Thin Ice

by Mikael Engström

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’ asked the teacher, looking from pupil to pupil.

  The laughter faded away. No one answered, but some grinned and opened their eyes wide and there was more whispering. The teacher shook her head and looked at them in surprise.

  ‘What are you whispering about? It was only an old drunk.’

  ‘It was Mik’s dad,’ said Stefan.

  Mik had heard everything that was said and whispered. The words were being sucked round like screams inside his brain. Tumbling and bouncing against the walls of his skull, the words refused to stop and be put in order. It was as if someone had forced a hand blender into his head and switched on the sharp blades. His brain became red gloop. Round and round, until it screamed. And it was a thousand years to the next bus stop. Snake moved about inside him.

  The bus stopped and the doors opened. Mik rushed off and the class pressed their noses to the windows.

  For hours he wandered around aimlessly in the rain. It had started as snow but now it was raining. The neon lights of the shops were reflected in the wet asphalt, cold blue colours, cruel green colours and angry red colours.

  Should he go home?

  He didn’t want to.

  Should he go …?

  Where was there to go if not home?

  Everyone goes home.

  He stopped outside the tobacconist’s, rubbed the dirty window with his mitten and looked at the crocodile. What a rotten life it had now it was dead, lying here leaking sawdust while the buses and cars thundered past.

  Why is it in the shop window? That’s what I was going to ask.

  Mik went in. The tobacco lady sat on a chair behind the counter, smoking a cigarette in a long weird holder. She blew smoke up at the ceiling and said, ‘Never start smoking. It’s expensive and unhealthy.’

  ‘Why is there a crocodile in the window?’

  ‘Why?’ She looked surprised. ‘Why? I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘No. Do I have to? Does a person have to know everything?’

  Mik couldn’t find anything to say. She gave him a couple of bars of chocolate and he left.

  Mik waited inside the entrance for Tony, waited for him to come on the bus from school. The light had gone out. He didn’t press the timer button, which was glowing red, but stood inside in the dark, looking through the glass doors. Ate the chocolate and watched the bus stop. He was cold in his wet clothes, tried to warm himself against the radiator, thinking: if you have a crocodile in your window, you ought to know why.

  Buses came and people hurried off to get home quickly. Mik took out his mobile and wondered who he should ring. The principal, perhaps. Tell him he’d left school for good. Or ring the man in the baby-blue jacket. Say he was sorry. Tell him he hadn’t meant it. Or had he? Had he meant to do it? If you throw a big, sharp stone at someone you ought to know why. Did he know? Mik considered it for a while, staring out at the bus stop. He was chilled right through to his backbone; he pressed himself harder against the radiator. Played with the buttons on the mobile, put it to his ear.

  ‘Hello. Sorry.’

  A police car pulled up at the pavement. Two police officers were sitting in the car. They put on the interior light and shuffled pieces of paper about, and one of them wrote something on a pad. The 515 bus pulled up on the other side of the street and a stream of people hurried off the bus towards the train station.

  Tony came walking diagonally across the road. Mik was happy. His big brother. They would make dinner together, play video games. Do some boxing.

  The policemen stepped out of the car and stopped Tony. They spoke for a little while and then led him to the car, opened the back door, pushed him inside and drove off. Mik ran out and watched the car disappear. Saw the red rear lights blend in with all the other red rear lights in the rush-hour traffic.

  Why had they taken him with them? Mik didn’t understand. He was shoved left and right by people hurrying through the rain to get home and couldn’t understand any of it.

  The door was unlocked. Dad was lying on the kitchen floor. On the table was an empty spirits bottle and a collection of beer cans. He was bleeding from a cut on his temple. He had hit himself on the window sill and dragged the plant pot and the curtains with him. Mik fetched a cushion and a blanket. Covered him over, lifted his head, pushed in the pillow. His dad opened his eyes. It was a blank look, as if no one existed behind them. There was only emptiness and darkness.

