A Fairy Tale

by Jonas Bengtsson

  I help him carry tools out into the yard: an electric drill with a very fine bit, a screwdriver, and a file. A jam jar of coffee grounds and a bottle of acetic acid. Paint brushes and a roll of sandpaper.

  The last thing my dad does is lug two old armchairs outside.

  I’m sitting in the corner on a rusty metal box that used to contain nails. It doesn’t open, I’ve tried.

  I’m well aware that I won’t be allowed to come here again if I’m a nuisance, so I don’t move. I love watching my dad work. He looks as though he has never done anything in his entire life but this exact task; his movements are fluid and he never stops or scratches his hair. The cigarette dangles from the corner of his mouth; the ash grows and drops off by itself. He’s oblivious to everything around him, me included. He uses the sandpaper, the screwdriver, the drill. He dips his fingers in the coffee grounds.

  I’ll never be as good as my dad. Not at anything, I know that. I get bored far too quickly. Or I forget what I was meant to be doing; I take down the garbage and don’t remember why I suddenly find myself in the courtyard.

  “But what about when you’re drawing?” my dad asks.

  He’s right, I can draw for hours. It’s like blinking and finding that the sun has gone down.

  My dad takes a few steps back; the armchairs are finished. He finds another cigarette in his shirt pocket and smokes it while he examines his work. He gestures for me to come over so I can have a look as well. The wood is darker. The varnish on the armrests is peeling now, I saw him use sandpaper and a file on them.

  The holes he’s drilled into the legs of the armchairs are so tiny that I have to kneel in order to make them out.

  “Woodworm,” he says. “Real nuisance, those woodworms.”

  I look at him, but I don’t understand. My dad smiles.

  “People like new things. They also like really old things. They throw out everything that isn’t one or the other. I make things look older.”

  After we’ve eaten our packed lunches, my dad starts taking a grandfather clock apart. He tells me to watch the sky, to look out for the first signs of rain and warn him. He hates working indoors.

  My dad carefully places the clock face on some newspaper and dips a brush in a tin of nitric acid.

  “When I’ve finished with this clock, it’ll be more than a hundred years old. And English.”

  A man enters the yard. I nearly burst out laughing because he looks like a tumbler toy. One of those ones you can knock down, but which keep standing up again. He has short legs and a broad lower body, but his confident stride makes me think he must be the boss.

  He comes over to the armchairs, bends down and slowly runs his index finger over them.

  “Not bad,” he says.

  “Thank you.” My dad carefully puts the hands back on the clock; he holds the tiny screws in the corner of his mouth. The boss looks up and glances around the yard as if he can sense that something’s wrong. He spots me in the corner even though I’ve been sitting as still as I can.

  “Who the hell is that?” he says, pointing at me.

  “My son.”

  “This isn’t a bloody kindergarten, you know.”

  My dad places the glass over the clock face.

  “I don’t want him here.”

  I sit very still on the metal box, wishing I could be invisible.

  “Get him out of here.” The boss’s voice is trembling slightly.

  My dad straightens up; he’s a head taller than the boss, but weighs less than half.

  “We don’t mind leaving, if that’s what you want.”

  The boss turns around and marches into the workshop. I hear the sound of tools being thrown on the floor. Even though nobody’s looking at me now, I continue to sit very still on my box. When my dad has wiped down the clock with a cloth, he comes over and strokes my hair.

  “I won’t get fired. Not today and not because you’re here.” He tugs my ear playfully. “He can’t afford to fire me. He can’t find anyone else who’ll do the work for so little money. And — it just so happens that I’m rather good at this.”

  On the way home I ride in the basket of the bicycle again. It starts to rain, warm summer rain. My dad laughs. I open my mouth and feel the drops hit my tongue.

  The noise that wakes me up sounds like an animal that has crawled into our kitchen to die. I recognize it and I know that it’ll continue. Sometimes for ten minutes, sometimes until sunrise.

