The Merman

by Carl-Johan Vallgren

  ‘I was asking him about Tommy... if he knew where Tommy is.’ Gerard started to do some more stretches, now his other leg. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Patrik Lagerberg circling round us with his gelled yuppie hair. It took only a single glance from Gerard to make him skedaddle over to the other side of the gym.

  ‘That’s what you claim, sure. But you might be lying. People do that sometimes. Make up things about other people. About me, for example. That I would burn kittens alive, for example. Somebody apparently told L.G. that. And also told him a whole load of other stuff while they were at it. Worse things. Which got me thinking.’

  He put his foot on the floor, leaned his upper body towards the wall and started stretching his calf muscles.

  ‘Things you can’t know, Ironing Board. But I didn’t realise that before late last Friday, after I’d been up in the headmaster’s office. It was only then that I realised it couldn’t have been you.’

  I glanced at Peder. But he did not move a muscle. Ola did not betray anything either: the same ice-cold expression, as if they were carved out of stone.

  ‘But you could have said that about the cat. And maybe somebody else told about all the rest? That’s entirely possible. But when you’re standing talking to L.G. during recess, it’s like I get confused. I don’t know what to believe. I don’t know where I’ve got you.’

  He sighed and pushed a strand of hair off his forehead. He had long eyelashes, like a girl.

  ‘I don’t know anything. But an agreement is an agreement. So I want my money. See you by your locker after our free period.’

  He waved me off with the back of his hand, as if I were a fly, and carried on with his stretches.

  I tried to avoid them for the rest of the lesson, tried to avoid thinking and planning altogether. Tried to avoid attracting the fear which had temporarily snuck into a corner behind the wall bars. I stuck close to the teacher, pretended to be interested as he explained how to improve my vaulting technique, queued obediently at the various stations, laughed when the others laughed, when somebody didn’t make it up onto the vault or landed with their arse right on top and had to wriggle down the other side; I pretended to be impressed when Petter Bengtson did a back flip on the crash mat; pretended to commiserate with Mats Ingelstad who shied away like an unruly dressage horse when faced with an obstacle that was too high; cast critical glances at Lilian and Sandra, who constantly chattered about what they were going to wear to school and who had decided the previous night to wear identical leotards and who now resembled two little versions of a keep-fit instructor from TV; laughed at Markus the joker, who was another one whose voice hadn’t broken and who attempted to conceal that fact by speaking in a low voice, unnaturally low in his throat. I became one of the crowd, basically, because it was so much easier to exist there.

  Exactly as promised, Gerard turned up by my locker five minutes before the end of our free period.

  He was on his own, and something told me Ola and Peder had been given orders to stay away.

  ‘Show me what you’ve got,’ he said.

  I opened my locker and took the Walkman out. He looked at it briefly.

  ‘Where’d you get hold of that?’

  ‘Mum gave it to me on Saturday. It’s brand new. The price tag is still on it. It’s a genuine Walkman.’

  ‘Do you think I’m blind? What else would it be, a toaster? And what am I supposed to do with it? I’m not even interested in music. Music is for faggots like Nicke Wester. How much money have you got together?’

  ‘Five hundred. The tape player cost twelve hundred, so that makes seventeen hundred in all.’

  ‘Give me that.’

  I handed him the envelope. He didn’t even open it, just stuffed it into his back pocket without counting the notes.

  ‘How’s your brother doing?’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Just wondering. It can’t be easy being in the remedial class and stuff. A little retarded, hard to grasp things. And incontinent, is that what it’s called, when you piss yourself?’

  I didn’t reply, and just felt round to find where the fear was. In my neck, it seemed; it was completely stiff.

  ‘And your dad in the slammer. Isn’t that right? Nobody to look after you, like, nobody to look up to. And your mum is round the off-licence pretty much every day, she’s like a regular customer there, isn’t she?’

  He leaned against the lockers and stared at a spot on my left shoulder. Then the reached out and plucked something off: a single hair.

