by Lavie Tidhar
“Yes, fine,” Mina replied. “A lot of work down at the police station, though. You know, the kids who disappeared, and all that…”
“What a world we live in,” said the shopkeeper.
Mina frowned because he didn’t seem very convinced by what he was saying — and yet the phrase did not require much conviction.
Suddenly, the seller of almonds, pistachios, dried apricots and prunes stared straight into Mina’s eyes for the first time.
“But there are those who go looking for trouble, too,” he said. “Thieves they were, those children. Little rotten seeds infesting the city, little grains of mischief… At least these ones won’t turn into murderers later on.”
Mina continued to watch him.
You know, sometimes, my dears, a little light goes on in the back of the head. When the little light takes hold and spreads to the neurons, it’s the moment for ingenious ideas, solutions to problems, the moment when writers make their keyboards vibrate typing so fast. And then, at other times, the little light doesn’t spread. It just stays there, and while you know you have just put your finger onto something, you don’t know what it is.
The little light had turned on inside Mina’s brain.
But she was unable to figure out what it revealed.
Still not moving, Mina watched the seller of almonds, pistachios, dried apricots and prunesfinish bringing in his displays. He was closing early that evening: it was only ten o’clock. No doubt he had something to do, something he had to finish before getting a good night’s sleep.
Mina set off.
A little further down the street, the haberdasher came out of her shop and started to scold the four children in green parkas and red caps. They had stayed too late outdoors, she couldn’t trust them, and so on. The usual complaints of mothers.
Seized by a sudden impulse, Mina went over to them.
“Hello, little brats.”
“Hello, mam’zelle Mina,” the kids replied in a chorus.
Their mother contented herself with giving Mina a black look; she preferred to have her children indoors without any argument rather than out here in the street talking to a cop.
“Tell me something,” Mina persisted. “The evening when the three little children disappeared…” She pointed to the building, but neither the mother nor the kids needed any explanations. “Did you stay out late then, too?”
“Oh, no, they did not!” the mother grumbled. “This is the first time this week they’ve stayed out so late, and they’re going to get an earful about it…”
“That’s too bad.” Mina sighed.
The kids went into their mother’s shop; the flat where they lived was on the floor above it. Mina followed them without any specific aim in mind, perhaps to ask them some more questions. The mother let her proceed; she didn’t dare protest because she’d already had problems with taxes and the building manager, and she tended to mix up all these things together.
The four children took off their caps and parkas, revealing four faces reddened by the cold and crowned by four mops of red hair. One of the mops of hair was longer than the others, that of a little girl who turned to the stairs and called out: “Tiberius!”
“So, you didn’t see or hear anything that evening?” Mina said, watching a ginger cat descend towards them in a leisurely fashion.
The boys shook their heads, but the little girl lifted her chin.
“I heard a cry,” she said. “Just one, like a squeak. But Maman said that…”
“Joséphine is always making things up,” her mother said nervously, as if she thought she was going to receive more reproaches.
“A cry where? In the street?”
The little girl shook her head.
“No. Down below.”
“In the cellar,” the mother explained. “They go there to play in the afternoon, when they come home from school. But she’s just telling stories, because we didn’t hear anything at all down there.”
Mina looked at the stairs that led down into the building’s cellar, adjacent to the three disappeared children’s house, and thus to the cellar belonging to the seller of almonds, pistachios, dried apricots and prunes.
§
In the ogre’s cave, Yassine had kept his hands over his eyes. He would have liked to have another pair of those hands, so that he would not have to hear. But throughout the day he did hear things: footsteps along the ceiling, crates and bottles being dragged about. He heard the steps of other people, those of customers who came in to speak with the ogre and left with provisions.
But little by little the customers became more rare and Yassine knew that evening had fallen. Then there was the sound of the outdoor displays being brought inside.
The iron shutters were lowered…
But only halfway.
Yassine removed his hands from his eyes. The iron shutters were raised again, as if a customer had wanted to come in at the last minute to purchase something. Yassine, heard, saw, felt the steps of the organ grinder make the floor above creak at different places within the shop, as if he were asking for… what? Ham, roast lamb, salted pork, soaked seven years in the tub of brine? But now the steps went away, the butcher did not want to run away, and God would not forgive him, he sold the meat without blinking and the iron shutters came down again.
Somewhere within the stony underground maze, a warrior woman descended without realising that she was approaching a small round door with a golden key; somewhere above her, four fairies fidgeted and laughed; and Yassine was aware of all this, the ogre’s walls cried out to him, and each of the ogre’s steps on the stairs cried out to him, as did the cleaver and the block and the chopped–up bodies of his brother and his sister. When the ogre seized him, Yassine screamed, his fists pressed on his eyelids, because it was the only means of keeping his brother and his sister alive behind them, and then he screamed again because when he died, his eyes would be extinguished and both Giamill and Leïla would disappear forever.
§
Mina started to run when she heard the screams, yanking at the door linking the two cellars until she saw the rusty key attached to the hook. She fumbled about with it in the lock, already anticipating the gesture she would make to grab the gun in her coat, but by the time the lock finally turned, the screams had ceased, replaced by a horrible gargling sound.
