A Fairy Tale (15 page)

K
im is sitting on a chair in the dressing room with a wet towel around his neck. He's clutching a cup of coffee with both hands; his body is shaking so violently that his trousers are covered with brown stains.

“He has been drinking ever since the pipe burst,” Margrethe says. “I don't think he has slept since Tuesday.” She holds his head, looks into his eyes. “Are you sure you can go on?”

Kim nods; more coffee stains appear on his trousers.

“If not, now's the time to tell us.”

Kim swallows a big gulp of coffee that must surely burn his throat. “I'm fine.”

“You heard him,” Margrethe says, clapping her hands, and the actors carry on doing their makeup and getting into costume.

Kim groans faintly.

The auditorium is so
packed that I have to sit on the steps between the seat rows.

On stage the actors talk about the harvest festival, they pour tea from the pot. Today the sun shines more brightly than ever on Sara. Her last line lingers in the air. This is the cue for the country doctor to enter. The actors stare down into their cups, they fiddle with their costumes. Margrethe examines the teapot as though there's something wrong with it. I count one Mississippi, two Mississippi, and have got to twenty-two Mississippi before Kim staggers on stage. He doesn't have his doctor's bag with him. A couple of metres in he stops. I think he's having second thoughts and is about to leave the stage. Then he goes over to the table. Sara quickly pulls out a chair for him.

“Have you been waiting a long time?” he asks.

The play carries on. Kim has a cup of tea which he sips. When the other actors talk to him, he mumbles his lines, but everyone pretends to understand what he's saying.

We reach the end of Act One; my dad slowly dims the lights. A summer evening. Now Olga and the country doctor are alone on stage. Kim gets up; for a second, it looks as if he's about to fall over. Then he moves downstage and stops a few centimetres from the edge. He scratches his face. The auditorium is completely silent. The country doctor says that life didn't turn out the way he thought it would. Then he goes blank. He takes a few steps back. Sara looks at him. Everyone in the auditorium is looking at him, their mouths hanging open. Kim scratches his face again.

He starts speaking again. The country doctor says that Olga has grown up, that she's a big girl now. Once she was so small she could fit in a pocket. Kim speaks for a long time and with many pauses. He stumbles through his words. Not everything he says makes sense, can be heard or understood.

When he finally stops, there's total silence in the auditorium. A young man gets up and starts clapping so hard that it must hurt. He's quickly followed by others until the whole auditorium is echoing with the sound.

“
A
re you hungry?” my dad asks me.

We've just left the theatre and we're walking down the street.

“Isn't Sara coming with us?”

“Not today.”

We cross RÃ¥dhuspladsen, we carry on walking. We end up in front of a place that looks like a bar from the outside. When we've entered through the large wooden door, I can see white fabric tablecloths and gleaming cutlery. A waiter shows us to a table in the middle of the room. Two men in suits are sitting a few tables away from us; apart from that we're alone in the restaurant.

The waiter returns with the menu, he brings a large beer for my dad and a soda for me. My dad flicks through the menu. He asks me what I want, have anything you like. Then he puts the menu down and looks at me.

“Something's bothering you.”

“No . . .”

“Yes.”

“I want to go to school.”

“You do go to school.”

“A real school.”

He nods, shakes a cigarette out of the packet. The waiter returns and my dad orders for both of us. When we're alone again, my dad looks at me.

“You'd like to go to a school with other children?”

“Yes.”

“Then you shall.”

We eat roast pork with parsley sauce on large white plates. Between us is a bowl of boiled potatoes with a sprinkling of chopped parsley on top. My dad crunches some crackling.

“It's a bit complicated,” he says, and looks as if he needs time to think about it. “I'll need to check out a few things. But you will go to school.” He cuts a potato in half, dips it in the sauce before he puts it in his mouth. “After the summer . . . after the summer you can start Grade Three.”

One of the men in suits gets up. He leans on the back of his chair for support before he starts walking. On his way to the bathroom, he knocks a fork from one of the other tables. He bends down, picks it up, and puts it back on the table very slowly and carefully.

“Do you think I'll be able to keep up?”

I had a dream I was in a classroom, the other pupils were laughing at me, told me to spell “idiot,” write it on the board.

