“In the city they learned new ways to survive. You could trick people. You could con them and take their money. It was no longer necessary to get your hands dirty. That’s why we’re so clever today. Because some of us have learned to cheat. And everyone else spends their time trying not to get cheated.”
We head deeper and deeper into the forest. I can hear the sounds of small animals, see their eyes shine before they disappear again. I cover my mouth with my sleeve. I don’t want the animals to hear me cry.
Then we walk around a tree stump through some low bushes and suddenly we’re back on the path. I can see the red gate we came in through and the streetlights along the road outside.
My dad picks me up, he carries me and he doesn’t put me down until we reach the vending machine at the small railway station. He puts money in the machine so I can have some hot chocolate. He smokes two cigarettes while I sip my drink. The train arrives.
My eyes are right up close to the wood. The fifth woodworm hole must be perfect, it must be better than the woodworms themselves could make it. I was unhappy with the fourth one. I find the pencil dot with my drill. Suddenly the light disappears and I sense something behind me. Something big and dark like the monsters in the fairy tales my dad tells me before I go to sleep. So big that it can gobble up an entire town and clean its teeth with the church spire. So ugly that you can’t look at it without going blind.
“What the hell is this?”
The boss’s voice thunders.
“I can’t believe you’re letting him drill holes. Have you gone completely . . .”
The boss’s fists are clenched.
My dad comes over to us; he doesn’t stop stirring the coffee grounds in the jam jar.
“Just take a look at it,” my dad says.
“You’re going to pay for the damage that little shit has done.”
“Just take a look at it.”
The boss takes a deep breath and finds his reading glasses. He leans over the chair. I just manage to get out of the way before I’m squashed.
The boss traces the holes with his finger, he growls under his breath.
“Not bad,” he mutters and straightens up, taking off his reading glasses. He scrutinizes me as if he can’t quite believe that I did that. He goes inside the workshop without saying another word.
My dad smiles. “Back to work,” he says. “These woodworm holes won’t drill themselves.”
My hands shake when I put the drill to the wood again.
The next couple of days the boss visits. Every time he stops and looks over my shoulder. I try to carry on as if I haven’t noticed. The boss then grunts a little before moving on.
At the end of the week the boss buys us lunch. Again he doesn’t say anything; he just puts a small parcel in front of me, greaseproof paper with an elastic band around it. I don’t dare unwrap it before the boss and my dad have started eating. The mayonnaise on top of my potato sandwich is too yellow; the meatball is a little burnt. I’m full after the first sandwich, but force myself to eat up.
Throughout the day my dad has said: “Sleep. Go to sleep. What are you doing up? Go to your room and sleep. It’s going to be a late night.”
We eat beef burgers with soft onions. Once the plates are in the sink, my dad reads a book and I paint on my easel. I try to paint a horse, but I can’t get the legs right; they hang under its belly and look like boiled spaghetti.
My dad looks up at the wall clock and says it’s time to go. But first I need to put on my clothes. All of them.
“All of them?”
“Yes, all of them.”
I put on sweatshirts on top of T-shirts on top of other T-shirts. Three pairs of socks.
“Where are we going?” I ask.
My dad just smiles and pulls the woolly cap over my ears. His bag makes a metallic sound when he picks it up.
The women in the street wear high heels and dresses that stick out under their winter coats. The men wear shirts and ties or bow ties. Some look like they’re in a hurry; others are laughing, drinking, and shouting. I waddle down the street with my arms sticking out from my body. I wish I could lie down so my dad could roll me.
After a few streets we stop. I follow my dad’s gaze to a red-brick building across the street.
“Jump on the spot so you don’t get cold.”
A man and a woman are standing in a first-floor window, drinking wine. I can hear music coming from the building, and through the ground-floor windows I can see a man with a party hat on his head jumping up and down. The cold creeps through my woolly mittens; I curl up my toes in my shoes and count the cigarettes my dad smokes. He finishes his fourth one and flicks the cigarette butt away; it lands in a snowdrift.
He fumbles in his pocket for his next cigarette when the front door opens. My dad grabs my hand and we cross the street.
“Take off your cap and pretend you’re going to a party,” he says.
A man comes out of the door. He stumbles and slumps across a parked car. Another man follows him, he has a bottle in his hand. They grin at each other. My dad is just in time to catch the door before it slams shut. We walk up the stairs. I can hear music and loud voices through the doors in the stairwell. I can smell the food they’ve eaten. On the third floor a man is asleep on a doormat. We step across him and carry on walking up.
At the top of the stairs is a single door. My dad takes a screwdriver from his bag and then a hammer. A couple of floors below us a door opens; we hear footsteps, but they’re going down, not up. My dad slips the screwdriver in between the door and the door frame and holds the hammer ready in his other hand. He looks at his watch.
“Five, four, three, two, one.”
It gets more noisy. People shout, stamp their feet, blow their horns.
“Happy New Year,” my dad says, and whacks the screwdriver with the hammer. It digs into the wood. He hits it again; the sound is drowned out by a thousand others.
