A Fairy Tale (30 page)

T
he woman in front of me has small mother-of-pearl studs in her ears. There's a row of holes for many more earrings in her left ear.

“Any questions, just ask,” she says.

We're sitting in her office with stacks of medical books on the desk between us. Her name and title, Consultant, is displayed on a small sign next to the telephone. “I'll try to explain if there's anything you don't understand.”

“What are the chances that my dad will ever be discharged?”

She looks at me long and hard, summing me up. Then she pushes a strand of blonde hair behind her ear.

“I can tell you that he's improving. But I don't want to give you false hope. He's better now than he was three years ago. Much better than he was five years ago . . .”

“Will he ever be discharged?”

She blinks a couple of times.

“I need a cigarette,” she says.

I follow her into one of the common rooms. She unlocks a glass door and we step out into a small courtyard with brick walls on all sides.

She takes a long menthol cigarette from a packet; I hand her my lighter. She takes a couple of drags.

“There's no way he'll ever be discharged. I'm not supposed to tell you that. We should always hold out hope to patients and their next of kin. It's part of the treatment. Hope can be just as important as medicine.” She burns a round hole in the leaf of a birch in a big pot. “I could recommend it. But there would be no point. His file would land on the desk of someone higher up. Alarm bells would ring.” She taps the ash into the pot.

“I'd like to take him outside, go for a walk with him.”

“You could always bring him out here.”

“Then I prefer the library.”

She nods.

I complete several copies
of the forms. I agree by my signature to take responsibility for my dad.

We get stale bread for the birds from the hospital kitchen.

A carer unlocks the door for us. My dad takes his first tentative steps outside; the gravel crunches under his feet.

He looks over his shoulder, up at the dark windows.

“Do you think they're watching us?” I ask.

“Of course they are.”

We walk across the lawn. We're not allowed to step onto the sidewalk because then we're no longer on hospital property.

We sit down on a bench along one of the gravel paths. We watch the cars drive past on the road.

I hand him the cola bottle. At the bus stop I filled it up with beer, trying not to spill a single drop.

He looks over his shoulder again before raising the bottle to his lips. He drinks the first gulp greedily. The second he holds in his mouth for a long time before he swallows it. The third he spits out.

“I know exactly what they give me.” He rolls the bottle between his hands. “Whenever I get new medication, I look it up in the library. If I drink more than this, my head will swell up, my eyes will get dry and hurt.”

I open the bread bag and hand my dad a stale poppyseed loaf.

“There is a way to escape the White Men,” he says, breaking off a chunk of bread. “A door in the wall. A door you can only see if you want to see it. If there are no other ways out, that door is always there.”

Tentatively he tastes the bread before he throws it to the birds that have started gathering around us.

“The body isn't worth a whole lot; it's a box, a rabbit cage.”

My dad grins and points to a gull struggling with a piece of bread that's far too big for it.

Then he falls silent again, scratches the top of his head; a crumb from the bread gets stuck in his short stubble. I remove it.

“Their walls, their locked doors, and their straitjackets trap you so you can't escape. That way they've always got you right where they want you. Ward R, Corridor 7, Room 314.”

“And while you lie there, strapped down, the medicine dulls your brain. You can see your hands and the wall, and that's all.”

We empty the last bread out of the bag. Our twelve minutes are up.

“I've tried,” he says, as we walk across the lawn and back to the hospital. “God knows I've tried. But I don't have the strength anymore.”

We wait to be let back in. We can see the carer like a shadow through the glass doors. My dad's voice is so soft that I struggle to hear it over the wind.

“You have to help me find the door in the wall,” he says.

Then the carer lets us in.

E
lsebeth rings her bell. she's standing at the foot of the stairs waiting; she says there's a telephone call for me. She looks a little confused, I've never received any calls at her place, I haven't given out her number to anyone.

“I think he's German,” she says, as I follow her to the telephone in the kitchen.

The man on the line starts by apologizing for last time: he was very drunk though that's no excuse, of course. It's Ulrich, he then says.

Elsebeth continues to stand there looking nervously at the receiver. I smile and nod to her. She goes back to the drawing room where the radio is still playing classical music.

Ulrich says he has sent me a letter. He asks if I got it. Then he laughs nervously, of course I haven't. He only posted it today. He just wants me to know that he meant what he said. Even if he was very drunk. He drank on an empty stomach and everyone knows that gets you very drunk.

He really liked my paintings and wants to exhibit them. A special exhibition, only my work. He just called to tell me that; everything else is in the letter.

I sit down on the chair by the table, still holding the telephone after he has hung up. I listen to the dial tone.

Petra has stopped asking
what's wrong. I wake up at night when I hear the sound of her crying, but I no longer turn on the light. Somewhere above the foot of the bed I see my dad's eyes. They float over the metal pigeonholes at the sorting office until my hands take over.

