The Slap

Portfolio Octopoda/o V.1 N.8

1.

It was shortly after five in the morning when Billy Phillips made his way up the stairs from the t-bana station and out into the streets of Gamla Stan, Stockholm’s old city.  The sun, at this latitude, would not be up for another three hours and Billy was counting on Eddie Love being asleep, likely not long in bed, as men of Eddie’s profession tended to prowl at night. He found Eddie’s building easily but had some trouble remembering which landing the flat was on. Fortunately, there were names on the doors, and on the fifth landing he saw “Edward Love.” Love, my foot!

He took a deep breath and listened at the door. Music played softly from within, soul music, the melody obscure to him but the beat throbbing slowly, mechanically. He tried the doorknob, and to his surprise, the door opened. He only cracked it a little, peering with one eye into the dim apartment, aglow with a blue light. The music was familiar. The Persuaders, he thought. Or maybe The Stylistics. He opened the door further, pushing slowly. It didn’t squeak, but there was a slight brushing sound as it cleared the carpet. He slipped through the opening and quietly pushed the door shut. The apartment smelled heavily of incense and tobacco. As his eyes adjusted, he saw that the room was as he remembered it, a small vestibule and a neat conventional parlor with provincial style furnishings. A man slept on the sofa, where before he had seen Melton making out with one of the girls. He felt in his pocket for the knife, Lena’s kitchen knife. He had made sure it was sharp before he had taken it.

It was not his plan to kill, only to threaten Eddie, to show him that he was not afraid to stand up to a bully. He moved toward the bedroom where he and the others had smoked from the bong. He thought likely it was where Eddie slept. Trying the door, he found it unlocked and slowly he pushed it, his heart thumping along with the music. There was no light in the bedroom, and he waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. The room smelled of sex, sweat and cologne. Eventually, he made out two figures spooned together on the bed, one was a white woman, her torso naked except for two dark hands that palmed her breasts. He could not make out the features of the man and he moved closer to the bed, stepping carefully in the room, cluttered with clothing and shoes. The two breathed in unison, deeply and evenly. Billy matched his movements to their breaths and moved to the head of the bed. Still, he couldn’t tell if the sleeping man was Eddie, but the woman, he saw plainly, wasn’t Eva. Was she one of Eddie’s other women? He took the knife from his pocket and holding it as if to slice, he put it next to the sleeping man’s throat without touching. The man was vaguely familiar, but he was not Eddie. Still, he held the knife close to the man’s throat, watching it swell and fall under the blade’s edge. How easy it would be to nick the throat, or slice deeper, just beyond the jaw line into the carotid or jugular. But it’s not Eddie! Billy stepped away from the bed, slipped the knife into his pocket and backed towards the bedroom door. He reached behind him and found the opening before turning to leave. In the blue light again, he searched for clues as to where Eddie’s room could be.

2.

Just a little over a week earlier, Billy had been in this apartment with Whitmore, who had deserted two years earlier and was showing him around. He had followed the lanky Whitmore up the stairs from the train platform onto the quiet plaza between Lake Mälaren and a street of Empire style buildings. He was still getting used to the cold, dry air which cut the inside of his nostrils and throat. Whitmore wore a U.S. Marine jungle jacket which was a muddle of black and gray because of the yellow glow of the streetlamps reflecting from the ochre colored buildings and the dirty, compacted snow. He turned toward Billy, slowing, it seemed, to allow the newcomer to find his footing on the icy pavement. “It ain’t far,” he said. When Billy had caught up to him, he laughed, letting out a cloud of breath. “You’ll get used to it, brother. In no time.”

Presently, they turned into a narrow street and Whitmore stopped before a somewhat weather-battered door. Entering, the building they heard the thump of music, climbed the spiral stairs up several landings toward it, and stopped in front of a door with a name plate that read, “Edward Love.”

 “That’s not a real name, is it?” Billy asked.

 Whitmore didn’t answer, for a tall, platinum-haired woman opened the door even before he rang the bell. “Hej!” she said, dragging it out so it could have been the Southern American version of the word. They entered, oddly enough, Billy thought, without taking off their shoes. Past a small vestibule was a crowded, smoky room that shone purple with black light. Florescent colors swirled and people danced stiffly and off-beat to the soul music. On a couch, near the entrance, a couple lay kissing and vigorously petting. The woman ran her fingers through the man’s mass of curly hair, knocking his glasses from his face. As his eyes adjusted, Billy could see that the room was nicely furnished and could, in the daytime, pass for a respectable parlor. Then he realized, contrary to what Whitmore had told him, that there were no brothers in the place, only attractive white women—mostly blondes—and middle-aged white men.

Whitmore seemed to have read Billy’s confusion. “The brothers are in the back room.” They went into a bedroom, dimly lit but without the disorientating black light. Four black men were huddled around a coffee table, two sitting on the bed, and two in chairs. They were passing a long bong, and when he saw them enter, one of them rose and greeted Whitmore with a soul shake. “Eddie, my man!” Whitmore said. Eddie was black skinned, average height and slim  build, and wore a neatly shaped afro with sideburns that came to his chin. He smiled warmly as he took Billy’s hand in a soul shake and pulled him close.

“Välkommen Billy. Välkommen till Stockholm.”