Mina felt her heart stop. She went on and managed at last to open the door. At first, she saw nothing, because the light was very dim, then an immense silhouette, so big that the cave could barely contain it, turned towards her while raising a cleaver dripping with blood. She took out her weapon, but the cleaver struck her on the temple.
She felt the bones crack…
And she fell…
La première dit: «J’ai bien dormi»
Le second dit: «Et moi aussi»
Et le troisième répondit:
«Je croyais être en Paradis…»
Ils étaient trois petits enfants
Qui s’en allaient glaner aux champs.
(The first one said, “I slept all night,”
The second one said, “I did, too.”
And the third one chimed in his reply,
“I thought I’d gone to Paradise.”
They were three little children
Who went gleaning in the fields.)
She woke with an atrocious pain in her skull, her head on the knees of her partner, David. She was in the cellar belonging to the seller of almonds, pistachios, dried apricots and prunes, which was swarming with police officers and nurses and more people than seemed humanly possible to be all in that one place.
The organ grinder, who looked very old and very tired, was explaining something to the superintendent. The shopkeeper had disappeared.
“We took him away,” said David, as if reading Mina’s thoughts from her look. “He should get thirty years, time enough to repent…”
A Red Cross nurse — why the Red Cross? why not the emergency crews? asked the part of Mina�
�s brain that still remained on duty — was comforting Yassine, Giamill, and Leïla, who were rubbing their wrists that had been bruised by the chains.
“No,” she whispered, her eyes fixed on Yassine. “He’s dead. I got here too late.”
“Not true,” said David, caressing her hair. “The old musician saved them. He was in the shop; he came down when he heard all the screaming…”
Mina stood up, rubbing her temple, as if she couldn’t bring herself to believe that her skull was still intact. She watched the nurse taking the pulses of the children wrapped up in blankets. She heard the others telling her about how the musician had seen the seller of almonds, pistachios, dried apricots and prunes preparing to strike her, how he’d knocked out the assassin with a glass bottle before freeing the children and calling the police.
A bottle?
Mina could not concentrate.
Her temple ached and she would have sworn she’d received a blow there, but there was no wound.
She followed the three little children who climbed the stairs while David pointed out on the wall what must have been the bloodstains of little Yanaèlle, and those of little Thomas. Mina gritted her teeth and continued upstairs, because she didn’t want to see any more.
Before the children went into the ambulance, she hugged Yassine against her chest and explained to him that she’d been scared and how happy she was that they were there, all three of them, wrapped up in their blankets. Leïla gave her a feeble smile, Giamill looked at her with his eyes full of tears and Yassine leant against her. They held hands for a long while until the nurse separated them.
“I saw you coming,” Yassine murmured just before the ambulance doors slammed shut. “I saw you coming closer to us underground…”
Mina straightened up, rubbed her temple and, for a brief moment, it seemed to her that the city was a black, living creature. It seemed to her that four small fairies were watching the ambulance pull away with astonished eyes, and among the groups of inquisitive bystanders that had formed on the pavement, some of them had the pale shiny skin and the eyes of life–suckers. It seemed to her that a cloud of fairies with glittering wings were rising from the street and circling the roof of the building like butterflies around a flame.
She thought again of the old musician, of the seller of almonds, pistachios, dried apricots and prunes, of the cleaver that had landed on her skull, and of the spectres screaming in the sky above her, but as quickly as it had come, the feeling evaporated.
Mina blinked her eyes in order to put her mind in order, slipped into the waiting car and went home.
§
And yes, that’s the end.
I’m sorry, my dears, I don’t have any grand conclusion. Stories don’t always have to end with: “They lived happily ever after and had lots of children,” or “That was how the majestic city of Atlantis vanished beneath the waves,” or “He replaced the jewel in its socket and went off into the sunset.”
The truth? That’s up to you to decide, little bunny. I can tell you what was printed in the newspapers: the three little children were rescued at the very last moment when the assassin had finally decided to kill them, after keeping them seven days in captivity. They were so frightened that they had dreamt they were dead, but psychiatric help was being provided.
Did Mina and the children ever meet later? There’s no verse in the song about that, but you’re free to imagine what you like. Why not? When you save the life of someone, you often feel responsible for them afterwards. And she had almost saved their lives…
What? The old organ? It’s up in the attic, but I don’t take it into the streets anymore, I’m too old now, you know. One of you will surely inherit it. But go on, that’s enough chatter, it’s time to go to sleep.
Shhh… Into your beds now, all nice and warm, there under the covers.
Close your eyes and you’ll believe you’re in Paradise.
Brita’s Holiday Village
Karin Tidbeck
Swedish author Karin Tidbeck is the author of English–language collection Jagannath, which won a Crawford Award, and of Swedish–language novel Amatka. She lives in Malmö.
