The Merman (4 page)

He sort of nodded to himself, as if he were watching everything on an internal cinema screen, and I wondered how sick the situation had seemed in my brother's eyes as I lay there in the woods on my front with my knickers pulled down, a pine cone between my buttocks, eating grass out of his hands.

‘Actually, that's not a wild mink,' I said in order to change the subject. ‘Its fur is too nice. It's probably escaped from one of the mink farms.'

‘I didn't know they could swim.'

‘Dad told me once. Remember, he worked on a mink farm when you were little. Anyway, sometimes they manage to escape from their cages, and then they usually head for the sea to hunt for fish.'

I kept my gaze fixed on the surface of the water, but the mink was gone. It had probably swum back to the dock underwater.

‘Are you going to pay a thousand kronor?'

‘I don't have any choice.'

‘But how are you going to get hold of that much money?'

‘It'll work out somehow... '

My brother picked up a stone and chucked it out into the water. The eczema between his fingers was about to split open. The cream had run out. I had forgotten to buy another tube. I mustn't forget the next time I was in town.

‘What do you want to do?' I asked. ‘Head home or stay here a while?'

‘Home to what?'

‘No, of course. You're right... '

Maybe, I thought, it had been a mistake to offer money to Gerard so he would leave us alone. How was I going to get hold of a thousand kronor within a week? And what made me believe that he would be satisfied with that much?

I looked over towards the houses that were huddled behind fences and dense hedges above the harbour. I could see the roof of the detached house where Tommy lived. I ought to ask him for advice. Maybe go over and visit him, even though he was ill, and ask to speak to him, or ring him up later that evening. Or make another attempt to get hold of the Professor.

After everything that had happened, there was no question of going back to school that day. When Gerard and his gang had disappeared, I took my brother by the hand and went over to the cycle racks. Somewhere inside the school building, some teachers had just recorded us as absent. Perhaps they had asked our classmates
if they knew anything. I could see in my mind's eye how everyone in the class shook their heads and tried to look innocent, except for Gerard, Ola and Peder, who just giggled, totally cool and calm. A report would be sent to the school welfare officer. A letter would be sent to Mum, which she would not even endeavour to open. I myself would be summoned to a meeting with L.G., our head of year, and as usual I would deny that there was any particular reason that I had gone off with my brother and played truant that afternoon; oh, no, nothing in particular had happened, we just felt a bit out of sorts, I'd say. And it was Friday and there were only three lessons left.

‘Let's go down to the sea,' I had told my brother. ‘We'll get a new pair of trousers for you first, though, and wash off what they wrote on your forehead.'

So we took our cycles to Glommen, my ladies' bike which I had found in a skip last spring, and Robert's little bike, which I had managed to scavenge from the Professor so he'd have something to get around on.

We would cycle to Glommen quite often in the summer, to meet up with Tommy or to look at the boats when they returned with their catch. But it felt strange to be there on an ordinary school day in October. Desolate, somehow. No kids running around. No tourists. No fish vans arriving from the wholesalers. Maybe it was the silence that caused me to peer out towards the fisherman's hut where somebody had been playing music. Two silhouettes moved about behind the dirty window, bent down, tried to lift something heavy, gave up, straightened up and caught their breath.

‘Where do you think Lazlo is keeping himself?' asked my brother. He had taken his glasses off and was looking at them indecisively.

‘I don't know. Maybe in town. Or maybe he didn't want to have any visitors and was hiding under his bed. He's like that sometimes.'

We had cycled past the Professor's farmhouse on our way to Glommen. I had got it into my head that we ought to tell him what had happened. Not because I expected he'd be able to help us, but
there are some things you just have to let out. We had peeked in through the kitchen windows. It looked the same as usual inside: a load of books and notebooks where he wrote down things he'd read somewhere and thought were interesting. Medicine bottles scattered around on shelves and tables. And then all the stuff he collects: stuffed birds, fossils, old coins and stamps... We had gone round the house and peeked into the barn: the Amazon was still there, which indicated that he wasn't far away. We called out for him a few times, but if he was in the vicinity he didn't reply. And so we cycled on to Glommen.

That was what I was thinking as we sat there on the quayside: not even the Professor had been any help, and there were two whole days to go until Monday. Two days of an all-too-brief chance to catch our breath before the school week started up again...

‘I hate these glasses,' my brother said. ‘I look like a nutter in them. Like a monster in a pair of cyclops glasses. That's why everybody's out to get me. People can't stand being around a freak.'

I took them from him, adjusted the earpiece that was bent, polished the lenses with the sleeve of my jumper and handed them back.

‘I'll buy you new ones,' I said. ‘I'll get a job this summer. And the first thing I'll do when I get paid is find you a nicer pair.'

‘You serious?'

A hundred per cent! If you pay extra, you can get the lenses ground so they're not even half as thick.'

Robert smiled slightly. Then he grew serious again.

‘Where are you going to get a job?'

At Torsåsen. They always need people. You earn twenty-five kronor an hour packing chicken. And if I don't get a job there, I'll look for something else. I'll be sixteen next year. Then I can work anywhere.'

He chucked a new stone into the water.

‘You can't just leave me at home with Mum. You can't move out.'

‘What makes you think I'm going to do that?'

‘You'll be an adult soon, and then you can do whatever you want.'

He was on the verge of crying again, but he tried to hide it by turning his face away.

We sat in silence for a while. The door of the hut opened. Two men stepped out into the sunlight, noticed us, froze and went back into the dark again. The door was shut quickly. They looked like Tommy's brothers, but I wasn't sure. Their boat was usually moored on the southern quay, but I couldn't recall its name. The boats down here all had the same combination of letters, but with different numbers: FG 31 Lyngskär, FG 40 Tuna...

‘If I move out, you can come along.'

