A Fairy Tale

by Jonas Bengtsson

  I pick up a Donald Duck comic from the table, but I can’t read the words. I’ve got tears in my eyes and I don’t care if Uncle Scrooge loses all his money.

  “The dentist will have a look at it,” my dad says. “I’m sure it’ll be all right.”

  I want to believe him, but we haven’t spoken to anyone since we arrived. We just sat down on the last empty chairs in the corner. I don’t understand how the dentist will know when it’s our turn.

  My dad takes my hand and says: “Virtute et armis.”

  I reply: “With bravery and weapons.”

  He says: “Iacta est alea.”

  “The die is cast.”

  “And who said that?”

  “Caesar.”

  “And he was?”

  Slowly the waiting room empties while we go through the Ads, such as Ad infinitum, ad libitum, ad notam.

  We’ve reached Ad vitam aeternam. I say: “Towards eternal life.”

  We’re now the only two people left. My dad gets up and takes my hand; I follow him past the door to the secretary and into the surgery. We stop in the doorway; we see the dentist, busy putting out tools on a metal table. He looks my dad’s age, possibly a little younger. He has dark hair and high temples. A cigarette is smoking itself in an ashtray on the windowsill; he glances up at us.

  “You need to make an appointment with my secretary. We’re closed for today.”

  My dad crosses the threshold, and says: “I’d like you to examine my boy.”

  His voice is almost pleading.

  The dentist looks up again, rather surprised that we’re still there. He takes a drag of his cigarette and stubs it out in the ashtray.

  “I can’t help you if you haven’t got an appointment.”

  “My boy’s in pain.”

  “I’m sorry . . .”

  We enter the room, my dad at the front, me right behind him.

  “You can see that he’s in pain.”

  “I’m sorry, but . . .”

  “I don’t have a health insurance card and I haven’t got any money so I can’t pay you. But I know that you’ll want to help us.”

  The tone of my dad’s voice has changed; it’s now a friendly demand. The dentist is about to say something, but my dad starts speaking again. “All those years of study just so that you can tick boxes and live in a nice house . . . ?”

  The dentist looks a little confused; he opens his mouth, but he doesn’t say anything. My dad holds his hand a few centimetres from his arm, so close that he can almost touch the white fabric of the dentist’s coat.

  “You want to help us.”

  My dad could say anything now and I would believe him.

  “We need your help. I know that you’ll want to help us.”

  The dentist stands there, he has stopped moving, then he lets his arms fall down by his sides.

  “You can go to the dental school, that’s free,” he says.

  “No,” my dad says. “We can’t.”

  The dentist nods and puts a couple of steel tools on the tray next to the dentist’s chair, then he leans out of the doorway.

  “Karina, I’ll just see one more patient.”

  I sit down in the dentist’s chair and a white piece of paper is clipped under my chin.

  The secretary appears in the doorway; she’s blonde, she has a dark brown coat over her arm and her eyes are tired.

  “I didn’t see any more appointments in the diary . . .”

  “I’ll deal with this last patient, you can go now. I’ll manage.”

  She hesitates, then she shrugs and leaves. The door slams shut after her.

  The dentist has a small mirror at the end of a metal stick; he sticks it into my mouth. The steel is cold. He nods to himself, finds a syringe. My dad holds my hand while the dentist injects my gum.

  “That was the worst part,” he says, and tells my dad to wash his hands. While he rummages around my mouth, he points to the different steel tools my dad needs to pass to him. I can smell cigarettes on the dentist’s hands. Then I hear the sound of the drill. My jaw buzzes; it’s like having a bee inside my mouth, but it doesn’t hurt, not like before.

  When the dentist has finished, one side of my mouth feels slack. I wipe off spit with my sleeve. We’re about to put on our coats when my dad goes back and gives the dentist a big hug.

  My dad is sitting at the table. in front of him lies every single newspaper he could get hold of.

  The newspapers don’t have to be today’s as long as they’re proper newspapers. That means the ones without colours and pictures of naked ladies.

  He sits there for hours holding a newspaper in front of him. I can’t see him; I can only hear the pages turning.

  He doesn’t put down the newspaper when he wants to smoke; he simply reaches his hand out. He always finds the cigarette packet on the first attempt. I see smoke rise up behind the pages, and soon afterwards his hand reappears, he taps the cigarette lightly, twice, and the ash falls into the ashtray underneath. I’ve yet to see him miss.

  I tiptoe up to him very quietly. It’s Sunday and he’s reading one of the thick newspapers. I avoid any floorboards that creak.

  Very carefully, I move the ashtray slightly to the right; I manage to do it almost without making a noise.

  My dad reads on, he smokes and turns the pages. His hand reaches out; he finds a fresh cigarette in the packet, lights it, continues reading, moves on to the next cigarette.

  My dad folds the newspaper and is about to reach for the next paper in the pile when he looks down at the table. His mouth opens in surprise: in front of him lies a small mountain of ash and cigarette butts.

  He looks at me; I’d thought that he’d notice me much sooner.

  I’m scared that he’ll shout at me like he did when that car came very close and nearly ran me over.

