Katarina

by Alona Jarden

  "That's not the same, Andrew. You've always been an idiot, but this is a real downfall for me!"

  We sat there until the wee hours of the morning and I felt no failure or regrets about returning to him.

  Andrew answered many of my questions and claimed I would know how to answer the ones he didn’t myself, in a few days. He had much faith in our next sessions and the route he’d prepared for me and I believed him enough to keep my mind at ease.

  In a world that I didn’t remember, I knew he was everything for me. But the memories, which continued to rise in my mind, were still very vague and blurry.

  Chapter 13

  Mr. Briggs

  I was so happy to be invited back to the police station. Partly because I wanted to watch Professor Thompsons' interrogation, but mainly because it meant I was officially dropped off the suspects list.

  I’d always wondered why his relationship with Kate was so profound and required many hours of work, even after school ended, and thought the police made the right call summoning him for questioning.

  "If he laid a hand on her, I swear I'll kill him," I murmured as soon as he entered the interrogation room, quickly regretting it as the cops around me gave me a chilling stare.

  It was clear to me that the glass window I was standing behind was two-sided to conceal our identities, and that its other side was a mirror. Officer Swenson sat on one side of a clean table and Professor Thompson sat on the other. The interior design of the room looked like a scene from a television series, especially with the lamp that had no shade or cover hanging from a white, electric wire over their heads, illuminating the place with a sickly, yellow light.

  "I'll ask again, Professor Thompson, what is your relationship with Ms. Kate Briggs?"

  "And I'll answer again exactly as I answered before. Ms. Briggs is one of my students and, beyond that, there is nothing to my relationship with her."

  "Are you saying she's just one of many?"

  "No one can say that about Ms. Briggs," he smiled. "She is special, but not special to me."

  "In what way is she special?"

  "She has exceptional mental abilities, far above those of her classmates. That’s how she's special."

  "I don’t understand," Officer Swenson stated and I wondered if she really meant it or was just trying to annoy him by asking him to explain himself over and over again.

  "My God," he looked around and sighed in distress. "This place is like my biggest nightmare."

  "May I ask why?" Officer Swenson straightened her posture in her chair.

  "Now you want me to explain why I am suffering here? Isn’t that ironic?"

  "Can you please explain why you think it's ironic?" That time I knew she was messing with him.

  "I suppose you have no choice but to keep asking 'why' and 'what' again and again, since you can’t seem to understand what I'm saying. Every word I utter makes you ask more questions and that just drives me crazy."

  "What is it that I don’t understand?"

  "Everything!" he raised his voice "My answers are fairly clear so I'm not going to make them any clearer. Try to make sense of what I said. I believe in you."

  I sat on the edge of my seat listening to the arrogant words spilling out of him. I wanted to wrap my arms around his neck and squeeze the air from him until he told me what he had done with Kate, but I was bound to the police’s pace of progress.

  "I'm waiting for my answer, Professor Thompson. Why is this place your biggest nightmare?" She insisted on him answering each and every one of her questions, despite his aggressive complaints.

  "How can I put this politely? I'm known as a blunt person who won’t tolerate stupidity in any way, yet here I am." He stretched his arms out, "In a closed room surrounded by policemen with a million repetitive questions I am obliged to answer and it feels like Chinese torture."

  "My questions may seem repetitive to you, but since we're not familiar with the special relationship you share with Ms. Briggs, it is important for us to hear the answers from you rather than guess them."

  "Oh, God. Why do I even bother? Did you not hear a word I said?" He pounded his fist on the table and Officer Swenson earned some credit points in my head for driving him out of his composure. "In what other ways should I say this to make you accept I don’t have a special relationship with Ms. Briggs?"

  "But, you just said she was special, did you not?"

  "Can someone please kill me?" He rolled his eyes and continued before I managed to volunteer for the task. "Ms. Briggs was a very special girl, and that's all I said."

  "Was?" She didn’t miss him talking about her in past tense, and a shudder of apprehension passed through my body.

  "I didn’t mean that she's gone or something. I don’t understand, are you trying to twist my words so that you find a main suspect? Is that what this is?"

  "I'm just reacting to the answers you provide me, Professor Thompson."

  "Then, come on, let's end this nightmare, please."

  The restlessness that dominated his body was very obvious. He moved in his chair, his breathing was quick, his gaze shifted from one corner of the room to the other, and his expression was apprehensive and unsettled.

  "He did something to her, you see that, don’t you?" I turned to the policemen who sat around me, taking notes in their notebooks.

  "Mr. Briggs, we agreed that you could be present as long as you kept quiet and didn’t interfere with the interrogation."

  "I'll be quiet if you promise me that you didn’t bring him here just to answer a few questions before returning him to his routine. I'll be silent if you write in your comments that it is beyond reasonable doubt that he hurt her!"

  "Mr. Briggs, I'm warning you," a policeman I could fold in half without much effort tried to threaten me, but he just made me laugh.

