The Princess of Burundi - Kjell Eriksson [22]
Lennart suddenly remembered how Albin’s face would sometimes contract as if suffering from a cramp. Was it pain or exhaustion? Was that why he fell? They had told him it was icy. Or had he jumped headfirst? No, his colleague had seen him slip, heard the cry or scream. Was he stuttering then as he fell helplessly? Was it a stuttering cry that echoed against the massive brick walls of the cathedral?
He must have screamed so loudly that it reached the archbishop. The top dog had to be notified so he would have time to prepare a place for Albin high above the roofs and spires he had clambered on. He must be welding something up there in heaven, Lennart thought. What else would he be doing? He needed to have something to do with his hands, hated being idle. Golden rooftops up there, or copper at the very least.
He suddenly missed the old man, as if his grief for John pulled the one for his father along with it.
“Only a little while longer,” he said aloud and struggled with his emotions.
He sat in the dark apartment, one hour, two, maybe three, nursing his grief. His lips and cheeks grew stiff and his back ached. He stayed up and seemed to relive the good times with John.
He pushed all the bad times away. Sure, he had wondered about the connections, been asked questions in school, at the child psychologist’s, at the police, in jail, at social services, at the unemployment center. They had all asked him about stuff. He had tried to find the threads. Now they converged at a snow dump in Libro, a place no one had ever thought about.
He knew there were no clear-cut answers. Life was a mixture of coincidence and hopes that often ran out in the sand. He had stopped wondering about it all a long time ago. He had chosen his path. And if he was the one who was in sole control of this decision—he had stopped asking himself about that a long time ago. That it had all gone wrong, gone to hell, too many times, he knew that. He didn’t blame anyone or anything anymore. Life was what it was.
The other life, the righteous life, was there like a reflector that gleamed momentarily as it caught the light. Of course he had tried. There was a time during the eighties when he had worked for a construction company. He had shoveled gravel and mulch, packed lunches, and developed muscles like never before in his life.
He had met people who had known Albin and slowly he developed another image of his father. Old construction workers talked admiringly of the knowledgeable old roofer, praise that Lennart absorbed. The collective memories of Albin’s great skill seemed to extend to his son a little.
Sure, there had been good times. And then John. His little bro. Dead. Murdered.
Berit cracked the door for the third time in half an hour, looking at Justus’s ruffled hair and the naked face that still bore traces of tears.
She closed the door but remained standing there with her hand on the doorknob. How is this going to go? she asked herself. The feeling of unreality lay like a mask over her face. Her legs were as heavy as if they were set in plaster casts and her arms felt like foreign outcroppings on a body that was hers and yet not. She moved, talked, and experienced her surroundings with full possession of all her senses but as if at a great distance from herself.
Justus had broken down. For several hours he had been shaking and crying and screaming. She had forced herself to be calm. Then he had eventually calmed down and, as if with the wave of a hand, sunk down into a corner of the sofa. Something strange came over his young face.
They had immediately become very hungry. Berit quickly cooked some macaroni, which they ate with cold Falu sausage and ketchup.
“Does it hurt to die?” That had been one of his questions.
How was she supposed to answer? She knew from that female police officer that John