A Fairy Tale

by Jonas Bengtsson

  “Read this,” she says, and hands my dad a crumpled newspaper.

  He quickly skims the page, then gives her a big hug.

  “But that’s great,” he exclaims. “That’s really great!”

  He lights her cigarette. I sit down at the table with the newspaper. The review is written in a column in a difficult language full of words I don’t understand.

  When I get to Sara’s name, I spell my way through it.

  She portrays Olga with greater authority than I have seen in any previous production. That the director has chosen to use her as the driving force of the production is bordering on genius.

  I carry on reading. I can tell from looking at Sara and my dad that it’s a good review, that they haven’t been slaughtered as Kim predicted. When his name appears, I try again, word by word, to make sense of what it says.

  . . . Making the world-weary country doctor a profoundly alcoholic character is a brave decision. Rarely have I seen alcoholism depicted so realistically, from the shaking hands to the slow but deliberately clear diction. Nothing is overplayed, nothing is superfluous. When the doctor drinks from his teacup, the audience wonders how little tea and how much vodka it contains. When he puts it down, the audience crosses its fingers that he will find the table.

  “What happened here?” Sara says, looking around the apartment, rubbing her eyes and nearly burning herself with the cigarette in the process. “Was there a break-in?”

  She looks at the clothes that didn’t make it into the suitcase, the bowl of porridge oats I ate last night — knocked over in the rush and now lying broken on the floor, the milk seeping down between the floorboards.

  “Fire drill,” my dad says.

  After that night’s performance we’re dragged out of the lighting box. We’ve no choice, of course we’re coming with them.

  The beers are ready and waiting, the bartender grinning. The newspaper review has been put up on the wall.

  The bell rings many times that night, many rounds are bought. Kim performs magic tricks not just for me, but for the whole bar. Margrethe sings a ballad; at first she doesn’t want to, but the others persuade her. The song is a little rude and everyone laughs.

  “The actors are celebrating tonight,” my dad says, helping me into my coat. We can still hear them shouting and laughing as we walk down the street.

  The actors and the stagehands have gathered in the theatre foyer. We see them through the windows as we come down the street. We’re late today: my dad stopped to buy new gels for the lamps and more light bulbs.

  The actors look ill. My dad says they must have been drinking all night. Even Margrethe struggles to hide it under several layers of makeup. We’re told we’re waiting for the theatre manager.

  Kim leans against my dad: “If he’s going to pull the show, his timing is lousy.”

  People in the street stop and stare at us before they move on.

  The theatre manager rushes in. “I wanted to tell you in person to avoid any misunderstanding.”

  “Speak up!” someone calls out.

  The theatre manager coughs into his hand. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to cancel tonight’s show. Nothing terrible has happened, not really. Water damage in the basement. A pipe has burst in one the dressing rooms.”

  I hear people say A blessing in disguise or It’s bad luck.

  The theatre manager holds up his hand again to speak. “The good news is that the costumes weren’t damaged. We should be able to re-open in a couple of days. The tickets are selling like hotcakes.”

  People break up into small clusters.

  Kim asks out into the room: “Am I the only one who’s thirsty?”

  That night Sara and my dad go out for dinner.

  Sara squats down in front of me; she says that I have to pick the restaurant. That I have to come with them or it won’t be a good evening. I tell her I’d rather stay at home and do some drawing. I follow them down to the takeaway on the corner where we buy half a roast chicken and french fries for me. I wave to the taxi as they drive off.

  I eat raw porridge oats with milk while my dad is still asleep on the camp bed in the living room. With every mouthful I take, my spoon hits the side of the bowl a little harder. My dad sits up, rubs his eyes, and asks me if I want to see something exciting. He takes me to the theatre. From the top step we can see men in rubber boots that go all the way up to their waists. They splash through the grey water and have to shout at each other to drown out the sound of the trunk. There must be an elephant right outside, sucking up the water. It’s very thirsty.

  I’m drawing in my room. Through the door to the living room I can hear Sara talking to my dad. She’s convinced that Kim caused the water damage. She has been thinking it over and now she’s sure of it. My dad doesn’t reply so she tries to convince him, telling him that Kim acted strangely in the bar that night. At first he was happy. Then he was on the verge of tears. Then he disappeared and was gone for hours. Then he came back and sat there nursing a whisky.

  “It would make sense,” Sara says. “He’s never gotten that much applause before. Not in the last fifteen years and not without him wearing a funny hat or dressing up in a monkey costume.”

  My dad asks if I feel like going out. We could go to Langelinie Promenade, throw coins at the Little Mermaid statue and eat ice cream.

  I tell them again that I’d rather stay at home and do some drawing.

  My dad doesn’t wake up until late the next day. He hums as he tidies up.

  “Music,” he says, “let’s have some music. We’ll buy a record player, you can choose the colour. Or we’ll just paint it.”

  He drums solos with his fingers on the table.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to come?” he asks.

  I hear his footsteps down the stairs; he takes them three at a time.

  I take out a tennis ball from one of the drawers. The block we live in is nice and very clean. No chewing gum wrappers or tricycles thrown into the hedge. No hopscotch lines on the courtyard floor. Only old people with walkers and signs saying “Watch out, steps.”