  ‘Honestly, Ironing Board, who do you think you are? If we assume it wasn’t you, I mean... There were only six of us by the newsagent’s kiosk, after all.’

  ‘It wasn’t me... ’

  ‘You won’t know that for sure until I’ve decided. And I haven’t yet. Tell me, who seems more nervous, Peder or Ola?’

  I was hoping the bell would ring; I didn’t want to get drawn into anything else, didn’t want to get any more tangled up in what Gerard and his gang had in mind. I didn’t want him to touch me again, to remove any more strands of hair from my clothes. There were only two lessons left: Home Economics and English, and I wasn’t going to be in either one. I had other plans.

  ‘What did you think of lunch?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Minestrone soup. Even though it’s Monday. Peder hardly ate anything. I was shovelling it in. Five open-faced sandwiches with cheese as well. And salad. I didn’t taste anything odd. Did you?’

  ‘No.’

  He took the Walkman out of my hand. He pressed Play, even though there was no tape in it, and then Stop.

  ‘Peder wasn’t hungry. He thought it tasted strange... Isn’t that a sign of nervousness? I’ve changed my mind, by the way: I’ll take care of this for you. You nicked it, right? Your stupid slag of a mother would never be able to afford a Walkman. And like I said: a thousand kronor by Friday.’

  ‘You just got five hundred!’

  ‘I don’t remember that. My mind is just a blank.’

  ‘You’ve got it in your pocket.’

  ‘I’ve made a deduction. You were talking to L.G. That has a price. And tomorrow I’ve got to go up to the headmaster’s office again. A big meeting with the school administration and the welfare officer. Even my dad has to go. Between you and me, Ironing Board, I’m just laughing at all this. What the hell are they going to do? Tell me how to live my life? What’s right and wrong, what you can and can’t do. I don’t give a damn... I’ve never given a damn about any of it.’

  He looked at me, completely emotionless, as if all this were just a sort of business arrangement, any old thing. And then I suddenly remembered his parents, from school prize days and events over the years: the nervous little couple who always drove up in posh cars, impeccably dressed, but seemingly terrified of their own existence – and Gerard’s expression when he caught sight of them, a look of shame, almost of disgust.

  ‘I’ll get my money by the weekend,’ he said in a friendly voice. ‘If you want to quibble, we’ll make it two thousand straight away. And it’s not just about you and me, is it?’

  He nodded towards the window that looked out onto the schoolyard. I followed his gaze. Several Year Sevens were standing in the smoking area, huddling against the wind. On a bench by the basketball hoop sat my brother, prodding a pile of leaves with his foot. He was on his own, as usual. He was wearing his Stan Smiths.

  ‘Remember when we learned about the Second World War last term... what the Germans did with all the retards... ’ He placed a hand on my shoulder. ‘Nobody else would be sad, Ironing Board, only you.’

  I stood there facing the window as Gerard disappeared down the corridor. My brother looked awesome in his new trainers. I had given him the jeans, too; they were a little big for him, but at any rate they were a real brand name. He was beaming from ear to ear until he realised it was a bribe, that I really did want him to go to school as usual, despite what had happened. It took a great deal of persuasion to get him t
o come. I explained how important it was that we didn’t stay away like scaredy-cats, because that would only sharpen their bloodlust.

  Somebody went over to him outside and said something. A lad in his class who suffers from a load of strange tics and is basically unable to keep still. I saw my brother perk up and nod. Maybe he got a compliment on his clothes. I felt like going out to him and keeping him company for a while, and I might have done it too, if I hadn’t had other things to think about.

