Thin Ice

by Mikael Engström

  The hall was long and narrow, front door at one end, bathroom door at the other. Tony set the egg timer for ten minutes and put on a pair of blue hockey gloves. Mik put on his red ones.

  ‘No punches in the face,’ said Mik.

  ‘No, not in the face. Not deliberately, anyway. Shoulders and stomach.’

  The hockey gloves protected his hands. That was good. You dared to hit harder. Dared to hit as hard as you could, but a punch still felt just as painful as one with bare knuckles.

  They faced each other in the middle of the hall, under the lampshade. Jogged a little on the spot, shook their arms and slapped their gloves together.

  ‘Now,’ said Tony.

  The contest started, and Tony threw a fast punch straight at Mik’s chest. It hurt. The next blow hit his shoulder. The first hits were the nastiest. After that, the places where he was hit lost all feeling.

  Mik often went the whole round. Only a blow to the solar plexus could floor him. Or a forbidden punch on the nose.

  After only a few seconds, Mik was pushed up against the bathroom door. He took blow after blow, but tried to break free with a series of wild punches. Tony danced backwards, laughing. He was out of Mik’s reach. Tony was a head taller and had significantly longer arms. Mik flailed his arms and all Tony had to do was hold out his gloves and throw a few heavy punches. Mik warded him off with his hands, backed away. He was trapped again against the bathroom door, taking blow after blow.

  ‘I give in.’

  ‘Bell hasn’t rung. Go the distance.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Come on!’ shouted Tony. ‘Box.’

  He skipped backwards, shaking his arms, giving Mik the chance to hit back.

  ‘Don’t curl up like a wimp. Fight, for God’s sake.’

  The inside of Mik’s head seemed to turn red. He rushed forward, thrashing out wildly.

  ‘Good,’ shouted Tony. ‘Come on!’

  But Mik’s punches didn’t reach their target. He lunged until he was red and dripping with sweat, and started kicking. Tony took a wrestling hold on his little brother who wriggled and wailed and tried to get free.

  ‘I’ll stop now,’ said Tony. He held Mik in a stranglehold until he calmed down. ‘You mustn’t get angry. Not angry, not annoyed. It’s important not to take it personally. Take it personally and you’re in trouble. We’ll start again.’

  They boxed until their bodies glowed with heat. The temperature in the hall rose. The sweat ran. Mik took a beating but he stood up, pressed against the bathroom door, and there he stayed for the entire contest. Not once had he managed to drive Tony back towards the front door at the other end of the hall. Mik took the blows, thud, thud, thud.

  The egg timer rattled. It was over.

  Tony’s fringe hung damply over his forehead. He smiled and ruffled Mik’s hair with his hockey glove.

  ‘You’re getting better and better.’

  Mik looked up at him, not letting his expression show how his body throbbed and stung.

  ‘I went the whole round.’

  There was a ring at the door. Tony looked through the peephole and held up his hand for Mik to be quiet.

  It rang again, and then a third time. Time dragged. They stood silently, not moving. There was a fourth ring, then footsteps could be heard moving away down the stairs. Tony turned to face Mik.

  ‘Don’t ever open the door to anyone you don’t recognise. If you’re home on your own and see strangers out there, you mustn’t open the door.’

  ‘I promise.’

  Mik tried out his DVD player, putting in a film. He could hear Tony washing up in the kitchen. It was comforting to hear the clatter of dishes. We’re doing all right here, he thought. We’re brothers and we’re doing all right.

  The Snake wasn’t moving now.

  Mik felt his shoulders. They were sore. It was a good feeling afterwards, like now. A proud feeling. Bruises from a big brother.

  The phone rang. Mik paused the film and the picture froze just as a zombie head exploded. He was about to answer when Tony came out from the kitchen and stopped him.

  The brothers looked at each other. They knew what the call was about. After the fourth ring Tony picked up the handset.

  ‘Hello.’

  He listened for a moment.

  ‘Yeah, we’re on our way.’

  Tony hung up and looked at the phone. It was frothy with washing-up liquid. The bubbles popped, one by one.

  ‘We’ve got to go to The Pirate.’

