Best European Fiction 2013

by Unknown

  When the three years were up we sat Jamie down between us and told him that his family would now be divided between two houses. His reaction was muted, no hysterics or anxious pleading, no face down pummelling of pillows. He walked into his room, pulled the door behind him, and was not seen or heard of for the rest of that day. He came out later that evening and asked for something to eat, his face flushed, his whole being pulsing in a haze of anxiety.

  A couple of weeks after that he began wetting the bed.

  Lately he’s got this idea, more accurately an obsession. How this idea has taken hold of him I cannot properly say but Martha dates it to the time of our breakup, the weeks and months after I moved out of our semi D and into a two-bedroomed flat in the city centre. Martha speculates that it’s all part of the break-up trauma, a childlike but nonetheless canny ploy with which to win treats and privileges off both of us. I listen to Martha because she is smarter than me and more attuned to the nuances of our child. Also, with her background in game programming, she is always likely to see chains of cause and effect. But just this once I have a feeling she’s wrong. Jamie’s conviction runs deeper than the circumstances of our breakup; it seems to come from the very depths of him, stirring something bleak in his young soul, putting him in the way of words and ideas completely out of scale with his age.

  Another example: one day he stepped into the kitchen draped in one of my old T-shirts and wearing a baseball cap back to front. His hands barely poked beyond the cuffs of the short sleeves and the baseball cap threatened to fall down over his eyes. It was a flashback to my grunge past, to a time at the beginning of the caring decade when, paradoxically, serial killers were valorised by a section of my generation as great countercultural heroes, heroic transgressors. The image leaped out in red ink, Michael Rooker in the title role, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.

  “Where did you get that?” I asked.

  “The box.”

  “I thought I told you.”

  “Yeah, yeah—look at this.” He held up a newspaper and tapped a headline in the middle of the page. Playgrounds designed by SAS, it read.

  “Tell me what it says. Sit into the table, this spaghetti is done.”

  He pulled out a chair and sat in, spreading the paper out in front of him. “It says that children have become bored with swings and slides, too girly they think, no thrills in them, no danger. They were lying deserted all over Britain. Then someone had the idea of bringing in SAS instructors to design these assault courses and now kids can’t get enough of them.”

  I laid the plate on the table and handed him the fork and spoon. “Eat up. Those playgrounds will be closed down in a year. Injuries and litigations, they’ll be lucky to stay open a year.”

  Jamie shook his head. “That’s where you’re wrong. One broken elbow and a concussion—that’s the injury list for a year in one of those playgrounds.” He folded up the newspaper, took off his cap, and fell to eating. “What do you make of that, what does it mean?”

  “Not with your mouth full.” I handed him a napkin and he drew it across his mouth, streaking an orange blur halfway to his ears. “What would I know, kids are daft. Who knows what goes on in their heads?”

  “That’s true, look at me.”

  “Look at you indeed. Do you want to stay the night?”

  “Yes.”

  “Finish your spaghetti and then call your mam.”

  “I already have.”

  A couple of weeks after we split up Martha told me that Jamie had begun wetting the bed. Martha took him aside and asked him about it. If fear and disappointment come only in man-size dimensions so too does embarrassment. He bolted from the kitchen and slammed the door on his bedroom. Martha bought a rubber sheet and told me not to mention it to him. A week later he brought the subject up himself.

  “I need something,” he said. “I’ll come straight out with it.”

  “Yes.”

  “No beating around the bush or anything.”

  “I’m all ears.”

  “A request.”

  “Which is?”

  “You won’t like it.”

  “Jamie!”

  “A beating.”

  “A what?”

  “A beating.”

  He was framed in the doorway, a little study in misery. Once more he was the child wrestling with outsize miseries which threatened to engulf him.

  “What have you done Jamie? Whatever it is it can’t be that bad.”

  “It’s not what I’ve done, it’s what I’m going to do.”

  “And what exactly are you going to do that warrants a beating.”

  He pulled the chair out from the table and sat in. This is his way of late whenever he has something big to get off his chest. It seems to give him confidence, putting him in a position of strength insofar as a child is ever in such a position. But just then he looked hesitant, teetering on the threshold of a great disclosure but unsure of how to begin.

  “What is it you are going to do?” I persisted.

  “I come from a broken home,” he began.

  “No Jamie, you come from a home divided between two houses, you spend an equal time with each of us. Whoever you want.”

  He shook his head, the flaw in the argument too obvious even to him. It was at times like this I had the feeling Jamie was streaking ahead of me, gaining on truths and ideas which by right I should have been handing down to him.

  He spoke irritably, “By any definition of the normal family I come from a broken home.”

  “Jamie, I’m only guessing but I don’t think this is what you want to talk about.”

  “I wet the bed,” he blurted desperately.

  “Yes, I know, it’s not a big thing, you’ll get over it.”

  “I can’t stop, each night I say my prayers and each morning I wake up covered in wee.”