My dad forces open the door and we walk down a narrow passage with wooden doors on both sides. A small ladder at the end of the passage leads to a hatch in the ceiling. It’s locked with a padlock, which also receives a couple of blows from the hammer.
We climb up on the roof and come out next to the chimney. The roof slopes to both sides, but there’s a flat area in the middle, three to four metres wide. My dad takes a blanket from his bag and spreads it on the ground; then he takes out more blankets and wraps us up in them. Finally he produces a Thermos of hot chocolate from his bag. We lie on our backs next to each other as we watch the fireworks. The city explodes in light; I cover my ears while I laugh. Around us rockets fall into the gutters.
1988
The frog stares at them. It’s enormous; its skin is green and knobbly.
“So you want to get across?” it asks, and grins.
Its echoing laughter stinks of rotten water; its jaw is so big it could easily swallow a car. The King and the Prince look at the lake. The far shore has disappeared in the thick fog.
“I won’t eat you,” the frog says. “I promise.”
The King and the Prince look at each other. Should they do it, should they trust the frog, run the risk?
I lie on my bed, holding my breath. The toilet being flushed downstairs becomes a huge pike splashing about in the murky water. Next door’s television becomes birdsong in the trees behind us.
“Couldn’t they just have walked around the lake?” I ask my dad.
“It would’ve taken them years. The Prince would’ve grown just as old as the King is now. And the King would’ve turned into a very old man who couldn’t see or hear anything. They’d never have found the White Queen. They’d never have managed to kill her and lift the curse.”
“Weren’t they scared? Really scared?”
“Yes, of course. But it’s a great deal easier to be brave when you don’t have a choic
e.”
The King climbs up onto the frog; it’s not easy, the frog’s skin is slippery and slimy and there’s nothing to hold on to. When he sits straddling its back, the King helps the Prince up. The frog tenses its thigh muscles, its whole body quivers. Then it jumps. Water splashes around their ears. The frog takes strong strokes with its big hind legs. The shore is quickly reduced to a thin line behind them. The sound of birdsong back on land grows fainter and fainter before disappearing altogether. They’re surrounded by silence; there’s only the sound of the frog’s swimming strokes. The fog settles around them, everything turns white. Then the frog starts to tread water.
“I’m hungry,” it says. “I’m really rather hungry.”
“You promised not to eat us,” the Prince says.
“I prefer to be a full liar,” the frog replies, and starts to open its mouth.
“You can have our packed lunch,” the Prince says.
The frog considers this and then it nods. Ripples form in the water.
“You’ll probably keep for awhile longer, anyway.”
The King and the Prince open their bags and throw eggs, sausages, and red apples sideways into the frog’s mouth. It chews and swallows. Then it swims on. My dad turns off the light, pulls the blanket around me, tucks me in.
“Sleep tight,” he says.
My dad and I are standing in the yard outside the workshop.
“Listen, I’ve got something to tell you,” the boss says. “We’ve got a big order from Germany. The Germans can’t get enough of all the old crap we make.”
An hour later a van arrives, crammed with furniture for us to distress. Anything we can’t find room for in the workshop we leave in the yard and cover with tarpaulin. Then we run out of tarpaulin and the boss goes off to get some more.
When he returns it has started to snow, and we have to wipe down the furniture before we can cover it.
In the afternoon we’re still working on the first lot of chairs and tables. We’ve moved inside the workshop; it smells of wet wood, of varnish and coffee grounds. The boss looks over my shoulder while I use a file to scratch the legs of an armchair.
“Not bad at all,” he says.
On his way out he slaps my dad on the shoulder, chuckles to himself, and mutters something about “child labour.” Then he laughs even louder.
We don’t leave the workshop until late that evening. I sit in the bicycle’s basket; there are no stars in the sky. I recognize the soreness in my feet like when we’ve walked all day, but it’s the first time I’ve experienced my whole body aching. I like the feeling of having worked hard.
My dad brings in the chair from the kitchen. His eyes are heavy, but he says we can’t let the King and the Prince sit on the frog all night. Their lips are dry and their stomachs groan with hunger pains. They still can’t see the far shore. The frog starts to tread water again.
“I really am terribly hungry,” it says. “A king and a prince would taste very nice right now.”
“Wouldn’t you rather have the meat we packed?” the King asks.
“I thought I ate your packed lunches yesterday.”
“Yes, but you didn’t get the meat we intend to sell when we get across.”
“Give it here,” the frog says.
The King takes off his shoes, very quietly so the frog won’t hear. The Prince does the same. They tie their shoes together by the laces, then they throw them into the frog’s open mouth. The frog munches the leather.
“It tastes funny,” it says. “And it’s very tough.”
“Real meat is always very tough,” the Prince says. “So that you can chew on it for much longer.”
the Next morning a van picks up the furniture we’ve finished. The wood is now darker than when it arrived, the seats have been distressed with a steel brush. We need to get it all out of the workshop quickly to make room for the next lot.