Eddie waved the visitors to seats on the bed, and the other men slid over to make room. They introduced themselves. Two and Eddie were deserters from Germany. The deserter community was comprised of several groups, a few like Whitmore and Billy, had deserted from combat zones. Some were draft dodgers, men who had left the United States before they were drafted. The largest group had deserted military bases in the United States or Europe, mostly Germany. As far as their Swedish hosts were concerned, they all held the same status, humanitarian asylum, but they made, if not always expressed, subtle distinctions among themselves. The combat veterans held the highest status, an elevation given to them by the other men even more so than one they claimed for themselves, though at times Whitmore had complained that the others, having never seen combat did not have a depth of understanding of the complexity of his situation. He was no college boy running from duty. In his case, and he had said this of Billy, too, he had done his duty fully, and left the war. He couldn’t be called a coward.

Billy took the bong, three-foot long, made of lacquered bamboo, which Eddie offered. He had only smoked from smaller bongs and didn’t like the way the smoke shot into his lungs. He preferred smoothness of a joint or a pipe. Eddie held a silver cigarette lighter to the bowl of the bong and Billy saw that it was packed with hashish. The smoke’s oily, savory taste filled his mouth and lungs. Almost instantly his head swam. The room seemed to brighten, and his mood lightened. The sound of the men talking seemed louder, slightly distorted. As he listened, he realized he had no idea what they were talking about, though the words were mostly English. He shook his head to clear it. It wasn’t the hashish. The men were speaking a slang he had never heard, so different from the slang the brothers spoke in ‘Nam.

One was saying something about white bitches. What bitches? Billy wondered. And then he remembered the women in the other room, the woman who had opened the door. They were Eddie’s women. His bitches. He looked at the faces of the other men who were lethargically laughing. White slavery! he thought. The idea amused him and, without meaning to, he chortled. It was something right out of the movies! Something out of Cotton Comes to Harlem or Shaft.

“That bitch was screwing around with some hardhead who was trying to be a hallick. He copped her on Wednesday and blew her on Friday. Now, he creeping on Malmskillnadsgatan,” Eddie said with a sneer.

“Man, that place is full of action. I was over there, stroked this bitch and made my swoop. Didn’t turn her, though,” said the man next to Eddie, a mousey, yellow man with a tight nap of red hair.

“Shit, you don’t know how to turn a bitch. First mistake, you lead with your dick, brother.” The other men, including Whitmore, laughed. “And don’t ever lay your lips on the table for a ho or get your nose open behind her.  You got to open her up. Make her choose you! She choose you, but then you got to be on the job for her. And you school her to the way you like things. Play a tight game. Tune her up and tune her down.”

The yellow man nodded. “But she got leg.”

“That leg will play you.”

“Ain’t nothing play me.”

“I say, that leg will play you.” Eddie dapped with the man who sat across from him. “If you don’t tighten up your game, the bitch will play you.” He sat back in the chair, with an air of authority. “Like Eva, my main bitch. I have to slap her at least twice a day. She don’t do right. She don’t do right unless you—” clasping the lighter, he hit his palm with his fist. “Yeah, you got to—” Again, he slapped his fist with the free hand, the ash of the cigarette held between his fingers flew off.

“It’s all right, dude,” the man who sat in the chair across from Billy said. Billy thought he must have looked confused because the man explained, “Here, you can slap the shit out of a white woman. It ain’t like in the States where they’d lynch you.” Anvil shaped sideburns ran down the man’s sculpted cheeks and a short Fu Manchu framed his mouth. Under a purple fedora, straightened hair was combed down to the top of his shoulders. They called him “Fly” after a character in a popular movie. He emanated a cool, dangerous aura, but nonetheless seemed antsy and submissive. Billy thought that he did not easily play second to Eddie.

“Fly,” the little yellow man interjected. “Man, you fronting in that brim. Them a boss pair of slides, too. You draw heat with all that flash.”

Though Billy nodded in agreement with the men, his discomfort with them churned his stomach. They are criminals! Just the kind of people his parents had warned against. Thugs. He couldn’t imagine they had ever been in the military.

“Clothes don’t make you hip,” Eddie said drily to Fly. “Like I was saying that bitch was a skank bricklayer, had a jones for the ignorant oil, too, until I lifted her game. She still lick a hardhead and free fuck just to spite me. I crack her for my cake, and she give me chump change. I go gorilla on her. She digs it, too. She knows I care about her. Says she’s gone drop a dime on me. Pow!” He slapped his palms together again. It startled Billy and he tried to cover by looking at Whitmore and chortling. “Man, I’ve been in the life too long not to know how to build a family.” Eddie continued. “I got me six fast hoes. They kick it.” He emphasized “kick,” clucking on the final “k.” Then he looked at each of the men in turn. Instinctively, Billy avoided eye contact. When Eddie looked at Fly, he took a deep breath and said flatly, “My bitches got game.”

The other men nodded, considered, but not Fly, who rested a thumb on his cheek as he inhaled deeply on a cigarette and let the smoke expel in streams from his nostrils. Then the man across from Eddie said, somewhat quietly. “My bitch dropped a dime on me. Got me beefed on some bullshit tip with the heat in Cope. Had to slide. Say it’s a two-year bit.”

