A Fairy Tale

by Jonas Bengtsson

  I turn on the light. Ulrich remains in the doorway, looking at the paintings that fill my room. He says a German swear word I don’t know and now seems much more clear-headed.

  “We need some light,” he says.

  I hold the bedside table lamp for him, aim it at the pictures while he moves around, squats down in front of them.

  “Didn’t we pass some pictures in the hall?”

  He drags them in, leans them up against the bed, holds the lamp up to them.

  We sit on the bed, he has seen all the pictures, we share the last of my cigarettes.

  “You’re good,” he says, smoothing his tie across his knee. “I can’t remember where my hotel is. Would it be all right if I slept here?”

  He doesn’t wait for an answer. He lies down on the floor next to my bed, folds his jacket, and uses it as his pillow. He falls asleep in seconds; I can hear one of his nostrils giving out a faint squeak.

  I wake up alone in the room and swallow a couple of Kasper’s Dutch headache pills.

  I had some banknotes and coins lying on the table under the window. Now they’re gone. On the back of a train ticket the man from last night has written that he’s very sorry, but that he’ll get the money back to me somehow.

  The cafés are quick to set out chairs on the sidewalks. Those who live in the apartments next to them have to squeeze their way past people drinking lattes. A few weeks later, the chairs have spread out across the whole street.

  The waiters risk getting hit by cars as they run back and forth with empty glasses and overflowing ashtrays. The chairs are centimetres from falling into the canal.

  Even so, many people come in vain; they hover around hoping that some of us will drink up quickly or die under the hot sun.

  Petra is wearing a broad-brimmed straw hat. She dangles a sandal over the water.

  She says that she loves the sun, but it’s not so keen on her.

  Every morning I ring the sorting office and ask if they can manage without me. They usually can. Not many large letters are sent in the summer months. Mostly postcards, lots of postcards. They’re sorted by machines.

  Petra doesn’t have to work so much either; during the holidays students offer themselves as cheap labour.

  We don’t scrimp, but neither of us has ever learned how to spend a lot of money. We buy coffee and food you can fit between two slices of bread.

  Petra stretches out in the café chair. The legs scrape across the cobblestones, edging a little closer to the water.

  “We’ll move the table,” she says. “You can paint in the kitchen. We’ll move the litter tray, Kot won’t mind. It doesn’t matter if you spill paint.”

  I raise my hand to shield my eyes from the sun.

  “And I’m not going to scrub paint off your fingers any more.”

  She takes my hands in hers: they’re clean. I haven’t painted since Kasper was arrested.

  “I’ll nag you,” Petra laughs. “‘You always get paint on your fingers,’ I’ll say loudly. I’ll keep repeating it until someone asks me about it and I’ll have to tell them that my boyfriend is an exhibited artist.”

  I’m almost certain that Petra has been past the gallery since the private view. She hasn’t said anything about it, but there are days when she has come back late, smiling, as though she’s keeping a secret.

  She showed me a cutting from a newspaper she read at work. A couple of lines in the arts section about a gallery that’s concentrating on new art. With a picture of Michael squatting in front of us. I’m standing near the edge, only a grainy shadow.

  I walk across the street for more coffee, our third cup. Petra asks if she can please have a cognac with it.

  I try not to spill when I cross the street again; a cyclist has to swerve to avoid me, I don’t hear what he shouts. Petra sips the cognac tentatively, looks up, and smiles.

  “My dad organized my communion,” she says. “He’s a Catholic, but he doesn’t believe in God so we went to Tivoli Gardens instead. We had to have a cognac with our coffee, now that I was practically a grown-up.”

  Petra licks the inside of the glass.

  “I think I talked constantly when we left. I prattled in a loud, silly voice and my dad was so ashamed he’d got me drunk.”

  Petra giggles before she remembers again that she’s promised herself she wouldn’t tell me about her family.

  On our way back to Petra’s apartment, I take her hand and we go into an off-licence. I buy a bottle of cognac. When the cat has been fed and the condom is in the trash, we drink cognac from water glasses. I look at Petra; after a couple of mouthfuls, she gets a red circle on each cheek that looks like it’s been drawn with lipstick.

  “I look like a clown, don’t I?”

  I nod, she lashes out at me but misses.

  It turns into a long, hot summer where every little vacant shop is rented out and sells ice cream; Italian ice cream, homemade ice cream. The bakeries put out signs advertising home-baked waffle cones. Everyone competes to sell the biggest: the biggest waffle cone, the most marshmallows. The number of scoops reaches double digits.

  Petra buys a leash for Kot. We try to take it for a walk, but the cat keeps turning around and biting at the leather. Petra nudges it with her foot; the cat walks ten metres then turns around again and bites.

  Eventually it refuses to walk any further. I pick it up and carry it around town.

  In Nyhavn I buy Petra an ice cream. I buy her the biggest one they sell. I hold Kot’s leash while she tries to eat it; she has to hold the cone with both hands.

  In bed that night Petra grabs a skin fold on her tummy. She says I’ve made her fat by feeding her ice cream. In the soft light her eyes are dark blue like police uniforms.

