The Swimmer (19 page)

Right now, here on this hard bunk, surrounded by the voices of young men that are more familiar to him than anything else, with the booze lifting him up and away, he feels like he just won an Olympic gold medal. Right here and now, it is an accomplishment of unfathomable magnitude.

‘Shammosh! Fucking heeeelll! Let’s go!’

Someone’s arms reach in under the top bunk, grab him, and pull him out on the floor. He spills his drink all over his Levi’s. He doesn’t even notice. Everyone is dancing and grinding against one another. Small, still controlled explosions of pent-up, male energy. Valves that might blow under the pressure, if they don’t get out of here, away from here, right now. Away from the barracks and the regiment. Anywhere else. They’d really like to keep their stiff berets on. They’d really like everyone to see who they are, what they’ve accomplished. But discipline wins out, and they leave their berets in their lockers before dancing out into a small-town evening, their voices triumphant fanfares in the silence.

The bar is full of high school students and cashiers from the local supermarket. A big group of adoring privates, just enlisted, considerably lower in rank than them. They realize that they don’t need their berets. Everyone can see who they are. Their eyes. Their stance. Their obvious, physical confidence. They find a table on the terrace, near the water, and some leftover conference attendee treats them to a round of licorice shots. It’s that kind of night. The kind of summer night where dusk perpetually shimmers around them, makes them glitter like silver and water, makes them expand and lift off of the ground.

Later, Mahmoud is standing at the bar. He feels like he can drink forever. Not a drop for fifteen months and not much before that either, but now there’s no end to how much he can drink. He stumbles and steadies himself against the bar. Tries to control his tongue. Shakes his head. He is Mahmoud Shammosh from the projects. He is Mahmoud Shammosh, paratrooper, soon-to-be law student in Uppsala. He is Mahmoud Shammosh, invincible.

‘You’re one of those rangers, right?’

A voice detaches itself from the din of voices and music. Very close, right next to Mahmoud’s ear. He twists his head, replies before seeing who’s asked.

‘I’m invincible.’

It’s a man. Maybe ten years older than Mahmoud. He’s wearing a dark, slim suit. A skinny tie that he hasn’t loosened, even though he’s in a bar, even though it’s late. A smooth, well-ironed, white shirt. His face is also slim. Oval and attentive. A dimple appears in one cheek, when he laughs at Mahmoud’s reply. Short, blond hair. Blue eyes that are more than just curious.

‘Oh,’ he says. ‘Invincible. Not bad.’

His gaze seems amused, seems to be looking straight inside Mahmoud. It’s shameless, that look. It says to Mahmoud, it’s your choice. But if you are still here, you’ve already chosen.

‘Yup,’ says Mahmoud. ‘Invincible. I’m a paratrooper. Do you know how hard-core we are?’

He’s struggling to pronounce his consonants. He thinks, he should get out of here, this can’t end well.

‘Wow,’ says the man, holding a hand up to his mouth, blinking. ‘How hard-core, soldier?’

‘Very fucking hard-core.’

It’s trying to sneak out of him now. Out of hibernation and denial. Out of its hiding place. And he lets it. Lets the alcohol release him. Lets freedom flow through him. Invincibility. It pops and dances like carbonation through his frontal lobe. The erection pushes against his jeans.

‘Are you staying here at the hotel?’

It’s so easy now. As if he’s never done anything else. If anyone deserves this, it’s him. It’s all over now. All of the games and the need to prove something. He has the beret. He is who he is.

‘You’re very straightforward, soldier,’ says the man, grinning. ‘I like that.’

They don’t waste time. They sneak out of the bar, out past the front desk, float up two floors of laminated stairs. The taste of beer in his mouth, the fresh new smell of wood and paint that barely conceals the mold. Mahmoud doesn’t understand these stairs. They spiral and seem to lean at impossible angles in some sort of alien geometry. In and out, past doors and floors. It’s an inconceivable labyrinth, it’s an enchanted castle. Finally they stumble through a door, which closes behind them with a sound like a vacuum, the sound of hermetic sealing.

There’s no time to get his footing, take his bearings. The wave trembles and strokes him. Threatens to engulf him. It pushes him forward, onto the bed. Eager fingers fumble with belts and buttons. Mouths, lips, and teeth kiss and suck and bite. Hands caress thighs and chests and their throbbing, pounding sex. Bare skin rubbing, pressing, pumping against bare skin. And Mahmoud lets it happen. He finally allows himself to let go and lose himself completely. Finally allows the wave to crash in and out. Allows it to sweep him away.

