A Fairy Tale

by Jonas Bengtsson

  I pick the door opposite the room with the antlers. This door isn’t ajar, but neither is it locked. A little boy looks out at me from the dimly lit room. When I raise my hand to my mouth, the boy copies my movement. I enter. The room is full of mirrors. From floor to ceiling, in wood or gold frames. I stand in the middle. I see an ear, a nose, a shin, some hair, the shoes in my hand. A little boy who looks like me, cut into small pieces and stuck on the walls. There are more mirrors in the ceiling; the boy looks down at me, very small and a little bit scared. When I leave the room I’m dizzy.

  As I walk down the stairs, I promise myself to stop being so nosy. I don’t want to take any more chances.

  It’s early in the morning; I’m lying under the blanket, keeping my eyes closed. I hear my dad get dressed. He walks along the passage and down the stairs. The front door opens and closes. I leap out of bed. I’ve become a thief who doesn’t steal. I explore the house in sock feet, a new room every day. I find one full of stuffed animals: dogs and cats, beavers and squirrels. Animals with bared teeth, all of them facing whoever enters the room. They stare at me until I leave. In another room there’s only a single stuffed bison with its head facing the wall as if it’s ashamed. It’s much bigger than the doors and windows; the house must have been built around it.

  I keep away from the old lady’s drawing room, but I investigate the rest of the house, from the ground floor to the loft. I follow the loft beam to the end of a long corridor. I reach a red door. I push down the handle, but it won’t open. I rattle it to make sure it’s not just stuck.

  Not all the rooms are as exciting as the first one I visited, but there’s always something to discover, such as Chinese porcelain painted with tiny brushstrokes. A single cup tells a story about dragons and emperors, a mighty battle with hundreds of tiny arrows flying through the air. In another room a whole wall is covered with butterflies on pins. Hundreds of them in as many different colours.

  In the afternoon, I sit on the grass drawing whatever room I’ve visited that morning. I’ve reached the eighth page of my sketchbook when I realize something’s wrong. Something much stranger than anything I’ve found in the rooms.

  I walk around the house and draw it from the outside. Two storeys, clad in broad wooden planks. I draw every single window. I try to draw everything as it is; many times, I have to erase everything and start over. It’s not until I’ve finished drawing that I realize what’s wrong. The outside of the house doesn’t match the rooms inside.

  The next morning I make notes in my sketchbook as I walk from room to room. I tap the panels. Where there ought to be doors there are walls with pictures of brown bears with fish in their mouths.

  I finish up on the top floor. Again I stand in front of the locked red door. The explanation must lie behind it.

  At night I dream about the door. It swings open all by itself; I’m blinded by a light coming from inside. I cross the threshold, then I wake up.

  When my dad has risen and gone to work in the garden, I start looking for the key to the red door.

  I’m no longer interested in the huge collection of walking sticks with carved animal heads or the curved sabres and the shrunken heads. All I care about is finding the key. The old lady is so tiny that if she had it on her, it would bulge like a bone sticking out.

  I’m drawing when I hear a noise in the grass behind me. A slither like a rattlesnake or possibly an anaconda. When I turn around I see something that scares me much more than a wide-open jaw with fangs. The old lady isn’t hidden by the shadows, nor does she have the blinding sunlight behind her. She stands only a few metres away from me.

  Somewhere far away my dad starts up the chainsaw again. I look down at the sketchbook; if you meet a bear in the forest then you must stand very still. Dogs can smell fear. I start drawing a dog eating an ice cream cone; it holds it between its paws as it licks off the whipped cream. My hands are shaking, but I keep drawing, hoping the old lady will disappear of her own accord.

  “I’ve heard you walking around the house,” she says to my back. “You think I can’t hear you because I’m old.”

  The hole in her face is a mouth; more words come out of it.

  “You think that because you tiptoe around in your socks you won’t make a noise. This is an old house. A wooden house. And wood creaks.”

  I can no longer take my eyes off her, even though I try.

  “I’ve lived here all my life. I’ve grown old with the house. I can hear you when I lie in my bed. I always know exactly where you are. I hear you in the kitchen, pulling out drawers. I hear you walk up the stairs; I know when you open the cupboard doors, when you rummage around the bottom drawer in the sideboard. I know this house. I could put it on my back like a snail.”

  I want to run, I want to hide in the garden, but I stay where I am.

  “I’m offering you a deal,” she says. “I’m going to show you what’s behind the red door. I’ll go up there with you. I’ll give you the key so you can open it yourself. In return you have to do something for me.”

  I try to keep my eyes on her white hair.

  “Do we have a deal?” she asks.

  I feel my head move up and down. The old lady starts walking back to the house. Just before the terrace she turns around: “Are you coming?”

  I walk right behind her up the stairs, up to the top floor. We go down the passage to the locked door. The keyhole looks at me; it’s very big and a little bit scratched after all the different keys I’ve tried to insert into it.

  The old lady holds out a bony fist towards me, unclenches it, and shows me a black key.

  “So, do we have a deal?”

