Thin Ice

by Mikael Engström

  Tony slept on a mattress on the floor in Mik’s attic room. Mik woke several times during the night, astonished that Tony was lying there on the floor. That it wasn’t a dream, that it was true. But even if it was true it felt like a dream. Tomorrow he would show him the river.

  Bengt lent Tony boots and a fishing line.

  ‘So,’ said Bengt. ‘You’re Mik’s big brother. He’s talked a lot about you.’

  Bengt brought out the petition, The Citizens of Selet in Support of Mik Continuing to Live in the Community.

  ‘Well, you’re not technically a resident of Selet, but in your capacity as his brother you are fully entitled to sign.’

  Tony signed.

  ‘Nice moustache,’ said Bengt. ‘A bit sparse, but it’ll grow.

  The boots fitted, and they walked through the forest to the river. The path twisted and turned and was difficult to see. It was Mik and Pi who had trampled the path – or paths. They rarely went the same way through the forest. It was a confusing system of narrow tracks and it was easy to go the wrong way.

  ‘He’s a strange old bloke,’ said Tony.

  ‘You should see his brother.’

  The water of the river reflected and played with the clear, glowing autumn colours of the trees. Red and yellow against the deep blue of the sky. Tony thought it was beautiful. It was straight out of a fairy tale, he said. Clean and bright.

  Not a sound apart from the gentle gurgling of the river. Mik pointed out the current, explained what eddies, still pools and current edges meant. That there were troughs, rocks and logs on the river bed that created surface movement. Tony listened with interest to Mik’s fishing tips about finding small fish in the shallows and bigger ones at the current edges in the still pools. He showed his big brother the best places where the fish were sure to bite. Then he went further upstream.

  Mik noticed that Tony was quite clumsy, his feet slipping on the stony shore and into the water. And the way he fished was completely wrong, not at all like Mik had shown him. But it didn’t matter. He was here and Mik couldn’t take his eyes off him. His big brother was here and they were fishing together. Mik had a bite and pulled a big grayling out of the river. He cheered and shouted. Tony turned round and Mik held up the fish.

  ‘Good,’ said Tony. ‘That’s a nice one.’

  Mik caught one more and Tony slipped into the water again. He tipped the water out of his boots and said it didn’t matter, soon he would be landing a really huge one. The biggest one of all.

  Mik thought that if that was the case he would be incredibly lucky, because he was doing everything wrong.

  ‘Cast your line in the pools,’ called Mik.

  Leaves fell from the trees and were carried off by the current. They fished until evening. Tony caught some fish, too, but they were small ones. Mik gutted the fish quickly and expertly while Tony stood beside him thinking it seemed a bit messy.

  ‘Smart knife,’ he said.

  ‘Bengt gave it to me.’

  ‘You’re all right here,’ said Tony. ‘That makes me happy. For your sake.’

  They gathered sticks and made a fire on the shore. Tony emptied the water out of his boots again and hung his socks up to dry. Mik began to barbecue the fish.

  ‘How clever you are,’ said Tony.

  ‘It was just luck. You got a few too.’

  ‘Oh, I can’t do this kind of thing. But that’s not what I meant.’

  Mik turned the fish. The fat bubbled and dropped down into the fire. Tony turned his socks, warmed his feet by the fire and went on, ‘I mean you’ve come through this okay. That’s what I wanted to see. It makes me happy. Do you understand that, Mik? You make me happy.’

  ‘You’ve come through it okay too,’ said Mik and tasted one of the fish.

  ‘I couldn’t write any letters. I tried, but I couldn’t do it.’

  ‘It’s hard writing letters,’ said Mik, handing Tony a fish.

  In an odd way, Tony felt like a stranger to Mik. Something had changed. It wasn’t only the moustache. His way of talking, of moving, was different. Maybe no one except Mik would notice. Maybe something had happened to him too. To his way of seeing and listening. Mik didn’t know. Maybe something had happened to the whole world. Maybe it was like the river – familiar eddies and currents float past but never exactly the same, always a little different, always new. Where had Tony been? What had he done? He hadn’t actually told Mik anything.

  They ate in silence. Dusk fell. A terrifying shriek sounded from the forest. Tony turned hastily around and sat as if frozen to the spot. The shriek came again.

