When Isak died, everyone did everything for them. When their lungs collapsed, they needed a fabricated form of love that could help them breathe. So Kira made the hardest decision she has ever made: she realized she was going to have to give hockey back to Peter.
There’s a thin line between living and surviving, but there’s one positive side effect of being both romantic and very competitive: you never give up. Kira gets the milk from the car, then stands there just laughing to herself, and realizes that she’s learned to laugh that way more and more often. Then she takes out a green scarf emblazoned with the words “Beartown Ice Hockey” and ties it around her neck. On her way back into the rink she greets and hugs other people wearing the same color, and for a few moments everything else seems unimportant. You don’t need to understand every aspect of the ice to love it, and you don’t have to love the town to feel proud of it.
* * *
Peter is wandering around the rink like an exorcised ghost. His entire day so far has been a sequence of moments similar to walking into a room and instantly forgetting why you are there. In the hallway outside his office he absentmindedly walks into Tails, which is no mean feat seeing as there’s a lot of Tails not to notice. He’s six and a half feet tall and a good deal sturdier around the waist than when they played in the final of the Swedish Championship together. He was always the sort of guy who compensated for a lack of self-confidence by trying to attract as much attention as possible; he talks as loudly as a child with headphones on, and when they were teenagers he always turned up at parties in a suit when everyone else was wearing jeans, because he had read in a magazine that girls liked that. Toward the end of their time in high school, one of the club’s sponsors died and the whole team was told to wear suits for the funeral. When he heard that, he showed up in a tailcoat. And that was how he got his nickname.
These days he owns a chain of large supermarkets, one here and one in Hed, and a couple more in places Peter has never really bothered to make a mental note of when Tails has been going on about them. He’s managed to get thrown out of every hunting club in the area because he can’t even keep quiet in the forest. When they played together he would gesticulate with his long arms every time a call went against him, veering between laughter, tears, despair, and rage so quickly that Sune used to say it was like trying to coach “a mime who can’t shut up.” Tails was a mediocre player, but he loved the competitive aspect of the game. When his hockey career came to an end, that attitude made him a far-from-mediocre salesman. Now he gets a new car every year and wears a Rolex the size of a blood-pressure monitor. Trophies from a different sport.
“What a day, eh?” the bulky grocer grins, gazing down at him.
They’re standing next to the old team photograph, in which they’re standing side by side.
“And now you’re GM and I’m the main sponsor.” Tails smirks in a way that stops Peter from pointing out that he’s actually a long way from being the main sponsor.
“Yes, what a day,” Peter agrees.
“We look out for each other, don’t we? The bears from Beartown!” Tails roars, and before Peter has time to respond he goes on:
“I bumped into Kevin Erdahl yesterday. I asked him if he was nervous. And do you know what he said? ‘No.’ So I asked him what his tactics were for the game, and do you know what he said? ‘To win.’ Then he looked me right in the eye and said: ‘That’s why you sponsor the team, isn’t it? To get a return on your investment?’ Seventeen years old! Did we talk that way when we were seventeen?”
Peter doesn’t answer. He’s not sure he can remember ever being as young as seventeen. He goes over to the coffee machine. It’s gone wrong again and rattles and hisses before reluctantly emitting a dribble the color of old chewing tobacco and the consistency of glue. Peter drinks it anyway. Tails scratches himself under one of his chins and lowers his voice.
“We’ve met up with the councilors, some of us sponsors and board members . . . all off the record, of course.”
Peter is looking for cream, and is trying to make it clear that he doesn’t want to hear this. Tails takes no notice.
“When the juniors win the final, they’re going to pick Beartown as the site of the hockey academy. It would look terrible if they didn’t, in PR terms, of course. And we’ve had a bit of a discussion about renovating the rink . . .”
“Also off the record, I assume,” Peter grunts, seeing as he knows that “off the record” in the political language of the local council means backs being scratched with one hand while the other stuffs money into a pocket.
Tails slaps him on the back and nods toward his office.
“Who knows, Peter, maybe we’ll even be able to afford to get you an espresso machine!”
“Great,” Peter mutters.
“I don’t suppose you’ve got anything stronger in there?” Tails says loudly, looking toward Peter’s office.
“Nervous about the game, then?” Peter smiles.
“Did da Vinci get a discount on brown when he painted the Mona Lisa?”
Peter laughs and nods toward the office next to his.
“The president’s bound to have a bottle or two.”
Tails brightens up. Peter calls after him:
“You are going to keep your shirt on today, aren’t you, Tails? Not like the quarterfinal? The parents weren’t happy!”
“Promise!” Tails lies, then adds quickly without turning around, as if it hadn’t been his intention all along:
“Let’s have a little glass together before the game, eh? I mean, I guess you could have water. Or soda if that’s what you drink. I’ve invited a few of the other sponsors along as well; I thought we could have a little chat. You know . . . off the record.”
He returns with both a bottle and the president, whose forehead is already as shiny as freshly polished ice, with dark patches under his armpits. Only then does Peter realize that he’s walked into an ambush.
