The Runaways Page 5
Grandpa blinked at me. We’d been thinking the same thing. We wanted to be alone. Dad looked relieved and off he went.
“I’ll be back soon,” he said.
But I knew he would be a while.
Grandpa sat up in bed with a pillow behind his back. He looked like a tired God leaning against a fluffy cloud.
“Now then,” he said. “Have you figured out how I can learn to speak nicely?”
“Yes, wait and you’ll see,” I said.
I dug out the blue dictionary with the gold letters and placed it in his lap.
He turned it this way and that. “What do I do with this?” he asked.
“These are all the words and what they mean. You just look them up and put them together and then you can say anything you like.”
Grandpa put on his reading glasses and opened the book. He ran his huge calloused hand over the pages. And sighed.
“There’s a whole…lot of words. How will I do this? I’ll run out of time…”
“You’ll have to do your utmost, Grandpa. Think about Grandma. Best to start straight away.”
We sat for an hour with the book in front of us. We got through half of the A words. Most of them Grandpa said he didn’t care about. Anaconda: a large, semiaquatic snake of the boa family, for example.
“I’ve got no use for that one,” he said.
He wrote a few in the notebook I’d brought with me: Ambrosia: the food of the gods could be good in case he was invited to dinner. Ardent because that’s how he’d feel—“You can bet your lucky stars on it”—when he saw her again. And amorous.
“You never know,” said Grandpa.
Then he’d had enough of words, so I took out the buns.
“You’ll have to work on it by yourself once we’ve gone,” I said. “You’d better hide the dictionary so Dad doesn’t see it. It’s his best one. But he already knows enough words. The buns are from Adam. He says hello.”
“Say hello back.” Grandpa put the book under his pillow.
Then we ate buns and drank water. Grandpa mixed his water with lingonberry jam. I wasn’t allowed any. He drank ardently with small mouthfuls. “I take a teaspoon with every meal,” he said. “It even makes the hospital food okay. And then I have one at night to give me beautiful dreams.”
“You have to make it last,” I said.
“I am,” he said. “It has to last long enough to get me through that blessed book.”
He’d just put away his jam and shaken off the crumbs when Dad came back, pleased because he’d finished the crossword, and holding a bag.
“Hope you like them,” said Dad.
“I’m sure I will.” Grandpa sneaked them to me.
“Unfortunately it’s time for us to think about getting home,” said Dad.
“Such is life,” said Grandpa, settling himself into bed and closing his eyes. “Goodbye, my sweet little boys.”
14.
GRANDPA GOT NICER and weaker with every week that passed. We went there on Saturdays, Dad and me. Dad sat in the visitor’s chair for a minute or two. Then he went down to the cafe to do the crossword.
The nurse said that Grandpa had started calling her by Grandma’s name or “my dearest one,” asking her how she was, if there was anything he could do for her and saying how happy he was to see her because he’d missed her so “fervently.”
“It’s almost enough to make you fall in love with him,” she smiled.
“I’m just trying things out,” said Grandpa with satisfaction.
Dad thought he must have had a small stroke.
“Then I wish more of them had them,” said the nurse.
Grandpa was different with Dad too. Much friendlier. Clapped him on the shoulder, even though he hardly could, and told him he knew he hadn’t been a very good father. That he’d shown too little love.
“You were too different from me,” he said. “You still are.”
“Yes, luckily,” said Dad.
“You’re right about that,” said Grandpa. “I’m pleased you’re still the way you are.”
It was almost as if they understood each other. Grandpa laid his great old hand over Dad’s. They sat there a while. Then Dad got up and took the newspaper.
“Now, would you like any treats today?” he asked.
“Yes, if you wouldn’t mind,” said Grandpa.
Dad turned to me. “But none before dinner. And brush your teeth afterwards.” He winked as he left.
Dad had noticed Grandpa’s trick.
“He’s not silly, my son, your father,” said Grandpa.
“No,” I said. “Just a bit hopeless sometimes.”
Once Dad had left we played chess, just like we did on hopelessly rainy days in summer on the island. Grandpa won most times. But not today.
He lost three games in a row. He wasn’t like the chief engineer of all the world’s ships.
“What is it?” I said. “What are you thinking about?”
“What if I don’t get to meet her. What if there’s no heaven. That’s what I’m thinking about.”
“Mum thinks there is. And she’s usually right.”
“Even mothers can be wrong, Gottfried Junior.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“Only time will tell,” I said.
Grandpa laughed.
“Yes, yes,” he said. “But before we meet next time I want you to find out. Shall we play once more?”
He fell asleep in the middle of the fourth game.
I took the dictionary out of the wardrobe and put it in my bag because Grandpa said he didn’t need it any more.
What was Grandpa asking, really?
How could I find out if heaven really existed? I was too young, didn’t he know that?
At night I lay on my back in bed, looking at clouds through the bedroom window. I saw clouds float past. I saw the moon and all the stars that looked like the pearl sugar on Adam’s buns. There were so many. And some of them didn’t even exist. Dad had told me that. They were so far away that by the time their light reached us they had gone out a long time ago.
When I stared out into space I had a thought: if we can see things that don’t exist, then there must be things that exist that we can’t see.
I felt incredibly smart. But I knew that it wouldn’t be enough for Grandpa. He wanted so badly to be sure. At breakfast I asked my mother.
“Do people go to heaven when they die?”
“I certainly believe that,” she said.
“But how can we know?”
“You can’t,” said Dad. “And there’s no point worrying about it. So far no one has come back from the dead to fill us in.”
