No one could answer the riddle, and no one wanted to make a futile attempt to find the obvious answer. One by one they left us. Finally, it was just me and Fanden left around the table. There were flowers on the table, red roses, a few stones from the shoreline and some twig someone had placed there. Not that any of these objects had any impact on the slowly unfolding story. Some drunkard, at this disaster of a party, probably put them on the table. Fanden looked at me and raised an eyebrow. He’d already had enough away of this place. Not that I could blame him. Finally, I rose with a sigh. Fanden followed me with his eyes, as if I had a ghost on the back. He stood up, too.
The answer to the riddle was ten. There are 30 cows and 28 chickens, how many did not? I just wanted to liven up your party with some puzzles. Obviously riddles were not so attractive for drunken teenagers. Especially not when someone had set up poker set on a table, and the girls began taking off their clothes. Fanden was a good guy. He didn’t even look at the girls. It was as if they did not interest him. I threw some curious glances at them now and then. It was not unusual for a young girl to question her own heterosexuality, but now it was now once so I had decided that I liked boys and girls equally. But I just liked Fanden more than anyone else.
Teenagers danced in the beachfront. We called the poor man's tango. We were dirty. Our clothes were tattered and shredded to pieces. You could not call us pretty, but no one tried to talk to us, so it didn’t really matter. In this way we avoided the painful and humiliating moments in life. Most girls here had to sell themselves on the streets. I had only done it a few times. Some called me one of the lucky few. I only realised I was lucky when Fanden came into my life.
Fanden was actually named Dominic Mowinckel. He had half long dark hair and big, brown eyes in his pale face. The nickname was a family joke. Fanden was Devil in Norwegian, the ancient language we once spoke in this part of Scandinavia. He had never known another name. His father was a doctor. His mother died long ago. Some thought she had defied his master. Marcello Mowinckel was no nice man. Not even Fanden thought so.
Since I was with Fanden some people looked at me differently. I was the girl who could afford things. I was in the slums every other night, but that meant I spent half the time in a four-poster bed in some palace. To call Fanden's residence a palace was a gross exaggeration, but it was still more beautiful than shacks we stayed in.
"What do you think?" Fanden asked. His voice was hard, distant and cold. He wasn’t a gentle man. Maybe this was why I loved him. I needed someone to look after me. I couldn’t be the one that looked out for other people.
Fanden held a bottle of vodka in his hand. Vodka was his mother's milk. Dr. Marcello had caused him to swallow incredible amounts of venom. He offered me a swig quite often, but I politely declined. There was no point in drinking. I had my pills and my cigarettes. If I needed a break from reality, I would just devour one of them.
"I need more pills soon," I said softly. Fanden looked toward the horizon. The sea reflected in his eyes. A painter would have loved Fanden. He was so aesthetically appealing. His face was symmetrical. Small and straight. He was slender and his clothes fit him perfectly. Fanden was always well dressed. After I got to know me, he started buying me better clothes. There was no more poor man’s tango for me. At least not while I was with Fanden.
"I have to go soon," Fandens said, and looked down at his pocket watch. "You can join if you like," he offered. I had my friends here, but they were all too drunk to notice it if I disappeared. Some would probably think that we had found a private place. A place where we could be alone and have some fun. Not that I had anything against the idea.
We sat down on a boulder. The beach was so dirty. Only the poor came to the Breakwater. It was just a stone's throw away Storstranda, where the rich went, yet the dirty stench never reached the rich man’s beach.
Fanden cast impatient glances down at his watch. It was beautiful and adorned with an engraving of a devil-like creature. The boy was, after all, Fanden.
"Do you ever wonder if we really live?" Fanden asked.
"What?"
"Where are we in this landscape of uncertainty. Are we alive or dead? "
"Does it matter?" I asked. "It feels like I'm alive. That's all that matters to me. "
"But what if you are an illusion. What if I sit here alone, talking to myself? "
"Again: Does it matter? When I touch I feel the heat. Whether it is an illusion or a fact doesn’t matter." Fanden looked at the weather and sighed.
"What’s with these sudden questions?" He shook his head and smiled weakly.
"Our ride will probably be here soon. We should get to the road so father won’t become displeased." Fanden never said that his father was angry, although it was the truth. The father, Dr. Marcello, was not unhappy. He was simply cursed. Fanden was afraid of him. But did the bridges burn between Fanden and the Doctor, I was sure Fanden would lose everything. Everything he had built would collapse. The years of work, gone.
Jonna sat at the entrance to the Breakwater. He had a new black eye every time I saw him. When he saw me he brightened up. He came staggering towards me and smashed me with a hug. He hugged me for a very long time. We were family. I had lived with Jonna almost my entire life. I had sex with his sister in his bed. We were bound by something stronger than blood.
"Are you on your way to Vila del Richo?," he asked teasingly.
"I have an errand to run," Fanden replied coldly.
"And you want to bring your girlfriend? Arabellaaaa, " he said while playing with his big top hat. Jonna was one of the few who could afford such clothing. He was not only an alcoholic and a rascal; he was also one of the biggest prostitutes in the city. Women and men paid good money for an evening with Jonna. He did not talk much about it. Prostitution was better than circuses.
