A Fairy Tale (13 page)

E
very Sunday we visit Sara and bring cakes. She lives in a small apartment, not far from the theatre. Sara and my dad drink coffee; Sara makes hot chocolate for me in a saucepan on the stove. My dad talks, Sara nods and smiles. On stage you can hear her all the way to the back of the auditorium and she doesn't even have to shout; on stage it's hard to take your eyes off her. But in the street and here, in the apartment, she's very small and practically transparent. Like some girls you meet on the sidewalk who'll always move, step right out into the bicycle lane if you just carry on walking.

We go for a walk in a park nearby. The weather is cold and we're wrapped up warm. We feed stale bread to the ducks. My dad and I play Hit the Swan, but Sara thinks it's mean. She takes his hand.

“I can't wait until the summer,” she says. “I can't wait until I can come here and eat ice cream.”

“Would you like an ice cream?”

“It's too cold, isn't it?”

“It's never too cold to eat ice cream.”

Sara and I wait on a bench while my dad goes to get us ice cream. Sara pulls her coat around her, moves a little closer to me.

“You're lucky,” she says.

We both look at my dad's back; he's walking up the path towards the exit.

“You're lucky you've got a dad like him.”

She keeps her gaze fixed on the gate he has just walked out of. Then she sinks into herself. I can feel her through my clothes.

When she sees my dad again, she comes alive, claps her hands. She rips the paper off her ice cream and laughs when it sticks to her bottom lip, frozen.

M
y dad is sitting behind the lighting desk. He looks at his watch and then puts his fingers back on the buttons in front of him.

Below us the auditorium is less than half full, as usual. The audience has long since stopped talking and coughing, but the curtain has yet to go up.

My dad checks his watch again, then he asks me to please go backstage to see what's going on.

I walk through the narrow passages that run along the auditorium, the ones the audience never sees. My dad calls them the theatre's arteries. They remind me of the strip club, they're dark and scary and the paint's peeling.

The actors and stagehands are standing outside the dressing rooms, talking to each other in hushed voices.

A door opens and the theatre manager appears.

“I don't know what we're going to do,” he says. “Why the hell did you have to go and . . .”

Kim's hands hang limply by his sides. “Do you want me to talk to her, perhaps I can . . .”

“I think you've said enough.”

“But everyone knows she screwed her way to all those film roles. That's what you did in those days.”

The theatre manager looks as if he's about to shout at him or possibly hit him. Then he heaves a resigned sigh and rummages around in his pockets for cigarettes. Waves of smoke waft under the low ceiling.

Sara squats down in front of me. She puts her arm around my shoulder and whispers into my ear. I look at her; she nods and gives me a little push. I go to the door, the actors fall silent; I can feel their eyes on me. One more step and I take hold of the door handle. Again I look at Sara; she smiles and nods. I enter, closing the door behind me.

Margrethe spins around and nearly throws a hairbrush at me, but stops in mid-movement. Her face is red, as though she has been trying to hold her breath. She has black stripes down her cheeks. She lets herself collapse into the chair in front of the dressing table mirror.

I sit down next to her.

“It's only theatre,” I say, the words Sara told me to say.

At first Margrethe looks at me in surprise, then she starts to laugh. She laughs until she begins to cough and then she laughs even harder.

“Yes, darling, it's only theatre.” She looks at herself in the mirror and lights a cigarette. “So, what do you think: should we do it?”

I nod.

“It's only theatre,” she repeats to herself while she lays out her makeup.

“The others are a bunch of assholes,” she says.

She removes the old makeup. Her hands work automatically.

“But then again, all actors are, or most of them, anyway.”

She dips cotton balls into a jar, removing layers of stage paint, briefly revealing naked skin before new layers are applied. She drips a bluish liquid into her eyes, blinks a couple of times. Then she smiles to herself in the mirror and turns to face me. In a very short amount of time she has a whole new face with no trace of tears.

I sit in row
three; Margrethe has said she would like to see me in the auditorium.

The first few times I saw the show, my dad asked for a ticket for me. Now we know there's no need.

Act One is long and boring. The actors smile and drink tea and look across a field which lies somewhere beyond the stage. Towards the end they argue a little, but still using impressive and clever words while they fling out their arms.

In the play Sara's name is Olga. Every time I see them perform, the light on her is a little brighter.

