A Fairy Tale (12 page)

T
he door opens, my dad's footsteps across the floor become the sound of raindrops on the roof of a bus that will keep driving all night long and not stop until it reaches a distant country. We get out and feed giraffes; we give the apes tiny pieces of bread from our packed lunches.

My dad turns over in his sleep. I can smell beer and tobacco and I know that all's well now.

Some nights my dad doesn't get back until the sun comes through the curtains, dyeing the room orange. Then he brings me breakfast. Other days he wraps me up warm and we walk down to the lakes and eat bread from the bakery. Some days I have school, other days we go for long walks across the city. When we cross RÃ¥dhuspladsen, I don't look up at the clock on the town hall. The hours pass too quickly and soon my dad will have to go to work. I've brushed my teeth and I'm lying in bed. My dad tells me the next part of the fairy tale about the King and the Prince. Every day I hope that he'll forget what the time is, I hope that his eyes will grow heavy, that he'll fall asleep in his shirt so that I can take off his shoes. It never happens. He kisses my forehead, takes his suit jacket from the back of the chair, and I hear the door slam shut.

One night when my
dad gets back, he curses all the way through the room. He closes the door to the bathroom behind him and stays in there for a long time. The sound of the tap becomes a huge waterfall; our little boat is heading for the precipice.

I wake up before my dad. The city is still quiet, the sun's on its way up. With sleep in my eyes I go to the bathroom to pee; I turn my head and see my dad's shirt. It's on a hanger on the shower curtain rail. The shirt is wet and crumpled and it's still dripping. On the front and at the end of both sleeves there are big pink stains so it looks like someone spilled fruit punch on him.

W
e celebrate Christmas Eve while the sun is high in the sky. We sit on the bed eating roast duck. We have caramelized potatoes in one foil tray and red cabbage in another.

My dad dragged the Christmas tree up the hotel's back stairs. We dance around it and sing Christmas carols. Then I open my present; it's wrapped in several layers of paper. It's a remote-controlled boat. Tomorrow we're taking it out for a sail.

My dad puts the blanket over me. He's going to work now. I ask him to please stay. Please, just a little bit longer. Please tell me again what's starboard and what's port on a ship, I think I've forgotten.

He says that more men want to see women take off their clothes at Christmas. He doesn't know why; perhaps they're lonely. But they tip him generously. He kisses my forehead and closes the door behind him.

My dad has the
next couple of days off and we sail the boat from when we get up in the morning till the sun sets, interrupted only by a lunch break or to go to the nearest newsstand to buy new batteries. I learn how to turn the boat against the wind so it won't keel over.

When we return to the hotel room, my nose is running and my cheeks are burning. Even in my sleep I can see the boat. I'm now standing on the deck; the boat hasn't grown bigger, I've just grown much smaller. I sail past a giant duck at great speed and nearly crash into an enormous beer bottle floating on the black-and-green water.

We're woken up by shouting and people running down the hotel corridor. My dad and I hurry out of the room, still wearing only T-shirts and underpants. We follow the flow of people. When we reach the landing, we see that everyone is on their way up, not down. We follow them; the second-floor hallway is packed with guests. Everyone is talking at the same time. My dad takes my hand, we push our way through. The door to room 212 is open. My dad tells me to wait outside; I hear the sound of a bottle smashing against the wall.

“Leave me alone,” someone shouts from the inside. The voice is strangely thick, but I'm almost certain that it belongs to the man in the suit.

My dad stands in the doorway.

“That one,” the voice calls out. “I'm only talking to him.”

My dad enters the room and I lose sight of him. I'm pushed around by people craning their necks in order to get a better look. They whisper to each other. A few minutes pass, then a man in orange clothes appears in the doorway. He asks everyone to move aside, first politely, then more forcefully. He's carrying the foot-end of a stretcher. People retreat along the corridor. When the stretcher passes me, I can see the man lying on it; he's wearing the jacket from his suit, but no trousers. His sleeves are pushed up; he has bandages around his arms. My dad holds his hands, doesn't let go even though the corridor is narrow. I follow them down the stairs. They lift the man into the ambulance, they close the back doors, and the ambulance drives down the street. My dad puts his arm around my shoulders. The ambulance disappears around the corner.

