He would miss Tony – that was the only thing he would miss. Well, Ploppy too, of course, but Tony most of all. The world’s best big brother. It was a shame. Tough, but no hesitation. The choice between drowning or going to the heated baby pool was hard but not impossible. Perhaps all that stuff in The Brothers Lionheart about going to the land of Nangijala beyond the stars was true. But if it wasn’t true, where would he end up instead?
Mik came up to the surface and then sank down into the depths. He was held gently, surrounded by bubbles and swirling water. There was no miracle. His arms and legs floundered, but he only sank deeper, drifting down to the bottom. The world record for holding your breath under water was six minutes and three seconds. Of course there were those who had been under longer, but they had hyperventilated or breathed in pure oxygen before they dived. That was cheating.
Six minutes and three seconds – would he beat that?
His eardrums ached. He remained lying on the tile floor of the pool, face upward. His hair waved slowly like thin seaweed and way up above he saw strange distorted shapes in a pale blue light. They bent over the edge and stared down. Swaying, ghostly beings.
But if he did manage six minutes and three seconds, who would know? He wouldn’t even find out himself. If you drowned, your record was worthless.
The pressure increased in his chest, thudded throughout his whole body. His ears were filled with a powerful ringing. His heart pumped and pumped, faster, faster. His blood screamed for air; he was burning up and what he heard was singing. Someone was singing. A murmuring song. Where was that coming from? His field of vision shrank, the edges turned red and the song rose higher and higher. Notes without a tune. Rising, falling. Like crying. It was weird and it became weirder.
He saw his mum. Her face quivered behind the waves, had no real shape. She had a green umbrella.
Everything disappeared.
Mik woke by the edge of the pool, coughing up chlorinated water. His body hurt as if stuck by a thousand burning hot needles. His nose was stinging and the pressure in his chest made him feel he was being turned inside out. His heart pounded fast and hard.
Ive crouched over him. His clothes were wet and his hair dripped. His whistle and stopwatch dangled above Mik’s face. The class stood in a silent circle around them. Mik vomited up the school canteen meat loaf. His classmates stepped back.
‘How are you?’ said Ive, stroking back his own wet hair. ‘Do you feel okay?’
Mik nodded.
‘Nobody told me you went under. I went with Åsa to the changing room. She was … ill. I didn’t know anything until Ploppy came running to get me. They thought you were play-acting.’
Mik nodded again.
‘Are you sure you’re okay?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Mik wearily. ‘What was my time?’
‘The watch has stopped on three zero five. It’s not waterproof.’
‘Three zero five!’
‘Go to the small pool,’ said Ive. ‘You’ve done enough for today.’
Mik got up on wobbly legs and staggered off. Ive blew his whistle and the next pupil dived in. Mik slid down into the warm water of the baby pool.
Three zero five.
SNAKE ALONE
It seemed a long way home from Solna Swimming Centre. Mik walked slowly, his head aching. He felt sick and stopped when he came to the tobacconist’s shop. The crocodile was lying there in the window, leaking sawdust. It was pitiful. Perhaps it had once swum in the waters of the Nile, hunted small fish and then, feeling full, crawled up onto a sandy beach to rest in the sun by some pharaoh’s temple. And now here it was in a grimy shop window on Råsunda Road in Solna, leaking sawdust. It had probably never expected that.
The tobacco lady beckoned him in from the other side of the window. Mik opened the door and went the four steps down. His knees were giving way.
‘You look ill,’ she said. ‘Do you feel all right?’
‘We had a swimming lesson. It was hard.’
‘I’ve got some more chocolate I can’t sell; that would be tricking people. But there’s nothing wrong with it at all; it just needs eating.’
She handed Mik some bars of chocolate.
‘Thanks.’
‘How’s your dad?’
‘Got a cold.’
‘Oh.’
Her pale face smiled and her green eyes bored right through him. Green lasers. But what did she know about his dad?
‘Nothing is predetermined,’ she said. ‘There’s always a choice and you decide.’