  “I don’t think I can stick to our agreement any longer,” she says.

  We’ve taken two buses and almost left the city. now we’re standing outside a community hall. There’s a poster on the door: the name of the band is The Blue Cat. Polska jazz, it says below. The photo of the musicians looks as though it was taken in the eighties.

  “My dad plays the trumpet,” Petra says.

  The man in the picture has a wreath of black curly hair around his head. He has a bushy moustache and wears an embroidered waistcoat that looks like part of a folk dancer’s costume.

  We enter, walk past a notice board with flyers about senior gymnastics and opening hours for the ceramic workshop in the basement. Folding chairs have been set out in the hall; we sit down in the middle. Around us the seats fill up with elderly people; several of them speak Polish to each other.

  Petra leans towards me. “My dad was well known in Poland, but he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. My mum would shout zamknij się, shut your mouth. He had too many opinions.”

  Some of the old people kiss Petra on the cheek. When they’ve greeted each other and everyone has sat down, the musicians enter.

  I recognize Petra’s dad from the poster. His hair’s now reduced to two dark tufts on either side of his head. He’s wearing the same waistcoat as when the photograph was taken, but his stomach has grown and he’d never be able to button it now.

  They get ready on stage and exchange a few words with each other.

  Petra’s dad attaches the mouthpiece to the trumpet, then he nods to the man behind the electric organ, who strikes the first chords. He’s quickly followed by the bass player.

  Petra’s dad blows her a kiss and puts the trumpet to his lips.

  The orchestra plays Polish folk songs with jazz harmonies. Petra tells me what the songs are called.

  “‘Ułani, ułani,’” she whispers in my ear. “It’s about handsome soldiers on horseback with long lances. The children wave goodbye to them, their faces are painted. All the girls are in love with them.”

  The last song before the interval is slow and lingering. Petra’s dad keep
s the jazz phrasing to a minimum.

  “‘Czerwone maki na Monte Cassino,’” Petra says. “My dad hates playing this one.”

  Around us I see old men and women with tears in their eyes; I see tissues come out of handbags.

  “This one is also about soldiers. Dead soldiers.”

  In the interval they sell coffee in plastic cups and bottles of beer from a crate.

  A woman puts a basket of cakes on the table. Petra says they’re called babkas and suggests that I try one.

  The second set is pure jazz, but even in “Birdland” and “Moose the Mooche” I can still hear the harmonies from the folk songs.

  Petra’s dad is about to put the trumpet back in its box when they’re asked to play the song about the dead soldiers at Monte Cassino again. They play a longer version where the chorus is repeated over and over. Afterwards people get up, they clap and clap, again with tears in their eyes. They shake hands with Petra’s dad. Some give banknotes to the musicians, others coins. Petra’s dad thanks them and smiles. An elderly man gives him a bottle wrapped in newspaper.

  We follow Petra’s dad down the street. The tips have been shared out and Petra’s dad has put the waistcoat in his rucksack. He swings the trumpet box back and forth; he smiles a lot, kisses me on the cheek when we’re introduced.

  “I made bigos yesterday,” he says.

  “You made bigos for yourself?” Petra asks, looking as though she finds that very hard to believe.

  “It always tastes better the day after. I was hoping you might stop by for a bite to eat.”

  “I think Mehmet might be working tonight?”

  Petra looks at me.

  “They let me off,” I say.

  She flashes me a grateful smile.

  “Then of course we’ll stay for dinner, tata.”

  The apartment is small, with yellowing jazz posters on the walls. Petra shows me her old room. It’s filled with stuffed toys and porcelain dolls. Across her bed lies a large crochet bedspread. Her dad has touched nothing since she moved out.

  “Sometimes I sit in here and play the trumpet,” he says.

  The dining table is set for three. Bigos turns out to be a sausage casserole with cabbage; we drink beer with it. Petra’s dad puts an LP on the turntable, a recording from the seventies on which he’s playing. Modern jazz with no hint of folk songs.

  When Petra has put the plates in the kitchen, her dad takes out the bottle he got after the concert. Close up, I can see that the newspaper in which it’s wrapped is Polish. He tears off the paper, smiles happily.

  “Proper vodka,” he says. “You need to taste this.”

  We drink a couple of glasses. Petra drinks tea; she says the last bus will leave soon.

  “Stay here,” her dad says. “Your room is ready, you can have bigos for breakfast.”

  His laughter turns into a long cough. Petra looks at me, I nod.

  “We’ll stay over,” she says.

  Her dad smiles and goes to the bathroom to carry on coughing.

  Petra tells me she’s tired and wants to go to bed; she hopes I’ll join her shortly. She says she’s never had sex in her old bedroom. Her dad is a heavy sleeper and she promises to turn away the porcelain dolls so they won’t stare at us.

  “My old tata,” Petra says, when her dad returns to the table. She kisses his cheek. “Don’t stay up too late.”

  From the doorway she sends me a look that can’t be misinterpreted and closes the door behind her.

  Petra’s dad lights a cigarette and fills my glass.

