The Merman

by Carl-Johan Vallgren

  But they seemed concerned because it had some connection with their business dealings. Tommy didn’t understand exactly what, but something seemed to have happened on that front as well. Something that made them cautious.

  All that meant we couldn’t let our guard down. If we were going to check on the creature, we’d have to wait. It was crucial that we didn’t go near the abandoned cottage, at least not for a while.

  Instead, I was pleased my brother had decided to go to back to school. At lunchtime he turned up by my locker, looking the same as usual, minus his glasses.

  ‘My stomach won,’ he said with a smirk. ‘I can’t go round being hungry any longer.’

  Nobody bothered to go food shopping at home any more. And at school at least he’d get one hot meal in his belly every day.

  ‘I just won’t be able to see a thing in lessons,’ he said. ‘I’m more or less blind without my glasses.’

  ‘We can go to the school nurse and see if she can sort out some new ones. Or the school welfare officer. I can help you if you want.’

  Robert shook his head.

  ‘Later,’ he said. ‘For now, I’m just here to eat. And to explain why I’ve been off. And this is a good day, because we’ve got home economics.’

  ‘What are you making?’

  ‘Pancakes with cream.’

  That’s the kind of thing people couldn’t understand, I thought as I watched him head off towards the Year 7 cloakroom with his uncertain gait and his back slightly stooped: that some kids went to school only so they wouldn’t go hungry. It suddenly seemed so messed up, with all the kids who hid the fish they didn’t like under a mountain of napkins so the dinner ladies wouldn’t see how much they were throwing out. But those glasses needed sorting out. I put it on my mental to-do list.

  If Mum had a list like that, it didn’t show. It seemed like she’d gone to bed and was never going to get up again. Everything was going downhill at home. Every room was a pigsty. She stayed in her bedroom with the curtains drawn, sleeping the days away. We didn’t see hide nor hair of Dad, either. He would head out every afternoon and not come back until late at night. Since his return from Gothenburg, he was barely contactable. I was becoming increasingly convinced that something had happened during that trip that terrified him. Leif and the other dodgy blokes seemed to be out of the picture. Or maybe not, because one afternoon when I came home, Dad was sitting on the sofa waiting for me.

  ‘We need to talk,’ he said.

  I stood in the doorway, and he seemed to be all right with that.

  ‘I’ve got to get away from here. And it might be a while before I get back. I mean, I’m not going back inside... not doing more time. I just need to stay away.’

  ‘From what?’

  ‘From certain people. I plan to clear out your room beforehand so you can move back in there.’

  ‘Can I go now?’

  He looked at me, almost in surprise.

  ‘Sure. Just look after Robbie, there’s a good girl. He won’t make it on his own.’ He made a significant gesture in the direction of upstairs. And Mum... well, you can see what shape she’s in.’

  ‘Don’t worry.’

  ‘I want you to know I appreciate it. That you keep things ticking along here at home. I’m sorry, Nella, really, for everything. I know how it feels. I didn’t have any adults I could count on either when I was fifteen. I was homeless.’

  He went silent and looked down at his hands. As if he didn’t really understand what he should do with them, I thought.

  ‘You’re strong, Nella. You’ll get through this. I trust you.’

  He winked at me.

  ‘Tell Robert I’m sorry about that business with his glasses. I didn’t mean anything bad, I just wanted him to have a new pair.’

  He got up from the sofa, as awkwardly as an old man.

  ‘I saw something strange the other week,’ he said in a quiet voice. ‘Something I never thought I’d get to see. There are things in this world that are completely incomprehensible.’

  The creature, I thought, it was the creature he was talking about. He felt guilty about what they’d done to him.

  ‘And people react bloody strangely to strange things. Isn’t that right?’

  Maybe he was just babbling. I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to think about who he was, what he had done or what he was going to do.

  ‘I’m clearing off the day after tomorrow,’ he said. ‘If nothing else comes up in the meantime. Then we’ll see when I come back.’

  The next day in the lunch break, Mum was waiting for me in the common room. It felt surreal to see her standing there, confused among a mob of students who’d just come out of their lessons. She was dressed up, had put on some makeup and was carrying her bag on her shoulder. As I got closer, I noticed a bruise above her left eye.

  ‘I need to speak to you, Nella,’ she said. ‘Come on, let’s go outside.’

  I took my jacket and followed her out. Without saying a word, we went over to the smoking area. She took a packet of fags out of her bag, tapped out two and held one out to me.

  ‘It’s funny,’ she said. ‘I don’t know anything about you, really. Not even whether you smoke.’

  She’d been drinking; I could smell it on her breath even though she’d been sucking on a Fisherman’s Friend to cover it up. I shook my head.

  ‘Good. And don’t start, either. Don’t start doing anything else. You can see what shit you’ve got in your genes if you look at me.’

  She lit her cigarette and blew smoke out of the side of her mouth.