Afterward, he’s sober. The bright summer night is no longer magical or supernatural, extraterrestrial, but cold and white and much too clear. The man next to him moves in the cheap sheets, rolls over on his side, and looks at him. A few gray hairs glitter in the sparse hair on his chest. That dimple. Those eyes won’t leave him alone.

‘I have to go,’ says Mahmoud. ‘I have to get back to the barracks.’

He falls silent. It’s over. It’s too late. There are no more curfews.

‘I just have to go.’

He gets up, pulls on his shorts and jeans in one fell swoop. Tugs the white T-shirt over his head. Buttons the snaps on his shirt. Not even bothering to tie his Nikes. Stumbling, tottering to the door.

‘Can I call you?’ says the man.

The voice comes from the bed, just as Mahmoud is pressing down the handle, the door already opened a gap, so anxious and pathetic that Mahmoud doesn’t know what to say. So he rattles off his number without thinking. Half hoping the man won’t remember it. Half hoping he’ll call right away, all the time, always.

Evening or night or morning. It’s a state outside of time. A triumphant, shameful, liberating, enslaving moment, which lacks markers or references. He is weightless and so heavy that he can hardly walk upright. Karlsborg seems only vaguely familiar. A memory without depth. Like déjà vu. It amazes him that he can find his way through streets and alleys back to the barracks. It amazes him that he has an ID card in his pocket, that the guard accepts it, it amazes him that he’s the same person as the boy on that ID card, trying hard to look tough.

He knows it’s over as soon as he opens the door to the barracks. He knows it when he sees the fluorescent lights are still glowing, the newly commissioned rangers aren’t asleep. He knows it from the silence and the smiles and the averted eyes. The familiar feeling of alienation increases with every breath, with each endless moment he doesn’t say anything, just stands there, like a thief, caught with his shirt in disarray on the doorstep. Between what he is, and what he also is. In the middle of the realization that there’s no way back. The endless faces of discrimination.

It’s Lindman who breaks the silence. Who rises from a lower bunk. It’s Lindman who expands from nothing to six foot five, 250 pounds, like a helium balloon suddenly inflated. It’s Lindman who sways across the floor, until he’s very close. Standing in front of Mahmoud, his breath smelling like licorice and beer and adrenaline.

‘So,’ he begins. ‘We knew you fucked camels, Bin Laden. But we had no idea you liked fucking people in the ass too.’

Laughter and giggles. A couple of halfhearted ‘Lay off, man,’ from Glans and Petrov. But it means nothing. Two sentences. That’s all it takes to wipe out fifteen months of assimilation.

Mahmoud says nothing at first. He’s overcome by an immense fatigue. He should have stayed out. What stupidity drove him back here?

‘What the hell are you talking about, Lindman?’ he says.

Staring back into Lindman’s blue, native Swedish eyes. A couple of the others have stood up by now. He can make out Malm and Svensson. Landskog and Torsson. They move in on him from the walls like mist.

‘What I’m talking about?’

Lindman turns back to smile at his Greek chorus, his extras.

‘I’m talking about the fact that you’re a fucking faggot, Bin Laden. That’s what I’m talking about.’

‘Come on, Shammosh. We saw you with that homo at the bar, okay. Saw you sneak off.’

It’s Glans. His eyes are staring up at the bottom of the top bunk. Glans. Who he’s shared guard duty and stress with. Who he’s helped with his blisters and his terrible map reading skills. Nothing is left.

Two beeps sound through the barracks. Two muffled beeps from the pocket of Mahmoud’s jeans. Before he can react someone locks his arms behind him. As if by secret command, an agreement. Lindman is on him, his fingers reaching into the tight pocket. Fishing, pulling, and grabbing. Holding up the Nokia in triumph. A few quick clicks. He clears his throat. It sounds like victory.

‘“Thanks for tonight, soldier,”’ he reads off the phone. ‘“You weren’t kidding, you really were ‘hard-core’. Take care…”’

He pauses for effect.

‘“Take care, Jonas”!’

The whole room explodes in laughter and disgusted triumph. Mahmoud feels them pushing him down onto the speckled linoleum. He doesn’t even resist. Their bodies press down on him. Their breath.

‘Fucking hell, Bin Laden,’ Lindman hisses in his ear. ‘Fucking hell, you’re disgusting. Did Jonas fuck you good in the ass? Did he?’

