A Fairy Tale

by Jonas Bengtsson

  My dad gets me dressed and washes my face with a wet hand towel. He takes his suit out of the wardrobe. I hate that suit, I know that now. He wraps me in the bedspread and carries me down the stairs, past reception, and then the few steps along the street to the strip club.

  Inside a man in a white shirt is busy taking down the chairs from the tables. Another man is setting out a stack of ashtrays which he cradles in his arms. There are stars and paper chains along the wall. My dad carries me past the stage, pulls aside a curtain, and walks down a passage where dark red paint is peeling off in large flakes. He knocks on the door three times before he opens it. One wall is covered entirely in mirrors. On the wall opposite are racks with cat costumes, bunny costumes, dresses with feathers. An older woman sits with a needle and thread in her mouth. She’s sewing buttons onto a dress; a cigarette smokes itself in the ashtray on the table.

  “My son’s ill, tell the girls to take good care of him.”

  The woman nods and takes the next dress from the table. My dad puts me on a low, dark green sofa at the back of the room. He wipes my forehead with the inside of his shirt sleeve.

  “All you have to do is last the night,” he says.

  When I open my eyes again the room is filled with girls. They’re younger than my dad. Some of them are wearing only bras and panties. They put on makeup and spray themselves with perfume. I can hear music from the stage; I recognize it from my nights in the hotel bed where it never gets louder than the sound of a fingernail against a glass table.

  The girls laugh and shout to drown out the music and each other. They drink from bottles on the table; they fill the glasses until they overflow. When they walk out the door, they look as if they’re going to a party in their glittering dresses, strings of pearls around their neck, their high heels making clacking sounds against the concrete floor. When they come back, they’re dressed only in their panties, the clothes now a small, crumpled bundle in their arms.

  They sweat; beads of sweat have formed between their breasts and trickle down their stomachs before collecting in their belly buttons. They dry themselves with white hand towels, then they walk around in tiny panties before they take another dress from the stand.

  The room smells of sweat, perfume, and cigarettes.

  The girls take turns coming over to me. They ruffle my hair and pinch my cheeks.

  I keep seeing the bicycle over their heads, the bicycle I’m going to get soon. Blue — or red, possibly. Red is a girl’s colour, but it’s also the colour of fire engines and mailboxes.

  One of the girls says her name is Camilla; she gives me a glass and fills it from one of the bottles.

  “Champagne,” she says, as she tops up my glass with orange juice.

  One of the other girls asks her what she’s doing, but Camilla doesn’t reply. She hands me the glass and whispers in my ear: “It’ll make you feel better.”

  When I’m halfway through the glass, it no longer tastes quite so disgusting. I drink the rest in big gulps.

  The girls laugh and I laugh with them. They stand in front of me and use me as their mirror.

  “Do I look good now?” They jiggle their breasts before they walk out the door again.

  The girl whose name is Camilla refills my glass, not quite so much orange juice this time.

  “Tell your dad I think he’s cute, won’t you, sweetheart?” Her perfume smells of apples and flowers. “He probably knows me as Candy.”

  I empty my glass.

  It’s early in the morning when my dad carries me through the strip club. The air is so thick with smoke that my eyes water. The tables are covered with bottles. Broken glass crunches under his shoes.

  My dad lays me down on the bed in the hotel room. He puts a wet towel on my forehead; it helps a bit until the towel’s just as warm as my skin.

  My dad supports my head and holds the water glass to my mouth. I manage three mouthfuls.

  My dad sits on the edge of the bed, running his hand through his hair so it sticks out. He throws down the jacket; it lands on the floor. He smokes two cigarettes while he stares into the distance. The streetlights fall on his cheek, ear, and some of his neck. He looks older now. Not just a couple of years, but much older.

  “I think it’s time we move,” he says.

  1989

  I’m sitting on the floor, up against the wall. I read my comic with a flashlight. The man in the comic can make himself invisible. My dad sits behind the lighting desk, smoking; he turns some knobs, presses some buttons. There’s a hole in the wall in front of him. When he doesn’t look down at the desk, he looks out of the hole.

  Sometimes he turns to me and we mime along to the voices from the stage.

  My dad says: “Hello, Ivan, have you also come outside to enjoy the morning sun?”

  Then I say: “Oh, dearest little Olga, these days the morning sun is the only joy I have left.”

  We’ve been here for two weeks now. I don’t know how he got a job in a theatre.

  The man in the comic only makes himself invisible in order to help others; he catches robbers and thieves who steal handbags from old ladies. He never takes anything for himself. He doesn’t trip up people he doesn’t like though it would be incredibly easy for him to do so. Even when he catches the bus, he puts money down in front of the driver, but he never gets a ticket.

  I don’t understand him. I follow the drawings with my finger.

  At the end of Act One, my dad gets up and goes over to the cassette player on the wall. He places his finger on the button, tilts his head, and listens. When the woman on stage has said: “But you’ll never understand. You’re in love with your art, Ivan, you don’t love people,” my dad counts: “One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi,” and then he presses the button. The sound of seagulls screeching and waves crashing fills the auditorium below us. My dad gets back into his chair, quickly presses a couple of other buttons, and slowly pushes up the big handle in the middle of the desk. The reddish glow of a sunset creeps through the hole in the wall and into where we are.