My dad stops chewing.

“I mean, the others have been going to school for two years. Five days a week. Are you sure I'll be as good . . .”

Then he starts to laugh. He laughs so hard that the beer in his glass sloshes and I think I can see tiny ripples on the surface of the sauce.

“You're not as good as them,” he says, wiping his eyes with the napkin. “You're much, much better. Take the best pupil in any class you join and you'll be better than him or her. Just remember this,” he says. “It's okay that you're better than the others. But try not to be too clever. Try not to show it. People will only start to ask questions.”

I promise — even though I find it hard to believe him.

My dad orders more pork, says eat up. Eat until you burst. I get another soda, too.

“We'll carry on with our own school, perhaps just on Sundays when we've nothing else to do. You don't need to be as stupid as the rest of the world.”

W
e're sitting on a picnic blanket in a big park. I've been here before, collecting bottles with my dad. Today we're the ones tipping out the dregs and smiling as we hand the bottles to men and women with dirty hands. We're surrounded by people walking, standing, and sitting down again, disturbing the grass so I can see that the soil is filled with worms and old bottle caps.

It's May Day, and Sara says she's cold in her summer dress. My dad gives her his denim jacket to put on. It's too big and her hands disappear inside the sleeves. Sara stays on the blanket while we wait in line at a food stand. I get a sticker from a man and put it on my T-shirt. It's big and round. I ask my dad if it's very important that we leave the European Community. He smiles. “I don't think you and I were ever in the EC.”

We buy grilled sausages that have split and are a little burned on one side; we sit on the blanket and eat them off paper plates. We can hear music from the stage: a man is singing and I hear the word “peace.” The rest of the lyrics are drowned out by drums and guitar. Sara gets tomato sauce on the sleeve of my dad's jacket; she promises to wash it, promises that it'll wash out. My dad just laughs. After we've finished eating, he comes with me to the bushes to have a pee. I have to watch where I put my feet. Many of the leaves are already wet and there are small puddles all over the place.

My dad has a pee, too. He aims his willy at me and says, “I'm going to pee on you, I'm going to pee on you.”

I try to escape, I trip, fall into a bush and scratch my cheek a little, but I'm still laughing when he helps me back to my feet.

I drink fruit punch. My dad rests his head in Sara's lap. Sara says she likes my sticker.

She looks at her watch. “If we're going to get to the front of the stage, we have to leave now.”

My dad nudges the plastic bag with his foot, it clinks. “There's still some beer left.”

Sara starts to rise so my dad has to sit up; the lap he was resting on is gone. “I want to hear her speak.”

I help my dad fold the blanket.

The area in front of the stage is already packed with people, hundreds of them.

Two men are walking around the stage picking up empty bottles and cigarette stubs and rolling out cables. When they leave, a blonde woman appears.

Her name is Monika: I know that from the placards people are holding up. She wears jeans and a T-shirt and her hair is in a ponytail. She smiles and steps up to the microphone. People clap, some whistle. Even though we were at the back a moment ago, we're now surrounded by people. I can no longer see anything, only their backs. My dad lifts me up and puts me on his shoulders.

The woman on the stage laughs as if she can't quite believe so many people have turned up just because of her. But when she starts to speak, she sounds neither hesitant nor shy. I look at the people around us; everyone is listening to her. It's the first time today that the park has fallen completely silent; all we can hear is Monika's voice from the big loudspeakers. She says it's not about Left or Right, but about people and the future. Her eyes shine while she speaks. My dad stands very still underneath me. He doesn't rummage around in his pocket for cigarettes or shuffle his feet like he usually does when he's bored.

When Monika has finished talking she takes a few steps away from the microphone; again she smiles apologetically. Everyone around me starts to clap and refuses to stop.

I think my dad has forgotten I'm still sitting on his shoulders; he just stands there staring at the empty stage. It's not until Sara touches his arm that he lifts me down, picks up the plastic bag, and we leave.

“I told you she's not like other politicians,” Sara laughs.

I
'
m woken up by a loud bump in the kitchen and then I hear my dad swear. He has stubbed his toe on the table leg again. Shortly afterwards he appears in the doorway to my room.

“I'll be back soon; I'm just going out to get some bread.”

