A Fairy Tale

by Jonas Bengtsson

  It grows quiet out there again. I can feel my dad’s heartbeat against my back.

  “I really don’t care that everyone at the theatre is pissed off at you. Please just open the door.”

  Her voice comes from somewhere below. I think she must be sitting on the doormat now.

  I can hear her crying through the door. I look up at my dad. He covers my eyes with his hand.

  My dad has spread newspapers over the living room floor and is sitting on a chair in the middle of the room.

  “How do you want it?” I ask him.

  “Just nice.”

  I start combing his hair. In some places it’s so matted the comb gets stuck. Slowly I start cutting it, scared that he might suddenly shout stop. But he says nothing, so I keep going. The hair starts covering the newspaper pages underneath us.

  “It’s quite short now.”

  He touches his head, pulls a strand forward from behind his ear.

  “Just keep cutting, it’ll grow back.”

  I try to visualize men I’ve seen in the street, how their hair looked, men with briefcases under their arms. Men who were in a hurry, who had trains to catch, meetings to attend. I try to cut my dad’s hair a little shorter on the sides than on top. When I start school, he’ll look like all the other dads and I’m pleased about that.

  When I’m too frightened to cut off any more, he goes to the bathroom and looks in the mirror.

  I hold my breath until he says: “That’s really rather good.” He fiddles with it a little before he’s satisfied. “I’m not saying that you should become a hairdresser, but that’s really rather good.”

  He makes a centre parting with the comb and smiles at his own reflection in the mirror. Then he makes a side parting, first to one side, then to the other. Now he looks like a man who wears a tie, works in a bank, and comes home every day at the same time. Next time I go shopping, I could buy him a tie. If I smile when he opens his present, I know he’ll wear it. My only fear is that he’ll wear it over a sweater.

  He puts more water in his hair.

  “An extreme side part,” he says, and flattens his hair completely.

  In the kitchen he finds the tin of shoe polish. He unscrews the lid and sticks two fingers into it, draws a straight line under his nose that stops at his upper lip.

  “Can you tell who I am now?” he asks.

  “Hitler!” I call out.

  My dad parades around the living room. He walks stiffly, as if his legs were made of wood, and his right hand points up in the air. He shouts “Arbeit macht frei!” while he kicks tufts of hair off the newspapers. He shouts: “Die Endlösung der Judenfrage!” Spit flies out of his mouth and he squints.

  I laugh so hard my tummy hurts.

  That night we have Swedish sausage casserole for dinner; I found the recipe in the big cookbook from the library. I can’t help laughing every time I look at my dad. He has scraped and scrubbed, but he hasn’t been able to get the black line off his upper lip.

  “When food tastes this good, you’re allowed to slurp it,” he says, and swigs a mouthful of beer.

  I’m proud: it’s the first time I’ve cooked something that resembles the picture in the book.

  The wall behind us is blank again. My dad took down the newspaper clippings while I cooked. Only the blue pencil lines on the wallpaper remain.

  My dad has already made packed lunches. My rucksack is waiting for us on the table. I’ve just woken up.

  “We’re going on a trip today,” he announces.

  “Put on your best clothes,” he says through the doorway to my bedroom. “We’re not going to the woods.”

  My dad wears a white shirt under his denim jacket, his black shoes shine, he has combed his hair.

  He helps me get the rucksack on my shoulders. “You need to get used to walking with it. School is about to start.”

  I tighten the straps.

  We walk down the street.

  “It’s not too heavy, is it? I put the drinking bottle inside it.”

  I shake my head. I know it’ll be much heavier once I get new books.

  My dad takes long strides and looks at his watch. I’m forced to jog to keep up with him.

  “Sorry,” he laughs, and slows down. “Do you want me to carry your bag?”

  I shake my head.

  While we wait for the bus, he smooths my hair with a comb and spit until he’s satisfied.

  “We’re going to Christiansborg so it’s important we look smart.”

