The Merman (3 page)

There was a small clump of trees over to the left. His cap was hanging in a fork in the branches.

‘Robert?'

No reply. Just the sound of the wind that had started to blow, bringing with it the smells from the sea.

I continued through a thicket of juniper bushes. For the first time I noticed how cold it was. I had left my jacket in the common room. Through the window I had seen them dragging him off, towards the gym: Peder, Ola and the trailers; I'd seen how he was trying to resist in absolute terror, I dropped my books on the floor right then and there and raced towards the doors. Someone grabbed hold of me by the exit, I couldn't remember who it was, somebody who
wanted to stop me helping him, but somehow I broke free, ran in the opposite direction down the corridor and got out through the Year Eight door. By that time I couldn't see him anywhere.

‘Robert? Where are you?'

A slow movement just behind me. But when I turned round, there was no one there. Only a lone crow flying off between the trees.

‘Robert!' I shouted. ‘Can you hear me?'

Thirty metres away was the fence that marked the western boundary of the school grounds. There were only fields and gravel tracks on the other side, leading down to the sea. I leaned against a tree trunk, shut my eyes and listened.

You're a witness to this, Ironing Board, if any of my mates ask. Gerard did it,you'll say. Nobody believed he'd dare, but he actually did it. He's crazy!

The plastic had melted into the flesh. Its stomach had burst, guts had come out – intestines, I think. Peder had looked away in disgust. There was a strange glow coming from its hindquarters. Gerard, that sick bastard, tried to light his cigarette on the body. ‘Can you feel it?' he asked, ‘it's warmer now. I was fucking freezing before. It's better now.'

Eight months had passed since then, and suddenly, today, they had got it into their heads that I had blabbed and decided to take their revenge out on my brother. I didn't understand any of it. Somebody else must have seen them by the newsagent's kiosk that night. That was the only explanation. The question was, why hadn't they come forward until now?

‘Here he is, Ironing Board!'

The voice came from the other direction, beyond some juniper bushes... Robert was squatting with his face turned towards the ground. Blood was dripping from his nose. His eyes were shut and he looked like he was sleeping. His trousers had been pulled down and they were wet; he had wet himself out of fear. They had stuffed things into his pants: pine cones, twigs, pages ripped out of his maths book. There were pine needles and grass sticking out of
his nostrils and mouth, and a cigarette in one ear. Four lads from the trailer were standing round him in a semicircle. Behind were Ola and Peder.

‘What the hell have you done?' I asked. It must have sounded ridiculous, because at the same time I was relieved they hadn't had a chance to do anything worse. It was nothing personal. It was me they wanted to get at, and the easiest way to get at me was through Robert.

‘Does it feel better now, you fucking mong?' someone asked, nudging him with their trainers. ‘Get up! God, he's disgusting. Totally pissed himself'

‘This is because you snitched on Gerard. Hope you get this into your head, Ironing Board. It's your fault your brother's pissed his pants.'

I recognised him from the games room, where Gerard would hold court during free periods. A big lad in Year Seven. Robert had pointed him out once, he was one of the ones who was always nasty to him. I wondered where he had been when they burnt the cat alive. I couldn't recall.

When we started secondary school we were given a leaflet about what to do in situations like this:
When pupils are treated badly by others: contact the school welfare officer, teachers or head of year
. I remember how I'd just laughed at that. That would have just made everything ten times worse.
Tell your parents if you are unable to contact the school administration yourself
. Some words bear no relation to reality. And it doesn't enter other people's realm of consciousness that someone could have a mother and father like mine.

I put a hand under Robert's chin and gingerly raised his head. They had drawn things in ink on his cheeks. A cock on one, a swastika on the other. They'd written ‘mong boy' on his forehead. He still had his eyes shut, and I could understand. Why should he look out onto such a vile world?

‘It's my fault,' I whispered. ‘Forgive me, Robert. It's me they wanted to get at.'