  “God has a lot on his mind Jamie. He’s a busy man, you might have to wait your turn. But wetting the bed is no reason for a beating.”

  “I’m going to do something bad, something really bad.”

  “We all do something bad at one time or other. What is it you’re going to do?”

  “I’m going to kill someone.”

  “That is bad,” I conceded. “Do you know who this someone is— it’s not me by any chance.”

  He threw up his hands in a gesture of unknowing. “I don’t know,” he said with some exasperation. “You’d want to take this serious because you’ll probably blame yourself later on and I wouldn’t want that.”

  “How do you know you’re going to kill someone?”

  “There are signs,” he said, “indications.”

  “This is that T-shirt. I told you before about going through my stuff.”

  “It’s not the T-shirt,” he yelled suddenly, “you’re not listening.”

  I held up my hands. “Okay, I’m listening now. What signs?”

  “Like I’ve said I come from a broken home and I’ve started wetting the bed.”

  “And that’s enough to turn you into a killer?” I felt distinctly odd discussing this with my eight-year-old son. Once more this sense of weightlessness came over me; I felt buoyant, unmoored from myself. From what I remembered none of the parenting manuals Martha showed me had ever covered this kind of situation. However I was certain also I had to see this conversation through to the end. “What has this to do with wanting a beating?”

  “The broken home and the bed-wetting are two of the classic signifiers of serial killers in their youth. The third one is parental abuse. In order to have a complete profile I need to have a beating. That is where you come in.”

  “Why would you want to kill anyone?”

  “It is not that I want to kill anyone—it’s just that that is the way it is going to be.”

  “This is ridiculous Jamie. I’m sorry, there are no beatings here today.”

  He looked at me sadly and sighed. “You have a responsibility,” he said softly. “Sooner or later the corpses will start
turning up. Two with the same MO and signatures might be a coincidence but three points to a serial killer. We have to give the investigation every chance. A full profile would put a halt to me before I get into my stride.”

  “This is nonsense Jamie. This conversation is at an end now.” I got up from the table; he grabbed my wrist.

  “He was quiet,” he said fervently, “he kept to himself a lot.” He fixed me with a glum stare. “That’s what the neighbours will say when I’m being led away. Of course long before that there will be all the other signs—the low self-esteem, the sexual inadequacies …” His voice trailed away.

  “I’m sorry. There’s no beatings here today. Or any other day for that matter.”

  He raised his voice. “I’m only telling you, the child is the father of the man.”

  I talked to Martha about this the following day. She had finally moved her computer into the small box room I’d used as a workspace when I’d lived there. A couple of personal items around the room claimed the space as her own. One of Picasso’s blue women hung on the wall to her back and a series of little marble Buddhas stood ranked along the windowsill that looked down over the back garden. She knew nothing about Jamie’s big idea.

  “He hasn’t mentioned anything to me about it. It sounds like a father and son thing.”

  “Does he spend much time on the Internet?”

  “Only an hour or two each day, the laptop on the kitchen table where I can keep an eye on him. John, he’s a good boy, I can’t stop him doing everything his friends are doing at the moment. He has it tough enough as it is.”

  Every time she talks about Jamie I can see him in her face, the ghost of him flitting through her features: the same wide spacing of her eyes across her nose and the freckles on her forehead which stand out so vividly during these winter months. And it is clear also that if Jamie keeps growing at his present rate he is going to meet the same problems buying clothes as his mother—the narrow hips on which skirts and jeans drape sullenly and the skinny wrists which protrude beyond every sleeve no matter how generous. It pleases me to see these shades of Jamie in her; the sense of continuity gladdens me. Sometimes though I wonder if the causal chain always runs from parent to child; since Jamie’s birth I could have sworn I noticed in Martha a flightiness which lay at odds with her usual downbeat moods. As for myself, while I take it for granted that there is indeed something of myself in my son, I can never quite put a finger on what this something is. If ever I press Martha on the subject she tells me airily that we are both the same age.

  “This worries me Martha. You should have heard him, all these technical terms and a rationale as well. And, this beating thing.”

  “Did you give it to him.”

  “For Christ’s sakes Martha!”

  She grinned openly. “I know, I’m winding you up. You’re so easy.”

  “Let’s talk to him together, this has me really spooked.”

  She pivoted from the chair and kissed me on the cheek. Over her shoulder I could see her computer screen locked in pause, two tiny figures arrested in their progress across some heroic landscape of rolling hills toward a gloomy forest.

  “Leave it to me,” she said, “it might need a woman’s touch.”

  I nodded to the screen. “What is it this time?”

  She waved a narrow wrist. “Orcland. A centuries-long dispute between elves and orcs, border violations, mineral rights, it goes back to the dawn of time. I have to tip the balance of power toward the elves, upgrade their ordnance for the second edition add-on. Market research has shown elves’ approval rating has risen across all demographics. The gaming community has responded badly to seeing them getting their arses kicked so easily. I have to help tip the balance of power for the next add-on.”

  “They’re still not going to win, the template is fixed.”