  “You make my daughter happy,” he says, coughing into his hand a couple of times before taking another drag of the cigarette. “You’re Turkish?”

  “Not very much.”

  “I was Polish once. Now I’m Danish and I speak the language badly. No, you don’t have to say that my Danish is good. My German is better.”

  “We can speak German if you like.”

  “Danish is my language now. I speak it badly, but I speak it.”

  We drink and we smoke. For the first half hour I look for an excuse or simply the right time to leave the table and join Petra.

  But her dad carries on talking. First about jazz. Then about escaping to the West. It had become necessary because he’d spoken up too much about Poland. About the Soviet Union. Eventually they got fed up with him. He wasn’t allowed to play at anything other than weddings and holiday resorts out of season. He tells me how the family sold everything they owned and made a deal with a coach driver who often just got waved through when he crossed the border late at night with his coach full of sleeping pensioners returning from a spa holiday.

  Petra’s dad was due to perform at a seaside hotel. When the last set was finished, they’d board the coach, sit at the back, and cross their fingers. Her dad played, Petra clapped her hands and joined in the chorus, her mum was supposed to ring their family to say goodbye and buy bread and cheese for the trip.

  Petra’s dad finds another bottle of vodka from the freezer. He fills our glasses and tells me that they waited for Petra’s mum for twenty-two minutes. Then the coach driver said they’d either have to get on or stay behind.

  They left without her. Perhaps she would join them later, in a taxi, before the border. Perhaps she would find another way across. It was the hardest decision he’d ever had to make. But if his wife had been taken by the police, returning to the apartment in Krakow was a bad idea — sitting there waiting for the police to take him, too, and orphan his daughter.

  Petra’s dad has given up translating all the words into Danish; he says them in Polish and carries on talking.

  I understand that they never saw the mother again.

  Many years later they learned that she had a new family. That she’d married a doctor. That it wasn’t them who had abandoned the mother, but the mother who had abandoned them.

  We’ve almost finished the second bottle when I lie down next to Petra. She’s sleeping heavily; I brush the hair away from her face.

  The summer turns into early autumn and the city grows restless.

  Street corners and benches are filled with bare-chested men, parks with half-naked girls on picnic blankets. Everyone wants to catch the last rays of sunshine.

  I follow the canal down to the gallery.

  There’s a sign in the window: Closed for the summer, it says, with a date for the next exhibition. I can see Michael through the window. He’s talking on the telephone. He smiles at me and opens the door.

  Most of the pictures have been taken down; the few still hanging have small labels saying Sold and give the address of the buyer.

  My two paintings are leaning against the wall in the last room of the gallery.

  When Michael has hung up, he gets out some corrugated cardboard and a big roll of packing tape.

  Then the telephone rings and he disappears again.

  It takes me only a couple of minutes to wrap up my paintings. I’ve tucked them under my arm and I’m heading out the door when Michael calls me over, putting down the handset.

  “This isn’t a post office, you know,” he says, smiling, and hands me a letter.

  I follow the canal past the cafés to the end of the harbour where there are fewer people. I sit down with my feet dangling over the water.

  The letter lies on my lap. For a long time I just sit there staring at it.

  Then I tear open the envelope. Inside is a single handwritten sheet of A4.

  He uses my new name even in the letter itself. He respects that I have the right to choose my own name.

  The letter is short.

  He wants me to visit him. It’s very important that I visit him. The address is written more clearly than the rest, as though he has traced the pen many times over every single letter.

  The letter is signed Your dad.

  I s
tay sitting with the letter in my lap; I look at the sailboats leaving the canal for the open sea. I see motorboats and tourists on canal round trips; they wave at me.

  I get up. I find a dumpster and toss the paintings into it.

  A couple of streets from Petra’s apartment, I stop at the bank to take out some cash.

  Petra kisses me. She asks me if anything is wrong. I shake my head, I try to smile. She cooks dinner for us, Polish food today. She serves potatoes, cheap beer, and vodka. Big sausages swimming in fat. I drink more than I eat.

  I take the cash from my pocket and tell her that my paintings were sold. That the money is for her.

  She counts it.

  “I’d have thought you’d get more for your paintings. I mean, if they’ve hung in a proper gallery.”

  “Won’t it cover the rest of Kot’s medical bill?”

  She nods. For the last couple of months she has been paying off the visit to the animal hospital.

  I put a bite of sausage into my mouth. I chew and force myself to swallow it.

  “It’s really great that you sold the paintings,” she says, pouring more beer into my glass.

  It turns autumn while I sit on the train. The leaves lose their colour as I leave the city behind.

  At the bus station the wind tears at my clothes.

  I ask the bus driver to tell me when my stop is. When I mention the name of the road, he stares at me a little too long.

  I walk up a gravel path with grass on either side. The building is single-storey, so I can see only the front from here. It’s difficult to get an idea of how big it really is.

  The gravel path leads up to two glass doors. When I get nearer, tiny scratches to the surface reveal that they’re not made from glass but thick, transparent plastic.

  Ring the bell, says a small cardboard sign taped to the inside of the window. I press the bell. I think I can see movement inside. The lock buzzes.