Anders Roslund - The Beast

She had stopped in front of him, looking at him with her head tilted back, bits of grass and earth scattered in her long blonde curls. She was trying to look cross, but angry children don’t smile and she did; she was smiling with the beaming face of a child who has been chased by the Big Bad Wolf, round and round a house in the small town. Chased until her dad couldn’t stand it any more, wanted very much to be somebody else, someone who didn’t wear a mask with a wolf’s plastic tongue and teeth.

‘Marie, I can’t hack it any more. Big Bad Wolf has to sit down and rest for a bit. The Big Bad Wolf wants to become small and kind.’

She shook her head.

‘One more time, Daddy! Just one more.’

‘That’s what you said last time.’

‘This is the last time.’

You’ve said that before too.’

‘It’s the last time. For sure.’

‘Sure, sure?’

‘Sure.’

I love her, he thought. She’s my daughter. It didn’t happen immediately, I didn’t understand at first, but now I do. I love her.

Suddenly he caught sight of the moving shadow. Just behind him. It was slow, crept along. He’d thought the other one was somewhere ahead of him, over by the trees, instead of right behind him, but there he was, moving stealthily at first, then speeding up, just at the moment when the girl with the mucky hair attacked from in front. They pushed him at the same time from opposite directions. He staggered, fell and hit the ground. Now they could both jump on top of him. They stayed as they were, then the girl with mucky hair raised her hand, palm outwards, and the dark- haired boy, the same age as her, raised his hand. Their palms slapped together. High five!

‘David, look! He’s given in!’

‘We won!’

‘The Pigs are the best!’

‘The Pigs are always the best!’

Attacked by two five-year-olds from opposite directions, the Big Bad Wolf hadn’t got a hope. As always. He knew what he must do, and rolled over, the two creatures on top of him following the roll. Lying on his back, he raised his hands to the plastic mask and pulled it off his face, blinking in the strong sunlight. He laughed out loud.

‘Isn’t it funny? I lose every time. Never win. Have I ever won, just once? Can anyone explain what’s going on?’

Waste of breath. The two creatures didn’t listen. They had won the prize, the plastic mask. They would try it on first, then celebrate by wearing it for a run-around. Afterwards they would go inside, upstairs to Marie’s room on the first floor, to add the mask to their other trophies. They would stand in front of the pile for a moment, a Ducksburg monument to the glory of two five-year-old friends.

As the children wandered away, his eyes followed them. He looked at the boy from next door, then at his daughter. So much life inside them, so many years held in their hands, with months slipping between their fingers. I envy them, he thought. I envy their endless time, their sense that an hour is long, that winter will last for ever.

They disappeared through the door and he turned his face towards the sky. Lying on his back, he searched for different shades of blue, something he had done when he was little and now did again. Any kind of sky held different blues. He’d had a good time back then, when he was just a small boy. His father was a career army officer, a captain, and that meant something. You were in a regiment. Your future promotion was embroidered on the shoulders of your uniform, or so you hoped, at least. His mother was a housewife, at home when he and his brother left for school, and still there when they returned. He’d never understood what she found to do, alone in four rooms on the third floor of a block of flats. How did she endure the sameness of her days?

On his twelfth birthday everything changed. Or, to be exact, on the day after. It seemed that Frans had waited until his birthday celebrations were over, as if he had not wanted to ruin them. As if he knew that for his little brother a birthday was something more than when you were born; it was all your longing concentrated into one day.

Fredrik Steffansson got up and brushed the grass from his shirt and shorts. He often thought about Frans, remembered missing him, more now than he’d used to. From the day after his birthday his brother simply wasn’t there. His empty bed stayed made for ever. Their talking together silenced. It was so sudden. In the morning Frans had hugged him for a long time, longer than any time Fredrik could recall. Frans had hugged him, said goodbye and walked off to Strängnäs station in time for the fast train to Stockholm. Next, no more than an hour later, in the metro station, he had bought another single ticket and caught a green line train going south, towards Farsta. At Medborgar Square, he got off, then jumped from the platform on to the track and started walking slowly between the rails into the tunnel towards Skanstull. Six minutes later a train driver caught sight of a human shape in the light of the bright headlamps and threw himself at the brakes, screaming in anguish and terror as the front carriage hit a fifteen-year-old body.

Ever since, they had left Frans’s bed untouched, the bedspread pulled tight, the folded red blanket at the foot- end. He never understood why. Still didn’t. Maybe to look welcoming if Frans returned. For years he had kept hoping that one day his brother would simply be there, that it had all been a mistake. After all, such mistakes are not unheard of. They can happen.

It was as if the whole family had died that day, on the track in a tunnel between Medborgar Square and Skanstull. His mother no longer spent her days waiting around in the flat. She never told anyone where she went but, regardless of season, she was always back at dusk. His father collapsed in every way. The straight-backed captain looked crumpled and bent, and while he’d been taciturn before, he now became practically mute. He stopped chastising his son. At least, after Frans had died, Fredrik couldn’t remember ever being beaten again.

They were back, standing in the doorway. Marie and David. One as tall as the other, five-year-olds’ height; he’d forgotten how many centimetres, it had said on the note from the nursery that stated Marie’s height and weight, but both kids were presumably as tall as they ought to be; he didn’t much care for notes with statistics. Marie’s long blonde curls were still full of grass and stuff, and David’s short dark hair was sticking to his forehead and temples, which meant that he’d put the mask on while they were inside. Fredrik observed them knowingly and laughed.

‘Look at you, so neat and tidy. Not. Just like me. We all need a bath. Do pigs take baths?’

He didn’t wait for a reply. Putting one hand on each of their thin bony shoulders, he pushed them gently back into the house, through the hall, past Marie’s room, past his bedroom, and into the big bathroom. He filled the old bathtub with water, a high-sided old tub on feet and with two seats inside. He’d found it at an auction of stuff from some grand house. Every night he would sit in the bath, allowing the sauna-like conditions to relax him and thinking, doing nothing for half an hour or so, except planning what he’d write the following day. The next chapter, the next word.

Now he worried about getting the water right for them. Not too hot, not too cold. He squeezed foam from a green Mr Men bottle. It looked soft and inviting. To his surprise they stepped into the bath without any fuss and settled side by side on one seat. He undressed quickly and sat on the seat opposite them.

Five-year-olds are so small. You don’t realise quite how small until they’re naked. Soft skin, slender bodies, forever hopeful faces. He looked at Marie, her forehead covered in white bubbles that trickled down her nose. He looked at