But he was wrong.
On Tuesday I found out.
My mother’s magazine arrived: the one she subscribed to because it had such good recipes. It also had articles about people who’d experienced incredible things.
I read about a man who’d been dead for several hours, but had come back to life. He talked about how it felt. How first he’d kind of twirled through a dark tunnel, then come to a place that was shining with light.
They even had a picture of what it looked like. There was a cliff, and a bit beyond that the glimmer of water sparkling in strong light from above. It looked like the picture at the end of Grandma’s Bible where an angel stood on a mountaintop pointing to the land of eternity, and light was streaming from dark clouds like water from a shower.
Both were in black and white.
I took the magazine and ran in to Dad.
“Look here!” I called triumphantly, pointing. “Heaven exists, and here’s the proof.”
Dad glanced at the picture and the article. “That’s just a drawing,” he said.
“Of course it is. You can’t take a camera there!”
Dad sighed. “You can’t believe things in those kinds of magazines,” he said. “They’re full of humbug and nonsense.”
“Mm,” I said.
But I believed it anyway.
The person who drew the picture had drawn it exactly the way the man who came back to life told him to. “That’s just what it looked like when I got there,” he said in the article. I didn’t worry about what Dad said, because he hardly believed in anything.
And now it was urgent. I didn’t want Grandpa to wait any longer for me to bring him the happy news.
15.
RONNY-ADAM GAVE me a ride to the hospital the next day. He hung a sign on the bakery door that said BACK SOON. I’d skipped school after lunch saying I had to go to the dentist.
I’d cut out the article in the magazine and put it in my school book so it wouldn’t get wrinkled.
When we arrived at Grandpa’s ward the nurse said it wasn’t really visiting hours. But that we were welcome anyway.
“He needs a bit of cheering up,” she said. “I’ve done my best. But he’s awfully tired and sleeps most of the time.”
Grandpa opened his eyes at least when we came into the room, and put in his false teeth.
“My little lads, just the ones I’ve been wanting to see,” he said. He tried to sound normal. But his voice was hoarse and thinner. And his eyes had an odd glitter.
“Are you sad?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “The lingonberry jam’s almost finished.”
The jam jar was on the bedside table beside the photo of Grandma. There were only a few red drops left in the bottom.
“I know something to make you happy,” I said.
“I’m sorry, lad, but I don’t think I can manage any beer today.”
“It’s not beer.”
“Is it buns?”
“No, not buns either,” said Adam.
“What then?” Grandpa muttered as if he’d already lost interest.
“Heaven,” I said.
I had to say it twice.
“You said I should find out if it existed or not.”
“That was a joke,” he said. “But I don’t feel like joking any more.”
“You can see it,” I said. “Here!”
I took the picture out of the school book and passed him his reading glasses that were on the notebook where he’d written all the words he wanted to learn.
“I’m not in the mood for jokes,” said Grandpa.
I said it wasn’t a joke. That this was really how it was. That someone who’d been dead had told it to the person who did the drawing.
Grandpa sighed and was about to give me back the picture when his face lit up. As if it was lit up by the light shining in the picture. He looked at it and smiled. There were tears in his eyes. His mouth moved, even though no sound came.
That lasted for about a minute. Then he woke up again.
“Did you see her?” he said.
“No,” said Adam.
“See who?” I asked.
“You know who,” said Grandpa.
He said that Grandma had come out and stood behind one of the cliffs. She was wearing her usual old stripy apron. And a shawl over her head. She didn’t say anything. Just looked at him and seemed sort of amused.
“You know how she could look, Gottfried Junior?”
“Yes.”
“That’s how she was.”
Adam looked doubtful. Although he didn’t want to say anything because Grandpa seemed so pleased. But Grandpa saw his hesitation.
“You think it was a dream, don’t you.”
“I don’t know,” said Adam, carefully.
“It probably was in a way,” said Grandpa. “Because she only showed herself to me. She appeared like a vision. How else could she do it?”
“Yeah, that’s true,” said Adam.
After a while Adam said goodbye to Grandpa. He even gave him a hug, even though Grandpa wasn’t the kind of person you hug.
“I’ll go and wait in the car,” he said. “So you can be by yourselves for a bit.”
I sat still beside the bed.
I held Grandpa’s hand. After a while he went to sleep. I looked at him and thought about all the things we’d done together. He looked happy.
He snored quietly.
It sounded like a ship starting its engines, about to depart.
ON FRIDAY AS I WALKED home from school I saw a crow flying higher and higher into space, until it turned into an eagle.
Grandpa had run away again.
This time he wasn’t coming back.
This edition first published in 2019 by Gecko Press
PO Box 9335, Wellington 6141, New Zealand
info@geckopress.com
English-language edition © Gecko Press Ltd 2019
Text © Ulf Stark 2018
Illustrations © Kitty Crowther 2018
Original title: Rymlingarna © Lilla Piratförlaget AB 2018
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted or utilized in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher.
The cost of this translation was defrayed by a subsidy from the Swedish Arts Council, gratefully acknowledged.
Translated by Julia Marshall
Edited by Penelope Todd
Typesetting and cover design by Katrina Duncan
ISBN hardback (USA): 978-1-776572-33-5
ISBN paperback: 978-1-776572-34-2
Ebook ISBNs: 978-1-776572-35-9 (epub); 978-1-776572-36-6 (mobi); 978-1-776572-37-3 (pdf); 978-1-776572-38-0 (epub USA)
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