A Fairy Tale (11 page)

M
y dad takes a bite of his crusty roll, drinks the last drop of coffee, and gets up.

“Do you want anything?”

I shake my head. He walks past a table with two young girls who look like they've been crying. My dad fills his cup with coffee from the Thermos on the table by the wall.

When we sat down in the hotel restaurant I was sure I must have stepped in something. Then I realized that it was the carpet that smelled of wet hand towels, dirty dogs, and cigarettes. My dad piles his plate high with bread rolls, a couple of slices of cheese, and some jam. I try to keep my eyes to myself. A man with a chunky silver chain around his neck sits at the neighbouring table. He has drawings on his fingers. His hair is black and cut very close to his scalp. When I asked my dad, he said the man was probably from Bulgaria or Romania. The man forms patterns with matchsticks on the table in front of him. He makes a star. When he has put down the last matchstick, he picks them all up again and begins a different pattern. He meets my gaze and I quickly look down at my plate.

My dad sits down again opposite me. He has spilled a little coffee in the saucer.

“What separates man from any other species,” he says, wiping the saucer with a paper napkin, “is his ability to adapt.”

I follow his gaze to a man in the corner. He's wearing a suit and tie. On the chair next to him lies a brown leather briefcase. The man's hair is smooth, with a part on the left. On one cheek he has a small cut from shaving. He reads his newspaper, hums to himself, and eats bread rolls.

My dad hands me two sugar lumps to suck.

T
here's a small cinema close to the hotel. The girl who sells tickets smiles at my dad and brings him coffee while we wait for the film to start.

We watch German, French, Russian, and Polish films.

Often I don't read the subtitles; I look at the screen and decide what they're talking about.

We must build a killer robot in the basement, Alexei.

Or,

When will the killer robot be ready, Alexei?

The robot is always just out of the shot, shining like silver and ready to attack.

There are five hot
dog stands near the hotel. My dad thinks it's important that we try them all, to find out who makes the best hot dog. You can't just eat one hot dog at each stand. You have to come back.

My dad has his hot dogs with everything. I don't like the strong mustard and the raw onions.

“He'll have everything but that,” my dad says to Ulla from Ulla's Hot Dog Stand, to Morten from Star Sausages, and to Svend from Svend's Snack Bar. Once we've been there a couple of times, they too know what “everything but that” means.

“You can't eat a good hot dog without getting your fingers sticky,” my dad says, ketchup at the corner of his mouth. “And not just your fingers; your hands should be covered in the stuff.”

Again I fall asleep
to sounds: the whistling of my dad's nostrils next to me in bed, noises from the street, cars braking hard, tires squealing against the wet tarmac. Drunken people chatting, arguing, shouting beneath our windows.

Every night I hear a couple of fights. The first few times they wake me up, and I go over to the window. I see the doorman from the strip club push a man so hard he goes flying over the hood of a parked car. That, too, has its own sound.

I learn to tell the difference between a police siren and the siren of an ambulance. The hotel also makes noises. Drunken people have a special way of walking and they're bad at whispering.

“How much?” they say. “How much did we agree on?”

I snuggle up close to my dad. When he scratches himself in his sleep, he ends up tickling me. The first few nights the sounds keep me awake; they're more alien and intrusive than in any of the other places we've lived before.

O
ne morning my dad says that the summer holidays are over, that it's time to go back to school.

“You're in Grade Two now. You should expect things to get a lot more difficult.”

There's a new subject on my timetable, History. We start with the Second World War. My dad says it's a good place to start.

We don't have a table, so we lie on the bed. While my dad talks I see roaring Messerschmitts leave trails of smoke across the ceiling of the hotel room.

On the wall I see Tiger Tanks appear over green hilltops; they're enormous and they plow up the grass. Yellow flames erupt from their cannons.

We spend a whole week on Hitler. We go to the library and look at photographs of Hitler giving a speech. Hitler raising his arm towards the sky, all his fingers pointing. Hitler patting a deer. My dad flicks to a new picture. It's grainy and at first I can't see what it's supposed to be; it looks like black shadows twisted together. They're human beings, my dad says. Then, suddenly, I can make out arms and legs. Naked bodies, as thin as the matchstick men I used to draw when I was little. I start to cry. My dad catches up with me on the sidewalk outside the library.

“There's a reason I showed you that,” he says, as he dries my cheeks. “When you see the world, when you really see it and you don't close your eyes like the man over there,” my dad points to a man across the street, “or that lady with her shopping bag. When you see things as they really are, you also have a responsibility. Then you have to do something.”

My dad takes my hand and we start walking.

“People saw Hitler,” he says. “They heard him speak. He was a great speaker. Do you remember the film we saw with him in it?”

