Samurai Summer (5 page)

The worst thing about the meals in this place was that we got dessert three times a week. The dessert was fruit syrup
soup or powdered pudding.

It was okay, but we were forced to eat it from the same plate we’d had our supper on, and since you could hardly eat the supper in the first place, it was even worse once it got mixed with the dessert.

Today we had pig’s liver and boiled potatoes for supper. I had put a lot of effort into training myself to eat whatever was put in front of me, but sometimes it was hard. The worst part was trying to eat with so many people around you. It was against the samurai rules. You were only allowed to eat in a big group when the samurai gathered for battle. Otherwise you were supposed to eat alone or together with just one other samurai.

The most important food for a samurai was rice. They had served us rice only once this summer, and that had been boiled in snot. If the camp cook had entered the world championship of disgusting cooking, she would have won as easy as pie. Sometimes she would look out from the kitchen to see for herself how many of us she was torturing at the two long tables. Then she’d go back inside and prepare dinner for Matron and the counselors and herself: pork chops, grilled fish, a baked potato, and ice cream. We could smell it. And chocolates from a bag of Twist, with coffee.

One of the counselors set down a pot of fruit-syrup soup at our table and started to ladle it onto our dishes that still
contained scraps of liver. The soup looked like nosebleed mixed with little white worms. The blood was thin like it had been filched from someone who was already anemic; the worms were grains of tapioca and tasted like boogers. Or maybe the other way around.

The slimy tapioca grains were used in almost every dessert. They must have gotten a deal on them at some market for reject cattle feed.

I looked down at my plate. I had tried to eat some of the potato, but it had gotten sticky and wet from the sauce.

The bits of liver looked like leather.

The counselors approached with the pot of soup.

“Aren’t you going to eat up?” Sausage asked and looked at my plate. He had even licked his plate so that it would be clean for the dessert. You really had to admire him.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” I said.

Once I poured everything onto the floor under the table. I acted like I’d knocked the plate over by accident.

But the counselors had looked at me suspiciously.

“You can’t chuck it on the floor again,” said Sausage. “They’ll kill you.”

“I could say you did it,” I said, and I reached for Sausage’s gleaming plate. It shone like a beacon as the sunlight broke through the window and hit it.

Sausage tightened his grip on the plate. He looked scared.

“W-would you really do that, Kenny?”

“I was only joking,” I said as I pulled my hand back.

Sausage looked at me like he didn’t quite believe it.

“You know I wouldn’t be able to do something like that, Sausage.”

They had reached us with their pot of fruit slop. Sausage held out his plate.

“I don’t want any dessert,” I said.

“You haven’t finished your dinner,” said one of the counselors.

“I’m still eating.”

“You have to eat up your food, Tommy.” She nodded at the pot. “Otherwise you don’t get any dessert.”

“I said I don’t want any.”

I raised my head and looked at her. She didn’t look retarded. She smiled a strange smile, knowing she was annoying me.

“I really want to take my time eating this delicious liver stew,” I said. “I really want to enjoy the taste.”

“When we come back you’d better have eaten everything,” she said, and the smile was gone.

“What are you gonna do now, Kenny?” asked Sausage when the counselors had headed off down the table looking for fresh victims.

“Enjoy the food,” I said.

“How?” asked Sausage and laughed.

“Well, it’s got nothing to do with the taste anyway,” I said. “Slide your plate over, Sausage.”

“What?” He looked down at the red goop on his plate. “What do you want it for?”

“Just give it here,” I said, and I scraped the liver from my plate onto Sausage’s.

Once the surface had settled, it was hidden under the soup. My plate was clean.

I slid Sausage’s plate back.

“What am I supposed to do now?” he asked.

“One thing at a time,” I said.

“I wanted that soup,” said Sausage.

“You’ve still got it.”

“But I don’t want any more liver,” he said.

“Just tell the counselors there were pieces of liver in the dessert,” I said.

“Will they believe that?”

“No.”

“Now you’re being mean, Kenny.”

He looked like he was about to cry, knowing he would get the punishment that was meant for me. But I wasn’t the type to let someone else take my punishment.

“I don’t want to get blamed for everything,” Sausage continued.

“Pass your plate,” I said, and nodded toward the far end of the table where the counselors had already been with their slop pot. Everyone seemed to have already forced down their liquid blood pudding. The plates were fairly white with red splotches here and there.

Sausage looked around. Then he whispered something to the guy sitting to his right. They exchanged plates, and with that, Sausage’s plate began to make its way down the table. I turned around to see if the cook or Matron or any of the counselors were watching, but the only grown-ups in the room right now were the counselors serving up the soup, and they were way at the other end of the mess hall.

Finally, the plate made it to the end of the table. It was in front of a girl named Ann. Ann had brown hair and a turned-up nose that made her look a little stuck-up, but I don’t think she was. She looked surprised, but she must have realized what was coming. She had seen the plate making its way to the end of the table.

We watched as she stood up, holding Sausage’s plate, and walked the length of the table, down to the end where the counselor was almost done ladling out the soup. I didn’t see if she said anything to the counselor, and I couldn’t hear anything from where I was sitting.

Sausage couldn’t hear either. He looked nervous. I felt
strange. I hadn’t intended for anything to happen to that girl. I didn’t even know she was the one sitting at the end of the table, but it was Sausage or her.

The counselor nodded. Ann turned and walked back.

She came toward us and I expected her to set the plate down in front of us, but she didn’t even look at us—not at Sausage or me. She just continued on into the kitchen and came back without the plate. She sat back down at her place as if nothing had happened.

“What did she say to the counselor?” asked Sausage.