M
y head feels as if it's rolling loosely around the bed. I don't want to wake my dad; he has barely had any sleep since he got the job at the strip club. I drink water from the tap, it tastes of metal, my tongue is too big for my mouth. I sit down and look out the window, I watch cars drive by, I'm hot and cold at the same time.

I feel a little better after I've had a bath. My dad hums while he shaves; today's the last day of the year. My dad has been pointing it out to me on the calendar in the hotel reception, only four days left now, three days, two days.

We sit on the bed and eat marzipan wreath cake. We wear paper hats and we pull crackers. Inside them are small plastic cats, one red, one blue, and one yellow. I put them on the bedside table.

We walk down to the lakes. We've got three fireworks and I'm allowed to light them.

On the way home I throw fun snaps. They make a loud bang when they hit the ground.

We've just walked through the door to the hotel when I start to feel ill again.

The pattern in the carpet in the corridor starts to twist.

I lie down on the bed between the paper plates with marzipan cake. The glasses with orange juice are still standing on the bedside table; the orange colour moves up the wall and spreads across the ceiling. I've never seen anything so orange.

I'm sweating and shaking. My dad fetches me a glass of water from the bathroom. I manage to swallow a couple of mouthfuls before I throw up; small lumps of marzipan and juice land on the bed and the carpet.

We haven't used the telephone in the hotel room since we arrived, but now my dad makes a call.

“I can't come tonight,” he says into the handset. “My son's ill.” Then he listens to the voice down the other end. “Yes, I do know what night it is. No, the money's not the issue, I only have one son.” Then he listens again, looks over at me. “Okay, yes, I'll ask him . . .”

My dad kneels down by the bed and looks me in the eye. “Would you like to see where your dad works? See the place at night?”

I make no reply, I'm afraid I'll throw up again.

“If you can last tonight, just for tonight, you'll get that bicycle. We'll buy it for you the moment the shops open again. What do you say?”

I see the bicycle: it floats right above my dad's head and it's incredibly blue. I nod.

My dad gets me dressed and washes my face with a wet hand towel. He takes his suit out of the wardrobe. I hate that suit, I know that now. He wraps me in the bedspread and carries me down the stairs, past reception, and then the few steps along the street to the strip club.

Inside a man in a white shirt is busy taking down the chairs from the tables. Another man is setting out a stack of ashtrays which he cradles in his arms. There are stars and paper chains along the wall. My dad carries me past the stage, pulls aside a curtain, and walks down a passage where dark red paint is peeling off in large flakes. He knocks on the door three times before he opens it. One wall is covered entirely in mirrors. On the wall opposite are racks with cat costumes, bunny costumes, dresses with feathers. An older woman sits with a needle and thread in her mouth. She's sewing buttons onto a dress; a cigarette smokes itself in the ashtray on the table.

“My son's ill, tell the girls to take good care of him.”

The woman nods and takes the next dress from the table. My dad puts me on a low, dark green sofa at the back of the room. He wipes my forehead with the inside of his shirt sleeve.

“All you have to do is last the night,” he says.

When I open
my
eyes again the room is filled with girls. They're younger than my dad. Some of them are wearing only bras and panties. They put on makeup and spray themselves with perfume. I can hear music from the stage; I recognize it from my nights in the hotel bed where it never gets louder than the sound of a fingernail against a glass table.

The girls laugh and shout to drown out the music and each other. They drink from bottles on the table; they fill the glasses until they overflow. When they walk out the door, they look as if they're going to a party in their glittering dresses, strings of pearls around their neck, their high heels making clacking sounds against the concrete floor. When they come back, they're dressed only in their panties, the clothes now a small, crumpled bundle in their arms.

They sweat; beads of sweat have formed between their breasts and trickle down their stomachs before collecting in their belly buttons. They dry themselves with white hand towels, then they walk around in tiny panties before they take another dress from the stand.

The room smells of sweat, perfume, and cigarettes.

The girls take turns coming over to me. They ruffle my hair and pinch my cheeks.

I keep seeing the bicycle over their heads, the bicycle I'm going to get soon. Blue — or red, possibly. Red is a girl's colour, but it's also the colour of fire engines and mailboxes.