  Tommy’s house stood behind a dense hedge that protected it from the winds off the sea. It was a two-storey detached house with fibre-cement cladding and a grey brick-built annexe, which the family let out to tourists in the summertime. To the left was a driveway leading to the garage and a shed, where they would tinker around with boat engines. There used to be another house on the plot, an old farmhouse, but Tommy’s dad had it torn down when the family built their new house in the Sixties. He was part of the Celes family and was born in the village. Tommy’s mum came from Träslöv, a fishing community some thirty or forty miles north. Through his father, Tommy was related to almost everyone in Glommen. The families had intermingled for generations, and everyone kept track of which branches they belonged to.

  I parked my bike by the gate and went up the gravel path. People freely came and went in each other’s houses down here. Nobody locked their doors, not even in the summer when the place was full of holidaymakers. Tommy had said there were never any break-ins in Glommen; there was no reason to break into an unlocked house.

  I rang the doorbell. When no one opened the door, I went in.

  The bed was made in his room upstairs. His schoolbooks lay on the desk. A pair of jeans hung over one arm of the chair. Dirty tube socks littered the floor. I spent a while looking at a picture hanging above his desk. It showed a fishing boat on its way into Glommen harbour. It was the family’s previous boat. Tommy’s dad had painted it. When he retired, he took up painting in his leisure time. I sat down on the bed and wondered what to do. Wait until he got home, or start searching?

  It struck me that he might be in the basement. His brothers had built a games room down there, with a ping-pong table and a little bar with beer taps. Tommy would sit down there and play video games sometimes, but if his mum or dad suddenly came home it could be awkward if they found me somewhere other than in his room. To say nothing of how weird I would feel if his brothers found me in the basement. They didn’t frighten me, but there was something that made you not want to end up alone with them.

  I went over to the window. I could see the lighthouse a little way off. At night it shone into the room, but it never disturbed Tommy. It might be in his blood, I thought, that love of lighthouses. In every family down here there were tales of some ancestor who had run aground and drowned because of poor light from a lighthouse.

  On the chest of drawers by the window was our school yearbook, open to the page with our class photo. Gerard was sitting in front on the left in his usual uniform: leather jacket, patched jeans and a bandanna round his neck. His scooter helmet was on his lap, and the gloves, as if he had something to hide underneath. Peder, who was seated next to him, seemed to be most inclined to agree in the presence of his boss. He had placed his hands on his thighs; if you looked closely, you could see he was giving the photographer the finger. Furthest to the right in the top row, as if we wanted to get as far away from them as possible, were Tommy and me: Tommy in his Tintin top and me in my usual T-shirt with a picture of a cat on it and a pair of trousers that were too small. My hair was unwashed. No make-up, of course, and my T-shirt was dirty. I had my eyes closed.

  The fact we were standing next to one another in our class photo was as much of a given as spring following winter or the sun coming up each morning. Tommy had arrived in our school in Year Five, together with an entire class from Glommen. The pupils had been divided up among the old Skogtorp classes. We were assigned desks next to each other in our first lesson. I still remember the feeling of change then: as if the cards had been reshuffled and I was dealt a new hand. From that moment onwards it was like I no longer held any interest for the others; I was invisible to them. Actually, it was hard to explain why we were drawn together. We didn’t have all that much in common. Tommy was a little brother and I was a big sister; he was a boy and I was a girl; he came from a fishing family in Glommen, where his relatives had been living forever and he knew absolutely everyone, whereas I had only my brother and my parents.

  But ever since that day we’d stuck together. We revised together, played during recess, chatted, discussed anything and everything that interested us: books we were reading, teachers and the other kids in our class, what they were like, why they thought and acted the way they did. I would go home with him after school as often as I could, but only if I knew that Robert was all right on his own. We were usually in the room where I was now, where I recognised every object, the exact position of the furniture and the smell of the wallpaper and the rug. We would usually listen to his brothers’ records, play games or play down by the docks. And if my brother wanted to, he could come along. Tommy never raised any objection about that. He knew that Robert was part of the deal if he wanted to be friends with me.

  That was what I was thinking about as I stood by the window and looked out towards the docks; how meaningless everything would have been if I hadn’t been friends with Tommy.