Eddie got up and they all moved into the larger room. Under the influence of the hashish, the colors, pinks, greens and fluoresced whites were even more confusing to Billy. He stood for a moment, trying to get his bearings, when arms encircled his waist from behind and a kiss was laid on his cheek. “Hello,” said a lilting voice, thick with Swedish accent. He turned his head and was met by a mass of curls that seemed white in the black light. The woman laughed and let go of him. “Let me know if you want to party. Ask for Eva.”  He turned to look at her and she seemed to pose for him. She couldn’t have been more than nineteen, though her heavy make-up fluorescing in the black light made it hard to tell. She wore a mini dress overlaying what appeared to be a brightly striped bodysuit. She smiled, and he couldn’t help but to smile back. Then she wriggled away through the crowd.

“You don’t want nothing to do with that one.” Billy turned to see Fly standing next to him, leaning in a little. Standing, the man was considerably shorter than Billy expected. “That’s the one Eddie was talking about. That’s his main bitch. He don’t let her trick for cheap. Anyway, she’s for those white motherfuckers.” He indicated a couple of middle-aged white men sitting demurely in the corner of the room. Another stood in the shadows, smoking a cigarette, and quietly watching the party. On the sofa, the younger man who had been making out was slipping on his glasses. A woman sat on the floor next to him, with her check on his thigh.  The other men sat very stiffly, morbidly self-conscious, it seemed, as if to move a finger might throw a spotlight on them, but one grinned as if he swelled with anticipation.

 “You new,” Fly continued. “You don’t have to pay for none of these white bitches. They’ll be crawling all over you, man. Black men is white women’s kryptonite! They see black. They don’t go back.” He held up his fist for a dap, and Billy obliged. He told Billy that he was from Detroit and that he had left Frankfurt as much on a dare as anything. “Got tired of that army shit and I booked. Look, here I am in Europe. It’s different from America. At home, I’m just another nigger, but here.” He chuckled and drank beer from his glass, his pinky erected. “Here, it is all different. They see me as something special. You dig?” Billy didn’t understand and said nothing. “They ain’t never seen black folks. And these women been watching too many Melvin Peebles movies. They think all black men got big dicks and are super fuckers and it gives them a high hand if they are seen swinging off your arm.” Again, he chuckled. “If you got a mind to, like Eddie, you can get yourself a nice size family in no time. That’s what I’m gone do. And what’s so funny is your johns be Swedish men, like they didn’t have enough sense to pimp for they own selves.”

Suddenly a commotion arose from a room, the kitchen, near the back of the apartment. No one paid attention until the fray spilled into the main room. Eva, her wrist held tightly by Eddie, was attempting to pull away. She screamed at him in Swedish. Billy didn’t understand the words, a fact that seemed to heighten the distress he heard in her voice. Eddie raised his palm to slap her, and she put out her face, daring him. They held the position, theatrically, the petite white woman with her jaw out and the wiry black man with his palm up. Billy thought for a second that it was all bluff, then Eddie slapped her. What conversation there was in the room stopped, but the music, Curtis Mayfield, thumped on. Got to get mellow, y'all. Though he could not hear the slap for the music, Billy winced.  He thought someone, the man who stood nearby smoking, would step in, but the bacchanal resumed, a few dancers, and people engaged in what seemed intimate conversations. The white-haired man smoking the cigarette, who stood nearest the combatants, moved away.  Again, the drama played out, only now Eva had dragged the fray closer to Billy. Again, Eddie raised his palm, and she dared him. It was more than Billy could take. The girl was no more the size of his teenage sister. He pushed past a dancing couple and stood beside the girl. “Hey man,” he called to Eddie, trying to measure his voice authoritatively but not challenging. “No need for that.”

Eddie glanced at him disdainfully, then looked back to Eva, a seeming look of endearment. “Nigger,” he said to Billy still looking at Eva, “mind your own business.” Again, he raised his palm, paused it in the air and then slapped Eva with a ferocious pop. With surprising quickness, and little thought, Billy punched, striking Eddie squarely on the nose. Eddie fell back, grabbing the shoulder of a man next to him and then buckled. Again, the crowd stopped, and the music thumped on.

Suddenly, Whitmore was pulling Billy away. “Let’s get the hell out of here!” Billy resisted at first, but Whitmore pulled strongly, his voice urgent and Billy reluctantly, his anger dampened, began to follow. Before they could get to the door, Eva attacked Billy, wailing wildly, arms windmilling. Fly caught her, giving Whitmore a chance to push Billy through the door and to close it behind him, and rush Billy down the stairs.  Before they got to the lobby, they heard Eddie call after them, his voice high, hoarse. “You dead, nigger. I see you again, you dead!”

When they reached the t-bana, the tunnel train, platform, Whitmore began to chuckle. “Välkommen till Stockholm.” Except for the thin mustache on his lips, his lean smooth face seemed boyish. He shook his head and rolled his eyes. “Didn’t nobody ever tell you don’t come between a pimp and his whore?” Whitmore’s accent drawled, familiarly, Southern, black. Billy said nothing. He hadn’t even realized he was angry. The girl was in trouble, and he had reacted.

“He deserved it.”

“Probably did. But you sure you wanted to be the one that give it to him?” Whitmore kept his voice low though the platform was empty.  “First day in Stockholm, and you got the baddest motherfucker here mad with you.” Then he looked past Billy and stiffened. Billy turned to see a young white man wearing an ushanka coming down the platform toward them. He held an agreeable smile, aimed at them.

“Hallo,” he called when he got within a couple of yards. His voice echoed in the tunnel. He adjusted his glasses and gave a slight, two fingered salute. “That was a bad scene, my friends. But well handled, I must say.” Billy recognized him as the man who had been making out on the couch.

