A Fairy Tale (29 page)

I
t turns autumn while I sit on the train. The leaves lose their colour as I leave the city behind.

At the bus station the wind tears at my clothes.

I ask the bus driver to tell me when my stop is. When I mention the name of the road, he stares at me a little too long.

I walk up a gravel path with grass on either side. The building is single-storey, so I can see only the front from here. It's difficult to get an idea of how big it really is.

The gravel path leads up to two glass doors. When I get nearer, tiny scratches to the surface reveal that they're not made from glass but thick, transparent plastic.

Ring the bell
, says a small cardboard sign taped to the inside of the window. I press the bell. I think I can see movement inside. The lock buzzes.

I walk up to
the woman behind the counter and state my dad's name. She looks up. I tell her I'd like to visit my dad. She freezes, her hands on the computer's keyboard. I give her my real name, a name I haven't used for years. She carries on staring at me.

“I'll need to see some ID,” she says eventually.

I fumble in my pocket; I find my old health insurance card, the one I used when I still lived with Karin and Michael.

“Visiting hours are almost over, but I think we can make an exception.”

She opens a visitor's log and shows me where to sign in. Then she presses the intercom and asks a carer to come up to escort me.

She prepares a visitor's card for me.

“Don't take it off. Or we might decide to keep you.”

She smiles a tired smile at the little joke she has probably used many times before. Then her face darkens.

“I don't know when you last saw him.”

“A long time ago.”

“People who are admitted here are very sick.”

I wait on the
sofa and read an old newspaper. A carer throws open the door. He's in his mid-forties and weighs fifteen kilos too much. He announces that visiting hours are over and is about to add something when the woman behind the counter tells him who it is I've come to see. Then he goes quiet. Only for a moment, like a single clap of the hands. He nods for me to follow him.

The carer has a bald patch at the back of his head, a third eye that watches me while we walk down the long, white corridors. He holds the doors open for me until I've only just gotten through; he's already on his way to the next one. His rubber-soled clogs make a slurping sound against the linoleum. I think he hates me.

“You're his son?” he says, and it sounds like an accusation.

“Yes.”

“I haven't seen you before.”

“I haven't been here before.”

We walk through several locks where one door has to be closed before the next will open. It could be a prison except that everything is painted white and there are brightly coloured posters on the walls.

We pass a couple of carers and they nod to each other.

“Most of them haven't been here as long as I have,” says the man in front of me when we're alone again. “They don't remember what your dad was like when he'd just been admitted to this ward.”

We stop in front of a numbered door.

The carer finds a key.

“You mustn't give him anything. No lighters, no pens, no containers or glass bottles. No alcohol and no illegal substances,” he intones. Then he turns the key in the lock and pushes open the door.

The only light in the room is coming from the window under the ceiling. A tall, thin man sits on the bed; his hair is close-cropped. He's leaning slightly forwards. An undernourished soldier sleeping at his post.

“You have five minutes,” the carer says. “And the door must remain open.”

I hear his footsteps: they stop right outside the door.

The man on the bed looks up. His eyes shine in the dim light. They haven't grown bigger, but his face has grown smaller. He looks neither stunned nor surprised.

Then he gets up and pulls me into an embrace. I can feel his lips against my arm, sense the hospital smell in his clothing and skin.

“I knew you'd come,” he says in a croaky voice.

I pull the chair over and sit down opposite him.

“I've been waiting a long time. I knew I'd find you eventually.”

“You saw the picture in the newspaper?”

“I'd recognize my own son anywhere. Even if he has chosen a new name for himself.” He scratches the short stubble on his scalp. “I'm sorry I couldn't stop by the gallery and see your paintings. But circumstances prevented it.”

He smiles a pale smile out into the room.

It might be the shadows in his eye sockets, but I think his eyes are moist.

“I'd like to have seen you grow up,” he says. “Seen you grow. Now I'm no longer sure that anything mattered more.”

I hear three knocks on the door. The carer waits for me in the doorway.

As I get up, my dad grips my wrists, a swift movement I didn't see coming. I can feel every joint in his fingers.

“Promise me you'll come back,” he says.

I nod.

My dad swings his long legs up on the bed and lies down.

I watch my own
reflection in the window of the train.

I'm good at lying. I know I can do it and my voice won't even tremble.

But my face can't lie.

I was glad that I'd made plans to see Petra. I'd held on to that thought in the train to the hospital. I knew she'd be waiting for me with half a bottle of cognac. With arms and breasts and a depressed cat in the kitchen. But my face can't lie and she'll keep asking until I tell her.

I get off at
Hovedbanegården. I walk past the bars, past cars and buses and people. The light changes to green. There are potholes in the pavement under my feet and I decide to focus on that.

I press my ear against the door to Elsebeth's apartment, I listen to the silence to be sure that she isn't in the hallway or in the kitchen before I let myself in.

I lie on the bed, my hand under my head.

I wish I could sleep. A deep, dreamless slumber. I force my eyes shut. I open them again and stare at the ceiling.

I get dressed and
go outside. I walk and I keep on walking.

I walk until my calves ache, until my feet are flat and too big for my shoes. I walk in circles within the Ramparts. I buy a hot dog from a stand. I take a few bites before I throw it in the trash.

Just before eleven o'clock I stand in front of the sorting office. I walk in with the others; I find the supervisor and ask him if he needs me. He looks surprised and tells me that my shift isn't on tonight.

I ask him if they can use me on one of the other teams.

The supervisor looks as though it's the strangest question he has ever heard.

That night I work a shift where I know no one and nobody knows whether I always look like I do now.

One hour later my hands and eyes take over and I no longer have to think.

My new station buddy peers furtively at me when I pull yet another crate with letters off the conveyor belt. I must be three or four crates ahead of him.