  I nod.

  “You’re not a very talkative boy.”

  I try not to touch the palm of her hand when I take the key.

  At first it refuses to go into the keyhole, possibly because my hands are shaking.

  I try a couple of times. I’m about to give up, it must be the wrong key, the old lady must be mistaken, she hasn’t been up here in years. I feel a certain relief, the deal’s off, I’m going to forget all about the door. I’ll sit on the grass and draw dogs and ice cream cones, wear down my pencil. My dad will finish in the garden, tomorrow will be like today and we can move on.

  I hear a click when the key goes into the lock. I turn it around and open the door.

  I blink a couple of times. I’m staring right into a brick wall. There’s nothing behind the door, not even a big cupboard, just straight rows of red bricks with mortar in between.

  I touch the bricks to be sure. Then I put the key back in the old lady’s outstretched hand.

  “Now it’s your turn to do something from me. That was the deal.”

  We go back down the stairs and into her drawing room, which I haven’t been inside since we first came to the house. We walk past the porcelain figurines and the dark leather furniture. She opens the door to a smaller room with bookcases from floor to ceiling.

  “You know how to read, don’t you?”

  I nod.

  “I thought so. You’re your father’s son.”

  She sits down in an armchair underneath the window. The sun blinds me so I can only see her outline.

  All the books are bound in red leather; the title is printed in golden letters down the spine.

  “Third shelf, far right. It’s about a huge whale.”

  I wipe dust off the book’s cover, sit down on the chair she points out, and open the book. My voice is feeble and it trembles when I read the first words aloud.

  My dad’s T-shirt is soaked in sweat when he emerges from the bushes. Again he’s scratched and covered in leaves. We sit down on the terrace and he looks at the drawings I’ve done during the morning. Many of them are of whales.

  Then I hear the old lady behind us; the fabric of her skirt rustles as she moves.

  “How is the garden co
ming along?” she asks.

  My dad makes to stand up.

  “Don’t get up, you work hard.”

  He wipes his hands on his trousers.

  “I know what it could look like,” he says. “Now that we live here as well. But there’s more work than I first thought.”

  “It’s a big garden.”

  “That’s not exactly what I mean.”

  “I know. Last year, another young man came. I told him to take it easy, but he worked every day from morning till night. The first night he grinned like a man who has just survived a shipwreck; a week later, he looked like a convict. Then he vanished for good. I think he gave up. But, who knows, perhaps you’ll stumble across him in the wilderness.”

  She laughs to herself.

  I look across at my dad. It’s not until now that I notice that his cheeks seem sunken, his eyes have grown bigger. Perhaps I haven’t seen it because he smiles all the time.

  “What kind of tools did he use?” my dad asks.

  The old lady hesitates as if she hasn’t quite understood the question.

  “His own,” she then replies. “He brought his own tools.”

  My dad nods, runs his thumb across the metal plate on the chainsaw with the image of the bear.

  “Tonight I’ll put a little extra bacon in the soup,” the old lady says.

  I follow her inside the house; it’s time for me to read to her. Always when the sun is high in the sky and she can sit below the window and be only a silhouette.

  Often I lose track of time. I’m on the ship with Ahab. Every day we come close to catching the great big white whale.

  Some days I don’t stop reading until there’s not enough light in the room to make out the letters. Then her face emerges from the shadows. The first few times I nearly dropped the book. I said sorry and raced out of the room. Slowly I’ve grown used to her appearance. Just like I’ve grown used to the smell of wood when the summer sun has roasted the house all day long.

  At night the water comes. I see it burst through the trees, taking with it big and small plants. The old wooden house releases its grip on the earth and floats away like a ship. Only the three of us are left in the whole world. The birds fly above us. The sky is theirs now and they screech loudly. Cries of joy: no high-rise buildings, no telephone poles, only the open sky. They’ve yet to discover that they’ve no place to land.

  I read the last sentence in the book. I can now look at the old lady for several minutes without blinking.

  We sit there, the two of us, neither of us saying anything. The words of the book still linger in the air between us. Then she straightens up in her chair.

  “I tricked you. And you know it, you’re not stupid.”

  She wipes her mouth with a white fabric napkin, then she spreads it across her knee.

  “All you had to do was ask me for the key, ask me what was behind the door. But you were scared.”

  I don’t say anything.

  “And when you finally stood there, staring at the brick wall, you could have asked: ‘Why?’ It was the only word you had to say, but you were still scared. Didn’t you think it was odd, a brick wall in a wooden house?”

  I don’t know what to reply.

  “Of course you thought it was strange. You’re not stupid. But you were scared. And sometimes they’re the same thing.”

  She looks straight at me.

  “Let’s make a new deal,” she suggests. “If you carry on reading to me, I’ll tell you the story of the house. No cheating this time. I’ll tell you everything I know. I think that’ll answer some of your questions.”

  I still make no reply, but I don’t think I need to, either.

  “Very well. You’ll get the story about the house, but not today.”

  I feel my head nod. This time I’m not scared.

