A Fairy Tale (10 page)

T
he old lady leans on my arm as we walk down the stairs. The car is parked in front of the house; my dad stands next to it, waiting for us. He's wearing a brown suit the old lady has lent him. It smelled of mothballs when he put it on. Underneath it he has a vest and a tie. He has shaved and smoothed back his hair with soap. He looks like a man who has stepped out of an old photograph.

My dad opens the car door and helps the old lady in. Then he rushes around the car to open the other door for me.

I sit in the back next to the old lady. She wears a hat with a veil that covers most of her face. She could easily appear in the same photo as my dad. I wear long trousers and a freshly ironed T-shirt. We've dabbed the scuffed leather on my shoes with a black marker.

We drive down the avenue. Here, in daylight, the car's interior of dark wood and leather makes it look like a small sitting room.

We reach a country lane; the old lady puts her hat on the seat between us.

“My mother used to say that a lady never takes off her hat, be it in church or in the smallest room. She was buried with hers on.” The old lady smoothes the veil. “I've always found hats to be terribly itchy.”

The country lane turns into tarmac; we're nearing the town. My dad drives smoothly in the traffic. Only rarely are we stopped by a red light. People turn around to look at the black car, some wave.

“I hope you can find it,” the old lady says. “I know my description wasn't very accurate. It's been years since I was last there.”

My dad smiles to her in the rear-view mirror.

“If it's still there, then I'll find it, don't you worry.”

I believe him. My dad once told me about a deer mouse that lives in Wyoming. It's no bigger than the nail on my little finger, but it can travel several days' journey away from its home. The equivalent of 160 kilometres for a human being. And yet it always finds its way back. It needs no signs, never has to ask for directions. It always finds its way home. It's always been the exact opposite for my dad and me.

The speakers in the car crackle; my dad turns the big shiny metal knob on the radio. He keeps turning it past human voices and guitar playing until he finds something he likes.

We leave the town to the sound of a trumpet solo. We continue along the road past yellow clover fields and churches.

The engine lets out a little grunt when my dad turns off the ignition.

“Does this look familiar?” he asks.

We've left the main road and are now in a gravel parking lot surrounded by trees. The old lady looks out the window.

“Yes,” she says, sounding as if she can't quite believe it. “Yes . . . this is it.”

The old lady puts on her hat and lets the veil fall to cover her face. My dad opens the car door; I can hear the sea. From the parking lot we walk down a narrow path until we reach a half-timbered house in yellow brick. People sit outside at tables with white tablecloths; their knives and forks sparkle in the sun. They turn their heads, their eyes flit from me to my dad in the brown suit and then linger a little too long on the old lady. Then they quickly look down at their food.

A waiter shows us to a table somewhat apart from the others. He fixes a white fabric tablecloth to our table with pegs which my dad says are made from silver. The menus we're given are bound in soft ox leather.

We eat sandwiches, but not the kind you'd put in a packed lunch, the filling squeezed in between a slice of cucumber and half a tomato. Here the fish fillet covers the whole bread slice and the prawns fight for space on top of it, pushing each other out of the way and nearly toppling off the plate in the process. My dad drinks his beer in large mouthfuls, the old lady sips hers and wipes the rim of the glass with her napkin. They toast each other with schnapps.

I can feel people looking at us while we eat. When I catch their eyes, they quickly avert theirs. Slowly they all turn away until we're surrounded by people's backs.

“We used to come here in the summer,” the old lady says. “Every summer. I didn't look quite like this back then. It's gotten worse with age.”

She dabs her lips with the napkin.

“In those days I never knew why people stared. I thought people always looked at each other like that. I used to stare back at them in the same manner until my father told me not to. I didn't understand why.”

For dessert I have chocolate mousse with fresh raspberries. My dad and the old lady drink coffee from small cups. We can't see the sea from here, but when the wind changes direction, we can smell seaweed and salt water. The seagulls fly high above us.

The old lady keeps
nodding off on the way home. Then she straightens up in her seat.

“I thought if only I got to see the garden, then that would be enough . . .” she says. “But today . . . I so enjoyed today.”

I can make out her lips under the veil. Now I know what she looks like when she smiles.

W
e're sitting in the library; the old lady in the armchair, me on the chair beside the door.

“We made a deal,” she says. “I'm afraid that if we put it off for much longer, I won't be able to keep my side of it.”

She takes a tiny sip of water from her glass, barely enough to moisten her lips.

“Today I'm going to tell you a story. Pass it on to you before it disappears. It's up to you whether or not you believe it. That's less important.”

She looks at me; she wants to be sure she has my full attention.