One of the girls says her name is Camilla; she gives me a glass and fills it from one of the bottles.

“Champagne,” she says, as she tops up my glass with orange juice.

One of the other girls asks her what she's doing, but Camilla doesn't reply. She hands me the glass and whispers in my ear: “It'll make you feel better.”

When I'm halfway through the glass, it no longer tastes quite so disgusting. I drink the rest in big gulps.

The girls laugh and I laugh with them. They stand in front of me and use me as their mirror.

“Do I look good now?” They jiggle their breasts before they walk out the door again.

The girl whose name is Camilla refills my glass, not quite so much orange juice this time.

“Tell your dad I think he's cute, won't you, sweetheart?” Her perfume smells of apples and flowers. “He probably knows me as Candy.”

I empty my glass.

It's early in the
morning when my dad carries me through the strip club. The air is so thick with smoke that my eyes water. The tables are covered with bottles. Broken glass crunches under his shoes.

My dad lays me down on the bed in the hotel room. He puts a wet towel on my forehead; it helps a bit until the towel's just as warm as my skin.

My dad supports my head and holds the water glass to my mouth. I manage three mouthfuls.

My dad sits on the edge of the bed, running his hand through his hair so it sticks out. He throws down the jacket; it lands on the floor. He smokes two cigarettes while he stares into the distance. The streetlights fall on his cheek, ear, and some of his neck. He looks older now. Not just a couple of years, but much older.

“I think it's time we move,” he says.

I
'
m sitting on the floor, up against the wall. I read my comic with a flashlight. The man in the comic can make himself invisible. My dad sits behind the lighting desk, smoking; he turns some knobs, presses some buttons. There's a hole in the wall in front of him. When he doesn't look down at the desk, he looks out of the hole.

Sometimes he turns to me and we mime along to the voices from the stage.

My dad says: “Hello, Ivan, have you also come outside to enjoy the morning sun?”

Then I say: “Oh, dearest little Olga, these days the morning sun is the only joy I have left.”

We've been here for two weeks now. I don't know how he got a job in a theatre.

The man in the
comic only makes himself invisible in order to help others; he catches robbers and thieves who steal handbags from old ladies. He never takes anything for himself. He doesn't trip up people he doesn't like though it would be incredibly easy for him to do so. Even when he catches the bus, he puts money down in front of the driver, but he never gets a ticket.

I don't understand him. I follow the drawings with my finger.

At the end of Act One, my dad gets up and goes over to the cassette player on the wall. He places his finger on the button, tilts his head, and listens. When the woman on stage has said: “But you'll never understand. You're in love with your art, Ivan, you don't love people,” my dad counts: “One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi,” and then he presses the button. The sound of seagulls screeching and waves crashing fills the auditorium below us. My dad gets back into his chair, quickly presses a couple of other buttons, and slowly pushes up the big handle in the middle of the desk. The reddish glow of a sunset creeps through the hole in the wall and into where we are.

The auditorium is never more than half full. My dad says the tickets are expensive, that must be the reason. When the play is over, the applause is scattered and out of sync. A few people clap hard and long. He smokes a cigarette while the auditorium empties. Then he turns on the light and I switch off my flashlight. He cleans up after himself, empties the ashtray, and rewinds the cassette tape so that it'll be ready for tomorrow.

There's a knock on the door and the theatre manager pops his head around. He's a small man with dark hair that sticks out as though he has just woken up. Even though this is his theatre, he grins apologetically. The first time I met him, he told me to help myself to some sodas. He repeats this offer every time I see him, just pop over to the bar and help yourself to a soda.

Today he doesn't notice me. He pulls up a chair next to mine and sits down. He's wringing his hands more than he usually does.

“About that contract,” he says.

“Yes?” My dad organizes some papers, the ones that tell him what the actors have to say.

“There are just a few outstanding details, but you will get it, of course.” The theatre manager looks down at his hands. “I know I said I'd have it ready for you today . . .”

My dad lights a cigarette and offers the packet to the theatre manager, who carefully accepts one. “As soon as I sign that contract, you're obliged to pay me for the whole season even if you have to close the show tomorrow.”

The theatre manager is still looking at his hands. “I know you're not a fool.”