I nod; we watched it on a small television with the librarian.

“He looked funny, didn't he? A small, posturing man.”

I couldn't help laughing when we saw it.

“But the people in that crowd, they saw hope. They loved him. Even though no one would admit it afterwards.”

We continue down the street. We go into the kiosk on the corner and I'm allowed to choose an ice cream, any one I like. I can only swallow a couple of bites.

I
'
m woken up by a scratching on the door to our hotel room.

It sounds like a mouse, tiny sharp teeth nibbling. I try to go back to sleep, but the noise persists. I tug at my dad's arm until he wakes up and I stand right behind him when he opens the door.

It takes a couple of seconds before I recognize the man from the hotel restaurant in the suit and white shirt. Now he looks as if he has been in a fight with wild dogs.

“I'm sorry,” the man says. “This is all wrong. I'm so very sorry.”

He scratches his head with the key.

“But this happens to be my room.”

“Which number is your room?”

“212.”

“This is 112, you want the next floor.”

The man stands there for a moment, swaying. Then he starts to walk down the corridor. After a couple of steps he bumps into the wall and collapses on the floor. When he has managed to get back on his feet, he continues to the next door and again tries to insert his key into the lock.

My dad puts on his trousers, lights a cigarette, and takes a couple of drags before he chucks it into a half-empty cup of coffee.

The man in the corridor is still trying to unlock the door. He's now closer to the wall than the keyhole. My dad takes him by the shoulders and steers him down the hall and up the stairs.

On the fifth step the man lies down and hugs his knees.

“We could always roll him up in a rug,” my dad says to me, and grins.

Then he gets the man back on his feet and pushes him in front of him. When we reach room 212, my dad takes the key from the man's hand and unlocks the door. The room is filled with bottles, big bottles that have had babies and made a lot of little bottles. In between lie densely written, scrunched-up sheets of paper. My dad opens the window to air out the room and helps the man into bed; he takes off his shoes and throws the blanket over him.

We wake up late
the next morning. The street below us is buzzing with cars and people. We walk to the bakery to buy breakfast, which we eat on one of the benches by the lakes that divide the city in two. When we've had enough, my dad takes out the bag of stale bread and we feed the ducks. Today we play Hit the Swan. It's a game we've invented because the swans think they're better than the other birds and because many of them hiss at us and demand more bread. For that reason we're allowed to throw stale bread at them. You get maximum points if you can deliver a soft underhand throw so that the bread lands and stays between the wings.

We walk back to the hotel and up to room 212. The door is open; the man is sitting on the bed. He's wearing a shirt and tie, but no trousers.

“Let's get you dressed,” my dad says, picking up his trousers from the floor and tossing them over to him.

It takes the man ten minutes to tie his shoelaces. He does what my dad tells him without protest, without saying very much; he brushes his teeth, splashes water on his face.

My dad looks in the man's wardrobe, rummages through his suitcase which, like the floor, is filled with crumpled notes.

“Do you have any other clothes?”

“I used to, but . . .”

“Not anymore?”

“No. I don't really know what happened to them.”

We walk down the street. A couple of times my dad has to grip the man by the shoulders and point him in the right direction. In daylight he looks even worse than last night. We reach a small dry cleaner's; the man behind the counter is talking on the telephone. His shirt sleeves are rolled up; on his forearm he has a tattoo of a lady in a bikini. He looks at the man in the filthy suit and carries on talking into the handset. I think he's hoping we'll get bored and leave, but we stay put until he hangs up.

“How long would it take you to clean a suit?” my dad asks.

“Next week at the earliest.” With his eyes he says:
Preferably never
.

My dad leans across the counter.

“I don't know this man very well. We just happen to be staying in the same hotel. But I know what it's like to be in trouble.”

The man behind the counter scratches the tattoo.

“This guy was sent over here by his boss in Jutland. He was to meet an important customer and come home with signatures on several contracts. But he runs into the wrong woman and ends up getting a beating in an alleyway. He has lost the contracts and most of his money. He has been drinking these past few days, drinking up the last of his money to get over it.”

While my dad speaks, I can see the man in the suit straighten up. He is starting to believe my dad's story.

“Now he's scared to go home to Jutland. And as for the meeting with the big customer . . . just take a look at him, he's not a pretty sight.”

The guy behind the counter nods. The suit will now take just over an hour to dry clean. We wait in the shop; I can see the man's naked knees stick out from behind the curtain. When the suit is done, my dad is told to put his wallet back in his pocket.

“This one's on the house.”

We leave the dry cleaner's. The man is wearing his suit; once again his shirt is white and freshly ironed. He walks down the street holding his head high. His suit gives off a little steam in the cold air.

