A Fairy Tale

by Jonas Bengtsson

  We wait to be let back in. We can see the carer like a shadow through the glass doors. My dad’s voice is so soft that I struggle to hear it over the wind.

  “You have to help me find the door in the wall,” he says.

  Then the carer lets us in.

  Elsebeth rings her bell. she’s standing at the foot of the stairs waiting; she says there’s a telephone call for me. She looks a little confused, I’ve never received any calls at her place, I haven’t given out her number to anyone.

  “I think he’s German,” she says, as I follow her to the telephone in the kitchen.

  The man on the line starts by apologizing for last time: he was very drunk though that’s no excuse, of course. It’s Ulrich, he then says.

  Elsebeth continues to stand there looking nervously at the receiver. I smile and nod to her. She goes back to the drawing room where the radio is still playing classical music.

  Ulrich says he has sent me a letter. He asks if I got it. Then he laughs nervously, of course I haven’t. He only posted it today. He just wants me to know that he meant what he said. Even if he was very drunk. He drank on an empty stomach and everyone knows that gets you very drunk.

  He really liked my paintings and wants to exhibit them. A special exhibition, only my work. He just called to tell me that; everything else is in the letter.

  I sit down on the chair by the table, still holding the telephone after he has hung up. I listen to the dial tone.

  Petra has stopped asking what’s wrong. I wake up at night when I hear the sound of her crying, but I no longer turn on the light. Somewhere above the foot of the bed I see my dad’s eyes. They float over the metal pigeonholes at the sorting office until my hands take over.

  I’m busy putting away Elsebeth’s shopping when I see the letter on the kitchen table.

  It’s addressed to the artist Mehmet Faruk.

  Inside is a photo of Ulrich; he’s standing in front of a former butcher’s. He’s smiling, flinging out his arms, proudly showing the empty display windows. He writes that he has finally found the perfect place. He’s going to call his gallery “Fleisch.” My paintings will open it.

  There are some Deutschmarks in the envelope. He’s repaying his loan, he writes. There’s a little extra which he hopes will cover my train fare.

  I place the items on the counter.

  Tubes of paint. An easel. Brushes of different sizes.

  The shop assistant asks if I need help. I shake my head and keep finding more things. I’ve stopped looking at the price tags.

  I buy as many canvases as I can carry. I move all the old paintings out into the hallway and stack them on top of each other.

  I put up the easel in the middle of the floor and mount a canvas. I open the first tube of paint. I paint until sunset; then I turn on the light, light some candles, and carry on painting.

  I don’t go to bed until the early morning. My hand has yet to unclench from gripping the paintbrush. I close my eyes, I can smell the pigments in the paint so strongly that I can see colours on the insides of my eyelids.

  The sun wakes me up and I carry on painting.

  After another hour I drink a glass of water and smoke a cigarette.

  I switch on the travel kettle and make myself a cup of instant coffee which I drink, cold, a couple hours later.

  I use the paintings from the basement for reference, finding details, a hand, a gaze. Then I carry the old painting down to the courtyard, rip it out of the frame, and throw it in one of the big garbage cans. I keep the frame and stretch out a fresh canvas.

  It’s afternoon and I’m squeezing ochre paint onto the palette. When I look at the clock again it’s five minutes before I need to be standing in front of the pigeonholes with the postal codes. I run down the street, I can feel paint dry through my T-shirt.

  A couple of days later I call the sorting office. It’s midday and I speak to a woman from Admin. I say a family member is ill. Terminally. I’m feeling terrible, really terrible. But I’d still like to go to work. The woman on the telephone sounds sympathetic. She must have typed in my name and seen from my records that I’ve taken only one sick day in the last two years. She tells me to call back when things are a bit better. Then she corrects herself and tells me to call again when I feel ready to come to back to work. And that sometimes you need to give things a little time. I promise to do that. At an ATM I check the balance of Mehmet Faruk’s account. For several years I’ve worked Sundays and holidays to earn overtime and there’s enough money to last the year out.

  I’ve a carton of cigarettes under my arm when I meet Elsebeth in the hallway.

  She opens and closes her mouth. She stares at me as though she’s just seen one of her late husbands.

  “You’ve lost weight,” she says. “You must eat.”

  “I’m painting.”

  “Yes,” she says, smiling. “I can see that.”

  It’s not until then that I realize I’ve got paint on my cheek and under my fingernails.

  “I’m careful,” I say. “I don’t get paint on anything, I watch what I’m doing.”

  “Doesn’t matter. If you’re painting, you’re painting. But you have to eat something.”

  She grabs hold of my sleeve and pulls me into the kitchen, she sits me down.

  “I’d prefer it if I was the first of us to die,” Elsebeth says, lighting the gas burner. “It’s hard to find a good tenant.”

  She makes scrambled eggs and bacon. The bacon sizzles in the pan.

  “A girl came by asking for you,” she says, without taking her eyes off the food. “Very pale-skinned. I said you were out. It’s none of my business.”