* * *
Fatima has never been in the rink when there are so many people in it. She usually sees Amat’s games with the boys’ team, but those are only watched by the parents of the players and whatever younger siblings have been dragged along. Today grown men are standing in the parking lot begging to buy tickets at four times their face value. Amat bought two well in advance. She had wondered why he didn’t want to go with Zacharias like he usually does, but Amat had said he wanted to show her the boys he would one day be playing with. That was only a week or so ago, and back then it would have seemed utterly fantastical that such a day would come so soon. She clutches the tickets tightly in her hand and tries not to get in anyone’s way in the throng, but evidently fails to be invisible because someone suddenly grabs her and says:
“You! Are you going to help with this, or what?”
Fatima turns around. Maggan Lyt is waving her arms at her, then points to a glass bottle that someone’s dropped on the floor and has broken.
“Can you get a dustpan and brush? Surely you can see that someone might step on it here! A child!”
The woman who dropped the bottle—Fatima recognizes her as the mother of another player on the team—is showing no sign of picking the glass up herself. She’s already started to walk off to her place in the stands.
“Are you listening, or what?” Maggan Lyt exclaims, taking hold of Fatima’s arm.
Fatima nods and puts the tickets in her pocket. She goes to bend down by the glass.
She is stopped by another hand on her shoulder.
“Fatima?” Kira says warmly, before turning to Maggan Lyt with noticeably less warmth:
“What’s the problem?”
“I don’t have a problem. She works here, doesn’t she?” Maggan snarls.
“Not today,” Kira says.
“What do you mean, not today? So what’s she doing here, then?”
Fatima straightens her back and takes such a tiny step forward that it’s unnoticed by everyone but her. Then she looks Maggan in the eye and replies:
/>
“I’m not ‘she.’ I am actually standing here. I’m here for the same reason as you. To watch my son play.”
Kira has never seen anyone more proud. And has never seen Maggan so speechless. When the crowd has carried mother Lyt away, Kira picks the glass up from the floor. Fatima asks quietly:
“Sorry, Kira, but . . . I’m not used to . . . I wonder . . . would you mind if I sat next to you today?”
Kira bites her lip. Takes a firm grasp of Fatima’s hand.
“Oh, Fatima, I should be asking if I can sit next to you.”
* * *
Sune is sitting at the top of the stands. The sponsors who’ve passed him on the stairs have pretended they haven’t seen him, so he knows precisely what they’re on their way to talk about in the office. Oddly enough, he no longer feels angry. Or sad. He just feels tired. Of the politics and money and everything about the club that no longer has anything to do with hockey. He’s just tired. So maybe they’re right after all. He doesn’t fit in anymore.
He looks out across the ice and takes several deep breaths through his nose. A few of the players on the opposing team—ready early the way you are when you’re terrified—set out to warm up. No matter how times change, nerves remain the same. Sune finds that comforting, that this is still only a sport, regardless of what the men in the offices are trying to turn it into. A puck, two goals, hearts full of passion. Some people say hockey is like religion, but that’s wrong. Hockey is like faith. Religion is something between you and other people; it’s full of interpretations and theories and opinions. But faith . . . that’s just between you and God. It’s what you feel in your chest when the referee glides out to the center circle between two players, when you hear the sticks strike each other and see the black disk fall between them. Then it’s just between you and hockey. Because cherry trees always smell of cherry trees, whereas money smells of nothing.
* * *
David is standing in the players’ tunnel, watching the sponsors go up the steps toward the offices. He knows what they say about him, how they talk about his successes, but he also knows how quickly they’d turn against him next year if the A-team doesn’t reach the same heights. And, dear God, does anyone in this town have any idea how utterly improbable this junior team is? There are no Cinderella stories in hockey anymore; the big clubs strip the smaller ones of talent before the players have even reached their teens. And even in Beartown, where—miraculously—all the guys have stayed put, there’s only one player of truly elite caliber; the rest ought to be outplayed in a hundred games out of a hundred. But despite that, here they are. This team is like a swarm of hornets.
People keep asking what David’s “tactical secret” is. He can’t tell them, because they wouldn’t understand. The tactical secret is love. He became Kevin’s coach when he was a frightened little seven-year-old who would have been flattened by the older kids outside the rink if he hadn’t had Benji there to protect him. Even then, Benji was the most courageous little bastard David had ever seen, and Kevin the most talented. David taught them to skate backward as well as forward. He taught them that passes are just as important as shots, he made Benji play for entire practices without his stick, and forced Kevin to play for weeks with a stick that was curved wrong. But he also taught them that they only had each other, that the only person you can really trust in this world is the guy next to you on the ice, that the only people who will refuse to get on a bus before you come back to it are a team.
