The Merman (14 page)

‘It's worse than that. Pretty soon you won't even be able to speak Swedish inside any more. Now there's Vietnamese as well, and Kunta Kinte nig-nogs that you don't even know what bloody country they're from.'

‘So no blubbing, if you please. You're a big lad now. They don't bawl.'

He took a can of beer, opened it, took a gulp and made a face.

‘My God, I can't believe I read the papers wrong. Marika just about passed out when she opened the door. But it's the same with the little fellow here, he's got reading troubles too, isn't that right, Robbie? The exact opposite of your sister. It's like the letters all blend together. An
R
looks like a
P
, a little
s
looks like a little
a
... It took years before I realised it didn't mean I was thick.'

Almost smarter than most people,' said his mate. ‘How long can I stay here, by the way?'

‘I'm the one who makes the decisions in this house, and because you've put me up in the past, I'll put you up. You can stay as long as you like, or until your supervisor comes up with something better. Have you thought of this, Leffe... we might celebrate Christmas together, but in a more homely place than Halmstad. What do you
say to that, Robert? It'll be exciting with two grown-up blokes in the house, won't it?'

‘Is he going to be here for my birthday as well?'

My brother was attempting to act as relaxed as possible, but he couldn't keep it up.

‘Sure. You haven't got a problem with that, have you?'

‘No.'

‘Good. It just sounded like you might.'

That was the same old Dad, I thought as Robert looked away, as if he wished he were a hundred miles from there. I couldn't figure out what he was hoping for. That he had latched onto the wrong person, that this figure was some sort of doppelgänger, and that the right person would suddenly walk in through the door and chuck him out?

‘And what have you done with your glasses?'

‘They broke at school.'

‘Mm-hm. But it looks bloody awful to go round with taped-up glasses like a fucking mental case. You need to learn to look after your things.'

Dad's voice was still calm, but to anyone who knew him, it took on a strange undertone. Mum heard it too when she returned with a tray of whisky glasses, a packet of Right cigarettes and the vase of tulips from the hall.

‘Kids get into scrapes all the time,' said Leffe. ‘I was the same when I was a kid. I had glasses for a while, too. They were constantly getting broken. I'd lose them when I was running or if there was a fight. If some bastard called me four-eyes, I'd punch him straight away.'

‘I wasn't asking you now, I was asking the lad here!'

‘Okay, okay, calm down!'

There was something reptilian about Dad when he got like this. Emotions and energy were transformed into their opposites, like when you flip a coin. He would go from impassive to full throttle before anybody had a chance to react.

‘Aren't you ashamed of how you look, Robbie? Don't you understand that people will laugh at you if you go round looking like that?'

‘We couldn't fix them any other way!'

‘I don't give a damn if they can't be fixed. It's about respect. And a little fucking self-respect. Did somebody punch you? Is that why they broke?'

I shook my head as discreetly as I could, and my brother caught it out of the corner of his eye.

‘No,' he said quietly. ‘I just happened to lose them in the schoolyard.'

‘Lose them? You need to learn to look after your things. Take them off!'

‘Now?'

‘Yes, now. I don't mean tomorrow.'

‘But I can't see anything without them... '

‘Do as I say!'

Nobody said a word. Leffe looked away, towards the TV, as if he hoped it would switch itself on and he could be swallowed up in the first decent programme. Mum was still standing there with some words on the tip of her tongue, things I knew she wanted to say, but didn't dare to, at least not right now when Dad had just come home. Robert took off his glasses, folded them up very carefully and stood there with them in his hand.

‘Bring them over here.'

Like an obedient dog, he went over to Dad. He was a millimetre away from bawling again, I could see it in his posture, in his walk, in the way he rubbed the back of his hand over the corners of his eyes. And as if I had telepathic powers, I tried to send thoughts in his direction, that he needed to keep himself under control, not start to cry, not show any weakness, because that would make Dad even more furious.

‘Give them to me.'

