him weak or dishonest or disloyal. They are probably people who live secure lives, who are surrounded by people who share their own opinions and only talk to people who reinforce their own worldview. It’s easy for them to judge him—it’s always easier to lecture other people about morality when you’ve never had to answer for anything yourself.
He goes to the rink. Joins his teammates. He may have left his war-torn country before he could talk, but he has never stopped being a refugee. Hockey is the only thing that has ever made him feel like part of a group. Normal. Good at something.
William Lyt slaps him on the back. Amat looks him in the eye.
***
Ramona is standing in the hallway, waiting for Peter. Leaning on a stick, smelling of whisky. It’s the first time in a decade that he’s seen her more than five paces outside the Bearskin. She grunts at him.
“They’ll feel ashamed, in the end. One day they’ll remember that when the word of a boy was set against that of a girl, they believed the boy blindly. And then they’ll feel ashamed.”
Peter pats her on the shoulder.
“No one’s asking... no one... You don’t have to get involved in this just for my family’s sake, Ramona,” he whispers.
“And you can fuck off if you’re going to tell me what I can and can’t do, boy.”
He nods, kisses her cheek, and leaves. He’s reached his car by the time she opens the door to the cafeteria with her stick. One of the men on the board, dressed in a suit, is just loosening his tie and says, possibly as a joke, possibly not:
“How on earth could it have happened anyway? Has anyone asked themselves that? Have you seen the jeans those young women wear these days? Tight as snakeskin! They can hardly take them off themselves, so what chance would a teenage boy have if she didn’t want him to? Eh?”
He laughs at his own wit, a few others join in, but the bang when the door flies open silences the whole room as everyone turns around. Ramona is standing there, drunk and furious, pointing at him with her stick:
“Really, little Lennart? That’s what you’re wondering? Shall we have a bet—your annual salary, perhaps?—that I could get that whole suit off you against your will without a single bugger in here doing a damn thing about it?”
She slams her stick down in drunken rage on the back of a chair, making the perfectly innocent man sitting on it gasp for breath and clutch his chest. Ramona shakes her stick at them all.
“This isn’t my town. You’re not my town. You should be ashamed of yourselves.”
One man stands up and shouts:
“Shut up, Ramona! You don’t know anything about this!”
Three men in black jackets step silently out of the shadows by the wall, one of them takes several strides across the room, stops in front of the man, and says:
“If you tell her to shut up again, I’ll shut you up. For good.”
***
Amat stands outside the rink, looking his teammates in the eyes. Then he takes a deep breath, turns away from them, and starts walking. His first step is hesitant, the second more confident. He hears Lyt start shouting behind him, but carries on into the rink, not bothering to close the door behind him. He walks past the ice, up the stairs, into the cafeteria, forcing his way between the rows of chairs, stops in front of the board, and looks each and every man and woman in there in the eye. A man named Erdahl first of all, and longest of all.
“My name is Amat. I saw what Kevin did to Maya. I was drunk, I’m in love with her, and I’m telling you that straight so that you lying bastards don’t have to say it behind my back when I walk out of here. Kevin Erdahl raped Maya Andersson. I’m going to go to the police tomorrow, and they’ll say I’m not a reliable witness. But I’m going to tell you everything now, everything that Kevin did, everything that I saw. And you won’t ever forget it. You know that my eyes work better than anyone else’s in here. Because that’s the first thing you learn on the Beartown Ice Hockey Club, isn’t it? ‘You can’t teach that way of seeing. That’s something you’re born with.’?”
***
Then he tells them. Every detail. Everything that was in Kevin’s room. The posters on the wall, the exact arrangement of trophies on the shelves, the scratches on the floor, the color of the bedclothes, the blood on the boy’s hand, the terror on the girl’s face, the muffled screams, stifled beneath a heavy palm, the bruises, the violence, the incomprehensible, hideous, unforgiveable nature of it all. He tells them everything. And no one in the room will ever forget it.