I didn’t answer. I checked to see if Ann was looking in our direction, but she didn’t seem to be looking in any particular direction.

“So, you managed to finish your supper after all, Tommy.”

I heard the counselor’s voice close to my ear. It felt like she wanted to burst my eardrum.

“But now there’s no more dessert,” she said.

“Too bad,” I said.

“I would have liked to have had some,” said Sausage.

“You’ve already had your portion,” said the counselor.

“I have no—” the numbskull started to say, and I kicked him in the shin.

“Ow!”

“What is it?” asked the counselor.

“N-nothing,” said Sausage. “Maybe a mosquito.”

“There aren’t any mosquitoes in here,” said the counselor, waving her hand.

“Now let’s thank the Lord for our food,” said the other counselor, and we stood up.

“THANK YOU, LORD, FOR OUR FOOD. AMEN!”

We were allowed to leave the table. Thank you, Lord, for our food. Half of us died; the rest just… spewed.

There was a canoe floating on the lake, but it was so far out that you couldn’t see whether anyone was sitting in it. We were just having our evening wash. Some splashed themselves with murky water. Some didn’t. Ann was standing thirty feet out. Kerstin was standing next to her. They were looking at the canoe that was gliding farther and farther away. I waded over to them. There weren’t many kids still down by the lake. Soon they would make us go to bed. The sun hadn’t set yet, but we were forced to go to bed. One thing I knew for sure: when I grew up I would never go to bed before the sun.

Kerstin and Ann saw me coming.

“That canoe looks abandoned,” I said, and nodded out toward the lake.

“You can’t tell,” said Kerstin.

“Thanks for the plate,” said Ann.

“So you saw it was me?”

“Didn’t everybody?”

“Not the counselors.”

“They saw the plate,” she said.

“I didn’t mean for you to get caught.”

“I didn’t get caught, did I?”

“What did you say to her, anyway?”

Ann looked at Kerstin. Kerstin looked at me.

“We could tell you,” said Kerstin, “but on one condition.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“That Ann gets to see the castle too.”

I
t was too late to go see any castles tonight. To be honest, there wasn’t really any castle to see. There were plans for a very fine castle. There was a foundation and a nearly finished moat. And there were walls that were being built, but they weren’t even half finished. Sometimes I doubted that we’d get the castle finished before the end of the summer, but I didn’t dare tell anyone—not Sausage, not Micke or Lennart or Janne or Sven-Åke or Mats. Not Kerstin. Or Ann. What would I say to them?

Why had Kerstin told Ann about the castle? I actually hadn’t dared ask. Maybe it had to do with the plate of fruit slop. Maybe this was a way of getting back at me somehow.

It wasn’t easy to understand how girls’ minds worked, and yet… well, this summer it had become a little more
interesting to find out how a girl’s mind worked. Or what a girl had to say.

If someone had told me that a year ago, I would have laughed at them. Or punched them out on the spot.

The sun was finally gone from the new night. There were four big windows in the dormitory and they all showed the same sky that had darkened but not become really black. I sat up and saw the moon. It wasn’t a half moon, but more like a sliver. Like a
katana
, the long sword. The tip was pointing straight down toward the forest. Toward the castle.

I sat there in bed. Janne mumbled something in his sleep, but I didn’t hear what it was. Something from the sea. Otherwise, everything was quiet. Quiet. This was the time when I would think—think intently about nothing. That was the path to total self-control. But it was only possible at night, when the only things that broke the silence were sleepwalkers and sleeptalkers.

But tonight I couldn’t think about nothing. All I could think about right now was girls—what they were like. Then I thought about what they turned into. I thought about Matron and the camp counselors. What did Kerstin think about them? What did Ann think? It must be awful to grow up and become like that.

Anything was better than that.

I thought about Mama. She had been a girl once. In her case, that wasn’t so hard to imagine. But Matron? And the counselors?

Then I thought about how I was going to grow up one day too. I couldn’t wait, but at the same time it scared me. What would I be like? Who would I become? I hoped that I wouldn’t turn into somebody else. But one thing I knew for sure: it wouldn’t be easy to continue being a samurai in this country once I was a grown-up. There was a chance they might think I was crazy and put me away in an asylum. Camp for the rest of my life.

There was someone I knew who was just barely grown up. Or he’d stopped growing up just when he was about to become an adult. Like something bad had happened to him. I had met Matron’s son last summer. He was eighteen or nineteen and his name was Christian. He hadn’t said much. When he looked at Matron, he seemed scared. When he looked at me, he seemed strange. There was something about his eyes that had frightened me.

I had seen him wandering around the grounds after sundown. Something about his hands looked… sinister. He clenched his fists and opened them again. Maybe he’d be visiting this summer too. He used to come for a week or so
every summer. He had a moped. This summer he said he’d be coming by car.

I slipped out of bed and walked over to one of the windows. The moon blade was still pointing straight down at the castle that was hidden in the forest. It was a sign that maybe I ought to understand. The forest started right where the gates to the camp ended. The trees formed a wall, but I knew how to get through that wall and into the forest beyond.

The glowing blade slowly started to sink down toward the forest. It wanted to show me something—to get me to understand that I should go to the castle. Now. Tonight. There was something waiting for me there.

A gentle wind blew across the grounds below the dormitory. I looked up at the windows in our room and saw something white. It was moving. Maybe one of the counselors had seen me. Or worse yet, Matron. If she had, I wouldn’t get away this time. I heard a window open. It was a penetrating noise in the darkness. I saw the white thing transform into a face. It was Sausage. I waved to him to keep quiet, close the window, and go back to bed. All of that was in the wave.