  ‘I don’t actually know what happened. With this, with life or whatever you want to call it. You reach out to take hold of something... and then you realise it’s nothing but air. You basically can’t count on anything, not even yourself.’

  It was Dad who’d walloped her, I thought. Even so, it wouldn’t be enough of a reason for her to leave him. And as if she could read my thoughts, she said:

  ‘It’s not because of... He just feels under pressure. A load of crap has happened, and the situation has got threatening. He’s clearing off soon and doesn’t know when he’s coming back. And when I told him I’ve had enough, that I’m thinking of leaving him, then it boiled over.’

  She was looking past me, out over the schoolyard where the pupils had started to stream out for recess. Normal kids, I thought, with normal parents. Not kids who stood in the smoking area with their mum and worried about her black eye.

  ‘So what are you going to do?’ I asked.

  ‘What needs to be done.’

  Maybe she was feeling sorry for herself, because her uninjured eye suddenly filled with tears.

  And somehow, strangely, I felt tenderness towards her as she stood there in her best discount-store coat, smoking and feeling sorry for herself. She had nothing. She’d lost everything long ago and didn’t even know what she’d lost.

  ‘Somebody else can take over here,’ she mumbled. ‘Somebody will have to look after you two if neither Dad nor I can.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I’m going up to the headmaster’s office now. There are a load of meetings I have to attend. With you and Robert’s form teachers. With the child psychologists and social services.’

  It was only then that I understood what she was really talking about.

  ‘So you’re just going to leave?’

  ‘Same as your dad. And you’re not accusing him... ’

  She dropped her fag on the ground and stubbed it out with the toe of her worn-out shoe.

  ‘And what’s going to happen to us?’

  ‘I don’t actually know. I’ll try to sort this out as best as possible.’

  ‘What if they split us up? If we end up with different families.’

  But she didn’t reply. Just straightened her coat and walked off, without turning back.

  Over to the left I could see all the way down to the sea. There was no one in sight. Just the vacant fields, heather moors a
nd the sun breaking up more and more clouds. I shouldn’t have been there, in plain sight if anyone should happen to turn up. But why would anyone? The abandoned cottage was in an out-of-the-way place; people steered clear of it.

  That stuff Mum said made me really confused. She was going to walk away of her own free will, but before then she was going to hand over responsibility for us to somebody else. I couldn’t bear the thought that Robert and I might get split up. That simply couldn’t happen. I wouldn’t be able to cope.

  But who said that was going to happen? I bet they wouldn’t split up siblings. Where had I got that idea from?

  I felt like I was going to be sick. The sensation of a chasm opening up inside me was nothing new – I’d grown up with it; that’s how my life was. And yet I never got used to it ...

  The mink farm could not be seen from where I stood. The only spot I could be seen from was on the opposite side, the small road leading off towards the lighthouse. I was alone. Out of danger. Everything was all right. Those were the sort of thoughts going through me, like little reassuring telegrams.

  The entrance looked exactly the same as we had left it: the soil and branches we had covered the door with were still there. Nobody had been there. Or left any tracks, anyway.

  I wondered what Mum was doing just then. Sitting in the headmaster’s office, trying to explain the situation? That she intended to abandon us. That neither she nor Dad was capable of looking after us any longer. That she hoped they’d be able to find suitable foster families for us. I’d cleared out of school before the bell rang again, without even saying anything to Tommy, just cycled down to the abandoned cottage as fast as I could.

  I took off my gloves and dug out the door. There was no noise from inside. For a moment, I imagined he was gone. That somebody had found him after all and taken him away. Otherwise I would have heard him, I thought, that silent language he transmitted to us in his inexplicable way. Or maybe he was dead? Maybe he couldn’t handle it any more, the shock, the injuries... everything humans had done to him. Just men, I thought, always just men.

  ‘Are you there?’

  But there was no reply. Only silence within me. As if I were empty, devoid of all feeling.

  The hatch door was exposed now. There was a gap up at the top. I stuck my fingers into it, braced myself with my feet and pulled until it fell aside.

  He was lying on his back with his face just under the surface of the water. His eyes seemed brighter now, clearer, sharper as he observed me. But his expression was terrified. He’d been silent because he didn’t know who was coming, because I was completely lacking in feelings, which is why he couldn’t recognise me. Because he was afraid they’d found him again.

  There were a few stone steps leading down into the root cellar. I sat down on the step closest to the water’s surface. If I’d wanted to, I could have reached out and touched him.

  I thought of that painting by John Bauer that was in our Swedish textbook, of a girl sitting by a small lake in a forest and looking at her reflection in the water. I’d always wondered what she was looking at. Because it wasn’t her reflection she was interested in, it was what was underneath. That’s how I thought of myself sitting there, like the girl in that picture.

  The creature asked if something had happened. He sensed it, that I was worried and sad. He wished he could help me, he said, but he understood nothing about our world, our rules. The best thing was if I just sat there and calmed down.