  The auditorium is never more than half full. My dad says the tickets are expensive, that must be the reason. When the play is over, the applause is scattered and out of sync. A few people clap hard and long. He smokes a cigarette while the auditorium empties. Then he turns on the light and I switch off my flashlight. He cleans up after himself, empties the ashtray, and rewinds the cassette tape so that it’ll be ready for tomorrow.

  There’s a knock on the door and the theatre manager pops his head around. He’s a small man with dark hair that sticks out as though he has just woken up. Even though this is his theatre, he grins apologetically. The first time I met him, he told me to help myself to some sodas. He repeats this offer every time I see him, just pop over to the bar and help yourself to a soda.

  Today he doesn’t notice me. He pulls up a chair next to mine and sits down. He’s wringing his hands more than he usually does.

  “About that contract,” he says.

  “Yes?” My dad organizes some papers, the ones that tell him what the actors have to say.

  “There are just a few outstanding details, but you will get it, of course.” The theatre manager looks down at his hands. “I know I said I’d have it ready for you today . . .”

  My dad lights a cigarette and offers the packet to the theatre manager, who carefully accepts one. “As soon as I sign that contract, you’re obliged to pay me for the whole season even if you have to close the show tomorrow.”

  The theatre manager is still looking at his hands. “I know you’re not a fool.”

  “Let’s forget all about that contract,” my dad says. “As long as I get paid on time, that’s all I care about.”

  The theatre manager holds his breath as if he can’t quite believe what my dad has just said. Then he gets up and shakes my dad’s hand, pumping it up and down.
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  “You’re all right, you are,” he says, producing a white envelope from his inside pocket. “Don’t forget to report this on your tax return.”

  They both laugh. The theatre manager leaves quickly, as though he’s afraid my dad might change his mind.

  My dad locks the lighting box after us and we walk down the narrow passage to the stairs. Sara comes towards us. She has changed out of her costume and into jeans and a dark red knit sweater. Her hair’s pulled back in a ponytail; she still has beads of sweat on her forehead.

  “Promise me you’ll come. Stay just for one drink.”

  My dad looks at me, it’s my decision.

  The wet cobblestones shine in the streetlight. We walk with the actors. Before the performance they’re always very serious. They hardly speak, but drink coffee and smoke cigarettes. Afterwards they laugh out loud, they laugh at absolutely everything.

  The bartender greets us when he sees us come through the door.

  “The actors are here,” he calls out. “Lock up your daughters.”

  He starts pouring beers. An older man gets up and makes room for us. It’s the least I can do, he says. We sit down at a table in the middle of the room. One of the actors is always telling stories or rude jokes or gossiping about the others.

  I’m sitting next to my dad, drinking orange juice through a straw. I’m here with them. People at the other tables listen in. They would just love to sit here, too, I can tell from looking at them even though they try to hide it. Kim and Margrethe sit at the head of the table. They both used to be quite famous, my dad has told me. Margrethe is the oldest of the actors. I haven’t seen any of her films, even though she has acted in quite a few. She drinks white wine; I can see traces of her red lipstick on her glass and on the cigarette she holds between the tips of her index and middle finger. In my mind I draw her; I draw the bar, the dark wood that stops halfway up the wall, the tables which all have cigarette burns. There are photos on the walls of people I don’t recognize. They smile or raise their glass in a toast. At the bottom of the photographs little greetings have been written in black ink.

  Kim falls out with Margrethe. Once again he has said something that makes her turn away and pretend that he isn’t there. Kim gets up, pulls a chair over, and sits down next to me.

  He plays the world-weary doctor who looks across the fields and talks about the city.

  “Are you ready?” he asks, and takes three coins out of his pocket.

  “Three Fly,” he calls this trick. Another one is called “Find the Lady.” He turns cigarettes into paper napkins; coins disappear and reappear under my juice bottle.

  I hear the bell ring and I see my dad standing at the bar with the bell rope in his hand. I know this means he’s buying a round. He takes the white envelope from his pocket. He asks if I want another juice; I shake my head. I need the bathroom and I’d like to go home, but I don’t tell him that. I see the money come out of the envelope and disappear across the counter. I see beer glasses fill up. Schnapps and vodka. People pat my dad on the back.

  When we get home, my dad tips the rest of the money out of the envelope. There’s hardly any left.

  He looks at me. “You’re wondering why I bought everyone in the bar a beer, aren’t you? Why I bought drinks for people we don’t know.”

  I nod.

  He squats down on his haunches in front of me. I’m fairly certain that I’m at school again.

  “You can’t make a living from being invisible,” my dad says. “That man in your comic, how does he earn his money?”

  I’d never thought of that.

  “No one gives him money for being invisible, do they?”

  No, I’m pretty sure that they don’t.

  “I wish I could drive a car without a number plate, that my feet didn’t leave footprints in the snow. But that’s not possible. So you have to trust people. Not always and not unconditionally. But you have to trust that if they like you, then they’ll do a lot to help you. And that’s worth much more than the money which was in that envelope.”