  ‘It’s only a bird,’ said Mik.

  ‘Blimey.’

  ‘You could live here too,’ said Mik.

  ‘That would be difficult,’ said Tony.

  ‘Why? You just have to move here. Lena can fix it. She’ll fill in a few forms and send them to the Paragraph.’

  ‘The paragraph?’

  ‘Yeah, and then we can go fishing every day, and next summer we can build a –’

  ‘Mik,’ said Tony, looking at him over the flames, his eyes shiny with tears. ‘It’s not that simple.’

  Mik was about to say something. He opened his mouth, but Tony held up his hand. The look in his eyes had changed. It was scared and darted about. He gazed into the fire, then out into the darkness across the river. A tear shone on his cheek. He filled his lungs and then exhaled slowly.

  ‘Remember that gun in the wardrobe?’

  ‘Yes, it had gone.’

  ‘Dennis and I, we … we went into a filling station in Huvudsta. We got some money, cigarettes. The place I’m living now … I’ll be there some time.’

  Mik understood what Tony was saying. He understood the meaning of the words, individually, but his brain refused to put them together. He shot up, ran to the river and started hurling pebbles out into the pitch darkness. Pebble after pebble. Hard and far. He tried to hit something out there in the darkness. Something smack in the head. The hate, smack in the head. He threw until the pain dug and tore at his shoulder. Tony stayed by the fire. An unmoving silhouette, bent forward like an old man. Mik squeezed a pebble hard in his hand.

  ‘What’s going on with Dad? Do you know anything?’

  ‘No,’ said Tony. ‘I don’t know anything.’

  ‘He’s a zombie,’ said Mik and dropped the pebble.

  Tony put his socks back on. They had dried. He stepped into the boots and said, ‘There’s only you and me now.’

  ‘Yeah. Zombie children.’

  ‘And we’ll get through this.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Mik. ‘Shall we go home now?’

  Early on Sunday morning, Lena and Mik went to wave Tony off from the bus stop in the square. Mik started to cry, which made Tony start crying too. Lena tried to comfort them and said she was sure they would see each other again soon, that Tony could come and visit whenever he wanted. That everything was going to be all right.

  ‘It’ll all work out,’ she said, and then she started crying.

  Mik cried all the way home. They walked past the school, over the bridge, past Gustavsson’s dog, who stepped aside. Mik saw the world through a grey mist, and it wasn’t the same world any more since Tony had been here. Whether it was good or bad he didn’t know, but there was just so much he had suddenly remembered that he didn’t want to remember. It was just that so many things were the way they were and he didn’t want them to be the way they were.

  ‘Look,’ said Lena, pointing up at the top of a birch tree down by Bengt’s house.

  The hawk owl was sitting there.

  THE LETTER

  The last remaining leaves fell from the trees. The days became shorter, the nights longer and colder. Thin, clear ice settled along Lake Selet’s shoreline. Lena began burning books again to keep the electricity bills down.

  One Tuesday the first snow fell. It fell heavily. The whole world turned white as if someone had waved a magic wand. All the schoolchildren ran out at break time an
d started throwing snowballs, sliding on their backsides and rubbing snow in the faces of those who deserved it. They cheered, laughed and shouted.

  Synchro-Bertil had forecast from perch fins that it would be a cold winter to break all records. Long, plenty of snow and very cold. It seemed as if he was right. The temperature plunged. Clear, starry nights came with the flashing northern lights, and steam rose from the lake.

  Mik lay awake and heard the song the ice made as it was forming. Long, magical notes the cold played as the water changed and set solid. The moon was suspended up there and the hawk owl sat in the tree. Everything was white. The fir trees in the forest on the mountainside stood weighed down with snow just like in a winter fairy tale, and smoke rose from every chimney in the village. The ice land was back.

  Mik sat on the sledge with the headwind piercing his face like ice-cold needles. Bengt kept a fast pace. The ice on Lake Selet lay shiny, free of snow and untouched, like glass. Mik had to shout to make Bengt hear him.

  ‘How can you tell there’s going to be lots of winter by looking at perch?’

  ‘You can’t.’