‘Doesn't he look nice?' One of the lads gave him a scratch behind the ear as if he were an animal, maybe a dog. He was still wearing
his glasses. The plaster on the left side that I had stuck on there was black with dirt. One of the arms was loose, but it could be mended. That's what I was thinking about: practical things. How it was better in any case than if the lenses were broken or if they had chucked them into the woods. It could take several weeks f or the school nurse to get hold of new ones, and during that time he wouldn't be able to see and would get even further behind in his lessons.

‘If there's a beginning then there is an ending
,' I whispered,
‘and the ending is always better
.'

I crouched down and put my arms round him, exactly the way I used to do when he was little. He shivered slightly, as if he were cold. I could hear his heart fluttering in his chest, like a terrified little bird.
‘There is a beginning, but you don't need to worry about that. It's the end that counts, because that's where a new, better story begins
.'

Maybe it was stupid of me to whisper to him. In the animal kingdom, a simple sound or movement from the prey is sufficient for the slaughter to begin.

‘Move it, Ironing Board. He hasn't finished eating his lunch.'

That was Peder. I'd sort of tried to forget he and Ola were there. And that Gerard was probably pulling the strings behind the scenes. He didn't even need to be there in person; he issued orders to the others, who carried them out to the letter. Or maybe it was Peder's own idea – something he was doing to get on his boss's good side?

‘That's what happens when people blab, Ironing Board.'

‘I didn't blab!'

‘Sure. But how many people were actually there? Us and Gerard and then the old lady in the newsagent's, but she couldn't see anything from where she was.'

He turned to Robert and tried to imitate Gerard's friendly psychopath voice:

‘We told your sister to be a witness and say what she'd seen if somebody didn't believe us. And of course what we meant was if
one of the lads at school doubted us, not some fucking teacher or a cop. But your stupid cow of a sister must have misunderstood everything.'

The trailers appeared unsure what they should do. Their energy was in the process of ebbing away. Someone needed to act to make things start to happen again. Ola tore up a handful of grass and started stuffing it into my brother's mouth. I tried to cover his face, but someone grabbed me by the hair and dragged me off along the woodland path.

‘Have you seen his disgusting scaly fingers, it looks like he's got fucking leprosy. Eat up some more hay, you goddamned donkey. This is because your sister blabbed... ' They prised open his face and shoved more grass into his mouth and nose, I could hear him spluttering, heard his gag reflex, and knew I couldn't leave him in the lurch again. I screamed, or at any rate I heard something distantly reminiscent of my own voice, I scratched at the hands that were tearing at my hair, turned round so I ended up on my belly. Now there were several hands pulling at my hair. Someone must have come over to help out. I didn't say anything; dirt and pine needles were poking into my eyes, I shut my eyes and lashed out until someone caught hold of my arms and pinned them up against my back.

‘Lie still now, you little cunt.' And then there were hands tearing off my trousers and knickers, ripping them off as if pain had no meaning, as if I were something to which they could do whatever they wanted because I wasn't really alive, hands trying to stuff something into my arse without even bothering to spread my bum cheeks apart, just shoving something sharp and spiny, and I hoped it wouldn't break apart in there.

My vision was starting to turn black. When I could see again, they had turned me round a hundred and eighty degrees so I could see my brother where he was sitting hunched up on the path, five metres behind me, with grass sticking out of his mouth, nose and ears, like a strange scarecrow.

‘Now go and feed your sister. Give her some fresh straw. She needs to have a reward so she won't blab any more in the future. Then she can go. But we're keeping you. It feels like we're not finished with you yet... '

It was the commander who had turned up at last: Gerard had sort of materialised among the trees in an unbuttoned leather jacket, trainers with the laces undone, gloves on and his friendly psychopath's smile. The trailers led my brother over to me, where I lay on my front with my arms pinned against my back. He screwed up his eyes for all he was worth as he knelt down in front of me.

‘It doesn't matter,' I said. ‘I promise. Do what they say, Robert.'

