Samurai Summer

by Edwardson, Åke

  “Can I see it?” she asked. “The castle?”

  I didn’t answer. I thought first. Yeah, this time I thought first. I had already told her she could come with me into the forest. And the forest was the castle in a way.

  “Okay,” I said.

  I would live to regret that.

  3

  It was evening again. We had just been down to the lake to wash ourselves. You came back dirtier than before you went down. When you dipped your hand into the water, it came out covered in a brown film that was almost like a second skin. It worked as protection against the sun. This summer the sun was intense. They said it was hotter than it had ever been.

  When we were eating our supper there was a girl who threw up. Nice one! I think her name was Lena. The food was so disgusting that all forty of us should have thrown up every time we sat at the table, but nobody had dared do it before. Lena sat at the same long table as me, and suddenly she leaned forward and threw up. Stuff like that impressed me. Kerstin was sitting a few chairs away from Lena. I looked at Kerstin but she didn’t look back. Instead she stood up and went over to Lena just as the counselors came running over. Otherwise it was deathly silent in the mess hall.

  Then it started to smell. One of the counselors led Lena away so that the rest of us wouldn’t throw up too. I looked down at my plate: two slimy prunes drowning in oatmeal. If I had thrown up into my plate it wouldn’t have looked or tasted any different.

  When we got up to the dormitory, Sausage made puking noises, but it wasn’t funny anymore.

  “Cut it out, Sausage.”

  “What?”

  He looked like I’d just hit him. Like he was about to start blubbering just because I had said that.

  “It was only funny down there,” I said.

  “Jeez,” said Sausage and went over to his bed, sat down on it, and sulked. Then he looked up. “You didn’t have to say that,” he said.

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  Then he perked up and asked, “Are we going to work on the camp tomorrow?” His head was round, and when he looked happy his face became even rounder. He was round all over and his mother only sent him clothes that were too tight for him. Maybe she hoped he would get thin enough that the clothes would fit. Her own clothes were always too big. When she came on visiting day it looked like a four-man tent had wandered in through the front gate.

  “The castle,” I said. “It’s not a camp.”

  “Yeah, yeah, the castle.”

  “What else would we do?” It was Micke who said that. His bed was next to Sausage’s. Micke was as skinny as a twig and as wiry as a juniper branch. When he and Sausage stood next to each other they looked like creatures from two different planets. Micke could never look plump. He was always unhappy, and I had never heard him laugh. It was like he didn’t know how. He was directly below me in rank. When I was out on a mission, he was left in command. He was a good commander. He returned the command to me when I got back without saying much.

  But once, earlier last summer, it seemed like he wasn’t satisfied with going back to being number two again. It wasn’t something I asked him about. It wasn’t anything he said. It was just something I felt.

  “What else would we do,” Micke said again, “except work on the castle?”

  Just then, I thought of Kerstin and what I had said to her. I still couldn’t believe that I’d told her about the castle.

  “Yeah, what else would we do?” said Sausage with a laugh.

  “We have to widen the moat,” said Micke.

  “We have to dig the ditch from the creek first,” said Lennart, who was sitting on his bed farther down.

  “You can’t widen the moat when it’s full of water, can you?” asked Micke.

  Lennart looked at him. Lennart was the same age as me and about as tall. We had the same color hair and sometimes the counselors got us mixed up. But I had ten times as many freckles as Lennart. And he never got sunburned, not even this summer.

  He had been at the camp last summer, too, and we had become friends. He had no mother back home. Apparently she’d just left one day without leaving behind a letter or anything. That was tough on Lennart. He was the first one I had approached to be second in command, but he had said that he didn’t want to be in charge of anyone but himself. He hadn’t looked very happy when he said it. I thought a lot about that last summer. In charge of yourself? When did you ever get to decide anything for yourself? When you were a kid you didn’t get to decide anything. At least not about yourself. It was the grown-ups who made all the decisions, even though they could barely look after themselves.

  But at least we had the castle. And I had my troop. I was in charge of that—sometimes anyway. We had our own country.

  “We’re not going to dig all that way,” said Lennart to Micke.

  “But we have to dig a canal from the creek.”

  “But that’ll take years,” said Sausage. “It’s miles and miles from the creek to the castle.”

  “We’ve got plenty of time,” said Lennart.

  “You sound like you want to stay here,” said Micke.

  “You got a better suggestion? Maybe you want me to come stay at your house in the fall?”

  “I’m sure they’d be thrilled,” said Micke. “Another mouth to feed.”

  “We can carry water from the creek and pour it into the moat,” said Sausage.

  We laughed at him.

  We had a lot of work ahead of us. So far, we had mostly been working on the main tower. There was going to be a big hall where we could receive visitors. And guard towers and weapons stores. And the samurai leader’s quarters—mine, that is. And then a hall for the warriors. But there was a lot left to build: the gatehouse, side towers, guard towers, inner courtyard, inner wall, outer courtyard, outer wall, and then the moat.

