A Bridge to the Stars

5

In the far distance Joel can see the yellow clockface in the church tower. If he screws his eyes up, he can just make out the two hands. Five minutes past midnight.
He stamps his feet to keep warm.
The goods wagon beside him is big and dark, like a dinosaur chained up in its cage.
He imagines a goods wagon being able to think. What would happen if a goods wagon started growling? Who will go hunting for a goods wagon if it breaks away from its chains and escapes?
'Only people can think,' he whispers to himself. 'Only people . . . '
He suddenly gives a start.
He has the feeling somebody out there in the darkness is looking at him. He turns round quickly, but sees nothing apart from the silent goods wagons.
He gazes over towards the district court, but everything is dark and quiet. No lights in any of the black windows.
He starts to feel scared. Somebody is watching him in the darkness. He's quite sure of it, even though he can't see nor hear anything.
He holds his breath and listens.
Somebody is breathing close by.
He listens again, but thinks he is imagining it.
Then he feels a hand on his shoulder.
Death, he thinks. It must be death. An iron talon digging into his shoulder . . .
He screams into the darkness.
'Did I scare you?' asks Ture, who is standing behind him.
When he sees that it's Ture, it registers that he very nearly peed himself. That would have been catastrophic. When you pee yourself and it's freezing cold outside, you first feel warm, but then it soon gets so cold that you can't stop shivering.
'I'm pretty good at creeping up on people,' says Ture. 'I've been watching you for several minutes. Who were you talking to? I heard you whispering.'
'To myself,' says Joel. 'Could you hear me?'
Ture nods.
Joel can't see properly, but he has the impression Ture is smirking.
Joel is beginning to feel unsure about his secret society. He doesn't know enough about Ture. What kind of thoughts does a person have when he says he's a nobleman and, in all seriousness, claims that his name is von Swallow? The only thing Joel is sure is good is the heroism rule he has invented.
Joel leads the way through the dark streets, down towards the iron bridge over the river. He takes short cuts through rear courtyards and narrow alleys between cold walls. Although it's not necessary, he picks the most roundabout and awkward route he can think of. Clambering over the roof of the shed where the Highways Department keeps its welding equipment is unnecessary, of course. Nor is it essential to struggle through the broken-down greenhouse owned by Mr Under, the horse dealer. But Ture doesn't complain. He follows a couple of paces behind Joel, and Joel notices that he's good at climbing.
They pause outside the block of flats where Otto lives.
'This is where an enemy lives,' says Joel. 'He's been excluded. He's called Otto and he's a real bastard.'
'Excluded from what?' wonders Ture.
The light from a streetlamp illuminates his face, and Joel can see that he is not grinning scornfully.
'You'll find out soon enough,' says Joel. 'How old are you, by the way?'
'Twelve,' says Ture. 'You as well?'
'Nearly,' says Joel.
When they stop the next time they're in the middle of the railway bridge. The enormous arches tower up over their heads.
Joel quickly invents another rule. Too bad if it's a rule that is going to cause pain.
He bends down and touches the ice-cold parapet with his tongue. His tongue sticks to the metal immediately, and it hurts when he pulls it loose.
Then Joel tells Ture about The Secret Society. About who is in it, who has been excluded and who are dead. He talks about the dog he is looking for, but he doesn't mention that he imagines it is on its way to a star. He's not sure why he keeps that back. Perhaps he wants to keep some of the secret for himself?
'Even if you're going to run away in a week's time you can still be a member,' says Joel. 'But there's something you must promise, and another thing you must do. You must hold your tongue against the bridge parapet and count up to fifty. And you must promise to crawl over those enormous iron arches if you betray The Secret Society.'
Without hesitation Ture crouches down and presses his tongue against the freezing cold parapet.
Joel realises straight away that Ture has never done this before. Licked cold iron in the middle of winter. The trick is simply to touch the iron with the very tip of your tongue, so that it doesn't hurt too much when you try to take it away.
Joel is worried. What if he can't get it loose again? What if it sticks fast and is torn off?
When Ture has finished counting to fifty he pulls his tongue away. Joel can see that it hurts something awful, and that Ture wasn't prepared for that at all. He pulls a face and spits blood into the palm of his hand.
'I promise,' he says. 'I'll crawl over the arch if I betray The Secret Society.'
'You have to stand up at the top of the arch and pee into the river as well,' says Joel.