“My father was an old man when he built this house, not much younger than I am now. You're too young to protest, fortunately. I know I'm old. Like milk that has been left in the fridge for too long. It has gone off. But this story isn't about me.”

She leans back in her chair. Puts her hands in her lap.

“My father was apprenticed to a watchmaker. On the day he finished his apprenticeship, he boarded a ship to America. Several passengers fell ill. Many didn't survive. When my father went ashore he was yellow all over. Thin and yellow. He walked the streets in the new country, but he couldn't find a job and he deteriorated even further. He was almost dead when he met a salesman from Smith & Wesson.

“The man said he needed someone like my dad. He even paid his train fare to Massachusetts, where Smith & Wesson had their factory. They made firearms and they quickly saw how skilled my father was with his hands. Don't forget he was a watchmaker and used to working with tiny pieces of metal under a magnifying glass.

“He worked for them for ten years. By that point, he'd invented his own rifle. It was called the Johnson — that was how they pronounced his surname. The rifle was very expensive, but it could shoot further and with greater accuracy than any rifle they'd ever seen. For more than thirty years he made rifles for people who wanted to shoot bison. Or at least that was what they said. ‘Shoot bison' — even though more often they shot Indians. The bullets in a Johnson rifle weren't as big as in many other guns. A buffalo wouldn't necessarily have died had it been hit, but the bullet would go straight through a human being. It had become a rifle for shooting people. My father became a very rich man. But as he got older, he grew very troubled; he knew what his rifles had been used for. How terribly good and how terribly accurate they had been.”

The old lady takes a couple of deep breaths, closes her eyes. The room has grown dark. For a moment I wonder if she has fallen asleep.

Her voice is hoarse when she resumes her story.

“First my father moved to the East Coast, but it wasn't far enough. At night he could still hear the souls of the Indians in the wind. So he moved back to Denmark and built this house, a house like they build in America. He had the cladding brought over from Sweden by ferry. Not one nail was hammered into place without his watching it being done. When he had lived here a couple of years, the housekeeper bore his child. That child was me. Possibly in another attempt to confuse the spirits.”

While she was speaking she fetched tiny bits of her story from the ceiling; now she looks straight at me.

“It might sound strange. But that was my father's intention. To confuse the spirits. The spirits of the Indians. Trap them between the walls in rooms with no doors. That's why the house is the way it is. It's an old tradition from before we stopped seeing the things we don't understand. Your father knows what I'm talking about. Your father is a very wise man, never forget that. No matter what people say. I've a drawer filled with clippings, articles he has written to magazines and newspapers. He didn't always cut hedges. But that's not my story and I'm not the person to tell it. It's your father's and yours. Now you know almost everything there is to know about the house.”

T
he old lady leans on me; we follow the trail of decapitated flowers from the bottom of the steps, across the lawn and down to the first apple and pear trees. There my dad is waiting for us with a rucksack over his shoulder. This morning he filled it with bottles of fruit punch and rolls the old lady had baked.

“Provisions,” he declared. “We'll need them.”

My dad pulls branches aside and shows us the start of the path he has spent the summer clearing.

Again the old lady takes my arm and we walk in between the trees. The path is about five feet wide; it winds around bushes with white, yellow, and red flowers. The earth underfoot is uneven and knobbly.

“My garden!” the old lady exclaims.

We reach a wooden bench cleared of branches and trailing plants.

“Would you like to sit down for a moment?” my dad asks.

“Not yet.”

With her index finger she traces the grooves of letters carved into the back of the bench. They've almost disappeared and are illegible. They make her smile. Then she walks on, she no longer needs my arm, soon she's the one leading the way. She stops only to enjoy the sight of a plant or a bush or wildflowers clinging to a tree trunk.

A rusty child's bicycle hangs in the air, lifted up by the branches that envelop it.

“So that's what happened to it,” the old lady laughs.

“I couldn't make myself take it down,” my dad says.

We reach a clearing
between the trees. I don't know for how long we've walked, an hour, maybe more. My dad takes a picnic blanket from the rucksack and spreads it across a tree stump for the old lady to sit on. My dad and I sit on the forest floor. He finds the fruit punch and the rolls. Some are filled with spiced meatloaf, others with mature cheese. When I take the first bite, I realize how hungry I am.

The old lady nibbles her roll and drinks only tiny sips of her fruit punch. I have a pee behind a tree when I've finished eating; my dad helps the old lady to her feet and we walk on.

First I hear a light tapping on the leaves above our heads. Then the rain breaks through the treetops.

“We can shelter over here,” my dad says. I hurry under the tree.

