'Mad World' by Erlend Bratland.
Went to school and I was very nervous
No one knew me, no one knew me
Hello teacher tell me what's my lesson
Look right through me, look right through me
I find it hard to tell you, I find it hard to take
When people run in circles it's a very, very
Mad world.
Death by Exile
He lies sprawled out across the lounge floor, twirling the small screwdriver in his fingers. He is warm with pride and satisfaction. Looking at all the little pieces, side by side on the carpet, black and shimmering. Every tiny bit that had all fitted into that one solid whole radio.
"Jonathan!"
He flinches and looks up like a fox cub at the end of a double barrelled gun.
"What are you doing? What is that?"
"It's the radio."
"You took the radio apart?"
"I wanted to see how it worked. I can maybe put it back."
His father grants him a glowering silence in reply.
"Do you know how much that radio cost?"
"I can maybe put it back."
"Jonathan, I don't work all the hours that I work –"
"As a bookkeeping clerk, Daddy."
"– to pay for you to take my belongings to pieces."
"I can maybe put it back."
"Well if you don't, Jonathan, there'll be no candy for a whole month. Let me assure you of that."
"A whole month?"
"Yes, a whole month. You don't – it's not yours to touch Jonathan, my belongings are important to me. I paid good money for them. You hear?"
With that his father puts down his briefcase, stomps into the kitchen to enquire why on earth Jonathan's mother hadn't seen him taking apart the radio – taking apart the radio? she asks – yes, taking apart the radio that he paid fifty dollars for – and then stomps back out of the kitchen so he can stomp out to the garden instead, and tend to his two apple trees and one cherry tree and the vegetables in his vegetable patch before the sun goes down.
The leather is cool against his legs, sharply so where his school shorts stop just above his knees.
He likes this room. It has lots of shelves with lots of books on. Science books. It's also cosy despite being a doctor's room. His previous experience of doctor's rooms is clinical dullness. But there's a soft elephant cushion on his chair, and photos and ornaments on the desk. He also likes the doctor, who is grey and kindly-faced with twinkly eyes.
"Jonathan," he says in a voice that sounds like smiles, so different from the other voices that are addressed to him. "Would you mind stepping outside for a moment? There's a chair halfway down the corridor for you to sit on."
He slips down without a word and closes the door behind him.
The chair is waiting for him all the way over there.
But he doesn't go to it, like he's been told. Of course it's naughty not to do what you're told, but he's curious.
If he's at the doctor's there must be something the matter.
If they've sent him out it most likely means they want to discuss what's the matter without him.
They don't want to include him. They're not the first. But he wants to hear all the same.
With his ear pressed against the wood he can hear everything. His mother's voice is slightly off. Eerie.
"One of the teachers mentioned – I'd never thought of it before – is it? Is he?"
"Jonathan is suffering from mild autism, yes, Mrs Crane."
"Well what are you going to do about it?"
"Mrs Crane, there is no medical cure –"
"What other cures are there?"
"It's really only a case of curbing symptoms –"
"Curbing symptoms?"
"Yes, Mrs Crane. Jonathan will have extra help from his school, an assistant –"
"He doesn't need help, he's very intelligent –"
"Yes, but he does need support in his interactions with others."
A dense silence.
"And what about me? His father and I?"
"I'll start by giving you a leaflet to read through. Once you've covered all of the basic points we can analyse Jonathan's requirements and make them a focal point for your home life."
"Our home life."
The bitterness in her voice is unmistakable. Jonathan's heart pulses and thrums and squelches blood at an awfully high rate.
Is he in trouble for having autism? Is she going to be angry with him?
"Doctor Seaton, I – I don't –" A deep breath, shaking. "He's – are you sure there's no cure? Is that all I can do, support him and read leaflets –"
"Mrs Crane, with the right attitude his condition has the potential to improve vastly. He's only six."
"Yes but he's never going to be – normal, is he?"
Jonathan stifles a small sound.
"Normal is a term thrown around a lot in situations like this."
"Be straight with me. Is he going to be an emotional cripple for the rest of his life?"
"Now, Mrs Crane. Jonathan has trouble expressing his feelings. That's not to say he doesn't have any."
"Well, I've never seen any evidence."
"Mrs Crane. Please. Go home and read the leaflet. Take some time to let this settle. Then come back to me."
He rushes to the chair halfway down the hall and sits like a good boy, hands in his lap, spine straight, shoulders back.
She emerges looking ragged, like somebody who has just been shaken hard, like an old doll.
It's one of the few times she has really tried to smile at him.
Jonathan enjoys watching the birds at home. Birds don't stick around at school because of the noisy children. If only they would all sit down and be quiet, maybe the birds would come. But nobody wants to be quiet except for him.
Here in his back garden, before his father gets home from work and goes out to shout at them, there are a few birds amongst the grass or on the fence. They hop and stop and look about with their beady eyes full of life and alert knowledge, wondering what worms they can find.
Except for the crows, of course.
His father hates the crows more than any other bird because, he says, they eat his vegetable patch and his cherries and apples. Eat away at them like awful vermin and ruin his lovely fresh greens and fruits. There are no homely meals if the crows come. And so Jonathan watches the wonderful birds and also keeps an eye out for nasty crows. When he tells his father that he's chased away some crows he gets a smile, and maybe a dollar for candy.