"Say hi to Sven from me," Jonna said when we went away from him. A cool gust went through my body. I would never speak to Sven voluntarily.
We stood by the road and waited for a while. Lager hot-air balloons floated around in the sky above us. Fanden also had such a balloon.
"I'll bring you to it one day," was one of the first things he said to me. The very next day I got to join him up in the air. That afternoon we sat and ate cakes in the Winter Palace. After that we moved his bed out on the balcony and fell asleep. I could not imagine a more idyllic and innocent Eve. I saw Fanden smile for the first time, and that smile, I was never going to forget.
A dark vehicle came driving towards us. It was a mixture of a car and a motorcycle. The bodywork was non-existent. Instead there were just a lot of pipes and gears. In the front seat sat Sven Mowinckel. Fanden took my hand and squeezed it discreetly. He knew about my distaste for Sven. Sven the Psychopath I called him.
I sat down in the back seat (which really was a sidecar). Fanden sat in the front seat with his brother. He gave the bright vodka bottle to his blond brother. Sven took a big gulp and threw it against Jonna standing in the edge of the grass. I felt the anger rise, but before I could say anything Sven crushed on the gas pedal. We set off. Away from the Breakwater and into the big, dangerous city.
I did not know what kind of errand it was Fanden was going on. It couldn’t be anything bad since he invited me. Still, I was a bit worried.
We drove through the dirty parts of the city before we entered the villa districts. I was surprised when we drove right through them as well. Sven and Fanden had started a muffled conversation. I was not listening. It was certainly not intended for me to hear. Nevertheless, I got to hear some of the chilling details of Sven’s life. I exhaled. The cigarettes were in my pocket. I could do without. The last few days I’d been so good. I had only smoked when I absolutely had to. Fanden didn’t like cigarettes. He liked very few things (other than vodka).
"How far into the city are we going?" I asked. I began to get nervous. The further into town we got, the closer we got to them. I had never been there, but I had heard horrible stories.
Furthest into the city, in a circle around the lake in the middle of tow, were the circuses. They were a tourist attraction, and the rich man’s main reason to get up from bed in the morning. They were one of the few sources of entertainment they had.
"So Arabella can talk," Sven grinned. His teeth were sharper than normal. Some said he had undergone surgery. Sven was blond, but had the same brown eyes as his brother. His smile was ferocious and stingy. He was like a starving hyena on the savannahs.
"Do you have any of the delicious cigarettes with liquorice taste?" Sven asked. I wanted to be harsh, but his eyes scared me. I could not say no to him. His menacing gaze was too much. I picked up the package and gave one of the cigarettes to him. He licked his lips and put it inside is mouth. Greedy and stingy, as always.
"So what have you done today, Arabella?" Sven asked. I snorted. He wasn’t usually one for small talk.
"We were at a party at the Breakwater." Now it was Sven turn to snort.
"Breakwater," he said under his breath, just loud enough that I could hear him. He said it with a contempt that made me gape. His fists clenched around the steering wheel. He despised that his brother was with an impoverished wench, he despised that we went to parties in the Breakwater of all places when we could be in the Winter Palace.
Sven was the kind of person who could walk over dead bodies to get his way. In his belt he wore a large butcher knife. The sheath was worn. It was the same colour as the leather vest Fanden was wearing. Sven straightened his glasses. They were a kind of glasses aviators used. Large and round with gold and silver in the huge frame. Fanden had a fairly similar pair.
We drove past a road sign. It said Midtown. The thought of going to circuses made me unwell. I had heard many horror stories; I knew what was happening there. It wasn’t the uncertainty that was scary. It was the certainty that something terrible was going on in the Midtown. Sven's grin became wider and wider as fears spread across my face. Fanden sat quietly in his seat, but I could feel the tension he radiated. He was nervous as well.
We reached Midtown. Circus tents stood in a row. There had to be hundreds of them, maybe thousands. They varied in colour scheme and sizes. If you had no idea what was going on, you might have found them pretty.
Sven found a vacant lot outside one of the largest tents. The air smelled of mould mixed with sugar. I could hear children laughing and adults talk merrily with their friends. Teenagers tried to sneak into the enclosures where the animals and carnival freak were.
Fanden jumped out of the car and opened the side door for me. He was gallant as a knight and as fair as a king, but I began to wonder why he had brought me here. I knew his father worked in the circus industry. It was where that the main demand for doctors (especially surgeons) was. For real circus freaks weren’t born, but created. Created by surgery and abuse only doctors could perform. They were also called Fragments. They were only part of the real people. Fragments of something that once was a person.
Yet they earned better than most of the poor. Some even got a celebrity reputation. And the more serious the surgeries and modifications were, the more you earned. Women with a beard gained nothing compared to the two-headed, and such. Jonna knew too much about circuses. He had several friends who had given up on prostitution and joined that damn life. And now, I was about to experience it for the first time in my life. I shivered at the thought.
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