Shopping
Grandma is reluctant to take Krill grocery shopping. He always makes a
fuss and causes a scene. Every time she stuffs sausages down his trousers or
shoves oatmeal and prunes under his sweater, he just starts flapping his arms
about, yelling and screaming. THAT’S ENOUGH, Grandma says as she fills his
pockets with carrots and onions. THIS IS THE LAST TIME I’M TAKING YOU WITH ME
SHOPPING. But the very next day they go there again.
Yatzy
Krill gets
tired of playing Yatzy with Grandma. She always throws the dice, so they fall
on the floor, and then Krill has to crawl under the table to retrieve them.
Grandma insists that any throw that lands on the floor automatically means
another go, so she throws the dice again, often under the sofa, where Krill
must grow himself a lynx coat of dust to get at them, or out into the hall or
into the kitchen. The little white plastic dice can be hard to find, and their
hiding places come in different combinations: one die in Grandma’s shoe, two
under the kitchen table and two behind the stove, for instance, or one behind
the stove, two in the shoe and three under the kitchen table. While the actual
throw of the dice is over in an instant, gathering them up takes a long time,
so that the whole game has come to revolve around whether Krill can find the
dice as he crawls and creeps and wriggles his way around the house. When
Grandma falls asleep on the sofa, the game is over, and Krill gets up off the
floor and brushes the dust from his aching body. He feels as though a giant
hand has shaken him hard and then tossed him around the house. Sometimes he’s a
small straight, but mostly a pair of threes.
Merry-go-round
Krill would have loved to
win the biggest teddy bear at the fair, ride the ghost train, eat cotton candy
and go on the roller coaster until he threw up with excitement – but more than
anything, he wishes he could ride the merry-go-round. The magnificent
white-painted wooden horse, as if frozen in a leap of unearthly beauty; to sit
in its gilded saddle, poised and exalted – the mere thought of it makes him
quiver and tremble like a bedspring on a sugar high. Grandma pushing him around
in a wheelbarrow shouting BOY FOR SALE! BOY FOR SALE! isn’t quite the same.
Withdrawal and protocol
Krill feels kind of sorry for Grandma as she struggles to reach the
counter. He has to give her a push, always with the smouldering fear that she
might snap in two, or shatter like a porcelain doll against the tiles. Krill
notices how much older she has grown. Her instructions come mostly as a yawn
through the balaclava now, and she waves the gun around less and less often –
and always with a weary gesture, as if signalling that she’s had enough, as
though she were declining a sleeping pill or another cup of coffee. He takes
her by the arm on the way out and helps her down the steps. Before Grandma
opens the car door, she fires a few more shots – mostly because she has
forgotten about the ones she let off moments earlier. In the car she complains
about her knee and the traffic, oblivious to the sirens and all the screaming.
They have barely made it through the front door when Grandma says she wants to
lie down for a while. In the evening she is grumpy and irritable, says
everything was different in the old days. Back then, the bank teller always had
such a lovely smile for her.
Door to Door
Grandma never
buys anything at the door. If they’re selling books, Grandma tells them she’s
illiterate, and if they’re selling life insurance, she lies down and plays
dead. Things don’t get really bad until people come to the door in pairs to
talk about God, and Grandma nails them to the garage wall. But sometimes
Grandma goes knocking on people’s doors herself. When they open, she gives a
solemn curtsy and tells them she’s selling raffle tickets. There’s only one
prize to be won, and that is Krill. But no one is interested in buying a
ticket. That’s when Grandma gets difficult and pokes them in their love handles
with her hunting knife. HE’S SUCH A LOVELY BOY, she says.
Girls
Krill is not
allowed to bring girls home, and Grandma keeps watch from the kitchen window.
So, he smuggles them in through the cellar window instead. As they sit there,
one girl on the floor and two on the mattress, they hear someone coming down
the stairs. Krill has to come up with something, and he’d better do it fast.
Maybe hide the girls behind the door or under the bed. Krill goes for the
closet, but it’s too late. When he opens the closet door, three girls from last
summer fall out.
Asbjørn Stenmark (b. 1971 in Brønnøysund, Norway) is a Norwegian writer, translator and lyricist. He has published two collections of short prose and a collection of poetry. His translations include works by English- and German-language writers such as Matthew Sweeney, Jan Wagner and Franz Kafka. He has also written lyrics for a number of Norwegian bands. Stenmark lives in Stjørdal, Norway.
Photo by Leikny Havik Skjærset