Jonny’s gang attacks Avila and tries to drown Oskar

Jonny’s gang attacks Fernando Avila and attempts to drown Oskar in a coordinated act of retaliation that turns the swimming pool from a supervised school space into a place where Oskar is isolated and helpless. The sequence links two acts of violence: first, Roger and Prebbe disable the teacher who might intervene; then Jonny and Jimmy corner Oskar in the water while the other boys watch. Its pressure comes not only from the threat to Oskar’s life, but from the failure of the adults and peers around him to stop what is happening—until Micke begins to falter and Eli appears outside the hall.

Clearing the Way

The plan begins as soon as Micke has left the changing rooms. Jonny and Jimmy move into the exercise gym, while Roger and Prebbe take positions beside the door. They are prepared for action when Micke calls from inside the swimming hall. The arrangement gives the group separate roles: some wait to intercept Fernando Avila, while Jonny and Jimmy are positioned to reach the pool.

Prebbe attacks when Avila enters the changing rooms and turns his back to go to his office. He swings a pair of tube socks weighted with coins, but Avila turns partway through the blow. The impact knocks him off balance; he strikes the doorpost and falls. Prebbe sits on his chest, keeping the weight ready in his hand, but Avila makes no resistance. Prebbe does not know whether the teacher is dead and judges only that he does not appear to be.

Roger searches Avila’s shorts for the keys, then tries them one after another in the office door. He later searches a coat in the office and takes a wallet containing three hundred kronor, along with ten unstamped subway cards from a desk drawer. The small amount of money and the cards are not, in the narration, the point of the raid: it is described as payback. The search therefore serves both as a practical effort to reach the office and as an act of retaliation, while Avila remains on the floor and unable to intervene.

Oskar Is Isolated

Oskar is in a corner of the pool, blowing bubbles, when Jonny and Jimmy enter in their outdoor clothes. Their shoes have not been removed. At first Oskar is annoyed by their presence, especially because Avila had been attentive to the boys at the pool; then Jimmy’s manner makes him afraid. Oskar recognizes the danger in the way Jimmy looks and moves, and understands that he is exposed in the water while the attackers are fully dressed.

Jimmy orders the other boys out of the pool and draws a stiletto from his jacket. The boys hesitate, then move toward the far end, leaving Oskar alone. The shift in their positions matters: the spectators are still present, but their withdrawal leaves Oskar without anyone close enough to help. He looks for Avila and cannot find him. Jonny grips Oskar by the hair and forces his head back against the tiled edge; Jimmy approaches with the knife and takes control of Oskar’s head in turn.

The brothers present the assault as a contest with a stated rule: Oskar must stay underwater for five minutes or face injury when he surfaces. Oskar says he cannot do it, but Jimmy dismisses the objection and begins a countdown. The threat is designed to make the violence appear to have terms Oskar might choose to meet, although Jonny is holding him in place and he has no meaningful way to refuse. The countdown turns the pool’s clock into part of the threat and gives the attack a public, staged character.

The Attempt to Drown Oskar

Oskar gets only part of a breath before Jimmy pushes his head beneath the surface. He loses his footing and cannot get a hold on anything that would let him escape. His fear rises as he struggles in the water, and the scene narrows around the contrast between his instinct to live and his thought that enduring this might be preferable to losing an eye. The moment captures how completely the attackers have narrowed his choices: the threatened alternative does not make the forced submersion voluntary.

The other boys remain at the shallow end. Micke, who had been smiling in anticipation earlier, begins to feel uncomfortable after two minutes. He looks at the others, but none acts; his own protest to Jonny is only half-formed, and Jonny does not seem to hear. Jonny stays beside the pool with the knife pointed toward Oskar beneath the water, while Jimmy continues to hold him down. Micke’s attention turns repeatedly toward the shower rooms: he wonders why Avila has not returned and remembers that Patrik went to fetch him. The absence of the teacher, first made possible by the attack in the changing rooms, now leaves the assault uninterrupted.

Interruption at the Door

Micke notices something fall outside and strike the glass door. Looking through the small upper window, he sees Eli outside, facing him and insisting that he say she can come in. The appearance interrupts the scene’s closed arrangement: Oskar is under the water, Jonny and Jimmy control the pool edge, and the other boys have withdrawn, but someone has arrived at the boundary of the hall and is trying to make Micke respond.

Micke looks back and sees that Oskar has stopped moving while Jimmy is still holding him down. This changes Micke’s discomfort into a recognition that the attack has gone beyond a frightening spectacle and may be fatal. When Eli calls again, Micke can see her teeth and something hanging from her arms. The passage ends with her demand that he let her in, before showing what Micke does or how the attack is stopped. The event therefore closes on an unresolved threshold: the gang’s control of the pool is still in force, but the possibility of intervention has arrived at the door.