A Fairy Tale

by Jonas Bengtsson

  Kasper rolls joints, I paint.

  When I look up from the canvas, he’s asleep in the armchair, his mouth slightly open. I find the white paint and paint his outline.

  He starts to wake up, looks at me with one eye. “I hope you’re not painting me?”

  I shake my head.

  “I’ve a friend you should meet,” he mumbles, and goes back to sleep.

  We’re somewhere in Vesterbro, possibly Frederiksberg. Kasper is leading the way.

  “His real name isn’t Karlsson, obviously,” he says, referring to a character from an Astrid Lindgren children’s book, “but he does live on a roof like him.”

  We stop at a corner store; it’s best if I bring something. I buy cherry brandy and a pouch of tobacco, things Kasper says Karlsson likes.

  We enter a stairwell with no entry system and walk up the stairs to the top landing. There’s only one door and it doesn’t have a nameplate.

  Kasper presses his shoulder against it and wiggles the handle until we hear a click and the door opens. We walk past attic rooms on both sides over to a short metal ladder that leads to a hatch in the ceiling.

  Kasper climbs the ladder. He pushes open the hatch; light appears in the crack.

  “This is never very easy,” he says out of the corner of his mouth. He’s holding a small key between his lips.

  “Can I do anything?”

  He shakes his head, sticks his hand out through the gap, and grabs hold of a strong chain with a padlock.

  We’ve reached the roof, which overlooks Copenhagen. There’s a small shed and a deck chair a little ways away from us.

  I’m about to go over there when Kasper grabs my arm.

  “I’m not sure what he might do if we knock on his door without warning.”

  Kasper picks up a handful of small white shingles. He throws them in a soft arc onto the roof of the shed.

  “Doesn’t he know we’re coming?”

  “Yeah, of course . . . But he’s not very good with dates or times.”

  A few more pebbles and a door opens. The man who comes out wears an anorak over two sweaters. He has a full beard and his cap is pulled over his ears. He must be in his mid-twenties, but his skin is weather beaten and ruddy. He gives Kasper a big hug and shakes my hand.

  “We brought you presents,” Kasper says.

  I hold out the bag. The man looks inside it and nods happily. Then he shows us around the roof, pointing out the Chinese Tower in the zoo and the Round Tower. On a clear day you can see all the way to the Barsebäck nuclear power plant on the Swedish coast.

  He shows us the gutter that he fixed himself. He tells us that he did it late one night with a flashlight. He nearly fell off the roof, but the gutter kept leaking and eventually someone would’ve come up here to repair it.

  He also mended the deck chair himself with a needle and thread — that was all it took. He says that he sits in it in the summer and puts cucumber slices on his eyelids. In winter he wraps up warm and sits outside while he reads and drinks coffee from a Thermos.

  We enter the shed.

  “My humble abode,” he says, showing me the sleeping bag and mat in the corner, the Primus stove, and the kitchen utensils hanging from hooks on the wall.

  We sit down at a small folding table. Kasper and I get the two chairs, Karlsson takes a beer crate for himself. He opens the cherry brandy and pours it into three chipped mugs.

  “I was training to be an insurance agent,” he says, by way of explanation. “I had a girlfriend, I thought my life was quite good. Once I’d qualified, there’d be no reason not to start a family.”

  Kasper has started to roll the first joint; he looks as if he has heard this story many times before.

  “One day when I came home, she’d packed up all my things. She said I made her sad. She said it was her apartment. I’d forgotten that.”

  He wipes cherry brandy off his lips.

  “I walked the streets. It was winter. I’d left my wallet behind in the apartment and I didn’t want to go back for it. It was then that I remembered my afternoons up on the roof as a child. My uncle was the caretaker and used to bring me up here. We drank hot chocolate and played Old Maid. I found a screwdriver in a bike shed. All the padlock needed was a small twist.”

  Darkness falls. Karlsson lights his two petroleum lamps. He fries sausages and potatoes for us on the Primus stove.

  “The first few weeks I lived on stale bread from bakeries. But I started to get dizzy. I needed to eat some meat.”

  Karlsson shares out the food between us.

  “I used my last few crumbs to catch a pigeon. Just like in the cartoons: the pigeon follows the trail of crumbs under a box and then you pull the string.”

  Kasper takes a couple of bites of sausage before pushing the potatoes around with his fork. When we’ve finished, Karlsson gathers up the leftovers and puts them out on the roof where they’ll keep cold.

  He sits down on the beer crate again, pours more cherry brandy, and rolls a cigarette with the tobacco I gave him.

  “I ate a gull.” Karlsson’s voice is soft. “I was starving. At first I tried to scare it off. But it refused to go away. It just stood there under the box, stuffing its face. You don’t ever want to eat a gull.”

  I nod, I believe him.

  “I stood here on the roof licking its bones, thinking about jumping. But I didn’t want to do it on an empty stomach. First I wanted to have a hot dog with all the toppings and then run off without paying. I met Kasper at the hot dog stand.”

  “We went to school together.” Kasper lights yet another joint.

  “He lent me some money. I don’t need very much; I just don’t want to eat gulls.”