  ‘Can you hear the music?’ he said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s the cooker; it’s playing music. Hear it?’

  ‘Dad, there’s no music. The cooker can’t play music.’

  Mik became frightened. He looked at the cooker but couldn’t hear anything. His dad shivered with cold under the blanket.

  Tony had to come. Tony would know what to do. They had to –

  The doorbell rang. It’s Tony. It must be Tony. He’s forgotten his keys. It must be … he’s …

  Mik rushed to the door and opened it, and there outside stood the strangers. The woman with the parrot earrings and the man with the gold tooth.

  ‘Hello. Are you Mik?’

  He tried to shut the door, but Gold Tooth held onto the handle.

  ‘We’re from the social services. I’m called Linda and this is Kent,’ said the woman with the parrot earrings.

  Mik looked at them. What did they want?

  ‘Is your dad home?’

  ‘No,’ said Mik. ‘He’s doing overtime.’

  ‘But he’s out of work.’

  ‘No, he drives a lorry.’

  ‘I see,’ said Gold Tooth.

  There was a crash from the kitchen. A chair fell over.

  ‘I don’t want to hear the music. Turn off the music. Please, help me. Turn off …’

  Parrot Earrings took a step into the hall.

  ‘Is that your dad who –’

  ‘He’s got a cold,’ said Mik.

  The strangers went into the kitchen. His dad crawled across the floor for a short distance and then collapsed.

  ‘You can’t get a worse cold than this,’ said Gold Tooth, and crouched down beside Mik’s dad.

  Then they took it in turns to talk to Mik.

  ‘We’re here to help you.’

  ‘Your dad will also get help. He’s very ill.’

  They phoned for an ambulance.

  ‘We can put you in a temporary home for tonight. Would you like that?’

  ‘No,’ said Mik. ‘I live here.’

  ‘Can you sleep here tonight?’

  ‘I always sleep here every night.’

  The man and the woman looked at each other.

  ‘But you can come with us instead. It might be a bit … lonely here.’

  ‘No, my big brother’s coming soon, he’s almost seventeen and …’

  The ambulance came quickly. Two men in green with an orange stretcher. They got Mik’s dad into a sitting position and spread a yellow blanket over him. ‘Hospital Property’, it said on the blanket.

  ‘Are you sure you’ll be able to manage tonight?’

  ‘Yes. Tony’s coming soon.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘He’s probably … at football practice.’

  Parrot Earrings wanted to take Mik with them there and then, but he refused and locked himself in his room. They slid a note under his door with a phone number so he could ring if he wanted anything. Mik listened through the door.

  ‘Will you be all right, then? Is there any food in?’

  ‘I’ve already eaten and Tony will be here soon.’

  ‘Your family will get help. Everything will be all right. We’ll soon get this sorted out.’

  They left.

  The flat became silent and empty. Mik switched on all the lights, even the ones in the toilet and the big hall cupboard. But the Snake had woken up. Mik put on both the radio and the TV.

  The Snake began to move.

  Tony would be angry.
Strangers weren’t to be allowed in, but that was exactly what he had done, and they had taken Dad to hospital.

  He picked up a large cushion, lay in front of the TV and wondered if it was good or if it was bad. Something big had happened, one way or another, but what it was he didn’t know. Who had he let in? And what would happen now?

  He didn’t want to watch any of Tony’s horror films. He put an old tape in the video player: The Brothers Lionheart, which he must have seen a hundred times. He knew the story inside out. The tape was worn, the picture fuzzy, with flickering lines. Tengil’s men stood up on the wall with swords and spears. Black helmets and flapping cloaks. And there were the brothers, Skorpan and Jonatan. Mik fell asleep in front of the television.

  ‘Mik. Wake up.’

  Tony was shaking him.

  ‘Mik, where’s the old man?’

  ‘I let them in.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘They took Dad.’

  ‘Took Dad?’

  ‘In an ambulance.’