  My dad looks out the window of the bus. He strokes his knee; he keeps running his hand over the denim. I pull his sleeve. He turns to me and cradles my head in both hands. He kisses me on my forehead before looking out at the street again. He has stopped moving his hands.

  I didn’t have any breakfast before we left home and I start to feel it now. The woman on the seat across from us is eating bread from a baker’s bag, tiny bites. She nibbles it like a bird at a feeding table. Yet another tiny piece of bread, pinched between her fingers.

  I’m about to pull my dad’s denim jacket again, ask him about the packed lunch, ask about all the politicians, how you become one and why they’re so important. Something, anything, because he’s far too quiet. Then he turns to me and smiles.

  “Exciting, isn’t it.” He takes my hand in his.

  When we get off the bus, I tell my dad that I’m hungry. He pats my rucksack.

  “Soon,” he says.

  We walk across the cobblestones towards the palace. My dad holds one of the big wooden doors open for me. Instead of knights in armour, two policemen are standing inside. They smile at us. We walk down a long corridor and up some stairs. I stop in front of a painting. A bird, a crow perhaps, is surrounded by other birds. It looks ill; its beak is open and its head is slumped down. It has spread its wings, and between them it says: “He who understands the language of birds can become a politician.”

  My dad grins, takes my hand, and drags me along past the other paintings.

  The room is filled with people, and when we enter they all turn around. They have cameras with long lenses and tape recorders in their hands.

  They look at us briefly, then they carry on chatting to each other. My dad says that the big camera on a stand in the middle of the floor belongs to the television company.

  A door opens and everyone in the room surges towards it. I can only see their backs now.

  People start talking on top of each other, asking question after question. I hear cameras clicking.

  My dad takes my hand and pushes us past all the arms and elbows. Right up to the front so we can see her, see Monika. She smiles and gestures to signal that the questions will have to wait.

  She’s on her way to the rostrum when she stops and looks down at me.

  “Hello, you,” she says. Her eyes are very green. I hear more clicking from the cameras around us. She touches my hair. “Have you come to hear me speak today?”

  I nod.

  “Well, in that case, I’d better make an effort.”

  She steps up to the rostrum and taps the microphone lightly with her index finger.

  “Thank you for coming.”

  She talks for a long time. At first I try to understand what she’s talking about, but soon I just listen to her voice. I look at her mouth as it shapes the words. They sound like music.

  Pencils against notepads make up the chorus. A couple of times I’m convinced that she’s looking straight at me. She speaks the language of birds and I’m the only one who knows it.

  Monika thanks everyone for coming again. She answers a couple of questions and gathers up her papers. She’s on her way down from the rostrum when my dad opens my rucksack, which I still have on my back. He takes something out of it and it gets a little lighter. It must be the drinking bottle, he’s thirsty. But I don’t hear t
he sound of the cap; instead I see my dad make his way through the cameras and outstretched microphones. He holds something in his hand, I can’t see what it is, but it doesn’t look like my drinking bottle.

  Then all the backs get in my way and I lose sight of him.

  A woman starts to scream, then lots of voices shout.

  I run towards the sound. I’m not afraid, I know that my dad’s there somewhere, I know I’ll find him. It’s not difficult to get through the crowd; everyone is standing very still now, a forest of arms, I brush through them like branches.

  Monika has stopped screaming, but her mouth is still open, her eyes wide. My dad is lying on the floor in front of her. One man has flung himself across his back; another man presses his shin against my dad’s outstretched arm. Not far from my dad’s fingertips lies the kitchen knife. I recognize the black handle. Yesterday I chopped onions and carrots with it.

  1996

  I’m sitting at the kitchen table drinking orange juice.

  Through the glass door I can see the back garden. It’s February and the swimming pool is filled with brown leaves that have almost rotted. Behind the pool the garden rises towards the railway tracks.