29/5
The cab ride from Åre station to Aunt Brita’s holiday village took about half an hour. I’m renting the cottage on the edge of the village that’s reserved for relatives. The rest are closed for summer. Mum helped me make the reservation — Brita’s her aunt, really, not mine, and they’re pretty close. Yes, I’m thirty–two years old. Yes, I’m terrible at calling people I don’t know.
I didn’t bring a lot of stuff. Clothes and writing things, mostly. The cottage is a comforting old–fashioned red thing with white window frames, the interior more or less unchanged since the 1970s: lacquered pine, green felt wallpaper, woven tapestries decorated with little blobs of green glass. It smells stale in a cozy way. There’s a desk by one of the windows in the living room, overlooking Kall Lake. No phone reception, no Internet. Brita wondered if I wanted a landline, but I said no. I said yes to the bicycle. The first thing I did was bike down to the Ica store I saw on the way here. I stocked up on pasta and tomatoes and beans. I found old–fashioned soft whey–cheese, the kind that tastes like toffee. I’m eating it out of the box with a spoon.
“Holiday village” is a misleading expression; the village is really just twelve bungalows arranged in two concentric circles with a larger house — the assembly hall — in the middle. The dark paneling, angled roofs and panoramic windows must have looked fresh and modern in the sixties, or whenever they were built. The wood is blackened now, and the windows somehow swallow the incoming light, creating caverns under the eaves. I’m a little relieved to be staying in the cottage.
Brita said that before she bought the holiday village, back when they were building it, the old man who owned the cottage refused to leave. When he finally died, the cottage was left standing for private use. It’s much more cozy, anyway. I’d feel naked behind those panoramic windows.
30/5
I got up late and unpacked and sorted music. I’ve got a playlist with old punk and goth for the teenage project, an ambient playlist for the space project, and a list of cozy music, everything in order to feel at home and get into the mood and avoid writing. Did some cooking. Rode the bike around until I was tired. Found an old quarry. Tried to go for a swim in Kall Lake and cut my feet on the rocks. Bought goat whey curd. Finally, I couldn’t avoid it anymore: writing.
So I have two stories I want to do something about. First there’s the science fiction story about child workers in the engine room of a spaceship. It’s a short story really, but I’d like to expand it into a novel. I know you’re not supposed to worry about form or length — it’s a guaranteed way to jinx the whole thing — but I’d really like to. I like the characters and their intense relationships, like Lord of the Flies in space.
The other story is a pseudo–biographical thing about a teenager growing up in the Stockholm suburbia of the 1980s, during the heyday of Ultra, the tiny house turned punk headquarters. I suppose it’s a cooler and bolder version of myself. Also, older. I was too young to ever hang out at Ultra. It had already burned down by the time I discovered punk. I used to go to Ultra’s next iteration — Hunddagis, the club housed in an old day care centre for dogs. I still remember the punk aroma: beer, cigarettes, cheap hair spray, and day–old sweat.
So, that’s what I’ve been doing: writing down a bunch of teenage memories and transposing them onto a little older and bolder version of myself, and it’s just slow and boring work. I had a go at the science fiction story instead, but it wouldn’t happen. I ended up shutting everything down, realized it’s now one o’clock in the morning (actually it’s 1:30 now), and I’m going to bed.
31/5
I took a walk through the village this morning. Things that look like white, plum–sized pupas hang clustered under the eaves. They’re warm to the touch. I should tell Brita — it’s some kind of pest. Wasp nests?
Biked to the q
uarry after coffee, gathered some nice rocks — very pretty black granite. Went home, made pasta with chickpeas, tried to write. Writing about punks at Hunddagis doesn’t feel the least bit fun or interesting. Mostly because I’ve realized what a lame teenager I was. I was always home at the stroke of midnight; I didn’t like drinking mash; I didn’t have sex. I read books and had an inferiority complex because I was afraid to do all that other stuff. I don’t know anything about being a badass punk rocker.
It’s the same thing with the story about the engine room kids — what do I know about child labor? What do I know about how kids relate to each other under circumstances like that? Not to mention, what do I know about spaceships? I’m talking out of my ass.
So there I am. I can’t write about what I know, and I can’t write about what I don’t know. Better yet, I’ve told everyone that I’m staying in Åre until I’ve finished the novel. I somehow thought that saying that would make it happen.
Hang in there for another couple of weeks. And do what? Try some more? Go on biking trips and eat whey–cheese?
2/6
I’m taking a break. I’ve scrapped everything I was working on. I rented a car and drove west over the border into Norway, where I bought ice cream in a lonely little kiosk. When I was a kid, I thought the sign in Norwegian that said åpen, open, meant apan, the monkey. It was the most hilarious thing ever.
I had my ice cream, and looked at the Sylarna Mountains and the cotton–grass swaying on the bog. There was a thick herbal smell of mountain summer. Little pools and puddles were everywhere, absolutely clear, miniature John Bauer landscapes. I considered going on to Levanger, but it felt too far. I stopped off for a swim in Gev Lake on the way home. It was just like when I was little: warm and shallow enough that if you walk out into the middle, the water only reaches your waist. Tiny minnows nibbled at my feet.