I'm busy putting away
Elsebeth's shopping when I see the letter on the kitchen table.

It's addressed to the artist Mehmet Faruk.

Inside is a photo of Ulrich; he's standing in front of a former butcher's. He's smiling, flinging out his arms, proudly showing the empty display windows. He writes that he has finally found the perfect place. He's going to call his gallery “
Fleisch
.” My paintings will open it.

There are some Deutschmarks in the envelope. He's repaying his loan, he writes. There's a little extra which he hopes will cover my train fare.

I
place the items on the counter.

Tubes of paint. An easel. Brushes of different sizes.

The shop assistant asks if I need help. I shake my head and keep finding more things. I've stopped looking at the price tags.

I buy as many canvases as I can carry. I move all the old paintings out into the hallway and stack them on top of each other.

I put up the easel in the middle of the floor and mount a canvas. I open the first tube of paint. I paint until sunset; then I turn on the light, light some candles, and carry on painting.

I don't go to bed until the early morning. My hand has yet to unclench from gripping the paintbrush. I close my eyes, I can smell the pigments in the paint so strongly that I can see colours on the insides of my eyelids.

The sun wakes me up and I carry on painting.

After another hour I drink a glass of water and smoke a cigarette.

I switch on the travel kettle and make myself a cup of instant coffee which I drink, cold, a couple hours later.

I use the paintings from the basement for reference, finding details, a hand, a gaze. Then I carry the old painting down to the courtyard, rip it out of the frame, and throw it in one of the big garbage cans. I keep the frame and stretch out a fresh canvas.

It's afternoon and I'm
squeezing ochre paint onto the palette. When I look at the clock again it's five minutes before I need to be standing in front of the pigeonholes with the postal codes. I run down the street, I can feel paint dry through my T-shirt.

A couple of days later I call the sorting office. It's midday and I speak to a woman from Admin. I say a family member is ill. Terminally. I'm feeling terrible, really terrible. But I'd still like to go to work. The woman on the telephone sounds sympathetic. She must have typed in my name and seen from my records that I've taken only one sick day in the last two years. She tells me to call back when things are a bit better. Then she corrects herself and tells me to call again when I feel ready to come to back to work. And that sometimes you need to give things a little time. I promise to do that. At an ATM I check the balance of Mehmet Faruk's account. For several years I've worked Sundays and holidays to earn overtime and there's enough money to last the year out.

I've a carton of
cigarettes under my arm when I meet Elsebeth in the hallway.

She opens and closes her mouth. She stares at me as though she's just seen one of her late husbands.

“You've lost weight,” she says. “You must eat.”

“I'm painting.”

“Yes,” she says, smiling. “I can see that.”

It's not until then that I realize I've got paint on my cheek and under my fingernails.

“I'm careful,” I say. “I don't get paint on anything, I watch what I'm doing.”

“Doesn't matter. If you're painting, you're painting. But you have to eat something.”

She grabs hold of my sleeve and pulls me into the kitchen, she sits me down.

“I'd prefer it if I was the first of us to die,” Elsebeth says, lighting the gas burner. “It's hard to find a good tenant.”

She makes scrambled eggs and bacon. The bacon sizzles in the pan.

“A girl came by asking for you,” she says, without taking her eyes off the food. “Very pale-skinned. I said you were out. It's none of my business.”

It's been only a couple of days since I last saw Petra, but I've been thinking about it for a while. Thinking that tomorrow I'll go over to see her. Or in a few days. Soon, anyway.

Elsebeth puts the plate in front of me, she pours milk into a tall glass and watches me to make sure that I eat.

The first couple of mouthfuls swell up in my mouth. My stomach groans in protest. I get a stitch as though I've been running too fast.

I need a cigarette, I ran out last night. A cigarette and a cup of coffee.

Elsebeth keeps her eyes on me until my stomach wakes up and hunger takes over. I clear my plate and eat four slices of rye bread as well.

Every day from then
on I discover plates of food in the kitchen with small notes.
Eat!
says the plate of meatloaf in the fridge.
Drink!
says a glass that looks like milk, but tastes like cream.

I find apples and hard-boiled eggs. Fried sausages that I eat cold while I paint.

I paint as the
storm blasts the country. The windows rattle while I dip the brush in paint. The next day I see uprooted trees and cars whose windows have been smashed by roof tiles. It's not until then that I realize that the storm really did happen, that it wasn't just inside my head and in my room. Winter is coming; I know this because I now have fewer hours of daylight in front of the easel.

My dreams come in muted shades of green and blue. Other nights they're fiery red like blood, mailboxes, and the insides of mouths.