Whitmore took a step away, tugged at Billy’s elbow at just the time that the man reached out the full length of his arm to offer his hand to Billy. Billy took the hand, feeling the cold leather of the man’s gloves against his bare hands just warmed in his pocket.

“My name is John Melton. I work for the Embassy.” His face, ruddy from the cold, nonetheless gave off an inviting warmth, a genuine smile, and big, excited eyes behind the horn-rimmed glasses.

“We don’t want nothing to do with you,” Whitmore said and walked away, turned, and beckoned to Billy.

“No, no.” Melton called after him. “I’m not one of those kind. I’m here to help you.”

“We don’t need your help.”

Billy dropped Melton’s hand, gave a shrug. He walked with Whitmore to the far end of the platform, where they waited facing one another and their bodies sideways to Melton who hadn’t moved.

“Another piece of advice,” Whitmore said. “Don’t trust any of those motherfuckers from the Embassy. From any fucking embassy.” He sighed. “Where’s that damn train?”

3.

The morning after the incident at Eddie’s, Billy decided to explore the city, to take a respite from the concerns of desertion by being a tourist. Whitmore’s admonishment about Eddie didn’t concern him. He had been in three fire fights in the bush, one of them at night. What nerves he had had been broken. He would either fall to pieces at any threat, or not give a damn. And he had deserted, too. So I do give a damn and then again, I really don’t.  

He took the train back  to Gamla Stan where he had been the night before. It was only a few minutes ride from the flat he lived in with Lena and Anton Peterson, siblings and deserter abettors.  Outside, the platinum colored sky was spitting a fine snow that pelted his face like sand. Seeing that the weather did not perturb the Swedes, he decided to embrace the inclemency and walked the cobbled streets in the direction of the Royal Palace. On the way, he noted the street that turned in the direction of Eddie Love’s flat.

Along the side of the block long palace, he came to a church, modest in size by city standards, but for him, a man from the rural South, quite large. With a tinge of pink in its plaster walls, it seemed the only color in the otherwise ochre, brick and gray cityscape. The church was open to tourists, and he went in to warm himself. Once past the vestibule, he felt warmth but also a strong sense of trespass. No black soul dared enter a white church, and though he did not know what denomination was professed there, he knew it was a white church. Hesitant to sit in the pews, he strolled a side aisle, examining paintings and sculpture and looking up at the brick columns and plain arched ceilings that contrasted the ornate pipe organs and pulpits, so different from the churches he knew, small, clapboard affairs, with white interiors plain and bright. If they were adorned in any way, they might have been with painted glass or a large window depicting Jesus tending sheep. Smelling of old masonry and polished wood, the sanctuary presented as a darkly ornate museum. He was drawn to a small painting of Stockholm, showing the old city and the church as the only civilized place among the wild islands. Above the islands were arcs and circles of light in the sky and what appeared to be a solar eclipse. The painting struck him as Oz-like, or perhaps apocalyptic. In another part of the nave, was a mesh globe, about six feet in diameter, filled with glowing candles. You must learn to look at the candles, Lena’s voice came to him. He had only known her a day, meeting her and Whitmore shortly after his arrival at the American Deserters Society, an organization that helped deserters find places to live and to get acclimated. He was assigned to live with Lena and Anton, sleeping on the sofa in the everyday room, just across from where Anton had his cot.

Then he saw a horse, larger than life, speckled gray and muscular. The eye facing him seemed crazed with fear, and the teeth were bared as it fought against the bit. Rearing up, its presence was so full of life Billy thought for a moment he smelled horse stink. Then there was the dragon, a complex thing over which the horse charged. It was a concretion of fins, wings, antlers, teeth, claws. Splayed on its back and desperately grasping at a broken lance, its crocodilian mouth gaped to snatch the horse. Its eye, too, was intense, so intense it appeared to roll around in its head. When the spell broke, Billy puzzled out Sankt Göran och Draken on the placard in front of the statue.

“Marvelous, isn’t it?”

Billy startled at the voice, turning quickly, his raised hands nearly knocking the ushanka from John Melton’s head.

“Easy. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

Billy caught his breath. “What are you doing here?”

“I followed you, of course.”

“How long?”

Melton snorted. “I was just on the square when I saw you going into the church. I called your name, but you must have been in a daydream. What do you think?” he said, turning to the statue. “St. George and the dragon. Quite something, isn’t it? St. Georges are all over the place. It’s kind of an idiotic symbol for Stockholm. That’s why they let you deserters in and every other kind of poor refugee.  They are saving the world from evil. Delusionary. It can’t be done. Evil is unrelentless. It has no ethics, you see. It knows no boundaries.  But dig this, Billy. Look at George. Have you ever seen a more apathetic face?” Gilded to the hilt in armor, George sat abroad the horse, but shared none of the horse’s engagement. His face was stoic as he raised his sword to strike the beast, but even this action was remote, disengaged.” He’s all ice. Frigid to the heart. A real Swede, I’ll say. It’s all between the horse and the dragon. That ought to tell you something, Billy. But who do you think will win?”

The horse seemed to stomp upon the dragon and the dragon to slither, underneath it. As Billy looked, he thought the statues actually moved. “I don’t know.” Billy glanced into the recesses of the sanctuary. “I suppose good will win out.”