  It was deserted down by the quay. Hardly any boats were in. I could see the roof of their hut. Smoke was coming from the chimney. Presumably, I thought, he was down there helping his brothers.

  There was a van parked in front of the hut when I went down to the docks. Its back doors were open. A man sat in the cab, smoking. The door to the building was closed but there were people inside; I could hear someone talking. I don’t know what caused me to turn round and go over towards the turning area for vehicles instead. Something about the man in the van, I think: the way he carried on smoking, kind of aggressively, a little like Dad.

  I carried on past the old storage halls and went round the corner to an old covered mooring. There was a fence at the rear, and I could see out to the quay between the slats. The man had got out of the van now, as if he had just been waiting until I was out of sight. He took a crate out of the back of the van and called out to someone who was inside. The door opened. I saw Tommy looking out. The man handed him the crate. Then the door closed again, the man got into the van, started it up and vanished in the direction of Glumstensvägen.

  The area around the docks was dead quiet; the only noise was the sea, which sounded a constant drone in the background. Just off to the left, at the edge of my field of vision, something moved. When I looked over I spotted the mink again, the same mink I’d seen three days before. It was sitting on a rubbish bin thirty metres away, observing me. Then it leapt down and disappeared from sight.

  I had just made up my mind to leave when the door opened again and Tommy’s brothers came out. One of them took a tin of chewing tobacco out of his pocket and began rolling a plug. The other crouched down and dried off his shoes with a hankie. I couldn’t figure out what was up with me: why didn’t I just go over and ask about Tommy, or call out to him as I approached? Instead, I stayed there, crouching behind the fence.

  It started to rain, a light drizzle that made me shiver. They were discussing something over there, gesticulating to one another. One of them rapped his knuckle significantly against his temple. Then they all burst out laughing and put their arms round each other’s shoulders as they walked up towards the village. But Tommy was still there. I saw him close the door after them.

  I waited until his brothers were out of sight. Then I climbed over the fence and followed the asphalt path down to the fisherman’s hut.

  ‘Who is it?’ he asked when I knocked.

  ‘It’s me, Nella.’

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

  He sounded angry and jittery at the same time.

  ‘Trying to get hold of you.’
/>
  ‘Go away. Get lost!’

  ‘How come? We need to talk.’

  ‘Get away from the door, they can see you.’

  ‘Who’s “they”?’

  ‘My brothers.’

  ‘I’m staying here until you open up.’

  It was quiet, as if he needed to think it over. Then the latch was raised and he let me into the darkness.

  I couldn’t see anything at first; there was a piece of tarpaulin hanging over the window.

  ‘Did anybody see you?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t think so... why do you want to know?’

  Tommy stood on a stool by the window, turned up a corner of the tarpaulin and looked out. Seemingly relieved, he climbed back down and switched on the light.

  I hadn’t been inside their hut for several months, but everything seemed the same. Nets hung on hooks on the wall. A broken barometer indicated a storm. Coiled-up ropes lay on the floor. Lobsterpots were piled up in one corner. Bailers and floats lay jumbled up in boxes. And in the middle of the floor stood Tommy, looking pale, as if he were still running a temperature.

  ‘Why did you have the light off before?’

  ‘I was just about to leave. It’s important that nobody sees anything when I open the door... and it can barely tolerate any light.’

  The lamp, I now noticed, was angled towards the wall. Most of the space was still in darkness. I heard a sort of panting coming from over by the end wall.

  ‘Is there someone here?’ I asked.

  Tommy gave a laugh, a laugh I’d never heard from him before, not at all happy-sounding.

  ‘I guess you could say that, someone – or rather, something.’

  He looked at me as if I were a complete stranger, as if he had never seen me before in his life.

  ‘There’s way too much going on here, I don’t even know where to start.’

  The crate I had seen him take in earlier was right by my feet; it was full of fish guts, cod heads, roe sacs, fins and tails.