  “Fifth shelf, three books in,” she says then.

  I have to stand on tiptoes to reach it.

  I dust off the book. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.

  It won’t be the last book we read this summer. The days disappear into the books. When the sun turns red, my eyes are dry and they sting. When my dad and I eat dinner in the kitchen, I sit surrounded by musketeers. Outside the window a man rides past on a donkey.

  The next day I’m back in the library reading to the old lady. If I struggle with a word, a word I don’t quite understand, she helps me. She doesn’t even have to look in the book. I think she must know what it says on every single page.

  She leans back in the armchair and says: “This was always my favourite room, being surrounded by books. Now you know why. If we had another year, we could make a start on the great Russians.”

  It’s early evening when I come out on the terrace. My dad is smoking a cigarette. He runs his hand through my hair.

  “Looks like you’ve got yourself a new teacher,” he smiles.

  The old lady leans on my arm as we walk down the stairs. The car is parked in front of the house; my dad stands next to it, waiting for us. He’s wearing a brown suit the old lady has lent him. It smelled of mothballs when he put it on. Underneath it he has a vest and a tie. He has shaved and smoothed back his hair with soap. He looks like a man who has stepped out of an old photograph.

  My dad opens the car door and helps the old lady in. Then he rushes around the car to open the other door for me.

  I sit in the back next to the old lady. She wears a hat with a veil that covers most of her face. She could easily appear in the same photo as my dad. I wear long trousers and a freshly ironed T-shirt. We’ve dabbed the scuffed leather on my shoes with a black marker.

  We drive down the avenue. Here, in daylight, the car’s interior of dark wood and leather makes it look like a small sitting room.

  We reach a country lane; the old lady puts her hat on the seat between us.

  “My mother used to say that a lady never takes off her hat, be it in church or in the smallest room. She was buried with hers on.” The old lady smoothes the veil. “I’ve always found hats to be terribly itchy.”

  The country lane turns into tarmac; we’re nearing the town. My dad drives smoothly in the traffic. Only rarely are we stopped by a red light. People turn around to look at the black car, some wave.

  “I hope you can find it,” the old lady says. “I know my description wasn’t very accurate. It’s been years since I was last there.”

  My dad smiles to her in the rear-view mirror.

  “If it’s still there, then I’ll find it, don’t you worry.”

  I believe him. My dad once told me about a deer mouse that lives in Wyoming. It’s no bigger than the nail on my little finger, but it can travel several days’ journey away from its home. The equivalent of 160 kilometres for a human being. And yet it always finds its way back. It needs no signs, never has to ask for directions. It always finds its way home. It’s always been the exact opposite for my dad and me.

  The speakers in the car crackle; my dad turns the big shiny metal knob on the radio. He keeps turning it past human voices and guitar playing until he finds something he likes.

  We leave the town to the sound of a trumpet solo. We continue along the road past yellow clover fields and churches.

  The engine lets out a little grunt when my dad turns off the ignition.

  “Does this look familiar?” he asks.

  We’ve left the main road and are now in a gravel parking lot surrounded by trees. The old lady looks out the window.

  “Yes,” she says, sounding as if she can’t quite believe it. “Yes . . . this is it.”

  The old lady puts on her hat and lets the veil fall to cover her face. My dad opens the car door; I can hear the sea. From the parking lot we walk down a narrow path until we reach a half-timbered house in yellow brick. People sit outside at tables with white tablecloths; their knives and forks sparkle i
n the sun. They turn their heads, their eyes flit from me to my dad in the brown suit and then linger a little too long on the old lady. Then they quickly look down at their food.

  A waiter shows us to a table somewhat apart from the others. He fixes a white fabric tablecloth to our table with pegs which my dad says are made from silver. The menus we’re given are bound in soft ox leather.

  We eat sandwiches, but not the kind you’d put in a packed lunch, the filling squeezed in between a slice of cucumber and half a tomato. Here the fish fillet covers the whole bread slice and the prawns fight for space on top of it, pushing each other out of the way and nearly toppling off the plate in the process. My dad drinks his beer in large mouthfuls, the old lady sips hers and wipes the rim of the glass with her napkin. They toast each other with schnapps.

  I can feel people looking at us while we eat. When I catch their eyes, they quickly avert theirs. Slowly they all turn away until we’re surrounded by people’s backs.

  “We used to come here in the summer,” the old lady says. “Every summer. I didn’t look quite like this back then. It’s gotten worse with age.”

  She dabs her lips with the napkin.

  “In those days I never knew why people stared. I thought people always looked at each other like that. I used to stare back at them in the same manner until my father told me not to. I didn’t understand why.”

  For dessert I have chocolate mousse with fresh raspberries. My dad and the old lady drink coffee from small cups. We can’t see the sea from here, but when the wind changes direction, we can smell seaweed and salt water. The seagulls fly high above us.

  The old lady keeps nodding off on the way home. Then she straightens up in her seat.

  “I thought if only I got to see the garden, then that would be enough . . .” she says. “But today . . . I so enjoyed today.”