It was David who taught the boys how to tape their sticks and sharpen their skates, but he also taught them how to knot a tie and shave. Well, their chins, anyway. They taught themselves the rest. He starts to laugh every time he remembers how Bobo, the wayward, hyperactive little fatty, once turned around in the locker room when he was thirteen and asked Benji if they were supposed to shave their backsides at the same time as they shaved their testicles. “Do girls think it’s important that they match?” When David himself was a junior, that was part of the younger players’ initiation, forcibly shaving their pubic hair off—it used to be regarded as humiliating. He doesn’t know what the modern equivalent would be, but he suspects that today’s teenagers would only be scared by the prospect of being taped to a chair and having to let their pubes grow out again.
Hockey changes all the time, because the people playing it do. When David was a junior the coach used to demand total silence in the locker room, but David’s team has always been full of laughter. He’s always known that humor could bring people together, so when the guys were young and nervous he always used to tell jokes just before a game. Their favorite when they were small was: “How do you sink a submarine from Hed? You swim down and knock on the door. How do you sink it a second time? You swim down and knock on the door, because then they open it and say, ‘Oh no, we’re not falling for that again!’ ” When the guys grew older, their favorite was: “How do you know you’re at a wedding in Hed? Because everyone’s sitting on the same side of the church.” Then they got old enough to tell their own jokes, and David used to leave the locker room more and more. Because sometimes the absence of the coach can also unite a team.
He looks at the time, counting the minutes until the start of the game. The sponsors in the stands will never understand his tactics, because they could never understand what the guys on the team are ready to sacrifice for each other. While the sponsors have been shouting at David to “let the team loose offensively,” David has patiently allocated very clear roles to his players, drilling them on where to pass the puck, on precise positioning, how to direct the play, angles, evaluation, and how to eliminate risk. He’s taught them how to disarm any advantage their opponents may have in terms of technique or speed, how to bring them down to their own level, how to frustrate and irritate, because that’s when they win, because they have something no one else has: Kevin. If he gets the chance he can score two goals, and as long as he has Benji beside him, he’ll always get at least one chance.
“Ignore the stands, ignore what people say,” David keeps repeating. His tactics demand subordination, humility, and trust, ten years of training and hard work, and if Beartown loses in every stat except the one indicating the number of goals scored, David will tell each and every one of the players in the locker room that they’ve done their job. And they trust him. They love him. When they were seven years old, when everyone else just laughed, he told them he would take them all the way here, and he’s kept his promise.
Before he turns to go back to the locker room, he sees Sune sitting alone at the top of the stands. Their eyes meet for a moment. No matter how much they have argued, David knows that the stubborn old bastard is the only person in this club who actually still understands the love underpinning what they do.
17
Some people say that everything in hockey is black and white. They’re crazy. Fatima and Kira are sitting in their seats when Kira suddenly excuses herself and stands up, makes her way to the steps, and stops a middle-aged man who Fatima knows is in middle management at the factory. Kira grabs at his red scarf irritably.
“Christer, for heaven’s sake, take that off!”
The man, who is obviously not used to being scolded, and certainly not by a woman, stares at her.
“Are you serious?”
“Are YOU serious?!” Kira exclaims, loud enough to make the other people on the steps turn toward them.
The man looks around with uncertainty flaring on his cheeks. Everyone is looking at him. He doesn’t know who it is, but behind him someone mutters: “For God’s sake, Christer, she’s right!” and then other voices soon join in. Christer slowly removes his scarf and puts it in his pocket. His wife leans toward Kira apologetically and whispers:
“I tried to tell him. But you know what men are like. Sometimes they just don’t understand hockey.”
Kira laughs and goes and sits down next to Fatima again.
“A red scarf. He must be mad! Sorry, what were we talking about?”
&nbs
p; Nothing is black and white in Beartown. It’s red or green. And red is Hed’s color.
* * *
Amat’s fingertips trace the seams of his match jersey. Dark green with silver numbers and the brown bear on the chest. The colors of Beartown: forest, ice, earth. He’s wearing number eighty-one. He was number nine on the boys’ team, but that’s Kevin’s number here. The locker room around him is chaotic. Benji, number sixteen, is of course lying in a corner, asleep as usual, but all the other juniors are sitting huddled up on their benches, forced back by parents who are getting louder and more excitable with their advice the closer the start of the game gets. That tendency exists in all sports: parents always think their own expertise increases automatically as their child gets better at something. As if the reverse weren’t actually the case.
The noise level is unbearable, and loudest of all is Maggan Lyt, a privilege you can grant yourself when your son plays in the first line. Benji’s mom has never set foot inside the locker room, and Kevin’s mom hardly ever comes to the rink, so Maggan has ruled the roost here for years. She came and untied little William’s skates after every game until he was thirteen, and she and her husband sacrificed their second car and holidays abroad so they could afford to move into the house next to the Erdahl family’s, and their sons could become best friends. Her frustration at the fact that William hasn’t yet managed to force his way in between Kevin and Benji has started to slip into downright aggression.
When David walks in, the locker room explodes in a torrent of accusations, questions, and demands from all the adults in there. He walks straight through them as though they didn’t exist, followed by Lars, who starts shepherding them toward the door. Maggan Lyt is so insulted that she bats his hand away.
“We’re here to support the team!”
“That’s what we have the stands for,” David replies without looking at her.
She loses control at that.