by Agnete Friis
Barbara was blowing more smoke rings out the window. “Have you ever talked to your grandmother about it?”
“No.”
“What about your mother?” she said. “Does she have any family?”
“I think they were very religious,” I said, thinking of the missing Book of Childhood Memories again. It contained only two pictures of my grandparents on my mother’s side. One of them sitting in an anonymous-looking backyard of a villa drinking coffee under a parasol, and another of the two of them flanking the four-year-old Anna, each holding a hand in theirs. “They cut all ties with her when she met my father. I know this, because the Welfare Office tried to place me with her sister after . . . after it happened. That’s what I was told at Bakkegården, anyway, when I asked about my family. The sister didn’t want anything to do with me.”
“You’ve never had anyone to look after you,” said Barbara. As usual, she was wearing a thick layer of make-up, and the dark-blue eyes were emphasized with black eyeliner and shadow. “My father died when I was two years old, and Mom drank like a hole in the ground. I had to take care of myself. I was the one who did the shopping. I was the one who got up and made breakfast and sandwiches for school. I was the one who went to the charity shop to buy second-hand coats and skirts for both of us. My mother lay on the couch all day long, stinking of booze. No one has ever been there for me.”
“And what about after? Do you have any family now?”
She nodded emphatically. “Two grown sons. They’re just a little older than you are.” She went into the kitchen and produced a drawing of two freckled boys sitting next to each other with big grins on their faces. The boy that looked like the elder of the two had an arm resting on his little brother’s shoulders. “Christian and Peter,” she said. The teeth were drawn in grotesque proportions, the gums were far too pronounced.
“They both live in Copenhagen with their girlfriends now. But they come and visit me once in a while.”
“What about their father?”
I had difficulty imagining Barbara in a conventional mother-father-and-two-children scenario. To begin with, she was the kind of woman men loved to hate. That demonstrably casual Bohemian look combined with the tinge of megalomania inherent in calling her hopelessly banal drawings art was, quite frankly, terrifying, and would probably tame the majority of erections. Not to mention the added madness of the river of vodka and the chain-smoking deep into the night.
“He died of cancer six years ago,” she said. “After he died, I moved down here to draw. It was something I needed to do. There had been so much stress in my former way of life . . . ”
She started working on her devil again. There was a grating sound every time the long, squared-off nails scraped over the sheet of paper. Sometimes she moistened the tip of her finger with her tongue and rubbed a little in what I presumed were meant to be smudges of grey cloud. In some places the paper was worn through, disintegrating into fine, wet balls.
But when Barbara wasn’t busy drawing big-eyed children, something extraordinary happened. I had become aware of this a couple of days before, when she was bent over a picture of hovering spirits in flowing robes: the lines still ran together in grotesque and distorted forms, but suddenly it seemed to make sense; the ugliness matched the motif, like when the devil really was the devil himself, even as he looked like a butt-ugly portrait by an amateur.
“I think you should stay away from your grandmother,” said Barbara. “Let me help you instead. I can help you remember enough to let you forget—and move on. You have fought for so long . . . you have been so alone. Let me be there to kiss your boo-boos.”
“I’m not sure I want to remember.” My voice was thick with the self-pity that suddenly surged in my chest.
Barbara undid her hairclip, clasped it between her teeth, and ran her fingers through her hair before tying her locks into a fresh knot in the nape of her neck. Not once did she take her eyes off mine.
“Sweet, darling, wonderful Ella,” she said. “Nothing can stay buried forever. Memories work their way out of the body just like splinters do. It can be a relief to have somebody standing by with tweezers and a little alcohol. It will be an entirely sterile operation. Aren’t you even a little bit curious?”
She winked at me, and I dropped my gaze.
Barbara made me intensely uncomfortable in the same way the nurses had done in the hospital when I had Alex. They kept on digging in their needles, trying to hit one of my dried-out arteries. It was that same familiar nausea, that violent urge to jerk my arm away.
“I can remember . . . a little,” I said cautiously. “I saw my father with the gun. He was yelling. I started to run, I think . . . ”
“Nothing else? Nothing before or after?”
I shook my head. “No, and I think that is more than enough. I probably saw my mother with her head blown off, for fuck’s sake, Barbara!”
It was the first time I had used her name, and the intimacy this implied magnified my acute discomfort. Barbara put down her pencil and put her hand over mine in the same way that Kirsten used to do. The long, shiny nail of her index finger traced along my wrist and gently circled one of my pink scars.
I jerked my hand away as if she’d burnt me.
The insult shone in her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I mumbled. “It’s an old war injury. I have some difficulty with physical contact. A social phobia. One among many.”
It was a half-truth. There was a particular kind of physical contact I had no problem with at all. Magnus, for example, could touch my scars, but I had a suspicion that lust could obliterate all phobias in a single blow. If something similar came on the market in pill form the entire psychiatric profession would go bust.
Barbara nodded and bit her lip. Still hurt.
“I’ll try the hypnosis,” I said. “I can’t very well get more fucked-up than I am already.”