“Hallo! Don’t count on it,” Melton said brightly. “It looks bad for the dragon but look at his tail.” The tail rose like a viper behind the horse. “I wouldn’t count ole Draco out just yet. Besides, Billy, who’s to say which is good and which is evil?” He snorted a laugh. “It’s just the nature of things, the eternal struggle. Those two have been at it for four-hundred some years.” He patted Billy on the shoulder. “How about we go and get some fika?”

Outside, Melton explained that in Swedish the church was called “the big church.” He laughed. “That’s how stupid Swedish is. A cathedral is just a ‘big church.’ A hospital is a ‘sick house.’ Vegetables are just ‘green things.’ I swear. That’s how they say ‘vegetables.’”

It sounded mean to Billy. “Why are you here then?”

They had just entered the Stortorget, the big plaza, when from the other side, Billy heard a shout. He stopped short. Nigger!

“Hey nigger,” the shouter called again. Billy saw the man. He was black.

“That’s fucking Eddie the pimp,” Melton said. Billy started toward Eddie, but Melton caught his elbow. “Don’t take the bait, Billy.” A young woman was with Eddie. Billy couldn’t tell if she were the one from the fight. Eddie pointed at Billy and brought his hand to his head mimicking a gun. Then he swung the young woman to face him and raised his hand exaggeratedly as if to slap her. “Steady, Billy.” Melton showed Eddie his middle finger, then he roughly turned Billy and they walked away. “Stay away from him, Billy. He’s bad news through and through. They say he ran here because he killed a couple of people in Frankfurt. They say he runs with the Bulgarian mafia, if you can believe that.” Billy didn’t know what to believe, but he had a knot in his stomach that told him he would find out.

They found a pastry shop within a few blocks and Melton explained to Billy that Swedes traditionally took a coffee break called fika. Billy found Melton to be a pleasant, slightly goofy man, whose conversation rolled out like curlicues, subjects turning back on themselves and ending in surprising conclusions. He worked for the embassy as a consular, basically a clerk, quite low level, he assured Billy. “Whitmore,” he said, “thinks that everyone who works for the Embassy is a spy. Not so. But lots of spies in Stockholm, you will never know who. If I were a spy, I’d be one of the good guys. I’m against the war, you know. Just like you. Even went to a couple of demonstrations back home. Dad got me this job. He’s in government.” He bit into an éclair and chocolate oozed out, sticking on his lips and fingers. “Still, Whitmore’s right to be careful. The Embassy wouldn’t like anything better than to see you guys sentenced to hard labor at Leavenworth.” He licked chocolate from his lips and fingers. “Don’t you worry, though. I’ll look out for you, Billy. I always look out for my friends.”

Billy didn’t think they were friends, but he did like Melton. He took a large bite of the éclair and chocolate squirted into his palm.

4

A week passed uneventfully while he got to know Lena and Anton. Lena worked as a receptionist in an office building and Anton was a trainee for the city police squad. The siblings worked every weekday. They left in the dark of morning, and in the evening, long after the winter darkness had come back and the candles were lit in doorways, they returned. During the day, Billy had little to do. He practiced calisthenics while listening to rock and soul music from Anton’s large collection of records. There was no TV and the only radio programs were in Swedish. For news, he spent a few hours at the Deserters Society, listening to other deserters debate politics and reading old English language magazines. Once he followed up on a job notice, but Whitmore had already warned him that without a work permit he would not be hired. In the evenings, he looked forward to returning to the apartment. Lena, a fair cook, prepared dinners—Swedish meals of fried herring and potatoes or fried meat and potatoes. Always potatoes and crisp bread.

One morning, Lena returned home just as he was getting up. Smiling widely, she stiffly held out a box of cinnamon rolls to him. “You like kanelbullar? I thought you might want some.” He took a bun. “Today, will be sunshine and so I told my job I would be sick. Probably everybody will be sick today.”  They sat at the small kitchen table, just big enough for three. She poured coffee for them, and they ate the rolls. “Also, I was thinking, you need to get away from this place. We can go see some of the sites.” Her voice, tinged with pity, was strongly attractive to Billy. She licked cinnamon icing from the tips of her fingers. “You will go crazy thinking about the war, so I will take you someplace special.”

Though cold, the day was clear, the streets crowded with sunbathers. Many sat on the benches, but some leaned against sunny walls, bundled in their coats, their eyes closed and faces to the sun. Lena led Billy to the t-bana, and after a long ride they arrived at a place called Millesgården, an outdoor museum displaying the works of sculptor Carl Milles.  The garden was filled with patinated statues of all sizes arranged on several terraces along a bluff overlooking a strait. Billy’s heart skipped with excitement as he explored what was as much a fantasyland as a museum. Turning to Lena, he smiled, and she smiled back, pleased, it seemed, at delighting him. In front of them was a long, shallow pool at the center of which was a bulky statue of a woman, Europa, on the back of a large bull who was none other than Zeus come to make love to her. As they walked by it, Billy saw that it was the bull more than the woman in ecstasy. A tortured ecstasy. He had fallen to his knees in the front, and his back bowed where her knees touched him. His head, long horned with a pendulous dewlap, was bent back at the lightest touch of her hand on his thick, eager tongue. Lena linked her elbow through his and they stood hands in their coat pockets.  She leaned slightly into him. She’s happy, he thought. He was happy to think so. Then, he thought, Who is the bull, here? Who is bending like a reed to the touch of the other? He pushed his nose against her cheek, not a kiss at first, but a rub of chilly flesh against flesh. Then he kissed her on the cheek, and she closed her eyes.

