“If you really, really, really don’t want us to . . . ,” Katia clarifies.
Benji doesn’t know what to say. Most of all, after everything that’s happened, he hates himself for having put his family into this position. He doesn’t want to be a burden to them, doesn’t want them to have to fight on his behalf. He was once told by another boy’s mother, “You may not be an angel, Benjamin. But, dear God, you haven’t suffered for the lack of a male role model. All your best qualities come from the fact that you’ve been raised in a house full of women.” Benji will always say she was wrong, because she made them sound like they were perfectly ordinary women. They aren’t, not to him. His sisters did their best to replace their father, they taught their little brother to hunt, drink, and fight. But they also taught him never to mistake friendliness for weakness or love for shame. And it’s for their sake that he hates himself now. Because if not for him, they wouldn’t even consider not going to Hed.
In the end it’s Adri who looks at her watch and says, “I love you, little brother, but I’m going to the game.”
“I’m going too!” their mom shouts from down on the ground.
Because she and Adri are old enough to remember life before Beartown. The other children were too young, but Adri remembers what the family was fleeing from, and what they found here. A safe place to build a home. This is their town. Benji pats Adri’s hand gently and whispers, “I know.”
Adri kisses him on the cheek and whispers that she loves him in two different languages. When she climbs down, Katia and Gaby hesitate, but in the end they follow her. They go to the game for the same reason that they could have stayed at home: for their brother’s sake and for their town’s. They wish Benji was going to play, but they know that nothing they say will change his mind. Because he is after all a member of this family, and there are probably mules that accuse other mules of being “as stubborn as an Ovich.”
* * *
Benji stays on the roof until his mom and sisters have driven off in the car. He smokes all alone. Then he climbs down, fetches his bicycle, and sets off through the forest. But not toward Hed.
* * *
When children first start to play hockey, they are told that all they have to do is try their best. That that’s enough. Everyone knows it’s a lie. Everyone knows that this sport isn’t about having fun; it’s not measured in terms of effort, only by results.
The Beartown Ice Hockey players enter the rink with a mother’s name on their arms, and even though it’s an away game large parts of the arena are filled with green shirts with the words BEARTOWN AGAINST THE REST on them. Men in black jackets unfurl a banner above one of the standing areas, similar to the one that’s going to be demolished in their own rink, and the words are aimed as much at Peter Andersson as Hed’s fans: “Come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough!”
* * *
The game starts down on the ice. The volume is unbearable, people’s ears starts to pop, and Beartown Ice Hockey’s players do all they can. They fight for their lives. Give everything they’ve got. Their very, very, very best. But Vidar is in the stands, and no one knows where Benji is. The goalie and the captain. Maybe Beartown deserves to win, maybe it would have been fair for them to have a fairy-tale ending, but hockey isn’t measured like that. Hockey only counts goals.
* * *
Hed scores. Then again. Then again, and again.
* * *
The singing from the red stand is deafening. Peter Andersson doesn’t hear it, though. The ringing in his ears is the sound of his heart breaking.
* * *
At the campsite the teacher has already packed. His bags are in the car. Yet he’s still sitting at the table in the kitchen of the little cabin, looking out of the window as he waits, hoping that someone with sad eyes and a wild heart is going to appear from between the trees. When he finally sees Benji, he’s been waiting so long that at first he thinks he’s imagining it. The teacher stands up and tries to gather all the words inside him when his heart leaps at the sound of the door opening and he finds himself staring at Benji’s lips.
“I . . . was trying to write something . . . ,” he says apologetically, gesturing clumsily toward the pen and blank sheet of paper on the table.
Benji says nothing. The cabin is cold, but the teacher is wearing a thin white linen shirt. It’s hanging loose outside his trousers, crumpled like Sunday-morning hair; he smells of warm skin and fresh coffee. Benji opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. He looks around the cabin; all the clothes are gone, all personal belongings removed. Perhaps the teacher detects a note of criticism in Benji’s gaze, because he mumbles embarrassedly, “I’m not as brave as you, Benjamin. I’m not the sort of person who stays and fights.”
There’s still a deep mark in the front door made by the knife. Benji reaches out his hand, touches his skin one last time. Whispers, “I know.”
The teacher holds his hand to his cheek, very briefly, closes his eyes, and says, “Call if you ever want . . . ever want to be somewhere else. Maybe things could have been different for us . . . somewhere else.”
Benji nods. Perhaps they could have been, somewhere else. Something more.
* * *
When the teacher gets into his car, he finds himself thinking of a quote by some philosopher: “Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.” He tries to remember who wrote it. Albert Camus, perhaps? He occupies his mind with this as he drives through Beartown, along the road, and out of the forest, because if he concentrates hard enough on those words, all the other feelings can’t overwhelm him and stop him from seeing the road ahead of him.
* * *
Far behind the car Benjamin Ovich gets onto his bicycle and sets off in a different direction. Perhaps he’ll be free one day. But not today.
* * *
Just as Hed Hockey makes it 4–0 toward the end of the second period, four boys from Hed sneak across the stand. They’re just schoolkids, that’s why they were given the job, because no one would suspect them. They’re not even wearing red jerseys, so they don’t attract attention. They’re carrying garbage bags, specially smuggled in during a practice of the boys’ team late yesterday evening. They’re going to throw the contents of the bags at the enemy. When the time is right, when the souls of the Beartown fans are at the breaking point, to push them over the edge.
A lot of people in the red part of the rink will say that this is just part of the game, purely symbolic, just hockey. Maybe even “just a joke.” Just the sort of thing you do to hurt your opponents and get under their skin. Conquer. Destroy. Annihilate.
The boys have managed to sneak along the side of the rink, far too close to the Beartown fans’ standing area, before someone finally notices them. But it’s too late by then. The boys pull dildos and other sex toys from the bags, one after the other, hundreds of them. Vibrators rain down on the men in black jackets, hitting their hunched forms like missiles. And from the red stand at the other end of the rink the chanting rings out again, more hateful, more threatening:
* * *
“QUEERS! SLUTS! RAPISTS! QUEERS! SLUTS! RAPISTS!”
* * *