  Mik found the note he had been given and handed it to Tony.

  ‘Solna Social Services,’ said Tony.

  ‘We’re going to get help.’

  PART 2

  LAND OF ICE

  THE JOURNEY

  Mik put on his outdoor clothes and tied the laces of his trainers. He had already packed his bag early that morning. The woman with parrots in her ears lifted it into the boot of the car.

  ‘Now, have you got everything?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Haven’t you got any better shoes?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s a small bag,’ she said, trying to pretend to be his friend.

  But she wasn’t his friend. She was the woman with the parrots in her ears. Never, ever would he be her friend.

  They climbed into the car.

  ‘The bus leaves the city terminal at twenty past twelve. We’ll have to hurry. Put your seat-belt on.’

  They stopped and started all the way out of Solna, past Norrtull and into Stockholm. There was a lot of traffic and a lot of red traffic lights. As they waited for green she looked at him and chatted in an artificial voice, as if she was trying to be a child herself, but what she was saying was completely incomprehensible.

  ‘Do you know what is going to happen now?’

  ‘No. How would I know that?’

  The traffic lights changed to green.

  ‘Well, it’s like this,’ she said, accelerating away from the lights. ‘Social services can offer parents and children support and help if they want it, according to the social services legislation. That’s the law that tells us how to look after families with problems.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Mik, looking at all the buildings, signs and people.

  Taxis sounded their horns. A lorry was stopped in the middle of the road as goods were being unloaded. A bus tried to get past with only millimetres to spare. It started to rain. Parrot Earrings switched on the windscreen wipers.

  ‘Your dad will be in a treatment centre for six weeks and you are going to live with his sister, your aunt. It’s going to be a long journey. You’ll get there tomorrow. We couldn’t make a better arrangement at such short notice.’

  ‘I can live at home,’ said Mik.

  ‘Not on your own.’

  ‘With Tony. He’s my big brother.’

  ‘Tony won’t be living at home either.’

  ‘Is he coming to auntie’s, then?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘We’re nearly there now. We’ve just got to find your bus.’

  ‘Can I come home again?’

  ‘Of course. This is only a temporary solution. Everything’s going to be fine. That’s my job, you could say.’

  ‘What? Making things fine?’

  She smiled at him. He did not smile back at her. No one had asked him anything. It had all just happened. He was given money and he bought his ticket himself from the bus driver. The bus was going to Umeå and from there he had to get a bus to the end of the world. Parrot Earrings had written it all down on a piece of paper.

  Mik chose a seat by the window, the bus pulled away and she waved from outside. He did not wave back.

  He hadn’t met Auntie Lena for several years. At the funeral, maybe. Dark hair, big brown eyes and a husky voice. That was all he could remember about her. And that she lived way up in northern Sweden, so far away that they had never been to visit her. He had no idea whether she was nice or nasty or hard work.

  There was a TV on the bus, showing a film he couldn’t understand. Mik leaned his head against the cool glass. The bus swayed gently. The evening rushed past outside a rainy window. Grey and dreary. Someone’s mobile rang; there was low chatting and the rustling of a crisp packet.

  Mik woke with his forehead against the glass and a stiff neck. It was dawn and the whole landscape was white. The snow lay thick and it weighed down the branches of the fir trees. There was forest, forest and more forest. The wilderness seemed endless but every so often a house appeared or a whole farm. Then the buildings grew gradually closer. They drove into a large town and there he changed to another bus. The driver helped him find the right one.

  Mik was on the coast and would now be travelling many kilometres inland. The second bus was old and rattled and smelled horrible. There were only a few passengers.

  Forest, forest, forest.

  After a two-hour drive along bumpy roads, houses began to appear among the trees. No big buildings, no blocks of flats, but small, pretty houses with hats of snow. The mounds left by the snow ploughs were enormous and the snow was incredibly white. Never had he seen so much winter. ‘Centre’, it said on a sign.