  The wind blew bitingly cold along Söderlång Street. Above the entrance a sign hung from rusty chains. The Pirate. Below the writing were two crossed swords. Tony opened the door and Mik followed him in. People inside were sitting eating or waiting for their food to be served. The waiting staff hurried between the tables. They were dressed in striped tops and aprons. From the ceiling hung sails and tankards. There was a smell of food and beer.

  A waitress came towards them. Her striped top swelled over her breasts. She held her head tilted slightly to one side and was drying her hands on her apron.

  ‘He’s sitting down there. You’ll find him, no problem. The usual place.’

  Tony and Mik said nothing.

  ‘He started causing trouble. The boss wanted to call the police, but it’s calmed down now.’

  She shrugged her shoulders and walked off to serve the customers.

  The staircase down was narrow and wound between walls of thick uneven blocks of stone. It was like going down into a deep well. On a shelf at a turning were three skulls. The first was wearing a pirate’s hat, the second was split open by a sword and the third had a patch over one eye and two teeth missing from its upper jaw. Someone had shoved a tab from a beer can into the gap.

  ‘Are they real?’ asked Mik.

  ‘No, only plastic,’ said Tony.

  Mik stopped and looked at them.

  ‘They look real to me.’

  ‘Shut up. Don’t worry about them. Come on.’

  The bottom of the staircase opened into a large stone cellar. Drunken men and women with hoarse voices sat at solid tables. From the ceiling hung a pirate ship, sailing above the mad shrieking and the crazy laughter. Beer glasses spilled and it seemed to Mik that the people down here never left the place. Never saw the light of day. They sat here yelling, day and night. Condemned by some pirate king. And a steady stream of waitresses carried in frothing beer glasses and carried out empty ones.

  Tony made his way between the tables, on the lookout. Mik followed close behind.

  Someone stood up and bellowed to everyone to shut up, but the racket didn’t stop.

  ‘You bloody amateurs. Shut your faces.’ The person who was shouting stood there swaying and waving his arms up and down.

  ‘Damned amateurs, the lot of you. Go to hell.’

  And then he fell across the table and lay there.

  It was their dad.

  Tony shook him awake.

  ‘Time to go home.’

  THE SWIMMING TEST

  Mik sat in a green vinyl chair that made his backside damp.

  The school psychologist was called Lisa Nordahl. She had straight brown hair and kind brown eyes. Her voice was calm and beautiful but she asked weird questions.

  Sitting in the green vinyl chair was like nothing else Mik had experienced. It was like being beamed up to another dimension. It was UFO time. The computer hummed and the screensaver jumped around. The room smelled strongly of cleaning fluid.

  They had talked about his drawings. She said they reflected feelings that were somehow trapped. That they ought to try and get hold of them.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The feelings. Fear, perhaps. Loss, anger.’

  ‘But they’re only scary pictures,’ said Mik. ‘I like horror films and horror books and …’

  Lisa Nordahl gave him a smile and leafed through her papers. Mik smiled back and fiddled with his mobile.

  ‘Is it switched off?’

  ‘Yes.’
/>   ‘How do you feel about school?’

  ‘Good.’

  Lisa Nordahl managed to get her papers about Mik in order.

  ‘You’ll see that we’re going to get to know each other really well.’ Lisa Nordahl tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. ‘What’s it like for you at home?’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘That’s good. I do wonder about that, though. Your dad hasn’t been to any of the parents’ evenings or progress assessments. He has …’

  ‘Lots to do,’ said Mik.

  ‘Remind me what he does.’

  ‘Lorry-driver.’

  ‘That would keep him busy, then.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Lisa Nordahl’s eyes wandered round the room. She moved a pen about and accidentally nudged the mouse, making the screensaver disappear. Her desktop background showed some little children playing with a hose on a green lawn.

  ‘Tell me more about your dad.’

  Mik looked out of the window. It was break and some pupils were playing hockey. Ploppy was goalie. Andreas was shouting something at him, hitting the goal with his stick. Mik realised he did not know his dad. When he thought of his dad he might just as well be thinking of a … spade.

  Think spade.

  Think spade.

  Think spade.

