Tommy

Tommy is a resourceful, guarded boy in Blackeberg, caught between the freedom of his own small world and the adult arrangements closing around him. Mischief, secrecy, and resistance mark his early appearances, but they do not define him completely: he offers Oskar practical care, and when danger reaches the shelter where he has made a refuge, he intervenes. His story turns on the uneasy coexistence of defiance and responsibility.

Identity and Private World

Tommy builds a life in spaces he can control. His shelter serves as a clubhouse and hiding place, secured with a chain and padlock; he keeps its key concealed. It is also where he can collect objects and turn them into trophies. One evening he places a small statuette of a man firing a pistol atop boxes of cassette tapes, taking satisfaction in the fact that it was stolen from a policeman. The careful locking-up and the display of the statuette make the shelter more than a place to pass time: it is a private territory shaped by his pride in getting away with things.

His humor and taste for teasing appear in more public settings. When a radio-controlled car bumps into Oskar’s feet and speeds toward the entrance of their building, Tommy is hiding behind the bushes with its antenna extending from his stomach. He laughs at the surprise he has caused. The prank is small, but it captures his instinct to arrange a scene and watch another person’s reaction. He can also retreat into abrupt, incongruous answers: when his mother asks what he is thinking about, he says Donald Duck, even though he has just glimpsed a shiny object below the railing.

Tommy is involved in more serious mischief as well. He, Robban, and Lasse are responsible for a break-in at a radio store, and he knows something about the police investigation because his mother is dating Staffan, who works for the Vällingby Police Department. Staffan’s position gives Tommy access to information that his mother has heard from him, and Tommy uses that knowledge while sitting with the other boys and keeping them in suspense. His place in the group is therefore not simply that of a follower: he controls what he knows and when he reveals it.

Friendship and Practical Care

Tommy’s encounter with Oskar shows a quieter, more protective side. When Oskar visits, Tommy notices the mark on his cheek and asks how he got it. He closes the door, directs Oskar to sit down, and gives him time to explain himself. The scene shifts from Oskar’s uncertainty in the middle of the room to Tommy’s steady, informal attention. He does not press Oskar into a polished confession; he makes space for him to talk.

Tommy is especially firm when he suspects Oskar may have been near drugs. He checks Oskar’s breath and warns him to stay away from that world, while treating tobacco as a lesser, permissible experiment. The concern is practical rather than sentimental, expressed through blunt instruction and a return to ordinary conversation. That mixture of roughness and care matters: Tommy is not presented as an idealized guide, but he recognizes a risk and tries to steer Oskar clear of it.

His friendship with Oskar also sits alongside the ordinary rhythms of Tommy’s own household. He welcomes Staffan into the home, then passes through the hallway as his mother and Staffan kiss. At another dinner, Staffan plays piano while Tommy’s mother sings. Tommy sits on the leather sofa and works a small hole in its armrest larger, occupying himself while watching their closeness. His attention to the room’s details conveys his discomfort without requiring him to confront the couple directly.

Conflict at Home and the Church

Tommy dislikes Staffan, whom he regards as a know-it-all, oily-voiced, religious man. Staffan is not merely his mother’s boyfriend: he represents a new domestic arrangement and an adult authority Tommy does not accept. At dinner, Tommy notices the safe under Staffan’s bed and the pistols kept inside it. The guns become part of his private speculation about his mother’s relationship with Staffan, just as the piano and sofa make that relationship visible in the shared home. Tommy’s mother, meanwhile, hopes that his willingness to attend church may mean he has accepted Staffan.

That hope proves premature. Tommy agrees to go because he has read the biblical passage that will inform the service, which is organized around young people, guiding stars, and the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt. His mother is pleased by his willingness, but at the church Tommy grows increasingly bored and contemptuous of the service. He sees the congregation as disengaged and the minister’s words as routine. In the back row, he has a lighter and a small tinder cube ready, with the christening font only a few metres behind him. When the minister reaches the passage Tommy has been waiting for, his hands tremble; the scene presents the disruption as planned rather than accidental.

A small mishap leads the minister to ask for the building to be cleared. Staffan quickly leaves the podium, understanding that Tommy is responsible and struggling to restrain his anger. Tommy’s act brings his private opposition into public view, but it does not produce a reconciliation. At home, he asks his mother not to tell Staffan that he was responsible. She does not answer. She hugs him before he leaves, and Tommy rests his head on her shoulder rather than returning the embrace with his arms. The gesture holds both affection and distance: he accepts comfort, but does not resolve the conflict that brought him there.

Afterward, Tommy takes a blanket and pillow to the basement and lies down to think. He chews tobacco and considers being shot as the best outcome. The thought registers the depth of his despair in that moment, without changing the stubborn, self-contained manner he has shown elsewhere. His retreat to the basement repeats the pattern of the shelter: when the adult world becomes intolerable, he seeks a separate space in which to withdraw.

The Shelter and the Turning Point

Later, in the shelter, Tommy hears someone in the corridor and first fears that the visitor is approaching his hideout. Once he realizes that the person is not coming toward the shelter, he takes his hand from his mouth and listens. He hears a girl’s voice, then another voice that does not sound human, followed by muffled impacts and movement. The uncertainty of what is happening reaches him through sound before he sees the danger directly.

Tommy does not remain hidden. He swings a sharp-cornered stone into the attacker’s temple, and the blow brings the struggle to an abrupt end. The action is forceful and decisive, a sharp contrast with his earlier withdrawal to the basement and his silence at home. The evidence presents him as responding to an immediate threat rather than pursuing a larger plan; the intervention changes his role from concealed observer to participant in the night’s violence.

The aftermath confirms that Tommy survives. Oskar later hears from his mother that Tommy is alive and will be fine, and that he is expected home the next day. This report gives his story a deliberately modest ending: after mischief, family conflict, despair, and sudden danger, the immediate prospect is simply that he will return. Tommy’s place in the novel rests on that tension between the boy who hides behind bushes or retreats to a locked shelter and the boy who can act when another person is in danger.