They grab and pull him in opposite directions, apparently unsure what to do, what punishment should be meted out. Finally, they end up in the showers. Finally, Mahmoud’s shirt and his undershirt are torn to pieces. His jeans are pulled down over his hips, over his thighs and his knees. He feels the shower turn on, feels kicks and punches. He lies naked, his jeans around the knees, under the icy water of the barracks’ shower. Voices all around him; shrill, agitated voices bounce off of the shining tiles. Those voices he thought he had convinced. That he’d deluded himself into thinking he’d convinced. Now they are all saying the same thing in a thousand different ways: for someone like you, there is no mercy, no respite, nothing.

Brussels, Belgium

‘First class?’ Mahmoud said. ‘Weren’t there any other tickets left?’

He set the backpack down on the floor next to him and peered out the window. The gray, efficient platform was full of travelers. Klara sat down in the aisle seat and pushed a strand of hair from her forehead.

‘I don’t know. I just thought there’d be fewer people in first class. It seems like you’re, well… wanted by the police.’

‘You will be too, pretty soon,’ muttered Mahmoud.

He’d been objecting to Klara coming with him, ever since she’d suggested it, insisted upon it, in the taxi after he’d finally told her everything. Everything that he should have told her three years ago, five years ago. Everything he should have told her the first time he saw her, not now, in Brussels, after everything that had happened. He felt like an idiot. And incredibly selfish. The last thing he wanted was to expose her to danger on top of everything else.

Finally she’d given up, held up her hand and said, ‘Okay, fine. Whatever you want.’

But when she came back from the ticket booth, she’d bought tickets for both of them. She hadn’t changed at all. She did whatever she wanted. At the same time, he couldn’t help feeling relieved. He was so alone, so hunted. The last twenty-four hours had been a complete nightmare. Sitting next to Klara in this comfortable first-class seat on the TGV train to Paris allowed him to breathe again. He owed her more than he could ever repay.

‘What did you say?’ Klara said.

‘I said that if you continue hanging around with me, you’ll be wanted too.’

‘Whatever,’ she said and took a sip of water from a bottle she’d bought at the station.

‘Or worse. It doesn’t seem like they’re pulling any punches.’

Mahmoud let his eyes rest on the railway yard outside the train window. Rusty tracks and wilted weeds, graffiti and gray, abandoned buildings. Spinning above it all was the huge, grinning face of Tintin.

When Mahmoud finally turned away from the window, he could feel Klara looking at him. He steeled himself and met her eyes. At one time he’d been defenseless against them; their blue depths had overwhelmed him. The train accelerated through the station. The gray light was fractured by the train window, transforming it into a speckled canvas.

‘You look different,’ Klara said. ‘Completely different.’

Mahmoud stroked his unshaved cheek, dragged a hand through his sweaty, matted hair.

‘Not that,’ Klara said. ‘I don’t mean your hair. Or not just that. All of you is different. Your whole demeanor. Your eyes. You’re older.’

‘It’s been a long day,’ he said.

She nodded.

‘I saw you on CNN a few weeks ago. Gabriella e-mailed me the clip. Things are going well for you.’

‘That feels like a hundred years ago,’ Mahmoud said.

‘You looked good on-screen. The camera loves you,’ she said, winking at him. ‘That’s a good thing, since you might be getting more media attention than you hoped for.’

‘Ha-ha,’ Mahmoud said.

But he couldn’t help smiling.

‘Ah, I knew I could get a smile out of you,’ Klara said.

She patted him gently, tenderly on the cheek, and then let her fingers slide down his arm until eventually she took his hand in hers. Mahmoud felt all the pressure he was under release, if just for a moment. He squeezed her hand back. A little too hard, but she didn’t protest.

‘So,’ she began. ‘It might not really be the time for this now. I mean…’

She was blinking quickly, suddenly looking so small.

‘Oh my God, it feels so banal now. But still. Oh, whatever.’

She went silent.

‘Yes, Klara,’ Mahmoud said.

He took a deep breath and put his free hand on her face, turning it gently toward him, pulling her closer. Her cheek was very smooth, very soft. ‘Of course I loved you. More than I’ve ever loved anyone. Ever. It wasn’t that. And I found you sexually attractive, if you’re wondering.’

‘You better have,’ Klara muttered.

‘It’s just that it wasn’t enough. I don’t know. It’s not easy to explain. I’ve known I like guys since I was in my teens. I mean, that I like guys too. Or, whatever you say. But you know, on the streets where I grew up… That wasn’t exactly something you bragged about. And in Karlsborg. Well, you heard what happened there. When we met, I thought that maybe it would all work out, that I might be normal after all. Or, whatever you want to call it. That’s what it felt like. But still, there was something that just wouldn’t leave me alone.’