  It’s been only a couple of days since I last saw Petra, but I’ve been thinking about it for a while. Thinking that tomorrow I’ll go over to see her. Or in a few days. Soon, anyway.

  Elsebeth puts the plate in front of me, she pours milk into a tall glass and watches me to make sure that I eat.

  The first couple of mouthfuls swell up in my mouth. My stomach groans in protest. I get a stitch as though I’ve been running too fast.

  I need a cigarette, I ran out last night. A cigarette and a cup of coffee.

  Elsebeth keeps her eyes on me until my stomach wakes up and hunger takes over. I clear my plate and eat four slices of rye bread as well.

  Every day from then on I discover plates of food in the kitchen with small notes. Eat! says the plate of meatloaf in the fridge. Drink! says a glass that looks like milk, but tastes like cream.

  I find apples and hard-boiled eggs. Fried sausages that I eat cold while I paint.

  I paint as the storm blasts the country. The windows rattle while I dip the brush in paint. The next day I see uprooted trees and cars whose windows have been smashed by roof tiles. It’s not until then that I realize that the storm really did happen, that it wasn’t just inside my head and in my room. Winter is coming; I know this because I now have fewer hours of daylight in front of the easel.

  My dreams come in muted shades of green and blue. Other nights they’re fiery red like blood, mailboxes, and the insides of mouths.

  I paint until noon and then I pack my rucksack. The digital watch I’ve bought is waterproof. I change into my swimming trunks and walk past the main pool to the cold water pool, a small, round basin where the water is just above freezing.

  I usually have the place to myself; on the few occasions I see other people they’re old with leathery skin. They smile strained smiles as they exercise by the edge of the pool.

  I look at the digital watch, I see the seconds mount up. By the hundred. I have to last one minute longer than yesterday. My body hurts; my hands turn white.

  One of the lifeguards asks me if I’m okay. He says I’ve been in there quite a long time. The muscles in my neck are stiff and stand out at the back of my head like the number eleven. I keep my mo
uth closed to stop my teeth from chattering. I give him a nod. He moves on.

  I do the finger exercise: When you can no longer press each fingertip against your thumb, you’ve been in the cold water for too long. I stole a book about it from the library; I cut off the magnetic strip with a razor blade and slipped the book into my bag. The clinical term is hypothermia.

  A range of symptoms is used to diagnose degrees of hypothermia.

  I look at the digital watch again. I’ve managed to add another minute. I lift myself out of the cold water and bang my foot against the metal ladder. It won’t start to hurt until later.

  I walk alongside the pools on stiff legs. I walk past people swimming, children splashing. I check my body for symptoms; severe shaking is one of them.

  The body trying to heat itself.

  Another symptom is speaking incoherently. You start to mumble.

  I recite nursery rhymes to myself. On my way back to the changing room, I say: Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief.

  But I don’t know if you can hear yourself mumble. If your thoughts are messed up and frozen, surely your words will be, too.

  I sit in the sauna until I can feel my hands and feet again. I massage the muscles in my right forearm, the ones I’ll be using when I’m back in front of the canvas.

  I’m sitting on a bench opposite the playground. I’m wearing several layers of clothing. Two pairs of socks in my winter boots.

  I’ve my sketchbook with me. I’ve unscrewed the top of the Thermos and I drink from it. It’s December and my coffee is steaming.

  At first I draw the school building: loose lines with a charcoal pencil. Then I fill in the details. I could be a student from the art college. Or the school of architecture. On an academic assignment. Architecture from the early seventies. If anyone were to look over my shoulder, they’d see the approximate measurements I’ve noted down, the height of the building, the width of each glass section.

  The bell rings, it’s break time. I go to the wire fence and look into the playground. The double doors are thrown open so hard they jump on their hinges. The playground quickly fills with children.

  A teacher on playground duty comes over to me. Even though I’m not wearing a raincoat and have no sweets in my pockets, I know I’ve been standing there too long.

  Before he opens his mouth, I ask him if he knows when the school was built. I turn over a fresh page in my sketchbook, ready to write down his reply. The sentence he’d prepared doesn’t cross his lips. He scratches his head and guesses sometime in the early seventies.

  I’m welcome to come with him to the office, where they’ll definitely know for sure. I smile. I’ve been sitting in front of the school during five breaks over two days.

  This private school is the last on my list, a small school with fewer pupils. It can’t be more than ten years old. The jungle gym in the playground isn’t rusty, the paint isn’t flaking off.

  I sit outside the school from the first break until cars with parents start pulling up to collect their children.

  At night I dream about a charcoal pencil so small I can only hold it with my fingertips.

  I have to draw the whole world, otherwise it’ll fall apart.

  The next morning I’m back in front of the school. The Christmas holidays start in two days.

  The bell rings for the lunch break. For the first ten minutes the playground is empty while the children eat their packed lunches in their classrooms. Then they come outside in small groups. I stand in front of the fence. I see a little blonde girl walking with her friends.

  I think I recognize a movement, the way she holds her head. I walk through the gate and into the playground.