  The bus swung into a little square and pulled up between two grocery stores, Konsum and ICA.

  Was this the shopping centre?

  A few people were standing in the square, waiting by their steaming cars. Not many people got off the bus: Mik, two ladies and a young man in a military uniform with a huge rucksack.

  It was cold, terribly cold. The snow creaked under his shoes. Mik looked around the square, but there was no one there who could be his aunt. The driver opened the luggage compartment and Mik was handed his bag. The ladies and the soldier were hugged by the people who had come to meet them. They laughed and said, ‘Oh, it’s been so long since we saw you.’

  ‘How was the journey?’

  ‘Was there snow in Stockholm?’

  ‘Anything happen in the village?’

  ‘What could possibly happen here?’

  The people meeting the passengers packed their luggage into the cars and drove off. The bus drove off too. Mik stood all alone in a snow-covered square in a snow-covered village. He looked at the green Konsum sign then turned his head in the other direction and saw the red ICA sign.

  The minutes lengthened into a quarter of an hour. The cold made its way through the soles of his shoes and up into his feet. His knees began to shake. The cold travelled further up into his stomach and met the cold coming down through his head. His whole body shook.

  An old man came along on a kick sledge. He had fish in a box on the seat.

  ‘What are you waiting for?’ said the old man, who had a fat red nose and bushy eyebrows that met in the middle.

  ‘My auntie.’

  ‘Auntie?’ said the old man and looked around the empty square. ‘Did you come on the bus?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then perhaps you came on the wrong day.’

  The old man parked his sledge outside the Konsum shop, picked up the box of fish and went in.

  Wrong day, thought Mik. I can’t have come on the wrong day. I came today. When else would I have come? I don’t even know where I’ve come to. I don’t know anything.

  He tramped up and down on the spot to get warm. The man came out with an empty box, put it in the sledge and set off.

  A few children the same age as Mik came running across the square, their toboggans bouncing behind them. Th
ey came to a standstill, staring at him. There were two boys and a girl and they were better dressed for winter than Mik, with their thermal trousers, padded jackets and woolly hats. They stood there and stared for a while. Mik held his bag in his hand and stared back. It started to snow.

  ‘Look what big ears he’s got,’ one of the boys said. He had snot running from his nose.

  ‘And red,’ said the other one.

  ‘He’s freezing,’ said the girl, who had long dark hair and a large blue-black birth mark under her right eye.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Probably came on the bus.’

  ‘What for?’

  Mik couldn’t stop himself staring at the birthmark. It looked like a third eye.

  ‘What are you staring at? The birthmark? I’m having an operation to take it away.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Mik.

  ‘Know what?’ said the boy with the runny nose. ‘You ought to have an operation to get rid of your ears.’

  Laughing, they ran into Konsum, coming out a moment later with bulging bags of sweets. Only the girl turned round and looked at him with her three eyes. She pulled her earlobe and smiled. Mik took out his mobile and pretended to answer an important phone call.

  The snow fell even more heavily. One or two people went into ICA to do some shopping, and one or two people went into Konsum. But not many. For long periods of time he stood completely alone in the square.

  Somewhere far off a dog barked. A car skidded at the road junction. Snow settled on his head and shoulders. He was so cold his teeth chattered. His feet ached.

  It was already starting to get dark. It was strange – it had only just got light and now it was getting dark again. He had come to a place with very short days. He had come to the wrong place. He didn’t want to be here.

  The old man with the kick sledge came back with a new box of pike on the seat. He stopped in front of Mik.

  ‘And what are you waiting for?’

  ‘I told you, my auntie.’

  ‘Auntie?’

  ‘You’ve already asked me that,’ said Mik.

  ‘What? Did I ask you?’

  ‘Yes. A little while ago.’

  ‘You’re getting snowed on.’

  The old man parked his sledge outside the ICA store and went in with his box of fish. Mik watched him. He must have a short memory, but that’s probably what happened here. Their memories froze solid.