Chapter 16
Dino opens the door. He laughs when he sees Britt-Marie, who assumes she has pressed the wrong doorbell, but in fact it turns out Dino always has his dinner with Vega and Omar, and Dino isn’t necessarily laughing at her.
Apparently, in spite of her first impressions, that is how things are done in Borg.
People seem to have their dinners at other people’s homes just like that, and then go around laughing as if they hadn’t a care in the world.
Omar comes running into the hall and points at Britt-Marie.
“Take off your shoes. Sami gets really pissed off otherwise because he just mopped the floor!”
“I do not get pissed off!” comes a voice from the kitchen, sounding fairly pissed off.
“He’s always in a foul one when it’s our cleaning day,” explains Omar to Britt-Marie.
“Maybe I wouldn’t be in a foul one if we had a fucking cleaning day, but it’s always me who has a fucking cleaning day in this place. Every day!” yells Sami from the kitchen.
Omar nods meaningfully at Britt-Marie.
“You see. Pissed off.”
Vega turns up in the doorway with a slumped upper-body posture, waving an invisible bottle of spirits, in imitation of Somebody.
“You know, Britt-Marie, Sami he has, what’s-it-called? Citrus fruit up the anus, huh?”
Dino and Omar laugh until they are hyperventilating. Britt-Marie responds with a brisk series of polite nods, because this is as close as she gets to laughing out loud. She removes her shoes, goes into the kitchen, and nods cautiously at Sami. He points at a chair.
“The food is ready,” he says and removes his apron, before immediately roaring towards the hall:
“Grub’s up!”
Britt-Marie checks her watch. It’s exactly six o’clock.
“Are we waiting for your parents?” she asks considerately.
“They’re not here,” says Sami and starts putting coasters on the table.
“I suppose they’re delayed coming home from work,” Britt-Marie says pleasantly.
“Mum drives a truck. Abroad. She’s not home much,” says Sami curtly, putting glasses and bowls on the coasters.
“And your father?”
“He cleared off.”
“Cleared off?”
“That’s right. When I was small. Omar and Vega were just born. I guess he couldn’t take it. So we don’t talk about him in this home. Mum took care of us. The food’s ready now so come here before I fucking beat the hell out of you!”
Vega, Omar, and Dino saunter into the kitchen and start devouring their food, hardly stopping to chew it; it might as well have been liquidized and served up with straws.
“But who takes care of you now, then, when your mother’s not here?” asks Britt-Marie.
“We take care of us,” says Sami, offended.
She doesn’t know exactly what common conversational practice is after that, so she gets out the carton of cigarettes with the foreign letters on it.
“Of course I usually bring flowers when I’m invited for dinner, but there’s no florist in Borg. I’ve noticed you like cigarettes. I suppose cigarettes must be like flowers for someone who likes cigarettes,” she explains, as if to defend herself.
Sami takes the carton of cigarettes. He looks almost emotional. Britt-Marie sits in a spare seat and clears her throat.
“You’re not afraid of cancer, I suppose?”
“There are worse things to be afraid of,” says Sami with a smile.
“Ha,” says Britt-Marie, and picks up something from her plate that she has to assume is a taco.
Omar and Vega start talking at the same time.
Mostly about soccer, as far as Britt-Marie can make out.
Dino says almost nothing, but he laughs the whole time.
Britt-Marie doesn’t understand what he’s laughing at.
He and Omar don’t even need to say anything before they burst out laughing, all they have to do is look at each other. Children are unfathomable that way.
Sami points at Omar with his fork.
“How many times do I have to tell you, Omar? Take your fucking elbows off the fucking table!”
Omar rolls his eyes. Removes his elbows.
“I don’t get why you can’t have your elbows on the table. What difference does it make?”
Britt-Marie observes him intensely.
“It makes a difference, Omar, because we’re not animals,” she explains.
Sami looks at Britt-Marie appreciatively. Omar looks at them both with puzzlement.
“Animals don’t have elbows,” he objects.
“Eat your fucking food,” says Sami.
When Omar and Dino are done, they stand up and run into another room, still laughing. Vega puts her plate on the dish rack and looks as if she’s expecting a diploma for effort. After that she also runs off.
“You could say thanks for the food,” Sami calls out after them, pissed off.
“Thanks for the food!” the children roar from an indefinable part of the flat.
Sami stands up and clatters demonstratively with the plates in the sink. Then he looks at Britt-Marie.
“Right. So you didn’t like the food, then?”
“Excuse me?” says Britt-Marie.
Sami shakes his head, says something to himself punctuated by several “fucking” references, then snatches up the carton of cigarettes and disappears onto the balcony.
Britt-Marie stays in the kitchen on her own.
Eats what she is almost sure must be tacos.
They taste less odd than she expected. She stands up, puts what’s left of the food into the fridge, washes up and dries the plates and cutlery, and opens the cutlery drawer.
Leans over it, catches her breath. Forks-knives-spoons. In the right order.
Sami is standing on the balcony, smoking, when she comes out.
“Very nice dinner, Sami. Thanks for that,” she says, one hand firmly clasped in the other.
He nods.
“Sometimes it’s nice if someone says it tastes good without your having to ask every time, you get what I mean?”
“Yes,” she says. Because she does get it.
Then she feels that it would be in order to say something polite, so she says:
“You have a very nice cutlery drawer.”
He looks at her for a long time, and then grins.
“You’re okay, Coach.”
“Ha. Ha. You’re also . . . okay. Sami.”
He drives them all to their practice session in his black car.
Vega argues loudly with him all the way—which, in Borg, is not very far.
Britt-Marie doesn’t understand what the argument is about, but it seems to have something to do with that Psycho fellow.