'I have no intention of evading my obligations,' says Ture. 'Now what do we do?'
'Look for the dog,' says Joel.
But there is no sign of the dog that night.
They roam about the little town.
The Old Bricklayer, Simon Windstorm, goes past in his lorry, and Joel explains that the driver is a madman who never sleeps.
'He hasn't slept for thirty-four years,' he says, to make Simon even more mysterious.
'You'll die,' says Ture. 'If you haven't slept for as many years as that, you're dead. That would mean there's a dead man driving around in that lorry.'
'Maybe he is dead,' says Joel. 'We'll look into that one of these nights.'
Outside the Grand Hotel are a couple of drunks, leaning against each other. Joel recognises them. The short fat one is Mr Rudin, the ironmonger. The tall thin one is Walter Kringstr?m who runs a dance orchestra and plays the clarinet.
In the background, in the forecourt of the hotel, Mr Roth, the restaurant owner, is trying to start his car. He can't get the engine to fire, and they hear Roth cursing and swearing as he rummages around under the bonnet.
Rudin and Kringstr?m make their way unsteadily as far as the furniture shop where they come to a halt again, leaning on each other. Joel thinks it looks as if Walter Kringstr?m is crying and the ironmonger is trying to console him.
'Winos,' hisses Ture in his ear. 'Let's get going . . . ' They wander through the empty streets for another hour. Occasionally The Old Bricklayer drives past in his lorry.
Joel is afraid that Ture might get bored. I ought to have hit upon more things to do, he thinks. If only Samuel hadn't come home with that slut in the red hat in tow. . .
He thinks he knows where she lives, behind the bookshop, in an attic flat.
He carefully opens the gate leading into the rear courtyard.
'Another enemy lives here,' he informs Ture in a low voice. 'The Lady in the Red Hat. She should be eliminated.'
'Why?' asks Ture. 'Who is she?'
'She serves beer in the local bar,' says Joel. 'She's broken into my flat.'
'Why don't you go to the police?' wonders Ture.
'Not that kind of break-in,' says Joel.
Then he remembers that he's promised to show Ture where he lives.
He's not sure he still wants to, in fact.
What is a shabby old wooden house in need of a coat of paint compared with the district courthouse? He might just as well show Ture the broken-down shed behind the vicarage. Or the earth cellar in the yard behind the pharmacy.
But he acknowledges that he can't get out of it now, and he leads the way back down to the river.
He stops by the gate.
'This is where I live,' he says.
Ture gives the house a long, hard look.
'The whole house?' he asks.
Joel very nearly says yes, but that would have been a dangerous lie. A bad lie that could easily be disproved. It would have been a hopeless piece of boasting.
'Just the top floor,' he says.
Then their nocturnal expedition seems to grind to a halt of its own accord. They go back to the courthouse and say goodbye at the gate.
'I wish it was me,' says Joel. 'Not having to go to school, I mean.'
'Come here after school tomorrow,' says Ture. 'Ring the bell on that door over there, the middle one.' Then he jumps over the gate.
'It squeaks,' he says. 'The caretaker might wake up and think we're burglars.'
Then he spits into the palm of his hand and examines it.
'It's stopped bleeding,' he says. 'Will you be coming tomorrow?'
Joel nods. He stays by the gate and watches Ture disappear into the white house. Then he hurries home. He's so tired, he can hardly keep his eyes open. When The Old Bricklayer comes rattling past in his lorry he doesn't even bother to slink into the shadows. He'd like to know what Ture is thinking. There's something about Ture that makes him insecure . . .

When Joel tiptoes carefully into the kitchen he can sense straight away that something is amiss. He stands perfectly still, listening.
When his eyes get used to the dark, he looks round the kitchen. Nothing has changed. Celestine is in her showcase, his dad's socks are hanging up to dry over the stove, which is still hot. Even so, something is not as it should be.
It's just that I'm tired, he thinks. I'm imagining things . . .
He takes off his boots, dries the wet stains from the floor, and snuggles into bed.
Although he has so much to think about, he falls asleep immediately.
Next day he hesitates for ages at the gate to the courthouse.
Should he go in, or shouldn't he? Had Ture been serious? The house is too big and too posh. He vaguely recalls hearing that the judge's lodgings has eleven rooms. Old T?rnqvist used to live there all on his own. In eleven rooms?