  The troop consisted of Sausage, Micke, and Lennart, and then there were Janne, Sven-Åke and Mats too. Janne and Mats lived in our dormitory; Sven-Åke lived in the dorm opposite. He was also an old friend from last summer. All of them were good warriors except maybe for Sausage, but he was good in other ways. I didn’t want anyone else in the troop. It might have been a good idea if there were more of us to help build the castle, but then we’d have to take care of the extra helpers afterward too. It wasn’t a good idea to be too many. That could lead to mutiny. You can’t be in command of too many warriors. Also, everybody has to have the chance to make their own decisions, and the bigger the troop, the more difficult that becomes.

  I heard a bird screech out over the lake. It didn’t sound like it usually did. It sounded like it was calling for help. I went over to the window. It was still light outside. I could hear laughter in the courtyard below. I hooked the window open and leaned out. A couple of the counselors were standing there. All the counselors were women. These two were all dressed up wearing skirts and stuff. They were laughing. The door to the building in the courtyard opened and I heard music coming from inside. Even though I hadn’t seen it yet, I knew that one of the counselors had a record player. I had thought about taking it and keeping it at the castle, but there was no electricity out there so there was no point.

  I heard them put on “Let’s Twist Again,” and that was about the only song I knew. It was good. I had heard it on the radio. It had nothing to do with bags of Twist. Then, thinking about that, I got the idea that I’d sneak downstairs and take back my bag of Twist. I’d do it tonight! I knew where they kept the candy—if there was any left. Maybe they’d eaten it all.

  I looked at the counselors. Just then, one of them looked up at me and pointed. In a flash I pulled my head inside and shut the window. It sounded like they were laughing even louder down there. I didn’t like it when grown-ups laughed at me. It was somehow worse than when kids did.

  I lay in bed and listened until the night had really set in. It was quiet out there now. The counselors had all left in a couple of cars that had been waiting for them with their engines running. They hadn’t come back yet.
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  Everyone in the dormitory was asleep. I got out of bed and tiptoed across the floor. Someone was snoring. I thought it was Sausage, but it wasn’t because then he spoke.

  “Where are you going, Kenny?” he whispered sitting up. It sounded like he was talking in his sleep.

  “I’m just going downstairs to slit Matron’s throat,” I whispered back.

  He let out a snicker.

  “Go to sleep, Sausage.”

  I pushed the door open slowly. It was darker in the hall than inside the dormitory. It was the darkest time of night, but soon it would be daybreak again. Everything was still.

  I crept along the wall to the stairs where I stopped and listened. I carried my wakizashi with me—a samurai never went anywhere without his short sword. You only carried your long sword when you went outside, and I was just going to the kitchen. At night, the samurai always kept both his swords under his pillow, but mostly I had to keep mine hidden under a floorboard in the dormitory.

  I went down the stairs. A few of the steps creaked, but I knew which ones they were—I was a regular at this. I knew every corner of the whole place. It wasn’t the first time I’d snuck around at night. That was the best time. If you knew how to do it right, it was like being invisible.

  I stood downstairs between the girls’ dormitories. In front of me was the mess hall. The curtains were drawn across the big windows, but you could see the trees swaying gently outside. I liked the big trees. They were larger than anything else around here and they always seemed to take it easy, even when they were swaying in a storm. They never showed any emotion, that they were angry or sad or happy. The trees were real samurai.

  The kitchen was on my right. The door was open slightly and I tiptoed across the high threshold that was easy to trip over. Once last summer the cook had tripped over it with a pot of stew.

  I stole quickly through the kitchen. The floor glowed in the moonlight that shone through the window like the beam from a flashlight. There was a cabinet at the very back where I suspected they kept the candy. I pulled at the handle, but the door was locked. I saw the keyhole, but no key.

  “What are you doing here?”

  In the silent kitchen, the voice felt like a karate kick. I hadn’t heard anyone enter. I turned around and there was Matron. She had also tiptoed over the threshold. Maybe she had been spying on me the whole time. Maybe she snuck around like a ghost all night long.

  “Children are not allowed in the kitchen,” said Matron, “especially at night.”

  If you weren’t allowed to be here, what difference did it make whether it was night or day?

  “I lost my way,” I said.

  “You live upstairs,” said Matron. “How could you end up down here?”

  I don’t live here at all, I thought to myself. I’m imprisoned.

  “Tommy?”

  Matron refused to say my samurai name.

  “Answer me, Tommy.”

  “I think I was sleepwalking,” I said.

  “I’ve never noticed you doing that before.”

  “I’ve done it up in the dorm.” I pointed upward as though she didn’t know where the dormitory was. “A few times.”

  “Nobody’s said anything to me about it.”

  “I guess they didn’t notice either.”

  “How did you notice it then, might I ask?” Matron bared her razor-sharp teeth in a smile of sorts. “If you were sleepwalking you’d hardly know about it, now would you?”

  “I woke up once when I was on my way out of the dorm.”

  “But this time you didn’t wake up until you were down here? Is that what you’re trying to say?” She smiled again. “Or are you still asleep, Tommy?”

  “I’m awake,” I said and looked around. “I woke up in here.”

  “I see.”

  She didn’t believe me, of course. She took a step forward. Her vampire face darkened when she moved out of the moonlight.