***
When he’s finished, he leaves them. He doesn’t slam the door, doesn’t stomp down the stairs, doesn’t shout at anyone on the way out. William launches himself at him the moment he reaches the parking lot:
“What have you done? What have you done you fucking stupid little bitch? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?”
The hands that push between them are half the size of Lyt’s, actually even smaller than Amat’s, but they keep the boys apart as if they possessed infinite strength.
“That’s enough!” Ann-Katrin roars at William.
Bobo is standing a couple of yards away, watching his mother stare down a young man twice her size. He’s never felt more stupid. Never felt prouder.
***
Inside the cafeteria Filip’s mother stands up. Waits until the noise has died down. Claps two damp palms together. Looks at the board and says:
“Can anyone demand that we vote anonymously?”
The president nods.
“Secret ballot. Of course. According to the statutes, one person requesting it is enough.”
“Then I request it,” Filip’s mother says, and sits down.
Her best friend is sitting beside her, and tugs at her arm with insulted outrage.
“What are you doing? What are you DOI ...”
And then Filip’s mother says three little words that all best friends have to say to each other occasionally:
“Shut up, Maggan.”
***
Amat backs away without looking at his former teammates, knows what they’re thinking anyway. He puts his headphones in, casts a last glance inside the rink, sees the ice shimmering beneath a single fluorescent light. He knows he’s put himself on the losing side—he’ll never win this. Maybe he’ll never get to play again. If anyone had asked him there and then if it was worth it, he would have whispered: “I don’t know.” Sometimes life doesn’t let you choose your battles. Just the company you keep.
He walks back through the town. There’s snow on the ground, but the air smells of spring. He’s always hated this time of year, because it means that the hockey season is over. He has walked nearly all the way home when he turns into the stairwell next to his, climbs to the third floor, and rings the doorbell.
***
Zacharias is clutching a video-game handset when he opens the door. They look at each other until the snow melts around Amat’s shoes. He’s breathing heavily, can feel his pulse in his ears.
“Happy birthday.”
Zacharias steps back into the hall so he can come in. Amat hangs his jacket on the same hook where he’s hung it every day since he was old enough to reach up there himself. Zacharias is sitting on the bed in his room, playing a video game. Amat sits next to him for half an hour. Then Zacharias gets up, goes over to a shelf, fetches another handset, and puts it in his friend’s lap.
They play without speaking. They’ve never needed words.
***
Meanwhile, at a meeting at a rink, the members of a club vote on the GM’s future. But just as much on their town’s future. Their own. Everyone’s.
***
Ramona is sitting in a corner next to a man in a black jacket. He’s got a tattoo of a bear on his neck, and is twirling his car keys nervously around his fingers. Ramona pats him on the cheek.
“You didn’t have to threaten to shut him up. I could have managed. But thanks.”
The man smiles weakly. His knuckles are covered in scars, one of his arms bears the marks of a stab wound, and she’s never admired or judged him for that. He and the other men in black jackets grew up at the Bearskin. Ramona has stood by them when everyone else kept their distance, she’s defended them even when she hasn’t agreed with them, she’s had their backs even as she’s yelled at them. They love her. But still he says:
“I’m not sure I can get the guys to vote the way you want here.”
She nods and scratches his cropped hair.
“I looked Amat in the eye tonight. I trust him. And I’m going to act accordingly. How you choose to act is up to you. It always has been.”
The man nods. The tattoo on his neck moves up and down as he swallows.
“I don’t know if we can get involved in this. The Pack and the team have to come first.”
Ramona gets slowly to her feet, but before she goes to cast her vote she pats him on the knee and asks:
“Whose club is it?”
***
The man sits and watches her go. Twirls his car keys around his fingers; the Saab logo on them appears and disappears from his palm. Then his eyes wander across the room to a man sitting on a chair in the very front row. He saw him in the Hollow, together with Amat. Kevin Erdahl’s father. The man in the black jacket puts his hand in his pocket. He still has the five crumpled thousand-kronor notes there, the ones he picked out of the snow.
***
He still hasn’t decided what he’s going to do with them.