I
paint until noon and then I pack my rucksack. The digital watch I've bought is waterproof. I change into my swimming trunks and walk past the main pool to the cold water pool, a small, round basin where the water is just above freezing.

I usually have the place to myself; on the few occasions I see other people they're old with leathery skin. They smile strained smiles as they exercise by the edge of the pool.

I look at the digital watch, I see the seconds mount up. By the hundred. I have to last one minute longer than yesterday. My body hurts; my hands turn white.

One of the lifeguards asks me if I'm okay. He says I've been in there quite a long time. The muscles in my neck are stiff and stand out at the back of my head like the number eleven. I keep my mouth closed to stop my teeth from chattering. I give him a nod. He moves on.

I do the finger exercise: When you can no longer press each fingertip against your thumb, you've been in the cold water for too long. I stole a book about it from the library; I cut off the magnetic strip with a razor blade and slipped the book into my bag. The clinical term is hypothermia.

A range of symptoms is used to diagnose degrees of hypothermia.

I look at the digital watch again. I've managed to add another minute. I lift myself out of the cold water and bang my foot against the metal ladder. It won't start to hurt until later.

I walk alongside the pools on stiff legs. I walk past people swimming, children splashing. I check my body for symptoms; severe shaking is one of them.

The body trying to heat itself.

Another symptom is speaking incoherently. You start to mumble.

I recite nursery rhymes to myself. On my way back to the changing room, I say:
Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief.

But I don't know if you can hear yourself mumble. If your thoughts are messed up and frozen, surely your words will be, too.

I sit in the sauna until I can feel my hands and feet again. I massage the muscles in my right forearm, the ones I'll be using when I'm back in front of the canvas.

I
'
m sitting on a bench opposite the playground. I'm wearing several layers of clothing. Two pairs of socks in my winter boots.

I've my sketchbook with me. I've unscrewed the top of the Thermos and I drink from it. It's December and my coffee is steaming.

At first I draw the school building: loose lines with a charcoal pencil. Then I fill in the details. I could be a student from the art college. Or the school of architecture. On an academic assignment. Architecture from the early seventies. If anyone were to look over my shoulder, they'd see the approximate measurements I've noted down, the height of the building, the width of each glass section.

The bell rings, it's break time. I go to the wire fence and look into the playground. The double doors are thrown open so hard they jump on their hinges. The playground quickly fills with children.

A teacher on playground duty comes over to me. Even though I'm not wearing a raincoat and have no sweets in my pockets, I know I've been standing there too long.

Before he opens his mouth, I ask him if he knows when the school was built. I turn over a fresh page in my sketchbook, ready to write down his reply. The sentence he'd prepared doesn't cross his lips. He scratches his head and guesses sometime in the early seventies.

I'm welcome to come with him to the office, where they'll definitely know for sure. I smile. I've been sitting in front of the school during five breaks over two days.

This private school is
the last on my list, a small school with fewer pupils. It can't be more than ten years old. The jungle gym in the playground isn't rusty, the paint isn't flaking off.

I sit outside the school from the first break until cars with parents start pulling up to collect their children.

At night I dream about a charcoal pencil so small I can only hold it with my fingertips.

I have to draw the whole world, otherwise it'll fall apart.

The next morning I'm
back in front of the school. The Christmas holidays start in two days.

The bell rings for the lunch break. For the first ten minutes the playground is empty while the children eat their packed lunches in their classrooms. Then they come outside in small groups. I stand in front of the fence. I see a little blonde girl walking with her friends.

I think I recognize a movement, the way she holds her head. I walk through the gate and into the playground.

She looks straight at me, but has already moved on. All she saw was a grown-up, someone she doesn't know, not a proper person. She runs a little before turning around again. Our eyes meet, she blinks once. Then she throws her arms around my neck. I think I can detect makeup on her face.

My sister has grown; I can already begin to see what she'll look like as an adult.

“Do Mum and Dad know you're here?” she asks, when she finally lets go of my neck.

“No. It's probably best if you don't tell them.”

“That might be difficult . . .” She bites her bottom lip like she used to do when she was unsure of something or wanted to pester her dad for new toys.

“In return I promise not to tell them you're wearing makeup,” I say, and she laughs. “I'm going to go away for a while.”

“You've already
been
away. Mum and Dad went crazy . . .”

“Far away. I'm going far away. All gone. I don't know when I'll be coming back.”

She looks at me. Her eyes are big and blue, even bluer than I remembered them.

She's about to say something when I pick her up and press my face into her collar to dry my eyes.

“Will I see you again?” she asks.

“Of course. But I don't know when.”

“Do I have to grow up first?”

“Yes, you have to grow up first.”

She nods. A girl calls out to her. She kisses my cheek, then she runs back to her friends.