  My dad blinks a couple of times, then he starts to laugh. He keeps on laughing until he has tears in his eyes. He sweeps ash and cigarette butts into the ashtray with the side of his hand. Not even the sight of burns on the table makes him stop laughing.

  “Do you still have your white shirt?” he asks me, and I know that he has seen something in the paper, perhaps in one of the small ads at the back. I shake my head; that shirt disappeared a couple of moves ago.

  My dad pulls my woolly cap over my ears. It’s a cold autumn day and he whistles as we walk down the street. I know that he loves spring and autumn: beginnings and endings, as he calls them. Everything else is just filling the gaps.

  My dad holds the heavy door open for me and I follow him through a lobby with dark wooden panels and a staircase. We pass young people who hug books to their chest and we reach another door. Behind it I can hear voices speaking on top of one another. My dad takes off my cap and smooths my hair. He puts his hand on the door handle and hesitates for a second before he opens the door to a room filled with people. We’re the only ones not dressed up for a party.

  I hold my dad’s hand tightly, scared that I’ll get lost. He leads me past people drinking wine from tall glasses, talking and laughing out loud. I’m constantly about to bump into someone.

  We stand in front of a table with food on it and my dad lets go of my hand.

  “Eat as much as you like,” he says. “I’ll be back in a moment.”

  He disappears between trouser legs and backs.

  The food is set out on large silver platters and is skewered with toothpicks.

  Tentatively, I pick one up, convinced that someone will call out “Hey, what the hell are you doing here?” But nobody looks in my direction; in fact no one’s looking below chest height. I start from one end of the table. Most of it tastes disgusting: those bits I chuck under the table where my dog is sitting. If people weren’t talking so loudly, they could hear it slobber.

  I avoid the strong-smellin
g cheese, but I eat a lot of grapes. I end up next to a platter with egg salad on tiny pieces of toast.

  I start from the edge and eat my way towards the centre.

  “My, haven’t you grown,” I hear someone say close to my ear, and my stomach starts to rumble.

  I turn and look straight into a pair of dark brown eyes: a woman has knelt down beside me.

  “If you’ve finished eating all that egg salad, I think we should go find your father.”

  She takes my hand and I go with her.

  “Our old professor is retiring today, but I’m sure your father has already told you that,” the woman says over her shoulder. She leads me through the labyrinth of legs and backs.

  My dad stands between two men. One has white hair and a beard that reaches all the way down to the knot on his tie. I’m almost certain that he must be the professor.

  “You’ve met Nana,” my dad says, and smiles.

  The professor takes my hand in his. It feels like baking paper.

  “The last time I saw you, you weren’t much taller than a pint of milk,” he says to me, and carries on talking to my dad. The woman called Nana offers to get some wine; she asks me if I like lemonade. I nod.

  The professor and my dad use words I’ve never heard before, but it’s clear that the professor isn’t asking him to fix a radiator or paint a fence. My dad’s happy, really happy, which makes me happy, too. Even dressed in his denim jacket he fits in much better here than anywhere else I’ve ever seen him.

  Nana has neither wine nor lemonade when she returns. She leans in towards my dad so it looks like she wants to blow on his neck. I catch only a single word, one that hides itself behind the hundreds of others being spoken in the room at the same time. That word is police. She has stopped smiling. My dad empties his glass and puts it down.

  “Come with me,” the professor says. “Come with me now.”

  I can’t see my dad, only his arm dragging me along. I bump into people; they turn around, but we’ve already moved on. Nana holds the door open; she blows my father a kiss before she closes it behind us.

  We follow the professor down a long corridor. The afternoon sun pours in through the windows and I can see every single bit of dust that hangs in the air.

  The professor struggles to walk and speak at the same time; he forces the words out.

  “I don’t know what happened,” he says. “People would rather gossip than do research. Drink coffee and gossip. I don’t know what happened and I don’t care, either.”

  The sound of people disappears behind us. The professor opens a door and we enter a small office. Every wall is lined with bookcases; below a high window, an old desk is completely covered with papers and books. The professor pulls out a brown leather office chair that’s worn through in many places. He pats the back of the chair.

  “You should’ve been sitting here,” he says. “You should’ve been sitting here now.”

  My dad makes no reply and the professor starts riffling through the papers on the desk. He moves books and puts them down on the seat of the chair. A bunch of keys appears and the professor hands them to my dad.

  “I won’t be needing these after today.”

  We follow the professor out of the office and down several other corridors. Then he stops. He leans against the wall and wheezes.

  “I can’t go on. You know the way.”

  My dad pulls him into an embrace. The professor’s eyes are wet and he kisses my dad’s cheek.

  Then I’m dragged along again. Several times I’m close to stumbling; the toes of my shoes scrape across the floor.

  On our way down the stairs my dad picks me up and throws me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

  We walk through a small room filled with books and dust, through a large room with a blackboard and lots of benches, through a big closet with brooms, and a kitchen with tiles and steel sinks. My dad uses every single key. We emerge into a courtyard.