The old lady finds a spot on the path, a spot with a clear view of the sky. She stands there while the rain washes down on her, looks up at the sky and laughs with her mouth open.

“Summer rain,” she says, looking at us with rainwater in her eyes. “Feel how warm it is.” Her dress clings to her body. “Today's the last day of summer. Autumn starts tomorrow. You'll see if I'm right.”

When the rain is nothing but a light drizzle, we move on. The garden smells of warm earth and sweet flowers.

“My father brought seeds home with him,” the old lady says. Her voice is laboured, but she carries on walking. “Others he had sent from South America, Africa, and Australia. People said they couldn't grow here. That they'd never survive the Danish climate. He just laughed at them.”

We pass a small bird bath which my dad has cleared. The old lady leans on it.

“The seeds my father sowed came from plants older than mankind. They weren't cultivated by a botanist. They didn't come from plants that just looked pretty or smelled nice, but from plants that refused to die. Kill rather than be killed.”

The old lady takes a deep breath and carries on walking. The shadows have grown longer.

On the way back to the house, the path seems narrower. I'm convinced that the trees have started growing again, that they're closing up the path behind us.

My dad holds the branches back; we step out behind the last bush and we're back on the lawn. The sun is setting behind the house in red and orange hues. Today all three of us have been explorers.

The old lady smiles at me. Her leather shoes are muddy, her dress is still wet from the rain, and she sways slightly. The exertion seems to have made her light-headed.

“Thank you,” she says. “I . . . thank you.”

She presses my dad's hand, gives us both a peck on the cheek, then says she wants to go inside for a lie-down.

My dad sits on the terrace. He looks across the garden while he smokes a cigarette. I fetch him a beer from the kitchen; he drinks it without taking his eyes off all the greenery in front of us. I've never seen him so content.

We shower on the
first floor. I scrub my dad's back with a coarse sponge. His neck and shoulders are covered in aphids. He checks me carefully for ticks.

My dad prepares a big plate of open sandwiches: liver pâté, pastrami and meat jelly, cheese with bell pepper. He makes coffee on the stove. When the table is set for three, he asks me to fetch the old lady who, he says, would probably like to join us.

I find her in the armchair in the drawing room. She sits very still; she's still wearing her summer dress. At first I think she's asleep. I take a couple of steps into the room, and then I'm sure that she won't wake up again.

I'm not scared, maybe because she's smiling.

W
e walk from room to room. My dad fills plastic bags with the old lady's things. He takes a book from the bookcase; behind it lies a wad of banknotes. He opens the wardrobe in the old lady's bedroom, takes out a broad-brimmed hat which he empties of gold jewellery. In the drawing room he takes porcelain figurines from the windowsill. Three dogs playing with a ball, a small shepherdess. He wraps them in towels. He takes a painting from the wall, an oil painting in a good frame. He reads the back of the canvas, looks over at me before he puts it down. He sits down on the sofa next to me and takes my hand.

“I don't want you to think that we're nicking stuff.”

My cheeks are wet.

“When you own a house like this one, with a garden, yes, and a car. And books. The books on the bookcases alone. Then you always have a lot of relations. Even if you never see them.”

I can't stop sobbing, he holds me tight. I try not to look at the old lady in the armchair a few metres away from us.

“‘Give them a day or two,' she would say, ‘and they'll start ripping up the floorboards. Looking for the X that marks the spot on the treasure map.' She would have wanted us to take what we could.”

My dad cups my head in his hands, looks into my eyes.

“You made her very happy,” he says. “You made her incredibly happy.”

We continue through the house. It's like working your way down a shopping list. My eyes are still wet; I wipe them on my sleeve. I've never wanted to stay in a place as much as this. We could smash all the clocks. Break every mirror so the old lady would never have to look at herself. We could stay here until my hair was just as long as my dad's, until I could grow a beard like his. We could drive around in the old black car, go shopping, but never buy a newspaper. No one would ever find us here. This is the first place we've lived where I haven't been woken up by my dad's nightmares.

The engine growls;
the
trunk is stuffed with our belongings, new and old.

We're back in the city today. It's just as big and noisy as when we first arrived. My dad parks the car beneath a sign with luminous red letters. The hotel is squashed in between a bar with dark windows and what my dad says is a strip club. He carries the suitcases into reception, hits the bell. We wait a long time. I stare at the carpet; the pattern is hidden under several layers of dirt.

Now I'm sitting on
the bed. I'm alone. My dad has gone to take back the car. It'll be hours before he returns on the butcher's bike. The suitcase lies unopened next to me. I can hear noises from the street, from the other rooms. New sounds. Our new home.