  She looks straight at me, but has already moved on. All she saw was a grown-up, someone she doesn’t know, not a proper person. She runs a little before turning around again. Our eyes meet, she blinks once. Then she throws her arms around my neck. I think I can detect makeup on her face.

  My sister has grown; I can already begin to see what she’ll look like as an adult.

  “Do Mum and Dad know you’re here?” she asks, when she finally lets go of my neck.

  “No. It’s probably best if you don’t tell them.”

  “That might be difficult . . .” She bites her bottom lip like she used to do when she was unsure of something or wanted to pester her dad for new toys.

  “In return I promise not to tell them you’re wearing makeup,” I say, and she laughs. “I’m going to go away for a while.”

  “You’ve already been away. Mum and Dad went crazy . . .”

  “Far away. I’m going far away. All gone. I don’t know when I’ll be coming back.”

  She looks at me. Her eyes are big and blue, even bluer than I remembered them.

  She’s about to say something when I pick her up and press my face into her collar to dry my eyes.

  “Will I see you again?” she asks.

  “Of course. But I don’t know when.”

  “Do I have to grow up first?”

  “Yes, you have to grow up first.”

  She nods. A girl calls out to her. She kisses my cheek, then she runs back to her friends.

  I’m standing in the street in front of Elsebeth’s apartment, taking small steps on the spot to keep warm. The wind smokes my cigarettes, raindrops threaten to put them out. I’m about to go back inside the stairwell when the van comes around the corner. A box van with German plates; at first it drives past me, then it reverses.

  The van has a big scratch on its side that reveals several layers of paint. Once it was yellow; it has also been brown and blue.

  On the side in big letters it says Ergüls Frucht und Gemüse.

  The driver gets out. He’s a big man in a hand-knit sweater whose stitches are stretched to bursting. He opens the back doors and I can smell rotten vegetables.

  He helps me carry my paintings down from the bedroom. He can manage three at a time; he holds them in outstretched arms, resting them on his stomach. He puts them into the back of the van, moving them around so they won’t fall over. Before he gets back in the driver’s seat, he shakes my hand; his fingerless gloves scratch my palm. I watch the van drive down the street and disappear around the corner.

  The car’s headlights pass in a few seconds; they’re followed by the sound of tires against wet tarmac.

  I walk up the gravel path to the reinforced plastic door. I ring the bell, the lock buzzes, and I enter.

  The woman behind the counter has sleepy eyes after a long shift or a Christmas party the day before.

  “I have an appointment,” I say.

  She enters my dad’s name on the computer. Then she shakes her head.

  “Are you sure it’s for today?”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time they’ve forgotten to log it.”

  She presses another couple of keys.

  “Can’t you ring someone? Try the consultant.”

  “We can only do that if it’s an emergency . . .”

  “It’s Christmas Eve. I just want to see my dad, I promised him.”

  She looks at me, hoping that I’ll give up. Go away and disappear and leave her with the crime novel she’s pushed under the counter so all I can see is one blood-red corner with a bullet hole.

  “I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do,” she says.

  I stay where I am.

  If only I’d start shouting. If only I’d throw papers and pens on the floor; then she could press the silent alarm which sits somewhere under the counter, the one her index finger has been resting on for a couple of minutes now.

  But I speak calmly; I look into her eyes without staring.

  “I just want to see my dad.”

  I don’t move a millimetre.

  She’s about to say something else, then she shrugs.
/>   Her finger leaves the alarm and she presses the intercom.

  “Mikkel, would you come up here, please?”

  I wait on the sofa, I flick through three newspapers before a young man with a nametag and a ponytail appears.

  I follow him through the wards I’m starting to recognize. From Ward E all the way down to Ward Q. Past R and V. The corridors have been decorated with wonky Christmas cards and paper chains cut with blunt scissors by shaking hands.

  A man in a dressing gown is sitting in front of a piano in one of the common rooms.

  “So how about it? How about a Christmas carol?”

  The patient turns his head slightly, not enough to see us. A long thread of saliva hangs from his lower lip and nearly touches one of the black keys.

  “Or what about ‘Für Elise’? Everyone knows that one.”

  The man hits the keys at random. The piano needs tuning.

  The carer slaps him on the shoulder. “I’ll be back in a minute, then we’ll get you back to your room.”

  We walk on.

  “You have to keep a sense of humour in this job. Otherwise you don’t last.”

  The lighting is subdued; we see no patients or other carers in the corridors.

  “You’re visiting your dad, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s probably heavily medicated. I’m just telling you now so that you don’t come back in ten minutes asking what the hell’s wrong with him.”

  He finds the key card, opens the door to yet another lock.

  “This place is always badly understaffed around the holidays, so they drug the patients to the eyeballs. Normally I don’t work this ward, but a boy with a stick could look after them right now, frankly. The night shift will have to change a lot of soiled underwear, but that’s not a problem when they don’t resist.”

  He unlocks the door. My dad is sitting on the bed, leaning against the wall.