  My dad is curled up on the couch. His T-shirt is drenched in sweat. He twists the blanket in his hands; sometimes I’ve seen him tear sheets apart.

  I stroke his hair; long sweaty wisps stick to his skin. I fetch a clean tea towel and wipe his brow and his neck.

  Every time we move I hope that the nightmares won’t follow us.

  Though I no longer dare to believe it.

  We move into a new place and, for a while, we’re free of them. A week or several months. It changes every time.

  I lie down beside him. The fold-out bed is narrow and I’m perched on the edge; I can feel the hard wood digging into my side. I put my arm around his neck, I stroke his forehead, my fingers catch in his hair and yet he doesn’t wake up. He never wakes up. I could scream right into his face and his eyes would still stay closed.

  My dad sobs in his sleep, too. But less now; he can feel he isn’t alone.

  “We’ll be all right,” I whisper to him. It’s what he says to me when things are tough. We’ll be all right, you and me.

  When we’ve finished our breakfast, my dad wipes the table with a damp cloth. He takes great care to catch every little poppy seed and crumb. Today I’m going to school for the first time. When the table has dried, he puts an exercise book in front of me. Then he finds a pencil. A brand new red pencil with a gold stripe down the side. He presses the point against his thumb, nods contentedly, and places it beside the exercise book. The eraser follows next. When we were in the shop, he held it up and asked, “Are you thinking of making any mistakes? No?” Then he laughed. I also got a book about dinosaurs which I’d spent ages looking at, a lunchbox with a picture of a smiling tractor, and a water bottle with no pictures on it.

  We bought all the items last Saturday in a big bookshop in the city centre. We bought them, but my dad never took his wallet out of his pocket. He has already explained this to me: how it might look as if we’re stealing, but that there’s nothing wrong with taking what you need. And that way, you never have to line up.

  Before we went home, we went to a small cinema. My dad told me to wait while he spoke to the girl at the box office. I couldn’t hear what they said, but I could see him pointing at me. The girl smiled and I smiled back. We got the tickets and again he didn’t take his wallet out of his pocket.

  I was hoping it would be the robot film. I’ve seen posters all over town, a picture of a robot and a boy my age. They look like they’re friends. But the film turned out to be in black and white and there was no sound. When they were about to burn the girl, I started crying.

  My dad sits down at the table opposite me. He lights a rollup, drinks coffee, and looks at me.

  “What would you like to learn?”

  “Numbers,” I say.

  My dad teaches me one number a day. I can count to ten easily, to one hundred, even, but he says that’s not enough. We start with the number one.

  “The smallest number,” my dad says. “And possibly the greatest. In the old days that number was associated with God. One God. A holy number. Today people have forgotten its original meaning. That’s why you don’t go to school with all the other children. Because they’ve forgotten what everything means. They see an apple. A bicycle. And nothing’s that important anymore.”

  Something’s knocking on the door. A small bird eating seeds, tap, tap, tap. The tapping gets louder, like a landlord wanting his rent. I must never open the doo
r if I don’t know who is outside.

  “Why isn’t your name on the door?” I recognize the boy’s voice, the boy with the dark hair. “Everyone’s got a sign with their name, why don’t you?”

  The stairwell falls silent again. I hope he has left, but I haven’t heard his footsteps going down the stairs. I hold my breath, then I hear a strange sound coming from the other side, a scraping as if he’s dragging his fingernails down the door.

  “I think I’ll have to talk to someone about it, maybe ask my parents. Ask them why there’s no sign on your door.”

  I crawl out from under the table, unlock the door, and follow him down the stairs. He holds my hand while we cross the courtyard and go out through the archway.

  The boy dips a stick in dog poo. Something that looks like a sweet corn kernel sticks to the end. We’re outside the neighbouring block.

  “I don’t know what the boys’ surnames are,” he says, smearing poo on the buttons for the building’s intercom. “But they give me strange looks at school and they call me names.”

