Twenty-Six

The paralysis did not ease up until Eva sat down at the kitchen table. The phone rang and she was sure it was Helen, who had very likely seen her and Patrik come home. But Eva did not pick up, she didn’t want to hear her friend’s busybody comments or have to listen to her good advice.

Patrik immediately went to his room. She knew he wanted to be alone. The relief he had shown after speaking with Barbro Liljendahl was obvious. He had been almost exhilarated on the bus on the way home, but this state also did battle with the feeling of an unexpected and shoddy betrayal that made him fall silent and stare out the bus window with a penetrating, searching gaze, as if he was trying to look into the future.

And the future for Patrik consisted of the next day, the next week, perhaps a month, at most the end of the semester. He measured everything against the present, Zero and the others’ immediate reactions, and therefore his action had been heroic. Eva imagined that he now regretted having spoken so freely with the police, and she understood intuitively that she had to give him time.

She was proud of him. This was her dominant feeling. Fear and anger had fallen away and made room for gratitude at her son’s maturity, which bore traces of a child’s forthrightness and a wish to be understood and forgiven. He was not yet hardened, encapsulated by his own and the gang’s distorted image of the world.

Barbro Liljendahl had skillfully tread the razor-sharp edge, showing him trust and respect, but also applying pressure when he threatened to slide away. She had won his confidence, otherwise he would never have allowed Eva to leave the room.

Eva looked at the time. In an hour Hugo would be home. She was hungry, but couldn’t bear to think of eating.

The phone rang again and this time Eva picked up.

“How did it go?”

Eva pulled the kitchen door shut, amazed by her own feeling of gratitude that Helen had called. She was the only one Eva could talk to, because in spite of her occasional impertinence she was the only one who cared.

“It went well,” she said and summed up what Patrik had told her on the way home.

“You mean they’re trying to get our kids to do drugs? Here in Sävja?”

“Are you surprised?”

“No, perhaps not exactly, but … I’m coming over!”

Helen hung up on Eva and several minutes later she was sitting in the kitchen.

“Ingemar is at some construction meeting,” Helen said. “You know how he is and God knows when he’ll be home. I wrote a note to the kids. Maybe we should have pizza together?”

Eva nodded and looked at her friend and knew what was coming. It was the garbage shed all over again.

“We have to do something,” Helen fumed, and now she was hard to stop. She flooded over with indignation at the teachers, the county, the police, and any conceivable authority. Even the church and the local parish received a tongue-lashing.

But she didn’t stop there, for that wouldn’t be like Helen. Eva listened and nodded, inserting a comment from time to time, but basically Helen spoke without ceasing until the phone rang.

“That’s probably Emil,” she said.

Helen had two children. Emil, who was the same age as Hugo, and Therese, who was eighteen and in her final year at the Ekeby school. She was rarely home, preferring to spend the night with her boyfriend in Eriksberg.

It was Emil who was calling and he was hungry, just like Hugo, who came home just as Helen hung up the phone.

Patrik did not want to eat pizza, and Helen sensed why. Then someone had to go down to the pizzeria, and that would most likely be Patrik, who with his moped normally took on the task of delivering the pizza, and it was very likely that he would bump into friends in the process.

“Can’t we have spagetti?” he said.

“I have ground beef,” Helen said. “I’ll call Emil and tell him to bring it with him.”

After dinner the three boys retreated to Hugo’s room.

Helen put the dishes in the dishwasher while Eva made coffee. They sat down in the living room.

“Should we have a …?”

“I think we should,” Helen said.

After Eva had poured out the liqueur, Helen picked up where she had left off.

“What do we know about cocaine? Nothing. Hard alcohol we know something about, don’t we? But drugs, nothing. Emil said something about hashish being harmless, or perhaps it was marijuana, he had heard someone at school say that. Do you understand? I lectured him for a whole evening but in the end I didn’t know what to say. If he had said that vodka is harmless then I would have had a leg to stand on, you know how Emil’s grandfather is, but what did I know about marijuana?”

“Schools should teach them about it,” Eva said.

Helen snorted.

“Are you kidding? They just have free periods and a lot of programs that don’t amount to anything. No, I think we have to do something ourselves. I should post flyers and hold a meeting, don’t you think?”

“The garbage room,” Eva grinned.

“Yes. Should we really just sit on our butts and watch these drug pushers destroy our children? Heavens, we should break their necks, line them up against a wall. There isn’t punishment enough for the likes of them.”

It was past ten before Helen and Emil went home. She had called her husband, but he didn’t answer, not at home or on his cell phone.

Eva saw how Helen tried to conceal her pain. There was no concern any longer, just a tired certainty that he was being unfaithful.

“Throw him out,” Eva said, regretting the words as soon as she said them.

Helen winced. Never before had Eva expressed herself so directly. Helen said nothing, called Emil’s name, and they went out into the mild late-summer evening.

Eva watched them from the kitchen window. Helen walked with long strides while Emil shuffled across the yard.

“Throw him out,” Eva repeated quietly to herself.