In the end he plucks up courage and opens the gate. It squeaks, just as Ture had said. He walks down the stone path and rings the doorbell. Better take my cap off, he thinks, and removes his woolly hat. Ture answers the door, to his relief.
It could have been his mother. Or even worse, his father.
What on earth do you say to a district judge? You might get hard labour if you say something wrong.
The flat is just as big as Joel had imagined. He follows Ture through the many rooms in his stocking feet. The walls are full of big paintings in gilt frames, and the walls of one room are covered from top to bottom with books. There are thick carpets on all the floors, and a coat of armour stands in one corner. Joel stops to stare.
Fancy a coat of armour ending up in this remote, snow-filled dump.
'The armour is from Scotland,' says Ture. 'That's where our ancestors come from.'
He and Ture seem to be the only ones in the enormous flat.
'Don't you have a mother?' asks Joel?
'Of course I have a mother,' says Ture. 'But she and my two sisters aren't moving here until the summer. It's just Dad and me at the moment. Plus somebody who comes in to clean and do the cooking. She's out shopping just now.'
Of course I have a mother – Joel repeats it to himself. It's not always of course . . .
Ture has a large room under the roof. Joel thinks it's odd that he's unpacked all his things and arranged them so neatly if he's going to run away shortly. And is he really going to cart all this with him when he does leave? He would need The Old Bricklayer's lorry to carry everything as far as the station.
For Joel, going into Ture's room is like entering a hitherto unknown world. It's almost as big as all the rooms in the flat Joel shares with his father put together. One wall is covered in books, another one in maps. Big model aeroplanes are suspended from the ceiling. Standing on a long table stretching from one corner to the other are Meccano models: steam engines and strange machines, the likes of which Joel has never seen before. There are two radios by the bed, and earphones hanging from some kind of pulley arrangement over the pillow. This room contains everything apart from toys.
Joel stands in the middle of the room, gaping at it all.
'You have a hole in your sock,' says Ture. 'Mind your big toe doesn't run away.'
'I like to keep my toes well aired,' says Joel.
He says it as nonchalantly as he can. He doesn't want to give the impression that he's embarrassed.
There is a picture hanging over the bed. It depicts a man with a long beard and an almost bald head. Joel thinks it looks like one of those old priests that are hanging in the sacristy at church.
'Who's that?' he asks, but regrets it the moment he's said it. Perhaps it's somebody he ought to recognise?
'Leonardo,' says Ture. 'The one and only Leonardo da Vinci. He's my idol.' Joel has never heard of him. Now he takes a big risk. If Ture starts asking questions, he'll be rumbled.
'Everybody knows who he is,' he says, as convincingly as he can. He's got away with it. Ture doesn't ask any more questions, but starts showing him his maps.
'I ought to have been born in another age,' he says. 'When there were still mountains and rivers and deserts to discover. No matter where you go nowadays, there's always somebody who's been there before you. I'm living too late.'
'You live when you live,' says Joel.
'Do you never dream?' asks Ture.
'No,' says Joel. 'Not very often.'
'You're lying,' says Ture.
'Oh no I'm not,' says Joel.
'I have my own ideas about that,' says Ture. 'But what do you want to be when you grow up?'
'A sailor, I think,' says Joel. 'Like my dad.'
'But there can't be any sailors living round here, surely?' says Ture. 'There's no sea.'
'He lives here even so,' says Joel.
'Is he a captain?' asks Ture.
Joel would prefer not to answer. If he does, he'll have to lie even more. He doesn't want to say that his dad is only an Able Seaman.
'His last voyage was as captain on a boat called Celestine,' he says. 'They were transporting live horses.'
He suddenly feels angry with his father. Why isn't he a captain? Then they could have lived in a big house, like this one.
'I might become an engineer,' says Ture. 'Or maybe I'll work for the UN.'
Joel has only a vague idea of what the UN is. A sort of place where people give speeches for the rest to listen to. But he doesn't ask.
I can go to the library and look them up, he thinks. Leonardo da Vinci and the UN.
'Why do you have two radio sets?' he asks, so as to avoid having to talk about the UN.
'So that I can listen to two programmes at the same time,' says Ture. 'Sweden and foreign stations at the same time.'
Once again Joel is angry with his dad. Here we have a boy aged twelve with two radio sets. His dad is over forty, but he has only one. And that's much older than the two Ture has.
'What kind of a radio do you have?' asks Ture.
'A Luxor,' says Joel.
