I can make out her lips under the veil. Now I know what she looks like when she smiles.
We’re sitting in the library; the old lady in the armchair, me on the chair beside the door.
“We made a deal,” she says. “I’m afraid that if we put it off for much longer, I won’t be able to keep my side of it.”
She takes a tiny sip of water from her glass, barely enough to moisten her lips.
“Today I’m going to tell you a story. Pass it on to you before it disappears. It’s up to you whether or not you believe it. That’s less important.”
She looks at me; she wants to be sure she has my full attention.
“My father was an old man when he built this house, not much younger than I am now. You’re too young to protest, fortunately. I know I’m old. Like milk that has been left in the fridge for too long. It has gone off. But this story isn’t about me.”
She leans back in her chair. Puts her hands in her lap.
“My father was apprenticed to a watchmaker. On the day he finished his apprenticeship, he boarded a ship to America. Several passengers fell ill. Many didn’t survive. When my father went ashore he was yellow all over. Thin and yellow. He walked the streets in the new country, but he couldn’t find a job and he deteriorated even further. He was almost dead when he met a salesman from Smith & Wesson.
“The man said he needed someone like my dad. He even paid his train fare to Massachusetts, where Smith & Wesson had their factory. They made firearms and they quickly saw how skilled my father was with his hands. Don’t forget he was a watchmaker and used to working with tiny pieces of metal under a magnifying glass.
“He worked for them for ten years. By that point, he’d invented his own rifle. It was called the Johnson — that was how they pronounced his surname. The rifle was very expensive, but it could shoot further and with greater accuracy than any rifle they’d ever seen. For more than thirty years he made rifles for people who wanted to shoot bison. Or at least that was what they said. ‘Shoot bison’ — even though more often they shot Indians. The bullets in a Johnson rifle weren’t as big as in many other guns. A buffalo wouldn’t necessarily have died had it been hit, but the bullet would go straight through a human being. It had become a rifle for shooting people. My father became a very rich man. But as he got older, he grew very troubled; he knew what his rifles had been used for. How terribly good and how terribly accurate they had been.”
The old lady takes a couple of deep breaths, closes her eyes. The room has grown dark. For a moment I wonder if she has fallen asleep.
Her voice is hoarse when she resumes her story.
“First my father moved to the East Coast, but it wasn’t far enough. At night he could still hear the souls of the Indians in the wind. So he moved back to Denmark and built this house, a house like they build in America. He had the cladding brought over from Sweden by ferry. Not one nail was hammered into place without his watching it being done. When he had lived here a couple of years, the housekeeper bore his child. That child was me. Possibly in another attempt to confuse the spirits.”
While she was speaking she fetched tiny bits of her story from the ceiling; now she looks straight at me.
“It might sound strange. But that was my father’s intention. To confuse the spirits. The spirits of the Indians. Trap them between the walls in rooms with no doors. That’s why the house is the way it is. It’s an old tradition from before we stopped seeing the things we don’t understand. Your father knows what I’m talking about. Your father is a very wise man, never forget that. No matter what people say. I’ve a drawer filled with clippings, articles he has written to magazines and newspapers. He didn’t always cut hedges. But that’s not my story and I’m not the person to tell it. It’s your father’s and yours. Now you know almost everything there is to know about the house.”
The old lady leans on me; we follow the trail of decapitated flowers from the bottom of the steps, across the lawn and down to the first apple and pear trees. There my dad is waiting for us with a rucksack over his shoulder. This morning he filled it with bottles of fruit punch and rolls the old lady had baked.
“Provisions,” he declared. “We’ll need them.”
My dad pulls branches aside and shows us the start of the path he has spent the summer clearing.
Again the old lady takes my arm and we walk in between the trees. The path is about five feet wide; it winds around bushes with white, yellow, and red flowers. The earth underfoot is uneven and knobbly.
“My garden!” the old lady exclaims.
We reach a wooden bench cleared of branches and trailing plants.
“Would you like to sit down for a moment?” my dad asks.
“Not yet.”
With her index finger she traces the grooves of letters carved into the back of the bench. They’ve almost disappeared and are illegible. They make her smile. Then she walks on, she no longer needs my arm, soon she’s the one leading the way. She stops only to enjoy the sight of a plant or a bush or wildflowers clinging to a tree trunk.
A rusty child’s bicycle hangs in the air, lifted up by the branches that envelop it.
“So that’s what happened to it,” the old lady laughs.
“I couldn’t make myself take it down,” my dad says.
We reach a clearing between the trees. I don’t know for how long we’ve walked, an hour, maybe more. My dad takes a picnic blanket from the rucksack and spreads it across a tree stump for the old lady to sit on. My dad and I sit on the forest floor. He finds the fruit punch and the rolls. Some are filled with spiced meatloaf, others with mature cheese. When I take the first bite, I realize how hungry I am.
The old lady nibbles her roll and drinks only tiny sips of her fruit punch. I have a pee behind a tree when I’ve finished eating; my dad helps the old lady to her feet and we walk on.
First I hear a light tapping on the leaves above our heads. Then the rain breaks through the treetops.
