The Merman by Carl-Johan Vallgren Page A

home. There’s always someone left to carry on while the others rest up for the next shift. People whose names nobody knows, because they’re only there once and then disappear, never to resurface, or ones whose names you do know, perversely enough, because they’re sort of regulars at the end of the month when the benefits are paid. People who don’t give a damn about your existence, who attempt to appear interested orconcerned with a wine bottle in their hand, who knock on the door to your room and say, ‘How ya doing in there little girl, hope we’re not disturbing you.’ They’re actually worse than the ones who are complete bastards, because with bastards you at least know what you’re dealing with: disgusting blokes who try to touch you up or undress you with their eyes. One time I heard my mum when some guy suggested we should have a shower together. She went completely mental and chased him out with a bread knife. Even so, the nice ones are almost worse – the ones who say they feel sorry for you, even though they’re trashing the place just like the rest of them. And the sick thing is that you end up believing that’s how things have to be, that it’s normal to have a load of drunks in your house who try to come in and make small talk with you as if it were the most natural thing in the world: How old are you, little girl? How are things at school? Or with a trembling voice, they’ll say they think it’s disgusting that we have to put up with people like themselves.
    Shortly after I turned six we moved out of our flat in Falkenberg. The house constituted a health hazard. There was mould in the bathroom and kitchen. The wallpaper had started to come off the walls, and the lino was curling up in the corners. It smelled musty, and the smell of mould even permeated our clothes. Mum complained to social services until out of pure pity they sorted out a place in the newly built maisonettes in Skogstorp. That’s how we ended up here. I was going to start school that autumn, and I remember I was happy about it. Even though I was just little, I went round hoping that our circumstances would change for the better.
    And they actually did, at first. It was nice here then. Everything was brand new. There was a playground nearby, and the street was surrounded by trees and flowers. It was as if Mum and Dad had been given a new opportunity, and they realised and were prepared to seize it. Mum made some curtains and bought furniture from the charity shop. My brother and I each got our own room. I’llnever forget the day when they showed me where we were going to live. A whole room of my own with a fitted wardrobe and a view out over the street. It didn’t really matter that the walls were paper-thin, that everything was built from the cheapest materials and that when somebody went to the toilet downstairs you could hear it throughout the whole apartment. Mum and I hung up a Bamse Bear poster together, and I got a new bed and new sheets with a Pippi Longstocking design on them. Dad happened to have some money. He had made a few deals and had also got a job at a mink farm in Olofsbo. That was in the summer, and sometimes my brother and I got to go there along with him. I don’t know why I have such strong memories of that. Maybe because normally he hardly ever talked to us, kept himself to himself and looked at us as if we were strangers who just happened to end up under the same roof. And then suddenly he was transformed: open, almost happy. He had got a job he wanted to show us: the long mink sheds with no walls, with a saddle roof to keep the rain out; the silky animals who looked so friendly, almost like cuddly toys, five to a cage. Lovely animals, but dangerous. You mustn’t stick your fingers into the cages because they could easily bite off a child’s finger. You mustn’t forget they are wild animals, Dad said. One of his tasks was to prepare