  I sit in the kitchen, waiting. I’m sixteen years old and I’m in my final year of school.

  The front door opens, Karin and my stepdad are back. Michael switches on the television in the living room and turns down the volume. He reads the news on Text TV. A habit from way back when he was a journalist. Today he’s a press officer for a pharmaceutical company.

  Karin comes into the kitchen. She has dark blonde hair, teaches at a high school, and writes educational books.

  “Are you ready?” she says. She gave up trying to make me call her “Mum” years ago.

  I nod.

  “Has the babysitter arrived?”

  “She’s upstairs with Clara,” I reply.

  My sister stands in the doorway, waving as we get in the car. The big houses we drive past are similar to Karin and Michael’s. Some have a sunroom rather than a garage, a flagpole in the garden rather than a birdbath.

  The school is a low building which could easily be a public swimming pool or a library. In the reception are pictures, painted by a local artist in strong, bright colours, of young people with books, skateboards, and Walkmans.

  We walk down long corridors with exposed red-brick walls. Posters made by pupils in the earlier grades are on display. We pass a picture of a squirrel eating a nut. In the next picture that same squirrel lies drowned in a pool of oil.

  The artificial light doesn’t reach the corners of the classroom. Two student desks have been pushed together in the middle; cups and a Thermos have been set out. Today my Danish teacher has combed his hair and put on a formal shirt. He shuffles the papers in front of him. Glances at his watch.

  “Karsten Eriksen should be here in a minute. He wanted a word with you as well.”

  “Sounds pretty damn serious,” Michael says, and laughs.

  My Danish teacher merely smiles down at his papers. Then he starts pouring coffee into the small cups the first-grade children use for juice.

  Karsten Eriksen, the principal, enters; he’s in his late fifties and wears a dark suit jacket over a pair of jeans.

  “Thank you for coming,” he says, and shakes hands with Karin and Michael.

  He sits down and pours coffee into a cup with a picture of an elephant.

  “All the cups in the staff room were gone,” my Danish teacher says to him.

  The principal scratches his chin with his pen. “Well, this is the thing . . . Your son has been seen smoking cannabis on school premises and . . .”

  “Why didn’t you tell us?” Karin straightens up in her seat. “You could’ve called . . .”

  “He wasn’t caught in the act. Someone thinks they saw him smoking in the parking lot, but that’s not why I wanted to talk to you.”

  They had come and taken me out of class. I followed them through the school and no one spoke a word. We stood around the big desk in the principal’s office while they emptied my bag of candy wrappers and scrunched-up notes. Four books and a comb. A forgotten sandwich that must have been over a week old was inside a plastic bag no one felt like opening.

  Then they found the folder: stiff cardboard with an elastic band around it. A folder that could easily contain a couple of squashed joints, so they opened it. I could tell from their faces that they regretted their action immediately.

  The principal takes the folder out of his briefcase and puts it on the table. At first Karin stares blankly at him, then she opens it and starts flicking through the drawings. Michael looks over her shoulder. Everyone looks gravely at a drawing of my English teacher having intercourse with an Alsatian. The dog wears a straw hat with little holes for its furry ears. Karin turns it over; in the next drawing my math teacher sits on his haunches in front of a horse with his mouth open. Michael tries hard not to laugh.

  That’s until we reach the drawings of blood and intestines hanging like paper chains. I’ve coloured them in.

  Karin pushes the pile away. The principal asks if I’ve anything to say for myself. I shake my head. He puts the drawings back in the folder and closes it.

  “This falls outside what we’d regard as normal behaviour. Several of these drawings could almost be considered a threat. I can’t rule out expelling him.”

  “Expel him?” Karin looks up from the folder and across to the principal. “But that means he’d have to retake his final year. His exams are coming up, he’ll never be able to . . .”

  “We’re not sure that an ordinary public school is the best place for him.”

  “Just because of a few drawings?” As always when she gets agitated, Karin flushes and spots appear on her cheeks.