After lunch the boss says he’s had an idea and disappears through the archway. An hour later he returns with thirty brand new alarm clocks. They’re metal and have to be wound up, but the varnish is still shiny and the price tags are still on.
“For the Germans,” he says, and explains that every time we send off a van full of furniture, we’ll throw in a handful of clocks. “They’re gonna love them.”
We take the clocks apart and put the hands and the clock faces in a bucket with water and acid.
I’m quickly given responsibility for the clocks. Once the clock faces are immersed in acid, the varnish starts to bubble up and the clocks look like they’ve been lying in an attic for many years under a leaking roof. The metal casing also needs to be aged. When I’m not busy varnishing an armchair or drilling woodworm holes, I take a new clock from the pile. I smear black shoe polish into the cracks and rub them with sandpaper before putting them outside in the rain.
The frog is still swimming across the lake. The fog grows so dense that the King and the Prince can no longer see each other. Nor can they see the frog beneath them; they can only feel its slimy skin and hear its stomach rumble. It starts treading water again, but it doesn’t say anything.
I look across at my dad; he’s asleep in the chair. I pull at him until he gets up and staggers over to the couch. I ask him if the King and the Prince will make it.
“Who knows?” he mumbles, and goes back to sleep.
The boss holds up a clock I’ve just reassembled, one of the first to be finished. He looks moved to tears.
“You need something for it,” he says while we eat lunch.
At first I don’t realize he’s talking to me so I carry on eating; I try to keep the pickled beetroot in place on top of my liver pâté sandwich.
“Hello, boy,” he shouts. “Hello, boy! What do you want?”
I don’t know what to reply.
“I know I laughed when I called you child labour, but I’m starting to feel bad about it. So what’s it gonna be?”
I look at my dad. He nods to give me the go-ahead, for me to just say it. I hesitate. I don’t want the boss to laugh at me, throw me out. I want to stay here, be with my dad. Work up a sweat and get splinters in my fingers. They both look at me while they wait.
“A bicycle,” I say. “A blue bicycle.”
I regret it immediately. I should’ve asked for something smaller, like a toy car or a new football.
But the boss just smiles. “Well, of course it’s got to be blue. You don’t want a girlie bike, do you?”
We ride through the city. The slush splashes up and hits my cheek; it makes the butcher’s bike wobble. I lie down in the big basket and look up at the dark sky. I almost fall asleep. Tomorrow we’ll make more furniture look old. Tomorrow I’ll be allowed to handle nitric acid. My dad has promised me. As long as I’m careful. Tomorrow we’ll get lunch from the sandwich shop again. Possibly an egg sandwich with a single herring on top. Or beetroot salad, which makes my lips go pink.
Tomorrow I hope the boss will tell me once again that I’m good.
I’m lying in my bed. The frog is still swimming with the King and the Prince. It starts to tread water again.
Before it has time to say anything, the King asks his son: “Why don’t we kill ourselves a frog? It’s been a long time since the last one.”
The Prince replies: “Yes, a fortnight, at least.”
“You eat frogs?” the frog says, and tries to turn its big green head to see if the King might have a knife or a small sword. A weapon it might have overlooked when they climbed onto its back. “Do you really eat frogs?”
“No,” the King replies. “We’ve never done that.”
“We just kill them,” the Prince says. “Some people like flying kites, others love riding bicycles. We kill frogs. It’s what we do.”
“But not me,” the frog says, now sounding more reassured.
“Why not?” the Prince a
sks.
“Because then you’ll drown.”
“I agree, I don’t think we can swim ashore, either,” the King says. “It’s too far. The water is too cold, the fog too dense. But we kill frogs. It’s what we do; it’s what we’ve always done.”
The frog has started shaking a little.
“But perhaps we could make an exception,” the King says.
The frog resumes swimming. Faster than before. It makes small, unhappy grunts all the way to the shore.
The King and the Prince jump off its back. They’re wet, cold, and hungry, but they can’t help laughing out loud. The birds’ twittering sounds like hundreds of tiny beaks saying welcome, welcome. You’ve won. You’re here now. You’re still alive.
The grass under their bare feet is so green that it hurts their eyes. They hurry away from the frog, still submerged in the lake, only its eyes sticking out of the water.
My dad is standing in the yard, cursing. He has accidentally broken off a chair leg while he was sanding it down.
“Do we have any more panel pins?” he asks.
I shake my head. I used the last ones this morning on a tabletop that had started to warp because it had been left out in the rain for too long.
My dad goes into the workshop. He quickly reappears.
“You’re right. I’ll just pop out and get some. Do you want to come along?”
I shake my head. I know we’re busy. When the boss came in yesterday, he pointed to the chairs and said, “Remember they need to look old tomorrow.”
My dad jumps onto the butcher’s bike and rides out through the archway.
I press the drill against the wood again. A few more holes and the armchair will be ready. I try not to make a mess of it even though we’re in a hurry.
“Where’s your dad?” the boss asks. I didn’t hear him come in. Perhaps I’ve finally learned to focus only on the table or the chair that I’m working on.
A Fairy Tale Page 6