Something about money. When they stop, Britt-Marie has a sense that something ought to be done to change the subject, because this Psycho makes her nervous in much the same way as too much talk about poisonous spiders. So she says:
“Do you also have a team, Sami? You and those boys you were playing with the other night?”
“No, we don’t have a . . . team,” says Sami, and looks as if it was a bit of a strange question.
“So why do you play soccer, then?” asks Britt-Marie, puzzled.
“What do you mean, ‘why’?” asks Sami, just as puzzled.
Neither of them are able to come up with a good answer.
The car stops. Vega, Omar, and Dino jump out. Britt-Marie checks the contents of her bag to make sure she hasn’t forgotten anything.
“Are you ready, Britt-Marie?” asks Vega, as if she’s already bored.
Britt-Marie nods with a good deal of concentration and points at her bag.
“Yes, yes, obviously I’m ready. I should like to tell you that I have made a list!”
Sami parks the car with the engine running, so that the headlights illuminate the parking area. The children put out four fizzy-drink cans as goalposts. Fizzy-drink cans are magical in this way—they can transform parking areas into soccer pitches by their mere existence.
Britt-Marie holds up her list.
“Vega?” she asks, loud and clear, while the children run about kicking the ball with varying degrees of success.
“What?” says Vega, who’s standing right in front of her.
“Is that a ‘yes’?”
“What are you talking about?”
Britt-Marie taps her pen against the list with extreme patience.
“My dear, I am reading the register. What one does is, one reads out the names and then each respective person says ‘yes.’ It’s common practice.”
Vega squints disapprovingly.
“You can see I’m standing here!”
Britt-Marie nods considerately.
“My dear, if we could just tick people off in any old way there wouldn’t be any point doing the register, you have to understand.”
“Never mind about your bloody register! Let’s just play!” Vega says and kicks the ball.
“Vega?”
“Yes?! Jesus . . .”
Britt-Marie nods intently and ticks Vega’s name off on the list. Once she’s done the same with the other children, she distributes handwritten notes to them with a short, very formal message followed by two neat lines at the bottom, where it is written “Parental signature.” Britt-Marie is very proud of the notes.
She has written them in ink. Anyone who knows Britt-Marie understands what an outstanding achievement it is for Britt-Marie to control her compulsion never to write anything in ink.
People really do change when they travel.
“Do both parents have to sign?” asks Pirate, who has arranged his hair so neatly that it really pains Britt-Marie when, in the next second, a ball strikes his head.
“Sorry! I was aiming at Vega!” yells Omar.
Vega and Omar end up having a fight. The other children fling themselves into the chaos.
Britt-Marie walks around in circles, trying to figure out how to give Vega and Omar their notes among all the flying fists, but in the end she gives up and walks determinedly across the parking area and hands their slips to Sami instead.
He’s sitting on the hood of the black car, drinking one of the goalposts.
Britt-Marie brushes dust off every part of herself. Soccer is certainly not very hygienic.
“You need help?” asks Sami.
“I’m not familiar with what a soccer coach is supposed to do when the players fight like wild dogs,” Britt-Marie admits.
“You let them run—you know, idiot!” Sami grins.
“I’m certainly not an idiot!” protests Britt-Marie.
“No, it’s an exercise. It’s called ‘Idiot.’ I’ll show you.”
He slides off the hood and walks around the car. Britt-Marie follows him. Clasps one hand in the other and asks, not at all accusingly:
“Might I trouble you for an answer as to why you don’t train these children yourself, if you know so much about this soccer thing?”
Sami gets half a dozen soft-drink cans out of the trunk. Hands one of them to Britt-Marie.
“I don’t have time,” he says.
“Maybe you would if you didn’t spend such an inordinate amount of time buying soft drinks,” Britt-Marie notes.
Sami laughs again.
“Come on, Coach, you do get that the council wouldn’t let someone with my criminal record coach a youth team,” he says.
As if it’s hardly worth mentioning. Britt-Marie keeps an extra-firm grip on her handbag after that.
Not because she judges people, obviously, but because there’s a pretty strong wind in Borg tonight. No other reason.
Idiot, the way it’s done in Borg, is an exercise based on half a dozen soft-drink cans being positioned at intervals of a couple of yards.
The children stand by the fence between the recreation center and the pizzeria, then they run as fast as they can to the first soft-drink can, and as fast as they can back to the fence, then as fast as they can to the second soft-drink can a little farther away, and then back as fast as they can.
And then to the third soft-drink can, and so on.
“For how long are they supposed to do that?” asks Britt-Marie.
“As long as you like,” says Sami.
“For goodness’ sake, I can’t make them do that!” Britt-Marie objects.
“You’re the coach now. If they don’t do what you tell them, they can’t play in the competition.”
It sounds quite deranged, in Britt-Marie’s opinion, but Sami doesn’t go into more detailed explanations because his telephone starts ringing.
“What did you say the exercise was called?” asks Britt-Marie.
“Idiot!” says Sami and then answers “Yeah” into his telephone, as people do who have no use for either exclamation marks or question marks.
Britt-Marie mulls this over at length until at long last she manages to say:
“That’s a good name for both the exercise and the person who came up with it.”
By now, Sami has started walking back to his car with the telephone pressed to his ear, so he can’t hear her.
No one can. But this doesn’t actually concern Britt-Marie so much.
The children run between the soft-drink cans and Britt-Marie stands there beside them with a sort of happy fizziness in her whole body, repeating, “A good name for the exercise and the person who came up with it,” very, very quietly to herself. Over and over again.
It’s the first time for as long as she can remember that she has intentionally made a joke.