Ture sits on the floor, on a cushion. 'The Secret Society is good,' says Ture. 'But we could do more than just look for a dog.'
'But you're going to run away soon,' says Joel. 'I thought we could find that dog while you're still here.'
'A Secret Society must create fear,' says Ture. 'We have to show that we're dangerous.'
'How?' asks Joel.
'I can show you tonight,' says Ture.
In fact Joel had intended staying at home tonight. He's frightened of falling asleep at his desk if he goes out every night. But he doesn't say that.
They agree to meet at midnight, among the goods wagons. Then Joel has to leave. The stove and potatoes are waiting for him.
'Why are you in such a hurry?' asks Ture.
'That's a secret,' says Joel.
He's in a bad mood when he goes home. He has too many lies to keep track of. And it's all his dad's fault. He's not a captain, he has only one radio set, and he hasn't got a wife which means that Joel hasn't got a mum.
Samuel has nothing. Only an axe that he uses to cut down trees in the forest.
Even worse, he's never said anything about who Leonardo da Vinci is, or what they do at the UN.
And to top it all he comes home with that slut in the red hat in tow.
Joel remembers that he has to go to the shop. As he's nearly home, he has to retrace his steps. That makes him even angrier.
I'm going to move in with Jenny, my mum, he thinks. I don't care what she looks like, I don't care what she does. Nothing can be worse than living with Samuel. The only thing he'll take with him is Celestine.
He'll take that blue stool he got for his birthday to the railway bridge and hurl it into the river.
There's a queue in the shop. Svenson smells of strong drink as usual, fumbles with the goods and has trouble in working out the bills. Joel waits and waits.
It will never be his turn. That's his dad's fault as well.
When Joel gets home he starts the fire in the stove, then lies down on the kitchen bench while he's waiting for the potatoes to boil. He falls asleep, and is woken up by his father shaking him by the shoulder.
The meal is ready and the table set. Samuel is in an extremely good mood. He's humming one of his sea shanties. He keeps smiling at Joel.
After dinner he gets shaved. That's enough to worry Joel. His dad only ever gets shaved once a week, on Saturday afternoons. It's only Wednesday today. Samuel is humming away non-stop.
Joel decides he'll have to keep a close eye on his father.
Can Sara with the red hat really put him in such a good mood? Or is it something else?
After dinner Joel takes out his thirteen tin soldiers and builds a fort out of some books. But he finds it hard to concentrate because he can hear his dad humming away in his room all the time.
In the end he gives his model soldiers a kick and they all end up under the bed.
They can stay there until they're buried in dust, he thinks.
Then he goes into his father's room. Samuel is lying on his bed, listening to the radio and wiggling his toes.
'Hi, Joel,' he says. 'What are you playing with?'
'I'm not playing,' says Joel. 'I want to know who Leonardo da Vinci is.'
'Who?'
'Leonardo da Vinci.'
'That's a name I've heard before. Why do you want to know who he is?'
'I just do.'
'Hang on, I'll have to think a bit. Leonardo da Vinci . . . '
Joel stands in the doorway, waiting. His dad wiggles his toes and thinks.
'He was an inventor, I think. And a painter. A long time ago. He knew everything. He invented cannons and aeroplanes long before anybody else.'
'I'm going to be like him.'
'Nobody can be like him. You can only be who you are.'
'Why did you never become a captain?'
'I didn't have any schooling. I just had my hands. That means you can only be an Able Seaman.'
Joel thinks he ought to tell him to stop wiggling his toes. Stop smiling, stop humming sea shanties. But he just stands in the doorway and says nothing.
'I'll go back to my room, then,' he says.
His father doesn't answer. He's closed his eyes and is humming a tune.
If he's lying there thinking of Sara, I'm off, Joel thinks. If he brings her home one more time, I'm getting out of here.
He will need to find out where his mother lives. He'll have to ask his dad about that. It's the most important of all the questions currently occupying his mind. He wishes it was the only thing he had to worry about. Most of the time nothing at all happens, he thinks, but just now far too much is happening that he needs to think through. It gets more difficult to cope with life for every year that passes, he thinks. Not the least difficult thing is understanding grown-ups, understanding his father.
He wishes he could creep into Samuel's head and sit down in the middle of all his thoughts. Then he would be able to compare what his dad says with what he actually thinks.
Perhaps being a grown-up means not saying what you really think.
Or knowing which lies are least dangerous. Learning to avoid untruths that can too easily be found out . . .