And then I turned to the boss:

‘There must be some way to solve this, mustn't there?'

‘I can't really hear what you're saying.'

‘I said, there must be some way to solve... for you to let him go.'

‘Still can't hear. Can you speak up?'

‘How much do you want to leave us alone? I can get hold of some money.'

He lit a cigarette and exhaled smoke through his nostrils, like two grey tusks.

‘That depends. How much do you value your brother? What do you reckon is a fair price? Fifteen hundred?'

‘You can have as much as you want. Just so long as you leave him alone.'

‘To be honest, I don't think he's worth fifteen hundred. You can haggle him down a bit. Let's say nine hundred... or a thousand kronor. Then we'll leave him alone for the rest of term. So the next question is, when can you pay?'

I could no longer speak and just stared down at the ground, the green moss and the fallen leaves.

‘Did I hear one week? Then we have an agreement. Next Friday. Otherwise, he'll basically be mine, your little brother. Sort of like a security deposit.'

‘Here, have a little feed,' I heard Peder hiss to my brother, ‘and go and feed your cow of a sister until she's right full up. She wants to, she said so herself. Come on, you fucking spacker!'

Tears ran down his cheeks as they placed a fistful of grass in his hand. He held it out towards me, keeping his eyes shut. But I did not flinch. There was one way to get out of this, for them to leave us alone, at least for the time being. And so, like a confused animal, I began to eat grass and pine needles out of my brother's outstretched hand.

T
he sun was lower in the sky now; in a few hours it would be dark. Nothing would separate the sea from the sky. Trawl nets lay spread out to dry on the grassy slope behind us. Hawsers and anchor chains rolled up like skeletons of gigantic sea serpents. Music was coming from one of the fisherman's huts. A truck drove past on Glumstensvägen, beeped at someone, and disappeared in a cloud of exhaust fumes. The smell of fish permeated the sea air. It was constantly there in the background, like the main ingredient in all the other smells.

We each sat on our own bench and looked out over the dock. Herring gulls crouched in an endless row along the pier. On the quayside there were small piles of ice that had fallen out of the fish crates when they had been offloaded from the boats that morning. A wild mink slid into the water over by the boat launch.

‘How are things?' I asked my brother.

All right. How are you doing?'

‘Okay.'

He blushed. Removed his glasses and then put them back on; a nervous gesture I'd seen him perform thousands of times before.

‘I saw what they tried to do to you. Stuff a pine cone up there... how sick can people be?'

‘It's all right. It didn't start bleeding, at any rate. Did you see the mink over there?'

He watched it without much interest as it swam some way beyond the quay, with its head above the surface like a little periscope, much more graceful in the water than you could have imagined.

‘So what have we actually done to them, Gerard and those guys?'

‘I happened to see when they set fire to a cat last winter. And now they've got it into their heads that I snitched on them.'

‘Well, did you?'

‘Nah.'

‘And what has it got to do with me?'

‘Not a thing. Other than the fact you happen to be my brother.' The waves struck against the breakers in front of the outer dock. If I turned to face south I could see the old lighthouse, which whisked its light over the harbour at night. Other than the mink and the gulls, there was not another living soul to be seen. The music from the hut had stopped. Oddly, there was no wind.

‘That's not your fault, Nella. If they didn't have a reason they would have made one up. If you're sick enough to set fire to a cat, you can come up with anything. Do you think Dad would have been able to do something if he'd been here?'

My little brother has a load of over-inflated hopes concerning our father. Maybe because he doesn't know him as well as I do. It would soon be a year since the last time we'd seen him. And when you're twelve, going on thirteen in December, that's long enough to start to forget certain things and remember others that do not completely correspond to reality.

‘I'm sorry to disappoint you, but no.'

‘Well, I'm sure he could do something. When he's back home I'll tell him everything, I'll tell him their names and where they live, and I promise you, he'll sort them out. He'll bash them so hard they won't dare to breathe a word again.'