  “I know, I can only help them make a better fight of it. Well, fairer at least.”

  “What sort of job is that for a grown woman,” I teased.

  “The type of job that puts food and rent on the table.”

  I sat on her chair and gazed at the screen. Two elves were streaking toward a great forest where they would find refuge and a cache of arms. Tipping the balance of power, squaring the odds, this is the type of thing Martha did.

  “Martha, how did we get to be this trivial, elves and subtitles? How did we ever get sidetracked into this shite?”

  She shrugged, shook her head. “Don’t ask me. But you show me another job that comes up with rent and crèche at twenty hours a week and I’ll consider it. Till then I’ve got elves to arm.” She giggled suddenly, put her hand on my shoulder. “John,” she said, “don’t worry, his name is Jamie, not Damien.”

  “Jesus, Martha.”

  “Sorry, I couldn’t help it.”

  Whatever way she broached the subject she made no headway with Jamie. And whatever he said to her in reply left her in no doubt that this was something between men. No, there was no drawing him out on the subject—he’d talk it out with Dad he said. So I left him to it, hoping he might put the whole thing behind him, thinking that if he needed to talk about it badly enough he would bring the subject up in his own good time. And sure enough he did. We were sitting together on the couch after a double episode of The Simpsons.

  “You haven’t given my request any more thought?”

  “No, I can’t say I have, how about you?”

  He squirmed round to face me, tucking his feet in under him.

  “Yes, I have it all figured out. Yesterday I killed a frog, I wrote it into my diary—that covers the cruelty to animals part. One beating now and I will have a complete profile, every box ticked off. Any investigation would have to be blind not to be able to track me down. But I need that beating. One beating registered with the childcare authorities and the job will be complete.” He rolled up his sleeves revealing his skinny upper arms. “You could confine your work to areas of soft tissue, my thighs and arms, places where the bruising will be obvious but not dangerous. But nothing around the head, I’d like to keep my wits around me.”

  “And how’s that going to make me look, a registered child beater?”

  “I’ll clear your name. I’ll say it was totally out of character, I pushed you to the end of your tether.”

  “You’re a serial killer, who’s going to believe you?”

  “I’m under oath, I won’t lie.”

  “This profile thing, that’s an American template.”

  “So?”

  “I’m saying that it may not translate across the Atlantic.”

  He shook his head sadly. “Dad, the world is of one mind. That’s the way it is.”

  “No, it doesn’t have to be like that. These things aren’t fixed.”

  I put my arm round him and drew him into my side. There wasn’t a pick on him, the bones in his shoulders dug into my ribs. “How do you know these things Jamie, where do you get these ideas from?”

  “How does anyone know anything? I just pick them up along the way, same as anyone. This is all common knowledge.”

  “It’s not common to me. Why don’t you turn yourself in now, before you do any damage?”

  “Who would believe an eight year old?” He turned his face up to me. “Would it kill you?”

  “I’ll never know.”

  He lowered his face. “It’s only for your good,” he said, “you’ll thank me for this later on.”

  I sat there long after he’d gone to bed, the TV on mute.

  Someone told me once that you know nothing of love till you have a child of your own. You know nothing of its unconditional demands nor the lengths you will go to protect it. And this is what I’ve been feeling these last few weeks, this is what spooks me. I’ve seen enough to know that wherever there is love there are opportunities for guilt also. It has something to do with more laws and prohibitions, more opportunities for transgression and omission.

  What spooks me now is that his fear will become my fear, his terror my
terror. One day it might spread from him, slip through his narrow boundaries and become mine. And, as ever, being in two minds, that old sense of weightlessness comes over me when I think these things; once more I am at a remove from myself … One night, at the end of your tether, the world really might be of one mind. And because you haven’t the courage to be scared, the courage to take up the full duty of love, you find yourself pitched into a place beyond marvelling that you could be pushed this far. And because this is the age of reasoned hysterics and because you are haunted by his pale arms, you find yourself walking down the hall to his bedroom, to where he is tucked up fast in his dreams. And sitting on the side of his bed, lit by the light streaming in from the hall, you run through your reasons once more, squaring your story against the day when you will stand up and tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And then, these things straight in your mind at last, you reach out to touch his shoulder, touch him gently, calling his name in a whisper that barely reaches into his sleep … “Jamie,” you call, “wake up Jamie, wake up, good boy …”

  And that you could even think these things, that for these moments you are in two minds and so divided from the better part of yourself leaves you with this question—to whom or where do you turn to now?

  Americans

  [ICELAND]

  GYRÐIR ELÍASSON

  The Music Shop

  I visited a most unusual music shop the other day. Actually, it wasn’t “day”; it was night and I was sound asleep during my visit. Yet in my dream I was wide-awake and walking down Vesturgata on a sunny spring evening. The air was perfectly still and all the gardens were a fresh new green. I walked almost to the end of the road, then turned off, only to find myself in a small side street. Not only had I never been down there before, as far as I knew, but I hadn’t even been aware it existed.