He held out the glasses and Dad took them, weighed them in his hand, looked at them as if they were some disgusting dead animal, before placing them in his shirt pocket with a grin.

‘Good, I'll look after these for a while. Now make yourselves scarce for a while, kids. I need to talk to Leffe about something. And Marika, if you want to make me really happy you can wash my clothes. I didn't have time to before I was let out. They're in my rucksack.'

L
ate that night, Dad and his mate came back. They'd been away for a few hours, heading out in the car around nine and not getting back until around midnight. Not even Mum knew what they were up to. She was just happy Dad was home, was matching him drink for drink, judging by her sloshed laughter, and smoked scented cigarettes that we could smell all the way upstairs. But I knew things would be all right. This wasn't a night when everything would get out of control; I had a special radar for those sorts of situations.

I couldn't sleep, and neither could Robert. He would knock on the wall at regular intervals to check if I was awake. I didn't respond, even though I wanted to. He was worried about his glasses. He wouldn't be able to see anything without them.

As I lay in bed, it struck me that I couldn't remember what I'd done just a week before. I'd gone to school of course, oblivious to what Gerard had in mind and to the fact that Dad was on his way home. I'd done my homework and watched TV I'd worried about my brother and how I was going to manage if Mum was heading into another one of her phases. But all the details were gone, as if they'd happened in someone else's life.

When I closed my eyes, the images from the hut came back. The creature that lay bound in the wooden crate; the syringes and blood spots on the floor. I saw the flesh wounds on its body, the cheek that had been sliced open, revealing its teeth and tongue. Some things were sort of lit up like close-up flash photos, as if my memory had secretly zoomed in on all the strange little details in order to store them better. There were auditory memories as well: the bellows
sound from the gills, the panting, the sticky sound of small air bubbles forming and bursting. And then the eyes that looked at me for a while. Something in that gaze unsettled me. It wasn't a human being, but it wasn't an animal, either. But in a way I had understood what it was thinking, that it was wondering what it was doing there, wondering who we were and why people were mistreating it.

I'd set my alarm clock for three but woke up before it went off. The house was silent. The only sound was the rain scraping against the roof. I put my clothes on and crept down the stairs.

The living-room door was ajar. Dad was asleep on the couch. Leif was lying on the floor with his jacket folded up into a pillow. It smelled of tobacco and sweaty feet, with a hint of Mum's perfume. They looked younger when they were asleep. Their breathing was shallow, like that of two big kids. The glasses were poking out of Dad's shirt pocket. I really should have fished them out and given them to my brother. Dad probably wouldn't remember anything in the morning, or else he wouldn't care about them any more. But he was a light sleeper, and I didn't want to risk waking him up.

I put my jacket on and sneaked out. My bag was still hanging on my bike handlebars from the night before. In the pocket were the lock picks I'd borrowed from Lazio, a proper set of locksmith's picks. I'd told him I needed them to open a locker at school. He didn't look like he believed me. But if any of them worked, he said, there must be something wrong with the lock.

The last scents of summer still lingered in the gardens. Fruit still hung from the trees. Soon it would drop and get raked up with the last piles of leaves.

As I cycled out on the gravel road that leads down to the sea, the rain stopped. The lights of Falkenberg formed a hazy dome on the horizon to the south. But in the other direction, towards Glommen, towards the fields, farms and mink farms, the world was quieter and darker.

I took the back route past the lighthouse to get down to the harbour. There were no lights on in town. I laid my bike in the grass behind the fisherman's huts. I had several hours to myself before the first people would turn up.

The area around the harbour was like a film set. A single street lamp cast its light on the quay, but the light did not reach as far as Tommy's hut. Nobody would be able to see me from a distance.

The lock opened with the third skeleton key. I lifted the hasp, opened the door and crept in. For a while I just stood still and listened. The only sound was the whoosh of the sea, and the wind that was on its way to bed, and then that noise... that strange panting noise, at first so faint that I barely noticed it, then stronger as I turned round. I tried not to think about it or even look over towards the wooden crate.