  He was happy to see me, he explained; he hadn’t recognised me at first and had thought it was the others, the ones who wanted to harm him, but now he knew that wasn’t the case. He felt better now, stronger. He could tell because his hunger was back. Soon he would need to eat again. For the first time in a long time he had an appetite. And there was nothing left of the fish we’d left for him; he’d eaten everything.

  ‘I’ll come back soon. With Tommy, if you remember. We’ll bring some more food for you. As much as you want.’

  He said he understood. And oddly enough, that reassured me. The creature reassured me, without my noticing. As if he were singing an inaudible song for me, a lullaby or comforting song that went straight into my nervous system and put everything right. As if he could dry my tears on the inside and fix what was broken just by being himself.

  He asked if he could help me. If I came with him out to sea, he said, he could help me there. But he understood that wouldn’t work. We were different creatures, not from his species; we were here on the surface, in our world, which was completely different from his. He wondered why my friend wasn’t with me. Had something happened to him as well? Had the others taken my friend, the same ones who had harmed him? I calmed him down, explained to him that there was nothing to worry about, everything was fine, Tommy was safe and we hadn’t forgotten our promise to take him back to where he belonged.

  His mouth sort of pressed together into a grimace which I knew was a smile. Soon, he said, soon he would be ready to return.

  His gills were moving, like soft valves underwater. The gash in his cheek had almost completely healed. It was the water that healed it, I thought, the same as it was healing the other wounds on his body.

  Then I saw another remarkable thing: he suddenly did a trick for me. As if he wanted to show he was on the road to recovery by twirling around. He rolled over two or three times in the water before coming to a rest again, on his back, just under the surface and looked at me with those almost glowing eyes. Do you understand? he said. I’m better now. Soon I’ll be ready...

  It was getting dark outside. I thought about Mum and my brother, and that the worst possible thing might happen: they might split us up... And the creature sort of followed my thoughts, comforted me from where he was down there in the water – not that he understood what it was about, but he understood I was afraid. Everything will be all right, he whispered inside my head. Don’t be sad, everything will work out. As if he knew more than I did. As if he had a premonition of everything that was going to happen.

  I was awoken in the middle of the night by the phone ringing. At first I didn’t know where I was. I’d gone straight from dreaming to reality. Then I noticed my brother next to me. He was lying on his side, holding my hand and snoring almost imperceptibly, and had stolen the whole duvet.

  I got up. It was pitch-black outside. I had fallen asleep beside him with my clothes on.

  The phone was ringing againg downstairs, irascible, insistent that someone should answer. I crept past my parents’ bedroom. The door was open.

  The room was empty. The wardrobe doors were wide open, as if they’d left in a mad panic.

  The phone kept ringing as if it was possessed. It was on the hall table underneath the cracked mirror. I picked up the receiver and heard the Professor’s voice.

  ‘Nella, is that you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’ve got to come here. The place is on fire. Can you bring some clothes? It’s below zero and I’m standing outside, naked.’

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘A bit underdressed for the conditions is all. I suppose I could warm up if I went closer to the house. But I don’t fancy it. It’s blazing’

  ‘Where are you ringing from?’

  ‘There’s a phone point in the garage. But it’s going to die at any moment ... ’

  I grabbed a few clothes from Dad’s wardrobe upstairs. He was obviously travelling light, because his winter coat and boots were still there. I could hear my brother snoring through the wall. Did he know where Mum was? Had she told him about her plans?

  Then I remembered I had a job to do. The Professor hadn’t sounded scared, but maybe he was just in shock. I stuffed the clothes into a plastic carrier bag and went out to my bike.

  I saw the fire from several hundred metres away. The sky was lit up above. I could also smell the burning because the wind was coming in off the sea. It was freezing cold. The puddles had frozen over, and I nearly wiped out when I turned off onto the track leading up to
the house.

  The windows were illuminated from inside, as if the fire was living its own life in there, moving back and forth in a sort of dance across the floor. I could hear sirens far off in the distance.

  The heat became almost unbearable the closer I got. And the noise... I’d never heard anything like it. Like a single uninterrupted crash, a fire machine that was running and making an infernal racket. There were strange hissing sounds when the flames found fresh wood to bite into, and explosion-like blasts when ceiling panels came crashing down.

  The Professor was standing a hundred feet from the house by the old barn. As I made a loop around the yard to avoid the heat, I could see him as clearly as if it had been the middle of the day. The fire was illuminating everything in the vicinity. He was naked except for a pair of long johns and a scarf draped over his shoulders. He had a pair of wooden clogs on his feet. His face was sooty and he looked immensely sorrowful. He didn’t even seem to notice me until I was standing right in front of him and handed him the bag of clothes.

  ‘How nice you could come,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know who to call.’

  He mumbled something inaudible while I helped him into the coat. That was his life that was going up in flames in there, I thought, his books, all his strange collections. The keys were probably melting in the heat up in the attic. The taxidermy animals, postage stamps, collections of coins, beer mats, books, reference books, piles of newspaper clipping – everything was on fire. He hadn’t even got his crutches out.