“Kom med mig.” Lena pulled him, still locked arm in arm, along the terrace. A colony of angels flew above them, seeming to dart here and there, cupids in the breeze. They climbed up the path onto a terrace of woods and found a bench where they sat and looked through the branches at a fishing boat chugging up the strait and disappearing behind the bend. Lena ungloved a hand and slipped it under his jacket. “You are warm,” she said. The other hand followed, both now worming under his sweater and shirt and sliding against his skin. He tensed against her cold fingers and the ticklish trails they left across his abdomen. Laughing, they put their faces together, exchanging breaths still smelling of the cinnamon. In a moment her hands were warm, and they began to play under his clothes, first pinching his nipples and then tugging at his belt. He sighed and he kissed her, his tongue finding the tip of hers, which darted to the back of her mouth until he coaxed it to the front again. He loosened his belt, and she found his penis. He was still for a moment, holding his breath, and then his hands slipped under her long skirt and tugged at her panties.  Another fishing boat, or perhaps the same one, was coming down the strait.

5.

The next evening, Lena met Billy at the door as he came into the flat. She wiped shrimp salad from her hands and pulled him inside, not waiting for him to toe off his shoes or hang his coat. “There was someone,” she said. “He didn’t say his name. He wanted to talk to me about you, he said. I didn’t know what to do—”

“Wait a minute, wait a minute.” Billy dropped the bag of apples, a gift for her, and put both hands on her shoulders. “An American man, right?” He thought it might have been Melton. “Not much older than—hell, a baby-faced looking guy? A pudgy little bastard—”

“Pudgy?”

“Kinda fat—”

“Nej. Fet—Svart.”

Svart—Black. Eddie! Billy thought.

He shut the door behind him and pulled her into the everyday room. Her eyes went wide. He assured her she was safe, and he pled for her to tell him what had happened. Perhaps she sensed his own agitation, so suddenly intense his fingers trembled. She began hesitantly, then increasingly breathlessly, until he calmed her again, assuring her by taking deep breaths himself. She said that she had gotten off the t-bana at Mariatorget and started toward the food store when she noticed that the man who had sat across from her on the train was following her. She thought little of it and went into the greengrocer. When she came out, he was standing across the street, and then she began to suspect him. But things like that never happen in Sweden, she insisted. It only happens in the movies. Still, rather than walking through the square as usual, she stayed on the opposite side of Hornsgatan, keeping the wide street between them. After a block, she didn’t see the man, and she started to crossed the street at Bellmansgatan and headed toward the flat. Suddenly, just across from the graveyard at Maria Magdalena Church, there he was again, seeming to come out of nowhere as if waiting for her. She stopped in the middle of the street, where she had been walking in the car track to avoid slipping on the ice. Already it was beginning to get dark, and she didn’t dare go past the man to cut through the narrow street leading home.

She went into the churchyard, full of ancient grave markers and gnarled linden trees. She thought she might just walk through the church yard towards home. People often went through and maybe she would meet other pedestrians. The path into the church yard was compacted with snow, and trying to trudge up the hill, her feet kept slipping. The paper bag tore, and the cans began to work through a hole.  Suddenly, the man was close behind her, his footsteps crunching the ice crusted snow, just off step with hers.

“Lena!” he called.

That he knew her name startled her, and she turned. “Do I know you?” She was sure she didn’t. The only black people she knew were Billy and Whitmore. As the man approached, she could see he was smiling. She couldn’t tell if he meant it to be friendly or menacing. Having lost her momentum on the hill, she was unable to run on the slippery path. “Why are you following me? Who are you?”

“Don’t worry, baby. I’m following after you just to see how fine you look.”

She recognized the accent as American. At first, she was confused about what he meant. “Are you Billy’s friend?” she asked him.

“You can say that.”

“What is your name?”

“He knows who I am.”

Her voice trembled. “What do you want?”

“Like I said, I just want to see Billy’s fine chick.” He stepped closer and rubbed his hands together. Even with thick gloves the action was lascivious, as if he were contemplating touching her. “I heard you was a fine, fine bitch and now I see for myself. Damn! I want you to come join my family.”

“Your family? What are you saying?’ She stepped backwards. She was thinking she could throw the bag of cans and run.

He grasped her shoulder with one hand and put his face level with hers. “You tell Billy. He knows what I mean. You tell him I’m gonna turn out his bitch. You tell Billy he’s a sucker and a punk and I’m gonna turn out his bitch real good.” Then he raised the other palm as if to strike her. She recoiled, but he held her firmly, smiling but still holding the hand ready to slap. “You tell, Billy. Hear. Be sure to tell him. He knows where to find me.” He let go of her and dropped both hands by his side. Again, he smiled, his lips parting over a cigarette stained tooth. Then, he waved forcibly, dismissing her.

“Son of a bitch!” Billy paced toward the door.  “I’ll kill him.”

“He hasn’t hurt me.”

He turned back to her, taking Lena’s shoulders in both hands. “Did he touch you?”

“Yes, but not in a bad way. I mean... .” She shook her head adamantly.

“But he threatened you. He threatened you.” Billy clenched his fist, paced the room looking for something. A weapon. There’s no gun in the house. He hadn’t touched a gun since he left Fort Ort, on the way to desertion.

“Do you think so?” Lena’s chin furrowed and began to shake. Billy came back to her and held her. “OK,” she said, breathlessly after a moment. “I will be OK. But I am more frightened now than I was then. Billy, who is he?”

