Konrad swallowed. “See there, three crap jobs you can’t make a living off of. Isn’t it nice to be able to pay rent and eat good food?”
“I guess,” said Arvid.
“You’re new here. When you get over that starving artist thing, when you’re my age, you’ll agree that it’s nice to be able to eat roast beef.” Konrad pushed the plate toward Arvid. “Here, have another kubbe.”
It was one week later, just after lunch, that Miss Sycorax’s lamp started blinking again. Arvid hesitantly took the call.
“Hello,” said the flat voice of Miss Sycorax.
“Where would you like to be connected?” said Arvid. “I want to be connected to the Beetle King.”
“I see,” said Arvid and muted Miss Sycorax. He cast a frantic glance at Cornelia, who was deeply involved in yet another call with subject 9970, Anderberg. Mrs. Cornelia frowned and waved him off. He returned to Miss Sycorax.
“Miss, I’m afraid I really can’t connect you to anyone by the name of hello, my little pupa.” A rustling voice forced its way out of his mouth mid-sentence.
“There you are,” Miss Sycorax said. “I have a request.”
“Anything for my little sugar lump,” hummed Arvid.
“Aww, shucks,” said Miss Sycorax.
“Your wish?”
“There are bugs crawling all over me.”
“I know! Isn’t it wonderful?” crowed Arvid.
“Hm. Yes, perhaps. In any case,” she went on, “I’d like them to take some time off. I’m developing a rash.”
“A rash, yes? An eczema.”
“Yes. It’s flaking a bit.”
“And that isn’t very pleasant.”
“No. It itches.”
“Well,” said Arvid, “where should I send them off to, then?”
“Anywhere you like,” said Miss Sycorax. “But for example, I don’t like the old woman in the corner store. Or the man who sells sticky window-pane-climbing dolls in Old Town.”
“Ahah.”
“I don’t like the switchboard operator either.”
“Let’s say then,” said Arvid, “that we dismiss the little critters until you feel better.”
“Good.”
“And you let me know when you start feeling lonely again.”
“Okay.”
“Goodbye, honeycomb.”
“Goodbye, your Majesty.”
When the Beetle King’s voice had left him, Arvid sagged back in his chair.
“I might have gone mad,” he told the terminal. He put his coat on and left the office.
When he came into the office the next day, Arvid found a stag beetle sitting on his terminal. It hissed angrily when he shooed it off, and crawled in under the desk where it refused to move. Shortly after morning coffee, a cockroach settled on his rules-and-regulations binder. Arvid left it alone.
Cornelia was more drastic about it. She had sat down in her chair to find the stuffing colonized by flour beetles. She was currently in the backyard, setting fire to the seat. The whole office smelled like insulin. Konrad sat at his terminal at the other end of the office, observing with great interest a dung beetle struggling with some cookie crumbs. No one was taking the incoming calls.
“Shouldn’t we call pest control?” said Arvid.
“Can’t get through,” said Konrad, eyes on the beetle. “I heard something on the radio about a bug invasion in Old Town.”
“Maybe it’s the season for it,” said Arvid.
“This dung beetle,” said Konrad, “this beetle shouldn’t be here at all. It’s African. A very pretty specimen, actually.” He gave it a piece of cookie to wrestle with.
Cornelia entered the office with a new chair. At the same time, the light by Miss Sycorax’s number started blinking. Arvid considered not picking up. But Cornelia sat down and put her headset on, and Konrad tore himself away from the dung beetle, and there was no longer an excuse not to work. He pushed the button.
“Operator.”
“Hello,” said the flat voice.
“Yes, hello.”
“I want to be put through to Arvid Pekon,” said Miss Sycorax.
“Arvid Pekon,” Arvid repeated. His finger flicked the mute switch up and down.
“Arvid,” said his voice.
A slap woke him up. Cornelia’s round eyes were staring worriedly into his. She turned her head to look over at Konrad’s looming silhouette. They grabbed Arvid’s arms and dragged him up into his chair.
“You had us worried there,” said Cornelia. “You fainted,” Konrad explained.