‘What if Mum says no?'

‘She won't even notice anything. And if she does, we'll go so far away that nobody will find us... '

That was a game we'd been carrying on for as long as I could remember. When things were at their worst at home, we would lock ourselves into my room, get under the bed with a torch and then Robert would start asking questions and I would answer. Like a happy story about the future.

I looked at him as he sat beside me on the quay. He had grown nearly four inches over the summer, but he was still small for his age. He looked so brittle, like he was made of glass or something, and I suddenly remembered him through all his ages up to now. From when I had helped him learn to walk, even though I was just little myself; the years in town and then in Skogstorp, where I had protected him from the other children; how I reassured him, helped him with his homework, tried to cheer him up and make his life as pain-free as possible, given the circumstances. But there is always an ending and a beginning. That's how it is with every story.

‘We can't just run away,' he said now. ‘How would we get by?'

‘We'll find jobs somewhere.'

‘I'm not even thirteen. You're not allowed to hire underage children.'

‘We'll have to make you older.'

‘With a false beard and a fake ID?'

‘Something like that.'

And where will we live?'

‘In a city, far away from here.'

‘I don't like cities. I want to live in the countryside.'

‘Then that's what we'll do. In a place where nobody knows who we are. Where nobody will find us. Not even Mum or Dad, if – against all the odds – they should decide to look for us. We can make up a whole new history. We can say that we came there with a circus, but it was so badly paid that we ran away. We can make up new names for ourselves.'

‘Will we live in a house or a flat?'

‘We can live in an old farmhouse, like the Professor.'

‘No. I want to live in a new house. And there has to be nice furniture. And a video player and a stereo. Not like the ones we have at home, or like at the Professor's.'

‘We'll get all those things.'

‘And new glasses, of course?'

‘That's the first thing we'll get.'

‘And nice clothes. No rubbish from the Red Cross or oversized kecks from the discount store that people laugh at. We'll have proper jeans, brand-name ones. We'll buy everything new.'

And perhaps that was exactly what we would do someday, if only an opportunity would present itself. But not as soon as my little brother dreamt it. We were forced to be patient. Until the spring, when I would leave school, and then nobody would be able to force me to do anything. I'd be able to get a job and my own place to live. Mum wouldn't even notice if I moved out. And then Robert could stay there as much as he wanted.

The only problem was that he had to attend school for another two years, and I wouldn't be able to be there and look out for him. He had to make it on his own, otherwise social services might get involved and place him with a foster family somewhere, and that was the worst thing that could happen in my world.

‘Anyway, I think things will get better when Dad comes home.'

‘Why do you think that?'

‘I just do.' He was lost in thought now. I noticed it in his eyes: it was as if a lamp had been switched off inside, and he had disappeared into a place where the world was exactly as he wished it would be.

‘I'll bring him along to school, and we'll go down the corridors and I'll point out everybody who's been nasty to you and me – no, maybe not everybody, because there wouldn't be enough time for that, but I'd point out the worst ones, and then Dad will sort them out.'

‘What do you think he'll do to them?'

‘Nobody will dare to put up a fight when he gets as furious as he can get. Come here you bastards, he'll say to them, and then they'll obey because they won't dare to do anything else. And then we'll walk through the school together, and Dad will clear everybody out of the way.'

‘What if some teachers come and tell him not to?'

‘He'll just laugh at them.“My son isn't going to be in any damn remedial class any more”, he'll say. “You can all go to hell. We're never coming back!” Then we'll go out to the car park, and Dad will have a car there, and everybody will have to get in his car and we'll drive off with them.'

‘Where to?'

‘To some place where nobody will come looking. Like a hideout. And then we'll lock them inside, in a cellar maybe. Or we'll throw them down an old well or something. We'll keep them captive there, chained and tied up, and every day I'll go there with Dad and do the same things to them they've done to me... '

He stopped talking and smiled to himself. I didn't say anything. This was something completely new to me. I had never heard him fantasise about revenge before.

The mink had turned up again. It was sitting on the boat launch, drying itself in the sun. It seemed to be keeping us under surveillance, at least that's what it felt like. Over by the fisherman's hut things were silent, but the men were still in there. It was Tommy's
brothers, I was almost certain now. I could see their silhouettes through the window. They were moving things around, dragging something back and forth across the floor.

I don't know what it was, but something in the atmosphere had changed subtly, like in a film when the background music you hadn't really noticed suddenly stops. Maybe it was just the day that caught up with me, the thought that Gerard had got it into his head that I had snitched and he had threatened to do even nastier things to my brother if I didn't come up with a thousand kronor; and that it was all my own fault, that I was the one who had planted the idea in his head.

The rumble of the school bus came from over on Glumstensvägen. Soon the Glommen kids would get off by the bus shelter. Maybe someone would come down to the quays and the huts. I didn't want that to happen. I didn't want to encounter anybody from school right now, so I stood up.

‘Come on,' I said to my brother. ‘We're going... '

Two overflowing bin bags were sitting on the floor in the hall. A third one had fallen over and spilled out its contents over the floor. There was a puddle of vomit in front of the door to the loo: red wine, I assumed, mixed with food remnants. The apartment was silent. Presumably she was lying asleep upstairs. She wouldn't wake up if you chucked a hand grenade in through the window.

‘God, it stinks,' said Robert.

‘I'll sort it. Meanwhile, you can watch TV.'

He hung up his jacket, took a detour round the accident scene and disappeared into the living room.

In the kitchen, two empty bottles of Parador, that cheap Spanish wine, stuck out from the mess on the worktop. On the table there was a half-full wine glass with a dozen fag ends in the bottom. Old dishes were spread out on every available surface.

I took a jar of white pepper from the spice rack and rubbed a bit in my nose. Then I fetched the cleaning stuff from the cupboard.