They stared at each other, weighing up the situation, calculating. If he ran over to the other side of the road and up onto the ridge of snow pushed against the fence by the snow plough, it might work. But if it didn’t work he would be trapped against the fence. It was too high. He wouldn’t be able to climb over.
Evil, pale-blue eyes stared at him, following his every move. A gurgling sound came from the dog’s throat and its lips twitched. It showed its teeth and said, ‘Look what I’ve got. And what have you got? Little wimp.’
Mik stood in his boots.
Time passed. He was going to be late. His first day and already late. Mik prepared himself and ran. The dog immediately started chasing him. The barking ripped at his ears. The animal was going to get him, grab him by the throat. They always went for the throat. Mik scrambled up the heap of snow beside the road. He heard the yelping, and the rope whistled. He sank into the snow. It was a trap. He fell and rolled out into the icy road, slipped and tried to go faster, but his legs only spun and his thigh muscles burned. Fell again – shit. Rolled onto his back and raised his hands. Protected his neck and got ready to kick. The dog took a powerful leap and hung in the air above him.
Now it would be death by dog.
There was a whip-crack and the beast flew backwards with a sudden jerk. It hurtled round in a somersault and let out a suffocated whine. So that was how long the rope was.
Mik shuffled back on his elbows, stood up and brushed off the snow. The dog slunk away with its ears back, throwing a look over its shoulder.
‘Bloody mongrel,’ said Mik. ‘Go and die.’
All the pupils were sitting in their places. Twelve of them, all ages, but all in the same class. The teacher looked as old as the school. She stood with Mik in front of her and put her wrinkled hands on his shoulders. He wriggled free.
‘This is Mik. He is going to be in our school for a while and you must be as nice as you can to him.’
Everyone stared. Unfamiliar eyes. Some grinned; others glared. Mik looked from one to the other. He wanted to go home.
Pi sat by the window. She smiled and pushed her ears forward with her fingers. Waggled them.
The teacher rested her hands on his shoulders again.
‘Now you must tell the class a little bit about yourself.’
Mik wriggled free again and stood there in silence.
‘But there must be something you can tell us about yourself?’
‘My name is Mik and I am … bloody small for my age and only my ears are growing.’
Pi laughed out loud and the rest of the class joined in.
Mik stood stiffly with a fixed expression. Let them laugh. It had been said: his ears had been betrayed. If they were going to tease him they’d have to find something else. And as far as the boots were concerned, they all wore the same. You wouldn’t survive here in trainers. Here you lived in boots.
‘We don’t swear,’ said the teacher.
‘Sorry, Miss.’
‘Anything else? I’m sure many here are curious about you.’
It went quiet. Everyone waited expectantly for him to say something. A chair scraped, a pen fell to the floor, someone with a runny nose sniffed.
‘I’m going to break the world record for holding your breath,’ said Mik. ‘At the moment Peter Hirvell from Germany holds the record without hyperventilating or using oxygen. The record is six minutes and three seconds.’
‘Well, well,’ said the teacher.
‘Over six minutes?’ said a boy with freckles. ‘I don’t believe that.’
‘My own record is three minutes and five seconds. If I survived, that is. I’m not sure about that.’
‘Obviously you survived,’ said the teacher. ‘You’re standing here.’
Mik looked around.
‘Maybe this is a parallel world.’
‘That sounds interesting,’ said the teacher. ‘You can go and sit down now, next to Pi. She will help you get the right books and so on. You will have to try and find your level in maths and English. I don’t know how much you know and how far you had got in your school at home. But I’m sure it will all sort itself out.’
Mik sat down and Pi leaned against him and whispered in his ear, ‘You’re funny.’
‘Me?’
The first lesson wasn’t a problem. They were allowed to draw while the teacher read out loud from a book. Mik drew a hawk owl.
During the first break, Pi and her friends gathered around him. Pi pointed first to one, then to another and said, ‘This is Filip, with the freckles. He’s moody and he’s snotty.’