Billy sighed. “It’s a long story.”

“You must tell me.”

He did.

The meal was shrimp salad from a can, potatoes, and flatbread. They ate it in silence, and when Anton came in, he joined them, sitting and brooding with them. The men drank beer, and pondered what to do about Eddie, but Lena, having washed and put away the dishes declared she was exhausted and went to her bedroom.  Anton also began to prepare for sleep, though as a matter of habit, he was always the last in bed. He pulled his sweater over his head and lay down. “What do you think you will do?” he asked, whispering.

“He threatened Lena. I can’t let that happen.”

“I think it was more he was challenging you. What is it called?—egga? Goading, perhaps. Perhaps, setting a trap.”

“A trap?”

“He said, you are knowing where to find him. He wants you to come to find him.”

“I want to find him, too.” Billy was sitting the edge on the sofa perpendicular to the bed. “Do you own a gun?”

“För fan!—Damnit!” Anton sat up straight. “What are you thinking?”

“I want to kill him.” Billy felt his face harden. “I want to kill that nigger.”

“Billy… .”

“You’re cop. Don’t cops carry guns?”

“You can’t be serious. Besides I am only training.”

Billy stood, paced toward the kitchen and back. “You got smokes?”

Anton tossed him a pack from the shelf beside the bed. “Be calm. Don’t be hot in the head. Let the authorities take care of it.”

Billy lit the cigarette and took several short puffs. “You don’t understand,” he said, trying to keep his voice down so as not to disturb Lena. “Eddie is not just a pimp. He’s one of those mean, little thugs who likes to hurt people. And I’m not afraid of him. I’ve been in tighter spots than this. In the bush. Under fire. That chump is messing with the wrong motherfucker.”

Anton sighed. “We can just go to the police.”

“What for?”

“For protection.”

“I know how to protect myself.”

Anton scooted to the end of the bed, took the package of cigarettes from Billy and lit one. The men sat with their knees just inches apart and talked in whispers. “Billy, I too, care for Lena. She is my only family. I would not like to see anyone hurt her.” He took a drag on the cigarette and looked Billy in the eyes. “Including you.”

“Why would I hurt her?”

“You more than anyone can hurt her. She is beginning to like you. There are a hundred ways you can hurt her. One of them is by committing a crime.”

“What if it’s not a crime? What if it’s justified?”

“Perhaps it is justified, but you cannot do it. It’s too big for you. Don’t be crazy and try to tackle someone that is too big for you. You cannot win against such a criminal.”

Billy took a deep breath, thought for a moment. His stomach was quivering, and the taste of the shrimp salad came to the back of his throat. He imagined how terrified Lena must have been, having Eddie follow her in the darkness—and through a graveyard, too. But that was not what churned his stomach. It was the raised hand, the insult, meant for him. Eddie said he would turn Lena. Add her to his family. Sell her. Slap her. And like Eva, she would take it. Like it. He stood abruptly.

Anton stood too.  He was taller than Billy, lanky. His large hands held on to Billy’s shoulders. “Calm down, Billy. Listen. I am your friend so listen. Lena is—I don’t know quite how to say it-- hon är kär i dig. But maybe not in love with you. We say in Swedish, Förtrollad. Under a spell. Charmed. Please do nothing rash. We will tell the police. You will be safe. She will be safe.”

“You say she loves me?”

“Not quite love.”

“But she likes me?”

“Yes. She is in like with you. But maybe a little more.”

“Somewhere between like and love?”

“That is what I will say.”

The thought caused Billy to chuckle, again. His head seemed light. Lena was in love with him. For a moment he relaxed, and Anton let go of his shoulders. Lena was in love with him—or was it just that Black men is white women’s kryptonite! Then the thought of Eddie slapping Eva, the dramatic pose. The glare in Eddie’s eyes. The flinch on the girl’s face. The recoil of her head. He tensed again. “So,” he said to Anton. “Who do you know who owns a gun?”

6.

 A hallway extended from the part of the room near the sofa. Eddie’s room must be down there. Billy put his hand on the knife’s handle in pocket and started toward the hallway, when a knot gripped his stomach. The man who had been on the sofa was gone. Billy looked around the room, straining to see in the dim light. Bathroom, the thought came to him. The man had gone to pee. Billy’s plan had depended on surprise, and, as quickly and quietly as he could, he stepped to the door. When he turned the handle, it was locked. He felt for a latch, and found that it was a key latch, and the key was gone.

Immediately, he slid to the corner between the door and sofa and slipped down to a squat, his hand on the knife, now held in front of him. Several minutes passed and the man did not come back to the sofa. The house remained quiet except for the even breathing coming from the bedroom. His eyes, now adjusted, he looked around. Heavy drapes covered a window in the parlor, but he could see streetlight coming in from another room, either a kitchen or a bathroom. He moved toward it. It was a kitchen, only slightly larger than the one in Lena’s apartment. Behind the small table, next to a shelf full of pans, was a large window, the silhouette of tree branches outside. It was a casement window. He groped for the latch, and then he heard something. Footsteps on the carpet. Soft padding on the forest floor. A twig snapped. No. It was something else. Yes. The cocking of a revolver. He found the latch and tried to push open the window, but it didn’t bulge. It was locked at the top, and his hand felt across a small bolt, but already the footsteps were at the door.

