Lion's Mouth, The

by Holt, Anne

  And she did settle down when I put her to the breast. She really did, I’m sure this is not something I imagined! Admittedly, she can’t have taken very much, but she wasn’t particularly restless when I tucked her up in her cot again. She still had a fever, I could see that from her eyes and the feel of her skin, but babies do sometimes become feverish, don’t they?

  Suddenly I was overcome by the notion that Benjamin was so sweet. It’s so awful to think about it, since I had just left you down at the jetty and had felt that you were the most handsome guy of them all down there! Cross my heart, I’d never looked at Benjamin that way before, after all he’s still at high school and always so solemn. But it was something that happened; maybe it was stupid of me to breastfeed Liv in Benjamin’s presence.

  Sorry! It just happened. He was wet behind the ears and hesitant, and we drank wine, even though I knew you would notice that the bottle was gone. It was probably the first bottle we’d been able to afford in six months. Why did you never ask about that?

  The wine on top of all the beer I’d drunk was too much, and when I woke up on the settee at five o’clock in the morning, Benjamin had left. You still hadn’t returned home. I had a dreadful headache, and felt so ashamed. I searched for the headache pills but couldn’t find any. Then I went in to see to Liv. She was completely cold. Her eyes were closed, and her skin was icy. I lifted her up, and it really took me a minute or so to realize that she was dead.

  I don’t remember very much after that. Just that I washed the wine glasses and put them back. And you came home immediately afterward, happy and roaring drunk.

  I have only exchanged a word or two with Benjamin since all this happened, but I can see it in him as he walks down the road, that he feels awful. He is moving to the city at the end of the month; he’s been accepted to study medicine, Mrs. Grinde told me. She seems worried. He has lost weight and speaks less than ever, she said. I hope I never have to see him again. He will always, always, remind me of betrayal, my great betrayal of you and my unforgivable betrayal of our daughter.

  I think of her all the time. Every single second of the day, and at night I dream of her skin, her honey-colored hair, the tiny fingernails no larger than a dot. Now and again, in the briefest of glimpses, I forget that she is dead.

  But she is.

  I was irresponsible, and I failed her. I have decided to go on living, but I need to push Liv completely out of my life, out of our lives. For the remainder of my time on earth, I will never, ever forget that the most important thing in life is to show responsibility. I will take responsibility, and I’ll never lose sight of that again.

  Now I can’t bear to write any more. If you ever read this letter, Roy, then I will no longer exist.

  Then you’ll know that I’m not worth grieving for.

  Your Birgitte

  The dust danced in the shaft of light. The draft from the skylight blew the minuscule particles up and down in unpredictable movements, glimmering like microscopic floodlights, floating aimlessly here and there. Stiffly, Roy folded the letter. When he looked at his hands, they seemed to belong to another person, someone he had never met. He replaced the letter in the hatbox, which was sitting at his feet with its lid askew. Slowly, he stretched out his hands, palms upward, into the beam of light.

  It was as though someone was sprinkling gold dust over them, and he fancied that he could feel the particles against his skin; he needed to feel something, something painful, and suddenly he gave himself a violent slap.

  Those last hours with Birgitte were crystal clear to him. That last night. He had slept badly. Every time he woke, he’d see her staring out into the darkness with her eyes wide open, not even blinking. The wall between them was too enormous; he did not know what tormented her, but knew her well enough not to try to creep across, to break his way through. He said nothing then, and nothing later either. Not to the police. Their questions – about Birgitte, about the pillbox, about Liv – had been so distressing. Suddenly he knew why. There was something inside him that had lain hidden and forgotten for so long that it refused to emerge. He would not let it. It should stay where it was, far from all consciousness. He had forgotten it all.

  But actually he had never forgotten.

  The truth struck him, almost like a revelation. The sun had just reached its zenith above the roof, and the bright diffused light illuminated the whole attic. Once more, Roy thought about the seal. The image was amazingly clear in his mind’s eye, like a well-preserved photograph, or a film clip that had never aged; the shiny seal, at ease in the water, twisting and turning in a turquoise pool in Bergen in 1970, sending him an agonizing look before shooting up toward the light, toward life on the surface, toward the air.