  I throw the ball up against the wall and catch it. I say Try again, throw higher, you can do it. The second-floor window opens and a lady with white hair and lots of wrinkles sticks out her head. She looks around, searching for something. She blinks a couple of times before she spots me.

  “You’re not allowed to do that,” she says. “No ball games in the courtyard. Can’t you read the sign?”

  “No,” I reply. “I’m blind.”

  She looks at me, baffled. “No ball games allowed.”

  She withdraws her head, but leaves the window open. I’m sure she’s sitting right behind it, ready and waiting in case I throw the ball again.

  Kim is sitting on a chair in the dressing room with a wet towel around his neck. He’s clutching a cup of coffee with both hands; his body is shaking so violently that his trousers are covered with brown stains.

  “He has been drinking ever since the pipe burst,” Margrethe says. “I don’t think he has slept since Tuesday.” She holds his head, looks into his eyes. “Are you sure you can go on?”

  Kim nods; more coffee stains appear on his trousers.

  “If not, now’s the time to tell us.”

  Kim swallows a big gulp of coffee that must surely burn his throat. “I’m fine.”

  “You heard him,” Margrethe says, clapping her hands, and the actors carry on doing their makeup and getting into costume.

  Kim groans faintly.

  The auditorium is so packed that I have to sit on the steps between the seat rows.

  On stage the actors talk about the harvest festival, they pour tea from the pot. Today the sun shines more brightly than ever on Sara. Her last line lingers in the air. This is the cue for the country doctor to enter. The actors stare down into their cups,
they fiddle with their costumes. Margrethe examines the teapot as though there’s something wrong with it. I count one Mississippi, two Mississippi, and have got to twenty-two Mississippi before Kim staggers on stage. He doesn’t have his doctor’s bag with him. A couple of metres in he stops. I think he’s having second thoughts and is about to leave the stage. Then he goes over to the table. Sara quickly pulls out a chair for him.

  “Have you been waiting a long time?” he asks.

  The play carries on. Kim has a cup of tea which he sips. When the other actors talk to him, he mumbles his lines, but everyone pretends to understand what he’s saying.

  We reach the end of Act One; my dad slowly dims the lights. A summer evening. Now Olga and the country doctor are alone on stage. Kim gets up; for a second, it looks as if he’s about to fall over. Then he moves downstage and stops a few centimetres from the edge. He scratches his face. The auditorium is completely silent. The country doctor says that life didn’t turn out the way he thought it would. Then he goes blank. He takes a few steps back. Sara looks at him. Everyone in the auditorium is looking at him, their mouths hanging open. Kim scratches his face again.

  He starts speaking again. The country doctor says that Olga has grown up, that she’s a big girl now. Once she was so small she could fit in a pocket. Kim speaks for a long time and with many pauses. He stumbles through his words. Not everything he says makes sense, can be heard or understood.

  When he finally stops, there’s total silence in the auditorium. A young man gets up and starts clapping so hard that it must hurt. He’s quickly followed by others until the whole auditorium is echoing with the sound.

  “Are you hungry?” my dad asks me.

  We’ve just left the theatre and we’re walking down the street.

  “Isn’t Sara coming with us?”

  “Not today.”

  We cross Rådhuspladsen, we carry on walking. We end up in front of a place that looks like a bar from the outside. When we’ve entered through the large wooden door, I can see white fabric tablecloths and gleaming cutlery. A waiter shows us to a table in the middle of the room. Two men in suits are sitting a few tables away from us; apart from that we’re alone in the restaurant.

  The waiter returns with the menu, he brings a large beer for my dad and a soda for me. My dad flicks through the menu. He asks me what I want, have anything you like. Then he puts the menu down and looks at me.

  “Something’s bothering you.”

  “No . . .”

  “Yes.”

  “I want to go to school.”

  “You do go to school.”

  “A real school.”

  He nods, shakes a cigarette out of the packet. The waiter returns and my dad orders for both of us. When we’re alone again, my dad looks at me.

  “You’d like to go to a school with other children?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you shall.”

  We eat roast pork with parsley sauce on large white plates. Between us is a bowl of boiled potatoes with a sprinkling of chopped parsley on top. My dad crunches some crackling.

  “It’s a bit complicated,” he says, and looks as if he needs time to think about it. “I’ll need to check out a few things. But you will go to school.” He cuts a potato in half, dips it in the sauce before he puts it in his mouth. “After the summer . . . after the summer you can start Grade Three.”

  One of the men in suits gets up. He leans on the back of his chair for support before he starts walking. On his way to the bathroom, he knocks a fork from one of the other tables. He bends down, picks it up, and puts it back on the table very slowly and carefully.

  “Do you think I’ll be able to keep up?”

  I had a dream I was in a classroom, the other pupils were laughing at me, told me to spell “idiot,” write it on the board.

  My dad stops chewing.

  “I mean, the others have been going to school for two years. Five days a week. Are you sure I’ll be as good . . .”

  Then he starts to laugh. He laughs so hard that the beer in his glass sloshes and I think I can see tiny ripples on the surface of the sauce.

