The Princess of Burundi - Kjell Eriksson [86]
“This is the darkness of Christmas,” shouted one of the Santas.
Vincent thought it must be a doomsday sect of some kind. He liked it. The sound of the bells followed him as he walked down Bangårdsgatan.
The bingo hall was unusually empty. He nodded at a few other regulars, but most of them were absorbed in their game. Vincent sat down in his usual spot and unfolded his newspaper. The first thing he saw was a picture of John Jonsson. The reporter summarized what had happened and presented a variety of motives. John’s colorful past was emphasized, the fact that he was a serious gambler alongside his burning passion for tropical fish.
A representative from the tropical-fish society had spoken out and declared John’s death a tragedy and an irreplaceable loss for the society and all cichlid lovers.
The paper, however, was more interested in John’s potential connections with Uppsala’s shady underworld and illegal gambling circuit.
Vincent read with great interest. He remembered John very well. He had been a short, quiet boy who inspired respect with his judicious use of words but was also insecure. He had lived not far from Vincent and in middle school they had often walked to school together. Vincent would walk quietly and sense that John appreciated the fact that he wasn’t chattering away.
Vincent put down the paper. The headache was coming back. He stared at the picture of his former classmate and wondered when he had died. Had he been included in Vincent’s plan for revenge? The bullies had to be punished. He flinched as if being struck. His father leaning over him, his mother’s whimpers from the kitchen, the repeated blows.
“No!” he shouted, and the other bingo players looked disapprovingly at him.
The blows rained down on him and he crouched to ward them off. Once he had struck back, but it had only made things worse. Now his father crawled around in his body like a parasite. John’s picture in the paper reminded him of his father, the blows meted out without words. Why had it been him? He was the youngest, the most defenseless. Wolfgang received the love, he the blows, the humiliation.
Had he murdered John? Vincent looked at the picture in the paper again. Perhaps the time had come for revenge. No one had cared. Where had his father’s rage come from, the rage that drove him to develop increasingly sadistic forms of punishment? In the beginning his fists had been enough, then came the strap, and finally the most horrific, the face forced down into the sink.
Vincent shook. The headache threatened to take over, to transform him into a crawling pile of bone and skin. You got what was coming to you, John. If it wasn’t me it was someone working in my spirit. He was sweating in the woolen cap. His head itched. He wanted to cry but knew his tear ducts didn’t work the way they were supposed to. He had stopped crying at the age of thirteen.
He rested his head in his hands and felt the gaze of others in the room. He should start playing. John was close-by. A neutral picture, without expression or clarity.
“You died,” he mumbled. Soon it would be Janne’s turn, or someone else. Vincent could no longer remember the rankings of the list he had drawn up. The picture of John in his mind was replaced by his father’s. He had woken up too late! When the time came for revenge, his father had disappeared into illness, the worms eating away at him until he was just a skeleton. Vincent remembered the thin hand gripping the hospital bed railing. He had taken it and squeezed it as hard as he could. His father had cried out, looked at him with watery eyes, and understood. Then he had smiled his satanic smile, the smile that seduced the women around him, and charmed the world, but Vincent knew better.
The picture in the paper of his father smiled at him and he tried to hit it. One of the bingo hall employees came over to him.
“You’ll have to go,” he said. “You’re disturbing the others.