  The principal coughs briefly into his hand. “It wouldn’t be purely because of the drawings, of course, but we see them as an indication of very unfortunate developments . . .”

  Up to this point Michael has been fiddling nervously with the steel strap of his wristwatch; now he looks up.

  “You searched his bag.”

  “Yes . . . yes, we did.” The principal no longer sounds quite so confident.

  “Is the bag his property or the school’s? Even in a public school, students still have some basic rights, don’t they?”

  The principal rubs his hands over his knees. “What I’m trying to say is . . . I don’t want you to view this as a punishment.” He pauses briefly. “It’s clear that your son is struggling to fit in. Many of his teachers tell me they find him hard to teach.”

  Neither Karin nor Michael says anything.

  “This is what I propose.” For the first time the principal looks directly at me. “I think you should go home and think about whether this school is the right place for you. Whether you want to be a student here. If you decide you want to do something else, we’ll be happy to support you. Help you find an alternative school.”

  I study the hairs in his nose, coarse hairs stained yellow by nicotine. If he has a wife, she must have asked him to trim them.

  “But if you choose to remain here, it must be a positive choice. And it’s on the condition that you see the school psychologist once a week for the rest of the school year.”

  The principal flicks through his Day-timer; he circles a date with his pen. I’m given a fortnight to think about it. If I want to stay at the school, I have turn up at his office two weeks from today before twelve noon.

  The Day-timer is closed; the decision has been made. When Karin starts talking again, I can hear that she has given up the fight.

  “Won’t he fall too far behind?”

  “We’re not worried about the academic side,” my Danish teacher says.

  We drive home in silence. Michael operates the steering wheel, the gears, and the pedals as if he’s engaged in mountain drivin
g that requires his full attention.

  I hear small sobs from the passenger seat, Karin holding it back, holding it in. I know it’s not just because of the drawings or my potential expulsion. The last few years would have been easier for them without me around.

  The babysitter has already put on her coat. She’s sitting on the steps to the first floor, waiting.

  “Clara has just nodded off. She refused to fall asleep until you came home.”

  Karin finds some money for her and offers to drive her home. We noticed her bicycle in the drive on the way in, so the offer is made purely out of politeness. The girl turns around in the doorway.

  “An old lady rang. She sounded a little confused. She seemed to think she knew you.”

  “It’s nothing,” Karin says. “She’s called before. Probably just some crazy old lady who rings people at random.”

  Karin closes the door behind her, takes off her earrings, and walks up the stairs without looking back.

  Michael puts his jacket on a hanger.

  “Can I have a word?” he asks.

  We go into the kitchen. Michael takes two beers out of the big silver fridge, opens them, and drops the bottle opener back into the drawer. He gives it a push with his elbow, it glides shut without making a noise. All the cupboard doors are black gloss. He wipes off his fingerprints with his sleeve. Then he hands me one of the bottles.

  “I won’t claim to understand you. Not at all. But I respect you. Possibly more than you think.” He picks at the label on the beer bottle, his fingers missing a cigarette. “Your Danish teacher’s an idiot . . . and your principal’s an old hippie. But that’s no reason for you to piss away your future. Take the damn exam. Get it over with. You’ll find university easier. I’m sure of it.”

  Michael looks down at his beer, shrugs his shoulders. “I’m not telling you to do what we did. God forbid.”

  The door to my sister’s room is ajar. She hugs her teddy bear in her sleep. I have to stand very still in order to hear her breathe. Her dreams don’t make her run in her sleep. In her world, Goldilocks and the Three Bears end up friends. My sister is completely surrounded by princes and princesses. By horses and enchanted castles. From the posters on the wall to the plastic jewellery and the dolls on the floor. She gets anything she wants, and when she develops a new interest, her parents follow her around the toy store. Yet I can’t help admiring how deeply she has immersed herself in a world of her own devising.