See You at the Observatory

GLI ARCO B ALENI 13

Titolo originale “Vi ses i Obsan” Traduzione di Samanta K. Milton Knowles Copertina e illustrazione di Alessandro Baronciani Vi ses i Obsan © Text Cilla Jackert, pubblicato per la prima volta da Rabén & Sjögren, Svezia, nel 2014 Per l’edizione italiana Copyright © 2016 Camelozampa Pubblicato in accordo con Rabén & Sjögren Agency.

Tutti i diritti riservati Prima edizione: giugno 2018 ISBN 9788899842185

La traduzione è stata realizzata con il contributo finanziario dello Swedish Arts Council

Questa pubblicazione riflette unicamente le opinioni dell’autore e la Commissione non può essere ritenuta in alcun modo responsabile dell’uso che possa essere fatto delle informazioni ivi contenute.

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Cilla Jackert

See You at the Observatory Translated in English by Margaret Greenan

6

Prologue Annika loved telling lies.

There were times she lied out of laziness. Or out of naughtiness. She could lie to impress somebody. Or to be kind. There were times she lied because it was fun, but she could also easily lie without a specific reason.

If we wanted to be generous, we could say lying was her hobby.

If we didn’t want to be generous, we could say Annika was a natural born liar.

And she was. She had no shame in putting one lie after the other.

“I’m moving to Egypt.”

“My dad can play twelve instruments.”

“We had snake meat for dinner yesterday. It tasted like chicken.”

Annika’s friends knew she told lies.

Annika’s parents knew that most of what their daughter told them had little to do with reality.

And since all the people Annika hung out with knew she’d rather make up an intriguing confection than tell a boring truth, it didn’t really matter that she told lies.

Joked.

Deceived.

Told fish stories.

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Or, at least, Annika flattered herself into thinking that was the case. Until the day she wanted to say the truth about what had happened to her during the summer between her sixth and seventh grade.

And nobody believed her. “Stop telling lies, Annika.� Her friends said.

Annika wasn’t surprised by their reaction.

Because what had happened to her that summer had been so absurd that it really seemed like a lie, even though it was the absolute truth.

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Chapter One The summer holidays between her sixth and seventh grade had started exactly as usual:with a very normal end-of-year celebration in Stockholm’s “Gustaf Vasa in Odenplan” church. In this very normal church there were rows and rows of very normal children, all sitting there wearing very normal freshly-ironed clothes that would soon get dirty with cream cake decorated with the summer’s first strawberries. The impatient knees of those kids all had very normal bouquets of white and lilac flowers on them, filling the church with their gentle smell, so normal for this season.

Five hundred very normal children sang “The Time of Flowers is Coming” like in every very normal end-of-year celebration, with their very normal music teacher standing in front of them while waving a quite normal wooden stick no one knew what it was really for.

In front of the altar there was a very normal choir and Annika was in the front row. She looked the same as usual, except for the fact that she had actually brushed her hair for once. But she hadn’t done her fringe because there was a gum stuck in it and her mum wanted to cut it.

The rest of her straight hair fell down her back, over a very normal white dress with a definitelynot-so-normal red marker stain right above her heart.

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Annika liked that stain because it was easy to come up with a lie about a red spot right above her heart.

“It’s blood,” Annika usually said when someone pointed at it.

Besides, that dress had pockets.

And those were almost as good as the stain.

In that moment, Annika had her hands in her pockets, just like the music teacher had told her not to do, and was singing “The Time of Flowers is Coming” in a clear, loud voice.

It was her favourite song and she wanted everyone to know. The lyrics were actually quite silly and the tune was terrible, but there was no other song worthy of being sung in such a clear, loud voice.

Everybody who, like Annika, loved the summer break knew that.

“I’m going to tour with my band this summer,” Annika explained to her classmates outside the church, after having listened to one of the headmistress’ baffling speeches, another one that had ended with her crying and blowing her nose loud and clear into the microphone.

“God, you really can’t stop making up stuff can’t you?” the Gnome, one of Annika’s classmates, said.

Annika shrugged.

She didn’t care if her classmates believed her or not.

They were all so boring anyway.

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So honest.