‘Me? No, I don’t decide anything. I don’t even know who does decide. Tengil, maybe.’
‘You exist, therefore you decide.’
He thought for a while, but he did not feel as if he existed.
Customers came into the shop.
‘Go on then, take the chocolate and go.’
Mik waited a second or two. There was something he had meant to ask but he had forgotten what it was.
Mik put his key in the door, but it was already unlocked. It was quiet in the flat. He could make out the sour smell of red wine. Dad was lying on the kitchen floor. He had fallen off the chair and dragged the tablecloth and a bottle of wine with him. The wine had run out in a large red puddle. Mik shook him. Nothing happened. He was dribbling.
The front door slammed. Tony was home and came into the kitchen.
‘Oh, shit.’
‘Shall we help him into bed?’ asked Mik. ‘It’s hard, lying on the floor.’
‘You know what?’ shouted Tony. ‘As far as I’m concerned he can lie on a bed of nails.’
‘But,’ said Mik, ‘it’s –’
‘He’s finished. It’s all finished. This isn’t going to work.’
Tony walked up and down the kitchen. Took a swipe at the empty bottles standing on the draining board and knocked them over. Mik didn’t know what to say. Tony grabbed hold of a bottle.
‘I ought to smash this into his head.’
He waved the bottle in the air. Tried to break it against the sink but it stayed in one piece.
Mik fetched the hockey gloves and wound up the egg timer.
‘Want to box?’
‘You want to box, do you?’
‘It’s fun.’
Tony searched through the freezer and the kitchen cupboards.
‘You want to box? He’s lying here, drinking up all our money. We haven’t got any food at home. Box? You must be mad.’
‘I’ve got chocolate. Several bars. Want some?’
‘Don’t you get it, little Mik? He’s a bloody drunk,’ Tony yelled.
‘We can play Monopoly. You can have Norrmalm Square.’
‘I’m getting out of here,’ said Tony. ‘I’m going to sleep over at Dennis’s.’
‘What am I supposed to do, then?’ said Mik. ‘He can’t lie here like this.’
‘Forget him. Play a video game. Let him be. Watch a film or borrow my PC. I’m out of here.’
Tony left, slamming the door.
It was silent.
Watch TV.
Alone.
Alone in the flat.
Alone with Dad.
It was more lonely than when you actually were alone.
Watch TV.
Alone started to tear at his stomach.
Alone was a snake with skin that stung.
He writhed in your stomach, coiling around with sharp, back-to-front scales. Scales that scratched and scraped and tore. Think of something good; think of something fun. Think of something good, good, good. Important and good, Lisa Nordahl had said. Such as what?
Could he phone someone? Who? And what should he say? Could he phone Ploppy and ask if he could go round to his place?
Mik phoned Ploppy.
‘Weren’t you having people round?’
‘They didn’t come.’
‘Well then, I can come to you,’ said Ploppy.
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘See you tomorrow.’
> ‘Okay, see you tomorrow.’
Mik fetched a blanket and spread it over his dad. It looked as if he had crash-landed. Fallen from a great height. His cheek was pressed flat against the floor. He needed a pillow. Mik went and got one of the small cushions from the sofa, lifted his dad’s limp head by the hair, shoved the cushion underneath and let his head down again.
Think of something good and important. Make Snake Alone be still and go to sleep.
Mik sank down to the floor and leaned against the fridge. Some magnets fell and unpaid bills fluttered down. Slowly he unwrapped the last bar of chocolate. It was so quiet; there was only the tick of the egg timer and the faint hum of the fridge. He could make out the sound of the neighbour’s television. They were dead sounds, lonely sounds. Someone flushed a toilet.
My dad, thought Mik, and looked up at the ceiling. My dad drives a lorry during the day and is saving up for a bike for me, with twenty-one gears. Or a computer faster than Ploppy’s. With a graphics card so good the games look like real films. In the evenings we build models together. And we go fishing a lot. But only in the summer when it’s lovely and warm. He’s got a red reel on his fishing rod. Mine’s silver. And I usually get to row the boat. That’s how it was.