  The boy daubs poo over the button next to “I and H Madsen.”

  “So we’ll just have to smear shit on all the buttons.”

  We move on to the next stairwell. The boy smears poo on the intercom. Carries on until all the buttons are pale brown.

  We fail to find more dog poo when we walk around the corner; we look, but there’s none in sight. The boy pulls down his trousers and squats in an archway.

  While he strains and groans, he says: “We can’t give up now. What if we haven’t got the right buttons covered in shit yet? Think about all the poor people who’ll get shit on their fingers for no reason. That wouldn’t be fair, now would it?”

  Every day the boy waits for me in the courtyard.

  “I can count on you,” he says, when I come downstairs. I don’t like that so I start to dawdle; I draw and I look at the clock.

  And yet he’s always there when I come down.

  We play Squeeze the Rabbit, a game where I jump up in the air and he has to try to remove his hands before I land. Other days we play Bear with No Eyes, where I put a plastic bag over his head.

  My dad holds up a carton of milk to me; we’re in the dairy section of the supermarket.

  “Möchtest du milch?” he asks, and I know that if I want to drink milk in the next few days, I’d better get it right. “Möchtest du milch?”

  Find the right words, find the right answer.

  He cups a hand behind his ears: “Entschuldigen, ich habe dich nicht gehört.”

  When we’ve paid at the till, he says “Danke schön” to the cashier.

  At night he kisses me on the forehead, tucks me up.

  “Schlaf gut, Liebchen.”

  My dad’s waiting for me at the breakfast table. He has been to the baker’s for croissants.

  “Bonjour, mon fils,” he says. He pours a little coffee into my cup and tops it up with milk.

  My dad says you learn best when you’re standing up. Even better when you’re running. And best of all, if someone’s after you. Then he laughs.

  We visit museums.

  “It’s easy to sneak in,” my dad says. “There are lots of ways you can do it: you can join a group of visitors, you can look for a discarded ticket on the sidewalk outside. But it’s always better not to.”

  My dad goes up to the attendant at the entrance; if it’s a woman, he’ll stand there for a little longer with her hand in his. If it’s a man, the handshake is short and firm. My dad’s voice gets louder when he talks to men; when they laugh together, it’s even louder. Sometimes he’ll touch their shoulder. Then we get in. Always without paying.

  We walk down a white corridor leading to the first floor, where the paintings are.

  “I know it looks as if they’re doing us a favour,” my dad says. “The nice people who let us in. No matter where we go, people help us.”

  I nod to show him that I’m listening. We’re standing in front of a painting of a fisherman beside a boat that has been dragged ashore; the sky behind him is grey.

  “But we’re also doing them a favour. Take that man . . .” My dad nods back in the direction of the attendant who has just let us in, an elderly man with grey hair and a full beard, his uniform a little creased. “He has been standing there all day, he tears tickets, he tells tourists that they can’t bring ice cream inside, that photography isn’t allowed.”

  My dad always looks at me in this way right before he tells me the important part. The part I must remember.

  “That man rarely gets the chance to do something for others. Do something without getting paid, just because he can and because he wants to.”

  In my head I try to repeat what my dad has just said.

  He points to the picture of the fisherman in front of us. “Good, isn’t it?”

  I nod.

  We walk on; I can barely make out the small boat in between the big waves in the next painting.

  My dad says, “When that man goes home tonight and has his dinner, he’ll remember us and know that he was the one who gave us the chance to see these paintings. His dinner will taste better.”

  I’m told to look closely at each painting. Then my dad says, “What can you see?”

  At first I just answer him. I tell him I can see a man on a seawall. A man on a horse.

  “No,” my dad says. “Look properly.”

  I’m about to open my mouth to speak.

  “No,” he says. “Keep looking at it.”

  We stand there for a long time. When I open my mouth but no words come out, my dad gives me a really big hug.

  “That’s right,” he says.