“What happened?” asked Arvid. The buzzing in his head made it difficult to hear the other two. His face tingled.
“Oops. Head between your knees,” said Konrad.
“What happened?” asked Arvid of the linoleum.
“You talked to 3426 for almost an hour and then you fell off your chair,” said Cornelia.
“But I took the call just now.”
“No, you’ve been going on for an hour.”
“What did I talk about?”
Cornelia was silent for a moment. She was probably glaring at him. “You know we don’t listen to each other’s calls.”
“Yes,” mumbled Arvid to the floor.
A hand landed on his shoulder. “You should probably go home,” said Konrad.
“I think I have to talk to the manager,” said Arvid.
The door to the manager’s office had an unmarked window of opaque glass. Arvid knocked on the glass. When there was no reply, he carefully pressed down the door handle and stepped inside. The room was smaller than he remembered it, but then again it was only his second time in here. There were no shelves or cabinets, just the enormous mahogany desk that covered most of the room. The desk was bare save for a telephone and a crossword puzzle magazine. Behind the desk, doing a crossword puzzle with a fountain pen, sat the manager in her powder blue suit and immaculate gray curls. She looked up as Arvid opened the door and smiled, her cheeks drawing back in deep folds.
“Egyptian dung beetle, six letters?” said the manager.
Arvid opened his mouth.
“S-C-A-R-A-B,” said the manager. “Thank you.” She closed and folded the magazine, put it aside and leaned back into her chair. She smiled again, with both rows of teeth.
Arvid waited.
“You have neglected to log three calls this month, Arvid,” the manager said. “Subject 3426 at 2.35 PM on March 15; subject 3426 at 1.10 PM on March 21; subject 3426 at 4.56 PM on March 30. Why is this, Arvid?”
“I’m having a bit of trouble,” said Arvid and shifted his weight from side to side.
“Trouble.” The manager was still smiling, cheeks folded back like accordions.
“I think I may be having a nervous breakdown.”
“And that’s why you haven’t logged your calls.”
“This is going to sound insane,” said Arvid.
“Go on,” said the Manager.
Arvid took a deep breath. “Subject number 3426 . . . ”
“Miss Sycorax,” supplied the Manager.
“Miss Sycorax,” Arvid continued, “has been making some very strange calls.”
“Many of our subjects do.”
“Yes, but not like her. Something’s off.”
“I see.”
“Eh, I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe I need some time off.”
“If you think you’re having a nervous breakdown, Arvid,” said the Manager, “I’ll book an appointment with the company doctor and let him decide. We need to know if it’s a workplace injury, you know. Oh, and do talk to Cornelia. She’s the union representative.”
“I will.”
“All right, Arvid. Go on home. I’ll have the doctor’s office call you this afternoon.” The Manager smiled at him with both rows of teeth.
At the switchboard, Konrad and Cornelia were back at work. Cornelia was doing her best to ignore a little army of ants who were marching in a circle around her desk. Konrad and the dung beetle, on the
other hand, seemed to have become fast friends. The dung beetle was rolling a sticky ball of masticated cookie crumbs.
Arvid sat down in his chair and stared at the terminal. After some hesitation, he put his headset on. Then he put a call through to Miss Sycorax.
“Hello,” said Miss Sycorax after the third ring.
“Hello,” echoed Arvid.
“Hello.”
“This is the operator,” Arvid managed.
“Oh.”
Arvid took a deep breath. “Who is this Arvid Pekon you wanted to be put through to?”
At the other end of the line, Miss Sycorax burst into laughter. The sound made Arvid cower in his chair.
“It’s a funny name,” she said. “Pekon, it sounds like a fruit. Like plums or pears. Or like someone from China. Or like a dog breed.”
“Who is Arvid Pekon?” Arvid repeated.
“There is no Arvid Pekon,” Miss Sycorax replied.
“Yes there is!”
“No there isn’t. I thought there was, but then I realized I was mistaken.”
Arvid disconnected and tore his headset off.