He takes his alarm clock into bed with him and wraps it inside a sock before placing it under his pillow, next to his ear. Then he switches off the light.
When Samuel sees that, he won't come in and sit on the edge of Joel's bed. He'll simply close the door and go to his own room.
It's easy to fool grown-ups, he thinks. Just because you've switched the light off, they think you're asleep.
What he would really like, in fact, is for his father to come and sit on his bed even so. Sit down and tell him about Jenny without Joel having to ask first.
It's hard to settle down to sleep. The alarm clock is rubbing against his ear. He shudders at the thought of having to get dressed in a few hours' time and go out into the night. He wonders what it is that Ture is going to show him.
Create fear, he said. What does he mean by that?
Joel tosses and turns. The alarm clock is irritating him, and he has to check and make sure he hasn't accidentally switched it off.
He needs to do a lot of thinking about Ture.
Having met him is both a good thing and a bad thing. Good that he's going to run away in a week's time because Joel has said various things that can be found out as untrue. But at the same time, it's a bad thing that he will no longer be around. It's good having a nobleman as a friend. A nobleman who is older than Joel.
He thinks about the enormous flat. He pictures himself in all the different rooms. Looking at the paintings and books, walking on the soft carpets.
But when he comes to the suit of armour, he stops dead.
Now he's on his own, Ture is no longer in his thoughts, and he can put on the armour with no risk of being found out. Last of all he closes the visor.
Now he's on a battlefield somewhere.
Miss Nederstr?m has told them that it was always misty when knights in armour rode into battle.
Now he's mounting his steed, the magnificent stallion he's seen at Mr Under's, the horse dealer. The black horse with the white patch under his right eye. Somewhere in the distance, invisible in the mist, the enemy is waiting . . .
He gives a start when Samuel opens the door.
It takes a long time to build up a good dream, but all it needs is for his dad to take hold of the door handle, and it's all gone.
He pretends to be asleep.
Samuel closes the door gently.
He usually listens for longer than that, Joel thinks. Tonight it happened far too quickly. As if he were hoping that I'd be asleep.
There ought to be rules for fathers, thinks Joel angrily. They shouldn't be allowed to come bursting into a dream. They should only be allowed to listen so long at the door to see if you're asleep. They shouldn't be allowed to invite certain people home for coffee.
All fathers ought to be made to sign such rules. And every time they break one, they should be punished.
The radio falls silent, Samuel has a good gargle, and his bed creaks.
What actually happened? Joel wonders.
Why was Jenny so unhappy? What happened?
When the alarm starts buzzing under his pillow, he's not sure at first what it is. It goes off when he's in the middle of a dream. Joel is surrounded by strangers, but he knows that his mother is among them somewhere. The only person he recognises is The Old Bricklayer. Then the barriers at the level crossing start ringing. It's the alarm clock under his pillow.
He lies still in the darkness, listening.
What had he been dreaming about? Was it a nasty dream? Or just an odd one?
He keeps on listening. Silence always has many sounds.
A beam creaks. He hears his own breathing. There's a rushing sound in his ears, like the wind.
Joel is afraid of the dark. Not being able to see the walls and ceiling, not being able to see his own hands. Waking up in the dark is a kind of loneliness he's scared of.
It's the nearest he can imagine to death.
A black room where the ceiling could be just above his face, but he can't see it.
When you wake up in the middle of the night there's no way of knowing if you're the only person left in the whole wide world.
He switches on the lamp standing on the blue stool. Then he switches it off again. The darkness isn't frightening any more. Not now that he knows nothing has changed while he's been asleep.
He tiptoes into the kitchen, puts on his boots then creeps silently down the stairs. Old Mrs Westman is having a coughing fit.
The stars are twinkling in a clear sky when he gets outside, and he starts running so as not to be late. Ture is waiting for him by the goods wagons, in the shadows. Once again he creeps up on Joel from behind and grabs him by the shoulder, making him jump.
I ought to have known, thinks Joel. Ture will keep on doing that for as long as he sees it makes me jump.
First they go looking for the dog. Joel shows Ture the streetlight where he last saw the dog. He'd like to tell the story of the night when he carried The Flying Horse out of the bicycle shop – but would Ture believe him? Joel has no idea what Ture thinks. And when he runs away next week it will be too late. After that he'll never get to know anything.