“Trapped like a motherfuckin’ rat.” He didn’t have to turn to know it was Eddie. A chuckle came from a second man. “I knew you was dumb, but I didn’t think you was this fucking dumb.” A second person chuckled. Billy pulled down the bolt and pushed open the window. The cold air cooled his sweat. The tree branch was too far away to grab onto and there was nothing to check his fall.

“Go ahead, now. And jump. I would like to see that.”

Eddie would have the gun pointed at him, Billy thought, still having not turned around. Perhaps the other man would have a gun, too. Then Billy stopped thinking. It had happened before in the war, many times in fact, when he just moved, the moving seemingly slow and deliberate, seemingly planned though he was not aware of planning. He was not aware of consequences, or pain. Whatever Eddie was saying to him now, he didn’t hear. As he turned, he upended and flung the table in Eddie’s direction, and dodging the other way, grabbed and threw a heavy pot at the second man. Then he charged, the blade in front of him like a bayonet. Eddie fell back. The gun went off, firing high, and Billy rammed into Eddie’s small frame and sent him sprawling into the parlor. He was aware of the second man approaching and turned on him, relieved to see he didn’t have a gun. He swung the knife at him, and the man jumped back, falling over the upturned table and crashing into a cabinet with dishes. Then Billy turned back to Eddie, who was picking himself off the floor, he lunged and again Eddie stumbled back. He was aware that others had come into the room—the smell of cologne—but he focused on Eddie, who was recovering from his stumble and was bringing the revolver to eye level. Billy drew back his arm, preparing to throw the knife, but his arm was caught by the wrist and pulled back, throwing him off balance. Then something heavy, a cudgel of some kind, hit him in the chest and again in the abdomen. He would have doubled forward, not so much from the pain, but from the force, had his arm not been pulled backwards over his head. Several hands, three men, he guessed caught hold of him and pushed him to his knees.

“Kill me? Kill me, motherfucker? I sure ’nough gonna turn your bitch, now.” Eddie stood before him. He struggled to get loose to strike at Eddie’s knees, but the hands were too strong. Then a blow came to the side of his face, the barrel of the gun. And another from the other side. Eddie hawked a loogie and Billy felt it splat against his cheek.  Then a sharp blow struck the back of the skull. The butt of the revolver, Billy thought. The blue light flickered snowy and black.

7.

His head thumped painfully, and his vision was double. His body felt numb from head to foot, except that his fingers tingled, and soon he realized he was very cold. Is this what it feels like to be dead? A shadow of a man on a horse, a sword raised high, loomed above him. He blinked his eyes rapidly, trying to blink away the gauzy second image. The man on the horse, he realized was a statue, one familiar to him. St. George? Yes. Another Saint George, this one too, with a dragon curling around the horse’s hooves. He was lying on a snowbank at the base of the statue. That accounted for the numbing cold, but the tingle in his fingers worried him. He tried to stand but slipped and fell on his back. He decided, despite the cold, to lie still. He closed his eyes. It seemed like a moment, and then someone was gently slapping his face. As if from a distance, he heard a familiar voice. He opened his eyes. The blurred silhouette of a man with a big square head looked down at him. The voice was clearer. “M-Melton?” The face and the ushanka came into focus.

“Ja brother, it’s me.” Melton’s fingers examined his skull, pushing at the painful place in the back of his head. “I don’t think they broke anything, but damn, they did a number on you. Do you think you can stand?”

“Yeah, yeah.” With Melton’s help, he stood, and once off the snowbank and on the hard, sanded ice of the plaza, he was able to walk steadily. He chuckled. “Been through worse. Been through ’Nam.”

“You want to go to the hospital? I’ve got a taxi waiting.”

“No. No.”

“Then I’ll take you home.”

 “Yeah. Whatever you say. How did you find me?”

“I work for the Embassy.” Melton helped him into the taxi and told the driver where to go. “Död berusad, dead drunk,” he said to the driver and grinned. “We Americans just can’t hold our liquor.”

The driver turned in his seat to examine them. His face was gaunt, and his nose crooked where it had been broken. He nodded, and then ignored them for the rest of the drive.

***

NOTE: This is a story excerpt from my novel manuscript “Burn the House,” about American Vietnam War deserters in Stockholm, Sweden. There was a community of about 1,000. Perhaps 200 of them were African American. A few of the African Americans were involved in pimping prostitutes, an activity which has its roots in American Jim Crow segregation. A study by Dr. Vernon Boggs, “A Swedish Dilemma: Scandinavian Prostitutes and Black Pimps,” asserts that the segregation of American service men in Copenhagen, Denmark where soldiers based in Germany came to recreate after World War 2, forced black service men into the city’s red light district. There

the Americans took over the prostitution business and were profitable until a police crackdown forced them into Sweden where the practice found a new generation of participants. To be clear, most black deserters were not involved in the trade and sought to make honest lives outside of the war.

The pimp slang is based on Boggs’s work.

NOTE 2: The image of Saint George and the Dragon is prominent across Stockholm. A gilded statue is located on the façade of the Stadhus, the city hall. Another, larger one, is found in Köpmantorget, a small square near the center of Gamla Stan, the Old City. The most spectacular one, seen in the illustration, is found in the Storkyrkan, the Cathedral, also in Gamla Stan. An agglomeration of oak, metal, elk antlers, and human hair, among other materials, the statue is a dynamic tableau of Saint George on horseback battling a dragon and rescuing a princess—good over evil. It was created by Bernt Notke and dedicated in 1489.