W
hen we moved into the hotel room there were bags along all the walls. I played on the floor where hangers from the wardrobe became ships racing each other across the carpet.

My dad would say: “Be careful with that one,” pointing to a bag. “I think that's the one with the china.”

I wake up at
the sound of the door opening. My dad has been up early and yet another bag has gone. Slowly the room has been emptied. He has a comic for me and a pile of newspapers for himself.

We eat sandwiches and spill fried onions on the bed.

“I thought we'd get a bit more money for that stuff,” he says.

I no longer have to be careful where I play.

The walls are dark
red; the lights are hidden behind coloured sheets of glass or plastic palm trees. Outside the sun is shining, but it could be midnight in here.

My dad helps me up on the bar stool; my feet dangle high above the floor.

“You don't have to be a big guy to do this job,” the man behind the bar says. “The last thing I need is yet another dumb knucklehead pumped full of steroids. No shortage of those.”

Around us, chairs have been put upside down on the tables with their legs in the air. At the back of the room there's a small stage.

“You wouldn't believe how many guys I've had to fire. How many survive only a week or even just a single night. Men with big muscles, but tiny brains and even tinier dicks.”

Then he remembers that I'm here.

“Sorry,” he says. “What the hell, we're all boys.”

He puts a glass in front of me and fills it with orange juice.

“Sure you don't want some vodka in there?”

He laughs and is about to say something else when we hear the door open and footsteps. Two men spill in through the curtain. Their voices are slurred; they lean on each other for support.

The man behind the bar puts down his tea towel.

“Let's consider this your job interview. Can you get them out of here?”

My dad nods, takes a drag on his cigarette, and leaves it in the ashtray. He steps down from the bar stool and walks up to the men.

“Gentlemen, I'm afraid I'm going to have to disappoint you,” he says. “Unfortunately we're not open yet.”

“The door was open, so you have to be.” The man who is talking is standing with his legs apart and his chest puffed out.

“I'm very sorry.” My dad continues towards them with his arms out like a goalie ready to catch a ball. “If you want to look at naked ladies at this time of day, you need to go down to Istedgade. The girls down there take off all their clothes and give lap dances as well.”

The man stays where he is until my dad is only a metre away from him. Then his shoulders slump. The men follow my dad, who holds the curtain open for them.

“Come back tomorrow,” I hear him say. “You'll be more than welcome.”

The door closes behind them.

My dad takes his cigarette from the ashtray. The man behind the bar chuckles.

“I don't bloody believe it.”

He takes my dad's glass from the counter and tips the contents into the sink.

“Christ Almighty, you were born for this job. I think I can take a vacation now.”

He takes another bottle from the shelf. Sets out two small glasses and fills them to the brim. The liquid looks like apple juice.

“You wouldn't believe what I charge for this. One single glass and the bottle is paid for.”

They clink their glasses.

“Do you think you could tie your hair back?” the man asks. “Put some Brylcreem in it, brush it back?”

My dad nods.

“Then you've got yourself a job.” They shake hands on it. “I'll get you a dark suit, don't you worry about that.”

That first evening I
follow my dad to work. He smells of soap, and he's wearing his new suit.

One of the other bouncers is already standing outside the strip club, a big black man. The streetlights reflect in his bare scalp. He fills his suit completely; one wrong move and it would split.

“I'll take good care of your dad,” he says, and lifts me up so I dangle in the air. “Don't you worry about a thing. I'll take care of him.”

I'm sitting in the
windowsill looking down on the street. I can see one of my dad's shoulders, or sometimes his back, when he takes a couple steps out onto the sidewalk. I see people come and go, see taxis pull up in front of the strip club and men get out. My dad holds the door open for them. Other men come alone; they walk down the street in thick coats. Some are allowed in, others are told to move on.

A young couple with backpacks stop below my window. They stand in front of the hotel for a long time, looking from the number above the door back to the piece of paper the girl is holding in her hands. I can't hear what they're saying; their words are drowned out by the traffic. The young man shakes his head and they carry on down the street.

I keep my eyes on my dad. Whenever he disappears from sight, I start counting. I get to nineteen; I get to twenty-four. I lean out the window, but I still can't see him. When I get to thirty-two, I can see his elbow. Then more of him. He has one arm around a man's shoulder; his other hand around the man's wrist. My dad straightens out the knot of his tie. The man leans against my dad for a little while before he's sent down the street with a pat on the back.

The young couple returns; now the guy is in front, there's distance between them. Their backpacks appear to have grown heavier since the first time they were here; they enter the door to the hotel without speaking to each other.

I look at my dad. As long as I keep my eyes on him, nothing bad can happen.