They always had to say the truth.

“Why should I?” Annika always replied.

As soon as her classmates opened their mouths, she would fall asleep to protest.

Of course, she only pretended to fall asleep, because falling asleep wasn’t that easy. If it were, Annika could have lent her classmates to people with sleeping problems. They would have sat on the corner of the bed of that person and spoken about summer camps where they taught you how to paddle in a Canadian canoe or about those riding camps where they held jumping races with obstacles so low the horses barely needed to lift up their hooves to pass over them.

“Snore,” Annika said.

There was one sure thing though. No one fell asleep when Annika spoke about her summer holidays. So, was it really important if there was nothing real in it?

“This summer we are going to Fantomenland, Eskilstuna’s zoo,” the Gnome said.

“Snore,” Annika said.

“I’ll have so much fun,” the Gnome said.

“Double snore,” Annika said.

“You’re being mean,” the Gnome said. He, unlike Annika, was always honest.

“You know why? Because my brain was attacked by an amoeba that feeds on what is good and leaves 11

only what is bad and unpleasant.”

“It’s the first time I believe you,” the Gnome said.

Then he giggled, wrinkling his nose. He was cute.

Annika laughed too.

“I must go,” he said.

He leaned forward to hug her goodbye.

“Is that because you’re in love with me?” Annika asked.

“Can you stop making fun of me?” he replied, while his cheeks had become as red as a gnome’s.

“What’s the problem? All boys are in love with me.

It’s perfectly normal and you shouldn’t be ashamed of it.”

“It’s not like I’m ashamed. And I’m not in love with you either,” the Gnome hurriedly added.

They exchanged a quick hug. He smelled like salt and apple-scented fabric softener. When he asked her what she would do during the summer break, his cheeks were still red.

“I’m going...” Annika started.

“Never mind,” he interrupted her. Then ran to reach his parents waiting for him nearby.

He turned around and waved. She waved back. It was nice knowing he was in love with her.

It was true.

She felt sorry for him because he had boring parents that surely stressed the fact that he must always tell the truth.

“Are you telling the truth, Gnome?”

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They surely said that every single day. Except, maybe, when they called him Rasmus instead of Gnome, as that was his real name.

Annika’s parents never insisted on having the truth.

Not even when their toilet got clogged up because Annika had tried to flush down a terrible cake she had made without following the recipe.

“It was already like that when I came back from school,” Annika had said while her mum was kneeling down, facing the other way and with an arm down the toilet.

“I believe you,” her mum had replied.

We could say Annika had inherited her parents’ talent for lying.

They were called Gugge and Ossian Bosse, and lived in the part of Drottninggatan that was so far from Vasastan no one knew it was still called Drottninggatan. Annika usually told people she lived in the Spirit’s Palace a block away, but she actually lived in a normal flat on the first floor of a quite-new building that was not haunted by ghosts, unfortunately.

The apartment had four rooms and a kitchen.

One of the rooms was Annika’s. It overlooked the Observatorielunden, the park of the astronomical observatory on the other side of the road. Her parents slept in another room. Then the family obviously had a living room with a sofa and a TV, and a library with so many books the shelves looked 13

like hammocks. And then there was another room, which was called the study for some strange reason, but which would become the room of Annika’s little brother or sister after the summer break.

There was still a whole summer before his or her arrival though, and Annika really wanted to enjoy those holidays in a special way.

“Things won’t change so much,” her mum had said all spring, taking Annika in her arms and rocking her like when she was a baby. Which hadn’t been that easy, as Annika had suddenly become just an inch shorter than her mother, and her mother’s belly grew week after week.

Annika knew her mother was as good a liar as she was.

Even if they didn’t lie about the same things.

Of course everything would change when her little brother or sister came. Actually, it would get worse, and Annika knew that well.

In fact, she had friends who were younger siblings and she knew perfectly well how terrible they could be. All they did was stealing money, taking clothes and disclosing all the secrets and lies of their older siblings.

“Mum thinks I don’t know it will all be different,” Annika thought while running to her main door and then up the stairs, through the door and stopping in front of the pinboard in the kitchen. She pinned her school diploma next to the calendar where her mum 14

had written in big block letters how long had passed since she and dad had conceived her little brother or sister.