  Mik shrugged. Spade. What should he say to her? That he’s always either drunk or hungover or both? That he doesn’t hit him, but he cries a lot? That he’s promised not to drink just as often as he’s been drunk – they cancel each other out. Promise to be sober; be drunk. His dad could say, ‘It’s over now, I can’t do this any more, I’ve finished drinking.’ He had drunk so much he couldn’t manage to do it any more. He was so tired of it that he … drank.

  Clinking plastic bags. Bottles, everywhere bottles. Open bottles, empty bottles, broken bottles, hidden bottles. Mocking grins and bottles. Shouting and bottles. Crying and bottles. And then there were the bottles in the cellar. The days are too long, his dad said. The days are too long. The bottles made them shorter.

  What rubbish words: bottles. Spottles. Spittles. Spit. Spew.

  Spade.

  Tony hated Dad. ‘I’ll kill the bastard,’ he always said.

  Mik didn’t say that. He felt no hate. You can’t hate a spade. He only felt Snake Alone with his back-to-front scales, and when it started moving inside his body, it hurt. As long as he kept thinking ‘Spade, spade’ it kept still.

  Think spade.

  The computer hummed. The screensaver had started up again. Mik moved his bottom on the green plastic. It had stuck.

  ‘Shall we think of a nice memory instead?’ said Lisa Nordahl.

  ‘Could do,’ said Mik.

  ‘Something to hold on to. An important memory which is, well, important. That makes you feel strong. Do you understand what I mean? If you say something good and keep that clearly in your mind it will be easier to talk about difficult things later on. Things that hurt. Things that are not nice and make you feel sad. We’ll start with something really good. Do you understand?’

  It went quiet. Lisa Nordahl’s elbows were resting on the table, her head resting in her hands. She put her head on one side and raised her eyebrows.

  ‘Hmm,’ said Mik. ‘Something good.’

  He thought. Looked around the room. Lifted one buttock.

  ‘One morning I walked down Dal Road to Råsta Lake. It was light, even though it was early. It was probably spring or nearly summer. Might have been about four a.m. I walked in the middle of the road. There were no cars, no people. I could pee on Råsunda Road. And over behind Vinter Road, on that big playing pitch, a fairground had sprung up overnight. It was so weird, totally unreal. I had found a fairground. It was just there. I’ve found lots of things – bikes, a camera, a broken guitar. But never a fairground.’

  ‘What fun,’ said Lisa Nordahl. ‘Go on.’

  ‘I ran home to tell Mum what I’d found. That it was amazing, a whole fairground. She said we could go there. That I could go on everything. We went there later that day. I was scared the fair would be gone, not be there any more. But it was there. We went on the waltzer and the big wheel. The octopus was scariest. I had candy-floss and did the tombola and won a big green dog. But on the way home she got a pain in her chest, and the hill up Dal Road was too long for her. We sat on a fence and rested. But she laughed anyway because it had been so much fun at the fair.’

  ‘That was beautifully told,’ said Lisa Nordahl. ‘That was lovely.’

  Mik looked out through the window at his mates, who were playing hockey.

  ‘I think that was the last time she laughed. It was probably the last time she went out.’

  The school psychologist, Lisa Nordahl, made a move to write something down, but then she didn’t write anything after all. The strand of hair had slipped out and she tucked it back behind her ear again. She had to put it behind her ear several times before it stayed there.

  ‘Can I go now?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’re doing swimming and I’ve got to get there in time.’

  Solna Swimming Centre was a long walk from school. Ploppy had waited for Mik. They were going to be late.

  ‘At least you missed English,’ said Ploppy.

  ‘Yeah, but I’ve got a damp backside,’ said Mik.

  ‘What did you talk about?’

  ‘Nothing special.’

  ‘You missed English to talk about nothing special?’

  ‘She wanted to hear stories.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Anything.’

  ‘Can we go back to yours today?’ asked Ploppy.

  Mik didn’t know how to answer. Lately they had always been at Ploppy’s. Ploppy’s mum and dad were really nice. His mum made an incredible lasagne. Ploppy had got a super-fast PC which his dad had built, with the latest graphics card, crammed full of internal memory and with a massive hard drive. You could run the latest games with full high-resolution graphics.

