Thursday, 12 November 1981

Thursday, 12 November 1981, marks a sharp passage from Oskar’s private distress to violence in the places meant to support him. After a sleepless night and a morning spent ill and unable to settle, he speaks with Fernando Avila about training; that evening, Avila is attacked in the changing rooms, and Jonny and Jimmy approach Oskar at the pool.

A night without an answer

The date follows a night in which Oskar cannot sleep. He peers from his window toward the playground, briefly thinking he sees something on the jungle gym, then returns to bed and taps gently on the wall. No one answers. The sound of his knuckles against the concrete turns the wall into a closed door, giving the night’s silence a force that carries into the next day.

Illness and Fernando Avila’s insistence

On Thursday morning, Oskar throws up and is allowed to stay home another day. Though he has slept only a few hours, he cannot rest; anxiety drives him around the apartment, where he picks things up, examines them, and puts them back. He calls Fernando Avila and says he is sick, but Avila makes clear that Oskar can talk or remain silent without affecting their relationship. He still wants Oskar to attend training, arguing that retreating into his shell will make him ill if he is not already sick. Oskar maintains that he is sick, and Avila answers by insisting that physical training is what he needs.

The changing-room ambush

That evening, after Micke leaves the changing rooms, Jonny, Jimmy, Roger, and Prebbe take up positions. Jonny and Jimmy slip into the exercise gym while Roger and Prebbe wait by the door. When Fernando Avila enters the changing rooms and stands with his back to Prebbe, Prebbe strikes him from behind with a pair of tube socks filled with small change, wrapped around his hand for a firmer grip. The attack interrupts the training that Avila had urged Oskar to attend.

Oskar at the pool

Oskar is still in a corner of the pool, blowing bubbles, when Jonny and Jimmy come in wearing their outdoor clothes and shoes. His first response is annoyance: they have brought the outside into the pool area, and Avila had been so concerned about something Oskar does not finish articulating. Fear replaces irritation when Jimmy looks across the pool. Oskar has met him only briefly before, but now Jimmy’s eyes and the way he moves his head recall the threatening behavior of the other boys. The day’s movement from isolation to an offered connection and then to assault remains unresolved in the available scene: Oskar recognizes the danger, but the account here stops as that recognition takes hold.