At this point, “week 27” was written on it, which meant there were about thirteen weeks left until the baby arrived.

“Put out the stuff you want to bring to the countryside,” mum said while coming from the entryway with a big carryall she left next to the door.

She looked tired and Annika wondered who things would be when the calendar said “week 35”.

“I don’t need anything,” Annika said.

They were going to leave for the countryside and, even though she would never say this to her friends, Annika loved spending summers in that small red house in Småland.

“You smelled like a stinky dog all summer last year.

So you’re not going to bring just a pair of trousers this time,” her mum said, going into the kitchen to open the water tap.

At least, that’s what Annika thought she’d done.

The sound she heard was like her mum had opened the tap.

The water started pouring.

The strange thing was it poured on the floor and not in the sink.

In fact, her mum hadn’t opened the tap.

That pouring sound was coming from several litres 15

of amniotic fluid dropping down on the linoluem floor, whose pattern looked like a skin illness according to mum.

“Dad,” Annika shouted. “DAD!” “The baby’s coming out!” her mum shouted.

“The baby’s coming out!” Annika shouted.

“The baby’s coming out?”

Her dad flung the bathroom door open. He didn’t even button up his trousers, he immediately ran to mum, who was leaning on the floor.

He looked scared.

Mum looked scared too.

Annika was used to seeing her parents sad, angry, happy or tired. Not scared. It was the first time.

“The baby’s coming,” mum said.

“Let’s go to the hospital then,” her dad replied, trying to get her back on her feet. It was like trying to get an elephant on two legs. He couldn’t move her one bit.

“You don’t understand. The baby’s coming out NOW.” And then mum yelled, and it was a kind of yell Annika had never heard before. It came from the deepest part of her belly. She sounded like an animal. A trapped cow. And it was awful. Annika wanted to yell at the baby, to tell him he’d got it wrong, that he had to stay in the belly for another few months.

But she didn’t do anything.

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She didn’t say anything.

She just stood there, staring at her mum’s face as it crumpled up.

“I’M DYIIIIING,” she howled, and Annika believed her.

“Just breathe,” dad shouted as he ran to the phone. He dialled the number and, as soon as he heard someone picking up, he yelled: “You must come now! My wife’s giving birth!”

His roar was almost as loud as mum’s. Then he fell silent. Someone must have been telling him what to do, because he dragged the phone with him and sat next to mum.

“OK,” he said. “I understand.” He then turned around and looked right into Annika’s eyes. “Go to your room and wait there.”

Annika would have usually complained, but that day she ran to her bedroom, threw herself onto the bed and hid her face int her pillow, which smelled like hair and blood for all the times she’d had a nosebleed and nobody had had the strength to change the pillowcase.

She lied down with her arms along her body and shut her eyes has hard as she could.

Why don’t humans have eyelids on their ears? She didn’t want to hear her mum yell, nor her dad’s always more panicky voice. She didn’t want to hear the ambulance staff burst into the flat and start giving themselves orders in calm but also tense voices.

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“Is it alive?”

Mum’s voice was thin. Annika was strangely able to hear it through the door and among all that chaos.

Why has she said that? Why shouldn’t the baby be alive?

A man yelled there wasn’t time to lose and Annika heard even more noises and racket and finally dad yelled, “WE’RE GOING TO THE HOSPITAL ANNIKA! BUT THERE’S NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT. EVERYTHING’S GONNA BE ALRIGHT, WE’LL CALL YOU LATER.” Then Annika heard the door being shut.

And their voices when they got down the road.

She heard her dad yelling something to her mum.

She heard the ambulance’s siren under her window and then going farther and farther.

Nee – naw – nee – naw – nee – naw.

Then there was silence.

Total silence.

Two kids passed under the window. They were arguing about what “the last drop” meant.

“That’s not the last drop. That’s the dirt at the bottom of the bottle,” one of them said.

“The drink’s mine so I get to decide which is the last drop,” the other one replied.

Their steps became weaker as they went farther down the road.

Then the silence came back.

Annika fell asleep a second after the kids had gone.

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