There is an old scarecrow that sits in the vegetable patch that is meant to scare away crows. But crows aren't scared of much, least of all wads of mouldy old straw and a badly stitched Hessian mask. Jonathan is terrified of that scarecrow with its lopsided leering smile and its empty sockets of darkness and the bit of rope looped around its neck holding its head to its body. But crows don't see the same meaning in frightening faces. To them it's just a dead thing. If it moved maybe then they would see the face and get scared to death.
Jonathan's bedroom window faces out over the garden, and every night he checks outside from that window, looking for signs that the scarecrow has tried to get down from its pole, or if its pole has moved closer. He measures it by the vegetables, their precise relation of distance.
The scarecrow never does move. But every night he checks.
One day, the crows aren't scared of Jonathan either. They caw with their gaping mouths and flutter away before lurching back again, pecking at the parsnips that are just poking out of the earth.
He has an incredibly clever idea.
Untying the rope from the scarecrow's neck, he tears the small burlap sack from the straw body and empties its stuffing. Then he fits it over his head, so that the sockets are aligned with his own eyes and he can see. Then he runs at those crows, roaring with all his might, and away they fly like silly scaredy-cats.
No, they won't be back any time soon.
"Mommy!" he shouts in an unusual ecstasy of open delight, running towards the house and peering in through the kitchen window. She isn't there. She must be in the lounge. "Mommy! I scared them off!"
Her shape appears around the door, quickly, urgently.
Then he hears a horrifying piercing scream that cuts right through him and jolts his nerves.
His mother stands with a hand over her heart, mouth agape, breathing heavily.
"Jonathan!" she cries, but has no more to say.
"Look Mommy, I scared the crows a lot this time!"
"You scared me. Don't ever do that again."
Then he realises.
She thought that he was the old scarecrow, come down from his pole at last, just like he checks for every night.
She had been scared of the old scarecrow.
He laughs aloud, a strangely high laugh. Frightening crows is one thing. Frightening a person, though. That's great.
He suddenly thinks of Sam, who loves to make him scared.
He feels ill.
Picking up the stuffing, he puts it back into the sack and ties the sack back onto the body.
He doesn't tell his father about his genius idea that night. He can feel his mother's eyes on him in a way that makes him feel uncomfortable, sort of prickly on his neck. And besides, he is beginning to suspect that his father is tired of his stories about the crows.
Adults don't like to repeat things as many times as he does. They don't find it comforting like him.
They just start to find him boring.
An unnatural sound floats down the hallway and into Jonathan's room through the crack under his door.
It is his mother raising her voice.
He creeps, creeps, creeps down the corridor and crouches like a cat outside their bedroom, listening intently.
"Now look, don't get all emotional," says his father.
"Emotional? I am the only one in this house who is even a little emotional and I am persecuted for it!"
"Shush. He'll hear you."
"Let him! I don't care. I don't give a fuck what he hears!"
"You don't mean that."
"George, I can't do it any more, I can't do it! He's just – he's just –"
"Doctor Seaton said –"
"Doctor Seaton doesn't know hell about it. He doesn't know hell about not being able to love your own child."
Jonathan stops breathing.
"You take that back."
"I won't, I won't! He's my son and I won't lie about him!" She is crying. "I want to love him, I want to hug him and tell him nice things and help him. But I can't, I can't do it. He just looks at my mouth – never my eyes, George – he won't ever look in my eyes, and how can I even – if I can't even get him to do that, then what is this? It's like having an alien. Having a cat would be more rewarding, having a gerbil for Christ sake."
"You're exaggerating. He does have feelings."
"But I don't even know if he loves me! How can I love him not knowing if there's anything - anything at all?"
"It's just a label, this thing. It's making you see differently."
"I knew before the doctor's George, and you did too. We just couldn't admit - there's something always there, or not there. I don't know. I just – I can't take it. I don't want some ghost wandering around where my son should be."
A pause.
"Well, he's the only son you've got, so you'd better accept him for who he is."
"You're one to talk! You're too fucking obsessed with him touching your junk than paying attention to him."
"Do you not want a nice house, is that it? Do you want to live in a shabby flat somewhere?"
"If it meant you'd take your share of him, then yes. You don't understand because you don't share anything with that boy."
"We don't have the same interests at all, you know that."
"Neither do we!"
"Do you mean you and him or you and me, Sarah?"
Another pause.
"Do you really expect me to answer that?"
"I'm going for a walk."
"Yes, another one of your walks. That's fucking fine by me. If you'd rather go for a walk than make love to your wife –"
"You obviously aren't in the mood right now, are you?"
"That's not the point!"
"What is the point then, Sarah? What is it? I'd really like to fucking know."
"George, what if – would you give me another child?"
"What?"
"You heard me. Another one. Who won't be – like him. Give me something to love, George, for Christ sake, if it's not going to be you any more."
Jonathan has heard enough.
He's just pulled the covers over his head when he hears the soft snap of that door opening and closing, and then the front door key sliding home too.
His father, going out, in the dead of night. For a walk.
Jonathan doesn't cry often. But this night is one of those nights when he just has to bite into his pillow and let the noises come, keen howls ripping and lurching like waves, as though they will never stop.
This is the night that the uneasiness which has pervaded his whole young life stops being uneasiness, and becomes something else entirely.
A fear that will rub him raw, that will grate at him day by day in quiet subtle malice. Never ending. Never merciful.
It is also the night that he starts having bad dreams.