“I’m right here!” he yelled at the cockroach on the inbox. “Look!” He banged his fist on the desk so hard that it tingled. “Would I be able to do that if I wasn’t here?”
Something crackled. He looked down at his hand, which was lying in shards on the desk. The tingling sensation spread up his arm, which shuddered and then exploded in a cloud of dust.
“Where did Arvid go?” Cornelia asked Konrad a little while later.
“Who?” Konrad was looking at a ball of cookie crumbs on his desk, having no clear idea of how it got there. He popped it in his mouth.
Cornelia shook her head. “I don’t know what I’m on about. Never mind.”
“Coffee break?” said Konrad. “I’ve brought Finnish shortbread.”
Originally from Stockholm, Sweden, Karin Tidbeck (karintidbeck.com) now lives in Malmö. She’s published fiction in Swedish since 2002 and in English since 2010. Tidbeck debuted with the short story collection Vem är Arvid Pekon? in 2010, followed by the novel Amatka in 2012. Her English publication history includes Weird Tales, Shimmer Magazine, Unstuck Annual, and the anthology Odd?. Her first book in English, the short story collection Jagannath: Stories, was published last year and won the Crawford Award and was shortlisted for the Tiptree Award. Tidbeck’s also written articles and essays on computer games, roleplaying, and interactive arts. She currently works for a writers’ interest organization and occasionally teach creative writing. “Who is Arvid Pekon?” has been made into a short film by Patrik Eriksson.
“Stories can educate just as much as facts,” Miss Mailer says. “They teach us how to live, and how to think.”
IPHIGENIA IN AULIS
Mike Carey
Her name is Melanie. It means “the black girl,” from an ancient Greek word, but her skin is mostly very fair so she thinks maybe it’s not such a good name for her. Miss Justineau assigns names from a big list: new children get the top name on the boys’ list or the top name on the girls’ list, and that, Miss Justineau says, is that.
Melanie is ten years old, and she has skin like a princess in a fairy tale: skin as white as snow. So she knows that when she grows up she’ll be beautiful, with princes falling over themselves to climb her tower and rescue her.
Assuming, of course, that she has a tower.
In the meantime, she has the cell, the corridor, the classroom and the shower room.
The cell is small and square. It has a bed, a chair and a table in it.
On the walls there are pictures: in Melanie’s cell, a picture of a field of flowers and a picture of a woman dancing. Sometimes they move the children around, so Melanie knows that there are different pictures in each cell. She used to have a horse in a meadow and a big mountain with snow on the top, which she liked better.
The corridor has twenty doors on the left-hand side and eighteen doors on the right-hand side (because the cupboards don’t really count); also it has a door at either end. The door at the classroom end is red. It leads to the classroom (duh!). The door at the other end is bare gray steel on this side but once when Melanie was being taken back to her cell she peeped through the door, which had accidentally been left open, and saw that on the other side it’s got lots of bolts and locks and a box with numbers on it. She wasn’t supposed to see, and Sergeant said “Little bitch has got way too many eyes on her,” but she saw, and she remembers.
She listens, too, and from overheard conversations she has a sense of this place in relation to other places she hasn’t ever seen. This place is the block. Outside the block is the base. Outside the base is the Eastern Stretch, or the Dispute Stretch. It’s all good as far as Kansas, and then it gets real bad, real quick. East of Kansas, there’s monsters everywhere and they’ll follow you for a hundred miles if they smell you, and then they’ll eat you. Melanie is glad that she lives in the block, where she’s safe.
Through the gray steel door, each morning, the teachers come. They walk down the corridor together, past Melanie’s door, bringing with them the strong, bitter chemical smell that they always have on them: it’s not a nice smell, but it’s exciting because it means the start of another day’s lessons.
At the sound of the bolts sliding and the teachers’ footsteps, Melanie runs to the door of her cell and stands on tiptoe to peep through the little mesh-screen window in the door and see the teachers when they go by.
She calls out good morning to them, but they’re not supposed to answer and usually they don’t. Sometimes, though, Miss Justineau will look around and smile at her—a tense, quick smile that’s gone almost before she can see it—or Miss Mailer will give her a tiny wave with just the fingers of her hand.