I put my book bag down on a folding chair. There was a back door some distance away. I opened it, went out again, put the hasp and the padlock back into place and used the back entrance. If anyone approached on foot, the place was locked from the outside. Everything would appear as usual.

I made sure the tarpaulin was securely covering the window. Then I switched on the light.

There was an empty syringe by my right foot. Blood spots formed a trail over to the crate. The box of fish guts was still by the door. The whole place smelled of the sea.

The light from the bulb was weak. Strange shadows stood stockstill in the corners. To my left, someone had covered part of the wall with a large cloth.

There was a faint thumping coming from the crate, rhythmic, three thumps followed by a brief pause and then another three thumps. It was awake now. It understood someone was in the hut, and that made it nervous.

‘There,' I said. ‘Don't worry, I'm not going to hurt you.'

It felt totally ridiculous. I took a step closer and stopped again.
I should leave, I thought, just leave through the back door, put everything back with the door and the lock and ride my bike back home. This was nothing to do with me. I'd just turned up at the wrong place at the wrong time, witnessed something I wasn't meant to see, just like with the kitten last winter. This was Tommy and his brothers' business, it wasn't even part of real life... it was part of the sea, the depths out there.

Then I took another step, and the rhythmic thumping started again: three thumps, then a pause and another three thumps. I went closer, closed my eyes as if part of me didn't want to see it, didn't want to see anything, just wanted to feel the presence of that alien, but not really be involved. When my hip bumped against the wooden crate, my entire body stiffened. It felt as if my eyelashes were stuck together, as if it was hard to open my eyes, as if I had to struggle with myself to be able to look again.

It lay in the darkness down there, hidden by my shadow. I took a step to the side so the light from the lamp could reach it better. Then I bent forward again, over the edge of what could have been a coffin... which perhaps already was a coffin for the thing that lay in there, a prison in which it would die and be buried.

The creature was awake. Its eyes were like two black marbles. As I moved, it raised its tail fin, beat three faint thumps against the base of the crate, paused, and repeated the same sequence.

‘It's all right,' I whispered again. ‘I'm not going to hurt you.'

Its gaze was sort of hypnotic, almost impossible to look away from. As if it was the one who decided when I would look in a different direction or finally get to blink. It was studying my face, my forehead, cheeks, mouth, chin, as if it wanted to imprint every single detail in its memory. The panting had stopped; it was calmer now, hardly frightened of me at all. It realised that I was not an enemy. So it lowered its eyes very slowly, as if letting go of my gaze, and instead glanced down at the cables that were wrapped around its wrists, the ropes it was bound with, and its scaly skin that looked dried-out and hard.

It was as if I hadn't managed to take in all the pain until now. The elongated wound that made its whole cheek gape, the bruises on its head, the small bone fragments sticking out of the skin at its temples. It was suffering; the pain was ever-present.

‘I don't understand why they did this,' I whispered. ‘Why they're hurting you... I'm sorry I can't help you.'

I looked around for some water to pour over it.

‘Do you need something to drink?' I asked. ‘Are you thirsty?'

Somehow, it answered. I can't explain how. It couldn't talk, didn't make any sign with its body, it didn't have any radio transmitter. And yet it understood my question. And somehow it answered, or it communicated with me. It was thirsty. It needed to drink, and it needed water on its body, on the skin that was made for being in the sea and was now drying out.

‘Wait,' I said. ‘I'll come back.'

Its tail fin beat nervously against the crate as I went round the hut, looking for a bucket. It grew worried when it couldn't see me: it no longer had the situation under control, couldn't anticipate what would happen. I mumbled some calming words as I searched through the cupboards. Finally I picked up a large bailer from the floor and filled it with water from the tap.

When I returned, it grew still again. Just looked at me, very calmly, with a sort of gleam in its eye, as if it appreciated my presence, and then past my shoulder, as if it was wondering whether more people were on their way in.