The following morning, there’s an interview in the newspaper with the local politician Richard Theo. The reporter asks him what he thinks about Beartown Ice Hockey’s decision to get rid of the standing area, and Theo replies, “Beartown Ice Hockey is the people’s club. It doesn’t belong to an elite, to the establishment, it belongs to the ordinary, decent, hardworking people of this town. I’m going to do all I can to persuade the general manager that the standing area ought to be kept. Our supporters make a huge contribution to the atmosphere at games. It’s the people’s club!”
A couple of hours later, Peter receives another email from the factory’s owners. They’ve changed their minds. Suddenly they have “been persuaded of the great value of the standing area to the local community.” That’s how Peter finds out that he was being deceived all along, the whole time.
* * *
That evening he sits alone in his kitchen at home, waiting for the sound of a key in the lock. It never comes. Kira stays at work late into the night. By the time she gets home, he’s fallen asleep on the sofa. She covers him with a blanket. On the table stand a bottle of wine and two glasses.
44
Storm and Longing
It’s far too late in the evening for there to be any lights on in the rink, but Elisabeth Zackell is still firing pucks when Bobo arrives. He didn’t know she’d be there when he set off from home, but he was hoping. He read Harry Potter and got his brother and sister off to sleep, he did the washing and cleaning. Then he packed his things and came down here. It was instinctive. He can’t sleep, his brain won’t stop thinking, and he knows only one place where everything falls silent.
“Can you teach me to skate?” he calls to Zackell.
She turns toward him. She’s never seen a young man in greater need of an escape from reality.
“What do you mean?” she asks.
“The first time we met, you asked why no one had ever taught me to skate!”
It’s more of a plea than a statement. Zackell leans thoughtfully on her stick. “Why do you like hockey?”
Bobo chews his bottom lip. “Because it’s . . . fun?”
“That’s not a good enough answer,” she says.
He breathes heavily. Tries again. “I . . . I know who I am when I’m playing hockey. I know what’s expected of me. Everything else is just . . . so hard. But hockey is . . . it’s just . . . I know who I am here . . .”
Zackell taps her stick on the ice, evidently not entirely dissatisfied. “Okay. I suppose I’d better teach you to skate, then.”
Bobo steps onto the ice and skates toward her, then stops and asks, “Why do you like hockey?”
She shrugs. “My dad liked hockey. I liked my dad.”
Bobo frowns. “So why did he like hockey?”
“He used to say hockey is a symphony orchestra. He liked classical music. Sturm und Drang.”
“Is that a band?” Bobo asks, and Zackell laughs out loud for once.
“It means ‘storm and longing.’ My dad used to play me the same pieces of music, over and over again, and he would say, ‘It’s every emotion, all at the same time, Elisabeth, can you hear? Sturm und Drang!’ He felt the same about hockey. Sturm und Drang. The whole time.”
Bobo considers this for a while. Then he asks, “So why do you stand here at night firing pucks?”
She smiles. “Because it’s fun.”
* * *
Then she teaches him how to skate. After a few hours Bobo asks if she thinks he could be a properly good hockey player one day. She shakes her head and replies, “No. But you could be a decent coach, if you can figure out how to be useful to the team.”
* * *
Bobo lies awake for the rest of the night thinking about this. At practice the next day he walks straight out of the locker room, skates across the ice as fast as he can, and bodychecks Benjamin Ovich as hard as he can. Confused, Benji gets up and stares at him. “What the . . . ?”
Bobo doesn’t answer, he just hits Benji’s legs with his stick. The rest of the team just look on in amazement, unable to figure out how to react. Bobo’s lost his mom, that might make anyone a bit crazy, but they all know Benji won’t tolerate being hit again.
“Bobo, stop it,” Amat says gently, but Bobo hits Benji again.
No one has time to stop Benji. Bobo is one of the heaviest players in the team, but Benji sends him flying into the boards, throws his gloves down, and flies at him with his fists clenched.
“WHAT DO YOU THINK EVERYONE ELSE IS GOING TO DO?” Bobo yells.
Benji stops in surprise. “What?”
“What do you think everyone else is going to do? Every team we meet is going to try to provoke you, they want you to fight! They want you to take a penalty!”
Benji stares at Bobo, along with the rest of the team. Amat mumbles, “He’s got a point, Benji. People are going to shout worse and worse things until they find something that works. You mustn’t react. Not you and not Vidar. You’re both too important to the team.”
Benji is breathing furiously through his nose. But in the end he calms down and helps Bobo up. “Okay. Keep trying, then.”
* * *
At every practice from then on, Bobo tries to find more and more creative ways to provoke both Benji and Vidar. Sometimes he succeeds and comes home with black eyes even though they both know that’s precisely what he’s trying to make them do. It turns out that this is Bobo’s unique talent in life: teasing people beyond their endurance.
* * *
When Benji opens his locker one morning, there are notes at the bottom, as usual. But one of them is different. Just one word: “Thanks.” The next day there’s another one, in different handwriting, saying “I told my sister I’m bisexual yesterday.” A few days later there’s a third note, again in different handwriting, which says, “I haven’t told anyone else, but when I do I’m not going to say I’m gay, I’m going to say I’m like you!” Then someone sends him an anonymous text: “Everyones talking about u they c u as a symbol I hope u know how important u are to all of us who darent say anything!!!!”
Just a few small notes and messages. Just words. Just anonymous voices who want him to know what he means now.
Benji throws them into the same garbage can as all the other notes. Because he doesn’t know which feels worst, the threats or the love. The loathing or the expectations. The hate or the responsibility.
* * *
He receives another sort of text message, too. They always start the same way: “Hi! Don’t know if I’ve got the right number, are you the homosexual hockey player? I’m a journalist, I’d like to interview . . .” One morning Benji and his sisters go down to the lake, drill a hole in the ice, and drop his phone through it. Then they drill some holes farther away and fish and drink beer and keep quiet for the rest of the day.
* * *
When Beartown Ice Hockey plays its next game on the road, the rumors about Benji have reached that town, too. In every town he plays in from now on, there will be people who shout the most disgusting things they can think of to get him off balance. But Benji doesn’t give in, he just scores goals instead. The more they yell, the better he gets. After the game Bobo hugs him and exclaims happily, “If they hate you, you’re doing something right! You’re the best! They’d never hate you this much if you weren’t best!”
Benji tries to smile. Pretend it’s nothing. But he can’t quite stop himself from wondering how long he’s going to have to be the best. How long it’s going to take before anyone just lets him play.
* * *
Ana and Vidar are the sort of love story in which neither of them really knows how to behave. So they end up just going for walks, every day, in the forest. The snow gets deeper in tandem with their infatuation.
One afternoon he touches her and she starts to cry hysterically. When he doesn’t understand why, she tells him about Benji. How everyone found out about it, about the photograph, and Maya’s furious reaction.
“I don’t deserve you, I’m a horrible person! I must be a psychopath!” she cries.
Vidar stands in front of her, and he might as well be naked when he replies, “Me, too.”
How could anyone help falling even more in love with him then? Perhaps someone knows. Ana isn’t one of them.
The next morning when they get to school, Ana waits until she catches sight of Benji. When he opens his locker, small paper notes fall out, and Ana realizes what’s written on them, she knows how much of other people’s hatred Benji is having to carry within him now.