  ‘Yes, Synchro-Bertil can.’

  ‘The only thing Bertil can do is talk a load of rubbish.’

  ‘There’s lots of winter now,’ said Mik.

  ‘Winter is winter,’ said Bengt, and that was the end of the conversation about Bertil’s perch.

  They stopped at the first hole. Bengt used his axe to break through the ice that had formed overnight, and Mik grabbed the fishing line.

  ‘We’ve got one. He’s big.’

  His arms twitched and jerked. The line hissed round in the hole.

  ‘It’s an ice dragon,’ said Mik and slipped and fell over.

  Bengt laughed.

  ‘Take it easy now. Haul it up.’

  Mik struggled and an enormous gaping mouth came up out of the hole and chewed at thin air with its fangs. Its jaws slammed shut with a dull thud. Bengt crouched down and took a strong hold around its gills.

  ‘Watch out for the slime!’ shouted Mik. ‘You can be paralysed. They spit out slime and you can go blind, lame or deaf.’

  ‘We’ll be making fishballs out of this one,’ said Bengt. ‘They’re good, just like meatballs.’

  ‘Isn’t it going to France?’

  ‘No, Konsum Lasse has finished with all that. He’s got rid of the pike business too.’

  Bengt laid the fish in the box, then suddenly looked up.

  They heard the roar of an engine going at top speed and a sledge came travelling at a terrifying pace over the ice. It was Synchro-Bertil.

  ‘Has he got an engine on his sledge?’ said Mik.

  ‘Yes, dammit. The idiot has attached the chainsaw, with its blade down in the ice.

  ‘Why don’t you sell your fish to ICA too?’

  ‘No,’ said Bengt. ‘Here you’re either a Konsum person or an ICA person.’

  ‘That’s what Lena said, but she does her shopping at ICA now.’

  ‘I wouldn’t set foot in the place.’

  ‘Where do you do your shopping?’

  ‘Gustavsson does it for me.’

  ‘At ICA?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Synchro-Bertil roared past, ice flying up from the chainsaw blade.

  ‘Hope he drives right through the ice,’ said Bengt. ‘Right through, with sledge and chainsaw and the whole shebang.’

  ‘So you can save him?’

  ‘Yep, so I can save him.’

  Mik stamped the snow from his boots on the front steps, walked inside and hung his mittens on the heater. He opened his mouth to say something about the ice-dragon balls that Bengt was going to make.

  Lena looked as if she had gone totally mad.

  She shouted, ‘I’m not good enough. Those bastards insist I’m not good enough.’

  She waved an envelope around, slung it down on the table and threw her arms out wide.

  ‘I hate them,’ she shouted. ‘Do you understand, Mik? Hate them.’

  He understood. It started somewhere down at his feet like a paralysis, wandered up through his legs and into his body, in towards the heart. Lena looked at him and clenched her fists.

  ‘Why aren’t I good enough?’

  She picked up the vase from the table, the one that had held the water lily in the summer, and threw it straight at the wall. Mik’s drawing of the hawk owl fluttered away and the photo of her dead dog fell to the floor. The vase didn’t break. Lena cried out, picked it up and threw it at the iron stove.

  This time it broke.

  RED ROSES

  Their teacher had pulled down a large map from the ceiling like a roller blind. They were doing geography and studying rivers and mountain ranges. The pupils sat in twos with their school atlases in front of them, looking for the Urals, The Apennines, the Elbe and the Oder, the Caucasus, Carpathians and the Pyrenees.

  Mik and Pi were working together. They had been given a blank map and were putting the right name in the right place. The rivers had to be coloured blue and the mountain ranges brown. Mik coloured in and Pi spelt out the awkward names.

  ‘The police,’ said Filip.

  All work stopped. Mik looked out through the window. A police car was parked in the school playground along with a normal silver-coloured car. Their doors were wide open. Their engines were running and the exhaust fumes formed clouds in the cold. But the cars were empty. How mysterious! A police car from Umeå? There hadn’t been one of those in the village since Bertil had been taken in for illegal hunting.

  Mik realised what was going on, and then Parrot Earrings and Gold Tooth entered the classroom, followed by two policemen. The teacher was frightened at first, then angry. They were storming the school as if they were arresting a bank robber. She swore at them. ‘And what the hell is this supposed to mean?’