  No one had murdered Birgitte. Birgitte had taken her own life.

  FUGUE

  FRIDAY, APRIL 4

  18.30, PMO

  When Benjamin closed the door behind him, it was as though he were closing down life itself.

  He was just as handsome as ever. Just as serious. But he was no longer her junior; the twelve months that separated them had been wide as an ocean when they were youngsters, but now he was her equal. Their conversation had been low-key. In a way, it was as if the past thirty-two years had not happened; when she looked at his face, she could smell lilacs and mother’s milk. She saw herself in a princess-style crimplene dress, tight at the waist, tailored across the bust, the skirt flaring wide and daringly short to her knees. She had sewn it herself, so happy that her body had quickly returned to its former shape and weight after the birth. His eyes, brown eyes with girlish lashes, were the eyes of Midsummer, the eyes of youth; Liv lay in his gaze, and Birgitte Volter knew that the decision she had made was irrevocable.

  “I have to withdraw from this,” he had said, toying with the little pillbox, the one she and Roy had received from his parents as a wedding present, the one nobody was allowed to touch, but that she could not take from him, could not stop him from examining; perhaps he would open it, and she could not do anything to prevent that. “I have spent so many years forgetting, and I had forgotten. It’s unbelievable that I could forget. Perhaps it was because I was so young. I console myself with that, Birgitte. I was so very young. But I cannot keep silent again, Birgitte. If I am asked, I will have to tell the truth. Even if it harms us both.”

  She had not attempted to dissuade him. Mechanically, she had scribbled a few words on the list of data he had given her, the list with Liv’s name on it. The name jumped out at her and meant Liv’s death could no longer be forgotten, could no longer be hidden in a year far back in time that she had spent the rest of her life trying to erase.

  Benjamin had been gentle. His voice sang, and his eyes made contact with hers every time she sought them. They conversed for a while, and remained silent even longer. Eventually, he stood up. He did not even make an effort to conceal that he was taking the pillbox with him. He held it up, looked at it, and without a word, stuffed it into his pocket.

  “It’s so long ago, Birgitte. We have to learn to live with it now, to stop trying to pretend it did not happen. We both made a mistake. But it’s such a long time ago.”

  Then he left her, and as the door closed behind him, life closed down for Birgitte Volter.

  It was not the humiliation she feared. Or the dishonor. The downfall that might follow was something she could accept. She did not fear the judgment of others. Perhaps they would not even reproach her. She had Roy, and Per. She deserved to lose everything else, only not them, and they would still be there.

  At night, certainty had come to her. The decision had really been taken many years before.

  Thirty-two years was not enough. Time had not healed the wounds, only brought a mature awareness of the enormity of her betrayal. Her little girl had died alone, even though her mummy could have been with her. There was both the shame of her betrayal and a longing for Liv’s world.

  Her life was over because Liv had returned. Liv was in the room. Birgitte coul
d smell the scent of the baby girl’s neck; she felt the tiny, fine hairs on her nose. Birgitte felt her breast press against the little mouth as it drew into a hungry pout. She experienced the powerful, unfamiliar, frightening feeling of responsibility that had surged through her when at the age of only eighteen, almost nineteen, she had held her firstborn in her arms. She had sobbed for hours; she could hear that sobbing now, it came from all around her, filling the room right up to the heavens, almost as high as it was possible to reach in Oslo, this city where she had hidden herself from Liv, working, and struggling to escape her youthful catastrophe. She had taken on great responsibilities since then, and she had felt the weight of those great responsibilities, but she had never really been able to run away from her abysmal betrayal. Now it had seized her again: it stood like a grinning, slobbering lion in front of her, and this was the place where everything would be brought to a close. This was where Liv’s death had led her, all the way to this point, and it was here her own life must end.

  Slowly, she wrapped the revolver in the shawl. She could not bear to see the gun. The revolver was an accusation in itself. She had chosen her mother’s Nagant precisely because her mother would have stopped her from doing what she did; Mum would never have let Liv die.

  As she aimed the swaddled gun at her temple, she heard someone making a noise in the restroom behind her.

  It did not prevent her from pulling the trigger.