“We can shelter over here,” my dad says. I hurry under the tree.
The old lady finds a spot on the path, a spot with a clear view of the sky. She stands there while the rain washes down on her, looks up at the sky and laughs with her mouth open.
“Summer rain,” she says, looking at us with rainwater in her eyes. “Feel how warm it is.” Her dress clings to her body. “Today’s the last day of summer. Autumn starts tomorrow. You’ll see if I’m right.”
When the rain is nothing but a light drizzle, we move on. The garden smells of warm earth and sweet flowers.
“My father brought seeds home with him,” the old lady says. Her voice is laboured, but she carries on walking. “Others he had sent from South America, Africa, and Australia. People said they couldn’t grow here. That they’d never survive the Danish climate. He just laughed at them.”
We pass a small bird bath which my dad has cleared. The old lady leans on it.
“The seeds my father sowed came from plants older than mankind. They weren’t cultivated by a botanist. They didn’t come from plants that just looked pretty or smelled nice, but from plants that refused to die. Kill rather than be killed.”
The old lady takes a deep breath and carries on walking. The shadows have grown longer.
On the way back to the house, the path seems narrower. I’m convinced that the trees have started growing again, that they’re closing up the path behind us.
My dad holds the branches back; we step out behind the last bush and we’re back on the lawn. The sun is setting behind the house in red and orange hues. Today all three of us have been explorers.
The old lady smiles at me. Her leather shoes are muddy, her dress is still wet from the rain, and she sways slightly. The exertion seems to have made her light-headed.
“Thank you,” she says. “I . . . thank you.”
She presses my dad’s hand, gives us both a peck
on the cheek, then says she wants to go inside for a lie-down.
My dad sits on the terrace. He looks across the garden while he smokes a cigarette. I fetch him a beer from the kitchen; he drinks it without taking his eyes off all the greenery in front of us. I’ve never seen him so content.
We shower on the first floor. I scrub my dad’s back with a coarse sponge. His neck and shoulders are covered in aphids. He checks me carefully for ticks.
My dad prepares a big plate of open sandwiches: liver pâté, pastrami and meat jelly, cheese with bell pepper. He makes coffee on the stove. When the table is set for three, he asks me to fetch the old lady who, he says, would probably like to join us.
I find her in the armchair in the drawing room. She sits very still; she’s still wearing her summer dress. At first I think she’s asleep. I take a couple of steps into the room, and then I’m sure that she won’t wake up again.
I’m not scared, maybe because she’s smiling.
We walk from room to room. My dad fills plastic bags with the old lady’s things. He takes a book from the bookcase; behind it lies a wad of banknotes. He opens the wardrobe in the old lady’s bedroom, takes out a broad-brimmed hat which he empties of gold jewellery. In the drawing room he takes porcelain figurines from the windowsill. Three dogs playing with a ball, a small shepherdess. He wraps them in towels. He takes a painting from the wall, an oil painting in a good frame. He reads the back of the canvas, looks over at me before he puts it down. He sits down on the sofa next to me and takes my hand.
“I don’t want you to think that we’re nicking stuff.”
My cheeks are wet.
“When you own a house like this one, with a garden, yes, and a car. And books. The books on the bookcases alone. Then you always have a lot of relations. Even if you never see them.”
I can’t stop sobbing, he holds me tight. I try not to look at the old lady in the armchair a few metres away from us.
“‘Give them a day or two,’ she would say, ‘and they’ll start ripping up the floorboards. Looking for the X that marks the spot on the treasure map.’ She would have wanted us to take what we could.”
My dad cups my head in his hands, looks into my eyes.
“You made her very happy,” he says. “You made her incredibly happy.”
We continue through the house. It’s like working your way down a shopping list. My eyes are still wet; I wipe them on my sleeve. I’ve never wanted to stay in a place as much as this. We could smash all the clocks. Break every mirror so the old lady would never have to look at herself. We could stay here until my hair was just as long as my dad’s, until I could grow a beard like his. We could drive around in the old black car, go shopping, but never buy a newspaper. No one would ever find us here. This is the first place we’ve lived where I haven’t been woken up by my dad’s nightmares.
The engine growls; the trunk is stuffed with our belongings, new and old.
We’re back in the city today. It’s just as big and noisy as when we first arrived. My dad parks the car beneath a sign with luminous red letters. The hotel is squashed in between a bar with dark windows and what my dad says is a strip club. He carries the suitcases into reception, hits the bell. We wait a long time. I stare at the carpet; the pattern is hidden under several layers of dirt.
Now I’m sitting on the bed. I’m alone. My dad has gone to take back the car. It’ll be hours before he returns on the butcher’s bike. The suitcase lies unopened next to me. I can hear noises from the street, from the other rooms. New sounds. Our new home.
My dad takes a bite of his crusty roll, drinks the last drop of coffee, and gets up.
“Do you want anything?”
I shake my head. He walks past a table with two young girls who look like they’ve been crying. My dad fills his cup with coffee from the Thermos on the table by the wall.