It strikes Joel that this is the first time he's met anybody who he knows he's soon going to be separated from, and will never see again. Never ever, as long as he lives . . .
'A dog,' says Ture without warning. 'Why are we looking for a dog?'
Joel doesn't know what to say. All he knows is that the dog is important. The dog heading for a star.
He can't explain it, he just knows . . .
Ture suddenly pokes him in the back.
'There's somebody coming,' he whispers.
He points down the street, and Joel sees a figure in dark clothes approaching along the opposite pavement. Somebody lit up by a streetlamp before being swallowed up by the darkness again.
They stand next to the wall where they are sure of not being seen. The darkly clad figure has its head bowed, looking like a body that stops at the shoulders. But Joel sees who it is.
It's No-Nose. The woman with a handkerchief instead of a nose in her face.
'It's Gertrud,' he whispers into Ture's ear. 'I know who she is.'
'Why is she out in the middle of the night, walking with her head bowed?' wonders Ture.
Ture indicates that they should follow her. They sneak along in the shadow of the house walls, keeping the hunched figure in front of them.
It's not hard to follow her because she never stops and turns round to look.
Joel has always believed that people who are being followed can sense it. But evidently not Gertrud. No-Nose. People either feel sorry for Gertrud, or dislike her. But nearly everybody is frightened of her.
You can feel sorry for her because she lost her nose during an operation at the hospital. You can also dislike her because she doesn't stay indoors but wanders around in the street and doesn't cover up her deformed face.
She must be brave, and everybody's frightened of brave people.
When Joel sees her in the street he thinks it's both disgusting and exciting to see her face without a nose.
She usually has a white handkerchief stuffed into the hole where her nose should be.
Every time he sees her he tells himself he's not going to look, but he can't resist it.
She goes to the Pentecostal chapel next to the Community Centre. She patrols the streets every day, selling religious magazines. Hardly anybody dares not to stop and buy one off her.
He knows she tried to drown herself in the river when they'd cut off her nose at the hospital. But somebody saw her jump in, and rowed out in the horse dealer's boat and rescued her. She'd had a heavy iron in her pocket and a thick chain wrapped round her neck. Then Happy Harry, the Pentecostal minister, took her under his wing, and now she sells magazines for him.
She lives all alone, in a little house at Ulvk?lla, on the far side of the bridge. That seems to be where she's heading for.
They follow her as far as the bridge. Then it gets hard, because there are so many lights on the bridge. They watch her disappear into the shadows.
Joel tells Ture what he knows about her. When he's finished, Ture asks a peculiar question.
'Do you know where there's an ants' nest?' he asks.
An ants' nest?
Joel knows where there are lots of ants' nests, but they are all still covered in snow. The ants don't usually emerge until May.
'We'll pay her a visit tomorrow,' says Ture. 'I want to go home now.'
'You said you were going to show me something,' says Joel.
'I have done,' says Ture. 'How to trail a person.'
Joel goes with Ture as far as his gate. He hopes Ture will invite him to call round after school, but Ture says nothing. He simply jumps over the gate and vanishes into his vast house.
Joel has the feeling that Ture is already beginning to take over The Secret Society.
That's a good thing but also a bad thing.
What is good is that Joel no longer has sole responsibility for it all. But what is bad is that everything has happened so quickly.
He hurries home. It's freezing, and he feels cold. He can hear The Old Bricklayer's lorry somewhere in the distance. When he enters the kitchen he has the same feeling as the night before. There's something amiss. This time it's even stronger.
He feels scared. What has changed?
He unlaces his boots and hangs up his jacket. Everything is the same as usual, but at the same time, it's different.
Without really knowing why, he opens the door to his father's room. He knows exactly how far he can open it before it starts creaking.
He listens for his dad's breathing. But he hears nothing.
Just for a moment he's so scared that he almost bursts into tears. Has Samuel died?
He gropes his way forward. It's pitch black, but even so he closes his eyes.
Breathe, he thinks. Breathe, breathe, breathe . . .
He knocks against the side of the bed with his knee.
He has to open his eyes now. He must face up to the most difficult task he's ever been landed with.
Face up to something he doesn't really dare face up to.
His eyes fail to respond.
His eyelids are secured by heavy padlocks.
Big dogs are running back and forth, preventing him from opening his eyes.
But in the end he forces his eyes open, as if he'd used dynamite to set himself free.
Despite the darkness he can see that the bed is empty.
His father has abandoned him.