  My dad glances up at the small windows that look like eyes. Then he pulls the cap over my ears and we walk out through the archway. We walk as fast as we can without running. My dad keeps looking over his shoulder.

  “You must always keep an eye out for the White Men,” he says.

  When I lie in my bed that night, I ask my dad how I’ll know the White Men.

  He has told me about them before; I know that they’re the Queen’s helpers, and the King and the Prince are always in danger of being captured by them.

  “It’s difficult,” he says. “There are lots of little things you need to look out for. The expression in their eyes. Most of the time they look like ordinary people. They seldom transform themselves, and only when they think they’re alone with their victim. Then their heads become those of eagles, lions, or wolves. That’s when they’ll bite and tear you apart.”

  I ask my dad if the White Men are evil; I’m almost sure he’ll say yes. But he shakes his head.

  “They’re only doing what the White Queen tells them to. They don’t know the difference between right and wrong.”

  I lie awake thinking about the White Men that night. I hope I’ll be able to recognize them.

  I’m drawing a dragon. I practice in the sketchbook before copying it out on a piece of cardboard. The dragon has snake eyes, its brows point downwards like a V, it’s angry. Its tongue is forked and its teeth are very sharp.

  I colour in the neck. I use greens and blues. The dragon should look as if it lives in a lake or a bog, perhaps. It has just poked its head out of the water because it can smell people or animals it can eat.

  I’ve been drawing the dragon since I got up. I don’t hear the sounds from the courtyard or the ticking of the clock. My only thought is to make the dragon as scary as possible. Right now it’s harmless. Its head is bigger than its body. Its claws look small and ridiculous. The sun is high in the sky and I know that the boy’s waiting for me downstairs. I’ve decided I don’t want to see him again. I colour in the tail of the dragon. I wonder if the boy is busy feeding cheese to the rats in the courtyard. I pick up the dark green colouring pencil in order to draw the scales on the dragon’s body. My pencil stops drawing.

  The boy is grinning as I step out of the main door. He looks as if he knew all along that I would come.

  “You’re the lookout today,” he says. “Just like when we smeared shit on the doorbells.”

  He starts walking, knowing that I’ll follow him.

  “What are you doing?” I say to his back.

  “We. What are we . . .” he replies, without turning around. I’m almost certain that he’s smiling. “I could tell you, of course, but then it wouldn’t be a surprise.”

  We pass the outhouses; we pass the stand with the rusting bicycles.

  “Surprises are always nice,” he says.

  I nod, he’s probably right. When I’m with him, I think more slowly.

  “You’re my friend,” he says.

  By now we’re standing in front of the door leading down to the caretaker’s workshop. The boy points to a paving stone.

  “Stand there and keep a lookout. If you hear the caretaker’s keys then run down and knock three times.”

  The boy quickly sneaks inside. I stand on the paving stone. I want to run away, but I stay where I am. I can hear the wind rustle the leaves in the trees; I can hear my own breathing, but no keys.

  Then the door is flung open. The boy waves a key over his head like a prize he has just won in a competition. He grabs hold of my arm and drags me along.

  “Just you wait until you see this,” he says.

  We cross the courtyard, pass a bird bath, and arrive at a different basement door. The boy quickly pulls me down the steps. He inserts the key into the lock and opens it. The darkness inside is total.

  “Hurry up,” he says. “Don’t just stand there.”

 
The door closes behind us.

  We walk down a short passage. There’s a sharp smell: glue, possibly, but I’m not sure. I hear the boy fumble with something. The light in the ceiling flickers a couple of times before it comes on. We’re surrounded by cats smoking pipes, by redheaded girls with bushy tails peeking out from under their dresses.

  Along the walls there are work tables and piles of fabric in different colours and patterns. “Surprises are always nice,” says the boy again. We’re in a doll workshop.

  I know I ought to leave, but I can’t take my eyes off an anteater with a top hat and a monkey with a walking stick and red shoes. I follow the work tables: more dolls, and giraffes with long ties that reach all the way down their necks. On a bulletin board is a photo of an old woman bent over a sewing machine. She’s stitching ears onto a rabbit and sewing paws on a dog. In other photographs she sits surrounded by children who hold the dolls on their laps. The children are laughing and she smiles proudly at the photographer. In the last few pictures there’s a little girl with no hair in a hospital bed. She’s hugging a crocodile with glasses.

  I hear a growl behind me like a dog with a bone. The boy is standing with a full-size male doll. At first it looks as if he’s embracing it, then I see that he has sunk his teeth into its neck. The boy rips off half the head and yellow stuffing spills out. Our eyes meet and he throws down the doll. The boy takes a pair of scissors from one of the work tables and ignores me while he cuts the arms and legs off the dolls. I walk backwards out of the room. The boy cuts the ears off a zebra and the trunk off an elephant. I walk down the passage and emerge outside.

  I stand on the basement steps while my eyes get used to the light. Then I hear a jingling. A large bunch of keys getting closer and closer.

  I throw myself behind the bushes along the wall. Below the leaves I can make out the caretaker’s trousers. He stops right outside the bush I’m lying behind. I press my eyes shut and hope that he can’t see me.