  I help my dad unfold the camping beds and we find our sleeping bags.

  Our new apartment is the smallest we’ve ever lived in. One of the stagehands at the theatre knows the landlord and said he would have a word with him. The next day we moved in. When we need something, a jacket or a pair of shoes, we take it out of a suitcase and afterwards it goes back into the suitcase.

  The walls in the apartment are sloping. My dad says that we can hear it if a bird lands on the roof. He can’t stand upright. While he fries sausages, he leans to the right. While he drinks a cup of coffee and smokes a cigarette, he leans to the left. While he washes up, he leans backwards.

  Every Sunday we visit Sara and bring cakes. She lives in a small apartment, not far from the theatre. Sara and my dad drink coffee; Sara makes hot chocolate for me in a saucepan on the stove. My dad talks, Sara nods and smiles. On stage you can hear her all the way to the back of the auditorium and she doesn’t even have to shout; on stage it’s hard to take your eyes off her. But in the street and here, in the apartment, she’s very small and practically transparent. Like some girls you meet on the sidewalk who’ll always move, step right out into the bicycle lane if you just carry on walking.

  We go for a walk in a park nearby. The weather is cold and we’re wrapped up warm. We feed stale bread to the ducks. My dad and I play Hit the Swan, but Sara thinks it’s mean. She takes his hand.

  “I can’t wait until the summer,” she says. “I can’t wait until I can come here and eat ice cream.”

  “Would you like an ice cream?”

  “It’s too cold, isn’t it?”

  “It’s never too cold to eat ice cream.”

  Sara and I wait on a bench while my dad goes to get us ice cream. Sara pulls her coat around her, moves a little closer to me.

  “You’re lucky,” she says.

  We both look at my dad’s back; he’s walking up the path towards the exit.

  “You’re lucky you’ve got a dad like him.”

  She keeps her gaze fixed on the gate he has just walked out of. Then she sinks into herself. I can feel her through my clothes.

  When she sees my dad again, she comes alive, claps her hands. She rips the paper off her ice cream and laughs when it sticks to her bottom lip, frozen.

  My dad is sitting behind the lighting desk. He looks at his watch and then puts his fingers back on the buttons in front of him.

  Below us the auditorium is less than half full, as usual. The audience has long since stopped talking and coughing, but the curtain has yet to go up.

  My dad checks his watch again, then he asks me to please go backstage to see what’s going on.

  I walk through the narrow passages that run along the auditorium, the ones the audience never sees. My dad calls them the theatre’s arteries. They remind me of the strip club, they’re dark and scary and the paint’s peeling.

  The actors and stagehands are standing outside the dressing rooms, talking to each other in hushed voices.

  A door opens and the theatre manager appears.

  “I don’t know what we’re going to do,” he says. “Why the hell did you have to go and . . .”

  Kim’s hands hang limply by his sides. “Do you want me to talk to her, perhaps I can . . .”

  “I think you’ve said enough.”

  “But everyone knows she screwed her way to all those film roles. That’s what you did in those days.”

  The theatre manager looks as if he’s about to shout at him or possibly hit him. Then he heaves a resigned sigh and rummages around in his pockets for cigarettes. Waves of smoke waft under the low ceiling.

  Sara squats down in front of me. She puts her arm around my shoulder and whispers into my ear. I look at her; she nods and gives me a little push. I go to the door, the actors fall silent; I can feel t
heir eyes on me. One more step and I take hold of the door handle. Again I look at Sara; she smiles and nods. I enter, closing the door behind me.

  Margrethe spins around and nearly throws a hairbrush at me, but stops in mid-movement. Her face is red, as though she has been trying to hold her breath. She has black stripes down her cheeks. She lets herself collapse into the chair in front of the dressing table mirror.

  I sit down next to her.

  “It’s only theatre,” I say, the words Sara told me to say.

  At first Margrethe looks at me in surprise, then she starts to laugh. She laughs until she begins to cough and then she laughs even harder.

  “Yes, darling, it’s only theatre.” She looks at herself in the mirror and lights a cigarette. “So, what do you think: should we do it?”

  I nod.

  “It’s only theatre,” she repeats to herself while she lays out her makeup.

  “The others are a bunch of assholes,” she says.

  She removes the old makeup. Her hands work automatically.

  “But then again, all actors are, or most of them, anyway.”

  She dips cotton balls into a jar, removing layers of stage paint, briefly revealing naked skin before new layers are applied. She drips a bluish liquid into her eyes, blinks a couple of times. Then she smiles to herself in the mirror and turns to face me. In a very short amount of time she has a whole new face with no trace of tears.

  I sit in row three; Margrethe has said she would like to see me in the auditorium.

  The first few times I saw the show, my dad asked for a ticket for me. Now we know there’s no need.

  Act One is long and boring. The actors smile and drink tea and look across a field which lies somewhere beyond the stage. Towards the end they argue a little, but still using impressive and clever words while they fling out their arms.

  In the play Sara’s name is Olga. Every time I see them perform, the light on her is a little brighter.