‘No-o,’ said Filip and wiped his nose on his jacket sleeve.
‘And this is Oskar. His brain is as curly as his hair. That’s why he’s cross-eyed. The curls have tangled everything up so his eyes cross.’
‘I’m called Mik,’ said Mik.
‘We know that,’ said Filip. ‘And your dad’s an alcoholic. That’s why you’re here.’
Mik took a step backwards. ‘That’s not true,’ he said.
‘Everyone knows,’ said Filip. ‘He’s in a clinic and you’re here. We know your mum’s dead and you’re a problem child. Stockholm’s full of problem kids.’
‘I haven’t got any problems,’ said Mik.
‘Why are you here then?’ said Oskar.
Mik shrugged.
‘Three minutes and five seconds,’ said Filip. ‘I don’t believe that.’
‘Parallel world?’ said Oskar.
Mik looked from one to the other. Filip grinned, bent over and filled his arms with snow. Oskar circled Mik once. Looked him over from Lena’s ugly hat down to his boots. The predators were out and sniffing their prey. Now he was going to get snow rubbed in his face. Get an icicle in the eye, or …
Pi took a step forward and stood close to him. She was a head taller and looked down into his eyes. She said nothing; her eyes just drilled into his.
Mik felt weak, but he would not give in. Never. But those eyes, there was something about them. His stomach sank. And the third eye, the one that looked right through him. Was it hypnotism, or did he have a temperature? He was actually shaking. Maybe he had caught a cold while standing for such a long time in the square waiting for Lena – or was it something else? A disease that only existed up here in the forest, that all newcomers got? Or was it something she was doing?
Pi suddenly bent towards his shoulder and sucked his earlobe into her mouth. A powerful shock ran from his brain and down through his entire body, bounced around his testicles and out into his legs, only to ping up to his brain again. He stopped breathing.
‘Look how red he’s gone,’ said Filip.
His heart raced.
Pi let go of his earlobe and looked at him. ‘He’s not breathing.’
‘Look, he’s turned blue.’
Mik fell.
He was far away in another world, spinning. He lay in a warm ocean, rolled gently by the waves. A few fish swam up and stared at him. Red and blue, some stripy with pointed mouths. Others with soft, round lips. He sank deeper and saw the sky up above and the sun sent down a drapery of gold into the water.
Mik came round with Pi’s face close to his. She was blowing air into his mouth. The air smelled of strawberry bubblegum. He lay perfectly still with his eyes closed and heard Oskar say, ‘Is he dead?’
‘Please breathe,’ said Pi. She filled her lungs with air and blew into his mouth again.
He felt her tongue against his. Touched it. Pi backed away.
‘He’s alive.’
Mik opened his eyes. The bell rang.
THE TABLET MURDERER
Mik walked over the bridge and his footsteps felt unbelievably light. All of him felt light, as if he was filled with oxygen. Something had lifted, somehow. He leaned over the railing and spat into the water, kicked some clumps of snow down and watched them sail along with the current. Then he ran over the bridge.
‘Woof.’
Mik stopped, his boots skidding.
&n
bsp; The brain-damaged dog sat waiting for him, its cold, pale blue eyes staring. Its mouth opened and closed, gurgling coming from its throat.
‘Die,’ shouted Mik, and ran.
The rope whined. The dog came level with him. Its jaws snapped shut right behind him.
CRACK.
The dog flew up in an arc and landed on its back.
There was a hole in Mik’s thermal trousers. The dog loped back. Mik hurled a lump of packed snow after it but missed. The dog growled without looking at him.
Old man Gustavsson came out onto his front steps and yelled, ‘What are you doing? Are you being cruel to the dog?’
‘I hate dogs,’ shouted Mik and ran.
‘I hate children.’
Lena was baking cinnamon buns. The whole house smelled of newly baked buns. She gave him a plateful and he tucked in.
‘I’m not much good at baking buns,’ said Lena. ‘Haven’t done any baking since … I don’t know when.’
‘You’re good at buns.’