All but one of the teachers go through the thirteenth door on the left, where there’s a stairway leading down to another corridor and (Melanie guesses) lots more doors and rooms. The one who doesn’t go through the thirteenth door unlocks the classroom and opens up, and that one will be Melanie’s teacher and Melanie’s friends’ teacher for the day.
Then Sergeant comes, and the men and women who do what Sergeant says. They’ve got the chemical smell, too, and it’s even stronger on them than it is on the teachers. Their job is to take the children to the classroom, and after that they go away again. There’s a procedure that they follow, which takes a long time. Melanie thinks it must be the same for all the children, but of course she doesn’t know that for sure because it always happens inside the cells and the only cell that Melanie sees the inside of is her own.
To start with, Sergeant bangs on all the doors, and shouts at the children to get ready. Melanie sits down in the wheelchair at the foot of her bed, like she’s been taught to do. She puts her hands on the arms of the chair and her feet on the footrests. She closes her eyes and waits. She counts while she waits. The highest she’s ever had to count is 4,526; the lowest is 4,301.
When the key turns in the door, she stops counting and opens her eyes. Sergeant comes in with his gun and points it at her. Then two of Sergeant’s people come in and tighten and buckle the straps of the chair around Melanie’s wrists and ankles. There’s also a strap for her neck: they tighten that one last of all, when her hands and feet are fastened up all the way, and they always do it from behind. The strap is designed so they never have to put their hands in front of Melanie’s face. Melanie sometimes says, “I won’t bite.” She says it as a joke, but Sergeant’s people never laugh. Sergeant did once, the first time she said it, but it was a nasty laugh. And then he said, “Like we’d ever give you the fucking chance, sugarplum.”
When Melanie is all strapped into the chair, and she can’t move her hands or her feet or her head, they wheel her into the classroom and put her at her desk. The teacher might be talking to some of the other children, or writing something on the blackboard, but she (unless it’s Mr. Galloway, who’s the only he) will usually stop and say, “Good morning, Melanie.” Tha
t way the children who sit way up at the front of the class will know that Melanie has come into the room and they can say good morning, too. They can’t see her, of course, because they’re all in their own chairs with their neck-straps fastened up, so they can’t turn their heads around that far.
This procedure—the wheeling in, and the teacher saying good morning, and then the chorus of greetings from the other kids—happens seven more times, because there are seven children who come into the classroom after Melanie. One of them is Anne, who used to be Melanie’s best friend in the class and maybe still is except that the last time they moved the kids around (Sergeant calls it “shuffling the deck”) they ended up sitting a long way apart and it’s hard to be best friends with someone you can’t talk to. Another is Steven, whom Melanie doesn’t like because he calls her Melon-Brain or M-M-M-Melanie to remind her that she used to stammer sometimes in class.
When all the children are in the classroom, the lessons start. Every day has sums and spelling, but there doesn’t seem to be a plan for the rest of the lessons. Some teachers like to read aloud from books. Others make the children learn facts and dates, which is something that Melanie is very good at. She knows the names of all the states in the United States, and all their capitals, and their state birds and flowers, and the total population of each state and what they mostly manufacture or grow there. She also knows the presidents in order and the years that they were in office, and she’s working on European capitals. She doesn’t find it hard to remember this stuff; she does it to keep from being bored, because being bored is worse than almost anything.
Melanie learned the stuff about the states from Mr. Galloway’s lessons, but she’s not sure if she’s got all the details right because one day, when he was acting kind of funny and his voice was all slippery and fuzzy, Mr. Galloway said something that worried Melanie. She was asking him whether it was the whole state of New York that used to be called New Amsterdam, or just the city, and he said, who cares? “None of this stuff matters anymore, Melanie. I just gave it to you because all the textbooks we’ve got are twenty years old.”
Melanie persists, because New Amsterdam was way back in the eighteenth century, so she doesn’t think twenty years should matter all that much. “But when the Dutch colonists—” she says.
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