  I felt my sword beneath my pajama top.

  “What were you doing over by the cabinet?” she asked.

  “What cabinet?” I turned back toward the cabinet instinctively.

  “I’m sure you know what’s in there,” she said.

  I didn’t answer. The cabinet was no secret here at the camp.

  “Then you also know that you only get candy at certain times,” she said.

  “It’s… mine,” I said.

  “What did you say?” She took another step closer. I was about to put up my arm to protect myself. I knew that she could hit you. “Repeat that.”

  “It’s my candy,” I said.

  “Who said it wasn’t?”

  “I haven’t gotten any of it.”

  “What? Any of what?”

  “My bag of Twist.”

  “What is he talking about?” said Matron seeming to speak to somebody else.

  “My mother brought me a bag of Twist.”

  “So?”

  “I haven’t had a single piece of it.”

  “What are you saying, Tommy? Are you standing there accusing us of stealing your bag of Twist?”

  “I haven’t had a single piece of it,” I said again.

  “I’ve never heard the like,” said Matron. “Are you implying that we would steal from children?”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “We’ll get to the bottom of this,” said Matron as she took another step forward. “Out of my way!”

  I jumped aside before she could put her hands on me. She stuck her hand down into the pocket of her dress and pulled out a key.

  “We’ll just see about this,” she said, and she unlocked the cabinet door. It creaked as she opened it. She bent forward. “You can’t see anything in here.”

  Matron walked over to one of the tables and turned on a lamp. When she went back to the cabinet, she looked even more horrible than before. The shadows made her look twice as tall and twice as fat.

  She rummaged around among all the things inside there. I didn’t want to look. There was the sound of rustling papers.

  “Ha!” said Matron straightening up and peering down at me. “There’s no bag of Twist in here!”

  That’s because you took it, I thought. But I didn’t dare say it.

  “How do you explain that, Tommy?”

  “I know my mother had it with her,” I said.

  “Then maybe we should call your mother and check with her.”

  “We don’t have a telephone,” I said.

  It was true. We’d never had one. Everybody had started getting telephones that year, but not us. They cost money.

  “Maybe we should go there and ask her?”

  “She’s not home.”

  “Admit that you made the whole thing up, Tommy!”

  There was no point in answering. There was no justice in this place—not at this camp. There was never any justice for children.

  “Can I go now?” I asked.

  “You mean continue walking in your sleep?” She laughed. “Can you find your way back up the stairs?”

  I started to leave.

  Quickly, she grabbed my shoulder. It hurt. I tried to twist free. Matron wasn’t laughing anymore.

  “I’m starting to get tired of you, Tommy,” she said.

  When I’d broken free of her grasp, she took hold of me again. With her other hand she twisted my ear. It hurt so much I thought she had twisted it clear off. It hurt all the way out to the ends of my hair. It hurt inside my head.

  “Maybe we should send you home.” She let go of my ear. “You don’t seem to like it here anyway.”

  “I… like it here,” I said as I tried to feel if my ear was still there.

  I had to say that I liked it here. Not just because she was in the process of twisting my ear off, but because I had a plan. Only without the camp there was no plan.

  “Really? You like it here? That’s news to me.”

  I yawned, wider than I needed to.

  “Can I go to sleep now?” I asked.

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nbsp; “Going to dream about the missing bag of Twist?”

  I nodded.

  “Go on up then. But don’t let me catch you down here again after bedtime.”

  What was she doing down here herself in the middle of the night? Stealing candy? Or drinking liquor? I thought she smelled of alcohol when she bent down over me. But that could have been something from the kitchen. The kitchen smelled strange.

  I walked back through the mess hall and up the stairs. A seagull screeched from the lake. It sounded like a screech of terror.

  “Where have you been?”

  It was Sausage. He sat up in his bed when I entered the dorm.

  “Shhh! You’ll wake everyone,” I whispered.

  “I thought I heard someone say something down there.”

  “It was nobody,” I said.

  “So you didn’t chop Matron’s head off?” Sausage snickered.

  “Not this time.”

  Sausage waved his hand. It was a small hand—about three times smaller than mine and three thousand times smaller than Matron’s.

  “Can’t you sit here and talk for a while?” he whispered. “I can’t sleep.”

  “We mustn’t wake the others,” I whispered back.

  “Just for a little while, Kenny.”

  “Lie down and count sheep.”

  “I did that already. I managed seven hundred sheep heads.”

  “Like a real samurai,” I whispered.

  “Do you think I can become a real samurai, Kenny?”

  “Tomorrow we can start working on your sword,” I answered.

  I moved closer to his bed. I didn’t want the whole dormitory to wake up and cause Matron to come rushing up here and start shouting.

  “Is it really true that the samurai preferred a wooden sword to a real sword, Kenny?”

  “Some did.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I already told you, Sausage.”

  “Tell me again.”

  “We can do it tomorrow. When we start making your sword.”

  “Does it take long? To make a sword?”

  “We’ll have to see. I don’t know.”

  “Can’t you tell me about that duel with the wooden sword? Or the wooden oar?”

  “I’ve already told you, Sausage. Twice.”