Worms.
Fat naked worms wrapped around each other as they slid over the bottom of the tin can that Alex had put them in.
That was the first thing I started thinking about: worms. The next thing I thought was that I didn’t want to do this. I hadn’t wanted to do it at all, but it sounded like an okay idea once I’d had something to drink and Barbara had set about drawing the curtains and getting me settled on the floor. But then I was just scared, and at the same time I had an irrepressible urge to laugh.
Worms.
I was lying on the floor upstairs in the loft, but I could see myself from above, lying prostrate on the checkered quilt, like an angel that had crashed to the ground. Barbara had lit several candles and placed them in a circle around me, but the whole scene still looked creepy.
My head was an opened can of preserves and a cluster of dark, red worms were spilling over the sides. Their pointy, black-blue heads worked themselves in and out of each other.
I snorted a laugh.
“You have to relax your muscles completely.”
Barbara’s voice had a faint echo to it, and I could see her moving around me. She bent down and picked up my right arm, which immediately thudded back onto the ground. Then she did the same with the left arm, carefully moved my head from side to side. I felt the movement like a rerun of what I had just seen. First I felt my head falling to one side, and a long time thereafter, I saw the same thing happen. It was the middle of the night and Alex was asleep. Dear, darling Alex.
I snorted again.
“Are you ready?”
Barbara’s gaze flooded my field of vision, even though I was lying with my nose to the floor. She must be hovering in the air with me—but I was the one, who had swallowed the pill. The world was a magical place, I could no longer feel my arms and legs.
“I’m ready,” I said, and grinned.
“It is dark outside,” said Barbara. “It’s raining, and you are seven years old. How do you feel
?”
“Just fine, thanks.”
My words were slurred. I could hear it myself, and laughed again.
“What did you get for your birthday?”
“A new bicycle.”
I saw the bicycle standing on the gravel drive in front of me. It was purple, with white tires. Brand new, no training wheels.
“Who gave you the bicycle?”
“It’s a gift from my mom and dad. Dad bought it, he brought it home with him after work. Mom wrapped it in tinsel paper and ribbons. She smiled when she gave it to me. She said I was the best little girl in the world.”
“Do you like your dad?”
“Wait . . . ”
I frowned. Something was wrong.
“Wait . . . ” I said again. “I’m not feeling so well anymore. Can I come home now?”
I wanted to turn away from my dad and the bike. He was standing with his hand on the handlebars, staring down at me. My movements were slow and heavy, as if submerged in water. It took all my strength to turn my head.
“Try sitting up, sweetheart!”
My mom was sitting next to me. Very gently, she helped me to sit up. Her white hair brushed my naked arms. She gave me a glass of water, and an orange pill. I had already had one, but that was a long time ago. She put the glass to my lips.
“Take this,” said Mom. “It will make you feel better.”
The water was clear and clean, it quenched my thirst.
“Careful,” I whispered. “He’s out there, and I can’t . . . protect you.”
17
ANNA, 1994
Where will you be when the world starts to burn . . . ?
Anna stood petrified to the spot, staring at the words typed onto the card she was holding in her hand. She had found it in an envelope stuck under the windshield wipers of her car. Any and all hopes that this was some kind of mistake—that the card was meant for someone else, left on the wrong windshield—were dashed when she saw her name clearly printed on the front.
For Anna. It was one of those floral-print cards that you could buy for ten kroner at a Fakta supermarket. Yellow roses. Her father’s favorite. And the words were her father’s, an echo from their living room whenever she had dared to step out of line.
Where will you be when the world starts to burn, Anna? Will you be standing among the living or the dead?
It was three in the afternoon and the sun was bright and warm after eight hours under the neon lights of the fish factory. But the cold lingered in her fingers; they were stiff and clumsy, making it difficult to fumble the card into her bag. She wouldn’t dream of simply throwing it away. If somebody saw it, saw her name written on the card, they would know the message was meant for her, that she had been caught in some unforgivable shameful act. She had to destroy it, get rid of it, later, when there was no risk of being seen.
Anna opened the car door and slid into the driver’s seat. Tried to breathe calmly, looked up and out over the wind-blown parking lot. Other workers were leaving the factory now, either alone or in small groups. Little bow-necked Ellen scurried over the asphalt like a mouse fearing a hawk hovering overhead. And a little farther off the mainstays emerged: the routine floor-workers who reigned supreme over the other girls on the factory floor. They lived next door to one another, gave one another lifts to work; their children played together, and on the weekends their husbands watched soccer games together and stood around the barbecue drinking beer. It was a community she had never been able to find her way into, even though she’d made her own tentative attempts to do so over the years. On her fortieth birthday she had invited her neighbors to a barbecue. She had rented a tent, served white wine and homemade potato salad. Everybody came, and went home again. And nothing changed. She was alone.
Anna put the car in gear and turned onto the country road along the coastline leading to Klitmøller. The sun was shining in a pale blue sky, but the wind had turned, and the waves breaking on the beach sent a mist of shattered grey pearls into the air. Soon the roaring autumn storms would rage along the coast.