  Officer Swenson kept her gaze directed into Professor Thompson's green eyes. She sat upright in front of his suspicious writhing, determined to get answers to all her questions.

  "Professor Thompson, tell me again what you were doing the day Ms. Briggs disappeared."

  "I arrived at work at eight in the morning, taught the courses according to my schedule, and then stayed about two hours later in the large auditorium to grade the exams taken earlier by Ms. Briggs' class."

  "You say everything went according to your schedule?"

  "Yes."

  "Isn't it more accurate to say that the test you had planned was supposed to take place in the first hour, but in practice took place later, not as planned?"

  "Oh, that's right. We actually did change the schedule that day."

  "Is there anything else you forget to tell me about that day? Maybe Ms. Briggs was there with you when you graded the exams?"

  "I didn’t forget to mention it, you just didn’t give me a chance to answer your question in full," he replied reluctantly.

  "Then tell me now," she smiled at him. "Why was she there with you?"

  "She helps me grade papers from time to time."

  "Is it customary for a student to do that? Is that how it's done with other lecturers? Do you have a different student in each class that helps you grade the exams?"

  "It is customary, and other lecturers do the same, but I don’t have a different student that helps me in every class, no."

  "So why did you decide to embark on such a unique process in Ms. Briggs' class?"

  "As I said before, Ms. Briggs is special and this whole interrogation is ridiculous."

  "Professor Thompson, I'm not sure you understand the gravity of your situation."

  "I actually do. I understand that an adult woman left her house and has chosen not to return to it for a few days. What I don’t understand is why I'm here and why the police are involved."

  "I'll be happy to answer that, Professor Thompson." She put her pen down on her notebook and looked straight at him. "Ms. Briggs was recently spotted being shoved in the trunk of an unidentified vehicle against her will."

  "She what
?"

  "Now do you understand, Professor? This is not about a girl who went a little wild and hasn’t returned home, it's an interrogation concerning an abduction. So let me tell you how this will happen in the most clear way I can. You are among the last people who saw her alive. She sat with you and graded exams, as no other student in the past did, and since then, she has disappeared."

  "That's not accurate." His tone of speech changed abruptly and he straightened up opposite her. "There were classes in the past in which I chose a student who stood out above the others to grade with me."

  From that moment on, the atmosphere in the interrogation room changed completely. Officer Swenson’s clarification of the situation made him change his cynical and aggressive manner to another, submissive and cooperative one.

  He answered her questions, explained where he had been at each stage of that day, and even managed to describe to her his precise location when he spoke to me on the phone.

  "Please check the security cameras of the gas station in question at the mentioned time and date," Officer Swenson spoke directly to the window behind him, and two of the policemen next to me left the room immediately.

  "You know what?" Professor Thompson leaned toward her and went on. "Now that I think about it, a few months ago there was a young man who wanted to learn a bit about Ms. Briggs."

  "What do you mean? Who?"

  "I’d never seen him before that day and haven’t since either."

  "What did he want to learn about her?"

  "He explained that he had been in love with her for years and thought I could be the one to give him some tips to attract her attention because…" he stopped and looked down.

  "Because...? Please, complete your sentence."

  "Because it seemed to him that I was the only one she appreciated. He claimed that our relationship was a subject of envy to all the other students."

  "So now you say that the relationship you shared actually was something unusual and had been talked about all over campus?"

  "No. I am saying that, a few months ago, a young man I'd never seen before tried to ask me about Ms. Briggs."

  "And what did he ask you, specifically?"

  "He didn’t ask me anything after he introduced himself."

  "I'm confused again, Professor Thompson. Help me understand. You just said that a young man asked you questions in order to learn more about Ms. Briggs, didn’t you?"

  "Officer Swenson, I believe that, by now, you've learned that I'm not a pleasant person and that people are more of a burden to me than a welcome."

  "Yes, I have to admit that, from our superficial acquaintance, I have experienced this feeling from you."

  "If so, would you believe that I would have a conversation of a gossiping nature with a guy I don’t know in order to help him fulfill his love for one of my students?"

  Officer Swenson laughed loudly and the conversation between them continued in a calmer tone. I, on the other hand, didn’t believe any of his utterances.

  I sat watching him through the window, unable to state aloud what was obvious to me, filled with disappointment to find that he had managed to confuse Officer Swenson or, at least, lead her to refine her tone of questioning.

  "Do you know of anything that was bothering Ms. Briggs? What can you tell us about her state of mind lately?"

  "Her mood in recent days hasn’t been any different than what it has been for the past few years. In a word, contemplated."

  "Contemplated? That doesn’t sound so positive."

  "It is what it is. She’s never been a particularly delightful student, and maybe that's why I could deepen the bond between us. I guess that if she were as talkative and jumpy as the rest of her classmates, I would certainly ask her to shut her mouth and leave my auditorium at the end of each day."

  "But that’s not what you did."

  "No."

  "What did you two do? Did you sit in silence and grade exams?"

  "On the contrary, we talked for hours, but not about the nonsense that interested the rest of her peers."