  “That was before I started the acid business.”

  “I sell it,” Karlsson says. “Old hippies don’t care what I look like. And they can afford to pay for quality.”

  “Most of the pills you get from Germany are crap. Largely chalk and codeine. Sometimes even rat poison,” Kasper says.

  “We sell good acid. Real acid, like the stuff The Mamas and the Papas drove around with in a big jam jar.”

  When we’ve emptied the third bottle of cherry brandy, I need to pee. I’ve held it in for some time because Karlsson hasn’t stopped talking.

  “There’s a bucket outside,” he says. “Don’t pee over the roof. I know it’s tempting, but don’t do it.”

  We’re one and a half hours into the shift when the supervisor comes over to me.

  I distribute the letters in my hands before I take off my headphones.

  “The boss wants to talk to you.”

  “Now?”

  “He’s waiting. It sounded important.”

  Kasper grins. “What’s Turk been up to this time?”

  The supervisor produces a strained smile, isn’t sure whether it’s appropriate to join in.

  “The Turks are always trouble . . .” Kasper shakes his head.

  I walk past stations where the same actions are repeated over and over. I walk as slowly as I can. The boss only works the night shift a couple of times a month. Or if something important is happening. Perhaps he wants to talk to me about Kasper’s acid import, but I don’t think so. They wouldn’t have picked me up while I was standing next to him if that was it.

  I know what the boss is going to say to me. I’m only wondering how they found out.

  At first I tried to get work without any papers. But my dad had failed to prepare me for the new era of bar codes and computers. A world where the black market is only for black people, as a builder said to me. Unless, of course, you’ve finished your apprenticeship, he said and then laughed.

  I started frequenting small shops on Nørrebro. My room filled up with pens, bags of nuts, and pomegranates that rotted over time. I had stacks of videos that I couldn’t play
and a pyramid of cigarette packets. I wanted to be known as a regular customer; I wanted them to feel safe with me before I asked for papers. Most of them said they could get me some; but every time, I ended up being offered only stolen toasters and VCRs.

  Late one night I was in a pizzeria. I hadn’t been there before and I had only gone inside because I was hungry. I’d almost given up so I just asked for papers straight out. At first I didn’t think the guy behind the counter had understood me. He smoked a cigarette while the pizza was in the oven. I read a three-day-old newspaper and I could feel his eyes on me.

  I had the pizza box in my hand and was heading out the door when he said, “Don’t forget your receipt.”

  On a small piece of paper he’d written an address, a greengrocer in outer Østerbro. He told me to say hi from Öztürk.

  The papers were expensive but genuine. I was now twenty-one years old and my name was Mehmet Faruk. I got a birth certificate and a health insurance card and was assured that Mehmet Faruk was no longer around. He might have gotten the wrong girl pregnant and left the country or maybe he was lying in a ditch somewhere.

  I got a passport. I opened a bank account. I went to job interviews and started working as a postman. Later I moved to the sorting office.

  After my first shift I went for a beer with the other postal workers at Bjørnen. They told me I didn’t look very Turkish. I said I was only half Turkish, that my mother was Danish. The redhead gene that wouldn’t roll over and die. After a couple of beers they said yes, perhaps, if you look closely.

  I’m standing with my hand on the door handle to the boss’s office; I take a deep breath before I open it.

  He’s alone. I can smell tobacco. There’s a calendar with building cranes on the wall.

  “My son works with one of the really big ones,” he says, and gestures with his hand for me to sit down.

  The boss used to be a builder. He had his own business until his back went. Then he had to retrain.

  “I might be wrong.” The boss touches a pile of papers in front of him. “But I’ve gone through these. Several times. And . . .”

  He looks at me; perhaps he’s hoping I’ll say something. Break down and confess. I force all explanations and apologies to stay behind my teeth.

  “Can it really be true that you haven’t taken any holidays since you started working here? None at all?”

  I gulp, then I nod.

  “I could turn a blind eye, but then we’ll have the union on our backs. They always think we’re trying to work you to death.” He grins. Then he raises his eyebrows, big bushy eyebrows. “Listen, you have to take your holidays.”

  He pushes a holiday request form across the table. The first line has already been filled in: Mehmet Faruk, it says.

  I’m about to get up.

  “And another thing, as you’re here. You work with Kasper Rasmussen, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “The shop steward will probably have a fit because I’m asking you. But, even so, does . . . does he do his job?”

  “Yes.”

  “What I mean is . . .” He searches for the right words; he has to tread more carefully here than he did when he was on a building site. “You haven’t noticed if he does things which could be regarded as . . . a little different? Odd, possibly?”

  “No. Or . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “No, it’s probably nothing.”

  “It’ll be between us, of course.”

  “During break time . . .”

  “Yes?”

  The boss looks at me. His eyebrows hang in the air like the wings of a gull.

  “When he has taken the last cup of coffee, he doesn’t always put on a fresh pot.”

  “Er . . . Yes?”

  “And the sign says . . .”

  “Oh, right . . . Well, thanks for letting me know.”

  I walk past the stations down to my booth.

