The well-stocked home improvement store was just a few kilometers away. That was where he went to buy a small jackhammer. And the spade. And the plasterboard. And the glue. And the putty. And the screws. And the white paint. And the brass hinge that looked like it belonged on a piano, and the small doorknob. And finally, after he packed the car and was on his way back, he stopped at another store and bought a piece of wood that would form the false floor of the closet.

Back in Tallbacken, he headed down to the basement of the apartment building, walked through its slightly mildewy hall, and passed by a row of storage spaces his neighbors had stuffed to the brim and a laundry room. Around the corner he found the air raid shelter. He grabbed two metal wheels that looked like steering wheels, one at the top and one at the bottom of the heavy steel door, twisted them simultaneously clockwise until, with a deep sigh, the locking mechanism released. An air raid shelter almost identical to the one in the high-rise apartment building where he grew up, housing projects really, that the politicians called left behind. Outsiders in this society. He’d never looked at it that way. He never put it in those words, never formulated the anxiety, restlessness, hopelessness—to him it was the only life he knew, the only place he had. He learned to fight, survive, be part of something instead of outside it. And the air raid shelter in his childhood apartment building had been their playground—the kids used to sneak down there and turn off all the lights in that windowless room and could play hide-and-seek in the dark. That’s where he had his first kiss, his first cigarette, his first beer.

The air raid shelter he stepped into now was, according to the building drawings, below one of the bedrooms in his newly purchased apartment. He checked the emergency exits, the walls, the ceiling, and everything looked exactly how he’d hoped.

On his way back up, he taped a handwritten note on the bulletin board next to the entrance and on the mirror in the elevator asking his neighbors for their patience for a few hours, he’d just moved in and would be doing some renovations, it might be loud. Then he unloaded all of the building materials into the apartment, spread them across the floor of the bedroom, and opened the closet, which had double doors that ran the length of the wall. It was empty just as it should be, only a rod with a few bare hangers on it, and as he opened the doors, even more of the former family’s scent rushed out—the smell of their skin against their clothes.