  “You’re not as good as them,” he says, wiping his eyes with the napkin. “You’re much, much better. Take the best pupil in any class you join and you’ll be better than him or her. Just remember this,” he says. “It’s okay that you’re better than the others. But try not to be too clever. Try not to show it. People will only start to ask questions.”

  I promise — even though I find it hard to believe him.

  My dad orders more pork, says eat up. Eat until you burst. I get another soda, too.

  “We’ll carry on with our own school, perhaps just on Sundays when we’ve nothing else to do. You don’t need to be as stupid as the rest of the world.”

  We’re sitting on a picnic blanket in a big park. I’ve been here before, collecting bottles with my dad. Today we’re the ones tipping out the dregs and smiling as we hand the bottles to men and women with dirty hands. We’re surrounded by people walking, standing, and sitting down again, disturbing the grass so I can see that the soil is filled with worms and old bottle caps.

  It’s May Day, and Sara says she’s cold in her summer dress. My dad gives her his denim jacket to put on. It’s too big and her hands disappear inside the sleeves. Sara stays on the blanket while we wait in line at a food stand. I get a sticker from a man and put it on my T-shirt. It’s big and round. I ask my dad if it’s very important that we leave the European Community. He smiles. “I don’t think you and I were ever in the EC.”

  We buy grilled sausages that have split and are a little burned on one side; we sit on the blanket and eat them off paper plates. We can hear music from the stage: a man is singing and I hear the word “peace.” The rest of the lyrics are drowned out by drums and guitar. Sara gets tomato sauce on the sleeve of my dad’s jacket; she promises to wash it, promises that it’ll wash out. My dad just laughs. After we’ve finished eating, he comes with me to the bushes to have a pee. I have to watch where I put my feet. Many of the leaves are already wet and there are small puddles all over the place.

  My dad has a pee, too. He aims his willy at me and says, “I’m going to pee on you, I’m going to pee on you.”

  I try to escape, I trip, fall into a bush and scratch my cheek a little, but I’m still laughing when he helps me back to my feet.

  I drink fruit punch. My dad rests his head in Sara’s lap. Sara says she likes my sticker.

  She looks at her watch. “If we’re going to get to the front of the stage, we have to leave now.”

  My dad nudges the plastic bag with his foot, it clinks. “There’s still some beer left.”

  Sara starts to rise so my dad has to sit up; the lap he was resting on is gone. “I want to hear her speak.”

  I help my dad fold the blanket.

  The area in front of the stage is already packed with people, hundreds of them.

  Two men are walking around the stage picking up empty bottles and cigarette stubs and rolling out cables. When they leave, a blonde woman appears.

  Her name is Monika: I know that from the placards people are holding up. She wears jeans and a T-shirt and her hair is in a ponytail. She smiles and steps up to the microphone. People clap, some whistle. Even though we were at the back a moment ago, we’re now surrounded by people. I can no longer see anything, only their backs. My dad lifts me up and puts me on his shoulders.

  The woman on the stage laughs as if she can’t quite believe so many people have turned up just because of her. But when she starts to speak, she sounds neither hesitant nor shy. I look at the people around us; everyone is listening to her. It’s the first time today that the park has fallen completely silent; all we can hear is Monika’s voice from the big loudspeakers. She says it’s not about Left or Right, but about people and the future. Her eyes shine while s
he speaks. My dad stands very still underneath me. He doesn’t rummage around in his pocket for cigarettes or shuffle his feet like he usually does when he’s bored.

  When Monika has finished talking she takes a few steps away from the microphone; again she smiles apologetically. Everyone around me starts to clap and refuses to stop.

  I think my dad has forgotten I’m still sitting on his shoulders; he just stands there staring at the empty stage. It’s not until Sara touches his arm that he lifts me down, picks up the plastic bag, and we leave.

  “I told you she’s not like other politicians,” Sara laughs.

  I’m woken up by a loud bump in the kitchen and then I hear my dad swear. He has stubbed his toe on the table leg again. Shortly afterwards he appears in the doorway to my room.

  “I’ll be back soon; I’m just going out to get some bread.”

  My dad didn’t wash up last night, so I fill up the washing bowl. When he comes back, he has a big pile of newspapers in his arms, but no bread. I don’t say anything; we have porridge oats and milk in the fridge.

  My dad pours himself some coffee and takes the first newspaper from the pile. He sits hunched over the pages. When he finds something interesting, he reaches for the scissors.

  When I’ve finished my porridge oats, I try to draw the ghost of the old man who lived in the apartment before us. I draw him just as transparent as the smoke that comes out of his mouth.

  I take my sketchbook and go down to the courtyard. I draw birds sitting in the tree. I draw cats slinking around as they hunt for rats by the bin shed. Then I draw a cat’s head on one of the pigeons and I’m pleased with my drawing. I draw a cat jumping from a garbage can; it has the head of a pigeon with its beak open.

  A couple of hours later I return to the apartment. My dad’s still at the table reading newspapers. I empty his ashtray for him. The last bit of coffee has burned black and stuck to the bottom of the pot on the stove so I put it in the sink, fill it with water, and leave it to soak.