This evening they would probably carry on making the model of the German battleship Bismarck. Only the funnels were left and a few small details like the lifeboats. Tricky to get right.
Mik put the last piece of chocolate into his mouth. There was a ring at the door – the sound scared him to death. Ding dong right into his heart. Who was that, now?
And why?
Had Tony forgotten his keys?
The peephole revealed a woman and a man out on the staircase. Strangers. He must absolutely not open the door to people he didn’t recognise. Tony had forbidden it. Strangers want strange things. The man was bald and had a gold front tooth. The woman had long blonde hair and a green mac. She took out a mobile and a second later the hall phone behind Mik rang. The man reached out his hand and rang the doorbell again. Mik held his breath. The woman rested her ear against the door to listen. Her earring was in the shape of a parrot. There was one more ring, then they left.
The egg timer rattled on the draining board in the kitchen. Mik ran into his room, threw himself onto his bed and pressed a pillow against each ear.
STRANGERS
The class stood outside the enormous entrance to the museum. Their teacher tried to gather them together, to get them in some kind of order. Andreas and Stefan ran round pushing the girls. Stefan’s face turned blue. Ploppy balanced along the top of a wall.
‘Stop!’ yelled the teacher. ‘And get down from that wall.’
Mik stood with his head tilted upwards, looking at the façade of the building. It was a very impressive building, like a castle, with towers at each end and a dome. A flock of birds settled on the dome. Were they jackdaws or crows? Last summer he had looked after an injured jackdaw until it was well enough to fly. It wasn’t a good pet. It crapped everywhere.
Mik looked down again and found the class had disappeared. He opened the door and went in. The ceiling was high and there was no one about. Distant laughter and shouting and the clatter of heels echoed faintly from staircases and galleries. A warm, dry smell of age and mustiness filled his nostrils and right in front of him stood two four-legged skeletons. Enormous skulls with long curved tusks and empty black eye sockets. They were elephant skeletons; he could tell that from the tusks. To the left was a glass display case containing a stuffed tiger eating an animal it had hunted down. The tiger was dusty and faded. Not yellow and black but grey and black. On a small gold label on the plinth it said, ‘Tiger with prey, 1927’.
Glass cases with dusty animals in them filled the entire gallery. An elephant calf, coming apart at the seams, had lost its tail. Astonished gorillas glared through the glass. Monkeys clung to branches. The largest case was made to look like a savannah scene with ostriches, two zebras, vultures and a giraffe. All the animals were unbelievably dead.
Mik noticed he was being followed by a man in a blue shirt and black trousers. A mystery man, as dry and wrinkled as the dusty animals. Mik walked through the rooms, saw strange-looking fish, peculiar birds, a panda, a hippopotamus, a gigantic tortoise and a crocodile that was way bigger than the tobacco lady’s.
The man followed him stealthily, watching him through glass cases and over the top of cabinets.
There was a calf with two heads and an extinct Tasmanian tiger. Each animal had a small tombstone of gold which gave the name of the animal, where it came from and when it had died.
Mik went up to the next floor and through a heavy door. He came out onto a bridge stretching high above a large gallery. The air was cold and stale. Mik stood amazed and wide-eyed among colossal skeletons. Some hung from the ceiling on steel wires. The biggest ones were on the floor below. They were whales: a baleen whale, a blue whale, a sperm whale and an orca. Vertebrae as big as tree stumps were attached to other vertebrae with metal fixtures. Enormous heads followed by ribs which joined together as they reached the tails. In black felt-tip on the biggest skull someone had written ‘shag’.
There was an open booth like a telephone kiosk in the middle of the bridge. Inside was a loudspeaker and a button that Mik pressed. The whale sound started up. Long-drawnout, mournful sounds.
‘They’re singing,’ said someone standing behind Mik.
It was the mystery man. On his shirt was a badge which said ‘Security’. The whale sound came to an end with a scraping noise in the loudspeaker.