‘How was school?’
Mik chewed a mouthful of bun and then swallowed. Took another one.
‘I was funny. Look, I’ve drawn an owl.’
He showed her his drawing and she thought it was very good. She pinned it up on the hall wall beside a photo of a dog.
‘Is that Gustavsson’s dog?’
‘No.’
Mik looked closely at the photo. It looked exactly liked Gustavsson’s mad dog.
‘That’s Decca. My dog.’
‘Was it as nasty as Gustavsson’s dog?’
‘No. Gentle but bonkers. She often chased things that weren’t there. Barked and rushed around. I think she saw spirits in her head. Although sometimes I did actually think Decca saw things no one else saw. Then one day she chased something out onto the lake.’
Lena shook her head.
‘I couldn’t stop her. She went right through the ice out there in the middle and was taken by the current. I found her later that winter, way down the lake. She was lying under the ice, frozen solid. The school was having one of its skating days and I was helping out with the barbecue and things. I skated a bit myself and there was Decca, underneath the shiny ice. Looking beautiful, just as if she was alive. It was terrible. Bengt hacked her out for me; I didn’t want to leave her lying there. And then I burned her in the back garden.’
‘What? You burned the dog?’
‘There was so much frost in the ground and it doesn’t disappear until the beginning of June.’
‘What do you mean, frost in the ground?’
‘The ground gets frozen solid. It’s impossible to dig. You can’t bury anything.’
‘You burned the dog?’
‘Is that awful?’
‘No, it’s just … I don’t know. You burn books and you burn dogs.’
Lena laughed. ‘When you’ve finished eating you can run an errand for me.’
Mik nodded, his mouth full of bun. Lena put a red box and a blue box on the table. The boxes had small compartments with transparent lids with M, Tu, W, Th, F, Sa, Su written on them. It reminded Mik of trays of fishing flies. In each compartment there were tablets, and Mik realised the letters were the days of the week.
‘These are Bengt’s and Bertil’s tablet dispensers, to make sure they take their medication when they should. Would you take them down to them? Then I can finish baking.’
‘Yes.’
‘Take a bag of buns for each of them. Bengt lives in the left house and has the blue box, and Bertil in the right house has the red one. You can go straight in, without knocking.’
Mik hesitated on Bengt’s steps. Go in without ringing the bell? That felt strange. Could you really do that? That was almost like breaking in. He looked around. The pile of snow beside the door was yellow with frozen pee. He wouldn’t want to fall into that.
Of course he had to ring. You can’t just walk straight into people’s houses. They could be … well, naked or asleep. Back home in Solna you phoned first and asked if it was okay to come round. Then you went round and rang the bell. That meant the person who opened would have had time to tidy up and hide all the empty bottles.
Mik looked around the door frame. There was no doorbell. He knocked with his knuckles, lightly to start with. No one opened. He knocked a bit harder. There was complete silence. Then he thumped hard and heard a faint voice.
‘Who’s that idiot banging on my door? Come on in.’
Bengt sat at the table in the cluttered kitchen, doing a crossword. Dipped a roll into his coffee and mumbled, without looking up at the visitor, ‘Papyrus boat. Two letters?’
‘Ra,’ said Mik.
Bengt looked over the top of his glasses.
‘Ra?’
He lowered his gaze to his crossword and wrote.
‘Well, I’ll be damned; that’s right. I’ve been sitting here for an hour thinking papyrus bloody boat. Ra. That solves the down word, too. Priest.’
It was stuffy and a bit smelly in Bengt’s kitchen. On the draining board lay three pike, staring with rigid eyes. A clock with a gold pendulum ticked on the wall and below the clock was a wall-hanging with a picture of elk.
‘I’ve got cinnamon buns here from Lena and your tablets.’
‘Put them on the draining board.’
Mik set them down beside the pike.
‘Big fish,’ said Mik.
‘No, only tiddlers.’
‘Bye then.’
‘Bye bye,’ said Bengt, not looking up from his crossword. ‘You going in to Bertil?’