Petra and I are
standing in the corner store. I put my arm around her shoulder; she turns around and looks at me.

The words I'd rehearsed, the ones I'd voiced in my head while I tried to go to sleep last night, are now impossible to utter.

“Kot doesn't like salmon,” I say.

“You're right.”

She puts the can back on the shelf.

J
ust over a week later, I'm back on the train.

Several times I almost get off. I'm tempted to rush out onto the platform, a little too quickly as though I hadn't paid for my ticket. Hasty footsteps on squashed chewing gum; buy some cigarettes and a newspaper at the newsstand and then head back to the city.

But I stay on the train. I wait for the bus, I get on, and I follow the bus stops with my eyes. This time I don't have to ask the bus driver for help.

The same carer as last time meets me at the counter.

We walk down corridors; I try to make a map in my head, try to remember when we turn right and when we turn left. Form an impression of how big this place is. It's big, I know that now.

The carer inserts the key into the lock.

“You mustn't give him anything. No lighters, no pens. No containers or glass bottles . . .”

He opens the door, is still reeling off his list, but stops. We're staring into an empty room. The carer takes a few steps across to the wardrobe and throws open the doors. It contains nothing but jeans and faded T-shirts. He rushes out into the corridor, looking to both sides, then he rips the radio from his belt. The clip makes a small snap.

“Resident 314 isn't in his room, should I sound the alarm?”

He speaks as loudly as he can without shouting. Then he listens to the voice down the other end, his facial expression going from controlled panic to irritation.

“I should've been told. No, just telling Poulsen isn't enough.”

He returns the radio to his belt and locks the door to my dad's room. He gestures for me to follow him.

He walks quickly, angrily, down several corridors, through several locks.

“Most staff haven't been here as long as I have,” he tells me again, slowing down so that I can come up beside him. “They weren't here when your dad was admitted. They can read his file, of course, but few of them bother.”

We carry on walking; the carer watches me out of the corner of his eye.

“I came over from Neurology; I'd just started here. Your dad had locked himself in the bathroom. We had a key, of course, but he'd managed to destroy the lock so we had to force the door. He'd smashed all the light bulbs in the ceiling so it was completely dark. He'd taken off his clothes and smeared soap all over himself. There was nothing to hold on to. We were four carers and yet he eluded us several times.”

We're on our way down a glass corridor when the carer stops, pulls down his sweater so I can see the scar. It starts right above his collarbone and stops somewhere under the sweater.

“He'd managed to rip a soap dish out of the wall. He used it as a weapon.”

We've reached two doors made from reinforced plastic.
Library
, says the sign. The carer holds open the door for me.

“Henrik still can't see properly out of one eye.”

Behind me the door slams shut. I follow the bookcases. It looks like a school library.

At a desk a man with a badge is putting lending slips back into some books. He looks at me until he notices my visitor's badge and carries on working.

I find my dad at a table in the small reading room. He has today's newspapers spread out in front of him.

“I'm not allowed to cut them,” he says, smiling at me. “So I hide the clippings in here.” He taps his temple.

A man behind my dad is busy taking books from the shelves. He studies them briefly before returning them to a new place.

“People can adapt to almost anything,” my dad says. “But that's not the same as saying they have to. Some things you should never adapt to. I miss beer. So very, very much. I miss the taste.”

The carer who was inserting the lending slips comes over to our table. In his hand he has a newspaper which he puts in front of my dad.

“It had fallen down behind —” Then he notices the man by the shelves. “Damn you, Holger.”

He rushes over to the man and snatches the book from his hand.

“But they're better this way.”

“Damn you, Holger.”

“The alphabet isn't —”

“Who the hell let you in here in the first place?”

Holger is escorted out of the library; we hear him knock books off the shelves along the way.

“It's hard to tell from looking at them.” My dad takes my hands in his. “They're getting much better at disguise. You'd think they didn't even recognize themselves.”

I can hear Holger fighting the two carers. I hear the thud of his body hitting the floor while they put him in a straitjacket.

“Like here at the hospital,” my dad says. “For most people this is just a job. They turn up in the morning, they earn their money, and then they go home. But a few of them are really the White Men. It's so hard to spot them. You have to study them a long time. You have to watch them when they think they're alone.”

The carer returns. He stops in front of the shelves where Holger had been standing and looks at them in despair.

“I don't know if this helps, but Holger spent hours doing that,” my dad says.

The carer starts pulling books out and putting them back in the right place while muttering curses under his breath.

P
etra puts peas on my plate.

“No one's forcing you to be my boyfriend,” she says.

“I'm not sleeping too well.”

“Maybe you should start painting again?”

I fill my mouth with potato, avoiding her eyes.

When the plates have been cleared and put in the sink, I borrow Petra's telephone. I call the sorting office and speak to an answering machine. I say that I thought I'd be feeling better. I really did. But I've got a stomach bug and I can't go to work.

If you're going to call in sick, you have to do it before noon so they have time to find a replacement. Perhaps I'll get a warning, but I don't care.

Today we leave Kot in the kitchen and close the door behind us.

I get a red rash around my mouth from Petra's pubic hair. She apologizes for not having shaved.

I throw the condom on the floor. She turns over on her side. I tell her this wasn't a one-act play. That the curtain might have come down, but only so the scenery can be changed for the next act.

We drink cognac from the bottle. I hold her, I hold her so tight I can see marks from my fingers on her skin.

Petra sleeps with her
hand under her head. I look at her naked shoulders. I grab her arm, shaking her lightly.

She mumbles in her sleep, turns towards me, rubs her eyes.

“There's something I have to tell you.”

She blinks a couple of times, looks at me quizzically. When I don't say anything else, she turns over, grunting a little.

Kot looks at me from the doorway. Its eyes reflect the streetlight.