  “Friends visit each other,” says the boy in the courtyard. “Today I’m going to show you where I live.”

  He takes my hand and I follow him.

  We walk up the back stairs; my hand sweats inside his. He has the key on a leather string around his neck and he doesn’t let go of me until he has to unlock the door.

  The kitchen we enter is big; our apartment could fit inside it several times. The cupboard doors shine, everything looks as if it has a place of its own. And yet there’s a slightly sour smell, as if the residents have gone on holiday and forgotten something in the fridge.

  The apartment is quiet, we’re alone. The boy drags me through a passage and into a room that’s pale blue and smells of perfume. On one wall is a big mirror with photos of teenagers wedged into the frame.

  The boy goes over to the dresser; he pulls out bras and panties and throws them on the floor. Eventually he finds a newspaper cutting at the bottom of the drawer. He unfolds it and puts it on the bed so I can see it.

  Summer girl, reads the caption underneath the picture of a naked girl who’s smiling at the camera. She holds a beach ball over her head and looks as if she’s just about to throw it.

  “That’s my sister,” the boy says. “She has lots of hairs on her pussy. It’s so you don’t see her crack.”

  The boy grabs my hand and drags me into the living room.

  The carpet is dark red and so thick my feet sink into it. A big leather sofa is pushed up against the wall; a porcelain vase with Chinese characters and golden dragons stands at each end of it. The television is huge, black, and shiny.

  He pushes it and it wobbles on its wheels.

  “How about we smash it up? You decide. Wanna smash it up?”

  When I make no reply, he grabs my sleeve and drags me back out into the kitchen again.

  He climbs up on the kitchen table. There’s a small padlock on one of the cupboard doors.

  He tells me to get a knife from a drawer; I hand him a butter knife. He sticks it in between the cupboard door and the cupboard, wiggles it back and forth. To begin with the door gives only a little: it creaks and a wooden splinter flies off and lands on the kitchen table.r />
  The boy pushes his hair behind his ears and applies greater force. The door gives off a loud bang and flies open; a piece of wood is still attached to the padlock.

  I jump to avoid being hit by bags of fruit gums and licorice. The boy stands on tiptoes and sweeps the shelves with the knife. Sweets rain down on us, boxes and bars of chocolate, fruit gums, hard candy, and toffees.

  We sit on the kitchen floor surrounded by sweets. The boy tears open the bags. Multicoloured, sugar-coated licorice balls roll across the floor.

  “Eat!” he orders me.

  I do as I’m told. I carry on eating until my tongue hurts and swells up in my mouth, sour, salty, sweet, my teeth are made of wood.

  “You look like a darkie,” the boy calls out and points to my chocolate-smeared fingers.

  “Won’t your parents get mad?” I ask him, my mouth stuffed full of gummy bears.

  “Of course they will, eat up!” He tosses a piece of licorice into the air and catches it between his teeth.

  On my way down the stairs I have to lean against the wall for support. When we cross the courtyard, I throw up in different colours. When my dad gets home, I’m lying on my bed, clutching my stomach. I turn my back to the door and pretend to be asleep.

  There’s a poster on the wall of a teddy bear holding a big toothbrush between its paws; other posters show teeth eaten up by cola. We’re sitting in the dentist’s waiting room. There are building blocks on a small table and a pile of comics. Goldfish swim around in an aquarium, nibbling fish food that floats in the water.

  My dad holds my hand; I’m trying not to cry. A toothache kept me awake last night. I told my dad about the boy in the courtyard, about the games, about Squeeze the Rabbit and Bear with No Eyes. I told him about all the sweets we’d eaten. My dad smiled and said that you don’t get cavities that quickly, that it’s good that I’ve made a friend. Even a bad friend. Often they’re the ones who teach you the most. And yet it feels like a punishment. I vow never to see the boy again. Never ever. He can wait for me in the courtyard all he wants; I’m not going down there.