A Fairy Tale (14 page)

A
couple of hours before the performance my dad and I are alone in the auditorium. My dad has a long wooden pole with a metal hook in his hands; he uses it to adjust the stage lights, nudging them a little to the right, a little to the left. He takes a couple of steps back, fiddles with them a little more before he's satisfied. He takes down some lights to replace the light bulb or attach new filters or gels. Gels are thin pieces of plastic that you put in front of the light bulb. They come in red, green, yellow, or blue. One night, during Kim's long monologue in Act One, my dad showed me how they work. It's when the country doctor says that life always happens elsewhere. My dad let me dim the yellow and red lights. Kim grew very pale, he looked like he'd eaten something that disagreed with him or had received very bad news. Kim kept on speaking; he still had many words to go.

“Why don't we try green?” my dad suggested.

He put my hand on another button; I was allowed to turn it up slowly. Kim looked as if he wouldn't get to the end of his speech before collapsing. Possibly never leave the stage alive.

My dad raises the
pole towards the stage light again; this time he's on tiptoes. “Why won't the damn thing . . .”

I sit with my feet dangling over the edge of the stage. I remind myself not to whistle. There are rules. You're not allowed to wear your coat on stage, either. Both bring you bad luck.

I hold up a gel in front of my eyes. The whole world turns blue. We're in the middle of a snowstorm.

The door at the end of the auditorium opens and the theatre manager comes running in. He sprints down through rows of seats. Polar bears are on his heels. Panting, he asks if my dad has heard the news, heard about the critic. My dad shakes his head, carries on working with the pole and the light in the ceiling. The theatre manager says that it might just be a rumour, but he has heard that Erik Schmidt is coming to review the show tonight. The theatre manager wipes his forehead with his shirt sleeve.

I find the red gel and hold it up to my eyes. That's better: The whole world is red now. We're surrounded by flames, no wonder the theatre manager is sweating. He says it's important that everything goes smoothly and jumps up and down on the spot to avoid his shoes catching fire. I feel sorry for him and find the green gel.

Now we're inside a humid jungle. Big birds with long crooked beaks perch in the treetops above us. The theatre manager's voice drowns out their chirping.

“Tonight everything must be perfect, it must be absolutely perfect,” he says, wiping his forehead with his sleeve; again he grins nervously and hurries back up the aisle. His feet sink into the soft forest floor. He reaches the door without being eaten by predators.

My dad turns on
the lighting desk one button at a time until the whole board is buzzing. If he's nervous, it doesn't show. He does everything he always does: he puts out the book, he flicks through the pages to make sure they're in the right order. The cigarette packet and the lighter are in place next to the ashtray.

I, too, have my comics ready on the floor beside me. I switch my flashlight on and off a couple of times.

My dad brings each lamp up and down to make sure that none of the bulbs have blown while he adjusted the lights.

Sara enters.

“With lots of luck for your final performance,” she says, and kisses my dad on the back of his neck.

“Is it really that bad?”

“Erik Schmidt either loves or hates a show. He's not going to like this one.”

Sara takes a cigarette from the packet on the table. “Everyone has been saying, ‘If only the critics would come, if only we got some reviews then the show would sell out . . .'”

My dad takes her hands in his. He usually has something to say in any situation, but now he's quiet.

“I only hope someone's prepared to sleep with him.” Sara laughs a little too loud. “Someone from the cast, the theatre manager, Kim, anyone. Otherwise we don't stand a chance. As long as he gets . . .”

Then she looks over at me. I get very busy rearranging my comics.

Sara turns in the doorway, forms her hands into a cone, and says in a stage whisper to my dad: “As long as he gets laid! Laid! Laid! Laid!”

I hear the sound of her heels down the narrow passage.

My dad checks the tape recorder, making sure the tape is in the right place. Then the door opens again and Kim enters. He wears a grey woollen vest over a baggy white shirt.

“The country doctor's here,” he says, and laughs. “Where's the patient?” His doctor's bag clinks as he sits down on the chair next to my dad. “I can't stand being in the dressing rooms. Everyone's going crazy. Margrethe is crying into her lap. Mikael is walking around in circles. I'm scared he might hit me if I should bump into him.”

