A Fairy Tale by Jonas Bengtsson

boss’s head. Like a bird has flown in here and now can’t find its way out.
    After four blows I see my dad standing behind him, holding the chair leg in his hand. The boss sinks to his knees and gets stuck like a cork in the doorway. With each blow I can see more of my dad. I’m good at counting, but I wouldn’t be able to keep up even if I tried. My dad keeps hitting him and the sound changes from the hard whack of wood against wood to a much softer, rounder sound. Like a rolling pin slamming into dough.
    â€œDrop it,” says my dad, who is out of breath. I’m still holding the toy rabbit. He lifts me across the boss so my feet won’t get wet.
    When we’re back in the workshop, my dad pulls off his sweatshirt. His black T-shirt clings to his body, his face and neck are covered with red splashes. He wipes the chair leg with his sweatshirt. Then he puts his sweatshirt and the chair leg in separate plastic bags and ties a knot in them. He washes himself in the sink in the corner. He lifts me up so I sit on the work table.
    â€œWe’ll be going very soon; I’ve just got to do a few things.”
    He puts on a pair of work gloves, gives me a quick peck on my forehead, and starts wiping down the room with an old rag. Just as when he works on the furniture, he looks like he knows exactly what to do.
    When he has finished, he crawls under one of the work tables along the walls. He emerges with a big metal box in his hands. He takes an electric drill from the wall, closes the door to the yard, and tells me to cover my ears. Sparks fly from the metal box. When he has finished, he opens it and empties it of banknotes and coins.
    On the way home we stop three times. The first time to throw the plastic bag with the chair leg into a garbage on a street corner. The second time to throw the bag with my dad’s sweatshirt into a different garbage. We cycle down a few more streets and my dad pulls in at the curb. He gets off the bicycle and helps me out of the basket. He doesn’t say anything; he just sits on his haunches in front of me, looks into my eyes, and holds me tight. His winter coat is buttoned all the way up, but I can feel the top of his wet T-shirt against my neck.
    When we get home, my dad says that we have to take off our clothes. All of them. He stuffs them into several plastic bags and ties knots in them. We take a bath; he scrubs us both thoroughly with soap and a sponge. Then he starts splashing water at me, spouting water out of his mouth like a fountain. I can’t help laughing.

E very morning my dad asks me what I feel like doing. And then we do it. We go to the zoo. We feed the ducks and go to Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum. We go to the cinema and see a film about a racing car that can talk. We see the film three times in one day, and I eat my body weight in popcorn.
    When we come out of the cinema or the zoo, I can’t remember where we’ve been. I know we stood in front of the lion cage, I know I saw the lion cubs play. But I can’t remember what they looked like. As if it happened to someone else, as if it’s something I’ve only been told about. I nod to my dad, yes, the little monkeys were cute.
    My dad stops buying newspapers; we no longer go to the kiosks. He buys his tobacco at the bakery, when he gets bread for breakfast before I get up.
    I lie in bed all night, unable to sleep. My eyelids don’t grow heavy until the sun starts to rise. And then the dreams come. I keep seeing the boss.
    In the morning, I try to draw my dreams, I want to draw a bear in overalls, a big, brown furry bear. I want to look at the drawing, laugh at it, and scrunch up the paper. But every time I try to start it, draw a line on the paper, I stop immediately. I can’t draw it, I feel sick the moment I pick up a pencil. I put my paper and my colouring pencils, watercolours, and brushes as far under my bed as I can. So far that I have to bend down to see