She wiped away her tears with the back of her hand, swore, and then cursed herself for doing so.
There was no reason to panic. All she had to do was think rationally, not let her feelings run wild. She was an adult human being, and she had to think of Ella. And Helgi. The life they had built together. It was only a card after all. Just words.
Helgi was already home. His car was parked in the drive. Ella’s schoolbag lay abandoned in a corner at the entrance. He had fetched her from daycare and bought the groceries for dinner. The card was burning in Anna’s handbag, but she knew that she couldn’t show it to Helgi. It was meant for her.
No one can protect you from the wrath of God.
The rasped inner voice was calm and polite, muted.
Anna went into the kitchen. Helgi was sitting at the small kitchen table with his back turned. He was reading the newspaper. His shoulders were broad and so familiar to her. There had been a time when she knew those shoulders could bear whatever she laid there. She reached out and brushed a hand over them.
“Hi.”
He did not look at her, didn’t even turn around. It had been like this for some time now—stress at work, he’d said, but apart from that, he didn’t say anything at all. She wanted to hold him in her arms, but he didn’t look like something you could hold onto. He looked like steel and stone.
“I’m going for a walk,” he said. His voice like rust.
“Again? But you’ve already been out for a walk today.” Ella had appeared in the doorway, she stood there shaking those massive curls of hers. “Shall I come with you? Shall we go fishing? Last week you promised we could go fishing.”
“Not today, Ella.”
He tried to smile, but his mouth was little more than a line. Then he turned and went into the entrance, the car keys jangling in his hand.
He is leaving you. You left God for him, and now you are being punished. There is no love stronger than the love of God.
“Mom? Should we do something together?”
Ella’s small face was tipped up to Anna’s, bearing all the courage a little girl could muster. Rejection hurt, this Anna knew. She also knew that she had to go to her daughter now.
Anna’s smile seemed reassuring and real.
“Let’s sit on the couch together for a while,” she said. “We could play cards, if you like.”
Ella’s face brightened up briefly, but after the first hand, she flung the cards at the wall and kicked the coffee table.
“Dad promised we could go fishing.”
Her small blue lips were curled into a pout, demanding an answer, but Anna merely cleared away their game. Neither one of them said anything, and a little later, Ella jumped up, went into the foyer, thrust her feet into her galoshes, and darted out the door for Thomas’s house. She and the boy had been inseparable all summer. Her little back cut defiantly through the wind as she disappeared down the drive. It was autumn, and it was already getting dark.
Anna wandered from room to room, lighting candles in the dark windowsills as she went—in the kitchen, the living room, even in the washing room. Then she went back into the living room and looked up Lea’s telephone number in her address book.
Lea would calm her down. Lea had always had a calming effect on Anna when she started to panic. She too had left the church, but she understood the terror of Judgment Day, the depths of this fear, and she had found a place where it couldn’t reach her anymore. Anna knew that when she heard about the card, she would laugh her hoarse smoker’s laugh and swear all Anna’s problems away. Tobacco was the only crutch Lea still clung to after her last rehabilitation. Tobacco and a little hash. That is, as far as Anna knew. It had been such a long time since they had spoken. Years, even.
Anna punched in the number and waited. Heard nothing but a mechani
cal beep. Busy. She called up again, taking extra pains to punch in the number correctly. The same aggressive, mechanical beep. Still no answer.
The restless dread returned. It seemed forever stored in her body, logged into her bones from a time when her father took her on his knee in the evenings and read the Proverbs to her.
The righteous—men of integrity—will live in this land of ours. But God will snatch wicked men from the land and pull sinners out of it, like plants from the ground.
Anna took the card out of her jacket pocket and held it over a candle. A weak, bluish flame caught, curled, and smoldered the card’s edges as she carefully turned it over. She let the final embers fizzle out in the sink.
18
When I opened my eyes my body was shaking.
Barbara and Alex had managed to drag me upstairs to the bed on the first floor. My cramping arms and legs were wrapped in quilts and duvets so I wouldn’t bang myself black and blue on the bedstead. There was a stench of vomit that I knew at once was coming from me. Stomach acid still burned in my nose and throat.
Alex stood at the foot of the bed in the grey light of dawn, staring wide-eyed at me.
“Can you hear me, Mom? Should I call an ambulance?”
I shook my head, trying to smile through clenched teeth. I wanted to avoid talking, if I could. I knew that if I tried, only grunts and gasps would come, no words.
Barbara appeared behind Alex. She laid a cold, wet cloth on my forehead.
“Now,” she said, “we are all going to take one thing at a time.” She was looking at Alex and me, but the words were probably more for her own benefit. She did not look well. The night before had left her looking deathly pale. The thick black eye-liner was smudged into dark blotches that extended down to her cheekbones, and when she stroked my hand, I could feel that hers was shaking.
“What a night . . . You were out of it for over four hours.”