During the intermission I drink orange soda from the bar and I don't have to wait in line.

“Is that little boy alone in the theatre?” I hear someone say, but I ignore them.

After the intermission the
stage walls are dark grey and grimy. The family has lost all their money. The table in the middle of the room is dirty. The floor looks as if a thousand muddy boots have trodden on it. Now they live in a basement. The actors look sad and poor, but I don't quite believe them, they're hiding too many kilos hidden under their ragged clothes. Sara's the only one who looks like she knows what it means to go hungry. When she sits on the filthy bed and her back convulses in silent sobbing, I want to climb up on stage and put my arm around her.

I drink juice, my
dad plays pool, and the actors take turns patting me on the shoulder. Kim and Margrethe are sitting at the end of the table. After the show they walked down the street arm in arm. Now they look like old friends again. Kim says something that makes Margrethe laugh and cover her mouth with her hand; he spreads a deck of cards out in front of her.

“What you did today was impressive,” Sara says to me. “When things go well, actors drink a lot,” she says. “To celebrate. But when they play to empty houses, as we do now, then they drink even more. They argue and they drink. They scream and they shout.”

I hear a sharp bang when my dad hits a pool ball and it bumps into another ball. Sara looks into the air; I try to follow her gaze.

“I would've been happier working in a shoe shop,” she says. “Selling shoelaces and pressing the toes of people's shoes when they're not sure if the size is right.”

She shudders slightly as if she's cold, then she smiles and looks at my dad's back. He leans across the pool table and shoots another ball. I hear it hit the sides and I'm almost certain he pockets it.

“Do you think he'll win?” Sara asks.

“Yes,” I reply.

W
e move into an apartment a couple of floors further down. The old man who lived there has died; they found him in a chair in the middle of the living room. Next to him was an overflowing ashtray. The caretaker says that after the man lost his wife, he just sat in his chair smoking one cigarette after another. That was all he did. Once a week the grocer's delivery boy would turn up with a plastic bag containing a box of crispbread and four cartons of cigarettes. I think the caretaker must be exaggerating until I see the apartment. Every piece of furniture is covered with tiny burns. The walls are yellow and the smell of smoke is so overpowering it makes my eyes sting.

“We used to worry he'd fall asleep with a lighted cigarette and set fire to the whole building,” the caretaker says.

We leave the windows open for two days, we walk around the apartment with our coats on, we sleep in them. The smell of tobacco refuses to go away. My dad opens a bag of ground coffee and tips it out onto three plates: one he puts on the kitchen table, another on the windowsill, and the third on the floor in the hall. It's an old trick real estate agents use to sell properties, he says. Everyone likes the smell of coffee.

Only old people live in this building. We pass them on the stairs; at night we hear their televisions mumble. It won't be long before another apartment in the building becomes available, then we'll probably move again. I hope we can stay here. Just for a little while. Move from apartment to apartment; move whenever my dad feels like it without ever leaving the building.

Every time we leave
Sara's apartment, the sky has grown a little darker. One day we stay longer and eat with her. From then on we no longer come for coffee, but for dinner. My dad spends hours in her kitchen, preparing food that goes in and out of the oven. We have old-fashioned roast beef, we have lamb chops, borscht, and veal. After dinner, when the red wine bottle is empty, they drink coffee. I sit on the floor with my back against the bookcase as I draw them. I draw the table they sit at, the coffee pot, which my dad says is called a Madam Blå. I draw the ashtray and the smoke from a cigarette Sara hasn't quite managed to stub out. She laughs at something my dad says. My dad always makes her laugh. Otherwise I don't think I've seen her laugh. Yes, on stage, but that's because she has to, it says so in the papers that lie in front of my dad. And in the bar with the other actors. But she doesn't fool me. I've seen people slip on the ice in winter, get up with grazed palms, and laugh, No, they're fine, it's nothing.

I draw my dad as a zebra sipping coffee from a tiny china cup. I draw Sara as a lioness. I'm about to draw her mane when I remember that lionesses don't have manes.

“We deserve a little something with our coffee.” Sara walks over to the bookcase where I'm sitting. “I got this after last night's show.”

She takes a bottle from one of the shelves. Then she looks down at my sketchbook. My first thought is to hide it; my dad is the only person who has ever seen my drawings, and perhaps she'll get mad because I've drawn them as animals.