Kim takes two beers out of the doctor's bag. He puts one in front of my dad and takes a cigarette from the packet on the table.

My dad has told me that people get nervous if you don't drink with them. They clink the bottoms of the beer bottles against each other.

“We're going to get slaughtered,” Kim says, taking a deep swig of his beer. “Completely slammed.” Then he smiles. “But if you know that failure is the only option, then there's really nothing to be scared of.”

Kim empties the first bottle and finds another one. When he has finished that, he grabs the handles of the doctor's bag, which still clinks.

I stay in the lighting box during the performance. It feels wrong to go down to the auditorium. My dad and I once saw a car crash and he told me that I must never rubberneck. That I should just carry on walking if I can't do anything to help. I'd really like to have seen the theatre critic, to know what someone like him looks like. Someone who can make grown people cry and sweat.

I read comics about the man who can make himself invisible. He fights a giant spider that throws road signs and cars at him. I can hear the actors on stage. Today they speak faster and louder than they usually do.

After the performance Sara returns to the lighting box. The other actors left without talking to each other; they were out the stage door before the last members of the audience had even left the theatre, she says.

My dad offers to walk her home, but she says she'll take a taxi while she still has a job.

The white envelopes lie
in a pile on the dining table.

My dad wanders around the apartment, takes a banknote out of his jacket pocket, and discovers another one that has hidden itself in his shirt pocket. A third one has been used as bookmark.

He shakes a shoe and I hear coins rattle. Then he borrows one of my pencils. He drinks coffee while he arranges the money in small piles, coins and notes separately. He writes numbers on a piece of paper in front of him. I know this math problem: How long can we manage before he needs to find another job?

A
rapping on the door wakes me up. Seconds later my dad appears in the doorway to my bedroom.

“Get dressed,” he says.

When I come out to the living room, the camp bed has been knocked over. My dad quickly pulls a sweater over his head and rushes over to the table, where he sweeps the money and envelopes into a carrier bag with his forearm. Some coins end up on the floor, but he doesn't pick them up.

“Don't forget your winter coat,” he says, as loudly as he can without raising his voice.

He grabs the clothes that lie nearest, throws them into the suitcase on the floor. I manage to add a couple of comics before he slams it shut.

My dad has opened the door to the back stairs when we hear Sara's voice.

“Wakey-wakey,” she calls out.

My dad freezes. Then he reverses back through the door and puts down the suitcase. He lets her in. Sara hasn't been to our apartment before, but we walked past it once and my dad pointed it out to her and told her we lived there. He quickly shut his mouth and I could tell from his face that he regretted it. Now Sara stands in our living room taking little steps on the spot. Her eyes are wide open, the cigarette in her mouth is unlit and bent.

“Read this,” she says, and hands my dad a crumpled newspaper.

He quickly skims the page, then gives her a big hug.

“But that's great,” he exclaims. “That's really great!”

He lights her cigarette. I sit down at the table with the newspaper. The review is written in a column in a difficult language full of words I don't understand.

When I get to Sara's name, I spell my way through it.

She portrays Olga with greater authority than I have seen in any previous production. That the director has chosen to use her as the driving force of the production is bordering on genius.

I carry on reading. I can tell from looking at Sara and my dad that it's a good review, that they haven't been slaughtered as Kim predicted. When his name appears, I try again, word by word, to make sense of what it says.

. . . Making the world-weary country doctor a profoundly alcoholic character is a brave decision. Rarely have I seen alcoholism depicted so realistically, from the shaking hands to the slow but deliberately clear diction. Nothing is overplayed, nothing is superfluous. When the doctor drinks from his teacup, the audience wonders how little tea and how much vodka it contains. When he puts it down, the audience crosses its fingers that he will find the table.

“What happened here?” Sara says, looking around the apartment, rubbing her eyes and nearly burning herself with the cigarette in the process. “Was there a break-in?”

She looks at the clothes that didn't make it into the suitcase, the bowl of porridge oats I ate last night — knocked over in the rush and now lying broken on the floor, the milk seeping down between the floorboards.

“Fire drill,” my dad says.

After that night's performance
we're dragged out of the lighting box. We've no choice, of course we're coming with them.