Mik stayed where he was in the booth, not making a sound. He looked at the museum guard and thought he was going to be told off for something. Anything at all: that he was there, that someone had written a rude word on the skeleton. Or because he had dared to press the button. Or because he existed.
‘The whales come from Gondwana,’ said the museum guard. ‘A lost continent. Although that’s hard to believe. Their ancestors lived on land, but that was a long time ago. Sixty million years.’
‘On land?’ said Mik.
‘Yes. They’re not fish, if that’s what you thought. Whales are mammals with the largest lungs in the world. They were four-legged animals, a kind of dog, before they stepped into the water and left all the land animals behind.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘If you look at a whale’s penis there’s no doubt it was once a dog.’
‘Its penis?’
‘Yes.’
The guard reached across in front of Mik and pressed the whale-song button again.
‘Listen. They’re singing to each other. They’re keeping the herd together and singing in the depths of the ocean. They can be underwater for an hour before they have to come up for air. But sometimes they suffocate.’
‘Drown?’
‘Kind of. They swim the wrong way, up onto land. Whales haven’t got a breastbone so they suffocate under their own weight on the shore. Whole herds can swim together onto dry land and die.’
‘Why?’
‘Nobody knows. But I think they lose their magnetic compass.’
The whale song ended.
Mik pressed the button again and said, ‘Perhaps they are longing to be on land again.’
He turned around but the guard had gone.
His class rushed into the whale gallery. The boys bellowed and shrieked and the sounds echoed between the skeletons. Stefan’s face was blue. Åsa and her friends held their noses and made vomiting gestures at the smell. Their teacher’s forehead was shiny with sweat.
‘Look,’ said Andreas. ‘“Shag”.’
Ploppy and Stefan pushed Mik out of the booth and pressed the button until the sound got stuck and the whales just howled. Mik looked for the museum guard but couldn’t see him anywhere.
Their teacher had managed to get the class onto the 509 bus to Solna. Mik and Ploppy sat next to each other. The bus set off. Their teacher stood in the aisle and held on and tried to control her pup
ils.
‘You disappeared,’ said Ploppy to Mik.
‘No I didn’t. You were the ones who disappeared.’
‘We saw a stone from the moon. A little stone we got from America. They brought it home with them when they went to the moon.’
‘I missed that.’
‘It was just an ordinary stone.’
‘Did you know the whale was once a dog?’
‘No,’ said Ploppy, pulling a stupid face. ‘A whale has always been a whale.’
‘Wrong. Sixty million years ago it was a dog.’
‘Yeah, right,’ said Ploppy, picking his nose. ‘And Godzilla lives in Solna Swimming Centre.’
‘You can tell from its penis,’ said Mik.
The bus stayed at the same bus stop for a long time. A passenger who had got on was causing trouble with the driver.
‘Whales can hold their breath for an hour,’ said Mik.
But Ploppy didn’t answer. He was looking along the aisle to the front of the bus.
Sara pointed and said, ‘Look at that idiot.’
Mik craned his neck to see the front. A stocky, drunk man stood there, swaying and shouting at the driver, who answered calmly, ‘You can’t get on. That’s all there is to it. I make the decisions here. Either you get off or I’m calling the police on my radio.’
‘Listen, you baboon. You can go to hell, you and the rest of this bus. Here I am, a member of the public, and I’m not allowed to get on.’
Mik had stopped breathing. The pressure built up in his head. His blood pounded and his ears were burning bright red. An older man in front of Mik turned to the woman beside him and said, ‘These winos. You get sick and tired of them. There seem to be more and more these days.’
A young man in a leather jacket shouted, ‘Throw him off, let’s go.’
‘Get a move on,’ called a few girls who were sitting right at the back.
The drunk man stepped off the bus, shouting and swearing. The doors closed, the bus driver pulled away. The whole class started talking quietly and whispering spread from seat to seat. Some giggled. Some laughed out loud.
Thin Ice Page 3