  Parrot Earrings was out of breath.

  ‘We’re here to take someone into care, according to the law.’

  ‘Police?’

  ‘We have reason to expect trouble,’ said Gold Tooth.

  ‘Trouble?’ said the teacher. ‘This isn’t how you do things. You can’t come bursting in here, into my classroom, for goodness’ sake.’

  ‘A decision has been made about a care order,’ said Parrot Earrings.

  ‘I don’t care about that,’ said the teacher. ‘We are having a lesson and don’t want to be disturbed. And does Lena know about this?’

  ‘It won’t take long,’ said Gold Tooth. He nodded towards the policemen and pointed to where Mik was sitting. The policemen exchanged glances, looked down at their boots and puffed out their cheeks.

  ‘Fetch him and put him in the car,’ said Parrot Earrings. ‘We’re in a hurry. We must make sure this doesn’t all go wrong.’

  ‘It already has,’ said the teacher. ‘No one here is going to be fetched. In this school I make the decisions.’

  She prodded the stomach of one of the policemen. He was tall and sturdy. She had to lean her head backwards to be able to look him in the eye.

  ‘You’re called Roland, I think?’

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘You’re Erik Pål’s boy, aren’t you? From Fällfors?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I taught you from first grade up to third grade in Fällfors School. Do you remember? Roland who couldn’t say his Rs. Loland.’

  The policeman’s face turned red and the class went silent, everyone holding their breath. A big, grown-up policeman was changed to Loland who couldn’t say his Rs. He probably wished he had come to take away an armed robber, not a boy on behalf of the social services.

  ‘And you always had a runny nose,’ said their teacher, ‘and carried about one of those soft dolls. But now you have a gun.’

  The other policeman laughed.

  ‘How’s your father these days?’ the teacher asked.

  ‘He’s in sheltered accommodation. A bit forgetful, but otherwise fairly well.’

  Parrot Earrings and Gold Tooth realised that
their speedy and smooth collection was not going to happen. This was going to be awkward. The pupils stared wide-eyed at the policeman who was called Loland and had played with dolls.

  ‘Can you say your Rs now?’ asked Filip.

  ‘I certainly can. Red roses, row, round, rhubarb.’

  ‘Rhubarb?’ said the other policeman.

  Time seemed to stand still and vibrate. One second. Two seconds. Three seconds. As if the cogs in the clock mechanism were slipping.

  The class broke out in hysterical laughter. Mik made a leap past the social workers and the policemen. Out of the classroom, out of the school.

  Gold Tooth chased after him and caught him up in the playground. He grabbed hold of Mik’s arm and held it so tight it hurt and wrestled him towards the car. Mik kicked, screamed and bit. Wriggled out of his jumper, out of the clutches of Gold Tooth, picked up a hockey stick from the ground and started waving it around in front of him. Was backed into a corner between the brick wall and the fence beside the river.

  The whole class, the teacher, the policemen and Parrot Earrings came out from the school. The smaller pupils were frightened and started to cry. The policemen stood still. They were not sure what to do. Pi threw an ice ball at Gold Tooth’s neck. Filip and several others copied her. Parrot Earrings became confused.

  Mik lashed out with the hockey stick. Again and again and again. Gold Tooth leaped out of the way.

  ‘You’re not taking me,’ said Mik. ‘I’m staying here.’

  ‘That’s not for you to decide.’

  ‘Oh, yes, it is,’ said Mik.

  He was afraid and cried through clenched teeth. The tears felt cold as they trickled down his cheeks. They wouldn’t take him. Not alive.

  ‘Give me the stick now, and we’ll do this nice and calmly.’

  Mik shot forwards and struck a blow right on Gold Tooth’s knees. Gold Tooth bent over and collapsed in the snow, swearing. Mik ran out onto the road and across the bridge. Gold Tooth got up onto his feet and raced quickly after him, gaining on him, but on the other side of the bridge Gustavsson’s dog launched himself at him.

  Mik got away; he knew where he was going, and no one could follow him there. Not even the Paragraph. He ran down to the lake and out onto the ice.