  Kasper grins at me. “They’re not sending you back to Turkey, are they?”

  During the next break I fill in the holiday request form and hand it to the supervisor.

  I put on my coat. I finish my cup of instant coffee. It’s coming up on eleven o’clock. I’ve just walked past Hovedbanegården and I can see the sorting office when I realize that my holiday starts today.

  The first hour I drink on my own, then a man sits down on the bar stool next to me.

  His skin is glowing; his clothes are clean and freshly ironed even though it’s after midnight.

  First we drink alone. Then we clink bottles. He tells me he’s a photographer.

  He has spent the whole evening looking for the right subject. He buys a round, looks down at himself.

  “I’m not gay,” he says, as though he could understand why I might think so. “I take pictures of sleeping girls.”

  I’m about to ask him when he nods.

  “I take their picture while they’re asleep. The tricky bit, of course, is to make them come home with you. You have to look presentable.”

  The bartender turns the light on and off; it’s time for last call.

  “I go running,” the man says, and straightens his shirt collar. “I’m a member of two book clubs. Girls like books.”

  We empty our glasses and stand up.

  “I’ve got something to show you,” he says, as we step outside.

  I follow him.

  “I used Rohypnol once,” he says. “Slipped a couple of pills in the girl’s drink and she was out like a light. I had time to rig the lighting and put the camera on a tripod. Pose her. She slept like they only sleep in the movies.”

  We cross the road diagonally.

  “But when I developed the pictures, I could tell that I’d cheated. So it didn’t count. I tore up the pictures and destroyed the negatives.” The man points to an apartment building further down the road. “It’s right up there.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  I turn around and walk down the street, away from him. He says something to me, but I don’t hear it.

  I walk through the city. The streets are wet from the rain. I step around vomit and broken bottles. I’m not far from my room in Elsebeth’s apartment, but I carry on walking. I cross the bridge, I walk along the canal.

  I press the buzzer, keep pressing the button. At last I hear crackling, then the lock clicks open. Petra stands in the doorway; she’s wearing an oversized T-shirt with Winnie the Pooh on it and white cotton underwear. Her eyes are tiny. She blinks a couple of times before she goes back to bed.

  I undress and lie close to her back. She presses herself against me.

  The sun is rising when she turns to face me. I can feel her hand between my legs. I find her mouth. She pulls off her panties and guides me inside her.

  Afterwards we lie soaked in sweat, still with sleep in our eyes. It’s not until then I notice the red lines on her arms.

  “It’s Kot,” she says. “It won’t groom itself. So I take it into the bathroom and hold it under the shower. It whines and then it scratches me.”

  I carry Petra’s cat down the stairs. Its skin is loose like an overcoat that’s too big. Halfway down the steps it widens its eyes and sinks its claws into my arm. I don’t let go. Petra opens the door.

  When we’re out in the courtyard, I put it down.

  The cat is shaking from cold or agitation. It stands there a moment before it takes a few tentative steps. Then it starts to run and disappears into the nearest bin shed.

  Petra is scared that it might run away, possibly out in front of a car. Perhaps on purpose.

  “It can’t get out, the courtyard is enclosed.”

  “Cats can always get out.”

  We sit down on a bench. We drink coffee from a Thermos. We can hear Kot move about. We watch it dart from one bin shed to another, to the bike s
hed and back. Then it disappears completely.

  Petra is about to get up; I put my arm around her and make her sit down again. She takes a sip of coffee, but doesn’t take her eyes off the shed where we last saw Kot.

  Fifteen minutes later the cat returns. It’s bleeding from a scratch under its eye, its tail has got a kink, and it’s missing some fur. Between its teeth it holds a dead rat. The cat stops in front of us and lets its prey fall to the ground. I’m pretty sure it’s smiling.

  We lie in Petra’s bed. She tells me I don’t look very Turkish.

  “I’m only half Turkish.”

  She rests on her elbow, watches me with her very pale eyes which are blue today and not green. Then she shakes her head. She still can’t see it.

  “Tell me about your family,” she says.

  “There’s not much to say.” I fumble for the cigarette packet on the bedside table.

  “Or not much you want to tell me . . .” I can still feel her eyes on me as I light the cigarette.

  “I grew up with my dad.”

  “Who is Turkish.”

  I make no reply.

  “Tell me about your dad.”

  “Later, perhaps.”

  “Then I won’t tell you anything about my family. Nothing at all.”

  “I know your dad is Polish.”

  “And that’s all you’re going to get.” She turns over and grabs the duvet.

  I hear a sound from her, a soft sniffle which might be laughter. I stub out the cigarette and I hold her until we fall asleep.

  Petra wakes me up. She’s in tears. She’s scared that her cat is dying. I find it in the kitchen, lifeless with milky eyes.

  We wrap it in a blanket and carry it downstairs. The vet isn’t far away. We wait in reception; Petra rocks the cat in her arms. I can see a paw with exposed claws sticking out of the blanket.

  The vet carries the cat to a steel table in his surgery. Unwraps it, squeezes its paws, examines its injuries, and looks into its eyes.