My dad didn't wash up last night, so I fill up the washing bowl. When he comes back, he has a big pile of newspapers in his arms, but no bread. I don't say anything; we have porridge oats and milk in the fridge.

My dad pours himself some coffee and takes the first newspaper from the pile. He sits hunched over the pages. When he finds something interesting, he reaches for the scissors.

When I've finished my porridge oats, I try to draw the ghost of the old man who lived in the apartment before us. I draw him just as transparent as the smoke that comes out of his mouth.

I take my sketchbook and go down to the courtyard. I draw birds sitting in the tree. I draw cats slinking around as they hunt for rats by the bin shed. Then I draw a cat's head on one of the pigeons and I'm pleased with my drawing. I draw a cat jumping from a garbage can; it has the head of a pigeon with its beak open.

A couple of hours later I return to the apartment. My dad's still at the table reading newspapers. I empty his ashtray for him. The last bit of coffee has burned black and stuck to the bottom of the pot on the stove so I put it in the sink, fill it with water, and leave it to soak.

The sun is starting to go down, so I switch on the lamp above the table. My dad massages his eyes, takes his jacket from the back of the chair, and says that we'd better be going.

That evening his movements at the lighting desk are slow. I don't know if the actors notice, they're probably too busy remembering their lines. But I see it. His hands are usually resting on the buttons while he counts to himself or whispers the lines as they're spoken on stage. Tonight his eyes are half closed and he forgets the cigarette in the ashtray. I smell the filter burning.

After the performance he kisses Sara goodbye and tells her that he's tired. We leave the theatre together with the last members of the audience. There are tiny droplets in the air; they settle on my cheek, they make my hair damp. I ask my dad where we're going.

“We're just going for a walk,” he replies.

We eat at a hot dog stand. I'm still chewing my last bite of hot dog when my dad looks at his watch and says it's time to go. The first newspapers come out just after midnight; he buys them from a newsstand at Hovedbanegården, Copenhagen's central railway station. He also buys a pile of magazines, cigarettes, and a comic for me.

When I go to bed that night, my dad's back at the table. I fall asleep to the sound of scissors.

T
he screen shows red deer in a forest, the leaves are yellow. A man steps out in front of the animals, he's wearing green clothes, he fills most of the picture. He points to the red deer behind him. The volume of the TV is turned down, but it looks as though he's whispering.

My dad goes from television to television, takes a couple of steps back, and narrows his eyes. He presses buttons, steps back again, and studies the screen.

He says: “Look at the colours.”

He says: “Isn't that picture a little blurry?”

At last my dad takes out a white envelope from his pocket and empties it. The television we buy is big, my dad carries it home. A lock of hair falls in front of his eyes; he blows it away. I'm sad there are so few people in the street today. People who'd have to move out of our way, who'd have to step out into the bicycle lane. I wish they could see what we've bought.

I decide to watch TV all summer. I want to be ready for the school playground. I'm convinced that other children watch a lot of TV, that they watch TV nearly all the time.

I make rye bread sandwiches while my dad reads the manual. I hand him a liver pâté sandwich; he presses the remote control and mutters
why won't it work?
He doesn't get the television to come on until late that night.

From then on the television is on all the time. Mostly with the volume turned down, but when the news comes on, my dad turns it up so it's just as loud as the televisions of the people who live around us. I could shout “Fire!”
and he wouldn't hear me. When the weather forecast begins, he drains his coffee cup and smiles at me as though he has just come in the room. He turns the volume down again; I ask him why he doesn't turn off the television completely.

“Emergency broadcasts,” he says. “If something important happens, they'll interrupt the programme with an emergency broadcast.”

He tells me to look out for them as well. Then he carries on with today's newspapers.

I thought I'd enjoy
watching children's TV, but now I'm expecting every programme to be interrupted by a man in a suit announcing an emergency broadcast. I'm scared of sitting very still and not being able to call out to my dad if it happens, like in those dreams where the bear comes closer and closer and I'm rooted to the spot.

I practice. When my dad goes down to the kiosk for more newspapers, I shout “Emergency broadcast!” out into the room. When I go to the bathroom, I whisper it to myself. Just before I fall asleep, I say it into the blanket,
Emergency broadcast
.