The beers are ready and waiting, the bartender grinning. The newspaper review has been put up on the wall.

The bell rings many times that night, many rounds are bought. Kim performs magic tricks not just for me, but for the whole bar. Margrethe sings a ballad; at first she doesn't want to, but the others persuade her. The song is a little rude and everyone laughs.

“The actors are celebrating tonight,” my dad says, helping me into my coat. We can still hear them shouting and laughing as we walk down the street.

T
he actors and the stagehands have gathered in the theatre foyer. We see them through the windows as we come down the street. We're late today: my dad stopped to buy new gels for the lamps and more light bulbs.

The actors look ill. My dad says they must have been drinking all night. Even Margrethe struggles to hide it under several layers of makeup. We're told we're waiting for the theatre manager.

Kim leans against my dad: “If he's going to pull the show, his timing is lousy.”

People in the street stop and stare at us before they move on.

The theatre manager rushes in. “I wanted to tell you in person to avoid any misunderstanding.”

“Speak up!” someone calls out.

The theatre manager coughs into his hand. “I'm afraid we're going to have to cancel tonight's show. Nothing terrible has happened, not really. Water damage in the basement. A pipe has burst in one the dressing rooms.”

I hear people say
A blessing in disguise
or
It's bad luck.

The theatre manager holds up his hand again to speak. “The good news is that the costumes weren't damaged. We should be able to re-open in a couple of days. The tickets are selling like hotcakes.”

People break up into small clusters.

Kim asks out into the room: “Am I the only one who's thirsty?”

That night Sara and
my dad go out for dinner.

Sara squats down in front of me; she says that I have to pick the restaurant. That I have to come with them or it won't be a good evening. I tell her I'd rather stay at home and do some drawing. I follow them down to the takeaway on the corner where we buy half a roast chicken and french fries for me. I wave to the taxi as they drive off.

I
eat raw porridge oats with milk while my dad is still asleep on the camp bed in the living room. With every mouthful I take, my spoon hits the side of the bowl a little harder. My dad sits up, rubs his eyes, and asks me if I want to see something exciting. He takes me to the theatre. From the top step we can see men in rubber boots that go all the way up to their waists. They splash through the grey water and have to shout at each other to drown out the sound of the trunk. There must be an elephant right outside, sucking up the water. It's very thirsty.

I'm drawing in
my
room. Through the door to the living room I can hear Sara talking to my dad. She's convinced that Kim caused the water damage. She has been thinking it over and now she's sure of it. My dad doesn't reply so she tries to convince him, telling him that Kim acted strangely in the bar that night. At first he was happy. Then he was on the verge of tears. Then he disappeared and was gone for hours. Then he came back and sat there nursing a whisky.

“It would make sense,” Sara says. “He's never gotten that much applause before. Not in the last fifteen years and not without him wearing a funny hat or dressing up in a monkey costume.”

My dad asks if I feel like going out. We could go to Langelinie Promenade, throw coins at the Little Mermaid statue and eat ice cream.

I tell them again that I'd rather stay at home and do some drawing.

My dad doesn't wake up until late the next day. He hums as he tidies up.

“Music,” he says, “let's have some music. We'll buy a record player, you can choose the colour. Or we'll just paint it.”

He drums solos with his fingers on the table.

“Are you sure you don't want to come?” he asks.

I hear his footsteps down the stairs; he takes them three at a time.

I take out a
tennis ball from one of the drawers. The block we live in is nice and very clean. No chewing gum wrappers or tricycles thrown into the hedge. No hopscotch lines on the courtyard floor. Only old people with walkers and signs saying “Watch out, steps.”

I throw the ball up against the wall and catch it. I say
Try again, throw higher, you can do it.
The second-floor window opens and a lady with white hair and lots of wrinkles sticks out her head. She looks around, searching for something. She blinks a couple of times before she spots me.

“You're not allowed to do that,” she says. “No ball games in the courtyard. Can't you read the sign?”

“No,” I reply. “I'm blind.”

She looks at me, baffled. “No ball games allowed.”

She withdraws her head, but leaves the window open. I'm sure she's sitting right behind it, ready and waiting in case I throw the ball again.