When we sat down in the hotel restaurant I was sure I must have stepped in something. Then I realized that it was the carpet that smelled of wet hand towels, dirty dogs, and cigarettes. My dad piles his plate high with bread rolls, a couple of slices of cheese, and some jam. I try to keep my eyes to myself. A man with a chunky silver chain around his neck sits at the neighbouring table. He has drawings on his fingers. His hair is black and cut very close to his scalp. When I asked my dad, he said the man was probably from Bulgaria or Romania. The man forms patterns with matchsticks on the table in front of him. He makes a star. When he has put down the last matchstick, he picks them all up again and begins a different pattern. He meets my gaze and I quickly look down at my plate.
My dad sits down again opposite me. He has spilled a little coffee in the saucer.
“What separates man from any other species,” he says, wiping the saucer with a paper napkin, “is his ability to adapt.”
I follow his gaze to a man in the corner. He’s wearing a suit and tie. On the chair next to him lies a brown leather briefcase. The man’s hair is smooth, with a part on the left. On one cheek he has a small cut from shaving. He reads his newspaper, hums to himself, and eats bread rolls.
My dad hands me two sugar lumps to suck.
There’s a small cinema close to the hotel. The girl who sells tickets smiles at my dad and brings him coffee while we wait for the film to start.
We watch German, French, Russian, and Polish films.
Often I don’t read the subtitles; I look at the screen and decide what they’re talking about.
We must build a killer robot in the basement, Alexei.
Or,
When will the killer robot be ready, Alexei?
The robot is always just out of the shot, shining like silver and ready to attack.
There are five hot dog stands near the hotel. My dad thinks it’s important that we try them all, to find out who makes the best hot dog. You can’t just eat one hot dog at each stand. You have to come back.
My dad has his hot dogs with everything. I don’t like the strong mustard and the raw onions.
“He’ll have everything but that,” my dad says to Ulla from Ulla’s Hot Dog Stand, to Morten from Star Sausages, and to Svend from Svend’s Snack Bar. Once we’ve been there a couple of times, they too know what “everything but that” means.
“You can’t eat a good hot dog without getting your fingers sticky,” my dad says, ketchup at the corner of his mouth. “And not just your fingers; your hands should be covered in the stuff.”
Again I fall asleep to sounds: the whistling of my dad’s nostrils next to me in bed, noises from the street, cars braking hard, tires squealing against the wet tarmac. Drunken people chatting, arguing, shouting beneath our windows.
Every night I hear a couple of fights. The first few times they wake me up, and I go over to the window. I see the doorman from the strip club push a man so hard he goes flying over the hood of a parked car. That, too, has its own sound.
I learn to tell the difference between a police siren and the siren of an ambulance. The hotel also makes noises. Drunken people have a special way of walking and they’re bad at whispering.
“How much?” they say. “How much did we agree on?”
I snuggle up close to my dad. When he scratches himself in his sleep, he ends up tickling me. The first few nights the sounds keep me awake; they’re more alien and intrusive than in any of the other places we’ve lived before.
One morning my dad says that the summer holidays are over, that it’s time to go back to school.
“You’re in Grade Two now. You should expect things to get a lot more difficult.”
There’s a new subject on my timetable, History. We start with the Second World War. My dad says it’s a good place to start.
We don’t have a table, so we lie on the bed. While my dad talks I see roaring Messerschmitts leave trails of smoke across the ceiling of the hotel room.
On the wall I see Tiger Tanks appear over green h
illtops; they’re enormous and they plow up the grass. Yellow flames erupt from their cannons.
We spend a whole week on Hitler. We go to the library and look at photographs of Hitler giving a speech. Hitler raising his arm towards the sky, all his fingers pointing. Hitler patting a deer. My dad flicks to a new picture. It’s grainy and at first I can’t see what it’s supposed to be; it looks like black shadows twisted together. They’re human beings, my dad says. Then, suddenly, I can make out arms and legs. Naked bodies, as thin as the matchstick men I used to draw when I was little. I start to cry. My dad catches up with me on the sidewalk outside the library.
“There’s a reason I showed you that,” he says, as he dries my cheeks. “When you see the world, when you really see it and you don’t close your eyes like the man over there,” my dad points to a man across the street, “or that lady with her shopping bag. When you see things as they really are, you also have a responsibility. Then you have to do something.”
My dad takes my hand and we start walking.
“People saw Hitler,” he says. “They heard him speak. He was a great speaker. Do you remember the film we saw with him in it?”
I nod; we watched it on a small television with the librarian.
“He looked funny, didn’t he? A small, posturing man.”
I couldn’t help laughing when we saw it.
“But the people in that crowd, they saw hope. They loved him. Even though no one would admit it afterwards.”
We continue down the street. We go into the kiosk on the corner and I’m allowed to choose an ice cream, any one I like. I can only swallow a couple of bites.
I’m woken up by a scratching on the door to our hotel room.
It sounds like a mouse, tiny sharp teeth nibbling. I try to go back to sleep, but the noise persists. I tug at my dad’s arm until he wakes up and I stand right behind him when he opens the door.
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