“Mind if I have a look?” she asks.

I hesitate before handing her the sketchbook.

“That's really good,” she says, and my dad beams with pride. “Why don't you try drawing us while we're on stage?”

I
'
ve a charcoal pencil in my hand. Not too hard or too soft. The red glow from the emergency exit sign lights up my paper. Should it become necessary, I can sharpen my pencil halfway through Act One. That's when Olga gets bad news and drops the teapot.

I draw the two Janus masks mounted above the stage, then I draw tables and chairs, the pitcher with water, and the display cabinet. I can feel my palms getting sweaty, as though someone is looking over my shoulder. I know I can draw dragons, trolls, strange animals whose shape I can decide. I'm good at buildings and trees with lots of leaves. I've drawn cowboys, but I always focus on their guns. Drawing real people is difficult. The actors on stage keep moving. They walk and talk, they fling out their arms before disappearing off stage. I close my eyes. Like a camera taking a picture. Then I draw them as they were. A single moment. The hand raised, the mouth open. I draw as much as I can remember before putting my pencil down.

The next day the actors stand in their usual positions and I carry on drawing. Raised eyebrows, palms open.

I draw six days in a row. Sunday is our day off. We go to Sara's for dinner. I don't look at the drawing; that would be cheating. And I think I'm also worried what I might find. On Monday I'm back in the theatre with my sketchbook, sketching in the glow from the emergency exit. I put the last few lines on the paper; the drawing is done. I don't look at it until the intermission. The stage might be a little too big. The folds in the curtain could be more accurate, but then again they change every night. Then I look at the actors. They look like people, but they're not. They stand far too still. Like stuffed animals, their eyes look like glass beads. I scrunch up the drawing, throw it into the garbage among the empty cigarette packets and plastic cups.

I tell my dad
I'm not feeling very well. He has his coat on; we're going to the theatre. I tell him not to worry about me, I just want to stay in bed, I'm tired. When he has gone I lie there staring at the ceiling. I hate that piece of paper. It's underneath me, as far under the bed as I could hide it.

My hands move under the blanket, draw lines in the ceiling. I try to stop.

The next evening I'm
back in the theatre with my sketchbook on my lap. I've made up my mind that it's the last time I'm going to draw. I no longer care about likeness; it's not as if anyone will ever get to see this drawing. I draw so hard that the pencil goes through the paper. So hard that the point snaps and I have to find my pencil sharpener. An older man turns around and looks at me, but I ignore him. I'm not drawing the actors; I'm only drawing their movements. The head is the last thing I draw; eyebrows, mouth, and eyes no longer matter. The table, the chairs, and the samovar, I know they're about to be knocked over soon and then they, too, will be in motion. I draw without looking at the paper, I draw through the whole of Act One and when we reach the interval, my wrist aches. During Act Two I just watch them talk. I don't want to draw any more, it's over. The easel my dad gave me, there must be another use for it. We could hang clothes on it.

I'm sitting on the
barstool drinking apple juice; the straw makes a slurping sound near the bottom of the bottle. My dad asks if he can please see my drawing. I hand him the sketchbook. He can look at it now and then neither he nor Sara will ever ask me to draw again. My dad puts down the sketchbook on the bar in front of him, his hand finds the beer glass, he empties it. He taps the ash off his cigarette without hitting the ashtray. Then he waves over the bartender and pushes the sketchbook towards him. Perhaps to teach me a lesson, like house training a puppy by pressing its head into its mess. The bartender looks at the drawing. He has tattoos on his forearms, a ship with tall masts and a naked lady. The tattoos have been made by someone who really knows how to draw. I bite my bottom lip and try not to cry.

The bartender looks up at me.

“Can I buy it?” he asks.

I nod; of course he can buy it. He can have it for free. He can tear it up and throw it away if that's what he wants.

“Please, would you write your name on it?”

I write
Peter
in the bottom right-hand corner. The bartender opens the till and takes out a banknote and puts it in front of me. Then he tears the drawing off my sketchbook with great care and puts it up on the mirror behind the bar.

My dad keeps pointing to the drawing for the rest of the evening.

He says, “My son did that.”

People stop, they look and smile. But no one laughs.

That night when we walk home, the banknote is in my pocket. I can feel it against my fingertips, the kind of thin, slightly stiff paper that can only be money. I know I'm never going to spend it.