  "What did you talk about?"

  "Life. Ms. Briggs is a very mature young woman. When she shared her heart's troubles with me, I was amazed to discover that it wasn’t due to trivial things."

  "What gave her distress?"

  "Things like the emotional burden she experienced in her life with her father."

  I widened my eyes at him.

  "Can you please elaborate?"

  "She used to tell me how difficult it was for her to talk to him and that she never told him what was really on her mind. If I'm not mistaken, her exact words were that she felt she had ‘emotional responsibility’ for him."

  "Did she feel responsible for him?"

  "She felt that she was the only thing in his life and that made her afraid for him."

  "When you say 'afraid,' what do you mean?"

  "I don’t mean that she was worry about any physical harm." I breathed a sigh of relief when he clarified his words and continued to listen to him religiously. "I believe that, not so deep inside her, she wanted to get away from him."

  "Do you know her father? Do you know Mr. Briggs?"

  "I don’t. I spoke with him on the phone a few days ago, when he tried to find out where she was, but other than that, I have had no contact with him."

  "And if you had to describe your impression of Ms. Briggs' relationship with her father, what would it be?"

  "In my opinion, he was obsessed with her."

  "And Ms. Briggs?"

  "She was definitely aware of this, but she wasn’t aware of how he controlled every aspect of her life. She was blind to him controlling her."

  "He controlled her?"

  "Yes. While she was telling me the story of her life, it was obvious that she hadn’t noticed that her father had decided where she'd learn, where she'd live, what she'd eat and where she'd go. He has very strict rules and conditions for her and somehow made her believe that the choices she made were all hers. From my point of view, when I sat and saw her extinguished eyes while she told me about her life next to him, it was all very clear."

  "What was so clear to you?"

  "There’s no need to beat around the bush. It sounded like the life she told me about wasn’t hers. It was his. The only thing that seemed to be in her bones was medical studies, and maybe that's why she was doing her absolute best. That's why I was so sure she had run away from home. It didn’t occur to me that something might actually..." He stopped and looked down again.

  "Professor Thompson, is there anyone you can think of that might want to hurt Ms. Briggs?"

  "There are a number of people, but I can’t believe that any of them would do such an act. She's intolerable, that's for sure, but her wit and grace make up for it."

  It was hard for me to hear the way he judged the relationship I had with my daughter. It was true that I was tough on her, but it was only because she was important to me and I knew exactly how I could fulfill her dream of becoming a doctor.

  Ever since she was a young child she wanted to be a doctor, but her mother, who was weak in character, couldn’t cope with some of her negative reactions.

  From the moment I arrived with her in the United States, I’d been directing her down the paths I wanted her to go.

  I was stronger than her mother. I didn’t allow her to sink into hours of pointless drawing as she used to do, nor did I allow her to be too attached to her friends and I made sure she spent her time acquiring skills that would help her.

  I just didn’t think that by being raised as a regular child she would be given the tools she needed to be as special as Professor Thompson described her.

  I did my best, though sometimes it was against her will. I hadn’t worried about it. I knew that when she achieved her dream, she'd thank me, but I never thought she saw it as an emotional burden.

  Could he have been right?

  Could it be that my love had burdened her?

  Had the light in my daugh
ter's eyes been extinguished when she spoke of her life beside me?

  Chapter 14

  Andrew

  It was all too perfect to be true. So much so, I was almost happy she’d decided to run away from me. I’d felt it was important I dealt with some difficulty in implementing my plan so that I would know for sure it was all happening in reality and not in another one of my vivid dreams. Even though, in my wildest dreams, I dared not imagine it all going so smoothly.

  We sat there for hours, Katarina and I, rocking in the chairs her drawings had instructed me to buy and talking freely. Even though I refused to answer some of her questions on the grounds that she wasn’t yet ready to hear the answers, she kept her calm. In return, I agreed to her request that I hurry up and reveal more details to her, understanding that she had grown up to be a stronger woman than I had thought.

  The rapid pace with which she agreed to dive into her memories caused me to stray over and over again from my plan, whether it was by speeding up the stages or canceling some of them all together.

  At that evening, I was supposed to ask her to draw the woman who appeared repeatedly in her dreams, but her spontaneous escape into the depths of the forest and the pleasant conversation to which we drifted, once again took me off course and I wasn’t ready to return to it so quickly.

  It kind'a felt like old times when we sat there, sharing our feelings. I told her how frightened I was that she would get spooked and run away and she told me how she was concerned from not being frightened enough. After long hours exchanging words from our hearts, at the end of a brief silence, she fell asleep in her chair, out on the porch.

  I smiled as I walked back into the cabin and got a warm blanket from the bedside cupboard to cover her. It wasn’t the first time she had fallen asleep before me but, on earlier occasions, I had been too young to realize how beautiful she was when she was sleeping and I hurried to return to her.

  I used to sneak out her bedroom window and back to my house after she fell asleep, so that no one in our families would find out I had been with her again past our bedtime.