“Let's forget all about that contract,” my dad says. “As long as I get paid on time, that's all I care about.”

The theatre manager holds his breath as if he can't quite believe what my dad has just said. Then he gets up and shakes my dad's hand, pumping it up and down.

“You're all right, you are,” he says, producing a white envelope from his inside pocket. “Don't forget to report this on your tax return.”

They both laugh. The theatre manager leaves quickly, as though he's afraid my dad might change his mind.

My dad locks the lighting box after us and we walk down the narrow passage to the stairs. Sara comes towards us. She has changed out of her costume and into jeans and a dark red knit sweater. Her hair's pulled back in a ponytail; she still has beads of sweat on her forehead.

“Promise me you'll come. Stay just for one drink.”

My dad looks at me, it's my decision.

The wet cobblestones shine
in the streetlight. We walk with the actors. Before the performance they're always very serious. They hardly speak, but drink coffee and smoke cigarettes. Afterwards they laugh out loud, they laugh at absolutely everything.

The bartender greets us when he sees us come through the door.

“The actors are here,” he calls out. “Lock up your daughters.”

He starts pouring beers. An older man gets up and makes room for us. It's the least I can do, he says. We sit down at a table in the middle of the room. One of the actors is always telling stories or rude jokes or gossiping about the others.

I'm sitting next to my dad, drinking orange juice through a straw. I'm here with them. People at the other tables listen in. They would just love to sit here, too, I can tell from looking at them even though they try to hide it. Kim and Margrethe sit at the head of the table. They both used to be quite famous, my dad has told me. Margrethe is the oldest of the actors. I haven't seen any of her films, even though she has acted in quite a few. She drinks white wine; I can see traces of her red lipstick on her glass and on the cigarette she holds between the tips of her index and middle finger. In my mind I draw her; I draw the bar, the dark wood that stops halfway up the wall, the tables which all have cigarette burns. There are photos on the walls of people I don't recognize. They smile or raise their glass in a toast. At the bottom of the photographs little greetings have been written in black ink.

Kim falls out with Margrethe. Once again he has said something that makes her turn away and pretend that he isn't there. Kim gets up, pulls a chair over, and sits down next to me.

He plays the world-weary doctor who looks across the fields and talks about the city.

“Are you ready?” he asks, and takes three coins out of his pocket.

“Three Fly,” he calls this trick. Another one is called “Find the Lady.” He turns cigarettes into paper napkins; coins disappear and reappear under my juice bottle.

I hear the bell ring and I see my dad standing at the bar with the bell rope in his hand. I know this means he's buying a round. He takes the white envelope from his pocket. He asks if I want another juice; I shake my head. I need the bathroom and I'd like to go home, but I don't tell him that. I see the money come out of the envelope and disappear across the counter. I see beer glasses fill up. Schnapps and vodka. People pat my dad on the back.

When we get home,
my dad tips the rest of the money out of the envelope. There's hardly any left.

He looks at me. “You're wondering why I bought everyone in the bar a beer, aren't you? Why I bought drinks for people we don't know.”

I nod.

He squats down on his haunches in front of me. I'm fairly certain that I'm at school again.

“You can't make a living from being invisible,” my dad says. “That man in your comic, how does he earn his money?”

I'd never thought of that.

“No one gives him money for being invisible, do they?”

No, I'm pretty sure that they don't.

“I wish I could drive a car without a number plate, that my feet didn't leave footprints in the snow. But that's not possible. So you have to trust people. Not always and not unconditionally. But you have to trust that if they like you, then they'll do a lot to help you. And that's worth much more than the money which was in that envelope.”

I help my dad unfold the camping beds and we find our sleeping bags.

Our new apartment is the smallest we've ever lived in. One of the stagehands at the theatre knows the landlord and said he would have a word with him. The next day we moved in. When we need something, a jacket or a pair of shoes, we take it out of a suitcase and afterwards it goes back into the suitcase.

The walls in the apartment are sloping. My dad says that we can hear it if a bird lands on the roof. He can't stand upright. While he fries sausages, he leans to the right. While he drinks a cup of coffee and smokes a cigarette, he leans to the left. While he washes up, he leans backwards.