Sune’s chest rises and falls below slouched shoulders as he starts to walk toward the entrance to the rink. For the first time in his life he feels his age, his body moving with slithery movements, as if someone’s tried to put a tracksuit on a bag of jellyfish. But when he opens the door a great calm still settles over him, the way it does every day. This is the only place in the world that he really understands. So he tries to remember what it’s given him rather than what they’re planning to take away from him. A lifetime in the service of the sport, which is more than most people can say. He’s been blessed with a few moments of magic, and has seen two immortal talents born.
The noisy buggers in the big cities will never be able to understand that. What it feels like to nurture a truly talented player on a really small hockey team. Like seeing a cherry tree in bloom in a frozen garden. You can wait years, a whole lifetime, maybe several, and it would still be a miracle if you experienced it just once. Twice ought to have been impossible. Anywhere but here.
The first time was Peter Andersson. That’s more than forty years ago now. Sune, who had only just been appointed A-team coach at the time, caught sight of him during skating classes. A scrawny little kid with hand-me-down gloves, a drunk for a father, and bruises everyone saw but nobody asked about. Hockey noticed him when no one else did. Changed his life with colossal force. One day that little kid grew up and raised a bankruptcy-threatened club that everyone had written off to the second-best in the country, and then he raised himself up to the NHL, the impossible path from the forest to the stars. Before fate snatched it all away from him.
It was Sune who called Peter in Canada after the funeral and told him that Beartown needed a general manager. That there was still a club and a town here that needed rescuing. And Peter needed something to rescue. That was how the Andersson family came to move home.
The second time was about ten years ago. Sune and Peter broke away from the search party in the forest because Sune realized they were looking for a hockey player while everyone else thought they were looking for an ordinary boy. They found Kevin out on the lake at dawn, his cheeks touched by frostbite, the look of the bear in his eyes. It was Peter who carried the seven-year-old back home. Sune walked alongside in silence, inhaling deeply through his nostrils. In the depths of winter the town smelled of cherry blossom again.
When a taciturn twenty-two-year-old A-team player that year gave up the fight against recurring injuries and a lack of talent, it was Sune who stopped him in the parking lot. He was the one who saw the makings of a brilliant coach when everyone else saw a failed player. The twenty-two-year-old was called David, and he stood awkwardly in front of Sune and whispered, “I’m no good as a coach,” but Sune gave him a whistle and said: “Anyone who thinks they’re a good coach never is.” David’s first team was a gang of seven-year-olds, and one of the players was Kevin. David told them to win. And they won. And didn’t stop.
Kevin is seventeen now, David is coach of the junior team, and next season they’ll both be on the A-team. Together with Peter, they make up the holy trinity of the future: hands on the ice, heart on the bench, brain in the office. And now Sune’s discoveries will be his downfall. Peter is going to fire him, David will take his job, and Kevin will prove to everyone that it was the right decision.
An old man saw the future. And now it’s overtaken him. He opens the door to the rink, lets its sounds tumble toward him.
Why does he care about hockey? Because his life will be silent without it.
*
Why? No one’s ever asked Amat that. Hockey hurts. It demands inhuman sacrifices, physically and mentally and emotionally. It breaks feet and tears ligaments and forces him to get out of bed before dawn. It eats all his time, swallows all his energy. So why? Because when he was little he once heard that “there are no former hockey players,” and he knows exactly what that means. That was back in skating class, when Amat was five years old. The A-team coach came down onto the ice to talk to the children. Sune was a fat old man even then, but he looked Amat right in the eye when he said: “Some of you were born with talent, some weren’t. Some of you are lucky and got everything for free, some of you got nothing. But remember, when you’re out on the ice you’re all equals. And there’s one thing you need to know: desire always beats luck.”
It’s easy for a child to fall in love with something if they’re told that they can be best at it, as long as they want it enough. And no one wanted it more than Amat. Hockey became a way into society for him and his mother. He’s planning to turn it into more than that—he’s planning to make it the way out as well.
Every part of his body hurts, every cell is pleading with him to lie down and rest. But he swings around, blinks the sweat away, clutches his stick more tightly, and drives his skates across the ice. As fast as he can, as hard as he can. Again. Again. Again.
*
Everything reaches an age when it no longer surprises us. That applies even to hockey. Most days you’d think there aren’t any original ideas left, that everything has already been thought, said, and written by a whole range of coaches, each one more confident than the last. The other sort of day is more rare—the unusual occasions when the ice still manages to reveal things that are beyond description. Things that surprise.
The caretaker is heading toward the stands to put some new screws in an old railing. He sees Sune open the main door and is surprised, because Sune is never here this early.
“You’re up bright and early today,” the caretaker chuckles.
“You have to work hardest just before the final whistle,” Sune smiles wearily.
The caretaker nods sadly. As already noted, Sune’s dismissal is the worst-kept secret in town. The old man is on his way up through the stands, heading for his office, when he stops. The caretaker raises an eyebrow. Sune nods toward the boy out on the ice. He squints, his eyes aren’t what they were.
“Who’s that?”
“Amat. One of the fifteen-year-olds on the boys’ team.”
“What’s he doing here so early in the morning?”
“He’s here every morning.”
The boy has put his gloves, hat, and jacket down as markers between the lines. He skates as fast as he can until he reaches them, then changes direction without appearing to lose any speed at all, then stops abruptly and explodes. The puck never leaves his stick. Back and forth. Five times. Ten times. Without any loss of intensity. Then the shots. The puck in exactly the same place in the net at the end of each approach. Again. Again.
“Every morning? Is he being punished by someone for something, then?” Sune mutters.
The caretaker chuckles.
“He just loves hockey. You remember how that feels, old man?”