  ‘We’re always at mine. Can’t we go to yours?’

  ‘No, impossible.’

  ‘What, has your dad got a cold again?’

  ‘No, we just can’t. We’re having visitors.’

  They reached Vasalund and looked in the pet-shop window. A rabbit sat in a corner of its cage, frightened and trembling. Ploppy knocked on the glass. A couple of yellowygreen birds flapped around the minimal space inside a metal cage and damaged their feathers. A white rat scrabbled in the sawdust.

  ‘Can you swim?’ asked Mik.

  ‘Obviously. Thousand metres, easily. You?’

  ‘Sure, but maybe not a thousand metres. A couple of hundred or so.’

  ‘That’s enough,’ said Ploppy.

  ‘Did you know the world record for holding your breath under water is six minutes and three seconds? Peter Hirvell – he’s German – he holds the record.’

  The whole class had already changed and were at the deep end of the pool under the diving platform. Mik’s swimming trunks were blue. He tensed his arm muscles and Ploppy laughed. As muscles go, they weren’t up to much. Mik wasn’t up to much, either. His skin was stretched over his ribcage, shoulders and hips as if his skeleton was covered in fine tissue paper.

  The gym teacher, whose name was Ivan and who was known as Ive, stood in front of the class in a green tracksuit with a whistle round his neck and a stopwatch.

  ‘Well,’ he said, looking at his watch. ‘Who would have thought it would be so flipping difficult to get here on time? I’ll just have to repeat myself. We’re doing a test today. A swimming test. You ought to be able to manage twenty-five metres. That’s one length to pass the test. Line up by lane three here at the deep end.’ And then he blew his whistle.

  Andreas pushed his way to the front, leapt up onto the diving block, shook his arms and legs and warmed up with jumps and forward bends. Mik was shoved somewhere in the middle of the queue, behind Ploppy. The smell of chlorine made him feel sick and he thought of the German, Peter H
irvell.

  Ive blew again on his whistle.

  ‘Anyone who knows they can’t swim is to get out of line now. I’m not planning on jumping in after you. As you can see, I haven’t even changed.’

  Ive stepped aside and studied them like an officer inspecting his troops.

  ‘As I said, anyone who knows they can’t swim one length can go to the heated baby pool for the time being.’

  Someone giggled and they all looked over their shoulders, but no one left the line. Ive stopped alongside Mik, took hold of his shoulders with his huge, rough, ice-cold hands and turned him round once.

  ‘What have you done? How did you get all these bruises?’

  Mik looked up at him.

  ‘Fell off my bike, sir.’

  Up on the block, Andreas turned around. Impatient and flapping his body about.

  ‘Sir, he hasn’t got a bike. Can we start now?’

  Ive made a worried face. Pulled a hair from his nose, blew the whistle and held up the stopwatch.

  ‘You can dive or jump. I’ll time you. Get going.’

  Andreas dived, did the crawl for the entire length, heaved himself out of the pool and applauded himself as if he had won Olympic gold. Ive blew and the next person jumped in. Some swam the breast-stroke, others the crawl and one person used an unspecified method. Ive blew and called out the times. No one beat Andreas.

  Ploppy chose a relaxed back-stroke, came off course and swam in a zigzag. His time was rubbish, but he got credit for a stylish technique. Just a little erratic.

  Mik climbed up onto the block. Ive had his whistle in his mouth and was just about to blow it when Åsa started crying at the back of the line. Ive spat out the whistle and walked to the rear.

  ‘Jump, then!’ shouted Andreas.

  ‘Get a move on; we’re waiting,’ said someone behind him. ‘Hurry up.’

  Åsa was still crying.

  ‘Carry on at the front,’ said Ive. ‘I’ll time you.’ He blew his whistle.

  Mik threw himself off the block.

  ‘I think … I think my period’s started,’ said Åsa.

  It was a quick journey down to the surface of the water, but an endless amount of time for thinking. Was he expecting a miracle? Or a world record? The choice had not been difficult. One person dies every time someone breathes. One in three people died in the plague.