‘Yes.’
‘Don’t listen to him; he’s off his head.’
‘Does he sell pike to ICA?’ asked Mik.
‘Yes.’
‘And you to Konsum?’
‘Yes. But he’s a poacher, blast him.’
Bertil didn’t have a doorbell either. Should he simply go in? Should he knock? He stood there on the steps, hesitating. Could he just leave the bag of buns and the tablets here on the steps? No, that would be silly. He lifted his hand and the door opened. And there stood Bertil. He looked like Bengt, but thinner. Bushy eyebrows and a fat nose.
‘You’re knocking. You don’t have to. You can come straight in.’
‘But I didn’t knock. I was thinking about it, that’s all.’
‘Perhaps that’s enough.’
Mik followed Bertil into the kitchen. It was neat and tidy and smelled clean. The washing-up had been done. Otherwise it was exactly the same as Bengt’s. The wall clock hung in the same place. Same rugs, chairs, table and kitchen sofa, except everything here was more colourful. Below the clock was a wall-hanging with elk.
‘It’s all about synchronicity,’ said Bertil.
Mik put the bag of buns and the tablet box on the table.
‘What’s that?’
Bertil stared at him. ‘It’s a more profound interconnection that we still don’t properly understand. There are simultaneous occurrences apart from those based on cause and effect. It’s about time and space connecting in a meaningful way.’
Mik had no idea what the old man was talking about but it was probably best to agree. He nodded and said, ‘I’ve put the buns on the table.’
‘There is a crossroads where a number of factors coincide to create something new. One moment in time is completely wrong, another completely right. We are dealing with factors that exist beyond our divisions of time, space and matter.’
‘Precisely,’ said Mik. ‘The buns are on the table.’
‘Oh, buns. Very nice. Then I’ll put the coffee on. Want a cup?’
‘No, I’ve got homework to do. Bye.’
On the way home, Mik started to wonder if he had got it right. Had Bengt been given the blue box and Bertil the red? Or had he given them the wrong ones? Perhaps Bengt had been given the red box and Bertil the blue? He wasn’t sure. Did it matter? Suppose Bengt took a tablet meant for Bertil, and Bengt’s tablets made Bertil ill, or …
No, they’d got the right boxes, t
hought Mik. I ought to be able to manage a simple thing like that. Two boxes in two different colours. But if it was wrong, would it make that much difference? All the tablets in the compartments looked the same, after all.
Maths homework, not a lot. He sat in his room and tried to do the calculations but thought mostly of Pi. ‘You’re funny,’ she had said.
He liked her saying that. He liked the fact that she saw him like that.
He had been given the sums for homework so that his teacher could see how much he knew, where he was up to. Idiotic sums about Lisa buying four and a half kilos of cheese, and Claes mixing orange squash for everyone at a party and how much squash everyone got in their glass.
Mik managed to do most of the calculations, even though it was hard to concentrate. He kept a watch through the window to see when the Selström brothers would empty their potties. They hadn’t done it yet. Imagine if they were lying dead in there. Perhaps he had made a mistake with the boxes after all.
He tried to remember, to visualise the colour of the box he put down beside the pike at Bengt’s. It was first blue in his mind, then it was green and eventually red. He had forgotten now who should have had which.
They’d better come out soon and empty their potties.
Dead, perhaps. Poisoned by tablets.
Mik tried to count but could only see the old men swallowing tablet after tablet.
M, Tu, W, Th, F, Sa, Su.
The next sum was: Sven has a full tank of petrol in his red car. The tank takes 62 litres. He drives until he runs out of petrol. How far has he driven? The car uses 0.76 litres for every ten kilometres.
Think if they were lying in their beds, pissing blood and writhing about in the throes of death? The tablet murderer had arrived in the village.
He tried to sit still and do the sums one after the other. Stina who bought strawberries. If a litre costs twenty-four kronor how much does seven-tenths of a litre cost?
Thin Ice Page 6